Lakunas

I have thought often about the ideas of lacuna's this semester. It has often been a topic of conversation within the confines of the classroom making it a subject of curiosity to me I have come to the realization that all books have lacuna's. The lacuna's can be small like in the Iliad or they can be huge such as the ones in the Bible. These lacuna's make stories fluid and dynamic within the minds of the readers and/or listeners. Sara's presentation in particular addresses this idea of lacuna. She proved that sometimes the lacuna's are the truly interesting part of the story. These parts allow the reader to insert images that relate the story to the reader's personal life thus making the story more interesting.
The Slave has several different lacuna's that have caught my attention in the past few months. But one in particular is the time period of when Jacob takes his son and runs and the time between him coming back to fetch his wife. What exactly happened to him during this time? Who did he become? We get to see the end result of his life but we do not get to see what shapes him into that? Was he a good father? Did he find out the answers to all of the questions that he often asked as a teen or ones that he tried to answer for Wanda/Sarah? The author gives us some ideas to where he wants us to go but allows us to fill in the cracks with our own details. Sometimes this seems almost like a professor giving guidelines and then expecting the student to go and write the paper from the prompt. Every time that I consider the answers for the above stated questions, I come up with a different answer. This ability of changing my answer is the greatest thing about lacuna's. Lacuna's allow all stories, fables, and mythologies to live in the imagination as a malleable entity.

Final Paper

            When considering why Isaac Singer titled his novel The Slave, there is the apparent reason that Jacob was a slave to peasants. This bondage caused him to meet Wanda and led to the repercussions from their union. However, the true meaning is much more in-depth than just a mere physical enslavement. A slave is “someone who is entirely under the domination of some influence or person” (Webster). Jacob is not under the physical dominance of another person throughout the entirety of the novel, which would make the theory that the title of the novel is inspired by his servitude to peasants almost ludicrous. Upon closer inspection, the theme of a slave becomes apparent even though it is not the typical form of slavery. Within the context of this novel, love, obsession, and forms of escape become Jacob’s bonds of slavery. These forces imprison Jacob emotionally, physically, and spiritually just as they imprison people in real life.

The Slave is enlightening because it brings to light that all people are enslaved to something, even if they are physically free. The parallels that Singer draws between Jacob and the audience are undeniable and almost like a slap in the face in pointing out the shortcomings of humans. However, one main parallel stood out, which was the issue of being a slave. Jacob considers himself to be a slave to God; at one point Jacob states that “We are all slaves” (Singer 90). This is deeply significant because not everyone will be a slave to God but will be a slave to their own personal god. That god may be religion; that god may be work, alcohol, drugs, school, or anything else that exists in our world. Often people are slaves to more than one thing or one person at any given time. This type of slavery is a fluid and dynamic entity. A person can be a slave to something or someone for a certain amount of time and later change their loyalties or priorities and become enslaved to another thing. This idea of fluidity is one of the points that Isaac Singer was trying to make with his novel. Jacob is not just a slave to God but also a slave to tradition, to his work, his body, and a slave to Wanda. These are just the main masters of his life.  

Jacob goes through phases of being a slave, just as everyone does. He is a captive of God throughout the entirety of the novel but his other masters change as he himself does. The concept of changeability of personal values is an important aspect to consider when reading The Slave because it is an essential correlation between real life and Jacob’s life. As children, humans as a whole are prisoners to the changes that are happening in their bodies. The other master of childhood is the societal pressures of learning how to behave in society. Singer points out Jacob’s obstacles in conforming to society’s expectations when Jacob reminisces about his first marriage and the difficulties that arose from being married without being fully developed mentally, physically, or emotionally. To be able to deal with the stress of being married as a child, Jacob immerses “himself so deeply in study that he forgot the outside world” (Singer 52). At this point in his life, Jacob has two masters, God and his studies. Most children, when they are the same age as Jacob was when he was married are obsessed with playing games, making new friends, and living in the moment. The point that Singer is trying to make here is that even at a young age, everyone is a slave, even if the master does vary from person to person. 

As anyone who has gone through the torment of the teen years knows, teenagers are questionably subject to their hormones. The masters of the teenage years are hormones and the quest to find the reason for existence, whether this is on the individual level or the universal level. During this stage of life, Jacob’s primary master was still God but it was also the quest to find the meaning of existence and to comprehend the ways of God (Singer 54). In the respect to the questions that he asked, Jacob wondered the same things that are often thought about by today’s teens. Jacob asked the same questions that have been asked within the confines of the Bible as Literature classroom at Montana State University. One of the main questions that have plagued these students this semester is “Why had He [God] found it necessary to have pain, sin, evil?” (Singer 54). This question would continue to burrow in the back of Jacob’s mind for the rest of his life, as it has burrowed in the back of people’s mind for centuries, creating one more link between the reader and Jacob because both are a slave to wishing to know the answer to this question. However, this is one master with bonds so strong that the chains will never be broken and no answer will ever be forthcoming.  

Young adults are slaves to aging bodies and the social pressures to figure out their lives, get married, and have children. This part of Jacob’s life is much more complicated, which again parallels real life. In this portion of Jacob’s life, he becomes imprisoned to his most powerful master besides God. This new and mighty master is not physically his wife Wanda, but his own emotions that tie him to her. His subjection to her increases with time until “a voice within him called out constantly for Wanda” (Singer 86). She would be the focal point of his life for over twenty long years. He becomes not only a slave to his desire for her physically but his desire for her emotionally and spiritually. This is the first time in the novel that Jacob’s body, heart, and soul served the same master against his will.

The most intriguing part of Jacob and Wanda’s mutual slavery is that neither wanted to be imprisoned by the other or more specifically by their feelings and need for the other. Both of these people literally had no choice but to serve the other. No matter what Jacob did to try and drive her out, he could not; “she had taken up residence within him and he could not drive her forth” (Singer 112). Once again, Singer creates a situation for Jacob that will allow his readers to realize that they too are slaves to their own emotions. Many of Singer’s readers will have probably at one time or another felt the bond of emotions that they could not control, which tied them to another person. Put into this context, love becomes not a positive emotion but a bond with chains strong enough to rival those that are put upon people by their religion and God.

The final pages of the book show the circular pattern of life and how everyone reverts to having similar masters as they did as children. In fact they are once again learning how to live within the moment and how to control their changing bodies. The reasons for these changes are vastly different than childhood but produce the same results of uncertainty. This is the time “when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened” (King James Version Ecclesiastes 12.3). Jacob experienced all of these difficulties at the end of his life; he could no longer see, eat, or lift his bag that had once been light. He was a slave to the limitations of his body as is everyone when death approaches. It seems a hard concept to grasp that the body could be a master of the soul until the time arrives when it actually happens. For most, this time only arrives shortly before death, as it did for Jacob. However, by expressing the concept of the body as a master, Singer brings to focus the issue and the reader must consider when they will reach that point in their life, even if they only do so subconsciously.

Jacob shows us how he completed each of the main phases of life and what his gods were at each phase. Jacob was a character that allowed the reader to place themselves within his mind and experience the trials that he went through. When reading this novel, the reader is able to imagine himself experiencing the changes of childhood and adolescence, of questioning God, of going through the pain of having some other person become the focal point life, and then facing the failing of the human body as it ages. Jacob proves that even if humans are not physically slaves to another person, everyone is a slave to something in this life. By naming the novel The Slave, Singer allows the reader to decide to what Jacob was truly a slave and then question their own freedoms physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  

I have no idea if I am reaching with the idea I am about to present so I would greatly enjoy feedback from my classmates and their ideas. All right here I go. Today in class, one the my classmates (I can't remember who exactly) talked about the true forms of Satan as his presentation. During his presentation, this student drew on the board a type of chart which had God on the top and then two branches below it with Satan on one side and Jesus on the other side. While looking upon this drawing a random idea struck me. Could Satan be the prodigal son of God? As within Jesus' parable, the two sons are complete opposites of the other. Let me list the similarities between Satan and the Prodigal Son.

• They both took part of their inheritance
• the Son took money
• Satan took 1/3 of God's angels
• Both went and caused mayhem in a different place
• The Son went to a far country and "there wasted his substance with riotous living"
• Satan was cast to Earth where he influenced Eve to sin
• Both became associated with looked down upon animals
• The Son was forced to feed pigs
• Satan is often compared to snakes

There are similarities too between Jesus and the other son.

