The dawn crow of the cockerel in the Passion Narrative: - (Part 2) The Midrash, about King Solomon who desires to build the Temple, the shamir and the Hoopoe begins by announcing that King Solomon got himself a male and female demon (derived from shiddah and shiddot which could mean ‘singers’ (see Jerusalem Bible version) but is obscure enough, according to the footnote, to possibly mean demons) who, in turn, eventually got a hold of the king of the demons, Ashmedai, who pointed King Solomon in the direction of the hoopoe, the guardian of the ‘shamir’. The text continues:- “Solomon replied, “I want nothing at all that is yours. But because I desire to build the Temple, I need the shamir.” Ashmedai (the king of demons) said to him. “ The shamir was not placed in my charge but given to the prince of the sea, and he gave sole charge of it to the wild cock, (the hoopoe) who is entrusted with it on oath. Do you know what he does with it? He takes it to an uninhabited mountain and sets it down upon a peak, and the mountain splits asunder. Then the wild cock gathers seeds of trees and scatters them in the split, which consequently attracts settlers .” (Hence the Aramai Targum calls the wild cock the “splitter of mountains.”)” (See:- “The Book of Legends Sefer Ha-Aggadah” No. 122 P. 130 Ed. Hayim Nahman Ravnitzky, Schocken Books, New York, 1992) If, in Judaism at the time of our Lord, the cockerel announces the new day and the call to first prayers, the clearing by the priestly caste of the ashes of the previous days sacrificial oblations in the Temple as preparation for sacrifices of the new day, and indeed, the cockerel is recognised as the one who has charge of the shamir then surely, we can equate the shamir with our Lord and the wood of the cross! The cross upon which our Lord was nailed, would have been erected in the rock, that is, it would have split the rock, and so we could say that symbolically, Christ is indeed the shamir who ‘attracts settlers’, the new Covenant, which is the Church, and therefore it is no surprise, the shamir disappeared after the building of the Second Temple, because Christ is the shamir, the tool required to build the (new) Temple, announced by the cockerel on Good Friday morning. When, as the Gospel recounts our Lord died upon the cross, the veil of the Temple was torn from top to bottom (Mk 15:37, Matt 27:51) and thus the Covenant of Sinai is superseded, the New and Everlasting Covenant (of the Church) is established through the Resurrection of Jesus and the institution of the Ministerial priesthood and the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper; these surely all point to Jesus as being the shamir. The cock crow on that Good Friday would see our Lord died upon the Cross and again, as the Gospel relates, there was an earthquake and the ground was split open and the souls of many rose from the dead (Matt 27:51). Is it that Christ is the shamir, the tool who enables the new temple to be built, the ‘keystone’ over which many would stumble, but upon whom, the Church, the New Temple or Tabernacle is built? In which case, the dawn crow of the cockerel, the splitter of stone, if the Gospel narrative references the Midrash, is of greater significance than we may think!
Many thanks for your Easter Offering, details of which, should be available next weekend; thanks also for the cake, chocolate, wine and Easter cards, the latter not having been consumed, but the others are a work in progress. Thanks also to all those who helped with the Holy Week liturgies in various ways! Thanks to those who prepared things in the sacristy, the flower arrangers, who made the church look so beautiful. Our thanks to our altar servers, who gave their time not only for the liturgies, but the rehearsals as well! A lot of time on their feet! Thanks to those who did the readings each day and to those who assisted with the music. Also, to take the opportunity to thank all those of you who help in the life of the parish in so many varied and different ways; particular thanks to those who look after the church linen, the flower arrangers, to the Special Ministers of Holy Communion, especially those who go out to the sick and housebound with Holy Communion; thanks to the gift aid organiser, the money counters, the finance team, the sacristans, the readers rota organisers, those who tidy up both in and around the church, attending to the plants, drains etc. the cleaners, the ‘Core Team’ and the roles they have undertaken, those who look after the coffee after the Masses on Sunday and Tuesday, those who organise and prepare the ‘First Friday lunch’ and of course the people that I will have forgotten to mention. Thanks also to Maria for the generous manner in which she has taken on the role of parish secretary, especially in getting the hall bookings sorted out and up to date. Again, my thanks, Fr. Ian
The dawn crow of the cockerel in the Passion Narrative: - (Part 1) In Judaism there are ‘interpretive commentaries which surround many of the text of the Old Testament, called ‘Midrash’. One such Midrash is about King Solomon and the building of the First Temple. The Midrash talks of a tool, the ‘shamir’ which is required to cut the stone for the Temple. The shamir is in the charge of a wild cockerel, the hoopoe. “An essential element in Solomon's construction of the Temple was the miraculous shamir stonecutter. In instructing us how to make the permanent altar to God, the Torah says, "do not build it out of cut stone" (Ex. 20:22). The shamir disappeared after the destruction of the Temple. The Nature of the Shamir:- The word "shamir" in biblical Hebrew was used in two senses: a) a penpoint made out of a hard substance (Jeremiah 17:1); or b) sharp thorns (Isaiah 5:6). Each usage relates to the ability of the shamir to pierce hard surfaces. The Talmud and later great rabbis described how the passage of the shamir along the surface of a stone would cause it to split perfectly into two pieces. Small as a barleycorn (less than one centimeter), the shamir did not have an inspiring physical appearance. According to Rabbi Bachiya in the Talmud, the shamir was first used at the time of the construction of the Tabernacle to engrave the names of the tribes on the precious jewels of the High Priest's breastplate. For safekeeping, the shamir was kept wrapped in wool, placed in a lead basket filled with barley bran (Talmud, Sota 48b.) The choice of these materials was specific, since no other materials were able to resist its penetrative powers. A Midrash recounts that even King Solomon had no idea where to find the shamir, although he knew he needed it to build the Temple. Solomon went to great lengths to obtain the shamir, even to the point, evidently, of contacting demons who had some relationship with the shamir and the other supernatural phenomena. The Midrash relates that Solomon consulted the king of the demons, who did not have it but knew that the angel of the sea had given the shamir to the hoopoe bird (dukhifat, Lev. 11:19), a type of fowl who needed it to survive. In the end, King Solomon captured the shamir from the hoopoe, a ‘wild cockerel’. (See:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoopoe ) The shamir was used by man only in the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple. Supernatural beings created by God for specific functions do not exist forever. The Mishna (Sota 9:12) states that the shamir existed until the destruction of the Second Temple. According to the Tosefta, the shamir disappeared after the destruction of the Temple (my note: in the year 70 A.D, some 27 years after the events of the first Easter, that is, the Death and Resurrection of Jesus) since it was no longer needed.” (Taken from:- https://www.chabad.org/kabbalah/article_cdo/aid/38030 3/jewish/Modern-Physics-and-the-Shamir.htm ) “Hoopoes will also feed on insects on the surface, probe into piles of leaves, and even use the bill to lever large stones and flake off bark.” We can understand the origins of the idea of the ‘rock splitter’ in the Midrash from the observations made about this wild cockerel, the hoopoe.