Extrapolation on my part?

I was watching Forrest Gump tonight. Of course, I had the Bible on my brain. Turn, Turn, Turn is on the soundtrack. Repetition is a huge component of the screenplay. Lieutenant Dan and Forrest engage in theodicy discussion. There's a female character who does lots of questionable things. People die  There's an unjust war.

About halfway through the movie (just about the time the hookers make fun of Lieutenant Dan for falling out of his wheelchair), I started thinking about Isaac and lacuna. I know we're supposed to be shifting to New Testament, but I took New Testament last year. I like Matthew and Luke.  I don't like Mark or John. Acts is okay, but I really don't care for the Epistles (Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus, Philemon isn't too bad, Hebrews, James, 1st and 2nd Peter, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, and Jude). Revelation is just cool.

Anyhoo, Isaac. There isn't much in Genesis about Isaac. I have a theory about this: Isaac was so traumatized by his near-death experience when Abraham almost sacrificed him, that he, well, he became a little addled. Kind of like Forrest Gump. If there is any truth the stories of the patriarchs, maybe the reason there isn't much information about Isaac is because he was a little slow and people didn't like talking about him. But I think there could be a compelling story to be made surrounding Isaac. Like Thomas Mann did with Joseph and His Brothers, maybe the screenwriters were kind of filling in the gaps of the story of Isaac; that is, I think Forrest Gump might be an adaptation of the story of Isaac. If Isaac were a little slow, I imagine he would be like Forrest. Rebbecca could be like Jenny. Isaac may have had trouble making friends, but he had good, true friends like Bubba and Lieutenant Dan. I bet Isaac was a super sweet, generous, and genuinely kind person. Isaac getting fooled by his own family members is kind of like how people threw rocks at or took advantage of Forrest. Anyway, now Joseph and His Brothers is on my summer reading list.

Oh, theodicy.

In an earlier post, I alluded to the question of theodicy, or the question of God's justice, or why bad things happen to good people. In class, we talked about why innocents are taken away. When people were sharing their personal stories, I couldn't help but think of something that recently happened to a friend of mine in high school. JD and I were in cheer and stunt together; he graduated a year ahead of me. After he graduated, he enlisted and has been in Iraq and Afghanistan. About two weeks ago, he stepped on a land mine and lost both of his legs and an arm. But he's okay otherwise...if you can call that okay. JD has two facebook pages so people can stay updated on his condition. Both of them center on prayer or something. People are thanking God he's still alive, but he'll never walk again. In fact, there's still a chance he could die of infection. His family says he's in 'good spirits.' What does that even mean? He lost 3 of his 4 limbs. Sure, amazing things are done with prosthetics nowadays but JD will be in a wheelchair for a damn long time. JD has a wife and a kid. What if the government doesn't provide him with enough financial aid to help them survive? What kind of justice is that, God?

Theodicy is a touchy subject. CS Lewis probed it in Mere Christianity. I dislike listening to Christians butcher the question by giving some sort of apophatic line of reasoning..."God is ineffable. His ways are too mysterious for mere mortals to understand." That kind of statement doesn't really leave much room for debate, but it's not an answer I can accept. A benevolent God would never let a baby die, an omniscient God would know it's about to happen, and an all-powerful God could stop it. If these are all true statements, then why do innocent babies (and people in general) suffer and die all the time?

Sue Sylvester, Byron, and Wilson the Volleyball

So, I finished the minor prophets a while ago, but when Dr. Sexson mentioned correlations between Bible stories and modern day fictions, I thought back to the Book of Jonah. Jonah, of Jonah and the Whale fame, goes to Nineveh to tell people God is going to smite them after being coughed up by the whale. Jonah gets butt hurt when God doesn't go all brimstone on their asses and then he somehow ends up in the desert and God gives him a plant. Jonah really loves this plant and then God just takes it away. This scene reminded me of two instances:

1) During Castaway, Tom Hanks really loves Wilson the Volleyball. They're best friends on the island. Then, when Tom Hanks makes a raft and oars away from the island, Wilson becomes dislodged from his perch on the raft and floats away. Tom Hanks' character is absolutely distraught. WILLSSSSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!

2) I love the television series Glee. For those of you who don't watch, Sue Sylvester is the cheerleading coach who incessantly picks on Will Shuster, the Glee advisor. In once instance of verbal abuse, Sue tells Will that she is going to bring him a cat from the shelter with whom he'll fall in love. Then, one night, she'll enter him home and punch him in the face. Sue Sylvester is analogous to the Old Testament God, smiting people for no good reason. With lines like 'I don't trust a man with curly hair', 'Sneaky Gays', and moments like this, it's a little obvious the writers of Glee modeled Sue after the asshat that is the Old Testament God.

On another note, the Bible seems to be filled with Byronic heroes. Romantic literature is far and away my favorite genre and Wuthering Heights and North and South are at the top of my Desert Island List. While reading the Bible, I noticed that I saw shadows of some of my favorite Romantic heroes in biblical characters. For those of you reading who don't know what a Byronic hero is, here's the Wikipedia entry. I can't help but think that Lord Byron, the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and other writers have somehow inspired by characters like Abraham, Jacob, Lot, Job, and even the representation of God.

Zionism, Covenant, Women, and Property Ownership

I still find the parallel between the covenant God made with Abraham (if Abraham devotes himself to Yahweh, He will grant Abraham His land and progeny) and the laws and language regarding women's bodies quite striking. Israel as a metaphor for woman or feminine sexuality is kind of a terrifying notion. Israel is the most contested swatch of land in, well, all of history. It's been warred over, torn apart by violence, conquered at least 36 times, settled, and claimed. In the Bible, Israel is always referred to in the feminine and it always belongs to someone, either God or the ancient Israelites. Several many passages in the Bible indicate that people viewed women's bodies in a similar fashion: as something to be tamed.

I'm just wondering if Zionists, who believe in the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign, Jewish homeland, feel similarly. Common sense and rationality is telling me, "No, Trish, people don't actually feel this way." But I can't help but think that modern instances of misogyny are fueled indirectly by examples set in the Bible of women not having agency over their own bodies and by the gendered language set forth throughout biblical passages.

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. 

Day 1 in the Semester of Reading Biblically

Can you read the Bible, the entire Bible (including the Apocryphal texts) in the space of one month? I think I can. For those of you reading this who have never read the Bible before or need a reminder, I'd like to share a synopsis of the Good Book with you: Bible in a Minute

Today in class, we discussed stories with which we were familiar and those to which we weren't looking forward. What we didn't talk about, though, were which parts of the Bible we were excited to read. I'm personally looking forward to reading Song of Songs. I've heard it's a beautiful work of prose and that it's kind of sexy. We'll see.

On a closing not, Dr. Sexson mentioned today that most works of art can be traced back to their biblical origins. The number one thing that comes to mind when I think of biblically-inspired works is the song 'Hallelujah,' written by Leonard Cohen and covered by numerous artists, the most recognized version recorded by Jeff Buckley. I'll post it here for your listening pleasure; see if you can pick out the Bible references! Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley

Until next time!