Biblical Foundations of Literature

Paper

2006-12-09T22:43:00.000-08:00

At the request of some others I have decided to post my paper. To spare you all the absurd length of it, I placed it behind this link.

Before you go there, I would like to make a couple of points. First, I did not edit the Deadrek (pronounced De-ah-drek) in the post like I did in the paper. The full story of the Watchers (The Nine) is included here, adding a couple pages to the length.

The purpose of this is to provide a mythology to the world of the Hidden Cities. You need not know much about the Hidden Cities beyond that the world is almost a mirror to our own, with the addition of the aforementioned Cities, placed like "rocks in a stream." The world flows around them but they can be accessed by those who know how. Those are the cities mentioned in the Origin of Men.

Between the Deadrek and the Origin of men comes the story of Semialich. Because I do not have it typed up, I will summarize here. Ëla-lon, the creator (who is Ëla under another name) created, in addition to the Nine Watchers (named and explained in the Deadrek) also created three other beings, the Exalted. They were equal with the Nine and regulators of the world, the chief of whom was Semialich. But Semialich came to desire Glory over Humilty, Freedom over Wisdom, and came to see himself as the Guardian of Ëla's nature. He elevated himself and through that, fell and become corrupted. He founded the fortress of Dirikan and set himself against men. This is where the story of the Origin of Men takes place.

Whenever a pair of brackets appear [] they refer to a location where a name is lacking. I a firm believer, as I mentioned before, in the importance of names and when I do not have one etymological and aesthetically accurate I leave blanks, marked for future refernce. Those blanks remain in this addition for I have yet to develop the names I need.

Feel free to post comments and questions here or at the other post and I will get back to you when I can.

Final Post

2006-12-06T21:59:00.000-08:00

Well, I can't guarantee this is the final post, but I doubt I will work up the energy for another.

I was originally planning to post a vast study on suffering and the views on it, from its non-existence to its help in the salvation of man, but particularly the understanding of it given in the Bible. For those of you curious, the New Testament view of suffering is very different than the Old, particularly in the letters of St. Paul. Suffering is constantly referred to in light of Christ's suffering and His order that we "take up our cross."

I have nothing particularly insightful, witty, intersting, supportive, aggresive, odd, or otherwise noteworthy. I just wanted to throw out one more post (course, another after this would bring me up to a full 40, five shy of my last Dr. Sexson blog, but that was for two classes. Me thinks I wrote too much).

I present tomorrow (with tomorrow being Thursday) so I may post something from that if something is particularly interesting, but we'll see.

Free Food

2006-12-01T17:26:00.000-08:00

Did I get your attention with my subject line? Every Friday during the school year the Catholic Parish next to the birdhouses puts on a free lunch (Chunch, from Church Lunch) from 11:15 to 1:30, no purchase necessary. Free food, fun, and fellowship.

Anyway, that is just background to what I want to talk about. I joined a couple of people I know today at Chunch and they were talking about the book of Jonah. Now my group did Jonah, so I figured I might have something to offer. After a few minutes talking, I realized our discussion had nothing to do with anything we even considered in our group presentation. Just goes to show you how versatile the Bible is.

The subject we discussed was Mercy. The exact issue we were looking at was how the worm/bush plot point was associated with the God/Ninevah plot point. The final conclusion came described like this:

"The reason Jonah was in need of the bush to shade him was because he doubeted God's mercy, expecting him to smite Ninivah. In response, God showed his mercy by giving Jonah a bush under which to shade himself. So while doubting God's mercy he himself was recipiant of that mercy.

"God then resinds the mercy he showed Jonah by letting the tree be eaten. Jonah then gets angry that God has not shown him perpetual mercy, yet he is simultaneously angry that God has shown mercy to the Ninivites."

Just a thought.

Ockham

2006-11-19T14:36:00.000-08:00

Ockham's Razor states that "the simplest solution is the best."

This may apply to science, but everywhere else it simply stinks.

Imagine, if you will King Lear. Shakespeare starts with "I thought the king had more affected . . ." and finishes with "Shall never see so much, nor live so long."

Ockham's King Lear reads as follows: "King Lear died."

While the latter is more sucsinct, it is also pointless. Likewise, to apply Ockham's razor to the study of such things as the Bible or the meaning of the Bible is absurd and dangerous. It results in such interpretations as I mentioned in my previous post.

Revelation and the Rest of Them

2006-11-19T13:32:00.000-08:00

After seeing all the other posts on Revelation (a.k.a. The Apocalypse of St. John) I decided to insert my own two sense and a half bit.

A wide variety of interpretations for this book have been offered over the years. Most recently, the favorite is the "Left Behind" version. This is based on a very literal understanding of the book, complete with literal Locust and multi-headed beasts, etc. One of the fundamental tennets of this belief system is the idea of a Rapture, where the believers in Christ will be removed from the earth, either before, after, or during the Great Tribulation (dun dun dun)!

An interesting thing about this theory? A hundred-and-fifty years old. Yeah, no where near as ancient as the book itself.

One of the more literate, or intrespective interpretations of Revelation is that it is a commentary on first century Israel/Rome. The number 666, for example, can be acheived by adding up the numerical value of Nero (most ancient literate cultures applied numerical values to each and every letter, hence how we end up with the roman I,V,X,L,C,M). This theory states that Revelation is first about Rome in its apocalyptic senses, while about heaven in its spiritual sense.

Most people tend to ignore the fact that half of Revelation is spent discussing heaven and what it is like there. Within the Catholic tradition, almost all understanding of heaven is drawn from this book.

Personally, I'm a big fan of using this work as a guidepost of heaven, because it deals with the joy of the future rather than perpetual damnation, et al.

Worldview

2006-11-18T19:37:00.000-08:00

Our Professor may or may not have mentioned this subject. His classes have a tendency to blur along the edges, so I'm not sure when he talked about his.

"There are more things in heaven and on earth than dreamed of in your philosophies" Hamlet tells Horatio in the play by Shakespeare. To Hamlet (and likely to Shakespeare, but that's another can of worms) the world, just like our class, is blurred around the edges. There is myth and legend and it is not all of it false.

Modern science (and, by relation, philosophy) would like to tell us the opposite: there is much less in the world than dreamed of. It suggest that we ought not to believe something until we can prove it true. One of the most commonly uttered phrases has become "What proof is there?" No longer can we accept the existence of something off the words of one man, or even a group of men. No, today we need properly educated scientest to tell us there is enough proof to believe in what man has known for centuries.

