Author: nbrandt

Today we talked about the symbolism of the mark of the beast and apocalyptic events described in Revelations. There’s a bunch of science fiction around the apocalypse, and the Fallout series and Blade Runner stand out to me in the context of the Bible. When (or if) the apocalypse happens, the believers of Jesus Christ with be saved from the torment of the world while the rest of humanity will be left behind to fight, survive, and suffer without a savior. The Fallout games are set in a post-apocalyptic nuclear war in 2177 to 2287 (depending on the specific game in the franchise you play, the year can vary). Specifically, in Fallout 4 you play as a veteran who escapes into a nuclear fallout shelter as the bombs are dropped a few miles from his home. The shelters that house the remainder of humanity are mostly used as human experimentation facilities, and your fallout shelter cryogenically froze humans to see how long they could survive in that state. You wake up 210 years later to the post-apocalyptic world. With a biblical lens, you could look at the nuclear bombs dropping as the kingdom of heaven opening to save the believers, while the rest get left behind. Those who remain live in a brutal and terrible reality. Blade Runner can be viewed in a similar way; it’s a dystopian future where life is bleak, and corporations have more control over culture and laws than the government. The reality of this fictional story could be viewed as the kingdom of heaven having already saved its believers, and what we see on screen is the people being left behind to suffer.

The mark of the beast was an interesting discussion, because I love deep diving into the internet to find the most bizarre conspiracy theories out there, and unfortunately you don’t have to dive that deep to find them. Going over the Bill Gates and Barney are the antichrist conspiracies was very entertaining and shows how biblical interpretation and texts can be used in destructive and unhelpful ways.

In class we talked about the authenticity of the bone box that was inscribed with “Jesus brother of Joseph son of James.” The ossuary was found on the antiquity market and not dug up through proper methods of excavation and documentation. I was reminded of sci-fi media that focuses on archeology like Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones. We talked about the necessity of credentials when unearthing items like these, because it’s crucial for proper documentation to happen for the history of items like these to be correctly theorized. Indiana Jones is a professor of archeology, but throughout the movies, he does little to properly document his finding, and sometimes his actions are rarely done through legal channels. Lara Croft from Tomb Raider is more of a professional grave robber than an archeologist. In the Tomb Raider games, the adventures and findings of Lara Croft are all secret and unofficial, so the history of what she finds is usually lost.

While reading the first few sections of Matthew, I found it surprising that Herod would try to kill Jesus as an infant. Herod saw Jesus as a threat to his rule over Jerusalem, and thus ordered every child in Bethlehem born of the last two years to be killed. The three wise men that visited Jesus when he was born in Bethlehem were visited by an angel and were told to not report back to Herod and to return to their homes. Joseph was visited by an angel and was told to flee to Egypt until Herod passed. Reading through Matthew 3 and 4, it seems that Matthew is focused on the deeds and portraying Jesus as a role-model . Matthew writes in a way that highlights Jesus’s conviction and devotion to God is second to none.

Psalm 137 stood out to me out of the other psalms we had to read for today’s class. Line 9 of psalm 137 is rather barbaric and cruel for a song in the Bible. The context of psalm 137 is the writer sings about the ones who plundered them mocking him to sing a song of their land. The song is very vengeful, the writer speaks about wanting to kill the children of his enemy and how it will be a joyous occasion.

The Melodians song, “Rivers of Babylon,” is an adaptation of psalm 137, and has a very different tone than reading the text without any music. The Melodians version has a somber and depressing tone to it while psalm 137 reads as a very aggressive and hateful passage. It’s ok for the Melodians to adapt and edit out parts of a psalm to make it their own, that’s part of their creative freedom.

Proverbs has an interesting set of sayings that I had never heard of, like “a stitch in time is worth nine” which we discussed in class that it could mean that fixing a small problem now rather than later saves you much time and headache in the future. The story of Job is rather demented in my opinion. God and Satan (a title rather than a name) put Job through trials of faith when he’s already a devoted man. Ecclesiastes is a strange section of the Bible. It’s very pessimistic in relation to other books we’ve read during the semester.

