Stone Wood

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Each rock has a story.  (If you’re not into rocks, don’t worry.  I’ll only indulge my passion from time to time.)  In this case, I was looking for an artifact that I’ve had since I was a child.  Back in the day when visitors to the Petrified Forest National Park took souvenirs without too many stabs of conscience, a former minister of my childhood church gave my mother two pieces.  Of course, she had three sons at the time and the two elder ended up with the heirlooms.  I’m not certain they were from the National Park, I would add.  I was only about five at the time.  When I got to college I found this ironic because, as I outgrew my fundamentalism I realized the fossil trees are about 225 million years old and the Bible the minister so fervently believed implied that God created everything merely 6,000 years ago.  In any case, this piece of petrified wood became one of my treasures.

At Nashotah House my geology gene awoke.  I recall having had this fossil on display.  Then tragedy.  That job, and my full-time teaching career, ended.  Most of my books and all of my rocks (the collection had grown considerably) were packed in boxes and were in storage.  They moved to New Jersey with us, still boxed up.  They came to Pennsylvania with us as well, still in boxes.  Talking to my older brother one day, the pieces of petrified wood came up.  I realized that I had no idea where mine was.  It’d been packed twenty years before and although I’d opened most of the boxes from our move, that particular tree cum rock now seemed to have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

While doing weekend chores, one of which involved straightening out things in the garage, I found an unopened box.  Inside the box was a set of smaller boxes.  Most of them had seashells we picked up while living in New Jersey, but the very bottom box, unopened for decades, held my long lost piece of petrified wood.  I picked it up, feeling a piece of my childhood again.  An innocence lost repeatedly and lost especially loudly at Nashotah House.  It was like reaching back to the Triassic Period from whence this tree had originally come.  Dinosaurs roamed Arizona at the time.  This tree was older than the Good Book claimed any artifact had a right to be.  I don’t know that the minister took this from the Petrified Forest itself, or some other location that has fossilized trees.  Of what I’m certain is that this rock has a story.

Not Full

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Disclosure Day may not be Steven Spielberg’s best movie, but it is a good one.  Part of his space trilogy after Close Encounters and E.T., it too comes back the the theme of aliens and posits what it might be like if those holding the secrets ever release them.  Although not a horror film, it makes use of the Bible—not surprisingly since real-life discussions about disclosure often ask about its effects on religion.  In the movie, the Wardex Corporation, part of the military-industrial complex, is the keeper of the secrets.  They reverse-engineer alien technology, and get to keep what’s found from recovered UAP wrecks.  More powerful than the police, they stop and kill without compunction.  They control the highest level of secrets that the government has—even those beyond the president.  (Spielberg clearly did his homework here, even working in the bit about Jackie Gleason making the claim to have seen alien bodies.)

A couple of Wardex employees, Hugo and Daniel, smuggle out the video proof of the nearly eight-decade cover-up and they plan to release everything to the media.  A weather reporter, Margaret, sudden becomes psychic and receives an alien message while on air.  Wardex has kidnapped and roughed up Daniel’s girlfriend, former novice nun Jane, to force him to return the stolen data.  (Religion plays a big role here.)  Noah, the head of Wardex, uses advanced technology to track Daniel, Jane, and Margaret, as they are trying to meet up.  When Margaret and Daniel finally do connect, Hugo reveals that they’re both “experiencers”—they’d been abducted as children and had been given extraordinary gifts.  Margaret’s abilities are such that she can break into and walk out of a secure military base with Daniel in tow.  As they prepare to show the evidence at Margaret’s Kansas City news station, Wardex shuts them down but Jane delivers a device that allows the broadcast to take place.  The world, which is on the brink of Armageddon—World War Three—stops to listen and begins to realize that we need to work together to save the human race.  

