The Gospel According to Saint Lucas

George Lucas has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible beyond the fact that it was one of many inspirations for his most noted series of films and arguably the most popular film franchise of all time, the Star Wars Saga. In all honesty, can you think of someone who hasn't heard of Star Wars? But back to my point, I watch the Star Wars movies all the time and try not to question "where did Lucas borrow that from?" because it ruins the movie experience. However, while I am just thinking about the movies, (and the Bible in general since this class began), I think I finally made some connections.

As I said in my earlier post about pop culture drawing on the Bible, Anakin Skywalker is born to a virgin mother. Okay... and? Well, isn't that the start of the New Testament? Then I began thinking of the original trilogy (which stars Harrison Ford and Mark Hammil) and I made a comparison: The original trilogy (from the seventies and eighties) is to the Old Testament as the new trilogy (the films released since 1999) is to the New Testament. No, its not just "New" and "Old," I think the movies parallel the Testaments in certain themes of similarities.

For example, in the Old Testament God visits Adam and Eve when he wants to, has a chat with Abraham, commands Noah, and speaks with Moses (even lets Moses see his backside). God has debates and discussions with people (even Job to some extent) while in the New Testament, I do not think that God directly interacts with anyone. So here comes the comparison, when old Ben Kenobi dies in the first Star Wars film, he directs Luke Skywalker throughout the remainder of the story on his quest to defeat the Galactic Empire. Luke's connection to the force allows him to directly interact with Obi-Wan. In contrast, no one in the new trilogy ever speaks to a "higher being." (Except possibly Yoda, who claims that Qui-Gon can communicate from beyond the grave at the end of the last film, but we do not see this, Yoda only tells us) Much like the New Testament, there is plenty of faith in "the force" but no communication with it.

Then there's the killings. In the original trilogy, the forces of good obliterate not one but two Death Stars. Each the size of a small moon and home to millions of Imperials (the bad guys). Sure they are not as wholesome as you, but do you have to kill them? It looks very similar to the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah where God, the force of good, destroys everyone even the innocent few to destroy the majority of them that are wicked. Much like Satan then (who I believe is responsible for ten deaths in total of the Bible), Darth Vader kills far less people than Luke Skywalker and the Rebels. (Okay, we all know that Princess Leia's home planet of Alderaan is obliterated by the first Death Star, but that was Grand Moff Tarkin, not Darth Vader, he only made Leia watch it happen.) Vader kills the guy on Leia's ship at the start of the movie, then Obi-Wan, and Biggs later, maybe another pilot or two. But that puts his total somewhere between 3 and 5 for the entire first movie. Then he chokes the guy in The Empire Strikes Back but not a lot of bloodshed after that (correct me if I'm wrong) and he kills the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. His complete body count in the original trilogy has to be less than ten! So Luke kills millions the first time around, Wedge and Lando do it the second time and Darth Vader manages only a small handful of murders. (This confuses me both in Star Wars and The Old Testament.) I guess in the new trilogy, you can argue that the "good guys" go off killing the "bad guys" because they are separatists much like in the New Testament when the Christians label the Jews as the enemy for no other reason than they are different.

Finally, does the Battle of the Heroes on Mustafar seem apocalyptic to anyone else? We have the ultimate good (Obi-Wan Kenobi) battling to vanquish the ultimate evil (Darth Vader) with rivers of lava and fire pouring down from a blackened sky. I hadn't thought of it before, but that sounds a little like the end of the world.

I would also like to point out that the phrase "In my beginning is my end, and my end is my beginning" is referring directly to Star Wars, even if it was written decades before the first films release. I say this because Lucas released the very first film as Episode 4, did 5 and 6, then made 1, 2, and 3 so that the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning.

Themes in Revelation

While I was reading Revelation, I began taking notes because certain themes were repeated over and over again. These repetitions interested me because they were so prevalent in the text and because I did not know that they were.

1) The most prevalent theme I found in the Book of Revelation was that of numbers. Whether its four horseman, seven seals, three gates of the east, three gates of the north, three gates of the south, three gates of the west, seven churches, 666, twelve stars, or "a hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel;" this part of The Bible is full of numbers.

2) the second most prevalent theme interests me the most, so I'm going to hold off on it for just a minute.

3) Third is all the sounds that go off. There are, (what, trumpets?) sounding every time something bad is about to happen. I'm sorry I did not make better notes here and pull out actual examples, but when I read it, I got a very real impression that there was noise going on throughout the book. Thunder, voices, etc.

4) I also found books very important and repeated ( Revelation 5, 22, and end of Revelation 20)as well as lightness/darkness (It was just mentioned so much that I could not isolate any one or two passages in detail.)