• Neither transgressed against their father
• Both will receive a great inheritance from their father
• Both are always with their father

Now this next part of my theory is an even bigger stretch than just imagining that the parable was based upon Jesus and Satan. Will Satan be like the Prodigal Son and come home to repent to God? This question is more towards the theological aspect of the Bible. The ironic part of this parable if this connection does actually exist is the it is the other son (Jesus) telling it as a lesson when he is the son that is shown in a poor light for not being forgiving. Does Jesus use his own foretelling of his faults to teach a lesson to his followers?
When I first started considering this aspect of the Prodigal Son Parable, I searched for more information on the Internet. I did not find any information linking Satan as the Prodigal Son but I did find articles and websites saying that humas are the Prodigal Son.  
I did find an interesting site that states that the character Pinocchio is based off of the Prodigal Son. It is amazing to me how much of the Bible shows up in everyday media. Here is a link to read the truly interesting ways the Pinocchio relates to the Bible specifically this famous parable. http://www.prescottumc.com/Sermons07/0715.htm.

Should children be told complete Biblical stories???

While considering what to write about for my final paper and in-class presentation, I thought about several topics that have interested me this past semester. I did not write about the following topic; however it has interested me so much that I feel compelled to blog about my alternative paper subject.
It has often been discussed in class, whether or not children should be told complete Bible stories. How much is truly too much for a child to comprehend? I am going to do the best to answer this question. I believe that children should be told entire Biblical stories. Obviously they do not need to know the graphic details of the maiming of people but you can give children the general gist without mentally scarring them (heck some of the details have even scarred me mentally and I am 20 years old!).
The reasoning behind my opinion is purely personal. I grew up in a Christian household and attend a private Christian High School. Through both of these types of education I did not know the in-depth details of some Biblical characters that I admired, at least not until I read the stories for this class. When I did read these stories and learned the truth, I felt affronted and tricked. These Biblical heroes were not what I had always been taught to understand that they were. I finally got to realize that these heroes were human because they had faults which makes them even more of heroes because they had overcome these faults and done something wonderful with their lives. The two main characters that I felt I had been misled about were Sampson and David. I was so upset upon first reading the story of David myself that I blogged about how horrible of a person he was. As Professor Sexson later explained in class, this was a superficial reading and he was completely right! During that class, I had one of my first epiphanies. The point of literature is not to present perfect people but to showcase simulations of how people truly live and how they can overcome the obstacles in their life. The overcoming of obstacles is what truly makes a hero. So if we are to teach children what truly makes a hero and choose to use Biblical characters to do this, then we need to allow them to see the faults of said characters. By not allowing this, we are skewing children's views of real life and what a true hero is. Thus it is my opinion that children should be allowed to know the true (censored) stories of the Bible and then decide for themselves if the person is a hero because of what they overcame, not because they had a perfect life.

What does not kill me will only make me stronger!

A few weeks ago, Professor Sexton asked us to have one bad day. However, I was not able to accommodate the assignment at the time but I did make up for it by having a bad week last week. Last week, it felt like that anything that could go wrong in my life did go wrong. I would call my grandmother to visit and the first thing she would say was "What happened now?". I will not go into detail about all of the things that happened to me last week but most of the time I did not know whether to laugh or cry. I remember that Job often asked what he did to deserve the things that were happening in his life and I often did the same last week. Even now just a short time later looking back I realize that I learned nothing when I was questioning why things were happening and I started focusing on what bad thing was going to happen next. By focusing on the bad, I allowed myself to perpetuate the cycle. I might not have been able to change what things happened but I could have changed how I reacted. This was as close as I got to an epiphany. I don't think it was an actual epiphany but just a mere realization and affirmation of things that I had previously learned and forgotten. I think that everyone needs to have these realizations & affirmations because without setbacks in our life, no one can go forward. As humans we need to have failures in order to fully appreciate our successes. Job realized this when he said "he destroyeth the perfect and the wicked". This quote relates to many, if not all creation stories, because humans are not perfect and without these bad days or weeks, we would as a whole forget this concept. We would forget the concept of our own imperfections because we become so wrapped up in our own world and often try to place ourselves as gods of our environment. The bad days is the cosmos' way of giving us a reality check and as much as I hate my own bad days, I realize now that I need them.

The Creation Story: Seen in a New Light

While reading Folklore in the Old Testament, I came across an interesting passage that states that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was truly the Tree of Death, the counterpart to the Tree of Life. I had never considered this before even though it was essentially the tree that did allow us to die. The author says that "that the forbidden tree was really a tree of death, not knowledge, and that the mere taste of its deadly fruit, quite apart  from any question of obedience or disobedience...sufficed to entail death to the eater" (Fraser 48). I personally have to disagree with some of the things that Fraser said. Why does it have to be one or the other? Isn't death a form of knowledge? I have no clue what people learn when they die but I do believe that they do learn something. I do not even particularly mean the afterlife but the moments leading up to a person's death, there must come some kind of epiphany about their life or life in general. Now I am definitely not in any hurry to experience this particular epiphany for myself but I do think that is how life works. So I believe that Fraser had some good points but was very mistaken when saying that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was in all actuality a Tree of Death. These two things can be synonymous in the proper context, such as the Creation story in the Bible.
In the same area of his book, Fraser discussed how the Bible did not specify whether humans were immortal or mortal until after Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree. I had never truly considered this idea before either. If Adam and Eve had not eaten of the tree, would we still be immortal? Because if they had not eaten of the forbidden fruit they would have had to eat of the tree of life thus making them immortal. But didn't they probably eat of the tree of Life before eating the forbidden fruit, so did the forbidden fruit's effects out-weigh the effect of the Tree of Life. Obviously it did but isn't it interesting that even as immortals, humans were still destined to fall from God's grace. Depending on how a person is reading this story, whether literal or as a moral story, a person can get many different lessons from the creation story. The lesson that I am taking from this time's rereading of the Creation Story is that no matter how many good choices a person makes before making a bad one, those choices can never protect you from the consequences of the bad choice. I am sure that I could probably find a deeper meaning from this story but right now I am happy to have gained a little in-sight into Adam and Eve. By realizing that Adam & Eve probably did make good choices before messing up, makes me realize that I can't just consider Eve to be either a curious woman or a gullible woman but I have to realize that she was probably a bit of both and so many more things that I am not given enough background information about her to infer.

The Slave

I personally had a hard time reading The Slave at first. I literally had to force myself to read just a few pages in this novel; however, last night I flat out told myself that I needed to finish this book by Thursday. I do not know if it was my determination to finish this book or that after reading more of the Bible I could recognize various references to the Bible. This book is very inspiring to its readers as well as illuminating when considering the struggle of various religions that depend on the Bible for instructions. The fight between not only Judaism and Christianity but between all religions and atheism. Many of the questions that Sarah asked reminded me of questions that Atheists have asked me before when they learn that I am a Christian.
One of the things that puzzled me most about this book was that the character's name was Jacob. I understand the love story of Jacob and Sarah and how it related to Jacob and Wanda but I also felt that part of Jacob channeled the story of Job. I saw various quotes that come from Job and the questions that were often asked by many people were very reminiscent of questions Job asked God. I almost felt at time that this combing of characters from the Bible was like how Singer combined many different religions. They all somehow contradict and complement each other until it is hard to say what truly belongs to one religion or to one Biblical character. I think that this may have been the point of The Slave; there is no way to choose what religion is correct because they all are intertwined at fundamental levels and no matter which religion a person belongs to there are always going to be questions that haunt us that we will never be able to answer.

I & II Samuel: The story of Jerks & Mad Men

As I have been reading the books of Samuel, I have been trying to remember what I learned as a child about King David. I always thought that he was a great guy who saved his people all the time and was blessed by God. But now I am finding that he is a cheating jerk! He has more wives than he knows what to do with, is never happy with what he has and is very manipulative. I was completely disgusted at his actions towards Uriah. He had the man killed so he could sleep with his wife. What kind of guy is this?!? Why would God choose him to lead Israel?
In these two books, I am also the most disgusted with God than I have been with the rest of the Bible so far. I understood why God was so harsh before. You need rules to keep people in line but He is allowing mad men and jerkish polygamists to be kings of his chosen people. Also he is never punishing the people who actually deserve to be punished. Does He punish Saul for breaking all of his promises? No He does not. Does He punish David for killing Uriah? Yes he does by killing an innocent child. How is that even remotely fair? Another thing that greatly annoyed me was the treatment of Michal, David's wife and Saul's daughter. This woman seriously was cursed in life. First she had a mad man as her father then a jerk for a husband. She is punished for hating David when he has cheated on her, abandoned her, and basically treated her like crap. I would hate a man too if he treated me like that.
Needless to say that I am less than impressed with all of the men in I & II Samuel except for Samuel himself. He is the only one that shows any kind stability in his actions but even he could not control his people. I do not get why these books were put into the Bible. They are great narratives but seem to hold no moral values that would help inspire Christians or Hebrews. God is not consistent in punishments, leaders are crazy, and it shows Israel at some of its worst point with the various acts that they commit against each other.