The plot is a bit complex to summarize fully, but this gives the general picture.  Disclosure Day is a hopeful movie.  The theme has been addressed by proponents of real life disclosure before: sharing this kind of information might well save us.  And the religious community, represented by Jane’s former monastery, is perfectly okay with this development.  There’s a lot to say about such a film, and I try to constrain my word counts here.  It’s the kind of movie that grows better with reflection—the writing is a bit trite in places—and the alien tech is a bit hard to believe.  Of course, we don’t know what off-world tech can really do.  But at the end of the day, religion plays a major role in the truth being revealed.  Worth thinking about.

Holy Sequel

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I’ve made reference, from time to time, to “Holy Sequel.”  This was a potential book to follow Holy Horror, in which further examples of the Bible in horror films would be explored.  While I only half-heartedly supposed I might write such a book, I have kept track of references to the Bible in the horror movies I’ve seen since my book was published.  I haven’t done this religiously, but it struck me that someone else, someday down the road, might want to do more research.  I recently uploaded my list of such movies in the section of this blog called Full Essays.  It also lists all the movies mentioned in Holy Horror.  (I may eventually add those from Nightmares with the Bible too.)  Not all of those movies are discussed in the book(s)—some are incidental references—but a good many of them are.  And as this bit of data shows, a good many more could be.  The main reason for adding the list to this website is to offer a filmography of movies that could’ve been in the book, but were discovered too late.  Or were produced later.

I watch horror with my Bible radar on.  It’s widely recognized that strong religious themes began in horror with Rosemary’s Baby in 1968.  One of the things noted both in Holy Horror and in the list on Holy Sequel is that the Bible appears in films earlier than that.  Its cinematic nature changes over time.  I should also note that some of the movies on Holy Sequel are marked as “maybe.”  The reason is that reference to the Bible isn’t terribly explicit, or, if it is shown it’s not done clearly.  In the book I discuss this explicitly if a movie is questionable, regarding its use of the Bible.  Another feature of Holy Sequel is that it will be updated; it is now my version of record.  In fact, since posting it a movie has already been added.

In my abundant free time (ahem), I’m adding links to the blog posts in which I discuss these movies.  As with my blog bibliography, this will take some time to complete.  I realize these posts are read on other formats such as Facebook and Goodreads, but the website itself has more information than simply the daily blog posts.  I do hope it’s a resource for those with similar interests.  There are many movies with the Bible in them.  There are no indexes or lists of such movies and I’ve stopped keeping track.  Except if the movie is horror.  If it is, it will eventually be added to Holy Sequel, if I find it.  It’s a book I likely won’t have time to write; my to-do list is far too long.

Dogs, etc.

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From Wikipedia

An incidental mention of jackals in a book made me curious.  Where did they come on the canine family tree?  I looked it up and was surprised at the results.  Based on DNA studies, they are further removed from the dog than the gray wolf is.  The lineage is quite ancient.  Quite clearly, this is a successful form of predator.  They’re actually omnivores, but they do hunt.  Just a few days ago I saw a red fox while out on my early morning jog.  As I watched it, and it watched me, I was thinking how like a dog it is.  Foxes are, however, still further from dogs on the family tree of life, falling into a separate phylum.  (I use that word advisedly, since since high school it seems that cladistics have become so complex—not that they were ever easy—that you need an electron microscope to tease similar creatures apart.)  When I see coyotes on the jog (quite rare), it seems they are a step further from dogs than wolves.

I grew up with dogs.  Our first lasting one was a good part beagle, and, in my opinion the best dog ever.  We don’t have pets now.  My wife tends to be allergic and pet care complicates travel (when we can afford it), but I often marvel at how well dogs have adapted to us.  And vice versa.  People now take their dogs into grocery stores and other shops.  While in an outdoor goods store recently, I was surprised to see a dog and its human pet stroll by.  The dog was as high as my chest.  (Or at least rib cage.)  And yet, in the wild, a jackal could well attack you.  And they’re biblical.  So biblical that they got picked up as the “father” of the Antichrist in The Omen.  Dogs, in the biblical world, were considered unclean.  I suspect people kept them as working pets anyway.  That’s why our species domesticated them.  The jackal, on the other hand, is a wild animal.