2)Here is the second most prevalent theme, but the most interesting to me: animals. Not just referring to Jesus as a lamb either, like real intense descriptions of animals or people with characteristics of animals. Obviously I took notice of the horses but there are plenty of others to choose from.

Revelation 4:7 - And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him,

Revelation 9 discusses scorpions, locusts, and lions (and horses and humans again)

Revelation 13:2 -And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. (okay, so dragons are not REAL animals any more than serpents can talk to people)

Right, so: numbers, animals, sounds, light (and dark), and books. I found these themes in abundance in the last book of The Bible. What did you find?

A Revelation of the Four Horsemen

Well, I read the Book of Revelation and found that, like many books of the Bible, what is in the Bible and what is common knowledge about the Bible are two very different things. For example, the Four Horsemen:

Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death
This interpretation replaces Conquest with Pestilence. This interpretation is generally espoused by those unfamiliar with the actual Biblical texts from which the Horsemen are derived. And, though apocryphal, it is this interpretation which is most commonly used as the inspiration for popular culture's uses of the Four Horsemen concept.
The origins of the name "Pestilence" as a distinct Horsemen are unclear, though certain Bible versions, such as the Jerusalem Bible do refer to Death--rather than Conquest--as "Plague" (a synonym for Pestilence).

(From Wikipedia's article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse
I know, I know, "Don't trust everything you read on Wikipedia." But it's good stuff!!)

So let's start at the beginning of the four. We have:

The White Horse, wearing one crown (as apposed to several by the White Horse Rider of Revelation 19) and is bent on conquest and carries a bow, but no quiver. (if you read the full article, you can see some scholars view this rider as the Antichrist, while some call it simply conquest, and still others claim it is associated with civil war.)

The Red Horse, referred to as war, the rider carries a fiery sword which represents death on the battlefield.

The Black Horse, famine, and carries a pair of scales to weigh the bread during the years of famine.

The Pale Horse, named Death in the text, carries no weapon but rides with Hell following close behind.


Just a note, The White Horsemen of Revelation 6 and Revelation 19 can be viewed as the same, or two different riders. The choice is yours, but to me they look like opposites rather than one and the same. Revelation 6 depicts the rider with a bow for a weapon and one crown, bent on conquest. Revelation 19 describes a rider with a sword wearing several crowns upon his head "and in righteousness he doth judge and make war." He is named the word of God. Faithful. True. The King of Kings. And Lord of Lords.
(Therefore the horseman in verse 9 can be viewed as the Antichrist while the rider from verse 19 is Christ. They are opposites. Enemies.)

So like several others before me, I was deceived by popular culture before I went looking for the truth for myself. (And yes, I guess this confirms that my X-Men reference to the Bible is based more in common perceptions of the Bible than the actual text itself. But what isn't?!)
Finally, if I were going to end the world, I would do it with pestilence, war, famine, and death instead of using two different kinds of war, but that's not how the Book of Revelation does it.

My Best Argument...

I got in an argument over the weekend with my father and my brother. Not a very spirited one but we each felt that we were right. No one out of the three of us has read the entire Bible, but we disagreed on the definition of an important word from the Bible that does not come out of everyday speech (except for my brother,) and that word is Apocalypse.

I believe it is "an unveiling to the masses, by the devine, of the world as it truly is; not how they perceive it to be."

My father says "it is the end of all things living on the Earth." (To me more like Armageddon or Judgement Day, But before Dr. Sexson elightened me, or unveiled to me the truth, I used Armageddon and Apocalypse interchangeably.)

Finally, my brother looked it up on his Ipod because he was tired of my father and I arguing and presented the option that it means "The final conflict in which the forces of good vanquish evil from the Earth."

The word comes from the prefix apo- (which means away, off, or apart) -calypso (to cover or conceal) Therefore apocalypse is the departure of the cover, or the unveiling. But the unveiling of what?

"I guess we're just gonna have to wait and see."
-Marge Simpson, The Treehouse of Horror V

The Bible as Influence

As I promised in an earlier post, I would like to point out the Bible references I have encountered in my favorite form of literature, comic books and then take a brief look at movies and television that share similar homages to The Bible.

This is not all of them (I do not think you could find them all!) This is a small few that I have found and remembered long enough to share.

Everyone knows Superman. Clark Kent. Or back home on Krypton, he was known as Kal El. But did you know that Kal El resembles Hebrew words that translate to "The Voice of God."

The X-Man Angel was dramatically re-envisioned as Archangel when the character became Death, The Fourth Horseman of The Apocalypse; which draws heavily on The Book Of Revelation.

