Horror and Head-colds

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Religion is such a pervasive vehicle for movies, whether disguised or blatant, that pointing out such connections might seem too easy. Finding these connections in horror movies is child’s play since religion constantly probes our deepest fears. Trying to get over a lingering head-cold and suffering from lack of sleep, I pulled out Ken Russell’s 1988 film, Lair of the White Worm. The film itself is not unlike a Nyquil dream, disjointed with sudden shifts of setting and context. The immediate connections with The Cult of the Cobra and Stuart Gordon’s Dagon – based on H. P. Lovecraft – were unexpected bonuses.

Through all of the B- special effects pulses a strong religion subtext. The crucifixion vision juxtaposed with Roman soldiers raping nuns was a dead giveaway. The supporting female characters bearing the names of Eve and Mary could not be more obvious. And the snake wrapped around a tree – is this Sunday School 101? Lacking the sophistication of Robin Hardy’s Wicker Man, Lair of the White Worm nevertheless does strike some similar religious chords. When archaeologist Angus Flint discovers a Roman temple dedicated to Dionin under a convent in England’s north-country, a mosaic of the great white dragon wrapped around a cross tells the viewers all they need to know.

Like Marduk, Baal, Yahweh, Zeus, and St. George, Lord James D’Ampton becomes the dragon-slayer. Chaoskampf (god slays dragon motif) is perhaps the most ancient form of religion, alongside the world-wide flood and dying gods returning to life. These archetypical images populate many films to the point of saturation and Lair of the White Worm is a treasure trove of them. The plot successfully invents an ancient deity, Dionin, whose name and cult have clear connections with that of Dionysus, himself a dying and rising god. This religion is in conflict with Christianity, and the film is opaque enough not to reveal the winner. I need to ponder this some more. In the meantime, I think I need another dose of Nyquil.

Take it with a dose of Nyquil

Holi Holidays

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I am the first to admit that I know far too little about Indian religions. As I teach Ancient Near Eastern religions every year, it becomes clear that much of our own modern, western religious tradition owes a debt of gratitude to the ancient traditions of the Far East. Zoroastrianism, substantially connected to early Indic religions, had an immense impact on the major monotheistic faiths that grew out of the ancient Near East.

So it was that I was pleased to see a story in the local paper about the upcoming Hindu festival of Holi. I know little about this festival other than it includes a celebration of color. Having grown up a little too attached to television, a device that was black-and-white in those days, I have retained my fascination with color and the emotion and power it conveys. When color television came to our home, it was an epiphany. Reading about human cognitive development it is impossible to ignore the impact color has on Homo sapiens and their outlook on the world. A master film-maker may convey depth and feeling in the absence of color, but once color is added, the story becomes vibrant. I took my family to a New Shanghai Circus performance at the local community college last night. As stunning as the acrobatics were, the vivid colors definitely enhanced the experience.

While at Nashotah House I found myself being consulted on color. The classrooms were being painted, and as Academic Dean I was asked what the color scheme should be. I consulted a friend who works in architecture, and she gave me a book about the “feel” of colors. My advice was overruled, but a new sensitivity to color had been awakened. Strangely, later that year a local public school brought me in as a consultant on classroom color. My engagement with color is purely subjective, but I know if I see a certain shade of blue I can be literally transfixed by fascination. My minimal exposure to Holi has opened a new window on religion for me. Color. It is an aspect of life to be celebrated.

Courtesy Louisiana State University

St. Valentine’s Day

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In keeping with my holiday series for young people, I present here my lighthearted essay on Valentine’s Day. This holiday was actually the starting point for the book project. My daughter had to do a school paper article on the holiday and had a difficult time finding information on the history of Valentine’s Day that was suitable for children. I starting writing this book at that time since there was nothing on the market. Still isn’t. In any case, here goes —

Hearts and cupids and tasty candy are a long way from the origins of this holiday! To get a grip on St. Valentine’s Day we have to go back to the Romans again. Remember that the Romans took over the known world in the first century B.C.E. Nobody has accused the Romans of having a great sense of humor! Like most empire-builders they had the serious business of looking out for their own best interests in mind.