It is the former worldview that allows discoveries, is optomistic, and allows one to read litature as it ought to be read. Imagine trying to read The Lord of the Rings with the continuous assumption that the whole thing is false. It will destroy any chance of enjoying the book, not to mention making the reader a more jaded person.

The same thing applies to the Bible. When you read it as false, you find or invent errors, put all your effort into disproving the book or learning why it is flawed, instead of enjoying it as one of, if not the, best works of literature ever compiled.

Everything

2006-11-14T20:09:00.000-08:00

So, I decided I would post about everything. Not just part of everything, but all of it. So pardon any ramblings, and any long length this post might acheive.

Of course, due to the nature of this class, this discussion of everything will naturally have to do with the Bible. All of it.

We, being more than I, have, due to the issue of time, only looked at a portion of the Bible. In English. Which, as we all know, is the language Jesus spoke. With all the thees and thous, one knows God was in charge. And spoke what he spoke. And nothing else. And so we gathered our knowledge, and pooled our resources, and this was the result. We searched for many days and soon detrimened our answer, or lack there of.

So I'm done. Length is lost.

What we Believe

2006-11-12T22:16:00.000-08:00

So this post is rather long. I apologize in advance.

Everyone, in any issue they are passionate about, has a single position they would like to advance as true, for they believe it true. These ‘true’ positions, however, are often in conflict with each other and all but one must, therefore, be false and some of the facts being misconstrued. But because “we believe in what we want to believe,” the simple facts cannot so easily dissuade people, nor will a lack of facts. The desire to hold truth (and, more specifically, one’s own truth) is more powerful than external evidence.

This holds true for religious, political, conspirital, scientific, or any other type of belief. This makes it difficult for anyone to disprove something or to even install an effective seed of doubt, for one simply refuses to believe or acknowledge that which stands against what they consider to be true.

When dealing with truth, however, we can offer no quarter. One cannot except what is patently false as true simply because it supports a certain world view. To do so would be intellectually dishonest, the death knell of thought.

There are four levels to each persons beliefs. There is 1) what they want, 2) what they want to believe, 3) what they believe, and 4) the truth. Let us take a moment to examine each of these in greater depth.

What they want: Most people, to some capacity or another, want humanity to be peaceful and prosperous. Desires such as these, however, are almost impossible and all people agree. It is highly unlikely that anyone even remotely intelligent would actually believe that man is peaceful, but they probably desire it.

What people want to believe is that which is something conceivable but which there is not enough evidence to stir their belief. Under this category is that some people believe because of its evidence which someone else does not, because, while there is evidence, it is not enough to convince them.

What people believe is simply that which people believe. They may or may not have evidence for their position, but they desire it to be true and have found no reason potent enough to cause disbelief (or they disbelieved the evidence). It is in this category that convictions are held, whether they are religious, political, or even conspirital. Peoples’ world views are generally based on their beliefs and they shape everything people do.

The truth is the most difficult of the four to accurately and fully understand. While many people hold conflicting beliefs and desires, there is always only one truth. Therefore, in each conflict only one of the views can be correct, no matter how convinced the parties are. Jesus was either God or he wasn’t. 9-11 was either a conspiracy or it wasn’t. No currently held view may actually be right (such as the case of quantum physics) but at most only one can be true.

This moves us to the question of how we find the truth. Despite popular opinion, there is Truth. The world, however, often ignores this, and therefore Truth is not firmly grasped by people, and in some cases, is not held at all. For the purpose of simplification, Truth will be considered that which is an accurate representation of the world.

There are certain criteria that help to show truth (we can, in essence, prove nothing, therefore truth is revealed but nigh complete agreement). First and foremost, evidence is necessary for proof, both in the positive and the negative. Positive evidence is offered as proof that Theory is effective in describing the world. Negative evidence simply works to disprove other theories. For example, positive evidence for the dangers of Communism, would be Stalin’s regime, while negative proofs to the same end would show the lack of such horrors in free states (not that free states are without problems, just that the problems are far less than under Communism).

To be valid, evidence must, in someway, point back to an eyewitness of some sort. This could be a person who saw (in our previous example) the death camps, or somebody who knew a person who vanished after expressing anti-Communist ideas. It could be as far removed as a demographist who notes an odd shift in the population. Only one of these people were, in the most basic sense, an eyewitness, but all three noted things that pointed to a death camp. It is also well to notice that only the eyewitness conclusively knew the purpose of the deportation/deaths.

Secondly, the weight of the evidence must be understood. If ten eyewitnesses claim Communism is the best thing that happened to them, while ten thousand said it was the worst, one must lay put extra weight behind the mass testimony. This does not mean that the majority are always right, but when they are witnesses, they are less likely to be hoodwinked.

Third off, proposed or theoretical truth cannot contradict absolute truth. Therefore, one cannot say that birds fly because gravity does not affect them, for that proposed truth contradicts the known truth of the Law of Gravity.

The conclusion we reach here, however, is that no body approaches a study without at least some degree of prejudice, therefore forcing an examination of any issue to be moved from the issue itself to the theoretical realm of truth, where a wrong cannot, under any circumstance, exist along side a right. This applies equally to the study of the Bible as anything else. Many enter their study of the work trying to prove it wrong, or that the traditional view of its origins (such as years written and authors) is false. Needless to say, it is easy to see how the intent can mar the outcome.

Prelim

2006-11-11T23:26:00.000-08:00

So a simple question: what if our presupposition for understanding the Bible is wrong? What if there is no point to reading it outside of the context it was passed onto us in? What if the Bible's truly valid reading comes only from understanding it as the holy book of the Western faiths? What if the modern deconstruction of the Bible is completely wrong?

What if?

I'll reflect more on this tomorrow, more specifically looking at the issue of what our understandings are.

P & C

2006-11-10T22:44:00.000-08:00

As promised, more postity-goodness. It's a bit late for me to be writting, so we'll see how coherent this is, and whether or not I say what I intend to say. Or something.

When we read literature from a Biblical perspective we need to look at who wrote it and when it was written. Specifically, one needs to know if the author was Protestant or Catholic/Orthodox (I am referring to anything written over a hundred years ago at the moment). Each group has a very distinct way of reading the Bible, and as such they draw different things out of it.

