o Jnnet (ProfessOl' Pierre)
.Jolfsse srlldied Psycholog)' tinder Pro/essor Pierre Ja"er, Examples of Usage
• «It was thus that I came in contact with the Psych% gle de /a Condlllle of Pierre Janet, and with the S{;heme mOf€1IY of Bergson It is clearly to these two men that I owe the most, so far as verification is concemed." (Jousse 2000:23)
• "Experimental Psychology is beginning to make contact with ethnology, linguistics and experimental
phonetics. At scholarly meetings, such as those of the Philosophical Society, Messrs Brunot, Delacroix, Oumas, Janet, LevyMBruhl, Mauss, Meillet, Pemot, Piron, Vendryes exchange views on the subject.
These specialists draw conclusions on co-operative projects, such as the Masters Course on Language and TIlOught taught during the last two years at the Sorbanne. It seems that the time has come to try to view certain complex problems in a less restrictive way. ( ... ) My research has dealt with 'rhythmic
verba-motor memory', with what my professor at the College de France, Or Pierre Janet, would have
called the 'psychology of recitation'." (Jousse 2000:54)
• "TIlis is the point where the Anthropology of Geste, after some indispensable adaptation and fme-tuning
encounters, is able to integrate the powerful behavi01lral psychology which my master Or Picrre Janet developed continuously in his teachings over so many years at the College de France.
In his lecture of April 15, 1926, Pierre Janct asked: "What, basically, is the brain? In no way is it the organ of action. Action does not depend on the brain; it is not perfomled by it. There was a time when the brain was said to secrete thought as the liver secretes bile. That is childish. A brain separated from a living being is incapable of thought or of action. The brain is one of the elements of the extremely complex circuit that we call action; when the brain is separated from the muscle, there is no longer action. Action is dependent on both brain and muscle. In reality, man thinks with his whole body; he thinks with his hands, his feet, his ears, as well as with his brain. It is absolutely ridiculous to claim that his thought depends on a part of himself: it is tantamount to saying that Ollr manual ability depends on our fingernails.
Psychological activity is an activity of the whole - it is not a localized activity. The brain is quite simply a conglomerate of switches ... It is not the brain that detennines psychological activity; it only regulates it."" (Jousse 2000:73)
• "Finally, the publication of Or Pierre Janct's lectures at the College de France records the immediate adoption of the conclusions of my research by the author of L'lntelligence avon/ le Lnngage. " (Jousse 2000:79)
• "We have sorely neglected working with the microscope when studying human gesticulation. Whoever
tells us: "To think is to stop oneself from doing", is making a profowld mistake. On dIe contrary, to dlink is to flex one's whole human composite in sllch a way that dle interactional play becomes more demanding. My master, Pierre Janet, expresses his perfect understanding of this when he speaks of
'psychological tension' ."(Jousse 2000: 114)
• "Primacy of thought and memory has been erroneously accorded to the brain. Professor Janet, my master, was justified in emphasising the exaggerated role attributed to the brain. Historically, the brain was regarded as the sole source of thought and memory. I have dethroned the brain and accorded it its rightful place: it is a 'commutator' which switches us into consciousness.
Our thought, which is the bringingMinto-consciousness, will thus no longer pulse to the Rhythm of dle Brain, and our memory, which is the re-play of consciousness, will thus no longer respond to the
Rhythm of the Brain. It is to the Rhythm of the Body as a whole that thought and memory will pulse and respond. Rhythm is collectively and continuously imbricated: dIe rhythm of our hearts, the rhytJUll of our
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breathing, the rhythm of the balancing of our hands, of our footsteps, of our actions, depending on which part of our bodies we use to express the intussuscepted, intelligised and globally re-played Cosmos."
• "I'ierre Janet reiterates repeatedly: "We think with our entire body."" (Jousse 2000:83)
• "What does the French child do when carrying a long baguette bread? He breaks it in two halves to lose
none of it, and make it easier to carry. \¥hen a paysan goes to tJ1e well, Illost of the time he takes two buckets, not one, even though he needs only one. If you ask him why, his answer will be akin to the fomlllla of my Master, Pierre Jailer: "1 do it to make the carrying easier." Likewise, consider the faml woman going on her way, carrying milk in two buckets, one balancing on each side. She has learned that she will go much farther, and tire less, if she carries two buckets, one on each side and each balancing the other, than ifshe carries only one, on one side." (Jousse 2000:252)
o
Jerome (Saint)Imcmor~d [Bcsor:ihl
JOlIsse notes the particular interest paid by Saint Jerome to the Aramaic origins 0/ the Gospels. A highly literate schalor. Jerome was oble to qUOIe extensively and accurately in theological displlles.
demonstrating a remarkable memory. thl/s illustratmg Ihat literacy does nor excl/lde the lIse of memory which as an anthropological characteristic can be developed by any human being given sllitable training and slIpported by Oral-style mnemonic text structllres.