If I saw a jackal while jogging I’d probably mistake it for a dog.  Depending.  Only long hours of studying have taught me to distinguish coyotes (which I very rarely see) from dogs.  Since jackals aren’t native to the Americas, the coyote fills much the same ecological niche.  Since about 2016 they can be found in any area of the continental United States.  They even adapt to city life.  I guess the jackal is the country cousin.  Coyotes attack humans more than gray wolves do, probably because there are many more coyotes.  And they are just about everywhere.  And the reference to the jackal I was was, I assure you, truly only incidental.

Augustine’s Children

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A horror film that relies more heavily on religion than just about any I’ve seen is Tin & Tina.  What really happens is up to you to decide because different characters have different interpretations.  Adolfo and Lola can’t have children.  Lola was pregnant with twins but a miscarriage with complications left her sterile.  The couple visits a convent to adopt two children.  Lola is attracted to two seven-year-olds with albinism.  The twins are very religious, while Adolfo and Lola aren’t.  The religion of the kids leads them to strange behaviors which can be disturbing, or even dangerous.  Lola begins to suspect they are trying to kill her, and, after she miraculously becomes pregnant, her son.  In a fit of rage Adolfo burns their Bible and the couple return the children to the orphanage.  Then Adolfo is struck by lightning and the house burns down.  Or is his death really the doing of the children?

In the view of the nun at the orphanage, the children are completely innocent.  Her teachings, however, raise some doubts.  When the family dog, which is terrified of the children, bites Lola, the children “cleanse” him by taking out his heart and washing it, assuming the dog will be resurrected.  Or do they?  A bully who teases them at school has an accident, but Lola believes that the twins caused it.  (There is some evidence of this, but it is ambiguous.)  When Lola refuses to let her newborn be baptized, the twins do it by holding him upside down in a fountain.  Are they attempting to drown him?  Each time they act innocent and quote the Bible to justify what they’re doing.  Lola believes they were in the house the night Adolfo burned to death, and the children believe whatever someone sows, they reap.  He had burnt their Bible.

Horror is often ambiguous.  Tin & Tina (their names short for Augustine, for they were in an Augustinian convent) remains ambiguous throughout.  Are these kids really just doing what they believe is right and only look guilty, or are they carrying out rough justice and using the Bible as an excuse?  The movie opens by defining the word “theophany”—an appearance of God.  The nun insists that they’re innocent, so Lola adopts them again at the end.  Many scenes here resemble The Omen, but overall the movie is unnerving.  And the tension doesn’t end when the credits roll.  In many ways this is a textbook example of religion and horror.  And like most matters religious, what you believe, in the end, is up to you.

Scary Scripture

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The question’s not as simple as whether chocolate and peanut butter go together.  What is it with horror and the Bible?  A number of us have explored that question in book form, but probably the most prolific is Brandon R. Grafius.  His Scared by the Bible is a mapping through terrain that will feel foreign to some: if you live for the beach in summer, why would you fly to Antarctica to visit the South Pole instead?  Part of the reason is clearly that the Bible isn’t the rainbow-and-unicorn book that it’s often made out to be.  Some parts—not a few—are pretty scary.  That’s Grafius’ entry point into how horror and the Bible are surprisingly compatible.  Interestingly, we had similar starts down this path.  A Bible given to us by a grandmother when we were a child, and the determination to read it.  My world was a bit more hellfire and brimstone than Grafius’ but we’ve ended up near the same place.

Often I thought, as I was reading it, “Are people going to get both these references?” (i.e., both the biblical story and the horror movie being cited).  After all, many Christian denominations still teach that horror is not helpful at best, and satanic at worst.  I just wonder how many of us there are who never found watching horror a spiritual problem.  I grew up thinking about death a lot.  Part of this was because Evangelical children’s literature raised the question of where would you spend eternity if you died today.  Seriously, some of the stories I read, along with Dick and Jane, still scare me today.  Religion often uses fear for its own purposes.  So does the Bible.  Grafius comes down to this at the end, asking if it’s intentional on the Bible’s part.