For example, it is highly uncommon to find a Protestant using the Virgin Mary as a major theme, while the exact opposite is true for a Catholic (try and read any long work of Catholic literature without coming across Marian imagery). Thus it is unlikely that when reading, say, Jane Austen, one will find a lot of Marian imagery, while it abounds in the works of Flannery O'Connor.

In addition, this dichotomy of reading has deep theological implications, the biggest of which is the issue of Tradition (as I believe I have mentioned before). Since a Catholic writes with up to 2000 years of tradition the work takes on a distinctly older character (if the writer is good). Protestant authors, on the other hand, work in a perpetually young faith and thus their writing seems to hold more weight in the hear-and-now.

I'm not going to spell out all the difference (and you wouldn't want to read them if I did). Rather, I am going to let you dwell on the thought that those differences do exist, and they provide for two (three if you count the Hebraic) ways of transforming the words of the Bible into more modern literature.

Aphesis

2006-11-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

So I have posted for a while. I still have a lot to say, and worry I will never say it. Alas.

The Greek word Aphesis (Αφεσισ) is translated as liberation or loosing. It is used throughout both the Old and New Testament, and is most often seen in relation to the concept of Jubilee.

In the Old Testament God demanded every seventh year to be a special year, a sabath year. Every fiftieth year, after seven sevens (forty-nine) was to be a year of Jubilee. On that year all slaves would be freed, debts forgiven, and land returned to those who originally owned it.

After some time Israel forget these practices and that is why, according to Jeremiah, they were sent into exile in Babylon.

In the New Testament, Jubilee is not explicitly mentioned, but the concept is revealed in the actions Jesus takes. He sets man free from their sins, forgives their sins, and returns health to those who lost it. In many of these cases, the word uses is Aphesis, which is the same word used in the Septuagint.

These theme of liberation makes it way through out both Testaments, and is one of the major underlying themes of the Bible. It continues on into the epistles, where St. Paul says "It is for freedom Christ set you free" and " Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." The dichotomy of slave and free is a major issue to most of the Biblical authors, as it is to Isaac Basheva Singer, whom we all know by now (one would assume). I may later interconnect those two, but as for now, I am finished.

Mark and Mystery

2006-11-02T13:38:00.000-08:00

So I'm talking about Mark again. This time, however, I am speaking on the man John Mark, rather than the Gospel proper.

There has long been a traditional interpretation of the verses of Mark 16:50-52 (about the young man with the linen robe). Assuming that Mark was written by John Mark, and that John Mark was with Jesus, at least at one point, many believe the young man to be John Mark in a self insertion. He was with Jesus on the last night and fled (self-depricatingly) when He was taken.

There are also other understandings of the word mystery. The most common among Christian's is the idea of something that cannot be fully known by human minds. Thus in Christian Theology (and any works of literature coming from a theological position) mystery can never be really known, and thus is always a mystery.

And speaking of mystery and secrets, The Prestige offers some really interesting ideas about mystery. The movie is about two rival magicians and what exactly makes a secret. It is quite a good show.

"Are you watching closely?"

Mark and Acts

2006-10-31T13:23:00.000-08:00

So once again I have to disagree with a designation Dr. Sexson gave to one of the books of the New Testament. He said that The Acts of the Apostles should be classified as an epistle, and not as history.

While the book does carry similarities to a letter (namely the existence of a recipient) it is not written as an epistle. It opens with the Luke (the author) talking about his first book (Luke), which implies this is his second book. In addition, the work is presented more as a history than writing to any group or individual. The Epistles all contain references to specific events or issues the church or person receiving the letter has to deal with, while Acts comes out in a very factual style, not aimed for one specific group.

And now a brief note on Mark.

The description of Mark as parataxic fits with the earliest tradition of the Gospel. Prior to any attempt to discover who/when/where the Gospels 'really' were written, Christians passed down traditional views of authorship. These include that the Gospels were written in the order in which they appear in the New Testament, as well as that they were written by those after whom they were named.

Mark is traditionally held to have been written by a young man named John Mark, who appears in the Acts of the Apostles. It is said he was with Peter while the latter was preaching in Rome, and he recorded the Gospel as Peter gave it. Thus the book comes down in an oral style, as it was taken from an oral presentation.

Eternal Optimism

2006-10-31T08:13:00.000-08:00

On Thursday we discussed the book of Ecclesiastes and the word "pessimism" was thrown out, suggesting the author (traditionally Solomon) had a very dark view of the world.

I want to offer a slightly deeper definition of his world view. Rather then simple pessimism, he had a more long term view of the world. For example, let us pretend someone's goal in life is to buy a house. This hypothetical person is currently unable to afford a house. Tomorrow he will also be unable to affor a house. Thus he is very pessemisitic about his chances in the coming day. The next day it is the same, and the next, and the next.

If, however, he works at saving money, eventually he will have enough to afford a house, even though for so many days he did not. In the short term there is nothing, but in the long term one finds what one is looking for.

The Qoheleth of Ecclesiastes is much the same way, presenting everything as Vanity (see below), yet the book ends with a look to the future: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole of man." The author turns the work to the end of Gpd, rather than simple suggesting all existence is useless.

Vanity: This word is often translated "meaningless," particularly in newer translations. In Hebrew the word is "habel" (לבה), menaing vanity, emptiness, meaninglessness, something which is fleeting. It is the same root as Hebel (לבה), which is translated as Abel (you may note the Hebrew letters are the same in both words: Hebrew does not commonly print vowels. Each three letter set has a certain meaning, and the exact vowels placed in codifies the meaning, h-b-l means emptiness, ephemeral, and inserting vowels creates nouns, verbs, etc.).

Lewis and Myth

2006-10-25T21:15:00.000-07:00

The following might be considered 'faith' language, because I am discussing another person's relation to Christianity, but I think it is, for the most part, kosher.

During the first half of the twentieth centruty Brittain seemed to overflow with Christian literary talent, from G.K. Chesterton to J.R.R. Toklien to C.S. Lewis. Many of these people influenced each other, particularly Lewis and Tolkien. They were two of the central figures in the Inklings, an Oxford literary society. Tolkien is also considered the most important figure in Lewis' conversion to Christianity.

From his youth Lewis had a love for northern mythology, above all others. He also particularly enjoyed the dying and resurrecting god of this and other mythic traditions, including the Bible. Interestingly enough, this understanding of the mythic nature of the New Testament led him to believe it held more than just stories (I think I'm allowed to use that word in the negative).