Before Constantine (if you skipped New Year’s Day, there’s more there) the Romans worshipped lots of gods. Their religion didn’t really have a name, but it had plenty of gods, gods to spare even! So when they conquered the land where Jesus would show up, Judaea (aka “Israel”), they didn’t really need any more gods. There were so many religions around, in fact, that the Romans hated new religions.

One of the favorite Roman sports was killing Christians, because Christianity was a new and illegal religion. By a remarkable coincidence two guys by the name of Valentine were priests in the early days of the church. Although St. Valentine’s Day gets cootie points for some, the name actually means “valiant.” Well, these two Valentines were both traditionally killed on February 14 in the 200s (C.E.). So Valentine’s Day starts with blood and gore!

Read the rest here (under Full Essays).

Prosperity Update

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I didn’t have the opportunity to write a post yesterday because my PowerPoint file for my class had been deleted. I still don’t know how. I’ve been using varieties of the same computer I have now for about 20 years and I’ve never lost a file before. I discovered this, of course, just before I began packing the car with the sherpa-load of equipment that I need to haul the 50 miles to Montclair with me to teach my class twice a week. The loss of the day’s lecture notes weighed heavily on my mind as I climbed into my car and discovered a problem with the electrical system – the blinker lights on the right wouldn’t shut off. (They finally started to behave normally half-way to the university.) And a blizzard was on the way. At times like this my thoughts turn to my prosperity cross.

I wrote about the cross in a previous post where I indicated that I was going to try a good-faith experiment to see if God really wants me to prosper. The last 17 years haven’t been good financially, so I tried my best to believe, and I have been carrying the cross around with me for a few weeks now. In that time I have had a publication rejected, did not get a full-time job after a very good interview, didn’t win the lottery (I bought a ticket as an experiment although I never play normally), my wife had more hours added to her job with no increase in compensation, my health insurance company politely declined to pay for an expensive dental procedure, and I have yet to be paid for my four weeks of teaching at Montclair. Oh, and two cars very nearly collided with me yesterday (not because of my blinker! One tried to pass me on the left as I was making a left turn into a parking spot in a parking lot, the other passed me on a single-lane entry ramp onto the Garden State Parkway while I was merging at the posted speed limit). I’m beginning to think they sent me a defective artifact.

In my prophecy class we’ve been discussing divination. From ancient times people have attempted to discern the will of the gods through a wide variety of techniques. Watching birds in the sky, smoke from altars, oil on water (haven’t discovered smoke on the water yet), casting lots, reading animal livers, and having significant dreams – any of these might reveal the hidden will of the gods. And ancients carried talismans at times to hedge the odds in their favor. We like to think of ourselves as more sophisticated than that, relying on more updated and civilized ways of influencing the almighty. My pocket cross is one of those modern means to induce divine favor my way. Perhaps I am reporting too soon, since I’ve got a backlog of nearly two decades of financial woes to overcome. In the short term, however, it looks like a real blizzard is on the way.

Secrets of my sucess

Mythology in Cinema and Belief

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My snow day activities yesterday would not have been complete without the viewing of a classic science fiction film for relief from my Mythology course prep. Still having mythology on the brain, I selected Dr. Cyclops, a 1940s movie that presages many of the concerns evident in the more famous members of the genre over the next decade. There were, even before the atomic bomb, clear concerns with radioactivity and its control by unstable elements of society. The fact that Dr. Thorkel is stereotypically Germanic would certainly resonate with audiences of the day. Given the title I focused on the classical elements and they eventually came through. As the radioactivity shrunk the cast, with the exception of Dr. Cyclops (Thorkel), Odysseus’ plight in the cave of Polyphemus emerged clearly. The doctor is symbolically blinded by the hiding and breaking of his glasses, and the shrunken prisoners escape like Odysseus’ crew. In one scene where the rival Dr. Bullfinch (surely no accident) addresses the much larger Thorkel the writers make it clear for the viewers that Bullfinch is really Ulysses (Odysseus).