Examples of Usage
• "Among us Christians, only one man truly knew the Palestinian milieu, and that was Saint Jerome. He alone maintained contact with the Rabbis of Israel, which was the source of all his disputes with Saint Augustin. There is however no denying the fact that his knowledge of the whole of Palestinian literature remained unsurpassed in Christianity, and that his study was tJle living science of the Rabbis of Israel."
(Jollsse 2000:271)
• "Mlltalis mutandiS, the following lines from Saint Jerome (De Yiris illllsfribus 5), could just as easily be read in a current newspaper report: "Paulus was first named Shaoul. He was born in a town of Judea, in Giscala. lllis city was taken by the Romans. So Shaoul emigrated to Tarsus of Cilicia with his parents. The latter sent him to school in Jerusalem, where he followed tJ1C lessons of Rabbi Gamaliel."" (Jousse 2000:548)
• "The 'territorial' meaning of the first proposition accords with the Palestinian tradition recounted by Saint Jerome, a reliable and authentic etlUlographic witness. In the second proposition, which is logically dependent on the first, we read in Greek, gegenemenos - 'who was in Tarsus', and not gegennemenos - 'who was born in Tarsus'. This reading is in no way surprising, least of all to a professional philologist. All one need do is open a concordance of the Septuagint and a concordance of the New Testament and run through the quotations containing the two verbs ginomai and gennao and their derivative words. One can then see how frequently gen and genn are used the one for the other.
Amongst the dozens of eases let me merely cite here: Psalm 44 (45),17; Ezech. 22, 13,2 and Petr. 2, 12. For example, the Greek phrase of the Psalm 44 could be read and translated both as:
In the place or your rathers were your sons.
In the place or your ralhcrs were born your sons."
(Jollss.2000:549)
• " ... and the redoubtable St Jerome, a person almost never mentioned, but one of the rare people who has applied himself to the Aramaic in collaboration with Palestinian rabbis." (Jousse 2000:595)
• " ... is the Doctor MaximllS of Holy Writ who regarded biblical learning as one of the Church's chief bulwarks." (Orchard el al. 1951:4)
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o Jerusalem IKcnisht:ihl
Jousse Ident~fif!s Jerusalem as the site of the orlf!,lI1al Kemshttih at which the Apostle·Envoys 'apprehendf!d' fhf! Bf!s6rtih In AramGlC WJI!1 Ihe suppOrt (~rthe COllntlng-necklace com·trllcred by Kepha- Peter. and assIsted by the Metollrgemans-Sllnergoi: as encodmg interpreters in the intra-ethnic and extra-elhnic diaspora.
Examples of Usage
• "These Targumic fonnulas were encoded in the favoured convention of Aramaic, which was the language routinely and commonly used in the daily lives of the people of the Palestinian ethnic milieu. Some studies still assert, wrongly, that the people in the Palestinian milieu of the first century spoke Hebrew. In the streets of Jerusalem and in the alleys of Nazareth, Aramaic was spoken, not Hebrew, just as in the streets of Paris, French is spoken, not Latin. That we should happen to visit certain scholastic institutions in Paris, such as the Instifuf Cotholiqlle, for example, in the middle ofa theology lecture delivered in Latin, does not mean that the French speak Latin. Much the same scenario was played out in Palestine in leshoua's time. Aramaic was the common medium of social conununicatioll. But in the schools, the Judaean theologians used Hebrew as tlle medium of scholarly instruction and interaction. TIle Judaist tlleologians have continued using Hebrew as a scholastic medium for two thousand years. As Christian theologians depend on Judaist theologians for tlleir infom13tion, it is little wonder tllat these Christian scholars have readily accepted that Hebrew was also lISed by the Palestinian people as the popular medium of social communication. Because this Palestinian popular milieu has, until recently, received very little attention, it must now be studied attentively." (Jollsse 2000:460)
• "111is Aramaic encoding was the Targum or Translalion. Having remained oral for centuries, the Targum was only officially put-into·writing little by little, after tlle destnlction of Jerusalem. TIle fear of its loss, amidst tlle terrible trials endured by Israel, was principally what prompted dle official 'Putting-into-writing' of an Aramaic encoding, created originally, both intrinsically and liturgically to bc, and remain, oral. It is ironical that we owe our current familiarity and daily use of these formulaic Aramaic traditions to tlle trials and tribulations of the embattled people of Jerusalem!" (Jousse 2000:500)
