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#Christian Jewish Dialogue
earthytzipi · 1 year
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I think interfaith panels should be moderated by autistic not-Christians because, as an autistic Jew, I simply would not be able to contain myself if a Christian said something disrespectful. and maybe more interfaith panels need some of that hostile energy from a moderator.
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thebichristian · 2 years
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this is why I have an issue with traditional Catholicism and/or Catholics that reject Vatican 2
great article from the ADL. it’s from 2007 but still great.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070715141249/http://www.adl.org/ADL_Opinions/Interfaith/JTA_071107.htm
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tanadrin · 8 months
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the book of job is so interesting to me because it's the closest an ancient book of religious scripture seems to come to admitting that any attempt to seek theodicy is in vain--i.e., that a plan of divine justice can't be found because it doesn't exist. like, god not only rebukes job at the end, but he completely ignores job's (extremely reasonable) demands for an explanation, and the only thing that rescues god for the reader, gives some hint that this whole "god" thing isn't a post-hoc attempt to salvage a just world out of a universe that is in fact quite uncaring about humans in particular, is the fact that job's life ends happier than it began.
and yet somehow this story became a landmark of both jewish and christian literature! i think perhaps it's because god's whole "who are you to question me" attitude to job is very useful in service of defending religious authority, and the speeches by job's friends that intimate if you're suffering you must have done something to deserve it, even if you don't know what, also can be used to defend orthodoxy when shorn of context. but as a complete literary object, the book feels to me at best a divine version of the Melian Dialogue, and maybe even as a repudiation of, rather than an attempt to defend, a notion of divine justice. like, the whole point of the story is that job is upright and blameless, that god lets satan fuck him over for no reason. we are told this explicitly. and no amount of "you are just a mortal being, you cannot possibly understand" at the end can make up for the fact that we are told explicitly in the beginning, "the moral of this story is that this god fellow is a real son of a bitch."
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somehow-a-human · 11 days
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The ineffables fell in love before the beginning, and God & Satan decided to make a bet on true love.
Okay so, this is kind of a crack theory. But if this blog is for anything, it's for divulging my crack theories, and not feeling bad about it. My other blog is where I act like a properly sane person.
I have had a lot of nebulous thoughts that led to this theory but there was one bit of dialogue that tied it all together for me, that we will discuss at the very end. I'm going to start by laying out each of my *Clues* for you below, and we'll tie all my threads together by the end. Shall we begin?
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Sanctuary Lights
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Warlock, Adam, and most interestingly Maggie all have a single red light displayed on their right hand side of their "rooms". The symbolism of the right hand side implies the sacred, good, right, and stable. It's also where we find Aziraphale in reference to Crowley when they are balance and harmonious, Aziraphale is on Crowley's right.
A sanctuary light, is a light that shines before the altar of sanctuaries in many jewish and christian places of worship. A lit Sanctuary Lamp signifies the presence of God in the tabernacle that contains the Eucharist, and are traditionally red.
It's interesting that these three characters are linked via this specific visual. The assumed anti-christ, the actual anti-christ, and the local record shop owner? All of whom were somewhat under the watchful eyes of Crowley and Aziraphale at some point, but more-so Aziraphale. The right hand sidedness of the lights is initially confusing as you might expect Adam's to be on the left given he is the son of Satan, but we do know at the end of season one that he isn't good or bad, but rather, very human. What is this telling us about Maggie? Is Maggie... Jesus?
Aziraphale & Crowley's Angelic Playlist
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Not Aziraphale and Crowley's Earthly Playlist, no no no, their Angelic Playlist.
These songs definitely tell a story. They are full of heartbreak, and longing, misunderstanding and disagreement, all while flowing with an undertow of deep love. And don't even get me started on The Book of Love. I have loved that song for so long and when I saw that was one of Neil's 3 picks for this playlist I did tear up a bit.
These songs no doubt illustrate the final 15 minutes. Aziraphale wants to leave, he needs to go to heaven to fix things, to protect humanity, and Crowley is hurt, he wants Aziraphale to run away with him. But, could they also mirror something else? Could they mirror Crowley and Aziraphale's disagreement before the Great War and the Fall? I mean it is their Angelic playlist afterall. It could have very easily been their any-other-adjective playlist.
In the Before the beginning scene we are shown, Angel!Crowley wants to stand up for the universe, and protect his creations, and Aziraphale wants to put his head down and hide. Angel!Crowley tried to do what he thought was right, and it resulted in a boiling pool of sulphur. He doesn't think Aziraphale can succeed at what he has already failed to do. This time, Aziraphale is the one who wants to stand up to Heaven and protect creation and humanity, and Crowley knows what that looks like, so he just wants to run and keep Aziraphale safe.
Maybe that's why the final fifteen hurts so much, even if they might not remember it well, because maybe they've been through this before, before the beginning.
Magic shop Ventriloquist Dummies
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Do you see the resemblance here? I really wish we could read their name tags clearly, I feel like that would give us a ton of information, and with time, hopefully we'll get that opportunity. And we do have information that each doll is named and they apparently had enough information for each of them and their dress that it warranted a spreadsheet so it must've been detailed and important. You can read that in this tweet from Mickey Ralph's twitter:
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From Mickey Ralph, Good Omens graphic designer's twitter: "I need a list of all the dummies and their names with as much information as possible for each of them. I think it would be best to have a photo of each of them and establish some kind of spreadsheet so that we can make sure the dressers put the right names on the right dummies"
It has been vaguely stated the likenesses of the dolls was not purposeful here:
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But I'd like to posit a guess that maybe this answer just means they didn't create the dolls to look like A & C, but maybe found ones that looked like them.
Do the dolls mimic the hierarchy of God and heaven? Why are there two Crowley's? Why is Muriel so far up? Was she a high ranking angel before she was possibly demoted and became a 37th order scrivner?
@noneorother has a more in depth analysis of the puppets here, if you'd like to read their take.
"Enough to Make you Believe in True Love?"
This dialogue is what set off the chain reaction that led to my ultimately writing this post. Don't remember this quote? It's easy to miss and seemingly unimportant. Just after Gabriel recovers his memories and Shax accuses Beelzebub of being a traitor we get this:
Beelzebub: "I didn't collaborate with Heaven, anymore than Gabriel collaborated with Hell. I just found something that mattered more to me than choosing sides" Maggie: "That's really sweet" Nina: "Enough to make you believe in true love?"
Maggie and Nina who are still in the bookshop and watching these events unfold have been silent, but finally share these two lines. And I finally noticed, it's kind of a weird thing for Nina to say to Maggie, no? Why wouldn't Maggie believe in true love? Why does Nina think Maggie wouldn't believe in true love? We've seen Maggie pining over Nina and saying she's in love with her earlier in the season so why might a romantic who's never even talked to the woman she claims to be in love with not believe in true love, and why might her and Nina have discussed that before?
Is this little aside a conversation really being had by Nina and Maggie?
