Elephop and Telephong: Notes on Reading The Bible Within Culture, and Christianity's Oddness Within It
Saturday, October 2, 2010 at 6:00AM | by Otter 
(The title to this post is taken from this wonderful poem, which my daughter memorized when she was eight.)
In this post I got a chance to address some issues about the Ascension as being more typical than atypical of ancient story-telling about heroes. In response to that, and to some of my comments on Noah and how his story poses problems because of its atypical nature in the ancient literature, a reader remarked on the game of Telephone and how it demonstrates the way stories change their shapes.
Her point was that the variant Noah stories indicated that something, somewhere, Had Actually Happened.
And then there's the old story of the Elephant and the Blind Men, each of whom feels an elephant and describes it in different terms that become absolutes for them but are sadly only partial truths. (For those who never hang out with large groups and experience the refined torture of "icebreakers," The Telephone Game is where a person whispers a secret to another player, who whispers it to another player, who whispers it to another player. The final message generally gets distorted on its path down the line.)
Below are a few reflections on these models for understanding truth and scripture and their relationship. (This might take a couple of posts... I have papers to grade.)
The Telephone Game analogy tells a truth: tales that have a source pick up "local variation" (though usually more intentionally than they do in the game).
But what it sometimes fails to make clear (in the Noah story, for example) is how specific cultures imprint sometimes-almost-predictable "signatures" on a story.
To take just one instance, given that many cultures have a flood-and-deliverance story, why is it that the Hebrew version of it chooses to have the "salvation" occur in an ark, or chest? The Hebrew word is tebah, a word that only occurs in one other instance in scripture: the story of the baby Moses' deliverance from death through water. Moses' name means "drawn out" of death / water, and this image repeats itself in his story twice. It has been suggested that the strange word tebah might be from an Egyptian loan-word for "coffin." In this case, both the author(s) of Noah's story and author(s) of Moses' story are emphasizing the paradox between death and deliverance. Suggestive. And highly Semitic from a certain period of Egyptian literature as well. In any case, it's an explicit emphasis missing in the Sumerian form of the story, to the best of my knowledge.
The Israelite author might well be writing a highly structured and literate allegory for the Exodus using local materials. ("No, no," say my literalist friends. "The Bible does not play such games," but they are unable to say why it wouldn't unless it's because their God has the literary range of a Chicago sports-writer.)
Consider too the Israelite version's sophisticated literary structure. I expect it was intentional on the part of the redactor to arrange his sometimes contradictory materials in a chiastic structure, noticed first in the post-mythic period by Gordon Wenham. (Yeah. It took us over 1500 years of reading just to pick that up. It was probably totally obvious to the original hearers of the tale.) That's not like the dramatic / literary structure of any of the other forms, but it's highly Semitic.
The Telephone Game therefore only really works if each person in the chain does not merely re-tell the story but instead intentionally leaves his own imprint on it. It should work like this: "Sue will tell Brian a story in his ear in a whisper. Brian will retell the story in his own words, but in rhyme. Next, Sue will tell the story to Andrew, and Brian will tell Andrew HIS version. Now Andrew will tell the story in a rap to Corey."
A Friend Remarks:
Actually, I have had to revise my view of the Bible over and over again these last few years. I first had to admit and make peace with the fact I don't believe in a YEC point of view that so many (all) Christians around me do. Then it was another thingI questioned, and another, and another. It seems every time I have a question on the literal accuracy of the Bible, the Bible comes up short. I have purposely left off researching ancient religions, because I feel they will be very similar to Christianity. If this is the case, what is left of Christianity? What makes it truly different?
Christianity had some peculiar features even in the first century. I won't pretend that to the local pagans it was entirely unique... but there were some interesting features to it.
For starters, it was a faith that seems to have appealed to the poor. It had a message of a god among the peasants, an incarnate god (they were familiar with incarnate gods) who did not come from the nobility.
Indeed, Christ's presentation consciously parodied that of the Roman Emperors, those sons of the gods, those princes of peace, those kings of kings and lords of lords.
