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