Lewis said that " [t]he heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history." The therefore rejects that implication that myth is opposed to history, and truth opposed to legend. There is no 'just.'

On another note, (more related to my openeing) the very definition of faith language is interesting. We could consider, could we not, that Bloom's proposition of J being a woman is based on faith just as much as the idea that the Bible really is the word of God. Both require us to believe beyond what we can truly know, and therefore, faith.

Just a though.

Wisdom

2006-10-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

המכח (hokmah): Wisdom, skill, shrewdness.

I think we may have been underestimating the book of Proverbs in class today. While many of the sayings seem a bit simple, a lot of them carry much weight as well.

Take Proverbs 18:2 for example:
"The fool takes no delight in understanding, but rather in displaying what he thinks."

This proverb talks about the fool (and not the holy kind) as one who does not think before he speaks. While this seems to be common sense, how often do we speak before we think? One would think common sense would be, well common.

In addition, this displays an interesting dichotomy. Not only does it lambast the fool for speaking without due regard, it relates that to the very act of being foolish: not learning. We can expect the man who least understands a situation to talk about it the most.

Many of the proverbs can be distilled to a simple piece of wisdom, or a little bit of hokmah can find a lot more going on in the background.

Four Sense of Scripture

2006-10-15T21:51:00.000-07:00

The study of the Bible has long held four senses in which one could read scripture: the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical sense (the latter three often lumped together into the spiritual sense).

The literal sense is the clearest, meaning exactly what it says (which, I suppose, is the opposite of ironic). This is the sense most commonly bantered around in discussions of the age of the earth and more particularly, the book of Revelation.

The allegorical sense is also pretty simple. We've talked about this a bit in class, but it also includes the idea of types. So when we say the passing through the Red Sea is a prefigurement of Baptism, we are reading scripture in the allegorical sense.

The moral sense of scripture involves reading scripture in order to act justly. This does not mean using the Bible literally as a rule of living (as a literal sense would) but rather using what the Bible gives as instruction, such as the wisdom books.

The anagogical is probably the one most of you have never heard of, much less understand what it means. The word anagogy comes from the Greek anagoge which means "leading." The anagogical sense of scripture involves reading it for a glimpse of eternity, reading everything in light of its eternal significance.

An old medieval saying sums it all up:

Lettera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria,
moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.

"The letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; the Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny."

Historical Criticism yet Again

2006-10-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

I said in my last post I was going to discuss more on the historical critical method, and that's what I am going to do.

In recent years scholars have spent enormous amounts of energy trying to determine who wrote the Bible, but to what end? I have found a many different interpretations of authorship and even the number of people who wrote the books (the Torah, for example, has been ascribed to Moses, Moses and Joshua, JEDPR, and more, some claiming as many as thirty authors for those five books). It's rather clear that no one has any really good idea who wrote what, so why do they keep searching?

Part of the answer is that they are trying to discredit the Bible. This, however, is as much a faith based idea as believing what the Bible proclaims. The other side of the coin is that scholars can say very little about the Bible that has not already been said (I have over ten thousand pages of Biblical commentary on my bookshelves) so they look at seeing who said it. It often simply comes down to inventing new ideas in order to get a graduate degree (nothing wrong with that, it simply means that the means are less important then the end).

In other historical critical news, the system has flaws. Ronald Knox, one of the great early twentieth-century Catholic British authors (along with G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc) wrote "The Authorship of In Memoriam." The work, using the historical critical method, makes the claim that it was not in fact Alfred Lord Tennyson who wrote "In Memoriam" but Queen Victoria.

This claim is only absured to us because we are so close to that moment of history. Likewise, historical criticism of the Bible required a long stretch of history between the penning of the work and man's ability to deconstruct it and insert new authors into the work (there is little chance first and second century readers doubeted the authors of the Gospels). Overall, it seems the historical critical method is a means without a viable end.

'Helper'

2006-10-12T17:17:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we discussed the creation of the female from Genesis 2. No matter who's talking about the passage, the issue of Eve being Adam's 'helper' always comes up.

In the Hebrew, the word 'helper' is ézre (רזצ), meaning, essentially, helper. But it's interesting to note where else ézre is used in the Old Testament: it's most commonly found in the Psalms, referring to God as Israel's helper.

In Hebrew, ézre by no means refers to a servant or slave. It means a helpmeet, someone who is necessary for the completion of a task. A proper Hebrew reading of Genesis 2 comes up with that Adam needs Eve, though the reciprical is not necessarily there.

Another thing I discovered while studying this passage was that many scholars (enough that the New Jerusalem Bible of 1973 listed this as the predominate view) believe the greation of Eve was inserted into the J account of creation. Even historical cirticism is unsure of itself (in the next post I plan on looking more at the historical critical study of scripture).

Some random things

2006-10-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

I'm only standing at half the posts I did for my last Dr. Sexson class. Not sure if that's good or bad.

So I know I posted on Lord of the Rings before, but I can't remember what, and seeing as I am feeling too lazy to look it up, please pardon any repeats.

Okay, so I can't remember what I was going to write about. This will no serve as I reminder for me to remember what I was going to write.

Here is a discussion of the historical critical examination of the Bible (specifically the epistles of Paul). It is written from a Catholic perspective, though it largely avoids faith language and offers a good explanation of why (or why not) one should use the historical critical method.

There is also a similar essay by C.S. Lewis.

A Verse

2006-10-04T22:05:00.000-07:00

I feel bad for not having posted in five days (I have a lot to say, so I should be trying to say it).

I decided to post my 'favorite' Bible Verse. It's not really my favorite, but it's the one I most like citing:

Esther 9:8
Porathai, Adalia, Aridatha

That's all.

Hebrew, Greek, and Jabneh

2006-09-27T07:44:00.000-07:00

If I had a purpose behind the information in this post, it is now lost. But I'm going to post anyway. Because I can.

As I'm sure most all of you are aware, there are not two different versions of the Bible (Hebrew and Christian) but three: Hebrew, Catholic/Orthodox, and Protestant. It is important to understand what separates the latter two when looking at the historical uses of the Bible. It also helps explain a little more about the Bible.

Somewhere between 300 and 200 B.C. some Jews in Alexandria got together and translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek for common use (because more Jews spoke Greek than Hebrew). Traditionally it is believed 70 scholars were involved, and hence the translation received the name the Septuagint, or LXX (from Latin for Seventy). This work contained all the books of the modern Hebrew Testament as well as the Deuterocanonical books (see below) and a few others (Esdas, Prayer of Manassess, etc.).

