The One Where Trish Rails on God

I found Katrina and Tyler E's blogs from yesterday quite striking. Katrina wrote about her compulsion to write and speak about God in exclusively positive terms for fear of divine retribution while Tyler E wrote about the all around asshole God seems to be. For the past few days, I've been thinking about how different groups of people, both historical and present day, feel akin to characters in the Bible and have applied biblical stories to their own lives, taking solace and comfort in making such connections. Puritans, for example, saw themselves as modern-day Israelite slaves who were escaping religious persecution via their own exodus to the New World. Slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries in America, hearing biblical stories from the masters, viewed themselves as a reincarnation of the still-oppressed Israelites in Egypt. There are numerous examples one could draw upon to make such a point. Today in class, Michael mentioned The American Religion by Harold Bloom. I had to read The American Religion for Lynda Sexson's Interpretations of American Religion. While incredibly dense, the book's thesis (that religious Americans practice a form of gnosticism, or cult of secret knowledge, concerning salvation via a personal relationship with Christ and God as opposed to traditional notions of Christianity and Judaism) is quite compelling. Bloom focuses on the so-called American home-grown religions: Mormonism, Southern Baptist, Pentecostalism, Seventh-Day Adventist, Christian Science, etc.

As someone who was raised in a Catholic home with many, many Jewish relatives who has since apostatized, the idea of having some sort of personal relationship with Jesus or God is incredibly foreign. I can't speak for other Catholics, fallen or otherwise, but that whole Catholic guilt thing was and is real for me; criticism and questioning were discouraged and, if one did question, one was made to feel bad for even entertaining such a notion. One of my personal heroes, Mother Theresa, was said to have been pained because of her lack of faith: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Theresa#Spiritual_life. So, I get where Katrina is coming from, feeling fear over criticizing God. God is someone to be revered and, yes, a little feared. He is the Creator and he did a lot of terrifying things in the Old Testament. It's pretty damn hard to reconcile that with the benevolent, merciful God of the New Testament, even considering all the theological nuances expressed by the boy who looks like Gerard Butler who's name I can't remember right now. Yes, Jesus represents a renewal of the covenant between God and His people. However, that BAMF in the Old Testament still seems to loom large in people's minds, especially mine. Thus, I never felt the need to have this special one on one thing with Jesus or God or whomever when I still did believe.

On the other hand, one of the passages in Plotz that got me thinking was that concerning a Jew's relationship, or lack thereof. Jews just have that Old Testament God, the God who cast Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, who brought the Great Flood, who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah (among other places), who enslaved them in Egypt then made them wander the desert for forty years, who exiled them to Babylon, who enabled enemies to destroy the Temples, who stood by and let discrimination, abuse, pogroms, and the Holocaust happen. The question of theodicy is an important one and one that I doubt I'll ever be able to answer satisfactorily. People look for answers and comfort in the Bible and in The Book of Job, specifically. The Book of Job attempts to tackle the problem of evil if we have an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent God. God orders Satan to kill Job's family and inflict him with horrible diseases, like boils all over his body (God does seem to be fond of that one, doesn't He?). Still, after all of that, Job praises God's holy name. The lesson of the story, in the end, is that Job's experiences are not on par with what God experiences because God is beyond anything that human words can describe and He shouldn't be questioned. What a fucking cop out. Scholars call that line of thought apophatic reasoning. I call it bullshit. Human curiosity can't and shouldn't be tamed; it's a trait that should be encouraged. Telling someone that God or whatever other variable you choose to insert can't be described by humans because it's so beyond our conception is a euphemism for "I don't know and I can't be bothered to figure something out on my own, " or, as I tend to believe, "God doesn't actually exist but I'm going to give you this bullshit line so you don't question me or anyone else any more about it."

Theodicy, I don't feel, can be addressed with the entirety it deserves in a blog entry, but I thought it'd be a good idea to touch on it. Anyhoo, as a relative of Holocaust survivors, I find that no amount of passages in the Bible or comforting  Jesusy messages about compassion will ever help me reconcile the amount of suffering in this world with a so-called benevolent God. I'm not troubled when I criticize God or the theology or dogma surrounding Him. I don't think he's going to smite me for saying that He's probably the biggest jerk in all of literary history (except for maybe Voldemort). I don't think He's going to come to my tent to discuss warfare strategy against people who happen to enjoy anal and rough (pre- and extramarital) sex from time to time.

Ain't I a Woman?