October 26, 2010 Class Notes

• The Slave
• should relate to final presentation & final paper
• keep list of unfamiliar terms
• keep list of how the novel relates to the Bible
• Clash of Jewish & Christian Cultures
• Final Paper
• Theme Suggestions:
• Why is it called the Slave?
• Bible & The Slave: Compare and Contrast
• Any instance in the novel that sparks interest
• Greek Influence
• Bible
• OT written in Hebrew translated into Greek to make more accessible
• NT written in both Greek and Hebrew
• Job:
• Wisdom Literature
• three friends: "you are responsible for your fate"
• 4th friend
• young
• probably added by a redactor later on
• tries to explain why bad things have happened to Job
• Dramatic Structure
• Drama
• Acts
• Characters with Dialogue
• 5 Acts
• 1st act: Introduction to Job & God & Satan's Competition
• 2nd/3rd Act: Dialogue with 3 friends
• 4th Act: Appearance of God/ Epiphany
• 5th Act: Conclusion/ Job is rewarded again
• Compared with Prometheus Bound
• gets eaten by a vulture
• also a drama
• torture until Hercules
• Static figure as is Job
• Some people suspect that Job is not Hebrew but is Greek
• Dr. Sexton does NOT agree
• not truly a drama
• too static
• Views of Human Responsibility
• Greek
• secular
• challenge gods
• tragedy promotes standing up to the gods
• Hebrew
• religion
• obey God
• Fear
• Respect & Submission
• Islam means Submission
• Job 42
• Joni Mitchell
• The Sire of Sorrow
• Based on Job
• antagonists-question-words in parenthesis- different voice
• tireless watcher
• Blake
• torture me with visions
• She understands Job raises Greek notion of tragic view of world
• comedy
• http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=55
• Ecclesiastes
• pessimistic
• The Answer to Job
• Carl Gustav Jung
• answers God should have made to Job
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answer_to_Job
• The Slave
• page 54
• Jacob searching for meaning of existence
• faith not knowledge
• not sustained by pain & agony
• Job 3
• Conflict of wisdom traditions
• Hamlet
• no conventions
• How can I live in this world?
• To be or not to be...
• deep mysteries of wisdom
• Polonists
• advice to sons
• Wine, Women, & Song
• Proverbs
• Domestic
• Harold Bloom
• Where should wisdom be found?
• Turn Turn Turn
• The Birds
• Ecclesiastes 3

October 21, 2010 Class Notes

• Flannery O'Connor
• Parker's Back
• every part of his body is tattooed except his back
• gets a tattoo on his back of Jesus to impress his wife
• O.E. Parker
• Has an Epiphany that leads him to get the tattoo of Jesus
• Like Moses
• loses his shoes
• burning tree
• "A good man is hard to find"
• Horror to some is beauty to others
• Exodus 24
• Picnic by the Mountain
• James' Blog on Susanna
• The Slave
• live according to the Bible
• everyone should be reading this by now
• Ruth
• Moabite
• characters:
• faithful but make their own faith
• appeals to agnostics
• not sure what to believe but do believe in some higher being
• marriage saying
• only said to mother-in-law not husband/wife
• Wisdom
• Job, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs
• Types of wisdom
• conventional
• parents
• Don't Question God
• He has mysterious ways
• Proverbs
• Based on Egyptian book of father giving advice to his son
• 3 Evils
• Wine
• Women
• Song
• Speculative
• Everything Sucks!
• Samuel Beckett
• Breathe (a play)
• Ecclesiastes
• Job
• 2nd best things is to die
• 1st best thing is to never have been born

Not understanding is understanding

 When assigned to write about theodicy, I did not have any clue about how I felt on this subject. Since Tuesday, I have talked to my grandmother, my mother, some of my sisters, and read the entire book of Job, trying to figure out what I thought about God's Justice. I am no closer to gaining any understanding of why God allows the innocent to die along with the wicked, at least in the spiritual sense. I have experienced as I am sure everyone else has personal tragedy that no can understand why it happened. My personal faith has allowed me to trust blindly that God had a plan for His actions. As I said before, I have no idea if God's justice is right or wrong and probably will never know.
In the literary sense, I understand the reasoning for having Job suffer to make a point in the Bible. Allowing one of his faithful servants to suffer as no other man had before made an example of him and tried not only his faith but the faith of others around him. I believe that this story was about being true to oneself, just as much as it was about loyalty to God. One verse that I found to be extraordinarily insightful "till I die I will not remove my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold  fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not reproach me so long as live." Throughout Job I did not find a satisfactory answer to the question of God's justice, but instead I found the answer to wisdom. To be wise it to stay true to oneself and to admit that we know nothing; that is the key to true wisdom. Thus to understand theodicy, one must say that I do not understand why God did as he did and then one would be truly wise in the theory of theodicy, as Job was.

Immortal Beauty

   One of the main themes throughout the story of Susanna was the idea of beauty and how it could could provoke acts of cruelty by the very people who are supposed to be the best of us all. The beauty that is the focus point in Susanna's story is physical beauty with her underlying moral beauty. When reading this story side by side with Wallace Steven's Peter Quince at the Clavier, I found that Wallace focused on a different type of beauty, the beauty of sound and its underlying moral beauty. He compares music to Susanna and her feelings; making one believe that music can indeed invoke emotions that are demonstrative of moral superiority. During a rereading of the story of Susanna, I found that there are many elements of the beauty of sound as well as physical beauty. To prove Susanna's innocence, God did not, as he had done previously, show her innocence with an act of power but through the act of speech. This was a very clever way to prove that Susanna did not deserve to die. This provides an interesting twist to the story and the idea of sound as a form of immortal beauty. During the story Susanna was often weeping for her fate but what should help save her: the matic tree, which is considered to be a weeping tree. It weeps for its injured branches as Susanna was weeping for her injured innocence. The other tree that helped prove her innocence  was a holm tree, a very hard wood. I see this tree as representative of the priest as they were hard men.
   The ideas of the trees brings me back to the idea of immortal beauty. There are very few living things that are more immortal than a tree. Through both pieces of literature, we now have trees, physical beauty, musical beauty, and the actual literature itself as all being immortal, either physically or within our minds. Beauty is immortal, no matter what form it takes. I think that is the main point that both authors were trying to prove with their work.

Class Notes October 12, 2010

• Read Apocryphal story of Suzanna
• pg. 1467 Bible
• story about women walking in the garden
• lust of priests
• Psalm 51: Iconic Music
• boy reached pitch that people had not heard before (listened to this on October 19 in class)
• Wallace Stevens
• Peter Quince @ the Clavier: READ!
• blog about by Thursday October 21
• tell about relationship between poem and the story of Suzanna
• http://www.poetry-archive.com/s/peter_quince_at_the_clavier.html
• Joseph
• J-writer
• "writing with Biblical tradition"
• Parataxes
• places thing side by side instead of subordinate
• urgency, simplistic, childlike (and, and, and)
• Mark 6
• Earnest Hemming way
• Judges 5:25
• repetition
• crude poetic power
• Numbers 7-18
• Repetition
• Oral Traditions=formulas
• make hearing better than reading
• easier to remember
• 3x
• Also seen in Children's Literature
• Joseph's Brothers
• need to figure out lesson by themselves
• change themselves (moral lesson)
• Writers
• creative=God
• change/manipulate lives/stories/characters