And even more interestingly, the writer of Revelation was able to reverse the poles by painting the Emperor as the "anti-Christ," which is something of a rich irony since Jesus was really the anti-Emperor.
It was a faith founded on love, and while it would be saying too much to say that this was in conflict with the Roman ideals, it was also a religion in which a self-sacrificial death in imitation of Jesus was considered the highest reward a person could obtain from God in this life. Such a death was understood to be an imitation of the transformative death of Jesus that actually defeated the demonic powers of false gods.
That kind of freaked out the Romans, for whom courage and heroism were martial qualities: you fought for your god, and if you died, well, that was a sort of heroism that might elevate your status. But to die without fighting was a really bizarre idea. (Indeed, if you're of the school of American Christianity that embraces a godly military, you're closer to Roman values than first and second century Christianity.)
So persuasive and so powerful was this value that ascetic monasticism developed as a way of dying when the Romans very sneakily refused to do it anymore. The early monks saw their lives as a sort of sacrificial death on behalf of the world that accomplished the same purpose of Christ's death: wrestling with and overcoming the demonic powers (which was their view of the cross, so far from any mechanical atonement). Out in the desert, they were tempted, overcame, and died to the world since the demons had turned disobliging and refused them martyrdom.
It would be wrong to pretend that weirdness was the exception rather than the rule in ancient religion. Mystery religions of every sort lauded the resurrection and ascent of their gods. You will eventually encounter the truth that Sol Invictus, the unconquered Sun, celebrated its resurrection at the Winter Solstice. People got their Sol on and made exceeding merry. Other faiths had their weirdos and prophets, their miracle workers and their monks.
So Christianity, from that point of view, was a storefront religion from the backstreets of Roman faith.
But its self-sacrificial nature and its aggressive socialism and its conviction that the world was passing away were apocalyptic themes that held it together. Jesus was Lord, not Caesar, and Jesus would soon establish his kingdom and grant the poor their relief.
For a century and a half or a little more this fervent piety produced, or imitated, or deluded people into believing in freaky shit that the bishops celebrated. The pious imagination, for better and worse, was on steroids: and while I think imagination and faith are tightly wound together, it makes it really difficult to wade through the historical sources... they're very clouded by desires.
In the center of it all though is the image of the cross and the defeat of the demonic powers. For the Christian of the first century or two, the triumph of the cross was that it represented the victory of god, the father of Jesus. There was proof of it in the transformative life of the community, and its freaky life in the Holy Spirit. Your modern Christian typically reports distant echoes in her own life.
They wrote the scriptures to testify to it, to piously lie about it a little (I think), and in so doing to present a true picture at least of the state of their minds and hearts. They wrote it that the world might believe, and in believing be changed.
And damned if they didn't manage it.
Whoever controls the imagination controls the world. "Thou hast triumphed, Nazarene," scrawls an pagan. And while Christianity has been a most appalling thing at times, it is bound in chains of memory to its self-sacrificial nature, to its almost heart-stopping belief that love is god and god is love.
Reader Comments (4)
Where is the "Thou hast triumphed" quote from?
Victoria, I can't honestly remember. I'll see if I can run it down for you. I recall reading it in some article on epigraphy, but I left that vague in the blog post on the grounds that I might have to fall back and say I was being poetic, here....
I think Marion Zimmer Bradley uses the quotation in some form in her Mists of Avalon, but it's been years since I read that, and I have a recollection that she changes it up a bit for her purposes. Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe my memory is distorted. Maybe there were no pagans and no Nazarene.
I clearly need to keep better notes on these things if you're going to keep asking questions like this.... You always were one of those pestiferous students who actually wanted to _know_ things. ;)
Could it possibly be from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Divine Tragedy
SIMON MAGUS.
Nazarene ! I find thee here at last!
Thou art no more a phantom unto me !
This is the end of one who called himself
The Son of God! Such is the fate of those
Who preach new doctrines. 'T is not what he did,
But what he said, hath brought him unto this.
I will speak evil of no dignitaries.
This is my hour of triumph, Nazarene!
Otter: Well, if you're going to throw out a good quote like that, of course I'll want to know about it. If you don't want to explain things, then stop piquing my interest. :P