REELigion ... My Take on "Captain America" and the Death of Khal Drogo

A couple of weeks ago, my good friend Patton Dodd, editor over at Patheos.com--a very slick, ecumenical web site on faith and religion--asked if I'd begin contributing to a new religion and film blog they're hosting.  I'm a pushover when it comes to seeing my words in print, so I agreed.  Hence, every once in a while, I'll devote my weekly Eat the Bible blogging to this new site, REELigion. 

This week, I submitted a post on religion--or lack thereof--in the new Captain America film.  Check it out!

But don't just go to REELigion for me; other luminaries in the field--among them Bradley Herling, Martyn Oliver, and Mr. Dodd himself--will occasionally contribute.  And they're all a lot smarter and funnier than I am.  Click here for more

Exodus 3: Can We Say that God Is Good?

As part of a book project, I've been picking through David Blumenthal's deeply challenging post-Holocaust theology, Facing the Abusing God.  Perhaps I'll get to his argument in a later post, but I've been meditating on Blumenthal's reminder that Maimonides, the great 12th-century Jewish philosopher and theologian, contends that God is without attributes.  More simply, God is so thoroughly beyond comprehension that we may not simply stick adjectives to his name.  We may not say that God is "mighty," or that God is "present," or that God is "powerful," because these modifiers constrain a deity whose being is beyond human expression. 

In making such a statement, Maimonides takes part in what comes to be known as "negative theology."  Simply put--and perhaps too simply put--negative theology starts with the premise that God is so beyond our wildest imagination that we can only say what He is not.  As a consequence, the most effective theologies may deal in negation, paradox, contradiction, and perhaps even in skillfully deployed silence.

It occurred to me, however, that Maimonides's argument is prefigured by a very early Biblical text, Exodus 3,  in which God "introduces" himself to his first prophet, Moses.  Here are the relevant lines:

"But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you," and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am'. He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “I am has sent me to you."’"

The Divine Name as rendered here is "I am who I am"--an evasive nomenclature if ever there was one--and we likely do not envy Moses his task.  At worst, God's name feels redundant, repetitive, and frankly, dismissive.  Here, I always picture God as the tired executive, lounging back in his desk chair, knees crossed, waving his hand in a slow circle.  He might be talking a little bit like the Godfather, too. 

However, this gnomic utterance--"I am who I am"--is not the only available translation of the Hebrew original, ehyeh asher ehyeh.  In the King James Version of the Bible, Exodus 3:14 names God as "I am that I am."  This rendering has allowed generations of English-speaking scholars to suggest that in this passage, God is defining himself as Being--pure essence. 

But when I teach this text, I always say what my Bible professors taught me: Biblical Hebrew does not make a clear-cut distinction between the present tense and the future tense.  Thus, one may acceptably translate this name of God as "I will be what I will be," a version that gets us back to Maimonides and negative theology.  With this third naming, we learn that we cannot name God; only God can name God.

We cannot say what God is, or what God "will be."  Only He can.

Such heady statements may lead to some downright frightening conclusions.  Because for the purest of negative theologians, God is not "loving," or "compassionate," or "rational," or--most disturbing of all--"good."  God is only "what he will be."  And we are not privy to what this "what" is. Click here for more

Job 38: "The Tree of Life" and the Voice from the Whirlwind

In my heart of hearts, I consider myself a true cinephile.  My credentials are sterling: I trashed Titanic when it won the Oscar, I claim to understand the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for many years, I wrote reviews of movies made for teen girls for a newspaper I like to call "the Grey Lady"--The Kalamazoo Gazette.  (Is that nickname already taken?)

So it was with chagrin that I recently realized I had never seen anything by Terrence Malick, the reclusive American auteur.  (I may have slept through Thin Red Line in college, but even I won't count that.) 

And thus, it was with head humbly dipped that I trooped down to the Kendall Square Cinema last week to salvage my reputation and watch The Tree of Life, Malick's most recent film and a newly minted Palme d'Or winner.  (If you don't know what that is, I'm not going to tell you; I'm a real movie guy.)

