November 2009 Archives

Big game last Saturday -- Florida State University against #1 ranked University of Florida, led by quarterback Tim Tebow whose illustrious career will make him the darling of NFL draft picks after he graduates this year. Tebow's Christianity isn't news, but the text in his eye black, "Hebrews 12:1-2" had them guessing... at least until they'd located the verses in a Bible. Hebrews is a New Testament book, and a peculiar one at that. It isn't a gospel, it isn't the historical narrative of Acts, and it isn't a letter like any of the others. In it, Jesus is a Jewish priest. Hebrews is an encouraging sermon that portrays Jesus as the great high priest who steps in to satisfy all expectations and demands of the Jewish sacrificial system. It orients Jesus within the Jewish religious system while also presenting him as superior to or even transcending them. Tebow's text, from the beginning of chapter 12, is a stirring call to the early Christian community to stand fast in their faith, to persist and endure despite the hardships and scorn this minority suffered on account of their beliefs. Their model -- Jesus, and their communion, the "witnesses" -- giants of faith from the Hebrew Bible, such as Abraham and Sarah (chapter 11). All that mention of "a cloud of witnesses," running the race, and endurance in the face of severe challenges and hardship -- well, it makes for easy application to American football, yes? I've no doubt that Tebow knows this text and its context, and hoped that it would point his Florida witnesses past him to Jesus in a kind of testimony. But I suspect that some people, once they had read the text, took it to be simply an eloquent statement of the challenge of a game played before thousands in which Jesus was believed to determine the outcome in favor of his faithful.

Doing some research on images of angels in biblical texts, I came across the captivating icon painted by Russian Andrei Rublev around 1410. Men, angels, or God? The peculiar story of Abraham and Sarah's visitors in Gen 18 uses a constellation of Hebrew vocabulary that has intriguing theological implications. For Rublev, it afforded an opportunity to meditate on the Christian mystery of the Trinity. In this icon depicting Gen 18, Rublev gives the messengers halos and wings. Not only that, but although the story appears in the Hebrew Bible (and predates Jesus by centuries), its interpretation in Rublev's hands is an exquisite representation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

This makes me think about the business of taking texts out of context. We are right to be anxious about such practice, but can there be a place for it, too? Maybe it's a little like grammar -- once you know the rules, you can break them. So long as you know about the Bible well enough to know that Gen 18 is not "about the Trinity," you can go ahead and meditate on how it could be about the Trinity.

Although scholars debate whether the figure on the left or center is Jesus or God the Father, it would seem that the central figure is Jesus -- the color and style of his clothes are typically used in this form of art for Jesus. The meal they share is at once the meal prepared by Sarah, who hurries to bring the best (and hears from the visitors that finally she's to have a son), and the Eucharist, commemorating Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection. Rublev's Three-in-One God is both host and guest -- a gracious image of profound hospitality, simulataneously communicating paradoxical ideas, as art so richly enables us to do.

Is it possible to overdue the thanks bit of Thanksgiving? -- to get a bit cynical and scrooge-y (to borrow from the holiday on deck) about all the "I'm thankful for..."? Dear Abby runs her annual prayer, comic strips go sober, and the local news features some feel-good story of triumph thanks to X (family, friends, pets) over Y (tragedy, trial, loss). It's all so... nice. And yet, and yet. We just can't help it. We're built for gratitude, it seems, well-placed or not. Thanks-giving takes us out of ourselves, if only for a minute, to recognize a personal benefit that we enjoy but had nothing to do with. By someone or something, by some peculiar grace, I am enriched. So the illogic goes. Each one of us knows that wonder and, aware of it, is grateful. But hey, for some of us, the thanks can get a bit cloying this time of year. Then, I welcome the corrective reality of winter, close on its heels -- severe, hard, dark, and cold. A reckoning season. And this native northern Minnesotan is, well, grateful for that, too.

Trying out some new technology and wondering -- will it work or will it crash?