It seems to me that this is an important question to explore.  Religion has been weaponized through fear since at least the Reagan years.  More recently it has been aimed specifically at us “evil” liberals and our “culture of death” even as conservatives rain bombs on Iran.  We desperately need to understand religion’s now very intentional use of fear to retain power.  People are afraid.  They have reason to be.  Generally it’s not the emotional issues politicians hand-pick to garner votes.  Yes, the Bible is a source of fear.  Horror films are often also a source of scary thoughts.  They do have a lot in common.  We just need someone to come along with an open jar of peanut butter to run into someone eating a chocolate bar.

Life’s Work

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It’s official.  I’ve now worked as an editor longer than I was a professor.  The latter was my chosen vocation, the former my fall-back.  I feel like I’ve tipped over a precipice.  As I’ve written before, I still think like a professor and would welcome back life in the classroom.  This came home to me in a major why when I realized that in my current position, in less than a month’s time, there will be only five people remaining in my starting department who were at my employer before I was.  At least twenty editors who were there when I started have left, most of them younger than me.  This was a world-rattling revelation.  You can’t choose your destiny.  You can do everything possible to make your plans happen, but change is constant and you have to make do.  None of this changes my mind, however.  A life has a calling, fulfilled or not.

I’m very grateful for all that I’ve learned about publishing, even if there’s still so much to learn.  As a young person I knew that writing would be part of my life.  I didn’t know what form it would take, and I guess I still don’t.  I’ve been getting positive signals from a publisher about a novel I completed thirteen years ago.  I’m doing my last set of edits on a very different novel that I finished initially last year.  I’ve made good progress on my seventh nonfiction book.  And there are many shorter projects in hand as well.

I was reading a book the other day where I was cited.  This got me to thinking about the concept of “life’s work.”  For some of us that’s measured in words.  I have no idea how many academic books cite me.  There’s software to measure such things, but it doesn’t capture every publication and I’m not that deluded that I’d spend much time checking on it.  Still, I do wonder if my life’s work (which is generally measured in written form) has made any difference at all.  I post thoughts here daily and they cover disparate topics.  (I had a record five “likes” recently for a post on the Bible.  Sometimes posts on monsters near that record.  Just sayin’.)  Academics tend not to cite blogs.  This one is, believe it or not, research-based.  That’s why I’m working on a bibliography.  When I’m dead and gone, and the auto-renew on this blog runs out, a good chunk of my life’s work will be archived away somewhere until electronic media cease to exist.  But one thing seems certain, most of the mentions I will have in print will be in the form of acknowledgements from having been an editor.

Whose Bible?

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“What the Bible really says.”  That’s a phrase you find in many places.  In academic books and on the lips of “true believers.”  Nevertheless, it’s a problematic formulation, no matter who uses it.  Biblical scholars often like to “correct” public assumptions about the Bible, but since the association of most people with the Bible is emotional, chances of changing any opinions remain slim.  There seem to be two troublesome words in the phrase: “Bible” and “really.”  Let’s take them in turn.  The Bible doesn’t exist.  Well, it does, but it’s an intellectual formulation, not a book.  This can be asserted with a great deal of certainty.  Why?  Because the boundaries of the Bible are porous and nobody, but nobody, has the authority to close them.  Just a quick example: the books of the Apocrypha—Bible or not?  Most Protestants fall on the “not” side of that question, although the King James Bible included some of the Apocrypha.

The question gets more vexed when we start asking about books like Jubilees and 1 Enoch.  There are ancient Christian churches that include them.  Since they are African, however, Europeans/North Americans have privileged the western canon, and have excluded them.  They are, however, part of “the Bible” for millions of people.  The book of Jude quotes Enoch as Scripture, just saying.  Things get even dicier when you include scholarly opinion.  Many biblical scholars believe The Gospel of Thomas has just as much credibility as (if not more than) the canonical four.  Since biblical scholars can’t add or remove books, however, it’s a moot point, although they are the best informed. 