The Job Bet
That's why he's perfect for the bet! This is the final piece to my puzzle before I wrap up my ramblings and try to coherently tell you how they fit together. God and Satan make a bet, to see if Job is really truly righteous, and loves God, even if She takes away everything she's given him. They aren't above making bets about their creations, and taking everything away from them, testing them to destruction.
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Conclusion
Let me weave you a web... The Starmaker, and Aziraphale meet in what we see is the first scene of season two. Maybe in the time before the fall they become close, and fall in love. Angels shouldn't have free will so that shouldn't be possible right? God and Lucifer!Satan? (maybe?) take notice and talk about it, maybe how they did with Job? Maybe they disagree about true love. Maybe God insists that in the ineffable plan, Crowley and Aziraphale will always end up together no matter what. Satan disagrees, they can be driven apart. They make a deal, a bet. The fall is inevitable, its ineffable, so they ensure Crowley and Aziraphale end up on either side of the factions, God lets Satan destroy everything they have, and then they'll see...
Fast forward to The Great War, the Starmaker doesn't really want to rebel like the other angels but gets swept up on their side of things, on the losing side, maybe with a bit of divine or demonic intervention. All he ever did was ask questions! He and Aziraphale are separated. Later, the Serpent of Eden slithers up next to the Angel of the Eastern Gate and strikes up a conversation. They don't remember each other, maybe a vague impression of familiarity, but the demon can't help but be drawn to the angel.
God and Satan we now know must chat about the goings on of Earth, making bets about Job and all that. That's at least my possible explanation for why Nina and Maggie have those weird lines during the Ineffable Bureaucracy reveal. Maybe God and Satan popped in to check on their bet and see what was happening with their stupid free wheeling creations?
Despite everything Aziraphale and Crowley are still together after all this time, and they do love each other. But they can always continue to be tested, even to destruction, or so they may believe.
Hey look, I'm not saying any of this is at all accurate but it was fun to come up with hehe.
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nimas-li-kvar · 2 months
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well, why not exactly like south africa? why not like any other arab country where muslims and christians and atheists and hindus live side-by-side just fine? why not like the diverse western nations that finance your state's existence? what exactly about palestinians is so Inherently Evil And Irredeemable (bc that is honestly how you sound) that they would not have the humanity and morality to treat people like people?
it's always the same fear of the day after. white south africans are alive. white american colonisers are fucking thriving. same in australia, in new zealand. immigrants to arab countries lead entire lives there. why not like any of them?
What an exhausting, insulting question... that truly has nothing to do with anything I said. I was speaking about Hamas and leftists who support their aims to dismantle Israel, not the Palestinian people.
I have never said that it’s impossible that Muslims, Christians, Jews, (and Samaritans, Druze, etc.) will live side-by-side. They already do, in Israel. There is discrimination, but they do indeed live side-by-side. What I said was that it will not happen under Hamas rule. Which is an objective fact. The Gaza strip, by the way, is currently 98% Muslim.
I also never said that Palestinians are “inherently evil and irredeemable,” nor did I imply it. You lie in order to paint me, as an Israeli, as hateful. I am not. I spoke only of Hamas. Your conflation of a militant terrorist group with civilians is unfortunate. Hamas has proven time and time again that they do not have the humanity to treat people like people. I said nothing of the Palestinian people.
While I owe you nothing, I'll have you know that I am absolutely in favor of steps towards a peaceful solution and mutual recognition of both nations. I think it is outrageous that there are Palestinian detainees held without charge. I find the number of deaths in Gaza an unacceptable collective punishment. I am supportive of cultural and economic efforts towards reconciliation (e.g., bilingual Arab-Jewish schools and summer camps, joint activism efforts, organizations that promote dialogue and cross-cultural events, shared efforts to help victims of violence, cultural exchange and language learning initiatives). I think the current government is a disaster. I want to see a world where Jews, Christians, and Muslims—and Samaritans, Druze, and Baháʼís—live in peace together in that land. The fact that you saw me saying that Hamas would enact genocide if given the chance (which is true) and interpreted that as me saying Palestinians are “inherently evil” (which I did not say) is truly sad.
The reality is Hamas is not a resistance group. It is an Islamic ultranationalist militaristic dictatorship that has kept its citizens as prisoners by stealing international aid and running military operations to commit war crimes from under schools and hospitals. It is a terrorist group that rapes, murders, and tortures civilians, including children and infants. Peace in the region will not be possible without a demilitarized Gaza. Hamas rule is incompatible with peace. If you support Hamas, you support the violent expulsion or genocide of Israeli Jews from our homeland. You can (and should) be in support of Palestinian self-determination. This belief is also incompatible with support for Hamas. Israeli war crimes do not absolve Hamas's war crimes.
Another thing I find interesting is that you refer to a dismantled Israel as “another Arab country,” and in the same breath claim that Jews would continue to live there. I wonder, was it a coincidence that you failed to list Jews in your list of religions living side-by-side, or are you aware that there are very, very few Jews living in Arab countries today? In case you are unaware, the absence of Jews from the Arabian peninsula, the Mesopotamian region, and North Africa is a result of diasporic Jewish minorities fleeing, being expelled, and/or being ethnically cleansed. Prior to that, they lived with second class status (dhimmis) under Islamic rule. As an Israeli Jew, I cannot set foot in many Arab countries today. Is that your version of coexistence?
And let us be clear: The remaining ethnic minority groups do not live in peace in the Muslim-majority countries of the region. The examples are endless. The genocide of the Yazidis by the Islamic State. The Houthi persecution of Yemenite Jews and Baháʼís. The displaced Christians from the Syrian civil war. The Middle East is rife with examples of radicalized religious extremists being entirely incompatible with coexistence with minority groups.
Yet, in your list of co-existing religions, you picked Hinduism: a minority religion that, while practiced in some Middle Eastern countries, is not indigenous to the region. Perhaps you did this in ignorance. Perhaps it was an attempt to support your point that some immigrants and migrants can indeed lead reasonable lives in Arab countries (e.g., Indian expats in the Emirates or Saudi Arabia), as ethnic minorities with a homeland to return to. Needless to say, it's an irrelevant and feeble attempt to claim that religions currently coexist well in the Muslim-majority countries. As a whole, they do not.
Let's talk about your list of colonizers next. White South Africans being alive has nothing to do with Israel. White people thriving in the USA, Australia, and New Zealand have nothing to do with Israel. Those examples are particularly bizarre anyway, as, excepting South Africa, you’ve picked countries where the colony essentially remained in place and became the ethnic majority. But none of these colonies have anything to do with Israel, because Israel is not a colony.
Jews are indigenous to Israel. We are one of a small number of indigenous Levantine ethnic groups who call that land home. The word colony requires a context we do not have–a colony for what country? What existing country is expanding territory? We are a 4000 year old nation, many of us displaced by the Romans, and who, after 2000 years of oppression and genocide both in the diaspora and in our homeland, won our independence from the occupying force in power at the time: the British. We have nothing to do with European colonizers. You cannot colonize your own homeland.