The LXX is the translation used throughout the entire New Testament by its authors, and was also likely the most common version read during its day.

Around the year 80 A.D. a collection of Jewish scholars got together (after getting premission from the Emporer) at Jabneh or Jamnia and, among other things, decided on what we might call a 'canon' of Jewish Scripture. It was not quite so formal as one might expect, but they selected the 39 books now found in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Protestant Old Testament, based almost completely on the fact that these books were the only ones with Hebrew versions surviving.

When St. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin in the 5th century he used the LXX (among other works) and included in his canon the books today found in the Catholic and Orthodox Bible, called the Deuterocanonical books. This term is essentially the same as the Apocrypha, except it is a more accurate and exact term. Apocrypha simply means hidden, and is used to describe almost any book of uncertain authenticity, including any book speaking of Jesus and not in the Christian Canon (they do not have to be written near the time of the accepted scripture, since most of what we know consider the Gnostic Gospels were written at least two hundred years after Christ, though some were earlier). Deuterocanonical is limited in scope to 1 and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Sirach, Wisdom, and the additional material in Daniel and Esther.

As I'm sure all of you are aware, the Bible did not fall from heaven, nor was it instantely revealed to someone as it is today. Many years went into determining the Canon of Scripture, and I hope this post clarifies some of the differences between each Canon.

Bloom's Irony

2006-09-24T09:29:00.000-07:00

Bloom makes a point of how the J author is ironic. As I've mentioned before, I'm pretty sure I don't agree with this position. I do, however, believe that Bloom is ironic in a rather unfortunate way.

In The Book of J he says that "Scholars have a way of dividing up strong ancient works and assigning them to several authors . . . destroying . . . individual creativity" (18). Bloom is speaking here about the Book of J and how people try to say it was not simply written by one person (J), but the irony seems to be lost on him. He has already broken up an ancient work (the Pentateuch), assigning it to four different authors simply because one cannot let good books lie.

Somehow I don't think that was the irony he was going for.

Disobediance

2006-09-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

I have an answer to part of Dr. Sexson's question today on why X is punished so much: Disobediance.

Throughout much of the Pentateuch God is laying down laws, from "Don't eat of the tree" to "put the seat down when you're done" (well, not quite). The point is, there are these rules, and often they don't make sense (though there is certain logic to not eating pork -- it was more likely to carry diseases that would not be cooked out -- or to not peeing on the wall -- it smells), but they're still there. If there is an Authority over someone, one must obey it or suffer the consequences (one does not have to agree to obey).

Why certain similar sins are punished to differing degrees is a more complicated question that has repurcussions I don't know so I won't answer beyond the exciting (and essentially meaningless) answer of "Providence."

I have another faith-based post on the Bible at my other Blog dealing with Biblical origins and the meaning of who wrote what.

An answer to the Question

2006-09-19T21:08:00.001-07:00

So the question has been possed in our class: "Why do bad things happen to innocent people?"

Simply Christian and Biblical answer: There are no innocent people.

This will be the fundamental premise of essentially all Catholic Christian Literature for the past two thousand years. When reading Chesterton, Tolkien, or O'Conner one aught to remember that they believe all man to be sinful, though inherently good. This means all mean deserves hell (God's Vengence) but is given the chance of life (God's Mercy). Flannery O'Conner specifically makes use of the premise throughout her writing.

I think G.K. Chesterton said it best: he was among a group of famous literary figures of the early twentieth century asked to write an essay on what is worng with the world. His answer was short and to the point:

Dear Sirs;

I am.

Sincerely Yours,
G.K. Chesterton

Breath, Wind, Spirit

2006-09-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

So at one point we discussed the breath of God. We failed, however, to make an important linguistic analysis of the word that was translated breath. The Hebrew for 'breath' is the word Ruach [חר] (where [ch] is pronounced as in Ich or Loch). This same word, however, also means 'wind' and 'spirit.' In fact, it is the same with most ancient languages, including Greek (pneûma, πνευμα) and Latin (spiritus).

What this means for any study of the Bible is that a translator can pick what word he wants and fully justify it in the text, even if tradition and intent is considered different. Thus, whenever the words Breath, Wind, or Spirit in the Bible one must consider whether the translator had any bias (which should always happen with every translated work) and then consider whether one of the other words would be a better fit.

Chapter and Verse

2006-09-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

It is important to note that the Bible, when originally written, did not have chapter nor verse. It was simply penned as history, literature, poetry, prophecy, epistle, etc. In the middle of the thirteenth century Archbishop Stephen Langton inserted chapters into the Bible as we know now them, though he retained the natural division of the Psalms into seperate poems.

In 1551 Robert Estienne divided the New Testament into verses in the Greek Bible. The same verse arrangement was later retained in the Geneva Bible.

The importance of this is that we cannot really read the Bible in Chapter and verse format (with the primary exception of the Psalms). Taking a verse out of context can destroy the entire meaning of the book or the intent of the author. That is a common technique used by people who want to prove the Bible says whatever they want it to say.

Thus are reading of the Bible as an entirety is really the only way to read the Bible. To break it apart and only read what intrests you is to dispose of the work as a whole. The Book of J is not really the Bible in any way shape or form. It's simply Bloom and Rosenberg's view of part of the Bible, and thus it becomes an independent work of litature. Imagine if somebody took every part of the Iliad that dealt with the gods and made another book out of that. We would not call that book part of the Iliad or critical to understanding it, so we can't do the same with the Book of J, at least while being intellectually honest.

And now for an etymological moment: contrary to what has been stated, Peter (Petros, rock) and Father (patri, patris) are not related. Peter comes from the Greek Petra, itself being drawn from the Indo-European root [per], meaning roughly the same thing.

Father, or Pater in the Latin, comes from the Greek pater (via the Latin) and is from the Indo-European root [pter], meaning father. Despite their apparent simularities, there is no connection. Peter's name comes solely from the fact that Christ said "You are Peter, and on this rock [petros] I will build my Church."

Actually, I should clarify. Christ was likley speaking Aramiac and therefore called Simon Bar-Jonah "Kepha" (see John 1) and said on this "Kepha" he would build his Church. Not Peter even involved until the Greek.

