ABSTRACT
The gospel of John begins with the irony of nonrecognition: “the world came into being through him [the Word]; yet the world did not know him. He came into what was his own, and his own people did not accept him” (1:10–11). When Jesus weeps over Jerusalem in Luke, it is also over a failure to recognize, “if you, even, you had only recognized … but now they are hidden from your eyes” (19:42). The failure is not knowing, as tragedies like Oedipus the King often remind us. Antigone also opens with questions of knowing things hidden: “do you know?” (3). Many tragedies revolve around questions of ignorance and blindness, as with Oedipus, Creon, and Lear. Boethius realizes he has forgotten the true nature of the world. To see is to know, oida in the Greek language and Platonic philosophy. It is also a root word for Oedipus’ name. Another root for Oedipus’ name is foot (pous), and Oedipus is lame because his feet were pierced when he was abandoned as a child. To be lame is an ambiguous status; it is to be unbalanced, different, and impeded, but it also points to an unbalanced strength and destiny. 1 The riddle of the Sphinx that Oedipus solved was about feet and the odd gait of being a tri-ped with his cane. Jean-Pierre Vernant observes that “the whole of the tragedy of Oedipus seems to be contained in the play to which the riddle of his name lends itself.” 2 In tragedy, anagnorisis is perceiving rightly, but at the wrong time. A perceptive knowledge comes, but through suffering. For Weil, “One of the principal truths of Christianity … is that looking is what saves us. The bronze serpent was lifted up so that those who lay maimed in the depths of degradation should be saved by looking upon it.” 3
