Having random (often late-night) conversations about whatever's on your mind. Someone you can talk to. Someone who understands what you're going through - or at least is available and has the energy to try. You realize how much you've taken for granted the ability to find such people within walking distance who are available at that moment because of college. Now you have trouble finding people you can even relate to that well. You don't have a consistent community to fall back on, and you find yourself scrambling back and forth between different clumps of people who you only see maybe once in a while because of circumstance, and you find that there's only so much you can talk about because your lives have been moving forward so much in between.
But because you've been out trying to follow up with those people, the people who would be nearby and more readily available otherwise but you end up not seeing because you've been busy- they go on regularly hanging out with each other, forming their own cliques locally. And you find that when you do somehow hang out with them, that you're just the outsider, or the third-fifth-seventh-ninth-eleventh wheeler, or the person whose presence complicates things cause it means now all of a sudden we have to add another car when we don't usually have to. And then they start talking about events past or future that you didn't know about in front of you, that you're not sure if it'd be prudent to ask about, and besides, you don't like forcibly inviting yourself to other people's events anyway. And based off of past experience, you don't really know if they would want to see you in the future, considering that the main reason you're hanging out now is just because of a random circumstance or because you asked out of the blue, as usual. (and people don't usually like it when you ask them, "How come you never invite me?" Whether or not there actually is a reason for it.)
And then there comes that admission at a certain point, sometimes, when someone tells you, "Sorry we didn't invite you; we just figured you'd be busy." Or is that just an excuse for something else? How much reading of social cues and mental second guessing and randomly seeing them hang out without you does it take before it becomes too much to handle? Before you just throw your hands up and admit that you just don't fit in with this particular group, even though you don't actually dislike them and may actually enjoy talking to some of them individually? Before it becomes time to just part ways and say, "what's done is done?"
Back about the time when college was ending, one of my biggest fears was losing touch with most of the people I knew. I was about to move to a new area where I didn't know anyone (so I thought- even though it was still in the Bay), and about to live in an apartment by myself for the first time in my life. Ironically, more than a year later, I'm living with other people but about to live alone again in a few months- and now my biggest fear isn't necessarily losing touch with people, but more about what causes it- becoming irrelevant in other people's lives.
Because finding someone to hang out with isn't the hard part. The hard part is finding someone to hang out with that you can actually relate to on a regular basis. And despite knowing a lot of people, I don't know that many people who share the same interests with me- and I feel like the further I pursue those interests (and be myself so to speak), the more I feel disconnected from the people who I do see or run into. It's not that I want to be alone when I go watch a particular movie at a theater or see a musical in SF or go read a book at a coffee shop or eat out at a restaurant and so on- it's just been hard to find someone who's willing to do so with you at that moment, since most of this stuff takes planning in advance, and when I really want to do something I don't let a lack of an available person stop me from doing so. Even though it may make me look "antisocial" if I do it often enough.
That said, lately I've been taking it too far and purposefully finding myself not home or away from people who might normally see me otherwise. I've somehow developed this association with being "ninja Ryan" (as my roommate puts it now), that person who randomly disappears for long periods of time such that no one knows where he is at a given moment. I've become one of those people who looks for excuses to be busy and outside for the sake of being busy. I feel both proud and not proud of it at the same time... and it's not healthy. I don't blame anyone when they accuse me of never being around- I think sometimes I'm just trying to run away from situations that would remind me of how hard it can be to relate to people. But then I end up making those who are looking out worry.
Especially after this past week... where I'd be having a good day, and then I'd randomly run into someone or a group in a situation that would trigger these unhealthy feelings, and then I'd be upset and in a depressive state and unable to focus on anything productive for the rest of the day. And of course I don't want others to see how vulnerable I am, so I'd disappear somewhere or look unsuccessfully for ways to forget it all.
That all said and done, it's a new year, and I'm not about to just let all of this continue to cycle again. I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but in light of all these frustrations of the past year, here are a few to start off:
- To not give in to jealousy when I do happen to see people I know hang out without me.
- To not wallow in self-pity when I am alone and doing my own thing.
