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cosmonadarovicarts · 4 months

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Theory: Carmilla would be Eve?

Among so many crazy theories (and I love it!) after this season, I'm going to bring my (crazy) theory. As the title already reveals, what if Carmilla Carmine was our missing Eve? Before you throw hate, here are some points:

-In some versions of the myth of the creation of Adam and Eve, Eve was condemned to hell (while Adam went to heaven). If the series goes down this path, the character wouldn't be in heaven;

-Carmilla's name: Originated from Hebrew culture. Carmila/Carmela/Carmilla/Carmile means garden, orchard. Well... I don't think it would be too much of a coincidence for the name to mean that (garden... Garden of Eden...).

-Eve was created from Adam's rib. Here I come up with the theory that the exorcist angels guided by Adam (including Vaggie) were created from his ribs (like Eve). This would explain the similarity in appearance of Vaggie, Lute and Carmilla.

--Carmilla's personality: she is super protective! The super mom of the series (so far). It is to be expected that Adam's second wife, mother of humanity, would be maternal./ "but she was presented as the mother of only two characters" man, she still seemed super worried about the day of extermination (she called a meeting with the Overlords precisely to think of ways to stop this), after all, the sinners were their descendants! (I'm not going to talk here about Adam's relationship with sinners, that would be worth another post) And, the same time, the exorcists would be like her sisters who she was reluctant to kill. I would also like to add here, I think Zestial could be Cain (one of his main sons and, precisely, the first sinner, as he killed his other brother Abel), this would explain the affection that Carmilla has for Zestial and for them both being the oldest Overlords! (Cain died before Eve in many versions of the myth) /Sure, they might just be good friends, but to me it made a lot of sense, my bad

-Her appearance: I've already commented on her resemblance to Vaggie (the two even duet two songs, expressing similar feelings), but now let's compare her appearance with her hair down with Eve's silhouette in the first episode (just look at the image I posted here) , it's identical! And of course, the second wife would have to be beautiful, and Carmilla is said to be beautiful.

--"ok but it is much more likely that she was one of the exorcist angels, taking into account her appearance and knowledge, why would Eve have an appearance similar to these angels?" Precisely because they came/were born from the same place, Adam's ribs! When Eve died, her demonic form still assumed that of a beautiful woman with large hands (representing her need to be able to hold, care for and hug everyone). Maybe Adam knew or didn't know how Eve was doing, and made his female army similar to his ex-wife (For me, this part would have several possibilities, like, him purposely making the appearance of the exorcists or it would just be because they were all born from the same place)

-In the final episode, when the news reports about what happened at the Hotel, the reactions of several characters appear, and there was one (emphasis?) in Carmilla's reaction to Adam's death (I imagine that, because she was against the extermination of sinners (her descendants) while her ex-husband, who lived in heaven, led this extermination, she should not have good feelings towards him).

Final note: Even if she is not Eve, probably she was one of the exorcist angels (as many already theorize), as she knew about the angelic weapons, knew of Vaggie's identity and her appearance.

(Sorry if there are a lot of grammatical errors, English is not my native language)

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tonkysexist · 1 year

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So, why are so many iconic comic characters the product of Jewish creators? I’d love to answer that.

Superhero comics were primarily the creation of Jewish people. You might not know Stanley Lieber, Jacob Kurtzberg, Robert Khan, or Milton Finger. But, if you’re a comic fan, I can guarantee you know Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, and Bill Finger. These pen names were adopted to make their Judaism less obvious out of concern for the stigma and their safety. Comics (in general) were an industry populated by Jewish creators, because they were seen as a lesser art form that mostly existed outside of the mainstream newspapers. Many Jewish creators went to comics when they struck out in other fields (I believe the creators of Superman originally tried to go into advertising).

Jewish ideas and culture contributed so much to what we see in comics. Kal-El is Hebrew-named baby who shares an origin with Moses (Superman is Moses not Jesus. That particular choice in any media is a pet peeve of mine). The earliest version of Captain America was golem-like and fought Hitler directly. And the well… everything about the X-Men is Jewish. The ideas about them being a “human passing” minority. Fights about integration. Constant questions of identity. The importance of the “coming of age” for young (13 y/o) mutants. Even before Chris Claremont put it more explicitly in the narrative, the X-Men were always Jewish.

There are plenty of contemporary examples of Jewish and Jewish-coded characters and stories in comic books, and I hope to have 8 different posts this Chanukah explaining a few of my favorites.

#marvel #marvel comics #dc comics #x-men #captain america #superman #chanukah #hanukkah

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cassandraclare · 6 months

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Happy Hanukkah! I hope you’re well.

Vaguely related question I guess. The parallels between the Jewish and Ashkari people were one of the things I loved most about this book. It’s not often you see a Jewish-coded character in a fantasy book - let alone as a hero. I saw in the acknowledgements you had a lovely Hebrew consultant - what were the challenges of creating a whole language? (Plus Sarthian and all the others??)

Hello! Yes, we don't see Jewish or Jewish-coded characters much (though more now than when I was growing up, and I felt very shut out of fantasy and fantastical worlds as it all seemed to contain a definite, sometimes unconscious, Christian bent). And often when we do see them, they're some variety of evildoer or hook-nosed goblin type.

I very much wanted to dig into my own cultural and religious background to furnish the mythology that underpins the Ashkar and their magic. Gematria (gematry in the book) is a Kabbalistic tool that can be used in the creation of the kind of amulet that Kel wears. Jewish readers will recognize mentions of specific names (Judah Makabi) bits of Hebrew (Shomrim, Sanhedrin) among other words and names extrapolated from Hebrew and Jewish history.

