I volti dell’Avversario. L’enigma della lotta con l’Angelo

There is a brief episode at the heart of the Old Testament; it is only a few verses long but not only is it one of the most famous and forceful scenes in History, it is also the junction through which the entire biblical narrative passes. It is the struggle between Jacob and the Angel. A hand-to-hand battle that is both mysterious and violent, an encounter with the Other that lies at the foundation of the Western world’s identity. But which Other is Jacob wrestling: the divine; Evil; absolute otherness; or the deepest, most subconscious self? To address these questions, as Roberto Esposito does in I volti dell’Avversario, means to address the questions regarding who we are today.
The episode in the Bible that perhaps has had the greatest influence on the Western world’s theological, philosophical, and artistic culture comprises about ten verses in Genesis. It is only a few verses long and yet it is one of the most famous, important, mysterious, and decisive episodes in the entire Old Testament: Jacob wrestling the Angel. But what do the concise verses of that one episode hide? After all, it isn’t even clear who – or what – Jacob’s adversary is. The prevailing tradition identifies him as an angel but some interpretations consider him a direct manifestation of God, while others consider him the Adversary, the personification of Evil. Is he a vestige of legends and mythologies that preceded Semitic culture, or a manifestation of interior energy, the underworld, the subconscious? What is certain is that, on the banks of the Jabbok river, we are witnessing a struggle, a clash of wills, of strengths, of bodies: an encounter with the Adversary.
And thus, in Esposito’s book, Jacob is the character we have all impersonated at some point in our life, the role that was assigned to us: the person who wrestles with an Adversary, whether it is evil; the evil of History; the evil of illness; fears and interior resistance; or the enemy, the opponent. Jacob’s crossing of the river and the struggle it entails is, thus, the image of our life, as individuals and as a society.