Class Notes October 19, 2010

• Theodicy
• Question of God's Justice
• Why do the innocent die along with the wicked?
• Why do children become afflicted with horrible disease when they have done nothing wrong?
• Everyone is to blog about theodicy
• what they think about this idea and how it pertains to our world
• Wisdom
• Job
• Satan's 1st appearance in the Bible
• Ecclesiastes
• Proverbs
• Hielege
• Holy
• all humans experience
• Temenos
• holy precinct
• Pagan
• worships non-Abrahamic religions
• Pan
• all
• Greek God
• randy 1/2 goat man
• The Wind & The Willows
• Pan makes the characters forget him but they still remember parts of him when they hear certain sounds.
• Exodus Chapter 24
• Saw God
• Moses, Aaron, & Elders of Israel
• communal epiphany
• picnic
• Lord Raglan's Hero Scale
• Buzzy MultiMedia Lord Raglan
• 22 points
• All points are commonalities seen in heroes throughout all mythology
• Oedipus & Moses hit a lot of these points
• http://blog.buzzymultimedia.com/tavi-lord-raglan-scale-the-codex-alera/
• "All literature is displace myth" Northrop Frye
• Words With Power
• Northrop Frye
• Journeys
• Pages 93, 94, & 95

Cyclical Aspects of Human Life

I have probably already said this but it bears repeating; Frye is the most difficult author to read but also the most rewarding. I am still reading Words with Power at my tortuously slow pace but am finding so much meaning in every page. In the latest section that I have read I found one quote very interesting. "Human life is not a straight line but a sequence of cycles in which we get "up" in the morning and "fall" asleep at night." I had never thought of life as a cycle in that sense before. I had always thought that life was a completely straight line before. Life is then similar to the way Dr. Sexton describe the Bible's cycle. There is cycles within the Bible but the Bible itself is essentially a straight line; just like every day is a cycle but life is a straight line. Going further with the image of life being a cycle, one could imagine a cyclical staircase to visualize whether one was going up or down. Frye talks about the four levels of the world. The top level is the presence of God, a metaphorical heaven. The next level is the Garden which does not exist physically but is a place of the state of mind. The third level is the level that we posses; the physical environment that we live in. The last level is the demonic level that came into existence after the Fall. Before reading Frye's thoughts on this subject, I had always imagined three levels of existence: Heaven, Hell, and Earth. To stretch this thought even further, people say that you have to work to get to Heaven, which makes sense if thinking of life as a cyclical ladder between all the levels of existence and to go up is to reach Heaven.
When considering the cyclical and straight aspects of life, it occurred to me that there is more than one ladder that humans climb on everyday. Going with Frye's thought, people climb or go down the four levels on a daily basis but we also climb ladders at work, our age, and anything other context of our life. I had never before consciously thought of how many times I imagine things as an up and down type ladder in my life. It feels like every context of my life I am trying to work up towards something. Frye also explains why we think in the manner of climbing as humans. He says that because "man cannot fly, and finds climbing the easiest metaphor for raising himself, whether physically or symbolically". This makes complete sense with life. Why would anyone want to work towards something that is on the same level as they are already on?

Ehud: The Bible's James Bond

One of the things that I have noticed throughout the Bible so far is that there is not very much detail given to people's appearance or the minute details of stories. However, that is definitely not true in the story of Ehud! There is a great amount of detail given to the appearance of Eglon, the King that Ehud kills. It says that he is a fat man. This is the first time that I can remember the Bible referring to a man/woman as being fat or skinny or any other similar adjectives. But the use of this adjective explains why I had not previously heard this story before. Most people believe that the Bible is supposed to teach values and adults do not want to tell stories to children about someone killing "a very fat man" with details about how he died. Reading about Ehud killing Eglon gave me chills. As a child it would have given me nightmares! I am curious as to why this change of writing took place in the middle of Judges. It would be less surprising if it was a whole book that gave this much detail but only have a chapter of Judges gives that much detail to how a single individual looked and how he died.
 I am currently halfway through Judges and Ehud is my favorite judge so far. His story is not one of the stories that I had previously heard but I found that it was the most interesting. Most of the other judges have to be guided by God but Ehud is a self-started. I can definitely see how this story could be an influence on writers throughout history. It is one of the first narratives in the Bible to have intrigue and espionage, especially given in detail!

Biblical Influences

I have recently started reading Folk-Lore in the Old Testament and noticed a pattern within all of the mythological studies. Almost every story within the Bible has a story that is somewhat similar in another culture. However, the author of this book consistently states that these other stories are influenced by the Biblical stories. Not once that I have read is the Bible influenced by other stories. I think that this is very interesting to consider. This seems to be very odd to me. Some of the cultures that are referenced are much older than Christianity. According to various sources, the last book of the Bible was written around A.D. 70-95. But then all of these books had to be compiled and the first published copy did not come out until 1611 A.D. I find it weird that one book, which was not even really a book for a long time, could influence so many different cultures. I tried looking up dates and info on the other creation stories. However, information on these mythological stories was not readily available. I wonder if it is often thought that the Bible influenced the other stories because it is more of a publicized mythological system than the other systems of thought. This will be an idea to be aware of as I continue reading Folk-Lore in the Old Testament. I will continue to look for some sort of mythological story that  influenced the Bible. This will be my goal for my reading of Folk-Lore in the Old Testament.

October 5 Class Notes: Exam Review

Everything that I am putting in this blog is fair game to be on the exam. Some of my notes are more detailed than other parts because Dr. Sexton was more specific on some parts of the exam than others. He did say however that a lot of his questions are going to come from the blogs of notes on the MasterBloggers' pages aka my blog, Myan's, & Katie's blog. So check out those blogs if you missed a class or a part of a discussion. I am going to bold all of the questions and try to give background with each question.
 Things to Review/Study

• Plotz Genesis-Judges
• Chapters 1&2 Words with Power
• Class Notes
• Stories discussed in class
• Northrop Frye's Words with Power
• Chapter 1 & 2
• Shape of Bible
• U-Shape
• Shape of Comedy
• ends happily- world is not destroyed! (Very Happy Thing)
• tragedies end sadly- world would be destroyed (Very Very bad thing)
• Why is the Bible a comedy?
• Frye says that the Bible is unified
• agrees with the documentary hypothesis (dozens of writers)
• Frye says this is not important
• that the writers integrated and united the text
• Why does Frye believe that the Bible is unified?
• Answer
• It is unified in terms of imagry and narrative structure!
• Frye's Levels of Language
• Chapter 1: Sequence & Mode
• 1st level
• factual/descriptive language
• literal
• example: newspaper articles
• level that most people use to read the Bible
• 2nd level
• conceptual/dialectic
• logic, philosophy, political writings
• 3rd level
• Persuasive/Rhetorical
• emotions of writer & audience
• 4th level
• mythic/Literary
• no dividing line between emotion & intellect
• this is the level that the Bible should be read with
• The levels can also be found at http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/Publications/frye.html
• Chapter 2 Words with Power
• Concerns & Myth
• Primary Concerns
• food
• drink
• sex
• property
• liberty of movement
• Secondary Concerns
• religion
• class
• virtues
• morals
• More info can be found at http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/Publications/frye.html
• Know that God=male & Israel=female in relationships
• Israel is often referred to as a harlot or given feminine attributes
• In a patriarchy, even men are ____________.
• WOMEN
• What is the difference between women, feminine, and female?
• women
• specific woman in the Bible
• female
• biological gender
• feminine
• symbolic
• these three categories often interrelate
• What is couvade?
• Childbirht envy
• inspired by Eve's birth from Adam
• French origin
• Eve is a metaphor of?
• feminity
• as would be Zephora
• What are Epistles
• letters
• major literary form in the New Testament
• What are the 7 part of the Bible according to Frye?
• Creation
• Exodus
• Law
• Wisdom
• Prophecy
• Gospel
• Apocalypse
• Which son was to be blessed by Abrham?
• Esau
• had his birthright stolen by his brother
• T/F: Lilith is the other wife of Adam according to the Bible.
• FALSE
• She is referred to in a text outside of the Bible
• What is a lacuna?
• Gaps in narrative
• What levitical law keeps Rachel's father from searching her saddlebags?
• The law that says not to have anything to do with a menstral woman as she is unclean
• Why are the interupptions of Genesis 38 & the Book of Ruth important?
• They provide geneologies that help interrelate important characters from the Bible.
• What does Tamar dress as to trick her father-in-law to get her pregnant?
• a harlot
• Who is usually favored to be chosen for a task?
• the person who is least likley to have the job or qualifications (underdog)
• Example: Moses
• What is the problem with the 10 Commandments?
• There are more than10 of them.
• What are the two views on the writer of the 1st 5 books of the Bible?
• Traditional
• all written by Moses
• Scholarly
• written by many writers
• Who wrote the Bible?
• JEDPR
• Jehovis, Elohist, Deuteronomist, Priestly, Redactor
• How did Ziporah save Moses from God in a vengeful mood?
• She circumsiced her sone & held the flesh between Moses' legs
• What does Apocalypse mean?
• unveiling
• What is an ediology?
• an explanation of how things came to be
• example: rainbows
• Know about the forbidden fruit
• What did God say his name was to Moses?
• I am that I am - YHWH
• Jacob wrestles with a man and knocks his thigh out of joint and changes his name to what?
• Israel
• What was the punishment for hte Tower of Babel?
• "confusion of the language"
• Know the symbolism behind the cave, mountain, furnace, and garden
• What apects of Biblical peotry inspired Chaucer/Shakespeare?
• repetitive parrellelism
• Jane Eyre's favorite Biblical writer?
• the J writer
• narrative
• What is the Great Event in Jewish Mythology?
• leaving Egypt
• Exodus from Egypt
• When wsa the Southern Kingdom destroyed?
• 587 BCE
• KNow the story of Onan