- To accept myself for who I am, and not worry about trying to fit in all the time.
- To be present and available more with the people I do get the chance to see.
- To set aside the energy and free time needed to work on problems that actually matter.
- To not lament what could have been, but to appreciate what is now and look forward to what will be.
And of course, relevant song from a musical.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Genesis
Genesis is pretty much a succession of stories (Creation -> Fall -> Flood -> Babel) that eventually converges onto the story of the ancestors of the Israelites - the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel). Some of the stories are fairly straightforward and are of the kind that most people would learn about from Sunday School or in general. That said, some come across as a little more morally problematic if you consider them under today's standards:
- the Fall (with regard to the origin of sin, you could have a full debate about it)
- Noah's Ark (to what extent were the deaths justifiable? even the potential babies?)
- the command to sacrifice Isaac (regardless of the fact that God stopped Abraham at the last minute... he was about to do it)
- Jacob deceiving Isaac to usurp his brother's blessing... and getting away with it.
- the rape of Dinah and the revenge her brothers take out on the city of Shechem.
and then some stories are just... what?
- Noah getting naked and drunk in his tent, discovered by his son Ham, and then proceeding to curse Ham's son Canaan.
- when the angels are trying to rescue Lot's family from Sodom and the locals are trying to... "sodomize" them, Lot basically responds, "No! You can take my daughters and do anything with them, but don't do anything to these guys!"
- Lot's daughters getting him drunk and having his babies. Although incest pretty much happens all over Genesis anyway.
- Abraham pretending that his wife Sarah is his sister (although it turns out later that she's actually his half-sister) in order to save himself from the kings that want her. Isaac pulls off the same stunt a generation later.
- Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for a meal, because he was that hungry.
- Laban pulling the wife-switcheroo on Jacob's wedding night. (Genesis 29:25 - "And in the morning, behold, it was Leah!") Moreso because Jacob doesn't even realize that he "went in to" the wrong sister.
- The back and forth between Leah and Rachel and their maidservants all having Jacob's kids. Rachel lets Leah sleep with Jacob for a night in exchange for her son's mandrakes, which made no sense to me the first time I read it until finding out that mandrakes apparently were supposed to help with getting one pregnant.
- Rachel stealing her father's household gods during the family escape.
- Judah's daughter-in-law, Tamar, tricking him into having kids after she fails with two of his sons.
- Jacob's final dying words to his sons, in which he apparently curses a good chunk of them.
If anything, the history of the lineage that eventually leads to the Israelites is incredibly messy. It's full of lies and deception on the part of multiple parties, polygamy and incest and rape and murder, family drama and sibling conflicts that go unresolved for decades, and then random dream-visions and visitations from God and men or angels or anthropomorphic beings out of whom one may or may not be God. God doesn't say or do anything, nor does the text provide any commentary, regarding most of the moral ambiguities and issues mentioned in the stories above. Whenever he does appear after the creation, it's either to rain down judgment because of how bad a particular situation's gotten (Flood, Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Onan, etc.), or to make promises or covenants with individuals (Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel... the last of whom he physically wrestles with) who don't generally see those promises fulfilled in their lifetimes, and even by end of Genesis, it's hard to see what the point of all these stories is.
Genesis by itself just feels incomplete... which ought to be the case, considering that it's meant to be considered as just one part of a bigger work, the Torah (Genesis-Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy), and not really as a standalone. The first several verses of Exodus even look as though they could have ended Genesis instead. I get the feeling that considering the fact that Moses's story dominates the latter four books, whatever it is that comes with Moses (say... the law and the actual foundations of Judaism) is meant to answer or act as the culmination of all of the problems and issues we've seen up to this point. Which is to say that that foreknowledge of what happens in the rest of the Bible helps a lot more in understanding Genesis, even though it's the first book.