Ashkar is not Hebrew though. It is a "real" imaginary language in the sense that it was constructed to have a working system of verbs and nouns and conjugations and so forth. I didn't create it myself, because I am not Tolkien, who was a philologist first — a professor of languages and how they work. I worked with a conlanger, Matthew AbdulHaqq Niemi, who had a background in Biblical Hebrew, modern Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. We traded ideas back and forth, and he created a glossary and even written poetry in Ashkar. He and the other conlangers I worked with are thanked in the back of the book.

Matthew's translation of El Nora Alila into Ashkar:

Afaryaš vēmū, Afaryaš hazānū, Oqošakedsā-mav dayn fī tsīa,

God of awe, God of might, Grant us pardon in this hour,

Dalī kol Tasī-qēōt oslōg dayn lešex tsīa,

As Thy gates are closed this night.

#sword catcher

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vaspider · 6 months

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What got you to "discover" judaism is for you ? What memory do you hold of the first jewish holiday you celebrate as a child of Abraham ?

Im not sure if that is how I should say it, but happy Chanukah :)

I remember the first time that someone explained the concept of tikkun olam to me, and the idea that the Moshiach won't come to save us but will arrive once we have prepared the world and made paradise ourselves. It was like my brain... rang like a bell. I don't know how else to explain it -- it's like suddenly every problem I had with my Evangelical upbringing and how Evangelicals handle responsibility and forgiveness and all of it just... worked, suddenly. And the more I've studied since then, the more in love I have fallen with being Jewish, with our people, with our sense of humor, our perseverance. It was like coming home.

And it helped very much that Owl, who used to be on here but left several years ago, was coming home to Judaism at the same time, so he was rediscovering a love for Judaism while I was falling in love with it.

The first holiday I celebrated after my beit din was Shabbat. I was called up to the bimah, given my Hebrew name, and got to hold a 400-year-old Torah which was smuggled out of what is now the Czech Republic during the run-up to the Shoah. The community it came from was completely obliterated in the Shoah.

That Torah is in such fragile shape that when I was adopted, it was never read. It was only used for conversions and for the confirmation class every year, and carried around the sanctuary on holidays in a procession called hakafot, or circuits. Since then, they've placed it in a specialized conservation case in the memorial alcove because it's too fragile to even be carried.

I was asked later if it was heavy, and I said, "not at all, and immeasurably."

Chag Sameach. :)

#jumblr #judaism

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queer-ragnelle · 3 months

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Hi! I really want to read the vulgate cycle but I have a hard time staying focused when reading it. Are there any sections of the vulgate that are not as important to the understanding or able to skip? Thank you so much for making all these stories accessible and thanks for your reply :))

Hello my friend! This is a great question and one I get a lot. The Vulgate Cycle is long and daunting, but I can help you navigate it!

Firstly, here is the full Vulgate Cycle PDF collection for everyone to read. Secondly, I'll summarize what you can do, and elaborate below a cut.

TL;DR

If reading a PDF, use CTRL+F to find your favorite character's name/stories.

If reading a physical copy, utilize the index (located at the very end of the Post Vulgate) to find them.

Discover chapters of interest from the summary page (also located at the very end of the Post Vulgate).

Skip The History of the Holy Grail and begin with The Story of Merlin or Lancelot I.

Now, let's break down the ways you can navigate the Vulgate Cycle step by step.

CTRL+F

This option will certainly be less effective if your favorite character is a prominent one such as Lancelot or Gawain as they appear a million times. However, if you want to learn more about someone else, say, the Lady of the Lake, you can search her up and find every instance of her appearance. Like so.

Index

In the very back of the final book of the Post Vulgate, there's an Index listing every named character [Ex: Gawain], location [Ex: Orkney Isles], entity [Ex: Holy Spirit], animal [Ex: Gringalet the horse], and language [Ex: Hebrew] mentioned in the entirety of the Vulgate Cycle. There you'll find a list of which book/chapter/page they appear in. Here are all the mentions of Gawain's horse in The Book of Merlin.

Chapter Summaries

Each book of the Vulgate Cycle has a Table of Contents with the chapter numbers and long, descriptive titles. That alone may give you an indication of what you want to read. However, at the back of the Post Vulgate, right before the Index, there's a list of every chapter in the Vulgate Cycle with a summary of events. That will give you more detail and may help you decide if you want to read in full.

Skip

If it sucks, hit da bricks. The beauty of the Vulgate Cycle is that you don't need The History of the Grail or The Book of Merlin to understand what comes later. I enjoy them because History gives a ton of background to the religious themes the Grail Quest will eventually explore and sets up all the motifs way in advance and Merlin has the Orkney Bros as well as Yvain and Sagramore as kids which is fun. But the fact is you can begin with Lancelot I and you won't be lost. Lancelot I was written first, Merlin is a prequel, so it's optional, and the motifs of the Grail Quest are going to be heavy handed when you get there anyway without the added stuff from History. That's hundreds of pages you can skip if you want to! Norris J. Lacy, the head editor, and his translation team did a phenomenal job with footnotes throughout, so if a character off-handedly refers back to something, you can rely on them to leave a little note at the bottom for you to refresh your memory with. It'll even give you a chapter/page number if you want to refer back yourself. Here's a footnote referring to Agravaine's unnamed amie [his ladylove] who helped wing woman her sister to romance Gawain. That was 4 chapters prior to this moment.

So there are plenty of ways to navigate the Vulgate Cycle and make it more digestible. That being said, it's translated so beautifully by Lacy and his team, that it reads like a modern novel. I have no doubt that once you get started, you'll become invested, and find it much easier to work through than you first thought. It's long-winded and character dense but it's fun. I do hope you're able to read it and understand why I love it so much! Thanks for this ask and I hope this helps. Have a great day!