Tree is a hybrid film.  Half mid-century, father-son drama, half cosmological speculation, it juxtaposes scenes of family life in rural Texas with sublime panoramas of the universe in flux--stars, planets, suns, and nebulous gas clouds.  Brad Pitt--playing an overbearing father of three--shares the screen with a small herd of CGI dinosaurs, if not at the same time.  This idiosyncratic fusion has caused some viewers to walk out of the theater after minutes.  (Though I've got a name for them--pansies.)

Now first, know that Tree isn't nearly so avant garde as those early exiters would have you believe; we're not watching David Lynch here. Nonetheless, any honest effort to interpret the film must reconcile its two major strands: the celestial and the domestic.  But with a little help from the Bible, I believe that it's not so hard a job as you might think.  Here's why ... 

Malick opens the film with a brief quote from the book of Job.  The translation he chooses reads, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" (38:4,7)

He then dives into his tale.  The opening fifteen minutes are dominated by two images: first, a mother (played by the luminous Jessica Chastain, shown above) receiving word that her son, a soldier, has died; second, a stellar explosion that most reviewers read as the Big Bang.  The rest of the film plays out both moments.

In one half, Malick delivers the pre- and post-history of that military death.  In the other half, we get a de facto history of the universe, from the first explosion to the primordial goo to early fish creeping onto land to velociraptors to ... well, I could go on. 

It is the book of Job that bridges the gap between the two.

Job, of course, is the story of a man afflicted by God.  After losing his riches and then his children in a string of not-so-freak accidents, Job sits down in a pile of ashes to lament his sorry state.  And the next thirty-five chapters of harrowing debate boil down to a simple question: Why? Job, you see, is a good man, a righteous man, and a man of God.  That his life should be so devastated seems, to him, tragic--or at least tragically unfair.

However, the miracle of the book is that Job, unlike all who suffer today, receives an answer from the deity.  In a passage that many simply call "the voice from the whirlwind," God takes four chapters (38-41) to respond in detail to Job's complaint.  They open with the following verses, from which Malick takes his epigraph:

"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man, I will you question you, and you shall declare to me.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements--surely you know!
On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings started for joy?" (Job 38:2-7)

These verses--and the hundred-odd that follow--give Job a God's-eye view of his own suffering.  "Your torment feels big," God seems to say; "Well, let me show you big."  So God takes Job to the beginning of the universe, challenges him with the mystery of life, escorts him to the peak of the world and to the depths of the abyss.  And Job is hushed by the comparison.

Malick, I believe, does the exact same thing with us; he shows us poignant loss and weighs it against the whole universe.  Halfway through, I was ready to retitle the film Job: The Movie; the answers that Malick provides to the thorny questions of human suffering are downright Biblical.

Ah, but are those answers persuasive?  I'll leave that question for another day.  Click here for more

Herman Cain, Keith Ellison, Sharia, and the Bible

Have you heard of Herman Cain?  No?  Well, that's fine.  Don't read any further; I'm not sure I want to give him any more coverage than he's already stolen.

Cain, a Republican, is a former Federal Reserve Bank chair and Godfather's Pizza CEO who's been able to grab a few headlines by forming a presidential exploratory committee.  As soon as a Palin or a Romney or even a Pawlenty throws his or her hat in the ring, we'll stop hearing about him. But for now, we must be submitted to his blather.

The latest of which is an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham in which Cain claims that he'd never put a Muslim in his cabinet. Now, Cain will never have a cabinet that doesn't hang on his kitchen wall, but I digress ... here's the clip in full: 



Cain goes on to argue that he doesn't trust Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, himself a Muslim, because Ellison swore his oath of office on a copy of the Qur'an.  The Minnesota Independent delivers Cain's full quote in a recent article: "If you take an oath on the Qur’an, that means you support Sharia law. I support American law." Sharia is Muslim legal thinking--a set of juridical principles drawn from legal speculation on the Qur'an.

(Oklahoma's state legislature recently passed a bill that bans the use of sharia law in state courts. Here's slate.com's recent coverage.  If you're wondering, no one had ever tried to use sharia law in Oklahoma, but legislators wanted to stay ahead of the game. Rumor has it they've also tried to pass bills pre-emptively curtailing efforts to name cricket the official state sport and gayness the official state sexuality.)