Odysseus and Polyphemus

Presumably filmgoers in 1940 were still required to have read the classics in school so that such references would have been obvious from the start. Less obvious to viewers then and now is the fact that ancient mythology was a form of religion. Over the past week or so I’ve been participating in an exchange on Sabio Lantz’s blog, Triangulations, on the topic of metaphorical versus literal truth. I maintain that mythology reflects truth as perceived by ancient believers, whether they “believed” in an actual pantheon on Mount Olympus or not. Myths are intended to convey truth – although ancient religions were more often about correct practice rather than correct belief. Placating angry gods was the job of the priesthood, not the average citizen.

The question unanswered is when religion shifted from correct practice to correct belief. Correct belief can only truly apply in a monotheistic context – if there are many gods there are potentially many beliefs. With one god, one personality, the potential for believing incorrectly infiltrates a religion that is primarily concerned with keeping the many gods satisfied. So perhaps what Dr. Cyclops sees through his one good lens is a metaphor for seeking a single truth rather than the many. In the film, before he meets his demise in the radium mine, Dr. Thorkel is the only character with the stature of a god.

View from the Snowpocalypse

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With all of the hype and anxiety of the current Nor’easter dumping snow on the East Coast, a guy from northwestern Pennsylvania can’t help but shrug his shoulders. What’s all the fuss about? Growing up in the snow belt of Lake Erie, I was accustomed to forgetting the color of the ground between December and April. School seldom closed with under a foot of snow. And I had to walk a literal mile to catch the bus, but it was uphill only one way.

The truly fascinating aspect of this storm is the creation of biblically charged words to describe it, as if the American vocabulary has run out of appropriate adjectives. “Snowpocalypse” and “snowmageddon” both appeared in this morning’s paper. The late biblical concepts of apocalypse and Armageddon indicate a devastating turn of the era when a new world is ushered in. All I saw out my front door was a bunch of snow. Peaceful, white, and pretty.

Snowmaggedon? Hardly.

I lament the farming of the otherwise underused Bible for images that cheapen the visceral fear and dread that accompanied ancient outlooks. Once while at Nashotah House in Wisconsin, when the temperature plunged to 38 degrees below zero (air temperature, not wind-chill) and the tired snow was being blown about by unforgiving winds, we were required to make the trek to Milwaukee for a day long spiritual retreat. Just about all human institution had shut down, with the sole remaining exception of a church eager to revitalize its aging congregation. As the ice on the window of the bus refroze immediately after being scraped off, I came close to thinking apocalyptic thoughts I admit. The weather, I guess, has always had a divine connection in our primitive minds after all.

Inter-species Prognostication

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Groundhog Day is a holiday easily forgotten by all but Bill Murray fans and residents of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The day, however, has a role deep in European folk religion that was reflected in the “cross-quarter days.” From ancient times, the four days of the year that fall precisely between the solstices and equinoxes were known as cross-quarter days, based on the day of the month that rent was due in England (“quarter days”). The Celts recognized this cross-quarter day in early February as Imbolc (later Christianized as Candlemas). Part of the folk religion held that animals had special powers on cross-quarter days, and that fair weather on Imbolc meant that more wintry weather was on the way.

In America, where Groundhog Day has its original burrow, the tradition began among German immigrants. The first historical reference to Groundhog Day was made in 1841 in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. By 1886 Punxsutawney had its groundhog Phil and the tradition has continued ever since.

Although it is a lighthearted holiday, I always tell my Hebrew Prophets class (which begins near Groundhog Day) that this is a form of socially accepted prognostication. Few believe that a marmot can predict the weather, but we like to believe that winter is on its way out when the cold starts to feel old and stubborn and we are ready for a few sunny days. The old tradition states that if Phil doesn’t see his shadow he won’t dash fearfully into his den and spring is on its way. Fact is, spring falls six weeks from Groundhog Day, so no matter what the rodent says, spring is on its way. Ancient religions always stress the hope that nature will continue as it has in the past and that spring will follow winter as it should. It is nevertheless a fun day to watch the largest member of the squirrel family amble out of his heated burrow, no doubt confused by all the furless bipeds standing around with cameras, and play the prophet for his fifteen minutes of national fame.

The world's hairiest prophet?