Short

2006-09-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

I'll probably pop up with a larger and more proper post later today, but at the moment I just want to link you to here. It is a discussion of the accuracy of the Bible on one of my other blogs. It is there because of the necessary faith language, so if you want to avoid that please don't read.

Translation and Intent

2006-09-14T09:22:00.000-07:00

I suspect I am not the only to find David Rosenberg's translation of J's writing to be a little odd, or at least unexpected.

This is, it seems, primarily because Rosenberg has an agenda with his translation. Now, most translators have a specific intent while translating, particularly with a book as influencial as the Bible. The problem as I see it is that Rosenberg is forwarding his beliefs (or maybe just Bloom's beliefs) ahead of the text itself. Let me give you an example:

The third chapter of Gensis, verse 5, Rosenberg translates as "The God knows on the day you eat from it your eyes will fall open like gods, knowing good and bad." Most other translators ( Christian, Hebrew, and Secular) use 'God' or 'him' for the word 'gods' Rosenberg used. The Hebrew word here is Elohim (םיהלא), the plural, but, interestingly enough, what he translates as "The God" is also the word Elohim. Most of the fall narrative uses the word Elohim instead of Yahweh (הןהי), yet Rosenberg translates it differently depending on the message he wants to send.

I'll talk more about translations later, but at the moment I am out of time.

Nothing Comes of Nothing

2006-09-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

I'd like to make a clarification for the class: Gnosticism has nothing to do with the Bible.

How can I make such a statement? Simple. The Bible is defined by the Christian or Hebrew religion and which books the leaders of said group decided to include. I won't discuss the Hebrew canon here because Gnosticism is primarily (at least to the modern mind) associated with Christianity.

Up until about the year 350 there was no single canon of Christian Scripture. Most every major Christian Theologian had there own canon. Included in these were all the books currently in the Christian Scripture (though James and the Apocalypse were less common). There were also a collection of books that appeared in some canons but were not accepted as inspired, and therefore did not appear in the final canon. They included such works as the Shepherd of Hermes, the Didache, and the epistles of Clement. None of this books, however, were Gnostic. They are in fact still used by Christians as the writings of the Fathers.

The only references to Gnosticism in the early Christian writing are in works written against heresy, such as St. Iraenus' work entitled, unsurprisingly, Against Heresies. This work, written around AD 190 denounced such works as 'The Gospel of Judas.' Gnosticism therefore can only be seen as an example of early non-Christian beliefs loosely related to Christianity and not something which can validly be considered as part of the early Christian belief or the early creation of the Bible.

On a unrelated note, I've noticed a lot of you are writing long entries. One thing I've learned that really helps the reading of those is to separate each paragraph from the previous one by a double space, since Blogger seems incapable of recognizing tabs. This will make your work much more readable and you'll get more comments.

Irony and Paradox

2006-09-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

I have a bone to pick with Bloom. One of the major points he attempts to make throughout The Book of J is that the work is highly ironic, as he seems to see that as the only logical conclusion for the way things don't seem to add up. I disagree.

Irony is not the only writing technique which places two ideas in opposition to each other. G.K. Chesterton (author of such famous works as the Father Brown Mysteries) is probably the most well known purveyor of the other technique: Paradox.

Paradox, like irony, looks at two seemingly inreconciliable ideas and attempts to bring them together. While irony does this to suggest that they are humoursly or odly united, paradox says that they can go together, it just is slightly beyond man's normal comprehension.

The Bible is rife with paradox: there is an infinitely high God who is willing to come infinitely low and talk to his creation. Yahweh is a vengeful God yet he is also merciful (sometimes these traits appear in the same psalm).

The Christian understanding of the Bible offers even more paradoxes: Christ is both fully God and fullt man. God is one, yet three. Man has free will but is predestined by God. The logical brain is unable to reconcile these, yet they appear in the Bible.

As you read the Bible keep an eye out for these paradoxes. They are both large and small, sometimes occuring only in a single passage, other times being a summation of the entire purpose of the Bible (such as the mercy/wrath dichotomy). If you'd like more information on the Christian view of paradox there is a chapter in G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy intitled "The Paradoxes of Christianity."

Tolkien, Jordan, the Bible, and Homer

2006-09-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

LotR

So more Tolkine and the Bible, though I plan to expand my scope for this post and look at The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan, both for its similarities to The Lord of the Rings and differences.

We talked about the concept of Lacuna and Lacunae within the Bible. I made mention that The Lord of the Rings has a similar nature, that Tolkien does not bother to explain everything. He chooses instead to leave much open for the interpertation and understanding of his audience. This is how Peter Jackson was able to come in and create so much of the look of his film trilogy differently from any previous incarnation of the books while still mainting the spirit of the works.

In opposition to the Bible in this area Dr. Sexson mentioned the works of Homer. Both The Iliad and The Odyssey are loaded with details not necessary to the working of the story. It would be easy to qualify those two works as being more fluff than plot, in the most basic sense.

The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan, could be called a modern day example of Homer's 'problem' (somebody else can debate whether detail or Lacuna is better). There are currently eleven books published in the series, the twelth and last is supposed to come out in the summer of 2007. The longest of the books is about 1,000 pages, the shortest around 600 (paperback). The final series will be around 10,000 pages long, or 2.5 million words. For comparrison, The Lord of the Rings comes in at a little over 500,000 words. The Lord of the Rings covers a time of about one year, for the main part (total time between first and last word is about five years) while The Wheel of Time contains three years worth. They both tell a story of man's battle against an ageless evil aiming to remake the world in his own image.

The most common complaint about Jordan's series is that he mentions anything and everything. He'll say that someone is wearing a blud dress, made from Andorian wool, which is normally sheared by older woman while they sing some song in which a Hero goes of to far, and how the hero's grandosn discovered a new way to smelt metal and steel was born and that steel was used to protect the palace guards from an insurrection which saved the life of a little boy who grew up to be king, then he returns to the narative. Obviously I'm exaggerating a little, but you get the idea.

And this is the reason the Wheel of Time will probably never be the same sort of success The Lord of the Rings is, because we, as an audience, don't always want to know every little detail. We want to be led through a story. This also is why almost everybody knows passages of the Bible (whether nothing more than "Our Father who are in Heaven") while almost no-one knows the origin of "Sing, goddess, of Achilles ruinous anger."

The Devil, they say, is in the details.

More on the Covanents

2006-09-10T16:01:00.000-07:00

(Please read the previous post for background information).

