Bernard Dubourg

Bernard Dubourg (August 20th 1945 - December 20th 1992) is a writer French, aggregate of philosophy in 1968. He is in particular the author of poems, published in Such as it is and the review PO&SIE , of a French adaptation of the treaties of Mr. Gaster and J.A. Montgomery on the Samaritains (ED. O.E.I.L., 1984 and 1985), and of a translation with accompanying notes of the treaty kabbalistic Sefer Yetsirah . It is especially known for the Invention of Jesus , a work in two volumes, which Gallimard made appear, in the collection Infinite the , that directed Philippe Sollers (volume I, the Hebrew of New Testament , 1987; volume II, the Manufacture of New Testament , 1989). With its death, he worked with a continuation of this project, centered on the Apocalypse of Jean.

Poetry

Dubourg was in liaison with the English poet J.H. Prynne of which it translated certain poems, and, through him, with the poets of the British Poetry Revival , in particular those of the group of Cambridge, among which Anthony Barnett. It is by Prynne that Dubourg took note of the study of John-Turner Marshall (1850-1923), English scholar, author of " The Aramaic Gospel". Marshall, defended the thesis of an original of the Gospels in araméen and posed the problem of the retroversion; these questions will inspire the Invention of Jesus .

The Invention of Jesus

The test of Dubourg wants to show that the corpus néotestamentaire drift of Hebrew originals and that the materials leading to the Gospels would have been composed according to the only traditional procedures of the Midrash. Their authors would have undertaken a true “excavation” of the Hebraic Bible, to seek the eschatologic implications of them, i.e. to include/understand how, “at the end of times”, the Writings would be “accomplished”, by the conversion of pagan and the arrival of the Messie. Dubourg, being based on the hébraïsmes of the Greek text, affirms that the original was written in Hebrew then translated literally into Greek. To prove it, it proceeds to a “retroversion” into Hebrew of various passages of the Acts of the Apostles and the Évangiles, whose Prolog of the Gospel according to Jean, and also uses the Gématrie, technique of Exégèse by calculation, resulting from the Alphabetical order of the Hebrew alphabet. He considers the result linguistically much more coherent than the Greek text. Accordingly, Jesus and Paul de Tarse would be thus two “inventions”, within the meaning of two discovered, of the midrash. The first Christians would be Jews messianists, whose various types (“sects”) could develop as of the translation of the Seventy, two centuries before the Christian era.

Dubourg quotes in particular:

  • Matthew Black (1908-1995), biblical professor of criticism to the University of St Andrews in Scotland, author of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (1967) on the subject of which Dubourg specifies that “ the title even of the work which he wrote on this question shows that he was mistaken in target: not only it continues to believe, in spite of however some doubts of detail, too quickly isolated, that the Greek of New Testament is original, but it chooses an examination of the araméen - and not of Hebrew - as possible sporadic source (only sporadic, and only possible!). Nevertheless this book - as the articles of J.T. Marshall published at the beginning of the century - with the advantage of giving an idea of the Semitic base of the Gospels and Acts (because the Acts also, those known as of Luc, in my opinion were written in an original manner and mainly in Hebrew) ”

  • Paul Vulliaud, painter and author of works on the esotericism, from which it borrows the importance attached to the Jewish Cabal and gematric calculations , and of which it returns to the list of Semitic turnings in the text of New Testament;

  • Claude Tresmontant, author discussed of the Hebrew Christ (1983), where it defends the thesis of a Hebrew original of New Testament. In this connection Dubourg precise: “ My own research goes back to 1980-1982. The demonstrations of C. Tresmontant do not owe anything with the miennes, and vice versa; by different ways, at the very least independent, we arrived from there at the same conclusion concerning the original language of the Gospels ”.

On this point, Dubourg concludes ( the Invention of Jesus , volume 1, p. 272): “ the néo-testamentary writers, while writing in Hebrew, know that they work on the crown-divine language of the Torah; but they also know that they work on a double language, at the same time exoteric and esoteric. They thus work it at the same time in light and within the framework of its traditional procedures (kabbalistic, in the etymological sense of the term) ”.

Example of the method of Dubourg

Dubourg applies its argumentative method to the famous Prolog of the Gospel according to Jean

It initially makes observe that in Hebrew, the first verse of the Genèse ( At the beginning, God created the skies and the ground ) has as a guematric value 913 + 203 + 86 + 796 + 703 = 2701 = 37 * 73. It gives then its own translation (“retroversion”) in Hebrew of the beginning of the prolog of Jean ( At the Beginning is the Verb, and the Verb is near God, And God is the Verb, is to Him at the Beginning near God ), to which it finds also a value guematric of 2701 = 37 * 73.

According to Dubourg this “ equivalence between the two texts has nothing to do with a " allusion" or a " renvoi". It is an example between so many others of arithmetic work whose the texts of New Testament are truffles”. He concludes some with the validity from his retroversion.

Reception and prolongations

Reception in the academic medium

In the academic medium specialist

Published by the collection infinite the of Gallimard, the Invention of Jesus did not obtain any reception in the academic medium and was not translated, not more than the theses of Dubourg nor were not commented on, were taken again or criticized by the specialists in the biblical studies, as well profane as religious (its editor Philippe Sollers speaks into 2007 about a " hiding absolu" ). They run up against the university consensus on the philological analysis and history of the texts of New Testament, like on the history of their composition and that of the first Christian communities.