#arthurian legend #arthurian legends #arthuriana #arthurian mythology #arthurian literature #the vulgate cycle #the vulgate #vulgate #post vulgate #quotes #resource #reading recommendations #my post #ask

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catinasink · 1 month

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welcome to the sink ig

have i hit post limit? no

most recent edit: 21.5.24

general

who the fuck are you?

call me cat or nico or pluto or octavian or neptune or leo or calypso or eris (any nicknames welcome (please)). any pronouns or none; see bottom of intro post for more info, check this post, or ask

MINOR. (nov. 8). i dont really care who interacts with me but i will judge you if youre 18+ and follow me, and may block you or softblock you

i use a fuckton of labels; main ones are agender polyam aspec (cupiro + aegoace + apl) and pan

what do you post about?

usually original posts ig

i reblog and talk to my moots often

i might make a fandom post or reblog a fandom post once in a while

i post lyrics from songs

i gaypost

i also ventpost sometimes; those are usually under the #delete later tag and have rbs turned off, and i try my best to tag it properly. please dont talk about it im sorry :'3

family, pets, irls, etc?

one older sister (she/her)

two cats (kim + shego (aka floorshitter)

the irl i mention the most: pissboy / pb (he/they)

can you tag me in tag games or send me chain asks?

i dont participate in either. please dont.

timezone?

PST

dni?

nsfw/nsft blogs, terfs bigots zionists etc etc

boundaries?

unless you have permission, dont call me your friend. dont use the /p tonetag either. dont dm me without asking

what kinda terms can i refer to you as?

masc + neutral terms are preferred, but honestly i dont think i really care as long as you switch it up ^^

other info

INTP-T

scorpio sun, sagittarius moon, scorpio rising

i speak english + russian, learning german + hebrew

sorry if i sound rude when talking to you, i promise im not trying to

five sideblogs, including @nymph-of-the-sea

matching descriptions with @shrimpysstuff, matching banners with @homoashell

if my vent posts dont have rbs turned off; pls lmk so i can turn it off because i forget sometimes

i have a family apparently

i swear + i use the word faggot to describe myself, sorry

i also have two lovely qpps btw. shout-out to them <33

tags

pretty much everything: #cat's rambles

asks: #cat's asks

writing (i dont use this one often for my writing posts, sorry ;-;): #cat's writing

art: #cat's art

schoolposting: #cat's schoolposting

lyricposting: #cat's lyricposting

music that i wrote: #cat's lyrics

yearning sigh: #nico catinasink is yearning

queued posts / scheduled posts: #queue you

@this-is-me-lolol: #basil my beloved <3

pissboy: #my lovely pissboy

sink lore: #happenings of the sink

blender anon: #cat's blender anon

dreamscape nexus (oh we havent done that in a while damn): #dreamscape nexus

more about my names + pronouns

you can use any prns for me and any names that i use for me, however, for my names i do somewhat have pronouns that i feel match them? you dont have to abide by this but if you want to you can, list below

cat, it/its

nico, he/they/it

pluto, it/they/he

neptune, it/they/she

octavian, it/he

leo, he/she

calypso, any

eris, she/it/they/he

have a good day

#intro post!#<- prev ones in there #imp.#<- tag for important shit for me

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reddje · 3 months

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losers fic writers what are ur losers middle names since they don’t have canonical last names 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️

i’ve been writing losers club / it fics for seven years so i’ve had plenty of time to perfect their middle names so here they are

eddie

eddie’s middle name when i write him is always isaiah. it’s biblical, it’s pretty, and i just think eddie’s mom is very much about pretty perfect things and edward isaiah kaspbrak is just a pretty little name

richie

alwaysssss wentworth! always! richard wentworth tozier is so ingrained into my mind that it’s almost canon to me. i just think wentworth and maggie are the type to name their kids after themselves and when richie was born they were like okay cute, little boy, dads name as his middle name.

stan

i think stanley asher is so cute and it’s also a popular name in hebrew and it goes well with his last name so i do love it. truth be told i did do a little digging when i was 14 and needing a middle name for stan and asher was one of the names that kept showing up on popular jewish names websites so it kinda just stuck w me. stanley asher uris ur so famous to me <3

bill

william henry 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️ william henry denbrough 🤷‍♀️ and georgie’s middle name is james, even though he’s the only one with a canonical middle name 😭

mike

mikes middle name is william bc it’s his dads name , but i also think he could’ve been named “michael leroy hanlon” after his grandfather. i tend to go with william though !

ben

benjamin alexander!!! so so cutie pie just like he is.

bev

beverly grace just screams at me idk. i just feel like her dad would’ve picked it, and she hates it, but richie found out about it and calls her by it all the time and it’s grown on her hearing him call her it. (bc they’re bffs)

#it 2019 #eddie kaspbrak #it #it chapter two #richie tozier #it movies #it stephen king #reddie #beverly marsh #stanley uris #bill denbrough #mike hanlon #ben hanscom #georgie denbrough #losers club hc #reddie headcanon #losers headcanon #it headcanons

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glitterslag · 7 months

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anthroponymy in the bear

Apologies if someone's done this already, but I've been thinking a lot about the names of the characters in The Bear, and how almost nothing in this show is accidental. It's led me to wonder whether the names chosen are also intentional and if they can tell us anything about the characters and their journeys.

Firstly, we have Michael. The name is derived from a Hebrew phrase meaning ‘who is like god’ (often posed as a question). It’s fitting in my opinion. His character certainly is a godlike presence, his influence and love felt but not seen in The Beef. As the eldest sibling, he’s presented as a leader, and Carmy and Richie worship his vision.

There’s a creation aspect with Mikey. He plays god from beyond the grave, literally breathing life into The Bear through the money he stashed in the tomato cans - we have him to thank for its establishment.

