A Whale of an Entry

[vovat]

The Minor Prophets say pretty much the same things as the big guys, but their books are much shorter. In fact, Obadiah only has one chapter. Two things in the Minor Prophets of particular importance to Christianity are Micah's prediction about the Messiah hailing from Bethlehem (although the language makes it sound like he might have been talking about a clan, rather than the town), and Zechariah's reference to a king riding on a donkey, which some people feel was comically misinterpreted by the author of Matthew. I might well say more about these things when I get to the Gospels, which should be next if I'm going in the typical order, but I think I'll actually tackle the Deuterocanonical books first. Almost buried in the midst of all the prophecies is one of the most famous Bible stories of all, that of Jonah and the whale. Okay, it's actually referred to as a fish, but I don't know that a culture that regarded bats as birds and thought that some insects had four legs (see Leviticus 11) would have known the difference anyway. I'm surprised that Young-Earth Creationists haven't tried to insist it was an icthyosaur or plesiosaur. Jonah is of the opposite stripe from people like Abraham and Moses, who tried to intercede with God when He planned to wipe out a population. Instead, the old whale-dweller gets pissed off because God DOESN'T destroy the repentant population of Nineveh. And before I leave Jonah, I'll mention that the Good News Bible I had when I was a kid referred to the destination of the ship that throws the prophet overboard as Spain, which I found to be somewhat out of place for a book that usually focuses on the Middle East. A more accurate rendering of the place is Tarshish, which some scholars do associate with Tartessos in what is now Spain, but it's not totally clear.

In Final Fantasy V, I've reached the second world, and escaped from Exdeath's castle. Prison breaks in games like that usually just consist of waiting around long enough, or finding a hidden switch or passage. Part of me thinks there should be more actual strategy involved, but another part realizes that such a thing might cause me to throw the game across the room in frustration. {g} FF5 is one of the games in the series with different job classes, which is kind of cool, but it seems like some of the most interesting jobs aren't really all that useful. Beastmasters, Mystic Knights, and Blue Mages have powers that sound really neat, but it's difficult to actually put their special skills to use, making it more practical to just stick to fighters, healers, and casters of attack spells. I do have to say that I quite like Callers, though, in this and other similar games. Summoning up powerful elemental spirits to do your bidding is awesome.

Incidentally, to tie the two subjects of this post together, there's a part in FF2 where your party is swallowed by Leviathan, which seems to be a combination of two different Biblical references. Leviathan hasn't yet show up in FF5, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of his appearing later on. He's a summoned monster in some of the games.

Comments

[onesto-hotel.livejournal.com]

I always loved the concept of Blue Mages, but I've never been able to really utilize one effectively in my party. Beastmasters are fun, but not practical. There's generally a reason why most people's parties use the same basic sorts of job classes.

I'll have to get back to playing FFV sometime, now that I finally own an English version. (Or I could just go back to playing the Japanese one now that I can comprehend it better.)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I picked up a few blue spells, but if you don't know when a monster who can teach one is coming up, you don't really know when to utilize the class. You can always use a walkthrough (that's how I got a few of the spells), but a class that's too difficult to figure out on your own isn't such a great idea. As for Beastmasters, I'm currently using that job for Bartz, and he's only been able to capture one monster so far. I'll probably change his class pretty soon. Gau's ability to replicate monsters' attacks in FF6 seems to be an improved version of the same basic idea.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Have you ever seen the Veggietales movie of Jonah? It rocks. I totally rented it for myself (no kids) and watched it a couple times and all the special features too. Very enjoyable.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

No, I've actually never watched VeggieTales.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

You'd enjoy a lot of the songs especially. The songs are quite possibly the best thing about Veggietales, but there's a lot of cleverness to the whole series in general. The movie's a good place to start because it's, well, a movie. And there's some interesting things in the special features that would go with your study of how various Bible stories are interpreted (but it's not "scary" religious like the Chick Tracts or anything like that).