Again, that does not mean I support the Israeli government or the IDF's actions. I fully believe Palestinians also deserve self-determination in our shared land. Our status does not change the Palestinian story. It does not undo their suffering. The situation in Gaza is untenable and an outrage. Our status does not change the inhumane conditions that Israel, along with other countries (like Egypt) have placed on the population of Gaza.
But Jews being indigenous to the region matters—because the context to understand Israel is not one of colonizer-colonized. Ours is an ethnic conflict in the context independence after a long history of many colonial powers (British, Ottoman, etc.), a wider political context of Arabization and oppression of ethnic/religious minority groups in the entire Middle East, as well as a global context of hatred of Jews and Arabs, and of Western meddling.
It also matters because it highlights the fact that Palestinians are our cousins—both because many Palestinians are likely decedents of Jews, Samaritans, etc. who were Arabized and forcibly converted Islam—but also because the Arabs are our cousins too. It is important to remember that this is an ethnic conflict, and not a situation in which one group can "go home." We have to find a way to coexist. Hamas is not that way.
Is “leading a life,” as you say, enough? Well, we wouldn't be able to, under Hamas. They have made that clear. But even if a Hamas-led state made room for dhimmi-status Jewish Israelis, then no, it would not be enough. (Remember, it is not even enough for many Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship to live under our state with full rights.) Self-determination is important. Maintenance of language and culture is important. Statehood matters, for both Palestinians and Israelis. I do not believe we are ready for a fully unified state. Perhaps we never will be. But whatever the solution, it is imperative that both people have self-determination in their homeland.
And be it a unified democratic binational state, a single federal government with autonomous cantons/states that govern themselves, a "two states, one homeland" two state confederation, a fully-realized two state solution, or any other solution: the violent—and yes, evil—Hamas regime can play no part.
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figureofdismay · 26 days
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does anyone have recs for Jewish Mulder fics that are...... I don't know how to put this. That are backed by Jewish thinking? That don't have such a Christian relationship to belief and non belief and argument? about the long process of doing the work?
I mean obviously people come at these things from their perspectives and I enjoy a wide variety of perspectives on a bunch of different Mulders, but in the small subset of Jewish-ish Mulders i've read about i haven't really found. Like. Jewish Atheism is different than Christian Atheism and I do agree that it's challenging too articulate how that is without sounding like a theological essay instead of a character dialogue but. You don't need to observe Shabbat or keep kosher to still not think like this particular binary, or this societally common cluster of binaries, and it would be nice to see that expressed somewhat in this context
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myguidingmoon-light · 3 months
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“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:7)
No room. That’s something I’ve heard too much lately. Palestinians have been hearing that for 75 years. Since they were driven out of their homes—more than 700 000 of them—in 1948 to make room for the colony of Israel, there has been less and less room every day. Less land, literally, as even though lines and walls have been drawn over the years, Israel continues to illegally settle in Palestinian land. Less room to breathe, as the population of Gaza grew within the illegal blockade walling them into a tiny strip of land. Less room to live now, as Gaza has been under constant attack by Israeli bombs and guns and while the civilians of Gaza are pushed by this violence into even smaller and smaller “safe zones” (though there is nowhere safe in Gaza right now).
But also no room our conversations. No room in our imagination. No room in our understanding of our world of “human rights” and “developed nations.” You’d think “Palestinian” is a slur for how quickly it shuts up (or heats up) dialogue. These are our neighbours, and it feels like pulling teeth to get people to engage with their humanity—let alone ask their MP to ask our government to ask Israel’s government to please stop bombing civilians for the third month straight.
Today we recognize when a Jewish Palestinian family was forced by the state to leave their home, shelter in unfit terrain, give birth without proper medical care, survive a massacre, and become refugees. We Christians call the baby born in that family Emmanuel, which means God with us. God was born in Bethlehem, behind the border wall, in an occupation. What does that tell us about who God is?
Our Christian siblings in Palestine have asked us not to let this Christmas pass as usual. To that, I ask, what is Christmas as usual? If we don’t see our neighbours in the story of Jesus, what is the point? If we need to put the real, genuine injustices of the world out of our mind so that we can be comforted by Christmas, we are frankly doing it wrong. The point—the whole point—is that love and justice are possible for the unloved and the oppressed, even when it doesn’t feel that way. It is our responsibility to make that happen, and we can’t do that with our eyes closed.
You should feel uncomfortable about celebrating Christmas while a genocide is going on. We need to have room for that. We also need to have room for the hope that Christmas represents. We need to have room in our hearts for justice, lasting peace, and a free Palestine, because we are all needed to make it a reality.
And for God’s sake, CEASEFIRE NOW!
“He has brought down the mighty from their thrones/ and exalted those of humble estate;/ he has filled the hungry with good things,/ and the rich he has sent away empty.” (Luke 1:52-53)
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I am indebted to Rev. Munther Isaac for his wisdom in helping so many of us walk through this time. Personally, I just finished his book “The Other Side of the Wall”—if you are a Christian, you have to read this book. I’ll buy you a copy if you want.
I also want to note that this post isn’t really supposed to be an explainer or an argument. I didn’t cite anything here, but if you’re curious about anything I referenced (e.g. why did I bring up medical care?), send me a message and I’d be happy to give you more details about what’s happening in Palestine. I’m no expert, but I know some people just genuinely don’t know the extent of the injustice and don’t know where to learn more; if you have questions I’m happy to help, but I’m not here to fight with you.
Same deal if you want to help but don’t know how. I’m happy to give you some ideas and even help you out with them (distance permitting). One important action you can always take is contacting your Member of Parliament. You don’t have to write anything fancy—just tell them honestly how you’re feeling and ask them to support an urgent ceasefire. This is literally your right as a Canadian, so you don’t have to worry about doing something wrong.
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mademoiselleseraph · 7 months
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Ivanhoe is incredible because if a popular book today had discussions of privelege and oppression sprinkled throughout both dialogue and narration and an entire scene dedicated to pointing out that Jewish people were targeted as witches and the "evidence" of witchcraft amounted to blatant misinterpretations of the responses to threats and "she does Jewish things and knows medicine better than Christians" reactionaries on the right would complain about forcing politics into fiction.
It was written in 1819.