The silver lining of marriage in the Bible

I have reached the age that all of my friends are starting to get married and live happily ever after. I have always thought that the wedding ceremony was pretty and represented love. At least I thought this until last Thursday, when we had Lynda Sexton as a guest speaker. When discussing women in Genesis, we happened upon the subject of Leviticus 19:29, which specifically gives fathers and husbands the power to make prostitutes of their daughters and wives. I had already known that women used to be viewed as property but then we started discussing the role of the actual marriage ceremony. I had never thought of the ceremony as a property transfer ritual but that is what it is! This idealized and cherished day is just a business transaction that is celebrated. This means that every little girl out there that dreams of the day she will get married is in all actuality dreaming of a business transaction. This pretty much takes all of the romance out of weddings. After I got over the shock of realizing this, I started to wonder, is marriage still viewed as a business transaction in today's world. After researching several different sites, I found that marriage is indeed seen as a business transaction. The true purpose of marriage is not be joined with someone because of love, even though that always helps make things easier, but it is to help make business transfers. It often makes sense economically to marry as it creates shared assets.
I have been thinking upon this subject for the past few days. I traveled home this past weekend to attend a wedding for some family friends but ended up not going. I am glad that I did not go as I think I would have spent the entire ceremony considering what the bride and the groom were getting out their newly instated property transfer. Was the groom or the bride going to gain more from this contract that they were forming? For the past few years, I have always joked with my mother that I am going to marry a sugar daddy and she would always respond that I was being very cold and unfeeling. But if I go with the Biblical interpretation of marriage, I would be marrying for the correct reasons. I would be transferring my skills as a wife for money. God in Genesis describes the marriage of Adam and Eve as a helpmate. Marrying an older man would make me his help mate so this means that I have finally found my justification for marrying a sugar daddy and becoming a trophy wife! I have found the silver lining for losing my childhood views of marriage and love.

Class Notes September 30: Linda Sexton "Women of the Book of Genesis"

• Categories of Women
• "feminine"- symbolic/metaphorical women
• "women"- social persons who are designated by culture
• "female"- biological category
• any character is a mix of these categories
• Eve
• means mother of all living
• women is a symbolic figure about ideas of femininity & masculinity
• Phallic God
• warrior attributes
• masculine symbolic attributes
• Femininity of God
• subdued & hidden
• complex
• more difficult to find
• Birth Process of Eve
• symbolic of couvade
• couvade
• men's envy of childbirth
• as Eve is born from Adam
• Bible inspires Patriarchy religions
• ruled by fathers
• most men & women are women in these types of religion
• men, women, children, sick people, etc...
• library
• every text has a context
• All gods are metaphors
•  of human emotions, thoughts, ideas, etc...
• Ziphorah
• symbolic of Israel
• Bride Groom of Blood
• Deuteronomy 25:11
• relationship between 2 men > relationship between man & woman
• Gender
• role of masculine
• role of feminine
• Lot's Daughters
• lead to the start of insulting parentage
• Judges 19: The Levite
• concubine=wife
• male bonding
• father-in-law & son-in-law
• Importance of guests
• man is saved from rape
• but female guest and virgin daughter are handed over to the mob to save the male guest
• women are enhance property
• wife is raped but the wrong is done to the Levite
• b/c it was his property that was harmed
• women are exchanged as tokens of power
• The concubines body is a metaphor of the 12 tribes of Israel
• her body becomes text
• represents vows, promises, words
• same as male genitals
• Israel's fault for suffering
• not worshipping correctly
• treating each other badly
• Prophet Amos & Hosea explain why
• Amos
• social justice
• way to worship God is to treat others kindly
• Hosea
• cultic purity
• how to worship
• laws and rules
• historical figure
• man not symbol
• Leviticus 19:29
• Women's Rights
• 1st daughter then become wife
• weddings are property transfer ritual
• from father to new husband
• father/husbands
• have the right to sell daughter
• own their body and life
• Symbolism of God's relationship with his people
• father/daughter = God/Israel
• conflation
• Word choice
• Adam, Earth, Red, Blood
• are almost the same word
• Symbols but have physical effects
• Hosea-wife (harlot)
• Yahweh-Israel (harlot)
• worshipping other gods
• likened to harlots
• Yahweh's feminine partners are human
• Jeremiah
• 40 years as a prophet
• Chap 13
• Dirty underpants= ppl of Israel
• 2:33-34
• speaking for Yahweh
• Israel=women's skirts
• promiscuous women
• unclean (menstrual)
• 13:22
• Yahweh violate Israel for everyone to see
• a sort of rape
• Genesis 31
• Jacob- Leah & Rachael
• sneaks out of father in laws' house
• accused of teraphim
• stealing household gods
• tries to search Rachael
• says she is unclean
• not searched and gets away with stealing from her father
• Judges 5
• Oldest poem in Hebrew Bible
• Symbolic feminism
• women change
• goes from powerful to weak
• Deborah
• judge
• authority figure on battle
• tells men when to fight
• women= holy book/Torah
• Yael
• drives a peg through a man's head
• violent
• masculine
• powerful
• Mother of Sisera
• spoils of war=women
• weak
• not even given her own name

September 27 Class Notes

• Women in Bible
• Guest Speaker
• Linda Sexton
• Attendance is required
• Great Women of Book of Genesis
• Will be on Exam
• Blog about lecture
• Exam
• Bring at least one question to have on exam for Tuesday 10/5/2010
• multiple choice
• Class questions will be at least 50%-60% of exam
• Review on Tuesday
• Continuance of Outline of Old Testament
• Solomon
• King after David
• known for
• buildings
• being wise
• having multiple wives
• Kings/Chronicles
• Division of Israel
• tells about different kings
• Israel's Identity
• formed by being misplaced people
• shows the importance of rituals of remembrance
• John Orsi's Blog
• 515 BC
• Temple of Jerusalem rebuilt
• Exclusive Nationalism
• part of Israel Identity as well
• Faith on the Run
• portable religion
• Importance of Covenant
• survival status of Jews
• Zionism
• return to the homeland
• Zionist Jews
• hyperbole
• exaggeration
• Islamic Prophet
• Mohammad
• Prophet of God 

September 23 Class Notes

• Leviticus 19: Be Kind to Your Neighbor
•    Leanne's Blog discusses this chapter
• Dr. Laura Slesenger
• Says live by Bible Rules
• read aloud some of the sarcastically funny responses to her radio show
• examples:
• why can we own Mexicans but not Canadians?
• Should I really kill my aunt because she wear more than one type of fabric at one time?
• The Year of Living Bible
• written by A.J. Jabcobs
• lives as much as possible as ppl did in the Bible
• says it is very difficult to live the Bible literally
• Angel's Blog
• discusses the patter or the Bible and how it ends in Revelation
• Bible moves towards an end
• Indian mythology
• normally cycles
• Matthew Arnold
• changed meaning of Philistines
• uncouth, uneducated
• Repetitive Parallel
• Biblical poetry
• Inspired Chaucer and Shakespeare
• benefit for different audiences who did not understand
• example: gentry and poor
• Great Event in Jewish Mythology
• LEAVING EGYPT
• Solomon: wisdom, Temple of Solomon (architecture), wealth
• loved a Canaanite woman
• Kingdoms
• NORTHERN KINGDOM
• Israel
• SOUTHERN KINGDOM
• Judah
• Ahab
• important king
• married Jezebel
• whore of Babylon
• only palms of hand left after punished for her actions
• Great Prophets
• Isiah
• Ezekiel
• Jeremiah
• Destruction of Kingdoms
• Southern Kingdom
• 587 B.C.
• Northern Kingdom
• 721 B.C.
• Skin of Our Teeth
• Thorton Wilder
• Based on a saying from Job
• almost obliterated then manage to come back
• written during period of exile to Babylon
• went back to rebuild Temple
• Psalm 137:
• Song of Remembrance
• very surprising ending
• ends with being happy killing babies of the enemy with stones
• John Orsie's Blog
• 1 Kings 17-19
• Early Prophets
• fire drenched alter
• Elijah
• beheaded prophets for wrongful God
• Spencer's Blog
• 2 Kings 23
• Elisha
• cursed children who made fun of him for being bald
• 42 of the children were then eaten by bears
• Genealogies
• Genesis 38 & Ruth
• interruptions
• interrelate people
• Matthew
• explains these interruptions by showing who gave birth to who leading to the birth of Jesus
• Shows how horrible things lead to good things
• Story of Tamar leads to the birth of David & Jesus