Paul Does the Classics

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I first became aware of Greek mythology in fifth grade. My teacher in an industrial, rough and yet rural school, believed in the benefits of teaching aspiring drug addicts and laborers the stories of gods and heroes. I immediately adored the stories we heard and read. Raised in a religious household, however, I feared enjoying the tales of what were admittedly pagan gods after all, too much. In the educational topography of my youth, we were on the brink of this brave new electronic world we’ve entered, and mythology was not considered a terribly useful part of the curriculum after that. I left the gods behind. In a class on the Christian Scriptures in college, however, my instructor suggested we all go see Clash of the Titans (the 1981 version) for its appreciative (if a little hokey) presentation of the Greek world. I enjoyed the movie and even took a class in the literature department on mythology.

Over the years I have touched and gone on Greco-Roman mythology while specializing in the mythology of Ugarit. Now that I’m teaching a course on mythology, I’m going back to my classical roots and rereading the stories of times not quite so ancient as the fertile crescent civilizations’, but older than what is considered practical nowadays. While rereading Euripides’ play The Bacchae, the concentration of images, concepts, and actions that recur in the Bible stood out in chiaroscuro. Especially noticeable were references to Paul in the book of Acts.

Like Paul, Dionysus comes to be imprisoned. Not recognized as a divine figure, King Pentheus of Thebes locked him in chains until he could demonstrate that Dionysus is just the wild imaginary figure of repressed women. An earthquake, however, soon rattles the city and Dionysus emerges, chains shed, to the astonishment of Pentheus. The scene reads like Paul and Silas’ escape from jail in Philippi (Acts 16). Admittedly this could be coincidence. A few lines later, however, Dionysus, free from prison, tells Pentheus, “Don’t kick against the goad – a man against a god,” (Act 3, Paul Roche’s translation). Even so, Paul on his way to Damascus sees a vision of a god and is asked, “Why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (Acts 26.14). Perhaps Luke had read his Euripides?

Now I’m no scholar of the Christian Scriptures (although I have taught courses on them a time or two), but when obvious parallels exist it is incumbent upon modern readers to pay attention. The parallels of Dionysus and Jesus were evident to early Christians, so what I noticed was nothing new. When the followers of Dionysus, however, strike a rock with their sticks and water flows out, I wondered if Euripides had read his Torah!

Paul's bedtime reading

The Truth is in Here?

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Constantly trawling for the shattered detritus of truth that rests scattered around our lonely little planet, I have often supposed they were here. I have never seen them, but in the Drake Equation there is a high probability that they exist. And now the newspaper says they may have been here all along. And closer than we thought.

Aliens. These latter-day angels and explorers of the cosmos are often pictured like E-T or the little gray aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The latest findings suggest they could even be quite a bit smaller than that. Paul Davies, a physicist from Arizona State, believes that life may have developed multiple times on earth, and perhaps some of the googol of microbes on our planet may have their origins in space. These potentially extraterrestrial microbes, he stated could be “right under our noses – or even in our noses.” Yikes! Time to put up the intergalactic “No Trespassing” sign!

Stop the alien menace!

In all seriousness, however, this concept of multiple origins of life, I fear, will be latched onto and misread by our Creationist fellow-life forms. I can see the fingers stiff from grasping at straws claiming that now there is scientific proof that different species do have different origins, thank you Mr. Darwin. The price to pay, if they apply logic, however, is not one evolutionary track, but many.

The movie Creation, focusing on Darwin, opened this past weekend in the United States. Delayed because of concerns that Americans can’t handle the truth, this film about Darwin’s sad voyage to the inevitable truth of natural selection will surely raise evangelical ire. Nevertheless, we did not design this world we evolved into, we simply inherited it. And the closer we peer at it, the more complex it becomes. These multiple evolutionary tracks may also explain the origin of Creationists – could they come from different stock than scientifically minded folk? In any case, the news today provides yet another reason to keep our noses clean and our eyes on the skies.