“Really” is really problematic.  Who has the authority to determine what the Bible “really” says?  Doesn’t this actually mean, “the correct interpretation”?  Who is qualified to make such a statement?  A preacher?  Did God tell them personally?  Did they think to record it?  Or should it be the experts—biblical scholars who spend their lives and careers learning everything possible about the Good Book?  Again, no person, or body of people, has the right and authority to make that decision.  What does the Bible really mean?  I wouldn’t leave that up to any of the many, many clergy I know.  It requires a bit more training than they have.  And I’m still really bothered by the “really” part.  It’s always going to be a matter of interpretation.  Yes, I know hermeneutics always spoil a good time.  Until, however, we can all agree on what “the Bible” is, nobody can say what it “really” says.

Missed Movie

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It has been years since I read H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror.”  I’d never seen this original movie made from it, often cited as being a reasonable adaptation of a Lovecraft story to film.  The visuals are sometimes impressive, but it is a slow moving, plodding movie.  It does, as far as I can recall, follow Lovecraft in general terms.  This is one of those movies that would’ve fit into Holy Horror for two basic reasons: it begins with a quote from the Bible and it has its own alternative sacred book, the Necronomicon.  In one scene the latter is explicitly compared to the Good Book.  Since religion didn’t enter horror in any kind of direct way until about 1968, this movie is an early example of how the two interact.  It came before The Exorcist.

The point is made at several junctures that the religion of the Whateleys is the antithesis of Christianity.  Indeed, the point of all Wilbur Whateley’s shenanigans is to raise the old gods.  Lovecraft, famously an atheist, used gods to set up his cosmic horror.  He’s also notoriously difficult to capture in movie form.  While Roger Corman was the executive producer he was not the director, and that may answer for the pacing.  Daniel Haller, the director, had worked with Corman before on some of his Poe Cycle films and had directed Die, Monster, Die, also a Lovecraft adaptation.  Lovecraft wasn’t a terribly cinematic writer.  His stories contain ideas that feel like they might fit on film, but executing them well is difficult.

For this movie, the house used for the Whateley residence is fitting.  It helps create a sense of dread.  The basic idea of the flick is that Wilbur needs a virginal victim to help summon the old gods.  He lures Nancy Wagner to his house where she falls under the influence of drugged tea.  There’s an intriguing glass sculpture that is never fully explained.  As Nancy begins to lose her will, her friends come to find her, and one of them is killed by Wilbur’s inhuman twin that had also killed their mother during birth.  Once released, this monstrous progeny begins killing locals (the locals hate the Whateleys) and is poised to take Nancy until a guest lecturer at Miskatonic University bests Wilbur in spells recited from the Necronomicon, saving the girl and dooming the last Whateley.  The family line ends.  Until it is rather heavy-handedly shown that Nancy is pregnant by Wilbur, so the unwholesome Whateley genealogy continues.  The visuals aren’t bad, but the story is lacking.  Still, it’s part of the canon, so I needed to see it and it used religion to intrigue me.

Old Passion

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Something I find inherently fascinating revolves around used books.  I buy used books and I always examine the overlooked scraps of paper that get left between the pages.  Mostly it’s random ephemera, but it is the window into a stranger’s life.  They had this bit of paper lying around to mark their place.  Had I the time I’d piece together the puzzle.  Recently, while preparing to donate some books to the local AAUW book sale, I found a scrap of paper in one of my own books.  This was from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, based on the date in my wife’s handwriting: 3-19-04.  It’s an Associated Press story from Statesboro, Georgia, involving a dust-up between a married couple after watching The Passion of the Christ.  That makes it interesting in its own right, but what’s especially striking is the couple battled, including a pair of scissors, over whether “God the Father in the Holy Trinity was human or symbolic.”  Things got out of hand.