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apenitentialprayer · 8 months
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hey, someone i follow here on tumblr recommended me this blog for questions about abrahamic religions, so one thing i always wondered is why is pork a big no for jews and muslims, but seems to be totally ok for christians, afaik they worship the same God and follow a lot of the same teachings, and i know theyre different in a lot of stuff but this one just stands out to me
(also sorry for getting in your askbox with this demonic themed looking blog i swear i just like creepypasta)
Hey! No worries about the blog theme, I'm always happy to interact with anyone interested in genuine dialogue. :)
So, I'm going to put Islam off to the side for now, because with few exceptions (Ibn Barrajan comes to mind), Muslims did not use the shared Judeo-Christian texts to explain their prohibition against pork. Most Islamic authorities would cite verses like Surah al-An'am, verse 145, which calls "the flesh of swine" either "loathsome" or "unclean," depending on your translation. When the issue is discussed among Jews and Christians, on the other hand, they would both cite Leviticus 11:7-8, which specifies that pigs cannot be eaten because any animal that does not both (a) have cloven-hooves, and (b) chew the cud, is ritually unclean. (Pigs have cloven hooves, but they don't chew their partially digested food a second time like cows do)
There are modern Orthodox Jewish perspectives (and very early Christian perspectives, such as that of the author of The Epistle of Barnabas) that explain this prohibition in allegorical terms. The consumption of animals that have both of the traits above are symbolic of traits that the Jewish community is supposed to emulate. But that doesn't explain why Jews who follow kosher laws follow the literal interpretation of the Leviticus verses while most mainstream Christians do not. So let's talk a little about the context in which early Christianity developed.
Christianity started as a movement that developed in a Jewish cultural context, but it did not remain a primarily Jewish movement for very long. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles depicts both Peter and Philip as integrating non-Jews into the nascent Christian community, but the mission of Paul of Tarsus seems to have been a turning point in Christian history. And as more and more non-Jews became involved in the Jesus movement, there was a question of to what extent they were expected to become Jewish in order to be Christian. Paul's answer was: not at all. But this would be an issue for the Christian community for a while, even with councils like the one held in Jerusalem around the year 50.
That council declared that non-Jewish Christians did not have to follow most of the laws listed in the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, but it didn't really give a systematic explanation as to why that was. So from very early on it was understood that large sections of the Old Testament were not applicable to non-Jewish Christians, but it took a few centuries for Christian thinkers to articulate why that was not the case.
In its most mature form, we see the argument as follows: the laws of the Old Covenant (as Christians referred to the Covenant at Sinai) could be broken up into three broad categories.
(1) The Moral Law, which was binding for all people everywhere and for all time, laws that are pretty self-evident like "thou shalt not murder" or "thou shalt not steal." These are laws that are "written on their hearts," in the words of Saint Paul.
(2) The Ceremonial Law, laws God commanded Israel to follow because they had a symbolic meaning that in some way foreshadowed Christ in an allegorical way. These laws are "fulfilled" rather than "abolished" by Christ, but in common parlance that distinction doesn't seem to matter much, because either way Christ's life is believed to have ended their necessity.
(3) The Judicial Law, which were civil laws to be maintained by the Kingdom of Israel. Since the Kingdom of Israel has been non-existent since either 587 BC or 63 BC (depending on whether you count the Hasmonean dynasty as a legitimate successor state to the Davidic kingdom), these laws are essentially defunct.
Among Christians who believe the Law can be divided into these categories, they believe that the prohibition of pork is part of the Ceremonial Law, which has been fulfilled with the coming of Christ and is thus no longer binding on Christians. As such, Christians can eat pork. That's also why they can eat shellfish, wear clothing made from mixed fabrics, and cook meat and dairy together.
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hero-israel · 1 year
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What do you think of Reform Jews? I don’t have a problem with it necessarily, but I have noticed it has been the movement of choice for many anti-Zionists to convert into and it’s been making me feel iffy about reform Jews I meet lately bc I don’t know if they’re just a Jew who have been burned by Orthodoxy for their sexuality for example and just want a safe(r) space for them to be both Jewish and Gay, or if they’re a Jew who just converted to legitimize their antiZionism and antisemitism shdjdk which I know is my problem bc I shouldn’t make assumptions about ppl just bc they’re reform
You shouldn't make assumptions about Reform Jews. Or about converts either.
Converts are Jews - full stop - and must always be welcomed, as their souls were welcomed at Sinai. I find it next to impossible to believe that there is any significant trend of people converting to Judaism in order to be anti-Zionist troublemakers. Given how long and involved conversion is (and Reform conversions are just as valid), "haters coming in to attack us" probably happens about as much as razorblades in Halloween candy.
When it comes to anti-Zionist Jews, the call is coming from inside the house. To an overwhelming extent they were born Jewish along one of two paths:
Ultra-Orthodox haredi Judaism (Neturei Karta, Satmar, "True Torah Judaism," etc), who hate Israel both because it was formed by mortal men with smelly armpits instead of by Moshiach with a red heifer, and because Israel is much too tolerant and liberal with too many rights for minorities instead of being a theocratic kingdom where all non-Jewish faiths have been totally eliminated. They "support Palestine" only because it isn't time to wipe out the Palestinians yet, and are every bit as cynical and apocalyptic as the Christian Zionists who want Israel to persist until it is destroyed in the Rapture.
Raised lapsed and unobservant, with Jewish identity totally irrelevant to their lives, to the point that even antisemitism meant nothing to them, so from either the "push" or the "pull" aspects a Jewish state was senseless to them. Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Eli Valley, Norman Finkelstein, Alan Rickman, Jackie Walker, Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
It is very hard to convert to Judaism, and we should want more people to persevere through that. It is very easy to throw away a culture and history that seems totally irrelevant to oneself, and we should want those conditions to stop entirely. The latter is a much more real cause of anti-Zionism. It is totally backwards to presume converts must be bringing weakness and subversion with them. I always expect they have joined us out of love and I have never met a case otherwise. The way we slow down the growth of anti-Zionism within the Jewish community is by helping to build dialogue and warmth among people who were born Jewish but for whatever reason feel disconnected and apathetic about Judaism. Show them the community they can still have with us; when we don't, they enter college with a gnawing void of meaning inside them and are easy prey for "Jews for Jesus in Palestine" groups (i.e. If Not Now, formed and led by evangelical Christians).
And since I am Reform, my family is Reform, my children are Reform, "what I think of Reform Jews" is that we're just fine, thanks. The basic "point" of Reform Judaism is to attempt to realize equal treatment for women, LGBT Jews (with gender-neutral ceremonies if requested), and children of interfaith parents, with clergy roles available for all of the above (rabbis, cantors, mohels, etc.), and girls reading from the Torah at their bat mitzvahs; this used to be really distinctive but with overall social trends it no longer is. In terms of social politics, inclusion, and Hebrew-to-English ratio during services, a Conservative shul in 2023 is pretty much a Reform shul in 1993. Where Reform congregations do still stand out is in their full embrace of patrilineal Jews, and in my opinion other congregations should follow that lead as well. I expect they will.
I deliberately left out Jews of color from that list as I think all denominations have been poor at welcoming them. Anyone who wants to give it a go first, please feel free.
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utilitycaster · 1 year
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Feel free to answer whenever you feel like, but i just saw an ask you've answered where you said " FCG's attitude towards the Changebringer is Jewish, Imogen's attitude towards the gods is Goyish. "
As Goy myself i really would love to hear you expand on this because i never thought about it like that until now but i can kinda see it (??)
Ok now this is something i realized mid-writting this ask and, if this is something Sam thought of doing on purpose, maybe the lose cables or "hair" on FCG is a convenient way to introduce a more obvious bit of Jewish analogy by introducing an Exandrian Kippah equivalent (??)