Fryeian State of Mind

I am still working my way through Frye's Words with Power. I have been trying to read this book for over a week and am 10 pages in. I do not know about everyone else but I really like this book. It is dense, hard to read, and incredibly insightful. Mr. Frye would be an amazing person to meet because of how intelligent of a person he must be. When reading his work, I am constantly forced to look up new words or to look up references that he makes to other pieces of great literature. So I challenged myself to try and think like Frye for one reading of the section I am currently working on. I was reading page 150 when trying to see if I could think in a Fryeian State of Mind. I found that I could somewhat think like him but after clmpleting this challenge and looking back at my notes, I felt that I was often stretching between what I was reading and what I was relating the readings to. In particular, I was considering, the cyclical process of all myth. The heroes' journey, the way that the same stories are often repeated, and the way that most stories never seem to have a complete ending (authors seems to leave a tiny loophole in every story in case they want to add to it at a later time). Frye often comments on the cyclical aspect of ladders, myths, and stories. Why are circles and cyclical aspects so important to mythology? I believe that they are important because they allow a person to always be able to find a new moral, a new ending, or a new purpose to the stories in myth. If myths were not cyclical, we would  not be able to adapt them as time goes on so that they relate to the people reading the stories. If we were not able to adapt the story of Joseph, we would not still be telling it to our children in Sunday school thus it has to have a cyclical structure  or else the story would have died eons ago.
It was discussed in class on Thursday that the Bible does not have a cyclical structure but the individual stories within the Bible have cyclical structures. I am forced to disagree and agree with this comment with some stipulations. I agree that all stories within the Bible have a cyclical structure. I disagree in the aspect that the Bible is not cyclical in the sense of foreshadowing how the Isralites will continue to exist. It is not a normal cyclical myth but parts of the Bible just seem to be on repeat, like being slaves in Egypt, but that when it does end it will not start over again. So the image that I get from the Bible is that it is a sprial. It just goes round and round but that it will eventually end. Once Revelation does happen and the world ends, it will all be over for humans but until that unlucky day happens we are on a repetitive spiral of the rest of the Bible.
I do not know if this blog will make sense to anyone else as it hardly makes sense to me but maybe that is the point. When doing my Frye imitation, I realized that to make some things make sense, we have to stretch their meaning to something that we already understand. I understand what a cyclical object and a spiral looks like, so it makes sense to relate somehting I do not understand, such as the Bible, to these objects. This is not a perfect system but Frye quotes Bertrand Russell saying "Every philosopher, in addition to the formal system which he offers to the world, has another, much simpler, of which he may be quite unaware. If he is aware of it, he probably realizes that it won't quite do". The above theory is my simple thoery wich I know is imperfect and probably makes no sense to anyone besides me. However, I hope it helps others to realize their own imperfect theories of hte bible.

Moral of Joshua 7: Make sure your family does not sin or else you will be punished for their sins!

In  my journey throughout the Bible, I have reached Joshua. Throughout my readings, I have found many many inconsistencies of what the bible says is appropriate behaviour and how to treat others. However, I have found things that have reassured me. I grew up in a Christian household where  the ideals and sayings from the Bible are often told as morals. About mid-Exodus, I was becoming very discouraged that I would ever finish with my goal to read all the of the Bible. I had grown up hearing about this great God who saved people and tried to do his best at making everyone safe and provide for them everlasting life. Through my readings of the Bible thus far, I found that this God did not exist. This god was jealous, lost his temper easily, and often went back on his word. However, I found the passage that says that one shall not be judged for the sins of the father (or any family member). This was very reassuring for me because I definitely do not want to be judged because of some of my crazy relatives! Everyone has those crazy relatives that you only claim as relatives at family reunions just because your mom makes you! Deuteronomy 25:16 says "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.". As I continued my readings of the Bible and of the Good Book, I finally finished with Exodus and started with Joshua. In Joshua, I came upon the story of the battle of Ai. This story made sense until I reached the part about the thief's family being killed for his actions. This goes completely against what God and the Bible had earlier stated about the sins of the father! How is this fair that one person does the wrong thing but an entire family is punished for it?!? It is not fair, right, or just, which are three of the various titles that God claims for himself. This single passage has managed to make me question why the Bible has been revered as a spiritual book for the last couple thousand of years. I completely see the literary value of the book but am losing sight of the spiritual value. In the past few weeks, we have often discussed how the morals of Biblical stories are very ambiguous if they exist at all, God is a fickle being, and the Israelites are complete idiots in the way they behave! Why do we look up to this book and to this group of people for guidance. In the first few books of the Bible, the Israelite's are often told not to do horrible things, which leads me to think that they are committing these atrocious acts! Why tell someone not to do something if they are not already doing it?
The literary value of the Bible is implicitly clear in every page that one reads whether it has been written by the J or P writer. Every page helps set the stage for future writers by giving them examples of correct procedures to set up repetitive parallel or how to tell an awesome story. I always thought that reading the Bible in its entirety would help me with my spiritual understanding but instead it is strengthening my literary understanding since every piece of literature owes at least a piece of its existence to the Bible.

September 21, 2010 Class Notes

Everyone is to blog in response to someone else's blog. Choose a blog that makes you think in a different way or from a new point of view. 
Class Notetakers: Kate, Jennifer, Myan, Ashley

Frye: page 121: Alexa's Blog

• most important part of book
• polysemis
• many meanings
• inspired by Dante
• Variety of different levels of literature
• Descriptive:  lowest level
• example given: reporters
• Rhetorical: higher
• language
• Poetic/Metaphoric
• Charismatic
• Bible
• Loss & regaining of identity
• U-shaped Curve
• Center of biblical narrative
• lost & found

Frye: page 149

• Displacement
• Condensation
• "All lit is displaced myth!" Sentence to know from Frye
• readers' job is to un-displace it

Spencer's Blog

• P-attitude
• rules & regulations
• want to know how to live
• geneology, rituals, rules
• J-attitude
• story
• morals are complicated
• example: Joseph and his Brothers
• Moral of story is the story
• Finding moral compromises integrity of story
• moral 
• is not detachable from story
• is ambiguous
• is experienced by the experience of reading

Constitution is the American secular gospel

Hidden Book in Bible by Eliot Friedman

• leaves only J-writer
• grey pages- J writer
• white pages- commentary
• says the J-writer writes until Samuel

Raiders of lost Ark: Biblical commentary on Ark of Covenant

Book of Enoch

• not included in the Bible
• apocryphal but not part of the accepted apocrypha
• According to book
• Enoch went to Heaven
• based on 1 line in the Bible
• "He walked with God" Genesis 5:24
• Also talks about Rebel Angels falling to Earth and having children with humans
• creating giants
• taken out of Genesis 6
• Milton did the same thing in Paradise Lost

Isaiah: Morning Star

• Lilith
• Sucubus=Eve

Redactors: editors of the Bible

Harold Bloom: The Book J

• commentary
• J does not go further than Deuteronomy

Room: Emma Donoghue

• room becomes sacred
• forbidden fruit

Etiology

• explanation of how things got to be the way they are
• examples
• Rainbow as a covenant tells why rainbows exist
• Tower of Babel explains why people speak different languages

