The semester is coming to a close in which we have studied, questioned, and became enthralled by the bible as a volume of stories. As my final blog I will leave you with a familiar story found in Luke:
"In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "'Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger'."
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.'"
The Christmas story, often called "The greatest story ever told" is the most famous story of the bible but also the most forgotten and most taken for granted by both those who don't believe it and those who feel themselves to be devout. I challenge you this Winter break to hold fast to whatever it is you do believe and to have a safe a rejuvenating holiday.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Side Efeects of LIT 240
Whether it was because I'm missing my family or my getting caught up in the atmosphere of the Christmas stroll on Saturday, I took the notion to try to visit the First Baptist Church here in Bozeman. I was comforted by the familiar wooden pues and the giant pipe organ from my childhood memories, along with the army of little old ladies that proceeded to maul me with friendship bread and sympathies for my living so far away from my family. I started to think about how much I've grown up just in this semester and how my opinions on alot of things have changed, especially concerning faith and the bible, but how I think I've managed to preserve my basic principles.
But then the sermon started.
The preacher was going on about John the Baptist and how the birth of Jesus was prophesied in the book of Luke and whatnot and the basis for alot of his message was based on the order in which the books are in the bible, and how because of it, there is a ton of evidence for Jesus's existence. The entire time I had this overwhelming urge to say "Actually sir, it was probably just a later redactor that put them in that order so that it makes more sense." or something like that. As he continued, Frye continued to run through my head whispering little bits of doubt and logic that made it impossible for me to be my old baptist believing self. I don't know if I would call this a crisis of faith, I'm just realizing now how much of an impact this class has had on me and how I think about the Bible.
But then the sermon started.
The preacher was going on about John the Baptist and how the birth of Jesus was prophesied in the book of Luke and whatnot and the basis for alot of his message was based on the order in which the books are in the bible, and how because of it, there is a ton of evidence for Jesus's existence. The entire time I had this overwhelming urge to say "Actually sir, it was probably just a later redactor that put them in that order so that it makes more sense." or something like that. As he continued, Frye continued to run through my head whispering little bits of doubt and logic that made it impossible for me to be my old baptist believing self. I don't know if I would call this a crisis of faith, I'm just realizing now how much of an impact this class has had on me and how I think about the Bible.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Term Paper
The Faith of a Slave
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel The Slave follows the life of a Polish Jew named Jacob, who after surviving a Cossack massacre is sold into slavery and falls passionately in love with his owner’s daughter, Wanda. The retelling of Jacob’s struggles with God and his fellow man along with the string of horrifying events that mark his life set the stage for his intellectual and spiritual enlightenment. In his novel The Slave, Singer traces the evolution of Jacob’s faith with multiple allusions to the Bible, starting with his blind following of Jewish law, to the questioning of religion and God as a result of the acquisition of knowledge.
Rather than focusing his astonishing loyalty and faith on the God he fears and worships, Jacob at the beginning of the novel concentrates on the laws established by religious men to guide a Jew’s daily life. He begins each day with a prayer: “‘I thank thee’ a prayer not mentioning God’s name therefore utterable before cleaning oneself” (11). It is interesting that the narrator should mention that the prayer itself does not include the name of God, for Jacob’s morning routine is just that; a routine that is mindless and automatic, not necessarily glorifying the God that inspires the action. One would assume that faith is an internal phenomenon, not affected by a lack of outward symbols, but Jacob’s preoccupation with Jewish decorum during his life of slavery remains present throughout the narrator’s description of him: “He was without prayer shawl and phylacteries, fringed garment or holy book. Circumcision was the only sign on his body that he was a Jew. But heaven be thanked, he knew his prayers by heart, a few chapters of the Mishnah, some pages of the Gemara, a host of Psalms, as well as passages from various parts of the Bible” (13). Why is it that, while amongst pagans recently converted to Christianity, who know nothing of the Jewish faith, does Jacob remain so concerned with keeping up the appearance of a faithful Jew?
One of the most important laws in the Jewish faith are concerned with dietary laws and keeping the Sabbath day holy. Throughout the Bible in the books of Leviticus, Isaiah, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, and Colossians the issue of cleanliness as it relates to holiness is addressed in dietary law, starting with God’s edicts to Moses about what makes an animal clean or unclean. Leviticus 3:17 states that "It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwellings, that you shall not eat either fat or blood." Jews are to eat only animals that have divided hooves, chew their cud, live in the sea and have scales, or fruits and vegetables. To Jacob, this means that he must live off of plants and bread because the farm he dwells in has only animals seen as unclean in the eyes of Jewish law, causing him to become emaciated in his state of bondage. Jacob did not think that God would understand the special circumstances or else he would have eaten what he could to keep his strength for when he was forced to work as a cowherd.