For context, I was still teaching at Nashotah House at the time.  Theological debates, sometimes heated, took place there on a regular basis.  People get very fired up over what they believe.  This may set our species apart from other thinking animals, or perhaps it’s part of the price we pay for abstract thought.  You almost want to step between the warring spouses and say, “let us handle this, we’re professionals.”  Of course, the species of specialist that has studied theology is dying out.  Universities are cutting religious studies departments.  Churches are losing members.  Better hide the scissors.

“Passion” is the operative word here.  We get quite attached to our views.  So much so that no amount of logic or rational discourse can dislodge them.  We see this with the utter devotion to political leaders and on-screen personalities as well as to religious beliefs.  Some of us were curious enough to study where these ideas came from and how we know that they’re “true.”  This is not for the faint of heart.  Testing your core assumptions can lead you into some very unfamiliar, unmapped territories.  And since religion deals with ultimate concerns, the stakes couldn’t be higher.  Our couple felt silly after the police had been called and the bail paid.  Passion is very much what drives our species, and perhaps others as well.  We feel we need what we believe to be true, and we’re willing to fight for it.  Even if it means, as the chief sheriff’s deputy remarked, they seem to have missed the point of religion in the first place.

Eh Aye Jesus

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Have you ever wondered just how bizarre it can get?  At work I’ve been receiving push notifications for AI Jesus.  This is a software platform for exploring “the Bible,” “life questions,” and “guided reflection or therapy.”  No Jesus required.  Apparently tech has evolved to the point of addressing spiritual questions.  This is ironic since one thing AI simply doesn’t, and can’t, understand is religion.  Religion is not exactly a rational response to the world.  Often emotion is deeply, deeply involved.  Emotion is something AI knows nothing about.  I recently sat through a webinar promoting AI with the presenter listing problem after serious problem that AI poses.  The presenter optimistically saw no problem with continuing to use a flawed tool.  I would never advise crowdsourcing spiritual guidance.  Those of us who’ve spent lifetimes exploring it hesitate to put ourselves out there as experts.

The problem with AI is that we’re no longer being given a choice about it.  If you buy a new device, AI is there waiting for you.  If you do a web search, AI will offer the first answer, even if it’s often wrong.  Some of us with very human jobs are being told that we should be exploring how to use AI for efficiencies.  As if none of us were really doing a good job before.  I’m personally insulted.  What can AI know about how Jesus thought?  We have four gospels with sometimes contradictory sayings.  And it seems likely that the Gospel of Thomas has legitimate sayings as well.  Even so, that’s not enough data for an LLM (large language model, which is what generative AI tends to be).  They need massive amounts of information.

The human mind conjures its own image of Jesus.  Some think of a mild and meek shepherd of souls while others see a political firebrand with hopes of breaking the Roman hold on Judea.  Some think of Trump.  And everything in-between.   And how we think of Jesus informs the way that we interpret the sayings attributed to him.  I studied Bible in college for just this reason.  In seminary, aware of what textual criticism could do, I focused on the Hebrew Bible instead.  I grew up with the Doobie Brothers telling me that “Jesus is just alright with me.”  I’ve lived long enough to see a sitting president present himself as the parousia (look it up).  And now I’m being told that AI can subvert the carpenter from Galilee.  Just how strange can it get?

The tempter urges Jesus to use AI; image credit: Ary Scheffer, The Temptation of Christ (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Demonic Plot

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The problem with pithy titles is that many of them apply to more than one movie.  That’s true of The Accursed, so I’ll specify that I mean the 2022 film, directed by Kevin Lewis.  Other than attempting too much—it’s a bit too complex for the needs of the story—it’s not a bad movie.  The production values are pretty good and there’s none of the goofiness that sometimes slips into lower budget efforts.  There were a few moments when it was obvious that anyone else would’ve fled the scene—of course, that would’ve changed the outcome.  And it is a film that I could’ve included in both Holy Horror and Nightmares with the Bible.  Obviously, there’s demons involved.  So what’s it all about?

