The very conception of a cupboard called the ark, for some tablets of written word as a replacement for an hallucinogenic image of a more usual kind, like a golden calf, is illustrative of the same point. The importance of writing in the breakdown of the bicameral voices is tremendously important. What had to be spoken is now silent and carved upon a stone to be taken in visually.
After the Pentateuch, the bicameral voice retreats even further. When the writer of Deuteronomy (34:10) says that no nabi has been like Moses "whom He-who-is knew face to face," he is indicating the loss of the bicameral mind. The voices are heard less frequently and less conversationally. Joshua is more spoken to by his voice than speaking with it; and, halfway between bicamerality and subjectivity, he has to draw lots to make decisions.
Inconsistency Between Persons
In the bicameral period, the strict hierarchy of society, the settled geography of its limits, its ziggurats, temples, and statuary, and the common upbringing of its citizens, all co-operated in the organization of different men's bicameral voices into a stable hierarchy. Whose bicameral voice was the correct one was immediately decided by that hierarchy, and the recognition signals as to which god was speaking were known by everyone and reinforced by priests.
But with the breakdown of bicamerality, particularly when a previously bicameral people has become nomadic as in the Exodus, the voices will begin to say different things to different people and the problem of authority becomes a considerable difficulty. Something of the sort might be referred to in Numbers 12:1-2, where Miriam, Aaron, and Moses, who all hear the voice of He-who-is, are not sure which is the most authentic.
But the problem is much more acute in the later books, particu-
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larly in the competition between the remaining bicameral voices.
Joash has a bicameral voice that he recognizes as the Owner to whom he builds an altar; but his son Gideon hears a voice he recognizes as He-who-is which tells him to tear down his father's altar to the Owner and build another to himself (Judges 6:25-26). The jealousy of the remaining elohim is the direct and necessary result of social disorganization.
Such a dissonance of bicameral voices in this unorganized breakdown period inaugurates the importance of signs or magical proofs as to which voice is valid. Thus Moses is constantly compelled to produce magical proofs of his mission. Such signs, of course, continue all through the first millennium even into present times. The miracles that today are required as criteria of sainthood are of precisely the same order as when Moses hallucinates his rod into a serpent and back again, or his healthy hand into a leprous one and back (Exodus 4:1-7).
Some of our present-day enjoyment of magic and prestidigita-tion is possibly a holdover from this desire for signs, in which in some part of ourselves we are enjoying the thrill of recognizing the magician as a possible bicameral authority.
And if there are no signs, what then? In the seventh century B.C., this is particularly the problem of Jeremiah, the illiterate wailer at the wall of Israel's iniquity. Even though he has had the sign of the hand of He-who-is upon him (1: 9; 25:17) has heard the word of He-who-is continually like a fire in his bones, and has been sent (23:21, 32, etc.), yet still he is unsure: whose voice is the right one? "Wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar?"
Jeremiah mistrustfully jabs back at his bicameral voice (15:19).
But on this point, it is sure in its answering. It breaks down what authority Jeremiah's rational consciousness may have had, and commands him to denounce all other voices. Chapter 28 is a particular example, with the somewhat ridiculous competition between Hananiah and Jeremiah as to whose bicameral voice is the right one. And it was only the death of Hananiah two months
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later that was the sign of which to choose. Had Jeremiah died, we would probably have had the Book of Hananiah instead of his competitor's.
Inconsistency Within Persons
In the absence of a social hierarchy that provides stability and recognitions, the bicameral voices not only become inconsistent among persons, but inconsistent within the same person as well.
Particularly in the Pentateuch, the bicameral voice is often as petty and foot-stampingly petulant as any human tyrant under questioning. "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." (Exodus 33:19).
There is no question of virtue or of justice. So He-who-is prefers Abel to Cain, slays Er, the first-born of Judah, having taken a dislike to him, first tells Abraham to beget a son, and then later orders him to kill the son, even as criminal psychotics might be directed today. Similarly, the bicameral voice of Moses possibly has a sudden impulse to kill him (Exodus 4:24) for no reason at all.
This same inconsistency is found in the non-Israelite prophet, Balaam. His bicameral voice first tells him not to go with the princes of Moab (Numbers 22:12), then reverses itself (22:20).
Then when Balaam obeys, it is furious. Then a visual-auditory hallucination out to kill Balaam blocks his way, but then this too reverses its commands (Numbers 22:35). Also in the self-recriminating category is the self-punishing voice of the ash-faced nabi who tries to get passersby to punch him because his voice commands him to (I Kings 20:35-38). And also, the "nabi from Judah" whose bicameral voice drives him out of the city and tries to starve him (1 Kings 13, 9-17). All of these inconsistent voices are coming close to the voices heard by schizophrenics which we noted in Chapter 4 of Book I.
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Divination by Gods
The deciding things by casting gorals or lots, probably throwing dice, bones, or beans, runs through much of the Old Testament. As we saw in II.4 of this essay, it is the making of an analog god. The goral by metaphor becomes the word of god deciding lands and tribes, what to do or whom to destroy, taking the place of the older bicameral authority. As mentioned earlier, it is a help in appreciating how authoritative such practices could be when we realize that there was no concept of chance until well into the subjective eras.
But of much greater interest is the occurrence of the spontaneous divination from immediate sensory experience that in the end becomes the subjective conscious mind. Its interest here is because it begins not in the man-side of the bicameral mind but in the bicameral voices themselves.
It is, then, another way that the bicameral voices show their uncertainty when they too, like men, turn to divination, and need to be primed or instigated. In the ninth century B.C., the voice of one of the nabiim before Ahab divines by metaphor from a pair of horns how an army may be defeated (I Kings 22:11). The bicameral voice of Jeremiah several times takes what he, Jeremiah, is looking at and divines from it what to say. When he sees a boiling wind-blown pot facing north, He-who-is metaphorizes it into an evil invasion blowing down from the north, consuming all before it like a fire driven by the wind (Jeremiah 1:13-15).
When he sees two baskets of figs, one good and one bad, his right hemisphere has He-who-is speaking about picking good and bad people (Jeremiah 24:1-10). And when Amos sees a builder judging the straightness of a wall by holding a plumb line to it, his mind hallucinates the builder into He-who-is, who then metaphorizes the act into judging people by their righteousness (Amos 7:8).
Particularly when spontaneous divinations are being made by
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gods (who after all cannot perform other types of divination), puns may 'seed' the analogy. Thus, when Amos stands looking at a basket of summer fruit, his bicameral voice puns over on the Hebrew qayits (summer fruit) to gets (end) and starts talking about the end of Israel (Amos 8:1-2). Or when Jeremiah sees an almond branch ( shaqed), his bicameral voice says it will watch over him ( shaqad) because the Hebrew words for the two are similar (Jeremiah 1:11-12).