Father Freeze

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Photo credit: Dmitry Lovetsky, Associated Press

This picture appeared in the newspaper this morning. At a monastery in Valdai, some 250 miles to the northeast of Moscow, Russian Orthodox believers were celebrating Epiphany by leaping into a cross-shaped hole in the ice on a nearby lake. The temperature, as noted in the caption, was 18 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). What the caption did not explain is that Epiphany, at least in this context, translates as Russian for “severely clenched scrotum.” Hypothermia, the Lord is frozen! Blessed is he who comes to freeze. The ice-man cometh in the name of the Lord.

Many years ago, well into the decades mark, I was talking to a friend about the liturgical churches, as opposed to the strictly Protestant ones. She had grown up staunchly Protestant and was put off by the ceremony of the sacramentally-identified churches. In our discussion she paused and mentioned a televangelist (I can’t recall which one; they all look alike after a while) who had agreed to ride down a water-slide at an amusement park, in a full three-piece suit, if his audience would raise a certain payload of cash. Although the details escape me, it seems entirely plausible ⎯ there is little a televangelist won’t do for money! Then she said, “I can’t see the Pope doing that. I guess there is some dignity to that.” I was pleased; I had made the point that some Christian groups do not need to be in the spotlight of artificial flamboyance in order to proclaim the seriousness of their message. Shortly after that I began to work at Nashotah House.

To speculate from the photo above, there was not a large gathering of the faithful on the Siberian ice. Just a few believers in an extreme masculine Christianity dressed in liturgical underwear. Nevertheless, such displays of faith have been part of religions from the very beginning. Ancient believers used to carry their statues of gods around Babylon for a day out to remind the secular that the eyes in the sky are still watching you. When a sartorially perfect prefect steps out in all his finery, what other option is there but to drop one’s hands and stare? A favored photograph at Nashotah House when I was there featured the “Fond du Lac circus,” a gathering of such high rollers in the Anglo-Catholic corner of the Episcopal Church that even a future Russian saint deigned to show up. The event was the consecration of Bishop Weller, coadjutor of the Diocese of Fond du Lac, in 1900. As I look at the Orthodox man poised over his cross-shaped hole, I wonder if my friend had it right after all. The Fond du Lac circus haunts me to this day. What is religion without the show?

The Fond du Lac Circus

Illusions of Permanence

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Blogging about the ancient world presents idiosyncratic problems. Quite apart from the fact that few readers show much interest in the shadowy ages of antiquity when new tunes and flicks are available to download just mouse-clicks away, the worldview of ancient people is difficult to comprehend. Most people before the common era probably focused their energies on their crops and beasts, hoping to survive for as long as possible in a subsistence world. I’m sure they would have appreciated an i-pod as they were out plowing or were at home weaving and cooking, but theirs was a solid, practical world where reality could be brutally felt.

Fast-forward to our day. I can’t teach a class of undergraduates without noticing their constant attention to their electronic arsenals forever at hand. Cell-phones, i-pods, laptops, and god-knows what-else making as much buzzing and chirping noise as a meadow in springtime. This constant interruption is what Linda Stone has coined “continuous partial attention.” Kids are raised to juggle many sources of input or stimulation at one time, an activity that befuddles those of us raised when television was black-and-white and telephones were heavy devices solidly settled in one place. The disconnect is palpable.

I read in Wired magazine some years back a whimsical analysis of data storage. A chart indicated the most reliable means of keeping data over long periods. Electronic media suffers from rapidly increasing technology (does anyone have a 5-and-a-quarter inch floppy drive I can borrow?) as well as the transience of the media itself (electrons marching in order). On the top of Wired’s chart for durability was the humble clay tablet with a period of about 5000 years. I chuckled at the chart, but deep in my psyche I know that a major power-outage, or a catastrophically failing server could plunge my electronic compositions and data into oblivion. We have so much information out there, but what happens if it flies away in the tale of an errant comet? My suggestion to the younger generation is to learn cuneiform. It may take a few years, but as a storage solution it is rock-solid.

The original hard copy

Incredible Shrinking Saturdays

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As a kid Saturday afternoon was devoted to the science fiction repertoire offered to B-movie connoisseurs on commercial television. There were only about a dozen channels in those days and one of the local Pittsburgh stations had the demographic of teenage boys’ viewing habits down to a science. Now that people tell me I’m grown up, although they won’t give me a full-time job, the temptation is there to let the television do the thinking for me. Actually, I only allow myself to watch TV on the weekends; it never gets turned on until Friday night. The rest of the time is spent getting ready for classes or looking for jobs.