So...this requires a lot of context that to be fair I think a lot of people might not have.
The *Lenny Bruce voice* is a reference to a comedy routine by Lenny Bruce, a Jewish comedian from the 1950s and 60s, in which he would just go through like...random things or people and assign them "Jewish" or "Goyish" based on vibes. Like...he sorts different cigarette brands as Jewish and Goyish. He calls Ray Charles (not Jewish irl) "Jewish" and Al Jolson (Jewish irl) "Goyish". It's like when people on Tumblr say "oat milk is a girl to me and almond milk is a boy" or whatever. It's cultural rather than religious, and worth noting that Goyish in this context is often equated more with WASP attitudes than with Christianity on the whole. (For more, see some brief commentary here).
This is actually based on broad philosophy and not specifics, and actually the kippah example you give is kind of specifically the sort of representation I tend to oppose, because it's frequently the representation given. A lot of Jewish representation in fiction takes surface-level elements and is like "cool! Jewish character created! Done," because they threw a kippah on someone or had them leave a small rock on a gravestone. In the Christmas episode, they'll have one character who has never engaged with Jewish culture in any other context be like "don't you mean...Happy Hanukkah?" and then that's the last you've heard of it. You can make a character who smashes a glass at their wedding until you're blue in the face but, as I've said many times, one of my favorite forms of "representation" in media remains the comic version of G. Willow Wilson's run of Ms. Marvel, a Muslim character. Because that actually understood my high school experience! That had the complexities of being in a public high school but needing to miss events due to religious obligations the Christian majority did not have, or not being able to eat the pepperoni pizza my friends ordered! That actually captured my day-to-day lived experience, rather than being like, a weird archaeological dig into "Jewish Ritual Objects And Practices" that are then pinned onto a character like they're Jewish Barbie. A Kippah placed on a character who has an otherwise extremely Christian mentality is just a hat on a guy.
So anyway the reason FCG's coin strikes me as a very Jewish practice is not because it's literally indicative of any specific Jewish rituals. It's because it's very much a dialogue with a higher power that provides a lot of room for interpretation and even disagreement. And it's very focused on the here and now - FCG comes to the conclusion that the details of the Changebringer are not going to be answered and are not technically relevant; what matters is their actions in this time. Like, the decision FCG makes in episode 53, to go into the Grand Disc to see if they can help, is explicitly "if we cannot get a direct answer from a deity, we need to focus on living out their values and helping people." Meanwhile, Imogen's initial attitude towards the gods doesn't really grapple with the idea that people have free will and actions ultimately speak far louder than words, which is antithetical to the Jewish philosophy. Like, Judaism doesn't really have a solid idea of the afterlife (there are multiple vague concepts with no real consensus other than 'really not the most important thing to focus on') and while it does have a concept of souls it's sort of like...the divine within us all. The Ruby Vanguard ideology is remarkably consistent with (for example) Calvinist predestination and presumes a monolithic attitude with little room for questioning or free will that is entirely foreign to my upbringing, and even considering it for a second feels bizarre to me. Which isn't to say it's bizarre for Imogen to do so because, well, she's not Jewish, but it is philosophically incompatible with pretty much any Jewish worldview.
This was a very long way of saying "Jewish representation for me needs to be about ongoing day-to-day lived experience and philosophical outlook and as such most representation fails because it's single moments in time - a specific holiday or custom used as a lazy shorthand for an entire diverse religion and subculture. Within a world that is always going to be incompatible with the basic tenets of Judaism re: ethical monotheism and six thousand years of highly specific historical events, what I find most relatable is attitudes towards the divine that I find compatible. And FCG's attitude towards the divine is compatible, and Imogen's is not."
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angeltreasure · 1 month
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tanadrin · 4 months
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Last notes and final thoughts on Creating the Quran:
A text does not become fixed at its first writing; ancient and especially sacred writing remain open and in flux for a considerable period after. Even after it was written down, the Quran was a text "in process."
The rasm (the consonantal "skeleton" of the Quran) does show extraordinary constancy from the time of Abd al-Malik; its vocalization was in dispute for centuries after. But the tremendous fluidity of the oral phase of development did come to an end.
Lol, the name of a scholar cited in this chapter is "Assmann."
Oral tradition can coexist with a written canon for a time: even once the Gospels had been written down, ancient writers rarely cited them word-for-word, often using relatively free transmissions and maintaining the vibracy of oral tradition. A similar process may have been at work around the Quran.
Sometimes searching for an "original text" when it comes to texts like these (including the Gospels, for instance, or the books of the Hebrew Bible) may even be meaningless; the early text-forms are in dialogue with the late oral-forms, and the former are not being produced with the specific end of creating a fixed, canonical text. Concepts like individual authorship, a complete and self-contained textual artifact, and formal publication don't necessarily apply. Canonized texts can start out as essentially aids to memory, or personal notes, that existed to be revised and extended as necessary.
The early regional codices could have grown out of such memoranda, only gradually being reshaped into more complete and polished texts. This would help account for why the Quran often repeats the same tradition in different forms, sometimes with minor differences and sometimes with significant contraditions.
For works like the Gospels, Matthew and Mark might have even been regarded as functionally "the same text" in the same way even very different oral performances of a story can be considered "the same."
The evident parallel traditions in the Quran may derive from the retelling and recomposition of traditions in different communities, or from ongoing revisions to an open text. Many of these parallel traditions are Christian ones, or Jewish ones that seemed to enter the text from Christian sources.
Extensive biographical tradition within Islam around Muhammad in particular; but it's unlikely (for reasons discussed earlier) to be reliable. The small grains of historicity within it are obscured by the narrative that has grown around them.
Some traditions in the Quran appear to originate from before Muhammad's prophetic mission, distinguished by their utter lack of intelligibility for early Muslim commentators. This indicates they were not passed down orally, since they were not altered in ways to make them relevant to the community, and so may have been written down when Muhammad and his earliest followers encountered them.
Bellamy argues there are more than two hundred words in the Quran that later commentators not only didn't understand, but didn't know how to vocalize. These could be the result of copyists' mistakes, but they're present in all Quran manuscripts, and so would have to go back to a single version.
Example: "Yuhanna" ("John") being read as "Yahya," because of the ambiguity between and without consonant-pointing. With just the rasm, Yahya is a perfectly good guess--whoever first read "Yahya" in the passages where it occurs cannot have had an oral tradition preserving the sound of the name, or prior knowledge of John the Baptist, or they would have recognized it on the basis of context.
Surat Quraysh was very opaque to interpreters, who had no better understanding of this sura than we do today; the meaning of the key term "ilaf" seems to be entirely opaque, leading to a wide array of interpretations. Difficult to reconcile this lack of understanding with Muhammad teaching it to his followers.