The use of a method of retroversion as a proof is disputed, as at Tresmontant. With regard to the original language of the texts of New Testament, the thesis currently most recognized is that they were composed and written initially in Greek. No Hebrew fragment of New Testament was found. The oldest manuscripts are in a Greek (that the researchers identify with the Greek hellenistic called Koinè ) container of many arameisms and hébraïsmes. Many researchers worked and highlighted the bonds between the Old Testament and the New Testament and the many quotations of the Old Testament in the Gospels.

If the historical character of the detail of the events reported by the Gospels is largely called into question, the existence even of Jesus is very generally allowed by the researchers. That of Paul was called in question only once by Radikal Kritik to the whole beginning of the century; the current erudite consensus regards these argumentations as hypercriticism.

With regard to the Guématrie, it was used initially (from) as technique of checking of the copies by the scribes and does not have a relationship with the Midrash which is a literary kind homelitic. According to the Critique history, it is only at the 13th century that it becomes with technical Abraham Aboulafia breath and sees extase (Tserouf), and a method Herméneutique with Raymond Lulle, and this although one traditionally gave to these uses an old origin. The interpretative use that makes Dubourg of it would be thus anachronistic (academic theories placing the drafting of the Gospels between the end of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd century, and the latest theories at the 4th century). This interpretative use would fall under the tradition of the ésotérisants mediums, of the Christians Raymond Lulle and Pic of Mirandole, with the occultists of the 19th century.

In a general way, Dubourg makes fun the academic specialists, without naming them (except Alfred Loisy qualified “ historicist ”), treating “ grecists ” the partisans of the Greek like original language of the Gospels.

Apart from the specialist medium

The sociologist of the religions Jean-Louis Schlegel, in his note of reading Invention of Jesus and exegetic hallucinations , appeared in the review Studies in 1987, speaks about “ delirious interpretations ”

However, some authors out of the medium of the specialists, quote work of Dubourg, without however taking again its theory that Jesus and Paul are imaginary characters created according to the " processes of the midrash" starting from the texts of the Old Testament.

  • In its work Resistance to Christianity , the Romaniste and old Situationniste Raoul Vaneigem, which is opposed as an atheist to the apologetic vision of the history of the origins of Christianity, places it among those which called in question the historical value of the accounts of New Testament and repeats the thesis of Dubourg for the presence of “elements midrashic revealed by a retroversion of the Hebrew text. ”.

  • For the linguist Henri Meschonnic “ Dubourg showed with profusion, in the Invention of Jesus I, Hebrew of New Testament (Gallimard, 1987) that Hebrew is " under the grec" ”.
  • the realizers and writers Gerard Mordillat and Jerome Prieur present, among others, some of the etymological and midrashic assumptions of Dubourg (without taking again the total thesis of it - none the researchers questioned in their documentary Corpus Christi and the origins of Christianity quote Dubourg or its theses).

Reception and prolongation in other authors

  • essay writer Roland Tournaire refers readily to Dubourg.

  • the singer and essay writer Lionel Rocheman, in its Jesus, enigmas and polemical (2000 Grancher editions) where it is question of the mythists, the mythologists, the catholic modernism and the archaeological discoveries of Qumran and Nag-Hammadi, which judges that, under a tone exaggeratedly lampoonist, theses of Dubourg deserve to be discussed.
  • the novelist and essay writer Stephan Zagdanski supports these theses.

A continuator of Dubourg is Maurice Mergui who explores what Dubourg names the midrashic development corpus evangelic, but also of the texts gnostic apocryphal books and .

The theses of Dubourg are also included in the militant atheistic mediums.

Incomplete bibliography of Bernard Dubourg

  • 1977

    • Digest on Prynne , in Prospice 7
    • Tinsel clinquaille ( Arm , 1971), PO&SIE n° 3
  • 1979
    • From henceforth? , PO&SIE n° 11
  • 1981
    • Runs blood (translation of Anthony Barnett), Digraphe n° 25, spring 81
    • a Blow of fanlight on Judas , PO&SIE n° 17
  • 1982
    • Sepher Yetsira , Such as it is n° 91, spring 82
    • Hebrew of New Testament , Such as it is n° 91, spring 82
    • Pierre and Fils at Flavius , PO&SIE n° 22
    • what I know of Sepher Yetsira , Such as it is n° 93, autumn 82
  • 1984
    • Samaritans, Histoire and doctrines , translation of The Samaritans: to their History, Doctrines and Literature (1923) of Moses Gaster, O.E.I.L
  • 1985
    • men of Garizim , translation of The Samaritans (1907) of J.A. Montgomery, O.E.I.L
    • Research under Jean I, 1-2 , Infinite the n° 9, winter 85
  • 1986
    • Marsipan cake (J.H. Prynne/MARZIPAN // B. Dubourg & J.H. Prynne/MARSIPAN CAKE /// Poetical Histories n°. 2/Cambridge/1986)
    • Of the superiority of the women , translation of Declamatio of nobilitate and praecellentia foeminei sexus of Heinrich Cornelius Clutched (1529), Paris, Dervy-Books, coll Christian Théosophie
  • 1987
    • the invention of Jesus , volume I: Hebrew of New Testament , Infinite the
  • 1989
    • the invention of Jesus , volume II: the manufacture of New Testament , Infinite the

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