Twitterpated

• 12:55 @TheRealTavie So you're taking your soul to Wario's Woods? (Yeah, I know that's not a Wii game.) #
• 12:57 @gick7 Do they also work on the Rum-Tum-Tugger from "Cats"? #
• 19:31 Photo: I’ve been covering mythological topics for well over a year now, but I just now got around to one of... tumblr.com/xpy7dsb0w #
• 22:47 Someone should do a remix/mashup of @ladygaga and Beyonce's "Telephone" with Raffi's "Bananaphone." #

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Too Many Cooks, Part 2: Writings and Prophets

Continuing where I left off last week, we come to the two books of Chronicles, and then Ezra and Nehemiah. These are all believed to have been written by the same author, or at least edited by the same person. Ezra and Nehemiah are still one book in many versions of the Bible, although a Christian scholar separated them in the fourth century. Basically, the Chronicles retell the Jewish national history with a priestly bias rather than a prophetic one, and Ezra/Nehemiah tells of the return to the homeland after the Babylonian captivity. Ezra is frequently credited as the author, as well as the compiler of the Torah, which makes a certain amount of sense.


The typical Christian arrangement of the Bible then moves on to some of the Writings and wisdom literature. Obviously, it's difficult to tell who actually wrote the Psalms or the Proverbs, and they were most likely the work of several authors over the years. Many of the Psalms are attributed to David, and it's certainly possible that some were genuinely his work. Others, however, are presumably from much later. Psalm 137, for instance, makes pretty clear references to the Babylonian captivity. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, and the not-generally-canonical Wisdom of Solomon are all attributed, of course, to David's son. Modern scholars tend to think this is unlikely for...well, all of those, although some of the Proverbs could really have been his. Solomon's reputation as the wisest man who ever lived made him an obvious choice for authors of wisdom literature to use. It seems pretty obvious that these books weren't all written by the same person anyway, unless he was really proficient at working in different styles. Also in this same general section of the Bible is Job, which was attributed in ancient times to none other than Moses himself, but is today believed to have most likely originated in Edom. As it holds no special regard for Israel or the Jewish people, and uses a generic name for God, it could easily have been borrowed from another culture, although its present form is most likely post-exilic.


Next we come to the prophets, and in many of these cases there's no reason to assume that the name on the book ISN'T that of its author, although there are significant exceptions. Jonah is a significant example, because the material in his story doesn't match up with what we're told of the historical Jonah in Kings. Actually, the book of Jonah is written in the third person, so it's not even like its author was necessarily lying. Isaiah is well-known to be the work of more than one author, one of them most likely being Isaiah himself, but one or more other authors adding in material during the exile and editing it all together. This is thought to also be the case with some of the other prophets (Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Micah, for instance), although it isn't as clear in these cases as it is with Isaiah. Daniel isn't even included among the prophets in the Tanakh, but Christians probably stuck the book in that section because of its enormous influence on the apocalyptic nature of early Christianity (and some branches of the religion today; doom-and-gloom end-times preachers LOVE the later part of Daniel). Jesus himself referred to its "abomination that makes desolate," and the beasts of Revelation were obviously inspired by those of Daniel. I'm pretty sure I've discussed before how, even though Daniel takes place during the Babylonian captivity, the matters it deals with pertain much more clearly to the Jews living under the yoke of the Greeks, and Antiochus Epiphanes in particular. And it's the part that deals with the Greek occupation, starting with Chapter 7, that's told in the first person. As for Lamentations, its presence in Christian Bibles immediately following Jeremiah is due to its traditional attribution to that prophet, but this credit is heavily disputed.


Next time, the New Testament! And by the way, if you're wondering where I got the title for this series, check this out.

Weekend Washout

Well, the Monster-Mania Convention was this weekend, and for once bethje and I didn't attend. We had planned to, but I was thinking I'd might just drop Beth off, since I wasn't feeling well and I'd had a chaotic week. As it turned out, though, there were flooded streets and traffic accidents, and we hardly made it anywhere before deciding it just wasn't worth it to make our way to Cherry Hill. I'm sure we could have reached it, but it would have taken hours. Instead, we spent most of the day in bed, and later went out to eat at Bennigan's. Kind of depressing, but relaxing. I just wish I could get over this stupid cold.

Tonight, we watched the new Simpsons and Family Guy episodes. The Simpsons one was pretty good, I thought. I like it when they occasionally return to the fairly simple plots like this one about Homer and Marge disagreeing on how to deal with Bart. I also thought it was nice that they had a few callbacks to the film at the beginning. I guess the abandoned subway explains why we saw a subway station in "Bart Sells His Soul," but have never seen anyone in Springfield actually riding it. As for Family Guy, it had the same flaw that I think a lot of their longer parodies do, which is that it pretty much hit all the plot points of what it was parodying (in this case, Tootsie) without really putting much of a twist on it. I think I would have actually liked to have seen more focus on the Lois subplot.