Julia M. OBrien

It's time for the results of my first reader poll.  Drumroll, please.

It's easy to read the Bible as if it contained disembodied doctrine, eternal truths about the divine being and the cosmos floating above the mundane concerns of human living. But biblical materials were shaped by the people who wrote them--not only by their beliefs but also by the economies in which they lived.  And as ancient Israel's economy changed over time, so too did the assumptions and the agendas of the writers of the documents that we now have in the Bible.

A recent article in GQ revealed that when Secretary Rumsfeld presented daily intelligence briefings to President Bush in the early days of Iraq war, he presented them with cover sheets emblazoned with biblical quotes.

The pope’s comments during his recent visit to Israel spurred a reader of the website to ask me this question:   “Why would the pope support the creation of a Palestinian state, since the Bible claims that God has given the Holy Land to the Jewish people?”

I thought others might be interested in my reply.

It sounds so simple, doesn't it?   Since the Bible insists that God promised land to Abraham's descendants, and since Jews are descendants of Abraham, then obviously Israel always and only belongs to Jews.

But the issue is far more complicated than such a simple formula implies.

Columbia Pictures will release Year One on June 19th.  Starring Jack Black and Michael Cera, the comedy follows two hunter-gathers after they are kicked out of their tribe and embark on adventures throughout the ancient world.

A friend who saw the long version of the trailer noticed multiple references to the Bible and sent me the link:  http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/yearone/site/ (Look for "video")

Lancaster County, PA, where I live, is home to a thriving art community and will soon have a new convention center.  The city of Lancaster is diverse racially and economically, celebrating and struggling with the issues that face other urban communities.  But most tourists come for only two reasons: (1) to see the Amish and (2) to shop at the outlets.

The two activities might seem a contrast--the former an attempt to appreciate the simplicity of the agricultural, un-electrified life; the latter a full embrace of the I-want-everything-and-I-want-it-for-cheap consumerist mentality.  Both, however, are fully consumer activities.  Amish tours, quilts, food, buggy rides are presented as quaint things to buy,  not as alternative lifestyles that bear contemplation.   How the religious beliefs of the Amish shape their understandings is much less a topic of conversation than how much their quilts cost.

 

King David is on the entertainment circuit these days.  He's the focus of an off-Broadway musical, not so creatively titled "King David," now at the Promise Theater. He's already a TV regular,  starring in the NBC series Kings (see earlier blog post).

In all the media hype, he hasn't risen above the humble book.  Robert Pinsky's The Life of David was published in 2008.   For the literary-minded, there's a new version of his story by Robert Alter: The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel.  And to show that he doesn't take himself too seriously, David continues to appear as a vegetable version of himself in "Dave and the Giant Pickle" in the Veggie Tales series.

What accounts for David's timeless appeal?

I just learned about the Iconic Books Project at Syracuse University, run by Jim Watts and Dorina Miller Parmenter.  The goal of the project is to catalogue the way in which iconic books ("texts revered as objects of power rather than just as words of instruction, information, or insight") are displayed, read, covered, represented in art, etc., etc.

My main complaint about The Shack is that it isn't very interesting as a story. The book starts out well enough, with an interesting (if disturbing) plot, and I find myself wanting to know what has happened to Missy, the main character's daughter.  I am ready for characters to be developed, details to be filled in, the mystery to be solved.  I am ready for something to happen. 

The longer I study the prophetic books, the less I talk about the prophets as people.  I see more and more how the authors of the books shaped the words and used stories about prophets to speak to later concerns. More and more I quit looking for who Amos or Jeremiah really were and focus on why writers presented these figures in the way they have.