Finnigan's Wake is inspired by Isaac

Russell's Blog

• Oral tradition
• when something is spoken it can never be retracted

Joshua and Jesus: pronounced the same just spelled differently

Bible can be seen as a book of military strategy

Judges

• Levites' concubine
• Story of Jeptha
• Inspired Hamlet

Ruth

• Sweet stories
• benign
• wedding ceremonies
• last lines lead into 1 Samuel

1 Samuel

• Election of Saul as King
• Replaced by David as King

The "New" Definitions of Displacement & Condensation

In the past week, I have tried to read Words with Power by Northrop Frye several different times. However, each time I would not get very far without getting completely confounded by what I was reading. After two or three tries, I decided to change my reading strategy. I have always been of the mentality to read through everything and then go back and reread the parts that I do not understand. This way of thinking does not work with Northrop Frye! You cannot read one part of the book without first understanding the parts that were written before it. I have now started rereading it again for the third or fourth time. However, this time I am actually understanding what Frye is talking about. This I believe is an accomplishment within itself because of how dense and full of references Frye's work is. As I sit here reading Words with Power, I keep my dictionary, highlighter, notepad, and computer search engine on hand. I am making a list and looking up every word I do not recognize and every reference I do not know. This may take me  longer to get through Frye but I will get through  it understanding exactly what I read. Upon my close perusal of Words with Power I found a few definitions that I did not previously know and was able to see how they related to the Bible as a literary work and then how they go on to relate to modern culture.
The first new definition that I found intriguing was displacement. There are multiple definitions of displacement. The first being "the state of being displace or the amount or degree to which something is displaced". However, this is not the type of displacement that Frye refers to. He says that displacement in a literary context is "the alteration of a mythical structure in the direction of greater plausibility and accommodation to ordinary experience" (Word with Power page 149 if anyone wants to read it for themselves). This is often thought of in context with the Bible as I have heard people change stories as to make them more believable. One such example is how people were able to live to such great ages. Instead of believing that Abraham really did live to be 175 years old, I have heard people say that years were not measured correctly, global warming has changed the yearly cycle, and etc... This is an example of how people displace literature. This type of displacement takes place today as well. When people hear amazing stories instead of believing the unbelievable with faith, they make up "scientific" reasons, which just a few hundreds years ago would have been unbelievable. This leads me to question why does something have to have greater plausibility and be an ordinary experience to be believed? I do not expect anyone to be able to answer this question. It is just something that I have been pondering since reading this new definition of displacement.
The second definition that Frye discusses is the literary definition of Condensations which "means  the opposite movement, where the similarities and association of ordinary experience become metaphorical identities" (149). This idea was harder for me to grasp than displacement. However, once I was able to fully comprehend the definition and its implications, I was able to think of many many examples of condensation. I think that Frye gave a wonderful example of showing how Blake condensed "Sick Rose". All of aspects of this poem became somehow mythical and had metaphorical identities. A rose was able to represent and the worm represented Genesis Serpent that corrupted the world. The idea of condensation is very intriguing because often I do not look for how ordinary things represent mythological or abstract ideas such as love or Genesis' serpent, unless I am prompted to look for such metaphors or they are obnoxiously obvious. Which according to Frye is the purpose of condensation. "It regularly has the function of reminding us that we are still within a literary orbit" and thus need to be aware of how the orbit of one thing always affects the orbit of another piece of literature, which leads back again to intertextuality.

September 16, 2010 Class Notes

Everyone is supposed to post a random line from Frazer at the top of every blog. Please start putting visuals on blogs
Parable of Good Samaritan

• Not confirmation of what is expected
• the non-expected person helps another

"mysterious mental maneuver"- Sarah's Blog

Jane Eyre

• Villian
• redactor P
• Jane Eyre
• revolts
• more into the J writer
• narrative parts of the Bible 

Northrop Frye's Bible- look @ webpage

• Inspired by 
• Milton
• Blake

Odysseus' Scar

• Mitchell: READ!
• literary style of Bible as represented in Genesis 22
• everything in background in Bible
• everything in foreground in Homer
• tells all details
• Homer vs. Genesis

The Lamb

• book that fills in gaps of Jesus' childhood

Foreskins

• hot topic in class 
• seen as a sort of trophy
• Hill of foreskins
• circumscion 
• sign of covenant between God and Israel

Groom of Blood

Myth

• "to tell the truth which can not be explained in any other way"
• highest from of truth
• mythos=truth
• history=false

Isaac means to laugh

Blood Meridian

• McCarthy
• Sodom/Gomora modernized
• The City of the Plain
• Genesis

September 14, 2010 Class Notes

Groups*
 Mountain 1: Roberto, Kaleb, Bobby, Ben, Angel, Zach S. Mayan
 Garden 1: Kinsey, Aronda, Alexa, Alicia, Spencer, Lisa
 Cave: Julia, George, Nate, Cameron, Laura, Tyler
 Furnace: John Serto, Emily, Katrina, Katelyn, John Orsie, Brittani
 Mountain 2: Jennifer, Rachel, Katie, Debra, Justin, Russel, Leanne
 Garden 2: Ashley, Kyle Crawford, Dan Goodman, Sara, Trish, Zach, Sam
*Sorry if I did not get someone's name or misspelled someone's name!

Frye-
 Themes of ascent-

•      Mountain/Garden
• Going Up
• Example: Jacob's ladders

Themes of descent

• Cave/Furnace
• underworld

Story of Martha and Mary: Needful things: "Only 1 thing is needed"

Falkner: Absolon Absolon

Intertexuality

• Ecclesiastics
• Hemmingway
• Isaiah 63 & Revelation 14:17
• Origins of Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck
• "Do to the enemy as we do to the grapes"
• influenced by Julia   Battle Hymn of the Republic

Infinity of Lists

• Umberto Eco
• lists of everything
• literary imagination drawn towards lists b/c rhythm, incantation, chanting, mantra

Need to know:

•  God
• Adam & Eve
• Serpent
• Cain
• Grain
• J-writer
• Able
• Sheep
• J-writer
• Lamick
• P-writer

Shrek=Balak

"In later times Jewish fancy tricked out the story of the flood with many new and often extravagant details designed apparently to satisfy the curiosity or tickle the taste of a degenerate age, which could not rest satisfied with the noble simplicity of the narrative in Genesis."
In the past few weeks, we have often talked about intertexuality between the Bible and literary works that have been influenced by the Bible. Ever since this topic was first discussed in class, I am always subconsciously looking for hidden references to the Bible in my everyday life. And guess what...I find them all over the place. Looking for these hidden meaning, references, or parallels has made reading Plotz, Frye, and the Bible more interesting because it conveys relevance to my everyday life.
One of the funniest examples of intertexuality that I have found so far is from the story of Balak and his donkey. This funny duo seems to be a predecessor to Shrek and Donkey. It seems to me that Balak and his donkey have the same type of bantering wit that Donkey and Shrek have. They also have the same bantering and unwilling relationship with each other. The "masters" Balak and Shrek want nothing to do with their respective donkey except to use them as a tool. Balak uses his "tool" as means of transportation and Shrek uses Donkey as a sort of sidekick during his first adventure. But both donkeys save their counterpart at least one time, if not more times. When reading what Balak's donkey to Balak "Am not I thy ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine  unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee", can't use just imagine modernize that sentence and putting it to Eddie Murphy's voice speaking to Shrek? It is definitely something that Donkey would say after Shrek was being a jerk about something, which did happen quite a bit during all of the movies. I had heard this story several times before reading it myself for this class but never had I connected it to Shrek and Donkey. It makes me wonder what other references to the Bible that I am missing because of my ignorance in actually reading the Bible myself. I often thought of myself as both averagely well versed in Biblical matters, as I attended a private Christian boarding academy for several years. However, I am definitely learning that I may know the stories of the Bible but I do not know how they have affected my life in the literature that I read, the saying that I say, the movies that I watch, and in many more facets of my life.