The tomatoes remind me of the bible story of the feeding of the five thousand. In this miracle, Jesus is able to feed five thousand hungry people from just a few loaves of bread and a few fish. In ep 1.08, a humble tin of tomatoes - just as much a symbol of modesty as a loaf of bread - is opened to reveal a wad of cash. From this money comes The Bear, which hopefully will go on to feed just as many hungry mouths, if not more!

Interestingly, 'michelin' is a diminutive of 'Michel', an alternate spelling of Michael. I wonder if there's a connection there? Maybe the key to The Bear earning its Michelin star will lie with Michael? A recipe of his, or a piece of advice he gave Carmy? (Sidetracking, but I just think it’s cool!)

Next, we have Carmy, who’s full name is Carmen. I’ve looked at a few sources, and there seem to be a couple of different meanings for his name. The Latin meaning comes from the word for a song or a poem. The Hebrew meaning is garden or vineyard.

‘Song or poem’ to me reflects Carmy’s creative nature, his love of cooking and drawing. ‘Vineyard’ is interesting, considering that Donna is an alcoholic, and that as far as we know, Carmy is either sober or drinks very little.

Carmen is also a gender neutral name. For me, one of the significant themes of the show is masculinity, and how different ideas of masculinity are warring with each other. To me, Mikey and to an extent Richie represent one particular masculine ideal, one that’s maybe a bit toxic. Carmy meanwhile is not painted as the stereotypical masculine guy. Richie often insults Carmy’s masculinity, jeering at his culinary training, being homophobic, making fun of his lack of experience with women.

There’s so much I could say about this dichotomy, even right down to the dishes that are associated with each character. Richie’s idea of The Beef serving ‘food of the working man’. The sandwiches - their red meat fillings. Mikey’s spaghetti, in its simplicity, its earthiness, its history as a staple food of the working class. To me, it’s a masculine, down to earth dish, very at odds with the fancier, more elegant dishes we come to associate Carmy with.

Then we have characters such as Luca and Marcus - both of whom are associated with baking. You don’t have to be a genius to know that baking is seen as a feminine art. Luca and Marcus arguably don’t fit the macho man ideal either - both of them being depicted as a lot more gentle, calm, and creative types.

Next - Sydney. It’s an Old English name, and there are a few different interpretations of it that I could find. One is ‘wide meadow’ or ‘wide water meadow’.

When Syd breezes into The Beef in ep 1, she’s literally a breath of fresh air. She’s a meadow! Her vision for what the restaurant could be, both in terms of the food served and the way the kitchen could be run (i.e. mutual respect, a smooth chain of command, no psycho bosses) is an idealistic vision, a utopia, a garden of Eden type image.

This brings me to the link with Carmy’s name:

Remember how one of the meanings of Carm’s name was garden? In my opinion, this similarity only reinforces the writer's intentions for us to see Syd and Carmy as kindred spirits. Gardens, meadows… both peaceful, calm, beautiful places. To me, it tells us they’re each other’s peace. It also tells us if they learn how to work together, they can create that ideal vision for the restaurant that they both crave.

Another interpretation of Syd’s name is that it means island or island dweller. This brings to mind the phrase ‘no man is an island’, which to me perfectly summarises her character’s central struggle. The phrase means that humans need each other. We need support, and we can’t do things alone. I think Sydney is shown as someone who can be prone to bottling things up, and maybe finds it difficult to ask for help and to be vulnerable. She’s not shown as having many family and friendship connections, and we see a lot of scenes where she’s alone - eating in restaurants, on the train, cooking at home. In that sense, she is a bit of an island, and I hope we see her become able to rely on others a little more in seasons to come (and hopefully Carmy gets his act together enough for her to trust him to be her support!).

Next up: Jimmy. Short for James, a derivative of the Hebrew Jacob, it means ‘supplanter’. A supplanter means someone who takes the place of something else, like a usurper. Now, in ep 2.06, Jimmy and Donna’s dynamic was a little suspect, and I think a lot of people would agree that we’re supposed to infer something was going on there, with Cicero figuratively and perhaps literally taking the place of Bear senior. My theory is that there was an affair, and that Jimmy is actually Mikey’s father. JAW and Abby Elliott look pretty alike I’d say, while John Bernthal has quite different features. Was this intentional? Who’s to say, but I think there’s definitely a case to be made for there being two different fathers. Equally, Mr Bear could be Mikey’s dad, while Jimmy could be Nat and Carm’s true father - he has their lighter hair and eyes, so who knows!!

In Genesis, Jacob supplants his twin brother by buying his birthright. In the show, Jimmy attempts to buy the restaurant, which of course once belonged to Carmy’s dad. Although the show doesn’t give us the full story of the pair, we gather that Jimmy and Bear Sr. were old friends who were almost more like brothers, until a feud ruined their relationship. Interesting for sure!

Next is Tina. Short for Christina, which means ‘follower of Christ’. Her last name, Marrero, is interesting. Deriving from Spanish, it means stone-breaker or hammer, reflecting her strength of character. She’s a single mother, an immigrant, and has been working in male-dominated kitchens with all these shitty, angry men for years. As far as we know, she was the only woman at The Beef pre-Syd. She dealt with Mikey and Richie’s shit for years. You’d have to be pretty fucking tough.

On the other hand, T is so warm and kind underneath it all and seems able to penetrate through the other character’s exteriors relatively easily - Richie, Carmy, Ebra, Syd. They can all be pretty grumpy, but they all have SUCH a soft spot for Tina and only Tina. She’s the stone breaker to their stony surface! 💖🥰💖🥰

Okay those are the main ones I wanted to talk about, but here’s a few more in brief:

Richie: short for Richard, which means strong or brave ruler/leader. In the final episode, we see Richie leading expo and doing a great job. He’s finally living up to his name - literally finding his purpose.