Final editing of the Quran must have been very conservative to retain these infelicities--typical of scriptural traditions, or at least of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
Patricia Crone proposes some parts of the Quran predate Muhammad. Michael Cook says OTOH maybe the materials that make up the Quran didn't become "generally available as scripture" until well after Muhammad's death. Neither supposition is exclusive of the other.
Gerd Puin argues that "every fifth sentence" or so "simply doesn't make sense." Gerald Hawting observes "the text taken on its own is often completely unintelligible, filled with grammatical and logical discontinuities." This puts me in mind with the weird way different sources are jammed together in the Hebrew Bible, sometimes totally muddling narratives that were clear in the original--I don't wonder if part of the problem is that different regional codices, when brought together, were harmonized in a very conservative way that left a lot of contraditions and discontinuities in the text.
Shoemaker thinks the best model is still the one where the Quran is largely rooted in Muhammad's teachings, with the inclusion possibly of some archaic and imperfectly understood textual materials, and with considerable change introduced in the process of transmission before final canonization.
Quran talks about seafaring and fishing familiarly, both things alien to Mecca and Yathrib. Ditto agriculture and vegetation, especially kinds not found even in the Yathrib oasis. Most likely elements that found their way in once the Islamic polity had reached the shores of the Mediterranean.
Similarly out of place geographical references: Sodom and Gomorrah as places passed by daily; as the audience living not far from where Lot once dwelled. Landscape of memory here is focused on Palestine, not Hijaz.
Heavy borrowing of words, including from Syriac and Hebrew, in the language of the Quran, indicating heavy linguistic contact with the Fertile Crescent.
"Vast knowledge of Christian lore" despite no Christian presence in Mecca or Yathrib, in either the Islamic tradition or elsewhere. Quran assumes good knowledge of the Torah and Gospels and many extrabiblical traditions also. The Quran's presentation of many figures from the Hebrew Bible draws specifically on Syriac Christian traditions, and not on Jewish traditions as you might suppose from the traditional account of Jews present in Medina. Its anti-Jewish rhetoric and demonology depend on earlier Christian traditions, and some passages seem to address Christian directly.
Removing Muhammad and the Quran completely from the Hijaz would make it hard to explain why Mecca and Yathrib eventually came to be so important in later tradition. It seems likely that, even though the Holy Land and Jerusalem stood at the center of the imagination of early believers, there was some historical connection to the Hijaz, and only as they began to more self-consciously differentiate themselves from Christians and Jews around them did they shift their focus to this element of their history.
It's not necessary (or tenable) to entirely detach the Quran from the figure of Muhammad. Some material in it almost certainly derives from his prophetic career in Mecca and Medina. In some cases, followers later added blocks of textual material already written down in a religious context somewhere outside the Hijaz, alongside entirely new traditions emerging from cross-cultural contact.
19:22-28 gives a compressed account of the Nativity that is found only in the liturgical practice of a particular Marian shrine just outside Jerusalem, the Kathisma church. This tradition is so obscure it's unlikely it independently made its way to the central Hijaz--it joined the corpus most likely after Muhammad's followers took control of the region, and converted this church into a mosque.
Like almost all other sacred texts of its type, the Quran is not a "book" but a corpus: texts not originally intended to be grouped together, heterogenous in origin and function, and in some cases dependent or independent of one another. Composite, but also composed, i.e., put together intentionally and carefully using techniques from a literate context, with literary polish.
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adarkrainbow · 5 months
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A brief talk about Fables and LGBT
When it comes to works dealing with oe re-creating fairy tales, I always like to take a look at any possible LGBT representation. After all, fairytales became such a monolithic symbol of a heterosexual world with no place for queer people that taking a look at non "orthodox" orientations is always one of the easiest but also deepest subversions of the genre. (There's a whole thing to say about the very strong queerness of literary fairytales from madame de Murat and the knight of Mailly to Andersen and Oscar Wilde, but we'll keep this for later - let us focus on the "popular opinion" and "random Joe or Joane" knowledge that "fairytales are for heteros only").
As such, I had to take a look at the LGBT representations in the comic book "Fables". Being one of the big names and great example of fairytale media, building an entire franchise on reinventing fairytales into a modern fantasy and marking the first American entries into the urban-fantasy fairytale world... And it is very interesting because in recent years "Fables" has come under heavy criticism precisely because of a lack of LGBT representation. You have this numerous series, that spawned numerous spin-offs, and co-existed with other great Vertigo titles filled with queerness (Neil Gaiman's Sandman to take an example)... And yet all people remember of it are "heteros everywhere". Is it true? Is Fables truly as queer-unfriendly as we recall?
This post originally began last year as a catalogue of all the queer characters in Fables... But I stopped halfway, realizing I was exhausting myself by just dissecting every little part of the comic. Not that I do not enjoy it - but I have better things to do on my free time. So instead of making a full and exhaustive list of every mention of non-hetero things, I will rather make some broad and general observations based on my knowledge and reading of this franchise.
If we look at the main series, we can only confirm this popular opinion: homosexual characters are neither primary nor secondary - they are tertiary at most. The only character I remember to have been truly confirmed as homosexual was Moss Waterhouse from "Jack Be Nimble". A very cool character - an intelligent, ambitious, charismatic, slightly morally ambiguous Black, gay and Jewish man who knows he is every minority the old world hates and doesn't hesitate to use it as a weapon, and ultimately gets the fame, the wealth and the power. A very cool character... that lasts a few issues and disappears completely. Beyond that... What do we have? Rose-Red says she had "experiences" with women before - but it is a detail thrown hastily in a dialogue of "Animal Farm", and it is unclear if she is truly bisexual, simply "experimented" in her past, or purposefully had lesbian relationships in her conscious and intense effort to break all the social taboos of the Fables community... I did notice a hairdresser that seems to be a "gay hairdresser" stereotype in "The Sons of the Empire", but after that, the series is a desert.
So, while Bill Willingham recognizes gay people exist, he clearly doesn't want to focus on them or talk about gayness in his plots. In fact, he seems to have been thinking more about them in the beginning of his comic (all the mentions above are from the first third or so of the series), before completely focusing on something else. There is not a refusal of depicting homosexuals, no, there is simply no desire to focus on them or push them forward or tell stories about them (except for Moss Waterhouse, who is a focus-character and one of the main characters of the Jack Be Nimble arc - but a tertiary character in Fables as a whole). [Note: I am only looking at here through the lense of inside the comic, but it doesn't help that Willingham is in real-life an openly Christian and old-fashioned author with some... specific ideas that do not really fit with modern sensibilities, resulting in some of the series' primary controversies, like the handling of abortion.]
HOWEVER! To say Fables is not a gay comic FRANCHISE would be a big mistake. Because while the main series is a desert with one oasis, the spin-offs are BURSTING with gay characters! Well, it isn't a Pride Parade still, but we have prominent, important, front-stage homosexual characters, and gay romances are part of the plots and character growths!