I have born 13 children
     and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother's grief
     none but Jesus heard me. . .
and ain't I a woman?
     that little man in black there say
a woman can't have as much rights as a man
     cause Christ wasn't a woman
Where did your Christ come from?
     From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
     If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world
     upside down, all alone
together women ought to be able to turn it
     rightside up again.
-Sojourner Truth


So, this past summer, I read Eve's Bible: A Woman's Guide to the Old Testament. It was a gift from my grandmother, who wanted me to have a fully developed knowledge of the kick-ass women in the Old Testament. The author, Dr. Sarah S. Forth, provides the reader with a treatment of women of the biblical era and provides some context. It has biblical timelines, discusses genealogies and laws, and explains a lot of the gender language in the Bible (for example, in a lot of the prophetic writings and lamentations, Israel is referred to in the feminine: I will strip her naked and expose her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and turn her into a parched land, and kill her with thirst...Now I will uncover her shame in the sight of her lovers and no one shall rescue her out of my hand -Hosea 2:3-10. That's not quite something you hear regularly in CCD, Sunday School, Torah study, etc.). Anyway, after discussing the Jahwist writer and the possibility of the writer being a her, I've been thinking a lot about Eve's Bible.

In my last post, I wrote about my preconceived notions regarding Exodus and Moses in general. So, walking into Bible as Lit after spending my summer reading books like Eve's Bible and Red Tent, in addition to books like A History of God and Adam, Eve, & the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity, I definitely came in with my own ideas about women in the Bible. I didn't think Eve was out of line; she was just curious. I came in admiring women like Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Leah, Rachel, Tamar, Jocheved, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Jael, Esther, Rahab, Jezebel, Bathsheba, and Delilah. Sure, some of them were a little morally reprehensible, but they were strong, amazing women. Their stories are incredibly fascinating and, even if they didn't actually exist, they act as a representation of their counterparts, the women of the Ancient Near East. In fact, they're not so different from women today. We as a culture are still fascinated by Biblical characters, which is why we invoke them in our stories and music.

The Documentation Theory has fascinated me for quite some time now and I was incredibly delighted when Dr. Sexson first introduced it that second week of class. Harold Bloom, in his Book of J, has convinced me that the Jahwist writer was, indeed, a woman. I don't think J treated either gender unfairly, but, after reading this far in the Bible, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of the characters, regardless of gender, are kind of douchey. Sure, they're compelling characters; but a lot of them seem, well, corrupt, and make ethically questionable decisions.

 The worst part is, God seems to just love it! Let's look at Rebekah and Jacob; they conspire to have Isaac bestow his paternal blessing on Jacob instead of Esau, Isaac's favorite. What does God do? He makes Jacob a patriarch. Why? Because he's clever and morally unsound. Poor Esau, he's such a good guy. But he gets duped. I guess God's into douchebags. Plotz agrees with me numerous times, btw. So, I think that the J writer was possibly trying to illustrate some sort of moral regarding this notion that, no matter how good you are, God's going to like the douchebag better. But do you really want to be that guy or girl? For serious, do you? I don't. If that's God's bag, I'm not buying. Maybe it's like a nice guys finish last sort of thing.

Anyhoo, a while back, I found a poem called Miriam's Song and I'd like to end the post with it. Miriam and Zipporah are two of my favorite biblical characters and this is a pretty awesome poem showcasing women's work. PS: If you've never read or listened to Ain't I a Woman? by Sojourner Truth, I highly suggest it.

Miriam's Song

I swept the house clean though nine plagues,
Swept when Moses turned the river into blood,
Swatted at frogs all day in the Egyptians' kitchen,
Chased frogs in the bedrooms, whacked at them
on the beds, jumped after frogs in the kitchen. Next
I cleaned off lice from the heads of the Egyptians.
When my brother sent flies, the Egyptians had me
stand over their meals and beds swatting at flies.
After the Lord killed their cows, we laughed
even as we smelled that horrible stench.
Then I spent hours wrapping up the boils
all over the Egyptians' skin, rejoicing.
The Egyptians made us women go into the fields,
round up their cattle, drive them into barns,
lock the doors against the pounding hail.
The day the locusts devoured the plants
I swept my house and swept three more days that
the Egyptians sat in darkness, for only we had light.
Before the tenth plague I swept once more,
then roasted lamb and cut up bitter herbs we ate
remembering four hundred years of slavery
that terrible night the Angel of Death screeched
and screamed as he flew over our houses
on his bloody way to kill the Egyptians' sons.
We were leaving so I baked my bread unleavened,
packed clay crockery, black pots onto a rickety cart.
I wanted to smash the pyramids.
We'd built them well. They'd last. A pity.
At the Red Sea, after we climbed onto the land and
saw Pharaoh lead his chariots into a gap
riding between two huge cliffs of water when
mountains of water crashed down on them,
I called the women who came with cymbals and drums,
"Come dance now for we are flying into freedom."