Donna: means lady in Italian. Madonna, or ‘my lady’ is another name for Mary, Jesus’ mother. The ‘mother of victory’ referenced in the prayer that Carm, Nat and Richie say before the soft open is the same Mary. Whilst Donna definitely doesn’t share many characteristics with Mary, I think the comparison is useful in showing the bear kids’ conflicting view of their mother. They of course still love her and crave her love and her blessing for the restaurant in return.

Natalie: means ‘birth of the lord’, literally, ‘Christmas’. There could be a connection here to the Fishes episode, which takes place on Christmas.

Pete: short for Peter, it means rock. When Jesus made the disciple Peter the first Pope, he said, ‘on this rock I build my church’. Pete is Nat’s rock and I think that’s beautiful!!!!!!

Ebra: short for Ebrahim, an alternate spelling of Abraham, which means 'father of many'. He’s a father figure for The Bear!

I know there are a couple I've left out from the main cast, one being Marcus, whose name means 'follower of Mars', the Roman god. I'm still figuring out whether there's a significance there - I'm sure there could be. Maybe I'll do a part two with the rest of the characters!

Anyways I just think it's neat how fitting a lot of the names are... and I really don't think a lot of them were accidental!

Pls feel free to add on and/or correct me if I got anything wrong!

#yeah i'm riddled with catholic guilt for all eternity but at least i can make the bear meta #the bear #the bear meta #sydcarmy #(tagging sydcarmy cause i know the sydcarmy army love the meta)#sydney adamu #carmy berzatto #the bear hulu #the bear fx #jeremy allen white

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fairuzfan · 2 months

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During ancient times there was the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. But according to the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) there was also the United Kingdom of Israel. BUT the thing is that a lot of ancient history about Jews is written in the Tanakh. And you can never really 100% trust religious books as historical sources. The Tanakh was written on stuff that can actually be preserved. While possible other sources on history of the Jews and other groups were written on things that perished. There is a lot of debate about the extent of the United Kingdom of Israel or that it even existed.

You have two kinds of historians when it comes to the Hebrew Bible:

The maximalists: accept everything unless proven incorrect by outside sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_maximalism

The minimalists: Hebrew Bible is limited in historical value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_minimalism

Thanks so much for these links actually while looking at "biblical minimalism" I recognize some of the authors being cited in some of the works I read. I should check them out.

Also love reading academic beef the way that both groups named each other's "study" but neither operates with those labels lmaooo classic academics.

But also so people don't misunderstand me or try to take me out of context regarding this whole discussion: I also don't think the Quran is a 100% accurate historically, and it's stories are mostly used to educate on certain topics and ideas as it's primary purpose (think of aesop fables when i say this). Of course religiously I believe in the Quran, but most of the Quran is written in poetic verses in arabic and even as a baseline Muslims believe there's more to a quranic translation than just the direct translation. In quranic book history what we focus on a lot is the way books were made throughout history moreso than the actual contents (which religiously, we are not supposed to change at all... I believe the Hebrew Bible also is like that? Would love if someone could tell me more about it tho).

Even with the Birmingham Quran (the oldest quran that has been carbondated to around the time of Prophet Muhammad), i dont think its as important for the text itself (other than comparing contemporary and ancient to see if any changes happened through the few leaflets that survived), the most valuable parts of it is the fact we can carbon date it and see what sorts of materials they used back then and to see when the earliest surviving fragments came from. Plus we can analyze the script and rubrication to see if this was actually used to be read or used as a mnemonic device.

I can't say too much about archeological study more than this and that other post though. That's not exactly my field of interest or expertise. If people want to share more I can't provide much input unless you're talking about book history LOL.

But yeah just wanted to clarify so people don't assume bad faith/try to use my words to push their own agendas. In general historical studies should separate themselves from religion I feel if they go beyond analyzing societies the time in which the books/material were made or written.

Also here's a direct link to Birmingham Quran if the above one doesn't link:

#palestine #history

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lycheeloach · 9 months

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overanalyzing mordecai's letter to his mom

Transcription + ramblings under the cut

Mother, Forgive my unannounced departure. Circumstances relating to my employment have made required me to travel on short notice. It may be some time before I am able to correspond again, but you will find savings in my rented room above the dry grocery adequate for living. Give Mrs. Kovitz the name Ezra [and] she will allow you upstairs. There is a safe box in the southeast corner behind the baseboard. [combination in Hebrew, more on that later] Please use some portion of it to relocate to more suitable living space, expeditiously. Purchase somewhere if you are able. The building is poorly ventilated, m[cut off, but based on the version from the Lackadaisy website it almost certainly says 'moldy'] and unhealthful. -M[ordecai]

First things first, he opens his letter with just 'mother'. 1) he's more formal than Esther, who just calls her 'mom' (though that might be because it's a Serious Letter). 2) he also signs it just 'Mordecai'. no 'dear' or 'love' here because he's totally not sentimental at all, right? he's also bad at expressing emotions, so instead we have to extrapolate how much his family means to him through his actions.

'forgive my unannounced departure' is telling in a couple of ways. First, it's pretty much an apology, which is something we don't really see from Mordecai. Second, it suggests that he and his mom are still in frequent contact, even after he's moved out.

The way Mordecai crosses out the word 'made' and replaces it with 'required' is probably in an effort to sound less alarming- less like he was forced to skip town. But he's so pressed for time and resources that he doesn't start over with a fresh sheet of paper.

'It may be some time before I am able to correspond again' he knows he's screwed. He's pretty sure he's going to die on this train, but he focuses on what's more important- writing to his mom and telling her where to find the money necessary for her and his sisters to have a better life.