• "In my study Jlld6hen, Judean, Judaiste in the Pale!llinian elhnic milieu, I show the antagonism between the 'intellectual' Judahens from Jerusalem and its environs, and the 'ignorant' Galileans. It is ethnographically interesting, and novel, to point out here, in passing, the mocking double irony in the instruction of the Latin occupier, Pontius Pilate. At the top of a Roman cross, planted in the soil of JUdean Jerusalem, on whi(;h the Galilean liberator W;lS slowly dying at the behest of Judahens with the cOlUlivance oftlle Roman oppressor, it was supremely ironical that an inscription should be fixed there proclaiming in all of Aramaic, Latin and Greek, that tlle dying sufferer was ruler of all the world. The besoraists (or evangelists) fortunately kept the wording for us in their Greek-enctXted memory-aids. 111is wording was naturally known by heart, in its entirety, by all reciters, as we have shown for the formulae of the Paternoster. When tllis was subsequently put-ill-writing, tlle use of customary graphic abbrevialions, which differed according to the different scriptors, can be seen in the accompanying table." (Jousse 2000:513)
• "Furthermore, the traditional fomlUlae of the parallel rhythmic Recitatives whose antithetic echoes were sung and balanced by the Babylonian Rabbis had been in the mouths of all and sundry, and heard for a long time in the typically Judahean streets of Jerusalem:
In Galilca, no Rabbi rises. (7,52)
From Jud5.hca. the Messiah shall come. (7,42)
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And thus was created U1C tragic and ironical contex1 of the mournful lamentation rhythmo- psalrnodised by the young Galilean Nabi, h!shoua the Messiah, before the capital of Judahea which rejected him:
h JenlslIlcm
e who kills
d Oh:o-ou
Ihe Nabis \\ ho cOllie from among ~ou
"
that I should g<lther
~our children Ix:fore Ille
o Jesus
[Icshou"ill IMcshihal
g
Ho\\ often I have w<tnted
j
And ~ou did not want to
c Jerusalem
f
and stones those who are Sent to you
4lS a hen gathers her chicks under her wings
,11/23.37-39 (Jousse 2000:547)
JOlIsse seldom uses the name 'Jesus'. the Hebrew versIOn of the Aramaic name of the Rabbi Jesholl"o.
Exa mples of Usage
• "As a small child I was extremely curious about Jesus of Nazareth. What drew me to him was his teaching, which my mother sang to me. I still sense her dear voice, not in my ears, but in my mouul and in my reciting throat. When I was still a child, I asked a priest who knew Hebrew and who was then curate at Beaumont-sur-Sanhe: "What language did Jesus speak?" - "I'm not exactly sure. In the seminary, they told us he spoke Greek, perhaps even Latin. But Renan thought he spoke Syro-Chaldaic ... 1l1at's what one finds in the Targum". And because of my eagerness to learn, he said to me: "If you like, we can work at this together". And UlUS it was that I began then and Ulere to scan the formulas of the Canticle of Job (if onc can call it a Canticle), and to study the Targum. I have gone on doing so to this day. I have kept on studying the Targum since then, attempting to sound on my lips the very language of Jesus. My scholarship has been marked by my obsession about this young Rabbi of NazareUl." (Jousse 2000:22)
• "When we are confronted widl dle words: 'Seonon' by Jesus, 'Gospel' by Jesus, we must ask ourselves to what Palestinian reality these words refer. For the word 'Sennon' is a translation, three times removed from the original, which original presumes to encode the Hebrew-Aramaean word: Diibiir- Pilgiimii. which means 'global and oral geste'. The Gospel is, in fact, the /Jesorelii, the Announcement or that which is recited orally, in odler words the very opposite of what we mean to signify when we say: the Book of the Gospels. How could masters of close textual criticism, who had never studied the structures of the Palestinian fomlUlaic style, ever delve successfully into the global stylistic mechanics of that original Oral-style Gospel?" (Jousse 2000: 169)
• "An exegete, filled with artistic innuendo and sarcastic condescension, once challenged me: "Jesus was not making music when he gave his sennen on the mount." Of course not, neither music nor sennon.