Now, Ellison doesn't support the promulgation of sharia in the United States.  Like most American Muslims, he's pretty happy with American law.  But that's not my beef with Cain. My problem is Cain's seeming ignorance of the fact that the Bible also features a very explicit set of legal principles--the Torah--most of which we no longer follow.

His flawed logic suggests that because Ellison swore an oath on the Qur'an, he will necessarily seek to subject all Americans to its strictures. By extension, then, every American legislator who has sworn an oath on the Bible must then be similarly bound to try to pass its laws. 

But I have yet to hear of Paul Ryan proposing legislation that makes chicken farms illegal (Deuteronomy 22:6).  And I don't think that Nancy Pelosi has any plans to make adultery punishable by stoning (Deut. 22:22).  And as of yet, Mitch McConnell has never tried to ram through a bill that mandates the construction of parapets on all new buildings (Deut. 22:7).  But now that I think of it, I have seen him carrying around lots of suspicious blueprints lately ...

Of course, you probably knew all this already, and I'm probably just blowing hot air now. I'll stop, but for the love of dog, I hope Cain will stop talking soon too. Click here for more

Exodus 28: God Does Play Dice

Last week was my first "off" week from Eat the Bible in nearly a year.  Are you impressed with my resolve? My consistency? My reliable effort? Me too.

But I've got a great reason for my brief hiatus: I went to Vegas last weekend to relearn all the hard and soft lessons that city has to teach. I relearned that blackjack will kill you. I relearned that basketball games are exponentially more fun to watch when you've got money riding on them.  I relearned that table service is obscenely expensive, and obscenely worth it. I relearned that my body definitely doesn't need eight hours of sleep per night.  And then I relearned that my body absolutely needs eight hours of sleep per night.

Katy Perry (image from www.chicstories.com)

But this year, I also learned something new:

I love craps!  I love the crowd of people.  I love making change with the dealer.  I love the sure weight of clay chips. I love the fleeting feel of the felt. I love the absurd "strategies" that other players use to place their bets.  I love the long wagers.

But most of all, I love throwing the dice. Man, do I love throwing the dice.

Most sane people believe that the dice throw in craps is entirely unpredictable--that an impossible combination of gravity, friction, muscle memory, and momentum delivers results that, from our perspective, can only be random. But it takes all of four seconds at the craps table to see that most players believe they have real power to affect the outcome of each roll. Every veteran player has a unique ritual designed to avoid a seven, or hit the point, or pull a hard eight. (Harper's Magazine ran a fantastic feature on this phenomenon back in 2008.)

I now have one too. I like standing on the flat side of the table, to the left of the croupier. When the stick-man pushes the dice my way, I let them sit on the table for a second.  Then I manipulate each die--one at a time--rotating it until it reads the number I want to roll. Then, keeping those numbers up, I brush the dice in a circle around my pass-line chips--once.  Clockwise or counterclockwise?  It doesn't matter; the universe decides. Then I throw, right-handed, all wrist, lightly--a soft line-drive that falls a foot before the backstop and rebounds near the wall.

It sounds insane, I know. Until you hit a streak. Then it feels like magic. Like voodoo magic. And all of a sudden, I am a voodoo-doctor, a dice-throwing hero, raking in cash not only for myself--indeed, not really for myself at all--but for the dozen screaming initiates around me.

My heart's racing right now even as I write.

But I know what you're thinking.  Why do I tell you my black-arts strategies here, on my Bible blog? Because I'm not the only one who loves craps. With all due respect to Einstein, God loves rolling dice too. Wanna know how I know? Read on, my voodoo babies ...

Roughly the second half of the book of Exodus (chapters 25-40) tells of the construction of the tabernacle in exhaustive detail. After the Israelites escape Egypt, God asks them to build this tabernacle--basically an elaborate tent structure--to house both the ark of the covenant and, by extension, God himself. These chapters are full of detailed ritual prescriptions that outline not only the basic dimensions of the structure, but also the specific responsibilities of the priests who will minister to it.