It's revealed that Mordecai is renting a room- this gives him the personal space he so desperately needs, and also might be for reasons of keeping his work and home lives separate. Ezra is presumably an alias and he may have even given Mrs. Kovitz instructions to let his mother in if she ever came by. (Sidenote, in all likelihood she was probably just his landlady but I still kinda want to know how Mordecai would interact with Mrs. Kovitz.)

SO. here's an interesting fact for you. The safe combination is the name of Mordecai's youngest sister, Hannah, who died in infancy (you can see her in Tzipporah's arms here). Characters in the Hebrew alphabet correspond to numbers, hence how her name could be a safe combination. I can't phrase this in an analytical way- Mordecai using the name of his sister who died approximately a decade ago for the safe makes me explode. It makes all my bones fall out.

Apparently Mordecai saved enough money for his family to only need some of it to move to a better place. He emphasizes the importance of moving right away, because their building is gross- more than that, the tenements had very high mortality rates, something that the Heller family experienced firsthand.

The last thing I want to say is how desperate Mordecai is to get the letter mailed, practically begging strangers for postage. He's certain he's about to be shot in the face and he still fixates on sending that letter, because if he doesn't, everything he did for his family will have been for nothing.

In conclusion, I am normal.

#loach.txt #mordecai heller #lackadaisy

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wolfythewitch · 11 months

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Wolfy, you have not only dragged me into the EPICS, but also now into the prince of Egypt (I'm on my first watch) I did not expect it to be this good, although I'm a little confused on what's going on This is infact an invitation so you can ramble if you please yes yes

HI YES PRINCE OF EGYPT INCREDIBLE MOVIE

It details the story of Moses, specifically found in the book of Exodus (aka, a departure or emigration), and also the story of Passover, a Jewish tradition. If any of my Jewish followers want to talk about that, feel free! My knowledge is very surface level and mostly from what I've read from the bible.

But so yeah at that time, the Hebrew people were slaves under the Egyptian rule, but they were multiplying too much and the pharaoh got nervous. So he ordered that any infant child be taken and thrown into the river. Moses was a baby at that time, and so he would've met the criteria of baby throwing. His mother did not vibe with that order and took Moses, placed him in a waterproof basket, and sent him down the river to hopefully find a better future than drowning. He ends up floating by the royal palace and gets found by the princess, daughter of the pharaoh(tho in the movie they changed her to be the wife instead) who takes a liking to him and decides to adopt him. In the bible, Miriam (his sister who the mother sends to follow him) asks the princess if she'd like a nursemaid, claiming to know someone (that someone being Moses' mother), and the princess agrees, so Moses gets to be with his family for a few years before going back to the palace. In the movie they don't have that and he's taken in directly with Miriam just praying he be safe and come back to them one day. So it's not very explicit in the bible but love the relationship between him and Rameses (I don't think he was actually named in the bible, but historians figured it was him based on contextual evidence) godbless and then he accidentally kills a guy and runs away. He meets tzipporah and his family and gets welcomed in and married and stuff. So the burning bush. Moses' destiny, if you will, is to save his people, and God tells him as much. Go back to Egypt and free his people. Moses doesn't think himself up to it but God says he'll be with him. So he goes back and does. Rameses refuses because that's his entire workforce, and in retaliation God sends down the 10 plagues. With each plague, Rameses hardens his heart and he refused to let Moses' people go. Until the tenth and final plague, the death of the firstborn. Any household with lamb's blood painted on their doorpost, the angel of death will pass over (AYEEE Passover). The Hebrews knew this but the Egyptians did not. Finally, at the death of his own son, Rameses tells Moses that his people are free.

They take their stuff and go. Thing is, to be actually free, they'd have to cross the wilderness. But there's a pesky sea blocking their way, which isn't very great for the whole crossing the wilderness thing. Also, the Egyptians had a change of heart and are going to get them back. So they're trapped between the sea and the enemy. God sends down a pillar of fire to stall them (though iirc in the bible it's like a cloud of darkness and a pillar of light depending on who you were) and while that's happening, Moses goes over and strikes his staff into the water. And the red sea parts before him, giving them a straight path across. You know the rest, with the people crossing and the waters coming down to drown the army and stuff. So now they're officially free from the Egyptians! But they're not done yet, because the main goal is to reach the Promised Land, and Moses is designated to lead them. They do skip ahead a few chapters and have Moses already grab the two stone tablets with the ten commandments, that doesn't happen until later and involves a golden calf haha

#scoopac #wolfy tedtalks #anon #wolfy religious tedtalks

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blessedarethebinarybreakers · 3 months

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Wrestling with the Bible's war stories

Spend any solid amount of time with scripture and you'll run into something that perplexes, disturbs, or downright horrifies you. Many of us have walked away from the Bible or from Christianity in general, sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently, after encountering these stories. So how do we face them, wrestle them, and seek God's presence in (or in spite of) them?

In her book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, the late Rachel Held Evans spends a whole chapter on the "war stories" of Joshua, Judges, and the books of Samuel and Kings. She starts with how most teachers in her conservative Christian upbringing shut her down every time she tried to name the horror she felt reading of violence, rape, and ethnic cleansing; I share an excerpt from that part of the chapter over in this post.

That excerpt ends with Evans deciding that she needed to grapple with these stories, or lose her faith entirely.

...But then I ended the excerpt, with the hope that folks would go read all of Inspired for themselves — and I still very much recommend doing so! The whole book is incredibly helpful for relearning how to read scripture in a way that honors its historical context and divine inspiration, and takes seriously how misreadings bring harm to individuals and whole people groups.

But I know not everyone will read the book, for a variety of reasons, and that's okay. So I want to include a long excerpt from the rest of the chapter, where Evans provides cultural context and history that helps us understand why those war stories are in there; and then seeks to find where God's inspiration is among those "human fingerprints."