It's a gray day in New Orleans, and rainy. No, not THAT rainy, but enough to keep the biblical scholars to their session... till nighttime, that is. The Society of Biblical Literature is meeting right now in downtown New Orleans, just off the French Quarter. This annual meeting, which gathers in a different place each year, is the biggie for all folks involved in studying the Bible. It's a great mix, with sessions ranging from "the Forum on Missional Hermeneutics" to "Method and Madness in the Study of the Bible and Popular Culture," from "Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World" to "the Formation of Isaiah." But you'd have to choose, because those are held at the same time... along with 36 others, all meeting from 1-3:30. It's a huge conference, and the opportunities for learning about anything related to the history, literature, and intepretation of biblical texts and their worlds is dizzying. And I haven't even mentioned the publishers' exhibit hall, much less the perfectly delightful chances -- chance or planned -- to visit with colleagues, friends, and maybe even a rival or two. Then it's off into the streets and charming alleyways of this vibrant and storied place.

One of the most iconic images of western art is Michelangelo's "creation of man" in the Sistine chapel. You know the one -- a stirring painting depicting an impressive old man God reaching from the clouds to touch the outstretched hand of a young Adam. But just what, exactly, is that image based on? Genesis tells the creation of human beings in two places -- the first chapter, in which an invisible God creates humankind, male and female, in God's image; and the second chapter, in which an anthropomorphic God fashions a human out of humus and breathes life into this creature. It is endlesslessly fascinating to me how biblical texts are interpreted and reinterpreted, sometimes uncovering hints or suggestions embedded in the rich layers of biblical texts and sometimes adding layers to the layers that are already there. This is the Bible as living text. And interpretation at the hand of creative masters in their medium of choice is intriguing delight. The Vatican Museum in collaboration with the Italian Il Sole 24Ore is publishing a series of four volumes called "The Painted Word" that discusses the ways that artists interpreted the Bible in the visual feast that is the Sistine Chapel. Mom, Dad: great gift idea, but in English, please.

In this time of the proliferation of Bible versions, translations, and packaging, there's yet another. The Word of Promise Audio Bible (Thomas Nelson) produced over near four years and based on a modern (1982) King James Version is 98 hours long and spans 79 CDs. The real selling point will likely be the stars who lent their voices to the project. The hundreds who contributed include Richard Dreyfuss as Moses and Marisa Tomei as Mary Magdalene. Sounds like a winner.

I've just begun (re)reading Milton's "Paradise Lost." Truth is, I don't remember ever reading the whole thing through before. Snippets here and there for lit classes over the years but never from the beginning to the end. What a ride it is! And to think that Milton wrote it blind. Contemplate that, for a minute.

This, too, impresses: Where most English translations read Gen 1:2 as "the spirit of God hovered over the face of the deeps," Milton follows the Hebrew verb describing the spirit like a bird "brooding" over the waters. That's the way that verb appears elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible -- the protective hovering of a bird over its nest... though Milton imagines the spirit in a masculine form impregnating "the Abyss" below despite the Hebrew's feminine Spirit subject in this verse.

But that's small stuff -- a tiny example of the thousands of ways that Milton appeals to and shifts the biblical text. Fascinating. I'm still a little puzzled by the bad guys that open the story. I mean, Satan appears to be a different character than Beelzebub, and there are cherubim and seraphim in hell. Well, back to it, as the dark powers prepare for war.

Modern believers are frequently encouraged to treat their Bible's with a little less care. Use it! read it! don't worry about marking it up, dog-earing pages, or wearing it ragged, they're advised. A tired-looking Bible is a good sign. Its user is, well, using it. Sometimes, though, the thing itself, that particular copy, really matters. Some might protest that that's to make an idol of the object; but occasionally the object is greater than itself. Maybe it points to a history that musn't be forgotten, its survival is a triumph of right, or it simply reminds that sacredness demands honor and attention. I'm thinking here of the Hebrew Bible, looted by Nazi soldiers in 1938 and finally returned on Monday to the Austrian Jewish community in Vienna. When and how should a Bible be so honored in itself? 