Well, there’s this woman who summons demons, for a price.  If you can’t pay then the demon accepts your child in lieu of cash.  The film starts with Mary Lynn, a local, attempting to kill the old woman, but a demon inhabits the medium and Mary Lynn knows she’ll have to come back to finish the job later.  Meanwhile, Elly, a nurse whose mother recently died by suicide, is offered a job watching a comatose elderly woman at her home until she can be transferred to the hospital.  The old woman, we soon learn, is the medium from the opening scenes.  She’s not in a coma, a demon is in her.  It becomes obvious that the demon is after Elly, but she’s devoted to her duty as a nurse.  Cut off from neighbors, except Mary Lynn, she has no way of knowing what’s going on until she discovers a grimoire, the Key of Solomon, in the basement.  By the time it’s over just about everyone except Elly, Mary Lynn, and her daughter has been killed.

A complicated plot underlies the story, but it is a good example of religion and horror.  It quotes from the Bible.  And makes use of apples as symbols of being fallen.  A bit of the horror is over the top and ceases to be scary, but overall it’s a good effort.  It could also have been about ten minutes shorter.  Some of the scenes go on just a bit too long, like when Elly is trying to warn a police officer that he’s facing a demon rather than an old lady.  The fear takes its fuel from religion gone wrong.  It does mistake the word “crucifix” for “cross” but it nevertheless gets a B for effort.  Not bad for a freebie on a streaming service.

First, Kings

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Recently I sat down to read 1 Kings.  Of course, I used to teach Hebrew Bible so I have more than a passing familiarity with it.  This time, though, I was reading it through the lens of Game of Thrones.  I wonder how much George R. R. Martin drew inspiration from the biblical book.  Indeed, a movie could be made from it—sex, conspiracy, battles, deception, it’s all there.  Perhaps someone should novelize it.  If you read it without knowing that it’s holy writ, you might be surprised to learn that it is.  Of course, having been edited by the Deuteronomists (so it’s supposed), it’s a bit preachy, but the action is pretty much the same.  In fact, Game of Thrones has quite a few biblical tropes in it.  And 1 Kings, if excised from the Bible, with its chapter and verse format, is pretty gripping itself.

Another thing that occurred to me is how little politics has changed over the millennia.  Powerful families want to retain power and privilege.  They aren’t too concerned with religious niceties but they rely on the backing of religious authorities.  (The priesthood and monarchy were always a tag team for keeping power in “the proper place.”)  And a number of the characters are quite colorful, even if you wouldn’t want them in the Oval Office.  Outside that context they can be quite loved, or at least people love to hate them.  Immature boy kings, seductive queens, and armed conflict at the slightest provocation are parts of the story across the ages.  The truth of power in powerful families plays out even in democracies.  Consider father and son presidents from the Adams and Bush families, husband and wife (nearly), in the Clintons, and countless powerful families represented in the senate or in the house.

Politics never change. Image: Saul threatening David, by José Leonardo, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Biblical tales are often more earthy than they might be supposed.  Viewed through the lens of faith, we’re willing to excuse behavior that wasn’t even condoned in that day: David’s adultery, (ahem) or literal political assassination (ahem).  Alas, poor Uriah.  The problem arises when these earthy texts are taken for something magical.  People still believe in magic.  Widely so.  This belief drives much of politics in two related nations far apart but bound together by a book.  Reading 1 Kings is a useful spiritual, and practical exercise.  We can learn much about how people behave.  The Good Book isn’t shy about the motivations either.  Sex, power, and fame drove leaders of antiquity even as they continue to do so today.  The Bible tells me so. 

