After a bit of a tangent, it is now time to return to Aslan's command at the beginning of Narnian time. We recall that the command has a positive and negative aspect, "Treat [the Dumb Beasts] gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways..." We spent a significant amount of time attempting to determine what (if any) particular actions or values are included in this command. We also noted that there does not seem to be much attention paid or centrality given this command. There is no warning to remember the command and precious few mentions of it outside of almost throwaway lines in various ones of the Chronicles.
(Note that this is unlike the Signs given to Jill in The Silver Chair where, parallel to the Shema declaration, she is commanded to "say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night.")
I've always found this quite difficult. After all, if you heard a direct command from God, wouldn't you want to make sure you always remembered what He said and consider His words more precious than diamonds? Wouldn't you ensure there were written texts, rituals, reminders, and holidays so that for generations God's word would endure? To me that would be a given, but it doesn't seem to have happened in Narnia.
With that in mind, I would like to do a quick thought experiment. Let us imagine a Jewish Narnia, in which the Talking Beasts mimicked a Jewish approach to Law and ritual, and to whom the same command was given. What would happen?
Actually, I think there are a couple of models: the Shabbos (the Sabbath) model and the Love Your Neighbor model. We'll take each one, explain it, and then apply the model to Aslan's stated prohibition against returning to the ways of the Dumb Beasts.
Let's start with the Shabbos model. On the seventh day of the week God commanded the Jews not to do work, "but the seventh day is a sabbath of your God, you shall not do any work..." (Deuteronomy 5:14). However, outside of an explicit prohibition against burning fire (Exodus 35:3), there is no explanation as to what constitutes work. Nonetheless, following the given rules describing how to derive laws from the text of the Torah 39 different categories of work are defined! On top of that there are numerous rabbinic injunctions to (1) ensure that one does not unknowingly come to violate Shabbos, and (2) retain the aura of Shabbos as a day or rest.
In fact, the definitions of the categories and their rules are so strong that there is little undefined wiggle room left in the unvarnished statement prohibiting work. Should someone suggest that an action violates the prohibitino of work on Shabbos, the immediate question would be, which of the 39 categories includes this action. And if it does not fit any of the 39 categories, it's not (biblically) prohibited. Similarly, with further categories enumerated by the Sages. One may decide, and even promulgate, the notion that a certain activity that does not fit into one of the 39 categories is not Shabbos-dik (meaning it is not in the spirit of Shabbos) and that may be correct. But no one would suggest that this newly defined activity violates the biblical prohibition.
Instead, we have well-defined categories of work with a myriad of rules and details.
Is it too easy to lose the forest for the trees? Perhaps, but I would counter that attention to details demonstrates Judaism's love, care, and seriousness about the word of God, and that the lived experience of Shabbos is easily and respectfully done without loss of forests.
So, what happens when we apply this model to Aslan's command?
We'll try to guess in our next post.
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