His determination to follow Jewish law extends to his obedience as a slave as well for he refuses to work on the Sabbath. The Talmud not only prohibits Jacob from completing his duties, but forbids him as a Jew to exert any kind of effort on the holy day. His owner’s daughter, Wanda, brings him food and milks the cows for him out of compassion for his situation. This compassion among other things causes Jacob to develop strong feelings for Wanda.
As time progresses, Jacob’s mind is free to wander. He thinks of Wanda, of his slaughtered community, and of his religion. Eventually he realizes that he is beginning to forget the laws and prayers he so firmly clung to at the beginning of his time as a slave. In an effort to retrieve them, he engraves them into a rock near his barn: “The Torah had not disappeared. It lay hidden in the nooks and crannies of his brain” (44). The exact words of the Talmud and the Gemara are not what define the Jewish faith, yet Jacob chooses to focus on remembering quotes and prayers rather than the God that spared his life when the Cossacks killed his entire village. He does all of this for fear of temptation and fear of corruption by the people he is surrounded by, but if he had confidence in his faith he would not be afraid for his God would help him regardless of how many psalms he can recite.
A majority of the plot of The Slave revolves around the relationship between Jacob and Wanda. Jacob believes than Wanda does not act on her own volition but is rather an agent of Satan sent to tempt him into fornication. Often Jacob quotes the Bible to himself in hopes of extinguishing his desire for her. Their love for each other is both passionate and intense. One could even say it is sent by God. But Jacob refuses to believe that his love for Wanda can possible be anything other than a disaster, for a Jewish man is forbidden to marry a Gentile. If not for this law that is enforced by men and organized religion, he is inhibited from marrying the woman he loves.
Wanda becomes interested in Judaism and seeks to understand the religion that is so important to her beloved Jacob as well as be converted in order to run away with him. Jacob attempts to explain the many laws that dictate his life and through Wanda’s questioning of the reasoning behind them, Jacob himself begins to wonder why these laws are so important. He explains that she must cleanse herself and that she is unclean and they must not touch anything when she menstruates as is stated in Leviticus. When they consummate their love, he forces her to immerse herself in freezing cold water in order to cleanse herself after their act. Wanda says that “I have done this for you.” But Jacob says “No, not for me. For God” (68). While Wanda understands that what they have just done is between the two of them and a product of their love, Jacob is still preoccupied with Jewish law and despairs over having had relations with a Gentile woman. He sees her immersion as compensation for their sin.
After completing all of the rituals necessary for conversion, Wanda changes her name to Sarah and goes with Jacob to a Jewish village where she must feign being a mute in order to keep the secret that she is a Gentile woman. The fact that she has gone through so much for Jacob, including leaving her home and family as well as learning about the Bible is not enough for the Jewish community. When Sarah dies in childbirth she reveals she is a Gentile and is denied burial rites. They would rather follow a law that excludes Sarah based on her heritage than let a devoted woman die with respect and dignity.
Ecclesiastes says that with much knowledge comes much vexation. This is true for Jacob because while in the Jewish village he and Sarah sought refuge in, he gains access to religious books and scholars. With the death of his beloved Sarah, his forced exile from the village and the birth of his son, Jacob is finally prepared to question his religion and his faith in a God that allows such horrible things to happen. Jacob’s theodicy leads him to the same crisis shared by many people of faith including Job and Hannah of the Bible. Why, if God is omnipotent and all-knowing, does he allow for innocent suffering? Jacob finds no comfort in the law books and religious texts but accepts that as a human he cannot possibly understand God’s reasoning. With this knowledge Jacob changes his perspective on life and the role of religion and law inspired by it.
The story of The Slave gains its power through its ability to relate to real life despite the extreme circumstances experienced by its characters. The process of following Jacob’s life allows for the reader to reflect on his or her own life and the aspects of faith in their lives. Jacob’s suffering and the suffering of the innocent villagers and Sarah is the root of basic crises of faith from which questions about God stem. This crisis is outlined by Jacob’s life and his progress from blindly following laws rather than the God who enforces them, to teaching the elements of his religion to an outsider, sparking his first curiosities concerning the logic behind its edicts, to finally questioning God himself, all the while quoting the Bible as means for credibility in his argument for Judaism. All of these factors make Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel powerfully emotional while thought provoking and moving.