Anyway, yesterday I decided to watch I movie I first saw as a tween (“kid” as they were called in those days), The Incredible Shrinking Man. The Christmas tree was set up and decorated and the snowstorm scheduled to bury the East Coast was doing its job quite well. So I settled in to remember old times. I’ve mentioned before the mild social criticism of 1950s sci-fi, and seeing this film as an adult yielded the same results. When Scott Carey realizes he’s shrinking, the doctors figure out that he had been exposed to radiation — a perennial plot device in Cold War movies — and the various creatures of the natural world become deadly threats. His cat, and, of course, the basement spider, both try to kill him.

Then, as the realization dawns that he will eventually shrink down to nothingness, Carey reflects how the infinite and infinitesimal are the “ends of a circle.” And in a movie where the divine is not previously invoked, he ends his relentless deflation by narrating, “To God there is no zero. I still exist.” When technology (medical science) and human help (his wife stays with him until he is the size of a cockroach, and only leaves when she believes the cat ate him) fail, the 1950s audience falls back on God. Theologians call this thinking “God of the gaps,” where God, the ultimate deus ex machina, is used to explain what human reason can’t yet figure out. It is still prevalent in Fundamentalism and most forms of contemporary Christianity. If belief in God relies on having unexplained phenomena, the question of who is shrinking becomes challenging indeed.

O Tannenbaum

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Today we put up our Christmas tree. As we drove home with it strapped to the roof our car yesterday we felt like pariahs since everyone else in New Jersey seems to have collected their tree a week or two before Thanksgiving. I have spent too long among Episcopalians to appreciate such eager chomping at the bit. At Nashotah House Christmas trees were discouraged until about Christmas Eve, since a hearty Advent celebration was considered a sign of true piety. Well, with a small child in those days, we didn’t care to deprive our daughter of the childhood anticipation of Christmas, so we received the ugly stares due to those so uncouth as to set up a tree a week in advance. Now people think we procrastinate to wait until the weekend before Christmas to set up our interior conifer.

A few years back I wrote a book on holidays for teenagers. I haven’t found a publisher yet, but I did quite a bit of research that I’d rather not waste. Sometime soon I will post the Christmas section under Full Essays. It is chock-full of traditions and facts and impressions about Christmas and what it has come to mean to us today in the United States, but since today is tree day for us, I thought I’d start out with a little of the story of the humble Christmas tree:

The modern use of Christmas trees can be traced directly back to Germany in the 1500s. The earliest written reference comes from 1570 when a fir tree was set up in guild houses and decorated with apples, nuts, pretzels, and small things for kids. On Christmas Day the kids of the guild members could come and take the hanging gifts. The apples may go back to plays in the Middle Ages with Adam and Eve; sometimes plays of the Garden of Eden had apples hung on a fir tree. A tradition says that Martin Luther, the monk who started the Protestant movement (the Reformation) was walking home one winter night when he saw the stars twinkling through the branches of the pines. He set a tree up in his house, the story goes, lit with candles, to try to recreate the effect.

We do know that the Christmas tree (originally Tannenbaum) was a German invention. Until the 1800s it was almost completely limited to Germany. Candles were used to light the trees – talk about your obvious fire hazard! Royalty from other European countries were presented with Christmas trees as a novelty in the 1800s. Soon other well-to-do families started to set them up. An engraving of Queen Victoria in England with a tree from her German husband Prince Albert captured the public imagination and Christmas trees became the rage in England. Charles Dickens took over and the rest is history.

A Christmas Tree primer

Im in ur blogz

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Translation. The Bible as we know it would not exist without translation. Ours is a culture of convenience — Americans want divine revelation dished out in easy-to-swallow portions in their own tongue. Going through the rigors of learning new alphabets and grammatical systems, not to mention the eerie specter of textual apparatus, are enough to frighten off all but the most stalwart of truth-seekers. This is a good thing. We would never advance as a culture if we all had to spend our time learning actually to read our religious texts as they were written, only to find out that we have no original texts at all. So we trust our translators.