The X-Men villain Exodus was the chosen disciple to lead mutantkind on a migration to the stars

And my favorite Bible mention in comics comes from Ghost Rider, (which deals more with Christian notions of Heaven and Hell than with the actual Bible being as the Ghost Rider is an angel that thought he was a demon...) This is not a reference so much as an observation made through the character Johnny Blaze (who is Ghost Rider.) After learning that he is an angel, Blaze says he has begun reading the Bible and noticed that God kills millions and millions of people, while Satan (The Devil, The Adversary, etc. ) has only killed 10, Job's seven sons and three daughters and only after he makes a bet with God. Blaze says "Which one should we really be afraid of?" Now, being that I have not read the entire Bible, I do not know if this is true; however, In as much as I have read and following our class discussions I am inclined to believe this body count distribution as stated above.

(Now I want to read more of the Bible just to see if Blaze is right!)

Comics not doing it for you? Well look no further than Anakin Skywalker's virgin mother and you have a direct Bible influence on one of the greatest film series of all time, The Star Wars Saga.

Even outside of Western Culture, I have seen Japanese anime that use Cain and Abel as the central protagonist and antagonist of the series Trinity Blood.

With all of that being said, there is no doubt that the Bible has had a significant influence on every form of media, from paintings and sculptures to literature and cinema.

Moses with Horns.

That Music is For The Byrds

When I turned on the radio this morning, the first song I heard was
Turn, Turn, Turn by the Byrds.

What are the chances?

How many of you knew that the band spelled birds with a "y" ?

How many of you can sing the song if pressured to do so in class?

Well, if you can, play the clip below and sing along. It's a live version so it sounds different from the one I heard on the radio, but it's still them.

Such stuff as dreams are made on

Dr. Sexson would want me to say that "something dreamed through me last night..." (or something pretty close to that expression.)

I was Batman! It's me, so it makes since. I am Batman. And I confronted Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich about his girlfriends criminal activities. (So what if he is a Marvel character and I am from the DC Universe, we are all comic book characters, right?) Anyway, he's a smart guy and would have figured it out eventually, so I just helped him along. I am the World's Greatest Detective afterall.

And after all that, not a word about The Bible. Then why post this at all? you ask. Well, excluding the exam and the group get togethers, we talked about having dreams in class today and I actually remembered my dream for a change. So there it is. Batman. Enjoy.

Repent! The End Is At Hand!

I feel like Billy Crystal. And I haven't even seen City Slickers in its entirety.
The clip we saw in class pointed out that he needs to find the one thing that matters. But poor Billy Crystal does not know what that thing is. Nor do I. (Perhaps it is to watch City Slickers?)
Bottom line: I have been doing the dishes for the entire semester and have not noticed that Jesus Christ is in my living room. So to speak. (The Bible actually sat in my bedroom.) I devoted hours upon hours of time reading tax, audit, and cost accounting material as well as financial statement analysis and overall/managerial business functions. So I set The Bible aside because "Professor Sexson will talk about it in class. And if I come to the lectures, I will get all that I need to know."
THIS IS NOT TRUE!
I know that there is so much in The Bible that we will not cover in class, but I ignored these things so that I "could do the dishes." (not that I did them very well...) I just wish that Jesus had asked me to wash his feet. No wait... I wish I was pointed in the direction of the needful thing. (Am I now, simply by acknowledging this?) Of course, who is to say that reading The Bible is needful? If I were not distracted, I suppose I would be home writing (and not this blog entry! but a short story) Because literature is not about communicating tax brackets,

it's about sharing stories.

Unfortunately, I put The Bible down sometime in Genesis and only picked it up to get at a book that was beneath it (literally and figuratively.) That doesn't mean I have given up, I have just postponed my reading indefinitely. I am moving slowly through Plotz and working towards The Slave. I can't say I wish I spent more time on this class, because today we discussed how you can if you want to. I can say I wish it was offered year round. It took me months (I'm dead serious, from March 20th or so to September 1st) to get this class with all my business requirements. I was looking forward to this course so much because EVERYTHING has been touched by The Bible. (More on that to come.) I wanted to learn about God and Satan. I was excited to hear about Lilith and how she was part of the story, but not necessarily in The Bible itself. I wanted to study The Book of Revelations. I still can, but not in the time left in this class. We have eight meetings left? I just don't see it happening, and it saddens me because it won't be the same latter on as it is right now. This class is special and the professor is special. It is my own fault, but I am only getting out of this class what I put into it. I didn't research Lilith. I didn't blog about Satan. And I can't even remember other passed up opportunities.
The title of this entry : Repent! The End Is At Hand! comes from my own penance (a sacrament, as in the Roman Catholic Church, consisting in a confession of sin, made with sorrow and with the intention of amendment, followed by the forgiveness of the sin. from Dictionary.com) and the realization that school will soon be out.
Coincidentally enough, I must take an accounting exam soon, thus ending this post. (What are the chances?)
I hope poor Billy Crystal found his one thing and that someday I will too. And I hope you find your one thing. Because everything else is just distracting us