After a bout with conjuntivitis...

I am back. I may not have been in class, but I have been reading. So far, I'm nearly through with Joshua. My strategy involves reading a few chapters, then consulting Plotz (who I'm now friends with on Facebook, btw). For the bits and pieces that are harder to digest, Plotz makes things a mite easier and a bit more humorous. Anyhoo, I'd like to take some time to reflect on Exodus.

So, my grandparents are secular Jews. When I was young, they would drink lots of Manischewitz at Passover (Grammy Hannah getting wine drunk is a story for another time) and force feed the little bubelahs matzah and we would all watch The Ten Commandments. Grammy had a thing for Charleton Heston, I think. Anyway, when we discussed Exodus and The Ten Commandments Tuesday, I remembered thinking, "Well, this isn't like the movie..." while actually reading Exodus. Plotz thought the same thing, too. Where was the Ben-Hur-esque chariot race? Why weren't Moses and Ramesses palling around? How come people weren't singing like in The Prince of Egypt (one of my favorite Val Kilmer films, I might add).

One of my first celebrity crushes actually involved the actor who played Joshua in The Ten Commandments, John Derek (seen at right, with Lilia). The scene that sticks out most in my mind from the film was when he was tied to a post and whipped. He also happened to be shirtless and ripped.Of course, he was being whipped because of his love for Lilia, the beautiful Hebrew woman who became property of Baka, the master builder of Egypt, ostensibly as a love slave. When Baka is killed by Moses, Dathan (another Hebrew) takes his place and becomes Lilia's master. Joshua is sent to the copper mines in order to save Lilia's life, but at the end, they end up together after all the plagues and crossing the Red Sea and so on. The kicker? None of it's in Exodus! I was reading and reading and waiting and reading, but it never came up. Sure, Joshua's a real character and took over after Moishe croaked then led the conquest of Canaan, but what about Lilia? I couldn't find her, nor could I figure out if Joshua ever got married. According to legend, Joshua married Rahab, a prostitute from Jericho who was committed to Jehovah and helped Hebrew spies take the city. But in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus, she marries Salmon of Judah and is the mother of Boaz, who marries Ruth of Book of Ruth fame. Same Rahab? Maybe, maybe not. But there's no beautiful love slave named Lilia. So, why all the lies, Mr. DeMille?

Anyway, now I'm craving matzah. Perhaps I'll bring some to class Thursday to share with people! Also, here's a little gem for your viewing pleasure; a young Adam Lambert in The Ten Commandments: A Musical as none other than Joshua: The Ten Commandments: A Musical

Day 8 in the Semester of Living Biblically

I've never read the King James version of the Bible before and, I must say, although it's very pretty, it's also so strange. I was raised in the Catholic tradition, but my mother's side of the family is Jewish. So, this KJV business is just way different. Also, when I read dialogue, I imagine the characters as having British, Scottish, and Irish accents because of all the ye's and thou's. For example, I imagine the serpent sounds like William Wallace as a child in Braveheart. Adam sounds like the adult William Wallace, played by Mel Gibson, of course. I'm not quite sure who Eve sounds like, but Cain and Abel both sounds like Hamish, the enormous Scottish ginger (also in Braveheart). God (I'm really bothered by the constant LORD titling), I'm sure, sounds like Gabriel Byrne, who voiced Scar in the Lion King. Noah strikes me as very no-nonsense and would, therefore, sound like Sir Patrick Stewart; his sons, Shep, Ham, and Japheth (is it pronounced Jap-heth or Jay-feth?), sound like the Beatles. I suspect they had lovely singing voices. Abraham kind of deviates from from my British Isles accent scheme in that his voice resembles Barry White's. I feel like there was a considerable amount of pillow talk exchanged between Abraham and Sarah, who sounds like Professor McGonagal from Harry Potter or Kiera Knightly, both of whom have somewhat shrill voices. When I started reading about the Hagar situation, I felt like she would sound Demi Moore. I want Hagar to have a husky, more sexy voice. I imagine her as a sexy lady. Isaac would sound like Jason Isaacs, who was the bad guy in The Patriot and Lucius Malfoy in the film adaptations of Harry Potter. Jason Isaacs is particularly hot because he's British AND Jewish and Jewish guys are a specific kind of hot so now I have this weird crush on Isaac because I associate him with Jason Isaacs.

All of this because of the change in dialogue.