A few weeks back I posted an entry on Andrew Schlafly’s misguided (imho) Conservative Bible, devoid of liberal bias. Since then Stephen Colbert’s interview with Schlafly has been making its rounds on the internet and thousands of people are now aware of the project and its biases. I stand by my original objection that biased translations are unfair representations of the actual ancient texts. But it looks now like I’ll have to be eating crow. A new translation is scheduled to arrive in stores next month, and it looks like it may have a bias. Still, it is a translation that no internet-savvy reader can afford to ignore. Yes, the Lolcat Bible is nearly ready to pounce from the press.

The culmination of the Lolcat Bible Translation Project, over two years in the making, a Bible in Lolspeak will soon be available. Comparing what I’ve seen of the two projects, I think there is more truth in the Lolcat Bible than in the Conservative Bible. I’ve studied more ancient languages than any sane person rightfully should, but I do rely on my able research assistant (aka daughter) to help read Lolspeak. She suggested the title for this post, but the full text reads, “Im in ur blogz, postin mah wurdz of wizdum.” That’s straight from the mouth of Ceiling Cat!

A Walk Around the Watchtower

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The Jehovah’s Witnesses stopped by yesterday. I never pretend not to be home, and when I’m less stressed out I like to engage them in terms of biblical exegesis — religion is all about conflict. Yesterday I was still recovering from the disappointment of not getting a job I really wanted, so I simply answered their questions and accepted their Watchtower magazine. Thumbing through it, I ran into some hermeneutical obstacles — an occupational hazard for those of us who’ve spent a little too much time with the Bible, I suppose. A story about Joshua informed me that “Jehovah wants you to succeed.” It tasted a little too much like prosperity gospel and not much like life in the present. So I flipped a few more pages.

An article on Lunar New Year (Chinese New Year, as it is traditionally called), warned against Christians celebrating it, in part because of ancestor veneration. The Watchtower declares, “the Bible show that the ‘ghosts’ and deceased ‘spirits’ are really wicked spirit creatures pretending to be the deceased. For what purpose? To mislead people and bring them under their evil control!” Now, I admit to being drawn into the Ghost Hunter fan-base, but I do recall the story of Saul summoning Samuel from the dead. The Bible doesn’t indicate that he’s evil; in fact, it is Samuel himself! If ghosts want to deceive then they need to show up a little more clearly and give more direct messages.

I then learned about King David’s remarkable musical prowess in the story about music in the Bible. It is truly amazing what can be extrapolated from a literal reading of the Psalms. The magazine informs us that King Sennacherib, emperor of Assyria, demanded male and female musicians from Hezekiah. “It seems that they were first-class performers.” This seemed a little too much like the stereotype of Jewish entertainers, and since it was extra-biblical I couldn’t accept it. The story concludes by indicating that music is not a human invention. “The Bible describes music and singing in the heavens themselves, where spirit creatures play figurative harps and sing praises around Jehovah’s throne.” As I pondered what a figurative harp would sound like, I could swear I heard the sound of one hand clapping.

Being that time of year, the issue has an Epiphany story. Well, most Christians associate the wise men with Christmas, so I’ll call it a Christmas story. Eager to be honest, the author notes that the wise men were really foreign astrologers. And although they were into witchcraft, the angel announced Jesus’ birth to them to lead them away from this abhorrent practice. Then a divine revelation came to them in a dream in order that they could avoid Herod and his wicked plan. So the astrology that led them to Jesus was bad, but the end result was good.

When the Jehovah’s Witnesses ask me if I know about the Bible, I look at my feet and kick at an invisible speck of mud on the floor as I admit that I have taught Bible for nearly twenty years. But when they ask what I believe about the Bible I tell them the same thing I tell my students — what I believe is personal and I choose not to share it. I don’t begrudge any person of their religion. I even share the Jehovah Witnesses’ hope that the future may be brighter than the present. If you want to convert a religion professor, even an adjunct one, however, it will take more than a Watchtower to do it.