At the head of the tabernacle's priesthood is Aaron, the brother of Moses. Now, God is a deity en vogue, so he takes two chapters to explain the particular outfit that Aaron should wear when working around the tabernacle (chapters 28-29). The description of the uniform begins with the ephod, a richly adorned apron with gem-encrusted shoulder pieces. (God apparently owns a Bedazzler.)  Over that ephod, the priest wears a similarly ornate breastpiece, woven through with gold, blue, purple, and crimson linens.

And then there's my favorite part: God commands that the low hem of the garment should include a ring of gold bells, specifically so that "its sound shall be heard when [Aaron] goes into the holy place before the Lord, and when he comes out, so that he may not die" (28:35). Here, God is treating Aaron like a cute little kitty near a garage door.

But God explains the priest's most mysterious accessory in 28:30: "In the breastpiece of judgment you shall put the Urim and the Thummin, and they shall be on Aaron's heart when he goes in before the Lord" (28:30). Biblical scholars are still divided over what the Urim and Thummin are. Some argue that they are small sticks; others that they are black and white stones; others that they are small pebbles.  And others still believe that the Urim and Thummin are, wait for it, dice.

Most all, however, believe that the they are oracular instruments that the tabernacle priests use to divine the Lord's intent--probably by throwing them.

Let that sink in for a second.

Sometimes, instead of talking to God, the priests of Israel roll the dice to find out what God is thinking. And the Urim and Thummin are those dice.

Such ritual gambling happens repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible; it is usually described in the English as "casting lots."  Thus, in Leviticus 16:8, Aaron casts lots to identify the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement. In Joshua 18, Joshua casts lots to find out how God wants to divide the land of Israel among the tribes. And in 1 Samuel 28, Saul knows that God is no longer with him because the dice confirm it: "When Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, not by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets" (28:6). Saul must have crapped out.

Divination using the Urim and Thummin seems to disappear during Israel's monarchical period, but it makes a comeback when the Israelites return to the Land after the exile.  Thus, in Ezra 3:63, "the governor told them that they were not to partake of the most holy food, until there should be a priest to consult the Urim and the Thummin."

The presence of the Urim and the Thummin in the early books of the Torah always surprises me.  We usually assume that early in the Bible, God is intimately close with his people. However, the notion that the first priests of Yahweh have to cast lots to discern his intent suggests that even in the Bible's second book, He has begun his inexorable progress upwards into the unreachable heavens, leaving his magic dice behind as a mere trace of his presence.

Now, did I find the Urim and Thummin in Nevada last Thursday?  Absolutely not.  Did I find God in Vegas over the weekend? Unlikely. But do I think He might of cracked a smile when I hit the point for the fourth time in a row?  Maybe. Click here for more

The Jefferson Bible

The Washington Post reported last week that the Smithsonian will spend nearly a quarter of a million dollars to restore The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, better known as the Jefferson Bible. 

The Jefferson Bible--and yes, we're talking about Thomas, not George and Weezy--is the third president's cut-and-paste job on the New Testament.  Simply, it's Jesus, redacted. 

Jefferson used an actual knife to slice and splice six books--in four different languages--in creating his own version of the Christian Messiah. The "Bible" is that scrapbook--a text unknown to the public until around the turn of the last century.

But in the process of building his new scripture, Jefferson makes real changes to the text, all of which shed light on the founding father's religiosity.  For Jefferson, it seems, Jesus was just a man with a message--not a god with a healing touch.  Hence, in recreating The Life, he excised passages that display Christ's miraculous powers.  Even more, he deleted the resurrection. (It is said that Jefferson didn't want anyone to know about his Bible, because he didn't want to add fuel to critics' claims that he was anti-Christian.)

So, what exactly is Jesus then, if he can't raise the dead--or be raised from the dead?  I'll let you decide for yourself.  Not too long ago, Beliefnet.org posted a full translation of the Jefferson Bible; you can find it here. 

For my money, Thomas Jefferson's Jesus doesn't look too different from the Jesus of another Thomas, the author of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas.  That gospel, which didn't make it into the Bible, provides unique perspectives on Jesus's message--while leaving out all the miraculous mumbo-jumbo. 

Sorry.  I started channeling Thomas Jefferson for a second.  Enjoy! Click here for more