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel The Slave follows the life of a Polish Jew named Jacob, who after surviving a Cossack massacre is sold into slavery and falls passionately in love with his owner’s daughter, Wanda. The retelling of Jacob’s struggles with God and his fellow man along with the string of horrifying events that mark his life set the stage for his intellectual and spiritual enlightenment. In his novel The Slave, Singer traces the evolution of Jacob’s faith with multiple allusions to the Bible, starting with his blind following of Jewish law, to the questioning of religion and God as a result of the acquisition of knowledge.
Rather than focusing his astonishing loyalty and faith on the God he fears and worships, Jacob at the beginning of the novel concentrates on the laws established by religious men to guide a Jew’s daily life. He begins each day with a prayer: “‘I thank thee’ a prayer not mentioning God’s name therefore utterable before cleaning oneself” (11). It is interesting that the narrator should mention that the prayer itself does not include the name of God, for Jacob’s morning routine is just that; a routine that is mindless and automatic, not necessarily glorifying the God that inspires the action. One would assume that faith is an internal phenomenon, not affected by a lack of outward symbols, but Jacob’s preoccupation with Jewish decorum during his life of slavery remains present throughout the narrator’s description of him: “He was without prayer shawl and phylacteries, fringed garment or holy book. Circumcision was the only sign on his body that he was a Jew. But heaven be thanked, he knew his prayers by heart, a few chapters of the Mishnah, some pages of the Gemara, a host of Psalms, as well as passages from various parts of the Bible” (13). Why is it that, while amongst pagans recently converted to Christianity, who know nothing of the Jewish faith, does Jacob remain so concerned with keeping up the appearance of a faithful Jew?
One of the most important laws in the Jewish faith are concerned with dietary laws and keeping the Sabbath day holy. Throughout the Bible in the books of Leviticus, Isaiah, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, and Colossians the issue of cleanliness as it relates to holiness is addressed in dietary law, starting with God’s edicts to Moses about what makes an animal clean or unclean. Leviticus 3:17 states that "It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwellings, that you shall not eat either fat or blood." Jews are to eat only animals that have divided hooves, chew their cud, live in the sea and have scales, or fruits and vegetables. To Jacob, this means that he must live off of plants and bread because the farm he dwells in has only animals seen as unclean in the eyes of Jewish law, causing him to become emaciated in his state of bondage. Jacob did not think that God would understand the special circumstances or else he would have eaten what he could to keep his strength for when he was forced to work as a cowherd.
His determination to follow Jewish law extends to his obedience as a slave as well for he refuses to work on the Sabbath. The Talmud not only prohibits Jacob from completing his duties, but forbids him as a Jew to exert any kind of effort on the holy day. His owner’s daughter, Wanda, brings him food and milks the cows for him out of compassion for his situation. This compassion among other things causes Jacob to develop strong feelings for Wanda.
As time progresses, Jacob’s mind is free to wander. He thinks of Wanda, of his slaughtered community, and of his religion. Eventually he realizes that he is beginning to forget the laws and prayers he so firmly clung to at the beginning of his time as a slave. In an effort to retrieve them, he engraves them into a rock near his barn: “The Torah had not disappeared. It lay hidden in the nooks and crannies of his brain” (44). The exact words of the Talmud and the Gemara are not what define the Jewish faith, yet Jacob chooses to focus on remembering quotes and prayers rather than the God that spared his life when the Cossacks killed his entire village. He does all of this for fear of temptation and fear of corruption by the people he is surrounded by, but if he had confidence in his faith he would not be afraid for his God would help him regardless of how many psalms he can recite.
A majority of the plot of The Slave revolves around the relationship between Jacob and Wanda. Jacob believes than Wanda does not act on her own volition but is rather an agent of Satan sent to tempt him into fornication. Often Jacob quotes the Bible to himself in hopes of extinguishing his desire for her. Their love for each other is both passionate and intense. One could even say it is sent by God. But Jacob refuses to believe that his love for Wanda can possible be anything other than a disaster, for a Jewish man is forbidden to marry a Gentile. If not for this law that is enforced by men and organized religion, he is inhibited from marrying the woman he loves.