Countless visual representations of the Garden of Eden creation story narrated in Genesis chaps 2-3 depict a crisp apple as the downfall of Adam and Eve. Yet the original Hebrew reads simply "fruit." Without knowing that, we English speakers (and readers) can be excused for assuming that it was specifically an apple such as a Gala or juicy Granny Smith, since that's the way that the Hebrew is often translated -- Eve ate from the apple, shared it with Adam, and bye bye Paradise. Translating like that makes a certain kind of sense, since "apple" used to function in English to describe all sorts of fruit. But even before that, when the text began to be translated into Latin, the translators introduced an evocative wordplay: they translated the Hebrew "fruit" with "apple," which in Latin is malum -- not incidentally related to malus, meaning "bad." Poor guys clearly never had my mom's apple pie...

As I work my way through the Buffy tv series ("work" is too severe a word here -- I'm having a blast), I'm struck by how bilbical themes, language, and images lend themselves to the science fiction imagination. This isn't earth-shattering news, I know. What's striking is how the Bible is translated into this medium. Appreciating the wild and wacky symbolism of biblical apocalyptic -- including gargantuan bad guys battling the supernatural good in a world that seems like ours but is nevertheless radically transformed -- one expects that to have some carrying power into our cultural sci fi milieu. And it does dominate, but that's not the only biblical genre to make the leap from ancient page to postmodern screen. Themes of journey, home, love, and faith washed with the biblical brush of narrative and poetry show up right regularly, too. I'm going to be following Dr. James McGrath's blog "Exploring Our Matrix" as he preps to teach a course next semester on the topic of religion and science fiction.

I happen to agree with Thomas Jefferson's assertion that "the Bible is the cornerstone of liberty...students' perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands," but I doubt I've taken the same logic to arrive at that conclusion... or maybe even mean the same thing by it. (Oh, and one obvious caveat: I can't quite follow the gender-exclusive assumption, being a girl and all. But anyhoo.) Among other things, the Bible's multi-valence, its variety of perspectives and voices, literary styles and ethical ideas demands earnest wrestling, respectful listening, a willingness to learn and to adapt one's opinions in the face of compelling evidence, and it can strengthen one's sense of purpose, too. These are crucial to securing and maintaining liberty as a democratic society. And they make us capable of being for those we love in ways that help them become healthy, whole, productive, and maybe even happy. To come at the matter from the other side: simply reading the Bible narrowly and selectively, with no inquiry, conversation, or debate, and uncritically applying that single interpretation to one's life (and everyone else's, too) can make impotent or sociopathic "citizens" and even make us damaging to those we love. I'd like to think that the more one engages the text, learning about it while reading what's in it, the less possible it is to use the Bible in such destructive ways. Just a thought.

Halloween, when ghosts, demons, and (judging from my neighborhood anyway) a lot of pirates walk the streets unrestrained and with an insatiable sweet tooth. All Hallows Eve (Halloween) inaugurates the celebration of All Saints' Day (Nov. 1), which commemorates the especially righteous dead who are privileged in heaven to behold God immediately (an idea developed out of biblical texts including 1 Corinthians 13:12). Right after All Saints' Day comes All Souls' Day, which is more inclusive -- commemorating all those who died and went to heaven. This year, All Souls' Day will end with a full moon, which many find particularly auspicious. On Halloween, what separates this world from others becomes barely discernible. So the forces of evil that want to prevent the Saints from interceding for humans take shape and work their mischief on earth... or that's what some believe, anyway. Wandering Richmond last night with fellow revelers, I can attest to lots of "demons" -- little and big, alike -- having a whee of a time. As for the forces of evil, I suspect they may not take quite the shapes we imagine on that night.