Class Notes 9/9/2010

Frye: Words of Power- Mountain, Garden, Cave, and Furnace
          -Assigning groups on Tuesday
          -6 groups
Review of Tuesday 9/7/2010
          -Old Testament
                   -Christian Bible
                   -Torah
                   -Books of Moses
          -New Testament
                   -Gospels
                           Matthew, Mark, Luke, John
                                -Biographies of Jesus of Nazareth
Literary Value
   -Receipts
        Scrolling Forward: David M. Levy
                      -Judean/Hebrew respect for oral traditions of Bible
                      -Save from extinction
                      -Important for all 4 religions of the Bible
    -Important because it helps us see the value of all written word
                      -Historical documents need to be approached with the right attitude
                      - Results in more complete understanding
                                  -Bible
                                  -Joe's Parkway Receipt
Spirit of law vs. letter of law (Discussed by St. Paul in the Bible)
     Spirit of law give life
     Letter of law kills
                    -carved in stone
                    -no fluidity

Frye: Entire Bible in 7 words
   1. Creation
   2. Exodus (Revolution)
   3. Law (Torah)
   4. Wisdom                                                  MEMORIZE
   5. Prophecy                              Come up with acronym by Tuesday!
   6. Gospel
   7. Apocalypse (Revelations)  

Plotz: We impose meaning from the Bible to serve ourselves
                -unlikely the meanings that were meant to be taken from the Bible
         -Bible
                -collage that is not a coherent whole according to Plotz
                -coherent whole but not likely in the way most people understand it to be; literary people                                        
                  understand this
Documentary Hypothesis (Wikipedia)
     JEDPR
         -J- (Yahwist) superior storyteller, Court of Solomon, told the stories of Jacob, Genesis
                 -Version of Genesis
                       -God is on Earth
                       -Adamah: means out of the ground; how Adam got his name
               -created anxiety of influence; Shakespeare
         -E- Elohist- writer- Prophesies, dreams, & visions (Sacrifice of Isaac)
         -D-Dueteronomists- wrote most of Deuteronomy- added centuries later- said Moses had spoken it -        
               gives authority
        -P- Priestly- focuses on generation, genealogy, numerations, rituals
        -R- Redactor- editor
Life of Brian
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjz16xjeBAA&feature=related
Texts of Genesis
       -table of different account of creation
       -lacuna- gaps
       -http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/genesis_texts.html

"Because I Said So"

  In class on Tuesday, one of the topics that were discussed (and there were quite a few) was the topic of everyday sayings that have biblical origins. I cannot remember exactly what the examples were that were discussed but in the middle of Dr. Sexson's lecture one just popped into my head. Every child has heard their parents tell them to do something then when the child asked "why?", parents always answer "BECAUSE I SAID SO!". This reminded me of God telling the Israelites to do something and the reasoning given to do it is "I am the Lord your God". God's edicts to the Israelites has significant parallels to the analogy of parents' ordering their children. This seems to signify to me that often people of lesser power are just supposed to obey without question those of more power. This goes against the grain, in the sense that from childhood on we are told to always question everything and to figure things out for ourselves. So do we listen to our parents/elders when they tell us to always ask questions or do we listen to the the commands to do as we are told? This dilemma extends way beyond childhood. The part of the lecture that jogged this brain wave was when Dr. Sexton was telling us about the assignment that was coming up in a few weeks and asked if we thought his plans sound sufficient. However, before even giving the class an opportunity to consider, he told us not to worry about he decided that was how he was going to do it and that's the way it is going to be (my wording may not be absolutely correct but you get the gist of the conversation). I am not trying to question that he has the right to plan the course however he wants to do it. Personally I think that the project sounds interesting but that is not the point that I am trying to make. The two things that I want people to take from this     blog is that it is often hard to know if we are supposed to ask questions or not and that this dilemma has origins from the very beginning of the Bible.
  Plotz also commented on God's use of the phrase "I am the Lord" as a way to establish dominance over the people of Israel. He related it to a much bigger scale than I did however. He related God's dominance to the power of governments and God's edicts to a sort of Constitution. If the people did not follow these edicts, God would enforce punishment; just like the government will enforce punishments against people who break laws; just like Professor Sexson will fail someone if they do not do the assignment as he specifies; and just like a parent would punish a child who did not do as they were told. This establishes that obviously we need these types of edicts and rules if they have been around since the beginning of time but it does not help to explain at what times the followers are supposed to question the leaders without inciting further punishments. What if Moses had questioned God after every order He gave on Mount Sinai? God probably would have lost patience and punished him as He punished countless others for not following directions correctly.
  After considering this train of thought extensively over the past few days, I am no closer to figuring out when followers are supposed to question leaders. I have however started to look for biblical origins for more and more sayings and traditions in my everyday life. This has lead me to become more aware of my actions and to question why I or people around me do or say things in a certain way. Most of the things that I have examined do have biblical origins and it will be interesting to see what other things I find to relate to the Bible as the semester goes on and I continue in my quest to finish reading the Bible by the end of the semester.

Genesis 1 Vs. Genesis 2: Who will win in the fight to be the correct account of Creation?

   One of the my most memorable classes of Freshman Bible at my private christian high school was the class that we discussed Genesis 1 and 2. Which version is correct is what our teacher told us to answer. After over an hour of 17 high school freshmen arguing, we were no closer to finding an answer than any scholar has ever been. After rereading these books for the first time in over six years, I still have no definitive answer. I do know that there are many similarities and differences between the book. The most glaring difference that jumps out at me is the way that woman is portrayed and her role in Adam's life. In G1, she is an equal and made at the same time as Adam. In G2, woman is an after thought created to help Adam. Just this one difference makes me know that G1 & G2 were written by two very different people. I find it hard to believe that the same person could have written so different of versions of creation. One point that does point in the favor of there being only one writer for Genesis is that it is often hard to tell where one book should truly end. For example, Genesis 1 actually ends at Genesis 2:5. This problem will continue throughout most of the Bible, at least in my experience with it. 

    A point of interest that I noticed in Genesis 1 is that in line 26 God refers to himself in the plural tense. No where else in that book does her refer to himself in the plural tense. 

   Side-note:Lately I have been fascinated with Greek mythology. I am currently rereading the Iliad in my spare time. That led me to notice in Genesis 2:11, that the name of the first river is Pison, which is similar to Poseidon. This may be stretching things a bit but it was the first thing that jumped to my mind when I read this verse so I thought it was worth noting even though it is very off topic. 

Leviticus Leads to Confusion

So I am half way through Leviticus now and am totally confused on several different points.
1st point of confusion: Aaron. First he is a prophet but doesn't really do anything except what Moses tells him to do. I understand his part in the story at that point but then as soon as Moses goes up to Mount Sinai, Aaron is the one to build the golden calf! How can he go from being a leader for God to being the leading person in building the calf?! What confounds me even farther is that instead of killing Aaron like I expected God makes him a priest as well as all of his sons. This seems so different than the God that was shown throughout Exodus. In that Book, God was causing all sorts of pain to anyone who did not do as he said. Then later in Leviticus He kills Aaron's sons for using incense on the fire. That seems like a much smaller crime that leading all of the Isralites into worshipping a golden calf.

2nd point of confusion: What does "until the even" mean? It is repeated often through out the first half of Leviticus but I could not figure out what it meant for sure. Does it mean for ever?

3rd point of confusion: Why is childbirth considered to be unclean? After childbirth women were forced to go into isolation for a certain amount of time which depend on if they gave birth to a girl or boy. It just seems that it would be very weird that such a natural and necessary thing as childbirth be considered on the same level as having leprosy. Is it a continuation of the punishment of Eve? Is being considered unclean a sort of penance for Eve's sin? Personally if that is true, I would think that 9 months would be long enough of a punishment. If a woman gave birth to a girl she would be considered to be unclean for another 12 weeks?

Genesis

Hi all!,
   I finished Genesis tonight. Pretty good for starting it last night. This is one ofthe more interesting Books of the Bible as it has many of the stories that most people recognize from the Bible including the stories about Joseph, Abraham, Noah, and a few more. It is a lot of history crammed into only 66 pages. There are not a lot of details that we are used to from contemporary books but more the details of geneology. Most people that I have discussed this with find the geneology parts to be annoying but I think that they show what was important during the time period. In contemporary books and other forms of writing, there is details on the environment of the story line, people's appearance, and transitions between stories. There are no fluent transitions between chapters and stories. This will be interesting to monitor over the rest of hte Bible to see if all the books continue to have no transitions or if as time goes on that transitions become more like contemporary books.
  Also today was the first day of classes. We mainly discussed the syllabus and how the rest of the semester was going to proceed. A few of the interesting points we talked about were the other books that are going to be read and discussed this semester. These books sounded like they will be very interesting to read along side of the Bible and will give a different perspective when considering the Bible as a literary book instead of a purely religious book. That was mainly the gist of today's class session.
Enjoy the first week of school everyone!