Wanda becomes interested in Judaism and seeks to understand the religion that is so important to her beloved Jacob as well as be converted in order to run away with him. Jacob attempts to explain the many laws that dictate his life and through Wanda’s questioning of the reasoning behind them, Jacob himself begins to wonder why these laws are so important. He explains that she must cleanse herself and that she is unclean and they must not touch anything when she menstruates as is stated in Leviticus. When they consummate their love, he forces her to immerse herself in freezing cold water in order to cleanse herself after their act. Wanda says that “I have done this for you.” But Jacob says “No, not for me. For God” (68). While Wanda understands that what they have just done is between the two of them and a product of their love, Jacob is still preoccupied with Jewish law and despairs over having had relations with a Gentile woman. He sees her immersion as compensation for their sin.
After completing all of the rituals necessary for conversion, Wanda changes her name to Sarah and goes with Jacob to a Jewish village where she must feign being a mute in order to keep the secret that she is a Gentile woman. The fact that she has gone through so much for Jacob, including leaving her home and family as well as learning about the Bible is not enough for the Jewish community. When Sarah dies in childbirth she reveals she is a Gentile and is denied burial rites. They would rather follow a law that excludes Sarah based on her heritage than let a devoted woman die with respect and dignity.
Ecclesiastes says that with much knowledge comes much vexation. This is true for Jacob because while in the Jewish village he and Sarah sought refuge in, he gains access to religious books and scholars. With the death of his beloved Sarah, his forced exile from the village and the birth of his son, Jacob is finally prepared to question his religion and his faith in a God that allows such horrible things to happen. Jacob’s theodicy leads him to the same crisis shared by many people of faith including Job and Hannah of the Bible. Why, if God is omnipotent and all-knowing, does he allow for innocent suffering? Jacob finds no comfort in the law books and religious texts but accepts that as a human he cannot possibly understand God’s reasoning. With this knowledge Jacob changes his perspective on life and the role of religion and law inspired by it.
The story of The Slave gains its power through its ability to relate to real life despite the extreme circumstances experienced by its characters. The process of following Jacob’s life allows for the reader to reflect on his or her own life and the aspects of faith in their lives. Jacob’s suffering and the suffering of the innocent villagers and Sarah is the root of basic crises of faith from which questions about God stem. This crisis is outlined by Jacob’s life and his progress from blindly following laws rather than the God who enforces them, to teaching the elements of his religion to an outsider, sparking his first curiosities concerning the logic behind its edicts, to finally questioning God himself, all the while quoting the Bible as means for credibility in his argument for Judaism. All of these factors make Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel powerfully emotional while thought provoking and moving.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Jonah
Our group presentation is today so I figured I'd jot down some of my thoughts on Jonah since I've spent so much time with him.
While it makes little sense as far as where Jonah was to begin with that he needed to go to Nineveh, or why God was upset with Nineveh in the first place and setting issues like that, it acts as an effective Sunday school lesson.
Jonah is asked to go to Nineveh to proclaim the word of God but he just doesn't feel like it so he gets on a boat to flee from God, resulting in being thrown overboard to stop a storm and then being swallowed by a great fish. God lets Jonah sit in there for three days before he gets the fish to throw him up but Jonah still hasn't learned. God decides to spare Nineveh, so Jonah throws a fit about being a false prophet and wanders around the desert. God gives him a shrub to give him shade but it dies and Jonah whines some more about wishing he was dead.
You'd think that this would be when God gives Jonah the moral of the story as we hear it in Sunday school, with a lesson on obedience and doing what you're told but it just isn't there. God talks about how the shrub was like the city of Nineveh, created ad cared for by God, not Jonah, so he should quit whining. And that's the end of the story. It's really rather abrupt. But like many bible "Stories" the misconception is a better story than what is actually in the bible.
While it makes little sense as far as where Jonah was to begin with that he needed to go to Nineveh, or why God was upset with Nineveh in the first place and setting issues like that, it acts as an effective Sunday school lesson.
Jonah is asked to go to Nineveh to proclaim the word of God but he just doesn't feel like it so he gets on a boat to flee from God, resulting in being thrown overboard to stop a storm and then being swallowed by a great fish. God lets Jonah sit in there for three days before he gets the fish to throw him up but Jonah still hasn't learned. God decides to spare Nineveh, so Jonah throws a fit about being a false prophet and wanders around the desert. God gives him a shrub to give him shade but it dies and Jonah whines some more about wishing he was dead.
You'd think that this would be when God gives Jonah the moral of the story as we hear it in Sunday school, with a lesson on obedience and doing what you're told but it just isn't there. God talks about how the shrub was like the city of Nineveh, created ad cared for by God, not Jonah, so he should quit whining. And that's the end of the story. It's really rather abrupt. But like many bible "Stories" the misconception is a better story than what is actually in the bible.
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