Matthew Ted's Reviews > Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

At quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife just after I came out on stage at the amphitheater in Chautauqua to talk about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm.

I'd like to talk about books.

There's only one book worth talking about.

Let me tell you about a book about a book. It's written by the Turkish author Pamuk, and called "The New Life". In this book there's a book that has no name, and we do not know anything about what's written on its pages. But everyone who opens this book has their whole life changed. After they read the book they are not the same as they were before. Do you know a book like that?

Of course. It is the book containing the Word of God, as given by the Archangel to the Prophet.

Did the Prophet write it down immediately?

He came down from the mountain and recited, and whoever was nearby wrote it down on whatever came to hand.

And he recited with complete accuracy. What the Archangel said: word for word. And then they wrote it down with complete accuracy also. Word for word.

That is obvious.

And what happened to these pages?

After the Prophet's life ended, his Companions put them in order, and that is the Book.

And they put them in order with complete accuracy.

Every true believer knows this. Only the godless would question this, and they don't matter.

Can I ask you a question about the nature of God?

He is all-encompassing. All-knowing. He is All.

It is in your tradition, is it not, that there is a difference between your God and the God of the other People of the Book, the Jews and the Christians. They believe, as it says in their books, that God created Man in His own image.

They are wrong.

Because, if they were right, then God might have some resemblance to men? He might look like a man? He might have a mouth, and a voice, and be able to use it to speak to us?

But this is not correct.

Because, in your tradition, the idea of God is that He is so far superior to Man, so much more exalted, that He shares no human qualities.

Exactly. For once you are not talking garbage.

What would you say were human qualities?

Our bodies. How we look and how we are.

Is love a human quality? Is the desire for justice? Is mercy? Does God have those?

I am not a scholar. Imam Yutubi [the YouTube star the attacker supposedly watched] is a scholar. He is many-headed and many-voiced. I follow him. I have learned everything from him.

I don't mean to ask for your scholarship. You agree that your God has no human qualities, according to your own tradition. Let me just ask this. Isn't language a human quality? To have a language, God would have to have a mouth, a tongue, vocal chords, a voice. He would have to look like a man. In his own image. But you agree that God is not like that.

So what?

So if God is above language—so far above it as He is so far above all that is merely human—then how did the words of your Book come into being?

The Angel understood God and brought the Message in a way that the Messenger could understand, and the Messenger received it.

Was the Message in Arabic?

That's how the Messenger received it and how his Companions wrote it down.

Can I ask you something about translation?

You do this too much. We are going in one direction and then you swerve across the road and start driving the other way. Not only a butterfly but a bad driver.

I only want to suggest that when the Archangel understood the Word of God and brought it to the Messenger in a way that the Messenger could understand, he was translating it. God communicated it the way that God communicates, which is so far above human understanding that we cannot even begin to comprehend it, and the Angel made it comprehensible to the Messenger, by delivering it in human speech, which is not the speech of God.

The Book is the uncreated Word of God.

But we agreed that God has no words. In which case, what we read is an interpretation of God. And so maybe there could be other interpretations? Maybe your way, your Yutubi's way, is not the only way? Maybe there is no one correct way?

You are a snake.

Can I ask what language you read the Book? In the first language or another?

I read it in this inferior tongue in which we are speaking now.

Another translation.