In class today we talked about if there are modern prophets and the definition of monotheism and its application to the Bible. In my breakout group we named scientist and political activists as modern prophets. Scientists, in a way, bring and interpret the laws of nature and the universe to the people, which is similar to how prophets of the time of the Bible functioned. Political activists like MLK bring social change, and some people listen to the activist, while some reject their ideas for what is already the norm. Prophets either foretell future events for bring about change, so that was the logic of my group during class. The modern definition of monotheism is belief in a singular deity and rejection of the existence of other deities. The first commandment states, “thou shalt have no other gods before me,” implying that the author of the Exodus knows that other gods are worshiped within their culture. I don’t think that Christianity is strictly a monotheistic religion, given that there are angels (even though angel simply means messenger) and the reference to the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

When you Google ‘prophet’ the first definition that pops up is “a person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God.” With this definition in mind, figures like Ezekiel, Jesus, and Moses fit into the criteria for being a prophet. In class we talked about how the only way to reveal a false prophet was to wait and see if their premonitions/predictions of future events actually came to pass. It seems strange now to entrust so much into the counseling and advice from a fortune teller. The idea of a false prophet reminded me of the sci-fi game, Halo, where the main antagonist is an alien hegemony (called the Covenant) led by false prophets. Long-story short, humanity posed a threat to the entire pyramid scheme of the zealous alien hegemony. The blind faith of the followers of the fictitious Covenant and the faith placed into prophets of the Bible’s writing correlated with each other in my head during class. More of a random post, but Biblical texts and structures influence other media around us.

In Sunday-School, David was always told to me in a very positive light. He was often described as a just and noble king, but when I try to remember the stories about David, I was only told a very small portion of his battle with Goliath. I was certainly not told that David cut off Goliath’s head when he had won the battle. Every time a character from the Bible is mentioned in class that I recognize, I realize that the ink on the paper depicts a much more grim version of these characters that what was told to me at Sunday-School (maybe for the better when I was learning about these characters as a child). It’s horrific to read that David would send Uriah on a suicide mission out of jealousy after raping Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. The more we dive into the nitty gritty of the Bible, the more horrified I become that tales like these are written in the Bible. This book is definitely written for mature audiences only, and it’s astonishing how little I actually know about the Bible and its stories.

I had so closely associated the history of Israel with the stories from the Bible that it hasn’t occurred very often for me to look up the archeological or written history of Israel outside the stories in the Bible. It’s not impossible for the stories that we see in the Bible to be dramatized, abridged cultural stories of Mesopotamia. Earlier in the semester we looked at different stories, like Gilgamesh, that share strong similarities to different stories in the Bible. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written in where modern-day Iraq is located, giving it a close cultural proximity to the authors of the Bible. We also looked at two rock formations that are in both Israel and Jordan that are known to both lands as Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt. The rock formations are referenced to be the same person, and it’s not hard to image that tales and stories migrated back and forth from places like Jordan and Israel. Books like Genesis could be abridged versions of cultural tales much like Aesop’s Fables: a compilation of tales that aim to teach morals to the next generation.

Today in class we discussed the issue of slavery/indentured servitude in the Bible, and there were a few things I wanted to address about this topic. Context of when sections of the Bible were written (and to an extent, who wrote a given section) is critical when analyzing and attempting to understand the Bible. I Timothy 6 was written during the Roman Empire, which lasted from about 27 BC to 1453 AD, and Exodus was most likely written at the same time as the Greek Empire (about 1200 BC to 323 BC). The Egyptian Empire and the Greek Empire existed during the same period of time. All three of these empires used slaves and servants, so it’s crucial to understand the historical and cultural contexts of servitude and slavery of these three empires and how it may effect the authors of the Bible when they write about slavery. Slavery during the time of the Bible was more akin to indentured servitude. People would sell family members, themselves, or the entire family into servitude in order to repay debts. Those who were sold into servitude or willingly participated in it to repay a debt, could buy back their freedom, have it restored by a court (if the master behaved poorly), or have their freedom restored after a period of time, and Exodus 21 lays out the conditions for these restorations of freedom to servants. Slavery in any period of time can’t be looked at through a single lens, but should be studied for its given period in time.