I'm going to make a quick defintion adjustment: when I use the word Bible, I mean only the Christian Bible, because the Hebrew 'Bible' only got that name retrocactively. It will regularly be called the Hebrew Scriptures.

We know that the Bible is diveded into two parts, the Old and New Testament. What, though, is the relation of those parts and how does that relation apply to Biblical foundations of literature?

St. Augustine probably said it best: "the new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed." This means that, two the Christian writer, the New and Old Testaments are not really two separate and independant collections of books, but rather a single collection with separate emphasises (which I mentioned in my previous post).

The most telling part of this connection is found in the idea of Biblical Typology: that events in the Old Testament prefigure things that happen in the new. Most of these have to do with Christ, the Last Supper, and His Passion.

For example, one of the most obvious is the Sacrifice of Isaac. For the benefit of those of you who don't remember the story, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac on top of a mountain. Abraham loves his son but goes to do what God asks. When he is about to kill his son (who does not offer much in the way of objections) an angel stays his hand and God Himself provides a lamb for the slaughter. Very much in the same way is the Crucifixion of Christ presented in the New Testament, only God Himself is the Father and he does not stay his own hand.

Typology appears quite regularly in Medieval literature, particularly the Mystery plays. These tell Biblical stories and expand upon the information in the Biblical account, filling out more of the characters and what they do. Almost everyone of the plays has some reference to typology, and some (such as the Abraham Isaac play) is overloaded with imagery.

So my suggestion to you is this: while reading the Old Testament look how some of it is an echo of the New Testament. It will give you both a better grasp of the Bible as a whole and its importance to Christian Literature.

A Brief Survey of the Relations of the Two Covanents

2006-09-08T15:58:00.000-07:00

As most anybody who has given the Christian Bible even a cursory study knows, it is not only divided into 73 (or 66) books, it also is seperated into two Covanents, or Testaments: the Old and the New.

The Old Testament is also called the Hebrew Scriptures. It is not, in fact, represented by one Covanent but by five. The first is between God and Adam and Eve, and involves couples. The second is with Noah, moving to families. Abraham is the third, involving a people. The fourth is with Moses and a Nation, and the fifth is with David, bringing about a Kingdom.

Fundamentally though, the Covanent of the Old Testament is the one with Abraham that brought about the Jewish people as God's Chosen People and all the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures center on that.

The New Testament is centered on one Covanent, the "new and everlasting covanent" Jesus brings about through the Last Supper and his Death. This is, in Christian understanding, simply the next (or final) step in the long line of covanents which start back with the very act of creation.

I'll have more in the next post about the two Testaments and their relation to each other.

Brief Introduction

2006-09-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

I offer this post as a breif introduction to one of the two themes I am planning on working throughout this blog (more may come up on their own, but two are defintely going to be there). If any of you have taken a previous class from me (or noticed what seems to appear in my blog more than anything else) you already know what I am going to write on: The Lord of the Rings.

Because my expertise is in Literature of the Fantastic, and because ninety percent of all Fantastic Literature owes a major debt to Tolkien, my studies have in many ways centered around his works (Also, I was given the order to not write about him from one of my professors so I have taken it upon myself to include Tolkien in a paper for every class except hers).

I want to make a quick comparison which will figure throughout the rest of my examination: The Lord of the Rings is written in the style of the books of Maccabees, and, to a degree, the entire Bible. Tolkien does not fill in all the lacuna present within his world, at least no in the Lord of the Rings proper (his volumes of back story, on the other hand, cover everything except Queen Berúthiel's Cats).

Expect to see more Lord of the Rings, though because it is so specialized I will have all entries of this nature begin with a LotR: in the title.

Clarifications

2006-09-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

While reading Bloom, he seems to imply that one can either read the Bible with an eye of faith or with an eye of litature, but they do not come together. Personally, this is not the case, as I read with both. I have long enjoyed the Bible as a work of litature. One of my favorite poems is Psalm 88.

The reasons this is important is that essentially all Christian litature, and most any litature prior to the Reformation, used the Bible as a foundation both as litature and as the basis of faith. This means that, while we are essentially looking at the Bible on as litature, one must always keep in mind that most others who reference it treat it as a work of faith as well. Imagine trying to read Dostoyevsky without having any understanding of the Eastern Orthodox Biblical tradition he came out of.

The second point I would like to make is one of definition, primarily aimed at avoiding any chance of offense or pointless argument (at least pointless to the aim of this course in its strictest sense).

When one is talking about the Bible, everybody seems to have a different viewpoint on the validity and accuracy of the Bible. So, in the future, I will be using the term Biblical Myth. Now, before anyone accuses me of calling the Bible false, please remember that I am an Orthodox Catholic and myth doesn't mean what you think it means.

Myth, in its best definition, is simply the stories and tales that are the foundation for a worldview. Therefore, one might be able to consider On the Origin of Species to be the myth for Darwinism, or the work of Copernicus to be the myth of modern astronomy.

Myth does not, contrary to popular opinion, carry inherent connotations of truth or falsehood. Rather when one calls something a myth it is because it is being examined in light of its foundational nature. No one would argue that the Bible is not the foundation of Christianity and Judaism (at least Orthodox Judaism), and therefore, one cannot help but calling it a myth.

Likewise, no intellegint scholar would deny the historical validity of most of the four books of kings (1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings). Scholarship has reapidly shown that most of the information in these books is valid, paricularly when it comes to listing rulers and wars.

I will be using the word myth with the above definition and would recommend it, simply because if we understand this meaning no one is stepping on anyone else's toes, and we need not debate the actual accuracy of the Bible, something largely unimportant to its litarary merits.

Markian Priority

2006-08-31T16:43:00.000-07:00

(Please read the previous post first to get an understanding of Historical Criticism).

So today we discussed the idea of the Documentary Hypothesis, that is, that the Pentateuch was written or compiled by at least five different people (Bloom suggests that D is infact two or three people). Of course, Historical Criticism doesn't stop there.

One of the most famous examples of HC is called Marcan Priority. This states that, contrary to Christian tradition, the St. Mark's was the first Gospel (tradition holds that they were written in the order they appear). We will not touch on St. John's Gospel because, as it is not a synoptic Gospel, it does not fit into the 'Synoptic Problem.' This is based primarily on the idea that the Gospel according to Saints Matthew and Luke say everything said in Mark and then add a little. This common extra is suggested to come from the Q document (Q from Quella, German for source) which was also written around the age of Mark.