"Fairest" is probably the most gay of all the spin-offs : in "The Hidden Kingdom", Rapunzel is confirmed to be bisexual and a key part of the plot is her romance with a female kitsune. In "The Return of the Maharaja" Prince Charming is revealed to be bisexual and Nathoo (of The Jungle Book) to be gay. And in "Clamour for Glamour" Mary is in an homosexual relationship too... Not only are homosexual relationships openly depicted and primary characters confirmed as queer, but the topic of accepting these relationships is also heavily talked about - from Rapunzel facing the rejecting of a feudal Japan moral system, to Nathoo being afraid of his own feelings and Charming having to explain to him they are normal. What is especially interesting about "Fairest" is that the series seems to go at counter-flow against the main series. For example, Prince Charming is confirmed to be bisexual and to have loved at least a man before... But if I recall well, in the beginning of "Fables" Charming made clear he was NOT into guys, only girls. Another case could be brought up - Crispin, whose "gay-coding" was massively amplified in "Of Men and Mice" - in fact, it is very obviously and strongly suggested by the story that Crispin and the Huntsman are more than friends, given how the Huntsman rushes by his side and refuses to leave his hospital bed after the explosion... It is not openly said, leading to Wikipedia articles to go with the usual routine of "They're just good friends", but the way it is framed and having this "very strong same-sex devotional friendship" sandwiched between openly gay romances, it all VERY strongly implies some homoromantic feelings...
Another spin-off that deserves a good place on this list, but that is not well known (because A- it is the last of the spin-offs and B- it got cancelled due to low sales) is "Everafter", which explicitely confirms that Connor Wolf, one of the children of Snow and Bigsby, is not just homosexual, not just bisexual, but PANSEXUAL thanks to his extensive shapeshifting abilities allowing him to turn into all kinds of sexes, genders and species. And this isn't just told to us by dialogue, but also explicitely proven and shown by having Connor enter an homosexual relationship with one of his male colleagues, Tom Swift (from the Tom Swift novels).
So, what made this "queer boom" in the spin-offs? Was it because Willingham was less present, if not completely absent, allowing other voices to write and speak? Was it because it was "side-stories" that could be split from the "main stuff", and thus there could be more experiments? Was it because these series were made and written in the late 2000s and early 2010s rather than the late 90s, and so these subjcts were more on people's minds? Probably a mix of all that - after all, one thing well known is that the spin-offs were places of free experiments and competitive alternatives, resulting in contradicting plotlines that made the series semi-canons compared to Willingham's main continuity (see the dual Sleeping Beauty origin backstory).
The Fables franchise is not "anti-gay", far from it - I do hold the idea that fairytales are an inherently queer genre and so every work dealing with them for too long ends up showing queer themes at one point or another - even though it is true that the Fables SERIES is very, if not almost exclusively, heterosexual-driven. But the very open and normalized homosexuality, bisexuality and pansexuality of the spin-offs help balance this in the scope of a franchise.
Now, you might say: "Hey, you spoke of queerness at the beginning of your post, but now you're all rambling about sexualities! Where's the transgenders at?". And believe me, it was deliberate! Here is the thing - when it comes to trans folks, Fables becomes a whole other lot of complex topic. I do not know what Willingham's personal opinions of trans people are, and it doesn't really matter here because am looking at the actual created work as it can be received from someone with no knowledge of the author. Here's the thing: while the Fables main series is a desert of gayness, it develops a very strong transgender esotericism through focus on specific fairytale topics, reversal of fairytale tropes, and discussion of motifs that truly work as gender-breaking occultism. This is why anyone who reads some arcs of the main series can easily believe Willingham is trans-friendly (again I don't know if he actually IS, and from the rumors I vaguely heard, he might not be fully okay with trans people, but his work speaks a different language). If Willingham truly is against trans people, than this proves my point above: anyone dealing too much or for too long with fairytales in their work will grow queer-messages and queer-themes, that they want it or not.
On one side, you have numerous shapeshifters in this story who explicitely keep altering and changing their appearances and identities, which brings forward questions of "living into two worlds" (like the cubs, halfway between humans and wolves) or having to choose one identity other another. When this gets mingled with inhuman, cosmic entities and personified natural powers this results to some very interesting gender issues - most famous being the North Wind case. When there is talks of the North Wind getting an heir among his grandchildren, there is a whole discussion about how the North Wind will always be King of the North and of Winter... even if the new North Wind is a girl. Which, as the North Wind attendants say, lets the heir choose if they want to become male to match the title, or stay female while being called "King" - because ultimately the North Wind, being a seasonal and weather power, is above and beyond these gender considerations, and mostly uses them as attributes and titles more than anything of real substance.
On the other side, the topic of names is truly fascinating... Fables being iconic characters of popular stories, feeding off their fame and celebrity to gain power, means that they are deeply attached to their names, that their names are their essence and their being, and that these same names will keep haunting them. And yet... in the second half of the comic, we have numerous characters changing their names. Changes that not only mark deep personal growths and dvelopments, but also are accepted by others and change the perceptions of who the character is. When Flycatcher stops being a low janitor in deny, and decides to become a brave, powerful, messianic king, he returns to his original name of "Ambrose". Similarly, Frau Totenkinder when returning to her true self, abandoning the nicknames and disguises, gains a new identity so that the other Fables do not recognize her and mistake her for another person. And of course, there is how Stinky - who got a name he hated, not by choice - becomes Brock Blueheart, though this is here meant to be more of a religious allegory than anything else. But still - for anyone aware of his transgenderism works, to see this importance and focus on the power of names, of names as defining an identity, and of the changing of names to change who you are... It is hard not to see some trans motifs in the second part of the Fables comics.
But even more relevant, even more obvious, even more trans-coded, was the story of Rodney and June. This arc was the definitive proof that no matter what Willingham's personal opinions might be, Fables was a trans-friendly comic, even if maybe against the author's own intentions, or by accident. [Or again, purposefully if Willingham turns out to be cool with transgenders people, I don't know the guy]. Rodney and June, wood-soldiers, born out of trees, made of wood, part of an entire elite nation and civilization of wooden people... Are fascinated by people of flesh, dream of becoming flesh people, even if others see them as weird freaks and advise them to "keep all this hidden" not to compromise their reputation ; and their story is fully developed and fleshed out (no pun intended) from awkward and failed attempts at imitating and understanding the behavior of flesh-people (things like eating or kissing), to them openly and bravely undergoing a quest to demand that their creator grants their wish of becoming people of flesh, and be recognized as such by the empire they live in... When you read this story, it seems massively obvious that this is a barely-veiled plot for anyone dealing with identity issues and trying to change who they currently are to be true to who they want to be - and more importantly who they feel they have to be. You can't do more trans than that - from the whole "don't tell, keep it hidden" behavior of the awkward friends around you to the secret experiments and roleplayings in the privacy of the bedroom...
In conclusion: Next time someone says Fables is homophobic, point out to them that the comics themselves are not. The main series might not have prominent gay stories or characters, but it has some very strong transgender motifs and characters (accidental or not, they're here, they're queer and people have to deal with it) ; while the spin-offs are bursting with unashamed gay romances and explicit lesbian sex. It is definitively not the greatest franchise when it comes to gay representation, but it cannot be said it isn't a queer comic in its whole.