I know how important it was to Rachel Held Evans that all of us experience healing and liberation, so it is my hope that she'd be okay with me pasting such a huge chunk of the book for reading here. If you find what's in this post meaningful, please do check out the rest of her book! A lot of libraries have it in print, ebook, and/or audiobook form.

[One last comment: the following excerpt focuses on these war stories from the Hebrew scriptures ("Old Testament"), but there are violent and otherwise disturbing stories in the "New Testament" too, from Herod killing babies to all the wild things going on in Revelation. Don't fall for the antisemitic claim that "The Old Testament is violent while the New Testament is all about peace!" All parts of scripture include violent passages, and maintain an overarching theme of justice and love.]

Here's the excerpt showing Rachel's long wrestling with the Bible's war stories, starting with an explanation for why they're in there in the first place:

“By the time many of the Bible’s war stories were written down, several generations had passed, and Israel had evolved from a scrappy band of nomads living in the shadows of Babylon, Egypt, and Assyria to a nation that could hold its own, complete with a monarchy. Scripture embraces that underdog status in order to credit God with Israel’s success and to remind a new generation that “some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7). The story of David and Goliath, in which a shepherd boy takes down one of those legendary Canaanite giants with just a slingshot and two stones, epitomizes Israel’s self-understanding as a humble people improbably beloved, victorious only by the grace and favor of a God who rescued them from Egypt, walked with them through the desert, brought the walls of Jericho down, and made that shepherd boy a king. To reinforce the miraculous nature of Israel’s victories, the writers of Joshua and Judges describe forces of hundreds defeating armies of thousands with epic totality. These numbers are likely exaggerated and, in keeping literary conventions of the day, rely more on drama and bravado than the straightforward recitation of fact. Those of us troubled by language about the “extermination” of Canaanite populations may find some comfort in the fact that scholars and archaeologists doubt the early skirmishes of Israel’s history actually resulted in genocide.

It was common for warring tribes in ancient Mesopotamia to refer to decisive victories as “complete annihilation” or “total destruction,” even when their enemies lived to fight another day. (The Moabites, for example, claimed in an extrabiblical text that after their victory in a battle against an Israelite army, the nation of Israel “utterly perished for always,” which obviously isn’t the case. And even in Scripture itself, stories of conflicts with Canaanite tribes persist through the book of Judges and into Israel’s monarchy, which would suggest Joshua’s armies did not in fact wipe them from the face of the earth, at least not in a literal sense.)

Theologian Paul Copan called it “the language of conventional warfare rhetoric,” which “the knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized as hyperbole.” Pastor and author of The Skeletons in God’s Closet, Joshua Ryan Butler, dubbed it “ancient trash talk.”

Even Jericho, which twenty-first-century readers like to imagine as a colorful, bustling city with walls that reached the sky, was in actuality a small, six-acre military outpost, unlikely to support many civilians but, as was common, included a prostitute and her family. Most of the “cities” described in the book of Joshua were likely the same. So, like every culture before and after, Israel told its war stories with flourish, using the language and literary conventions that best advanced the agendas of storytellers.

As Peter Enns explained, for the biblical writers, “Writing about the past was never simply about understanding the past for its own sake, but about shaping, molding and creating the past to speak to the present.”

“The Bible looks the way it does,” he concluded, “because God lets his children tell the story.”

You see the children’s fingerprints all over the pages of Scripture, from its origin stories to its deliverance narratives to its tales of land, war, and monarchy.

For example, as the Bible moves from conquest to settlement, we encounter two markedly different accounts of the lives of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon and the friends and enemies who shaped their reigns. The first appears in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. These books include all the unflattering details of kingdom politics, including the account of how King David had a man killed so he could take the man’s wife, Bathsheba, for himself.

On the other hand, 1 and 2 Chronicles omit the story of David and Bathsheba altogether, along with much of the unseemly violence and drama around the transition of power between David and Solomon.

This is because Samuel and Kings were likely written during the Babylonian exile, when the people of Israel were struggling to understand what they had done wrong for God to allow their enemies to overtake them, and 1 and 2 Chronicles were composed much later, after the Jews had returned to the land, eager to pick up the pieces.

While the authors of Samuel and Kings viewed the monarchy as a morality tale to help them understand their present circumstances, the authors of the Chronicles recalled the monarchy with nostalgia, a reminder of their connection to God’s anointed as they sought healing and unity. As a result, you get two noticeably different takes on the very same historic events.

In other words, the authors of Scripture, like the authors of any other work (including this one!), wrote with agendas. They wrote for a specific audience from a specific religious, social, and political context, and thus made creative decisions based on that audience and context.

Of course, this raises some important questions, like: Can war stories be inspired? Can political propaganda be God-breathed? To what degree did the Spirit guide the preservation of these narratives, and is there something sacred to be uncovered beneath all these human fingerprints?

I don’t know the answers to all these questions, but I do know a few things.

The first is that not every character in these violent stories stuck with the script. After Jephthah sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering in exchange for God’s aid in battle, the young women of Israel engaged in a public act of grief marking the injustice. The text reports, “From this comes the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah” (Judges 11:39–40).

While the men moved on to fight another battle, the women stopped to acknowledge that something terrible had happened here, and with what little social and political power they had, they protested—every year for four days. They refused to let the nation forget what it had done in God’s name.

In another story, a woman named Rizpah, one of King Saul’s concubines, suffered the full force of the monarchy’s cruelty when King David agreed to hand over two of her sons to be hanged by the Gibeonites in an effort to settle a long, bloody dispute between the factions believed to be the cause of widespread famine across the land. A sort of biblical Antigone, Rizpah guarded her sons’ bodies from birds and wild beasts for weeks, until at last the rain came and they could be buried. Word of her tragic stand spread across the kingdom and inspired David to pause to grieve the violence his house had wrought (2 Samuel 21).” ...