The primary problem? No hint of Q has ever been discoereved. Thousands of other so-called gospels (of Thomas, Judas, Philip, etc.) exist in partial or nearly complete documents, but nothing that could be Q has ever been found. The Q Hypothesis, as it is called, exists on nothing but a similarity between two stories about the same man.

Imagine three people wrote about George Washington. One was a short biography, and two were longer. Arguably, everything in the short one would be found in the long as well, and then the long two would include what else they considered important. Much of this would logically overlap. No one would assume that the short biography was the source for the longer two, nor would they assume the longer two shared another source.

Also, it would be well to note that the first appearance of Historical Criticism in the New Testament argued that Mark was the last gospel to be written, on account of it bringing together the more Jewish nature of Matthew with the more Gentile nature of Luke.

I currently have fifteen more posts in some sort of planning, so I figure I will be writing a lot. I will try to post no more than once a day, but if I do, I apologize in advance. Feel free to comment on anything.

Historical Criticism

2006-08-31T08:58:00.000-07:00

(If you haven't read the introduction, please scroll down and do so).

Historical Criticism has been the big thing when studying the bible for the past hundred and fifty years, particularly among secular scholars. I am going to touch on it at least a couple more times, but I would first like to define it and go over a little about its origins.

Historical Criticism is "is the art of distinguishing the true from the false concerning facts of the past" (The Catholic Encyclopedia). Thus it is used to decide what part of a writing is true, and what part is false. When it was applied to the Bible (its only major study) it starts with the assumption that all things miraculous and divine are false, and then attempts to work its way from there. The Book of J is an example of Historical Criticsm, as is the Markian Priority hypothosis (I'll explain it later).

I will discuss many of the flaws and misconceptions associated with Historical Criticism in later posts, but first I will explain why it is such a big thing when studying the Bible. For the last hundred and fifty years or so much of the intellectual world has taken on the goal of dismantleing the current authority. It is their view (which is somewhat accurate) that the Authority has always oppressed the weak. Therefore, white's have oppressed minorities, men have oppressed woman, the Church has oppressed 'free thinkers', heterosexuals have oppressed homosexuals, the rich have oppressed the poor, etc. Intellectuals (critics, etc.) take it upon themsevles to free the oppressed from their oppressers through whatever means (Marxism, Civil Rights Movement, Historical Criticism, etc.).

The problem, however, is that there is no particular reason to believe that the current 'oppressers' are the worst. The only reason those in charge seem so bad (or are so bad) is because they have the power to do it. If Hitler had never gained the power to murder millions of Jews, Anti-Semitism would likely not be considered the great evil that it is. Likewise, if African-American's actually held the power in this country they would probably, in some way, oppress the whites. Human nature desires its own elevation, and will, in many cases, attempt this at the expense of others.

As Harold Bloom said on one of the first pages, we cannot say if any Historical Criticism is true. It is, however, very popular because it attempts to descredity and/or destroy one of the reigning institutions of the world, the Christian Church, seen as one of the oppressers that must be stopped.

An introduction and all that Jazz

2006-05-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

For any of you who bother to check the dates, you will notice that this entry was written a loooong time before class started. There are several reasons for this. First, I know I will need the journal, as it is a Dr. Sexson trademark. Secondly, I have a lot to say and would like to get the basic background/introduction stuff out of the way. Finally, I am simply bored and have nothing better to do then write this journal (I suppose that is not true given the other writing I am supposed to be doing, but at the moment I don't really care).

To start with, I am coming into this class in an interesting position. Despite the fact that this is a sophmore level course aimed at providing background to all further English courses, I am not taking it as a sophmore. This is, in fact, my last semester, so every interaction I have with this will be more retroactive than not.

Attatched to that is the fact that I am an avid reader and writer. I assume that a majority of the class will be English majors (as I know of no other reason to take the class), and thus are also likely to have read a lot. My area of 'expertise,' as it were, is fantasy, and as such most of my refrences will be made in that direction (my writing is across the board, but more on that later). Also, because I am an English major (and have had many Dr. Morgan classes) I will cite things often and without mercy (unless I do not own the source). If I fail to cite something and you would like further information, feel free to comment and I will see what I can do.

Thirdly, there are two hobbies of mine which will come into play throughout this class and, more particularly, this journal. The first is that I am a philologist. For those of you unfamiliar with the word (probably ninety-five percent of the population) a philologist is linguist who is specifically interested in the connection of words to culture. The basic premise of philology is that one can understand a culture to some degree simply by understanding their language. J.R.R. Tolkien was a philologist and stated that much of the Lord of the Rings was born from the Elvish languages (Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 219).

Because of this, I will examine words and their meaning randomly and to varying degrees. I will trace meaning and dispute some meanings and implications attached to those meanings (in a similar manner, I will attempt to debunk any urban legend that is presented as truth, particularly when it applies to something we are actuall discussing).

The second of my two hobbies (arguably more of a profession) is that I am a theologian. I have immersed myself in the study of theology, most specifically of the Christian bent (Catholic, if you want to be specific). As such I have a vast refernce library of theological works and a knowledge of inane terms which I will be using on the blog. I will attempt to define and term that is not commonly known, but if I miss one, feel free to comment and I will define it. Through the existence of these two hobbies I am a student of Ancient Greek and Hebrew (more study currently has been done on the Greek ) and will frequently reference these sources, as the situation requires.

This also means that I approach Biblical references in literature from a more Catholic perspective. There has always been a big thing in the Catholic Church about art, and many great works of literature have come about from this. These include, but of course are not limited to, St. Augustine's Confessions, the Miracle, Morality, and Mystery plays of the late middle ages, and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. A Catholic reading of literature includes references not only to the Bible, but also to Tradition, itself referencing the Bible. Therefore, when I talk about Biblical Foundations of literature I will often mention things not explicit in the Bible, but important to a Catholic understanding of literature, which is in itself rather important, given that almost all writing for a thousand years was Catholic.

I am willing and open to any question or comment that is not an attack (as long as it is couched in correct English). I will try to respond to all of them, and if I don't feel free to comment again. From past experience I have learned that these journals are better when their is dialogue between varies authors (Dr. Sexson also has a tendency to up one's grade in such cases for actually doing something beyond simply posting).

This has been a rather long and varied post, but I hope it will provide a good background to you all about what I am doing and how I am going to go about it.