Weird Films

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I’ve read Gary D. Rhodes before and found him informative and enjoyable.  Although I hope his recent offering Weirdumentary moves beyond its ideal readership, I suspect I’m among that class.  I was alive and somewhat aware of cinema during the period under discussion—the 1970s—and I even saw a few of these films in the theater, as well as watching some of the television offerings.  I think Rhodes is correct in pointing out that this genre was a product of its era.  And what a strange time the seventies were!  I grew up watching the series In Search of…, which is discussed at some length here.  But before I get more into it, I should explain that a “weirdumentary” is a pseudo-documentary that has characteristic features such as dramatic recreations, questionable authenticity of at least part of what it covers, and often a famous personality as a host.

The book is handsomely illustrated with pictures that will offer a nostalgic rerun of the seventies for some of us.  It divides the material into eight sections:  the proto-weird, ancient aliens, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, the paranormal, mysterious monsters, speculative histories, and prophecies.  The proto-weird are this kind of documentary from before 1970, and the rest of the categories sometimes bleed into one another.  Not to detract from this excellent book (it’s often quite witty), my mysterious mind thinks a straightforward chronological treatment might’ve worked better.  “Paranormal,” for example, could cover quite a few of these topics.  Still, the organization of a book can be a personal thing and this layout, with “prophecies” at the end, works well.  A number of speculative religious films make the list, including In Search of Noah’s Ark and Late Great Planet Earth, both of which made it to my small-town theater, and drew me in back in the day.

I also admit to having spent some of my summer earnings to see Mysterious Monsters.  And maybe Chariots of the Gods—although I can’t remember for sure.  I certainly read the book.  Rhodes begins by explaining how 2001: A Space Odyssey set up viewer expectations for such films as these.  I definitely saw that one when I was young.  So the ideal readership here would seem to be those born in the sixties who were old enough to see these movies (and television programs) when they were making their initial rounds in the next decade.  Kids suggestible enough to believe the pseudo-science of many of these offerings, who would grow up to look back on them nostalgically.  Written with a light touch, but true appreciation of the subject, this book was a great way to relive one of the strange segments of my early life. 

Time for Asherah

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Asherah has a way of coming back into my life.  I’d pretty much laid my research on her to rest when a friend convinced Gorgias Press to release my Reassessment in paperback.  A few months later I was asked to discuss the goddess on the Biblical Time Machine podcast.  You can listen here.  My interest, as a young scholar, was to peel back the layers and see what was behind.  I’ve always been interested in origins (that interest shows through in all my work) and when I started my dissertation on Asherah only a few monographs existed.  In those pre-internet days I didn’t know that at least three others were overlapping with mine.  Part of the problem in researching pre-biblical religions is that records are, overall, scarce.  There’s a lot of Mesopotamian sources, but their religion is only known in a fragmentary way.  The fact is, the largest archive of Asherah material comes from Ugarit.  And two Ugaritologists were at Edinburgh in my day there.

I’ve been watching over the years as specialists in Ugarit have begun to disappear.  It was as if it wasn’t a sexy enough field of study.  From the thirties through the nineties of the last century, interest seemed to be growing.  As I’ve argued elsewhere, however, competing with the Dead Sea Scrolls was a fool’s errand.  And as I’ve continued to watch, interest seems to have shifted to the Persian Era.  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but what about the origins?  I regret that my grasp of Akkadian wasn’t solid enough, and my appointment at Nashotah House not well situated enough to delve into earlier origins.  Origins are why I’ve always been interested in Darwin and Genesis.

One of the research projects that I never had time to pursue was work on Genesis.  After all, it deals with beginnings.  I did a lot of research for a book that never really had time to take form.  The fate of most of those who pursue advanced study in ancient west Asian religions, if they get a job at all, is teaching biblical studies.  Others in that boat I used to find working on either Psalms, Job, or Genesis.  You see, it all comes back to origins.  Asherah was a goddess recognized in some form in ancient Mesopotamia.  Not much is known about her.  Her role in the Bible and the world of ancient Israel is likewise unclear.  With all our technology we can’t replace ancient records lost to time, but when Mars, named after an ancient god, is in our sights, that we can afford.  If only we had a Time Machine.