There was simply a young paysan-Rabbi who was recounting, and re-counting, his pearls-of-Ieanting, according to the crystallising anthropological and ethnic rhytJlms of his country, Galilee. And his Apprehenders faithfully received this teaching in order to wrap it, as a living rosary of pearls-of- learning. around their reciting throats in order to transmit it, alive and vivifying. That is why I follow the law of the interactionally miming anthropos - the mimer of what is interactionally real - well aware that
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Algebrosis is necrosis, and that death has no rhythm. I resuscitate that which conceives the ulllque essence oftlle grandeur and nobIlity of the human throat - the emissioll of sounds, as all animals do, and expression of meaning, as no animal does." Jousse 2000:207)
• "Loisy said: "TIle life of JeslIs, according to the Gospels, is like shagreen leather. TIle more one studies it, tlle more it shrinks". I maintain that the life of JeSllS is a yet untouched paysan immensity, and the more one explores it witlt virtuous hands, the more it grows." (Jousse 2000:312)
• "To the Jews, Jesus often appeared to be a gross oddity, as was the case when he demonstrated his genius in synthesising the traditional teachings. Abb6. Berii. Memr6. Meshih6 are all found in tlle
Aramaic targum, but not synthesised in the way that the Rabbi leshoua syntllesised them.
TIle Gospel might be less shocking to Jews iftlley were to discover, by reading steadily tluough tlle Apocalypses, the essential Jewishness embedded in the traditional fomlUlae. The Apocalypses of leshoua's time, and tllOse which followed - like the Apocalypse of John, the only one recognised as canonical by Christians - derive from currents that originated in the immense treasury of Palestinian tradition." (Jollsse 2000:566)
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H J<KKK"
o Kcnishtah - Qchillah - Asscmbly - Ekklcsia - Synagoguc
I LillIrg~'J IlIcd:tgog~·IIA1)Osllcsl I Kel)h:1llmcmoQ I
JOllsse was most partlclt/ar to emphasise 'he paysan or/gill of the Kenislttlilt-Qehill6h ,hat formed in Jerusalem after the death a/the Rabbi /eshou"a. H,s insistence was informed by Ihe need to ensure that Ihe essentially pedagogic Arall/eo-Hebraic Oral-slyle Tra(htlon origins of the 8es6roh-Gospel scrip/llres were acknowledged and celebrated. He worked com-tontly (0 shift the perceptions that the Rabbi lesholl"a and his Disciples Apostles were formally trained in (he literate Hebraic tradition and that the origins of the Christian teachings were fundamentally Graeco-La,in If/urgy, to an understanding of the early church as the product qf the Aramaic traditioned Oral-style milieu,
The Kenishtiih (Schoolhollse) was the orlgm of the ~)nagoglle (temple). and its real jimctlOn
\I'm is 'teaching and learnmg '. not preaching ': see "Pedagogy engenders Uturgy. ,"" (infra) Jousse notes thar
• "In this respect. the Palestinian miliell i.~ a mi/iell privileged above all others: it has consistently
maintained a holistic and dynamiC, Corporeal Pedagogical Oral Style liturgy. An "Oral-style Recitative' is always more or less a 'Global Style Mimodramo·. Ollr Liturgy has drunk its fill from the Clip of Israel . ., (Joltsse 2000:168)
• '·And./ollowing after him, he who re-mem-bers nOl only becomes an oral reciter, bUI a global re- player. ThaI is the essence of the ancient ethnic pedagogy-liturgy and the Single anthropological memOly. ., (Jofl,\'se 2000: 171)
• "Our liturgy has lost the conscious connection with lIS mimodramalic origin. It has become mechanical Or aesthetic instead of being intelligible. 1 understand why there are people who are deserting their churches. and their religion. There is no longer any life Ihere. There are no longer any Significant gestes that con be understood. Everything has become disassociated. so that people are living Olll misconceptions. and end lip rejecting everYlhing. One cannot live forever in a state q(
inconsistency} Either religion must become SCientific. Or it will become a dilapidared and abandoned shell ... We have lost the sense of the expressive geste and too often we coment ourselves with algebrosemes. We have to regain a deep consciousness of the greatness of the primordial Signifying
gem. " (Jollsse 2000:565)
Examples of Usage
Jousse [races the origins of the Kenishtah [0 the Babylonian exile:
• "In Babylon, on foreign ground, they organised an intelligent passive resistance. Familial abbas were transfoffiled into national Abbas. Isolated families, in order to keep their Tradition intact, or even increase it, put it into writing, or if it remained oral, 'assembled' it. TIle Assembly, the Kenisl,til which
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