The point is, if you pay attention to the women, a more complex history of Israel’s conquests emerges. Their stories invite the reader to consider the human cost of violence and patriarchy, and in that sense prove instructive to all who wish to work for a better world. ...

It’s not always clear what we are meant to learn from the Bible’s most troubling stories, but if we simply look away, we learn nothing.

In one of the most moving spiritual exercises of my adult faith, an artist friend and I created a liturgy of lament honoring the victims of the texts of terror. On a chilly December evening, we sat around the coffee table in my living room and lit candles in memory of Hagar, Jephthah’s daughter, the concubine from Judges 19, and Tamar, the daughter of King David who was raped by her half brother. We read their stories, along with poetry and reflections composed by modern-day women who have survived gender-based violence. ...

If the Bible’s texts of terror compel us to face with fresh horror and resolve the ongoing oppression and exploitation of women, then perhaps these stories do not trouble us in vain. Perhaps we can use them for some good.

The second thing I know is that we are not as different from the ancient Israelites as we would like to believe.

“It was a violent and tribal culture,” people like to say of ancient Israel to explain away its actions in Canaan. But, as Joshua Ryan Butler astutely observed, when it comes to civilian casualties, “we tend to hold the ancients to a much higher standard than we hold ourselves.” In the time it took me to write this chapter, nearly one thousand civilians were killed in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, many of them women and children. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki took hundreds of thousands of lives in World War II, and far more civilians died in the Korean War and Vietnam War than American soldiers. Even though America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it takes in less than half of 1 percent of the world’s refugees, and drone warfare has left many thousands of families across the Middle East terrorized.

This is not to excuse Israel’s violence, because modern-day violence is also bad, nor is it to trivialize debates over just war theory and US involvement in various historical conflicts, which are complex issues far beyond the scope of this book. Rather, it ought to challenge us to engage the Bible’s war stories with a bit more humility and introspection, willing to channel some of our horror over atrocities past into questioning elements of the war machines that still roll on today.

Finally, the last thing I know is this: If the God of the Bible is true, and if God became flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ, and if Jesus Christ is—as theologian Greg Boyd put it—“the revelation that culminates and supersedes all others,” then God would rather die by violence than commit it.

The cross makes this plain. On the cross, Christ not only bore the brunt of human cruelty and bloodlust and fear, he remained faithful to the nonviolence he taught and modeled throughout his ministry. Boyd called it “the Crucifixion of the Warrior God,” and in a two-volume work by that name asserted that “on the cross, the diabolic violent warrior god we have all-too-frequently pledged allegiance to has been forever repudiated.” On the cross, Jesus chose to align himself with victims of suffering rather than the inflictors of it.

At the heart of the doctrine of the incarnation is the stunning claim that Jesus is what God is like. “No one has ever seen God,” declared John in his gospel, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known” (John 1:18, emphasis added). ...So to whatever extent God owes us an explanation for the Bible’s war stories, Jesus is that explanation. And Christ the King won his kingdom without war.

Jesus turned the war story on its head. Instead of being born to nobility, he was born in a manger, to an oppressed people in occupied territory. Instead of charging into Jerusalem on a warhorse, he arrived on a lumbering donkey. Instead of rallying troops for battle, he washed his disciples’ feet. According to the apostle Paul, these are the tales followers of Jesus should be telling—with our words, with our art, and with our lives.

Of course, this still leaves us to grapple with the competing biblical portraits of God as the instigator of violence and God as the repudiator of violence.

Boyd argued that God serves as a sort of “heavenly missionary” who temporarily accommodates the brutal practices and beliefs of various cultures without condoning them in order to gradually influence God’s people toward justice. Insofar as any divine portrait reflects a character at odds with the cross, he said, it must be considered accommodation. It’s an interesting theory, though I confess I’m only halfway through Boyd’s 1,492 pages, so I’ve yet to fully consider it. (I know I can’t read my way out of this dilemma, but that won’t keep me from trying.)

The truth is, I’ve yet to find an explanation for the Bible’s war stories that I find completely satisfying. If we view this through Occam’s razor and choose the simplest solution to the problem, we might conclude that the ancient Israelites invented a deity to justify their conquests and keep their people in line. As such, then, the Bible isn’t a holy book with human fingerprints; it’s an entirely human construction, responsible for more vice than virtue.

There are days when that’s what I believe, days when I mumble through the hymns and creeds at church because I’m not convinced they say anything true. And then there are days when the Bible pulls me back with a numinous force I can only regard as divine, days when Hagar and Deborah and Rahab reach out from the page, grab me by the face, and say, “Pay attention. This is for you.”

I’m in no rush to patch up these questions. God save me from the day when stories of violence, rape, and ethnic cleansing inspire within me anything other than revulsion. I don’t want to become a person who is unbothered by these texts, and if Jesus is who he says he is, then I don’t think he wants me to be either.

There are parts of the Bible that inspire, parts that perplex, and parts that leave you with an open wound. I’m still wrestling, and like Jacob, I will wrestle until I am blessed. God hasn’t let go of me yet.

War is a dreadful and storied part of the human experience, and Scripture captures many shades of it—from the chest-thumping of the victors to the anguished cries of victims. There is ammunition there for those seeking religious justification for violence, and solidarity for all the mothers like Rizpah who just want an end to it.

For those of us who prefer to keep the realities of war at a safe, sanitized distance, and who enjoy the luxury of that choice, the Bible’s war stories force a confrontation with the darkness.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

#joshua #biblical interpretation #texts of terror #rachel held evans #inspired #wrestling god #reading and studying the bible #bible tag #long post #quote tag

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