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alpaca-clouds · 8 months
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Religion in Castlevania
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So, uhm. Castlevania has a strange relationship to the concept of religion, right? The games are of course Japanese and to the average Japanese person Christianity is about doused in as much mysticism and alieness as Shinto is to the average white person. As such the games do kinda mirror this like many other Japanese media with European inspired settings. We will get a lot of Christian symbolism and maybe a line or two referencing it, but as much as the average western story using Shinto and Buddhism, it is barely more than set-dressing. It is not offensive or anything, just also not very in depth
The series meanwhile runs into the opposite problem. It is a western production first and foremost and in western circles the relation people have towards religion is... complicated. Especially when it comes to Christianity. Because the fact is that you really can only do wrong.
You show Christianity as something positive? Yeah, fuck it, you are doing white supremacist propaganda (because Christianity sadly is tied to that other believe as a vehicle. Not because of anything inherent to Christianity, just because of history). You show Christianity as something negative? Fuck you, you hate all Christians and are basically the antichrist time to boycot you!
Which leads to the interesting phenomenon that Castlevania has a Muslim character whose relationship with his religion is in depth explored. While Christianity... is somewhat iffy.
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First and foremost: The only explicitly Christian characters we have are bad guy who get killed within the first season. Namely the bishop and the arch bishop. Who of course use their religion as a tool to spread hatred. In this case of witches. (Note to self: Write a blog about witch hunts.) And then there are of course the corrupted monks in season 3. The show does not go so far to imply "Christianity = Bad", especially as the show does have some no-dialogue characters who end up siding with the protagonists and what not. But... It also does not have an explicitly positive portrayel of religion, right?
Now, from our main characters outside of Isaac we barely know anything about their religious affiliation.
We know that Sypha believes in Jeshoa (Jesus) and some of the bible stories, but in a way that actually frames God as a vengeful, bad god, rather than a force of good. This is never further explored, though. It is basically two lines over the course of the series we get. All we know is: Yes, she believes it. She things Jeshoa was okay and that God is bad and hates the speakers.
And for the others?
We know nothing about the relation Trevor and Alucard have towards religion, and while there is like two very vague hints that Hector might be of Jewish descent we also do not learn much about that.
And it is kinda ironic, really. While the games do have very little in terms of dialogue linking Alucard to Christianity, there for sure is endless symbolism of him holding rosaries and what not. And it would have been interesting to explore.
Especially given that I also think that the relation between Dracula/Mathias and religion would be super interesting to explore and would be fun to see more about. But of course... we do not get that.
And while it is to be assumed that the Belmonts should be Christian... Well, outside of him cussing out God a lot, there is not a lot of him and his religious affiliation going on.
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Which is kinda a pity. Because I found it makes for interesting storytelling. Especially in a world like this.
I mean, we know for a fact that priests can bless water and through this act turn it into a weapon against vampires and demons. And it would be such a fun thing to discuss, whether this actually means they get that power from God - or whether they just use a sort of spell. (Especially given that I somehow doubt that God is gonna channel his power through an undead bishop, you know? Making me think that the zombie bishop rather uses a spell.)
Side note: I would've totally loved to see Isaac use some Muslim prayer to hurt a vampire or demon. That would have been kinda fun - and it is something we barely see in media.
But there is of course more than that: The people in the Castlevania world (especially the series) live in a world where the existence of the afterlife is undeniable, based on the fact that people can literally summon souls from there. People can have a long discussion on whether or not that actually is hell - but it is undeniable that it is an afterlife. It is a place where souls move to after death.
And I do have to wonder how that would affect the people's relationship to religion?
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I honestly never realized how interesting it is to write about religious characters. Because due to my own religious trauma, I just stayed the hell away from religion in my writing. Like, sure, in my own vampire novel there is a subplot about the main characters religious trauma (being a queer kid in a conservative Christian household). But she had left her religion behind and all that.
So... me writing Isaac in my fics was literally the first time I ever wrote a religious character in a story who was not framed negatively. And I learned that it actually... can do so much to enrich a story. Because it allows you as a writer to have yet another point of view to frame the story through.
And yes, it also ended up with me thinking a lot on religious backgrounds for the characters and their relation to religion - especially inside a world, where, again, the existence of an afterlife is undeniable.
And honestly, one of the favorite things to me in terms of writing was this bit about Gilles de Rais loosing his religion, upon realizing the corruption of the church. As a more gutteral and painful experience, than I have written before.
Also: Yeah, I have FlysEyes (who I have christened Nicolai, to give him a proper name) still a practicing Christian. Because that is kinda fun.
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jinruihokankeikaku · 1 year
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I still firmly maintain that despite the creators' somewhat glib comments to the effect of "the [Christian/Abrahamic] religious imagery in the show was just there to look novel/unfamiliar/cool to a predominantly Japanese audience", it would be incorrect (or at least a bit short-sighted) to dismiss outright the presence of religious themes in Evangelion.
While the show was certainly never intended to have a religious (let alone a proselytic) *message*, explicit discussion by characters of...
divine beings (神) and their intentions
lowercase-a angels (that is, 天使 tenshi rather than the in-universe beings 使徒 shito)
the immortal/metaphysical soul (that is, 魂 tamashii rather than 心 kokoro)
...are all present across multiple episodes in the series.
Additionally, on at least one occasion (namely, in Episode 23', by Fuyutsuki) the term 依代 yorishiro (a Shinto term that, as I understand it, denotes a physical object or location inhabited or relied upon by a divine or spiritual being, generally rendered as "vessel" in English translations) is used to refer to Rei. And of course, the Chamber or Doors of Guf feature prominently in the show's plot - "Guf" being a term borrowed from Jewish mysticism. (And, while the Guf referred to in the show may be used in a context largely divorced from its original cultural context, its role in the series would seem to imply the existence in-universe of a metaphysical soul.)
I could go on - references, for example, to concepts of "sin" and "salvation" that seem to parallel a Christian moral ethos or something like it, and to "Eden" by name, also show up - but I'll stop there for brevity's sake. While it's true that such discussions as these do not seem to hold the show's focus as much as, for example, the show's more widely-recognized themes regarding psychology/psychoanalysis, sexual desire/love, and familial bonds/estrangement, they are (I believe) significant nonetheless, especially when set against the backdrop of religious imagery the show presents.
To me, the significance of the characters' occasional remarks on metaphysics is best understood in conversation with the show's existential or Absurd themes - they represent the characters' and, by extension, the narrative's search for meaning in a world in which science has found the soul but has yet to find a higher power. There exists a meta-dialogue in Evangelion between the disciplines of science and metaphysics, between humanity and that which lies beyond humanity's control or understanding. To dismiss this dialogue out-of-hand is, I think, to dismiss thematic facets of the show that complement its central thesis on loneliness, human relationships, and existential and interpersonal angst.
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