Even aside from the moral issues, it's easy enough to get hung up over the factual details of the accounts and how they apparently seem to contradict reality, as well as each other in many cases. Given that Genesis was likely written much later than the events it transcribes (conservative accounts would attribute it to Moses; over the last century the documentary hypothesis has gotten popular and is supported by my NISB; I tend to lean towards some combination of the two plus even more edits/revisions), I think it's much harder to accept literally compared with the rest of the Bible, and it makes more sense to read from the perspective of the Israelites living in the later Kingdom/Exile years prior to Jesus. It's less about the historical fact of the events (although some aspects such as the Cave of the Patriarchs are worth looking into) and more about introducing the big ideas, like the nature of God's relationship with creation and humans and how it evolved over time. It's about explaining the basis for what would lead to their belief-system, and providing an explanation for how things got to be the way they were, things that would allow the Israelites to remember their culture and their identity even after their kingdoms were conquered and their peoples scattered during the Exile era.
One facet of the documentary hypothesis that my NISB likes to bring up is how many of the conflicting accounts- the two Creation stories, the two times that Abraham makes the same covenant but the person responding differs, the same lines or leadership being attributed to either Reuben or Judah, and so on- seem to arise from differing perspectives of its perceived different authors or editors. The Yahwist and Elohist share a perspective coming from the time of the monarchy, although they differ in how they prefer to address God (YHWH vs. 'elohim), one being from south kingdom of Judah and the other the north kingdom of Israel, whereas the Priestly author seems to come from a later period closer to the exile/restoration eras and is more concerned with religious ritual and genealogical details. Most of the conflicting accounts of the same or similar sounding incidents get attributed to one author or another. I find it more telling that the final redactor or whoever last worked on the Torah decided to keep all of the conflicts intact; and from an orthodox Jewish perspective it may even have been intended that way. For what reason, though, I don't know... although it's pretty reflective of how perspectives change with time and location.
A number of the odder stories in that respect seem designed to explain the geographical or cultural reality of the writer. Like the cursing of Canaan explaining Israel's subjugation of the Canaanites; the whole incident with Lot's daughters leading to the ancestors of two of Israel's neighbors, Moab and Ammon, and explaining the complicated nature of their relationship; likewise with Esau and his descendants, the Edomites, being subservient to the Israelites until their rebellion. And in Jacob's case, his speech to his sons seems to speak more to the situation of the tribes named after his sons rather than the sons themselves (for instance, arbitrarily blessing Ephraim over Manasseh- considering that the future tribe of Ephraim wound up standing in for the entire Northern kingdom of Israel). It seems like much of Genesis was meant to address or explain the present day reality of the Israel at the time it was written as much as it was to explain its past.
Given all of this focus on Israel, I find it odd that there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for why God chooses Abraham (or "Abram") of all people to start a covenant with. I know in the NT that Abraham's called a man of faith, for what it's worth, and you could use the sacrifice incident with Isaac to support that, but outside of that Abraham and his first descendants don't seem particularly special or even decent at the time that God reaches out to them, considering all the incidents of lies and deceit I mentioned earlier. It just happens that God chooses these people to enact his plan for a future nation, and they end up going along with it, and as such this is the legacy that the Israelites have been tasked with. I've heard a Jew phrase it as like being given the responsibility of an older sibling, in this case to the other nations of the world. The older sibling isn't really given the choice whether or not to have that responsibility... they're just born into that position and have to deal with it.
other random thoughts:
- So there's also the Oral Torah in Judaism, which is meant to complement the written Torah by providing more explicit interpretation and explanation (kind of like lecture notes) but generally gets ignored in Christianity. It supposedly came about around the same time as or perhaps even before the written Torah and was considered equally as important as the written Torah, but was forbidden from being written and had to be passed down orally. This tradition continued up until the destruction of the Second Temple (after Jesus), at which point it became apparent that the only way to preserve it was to transcribe it, resulting in the Talmud. I would look more into the Talmud if I had the time, since it does feel like there's some things missing from just reading the written books by themselves, but that'll probably have to wait till later.
- In the garden of Eden, there's two trees: the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. It's the eating of the fruit of the first tree that brings about the fall of man; and it's the possibility that man would then eat of the tree of life and thus continue living forever that prompts God's decision to banish from the garden. I'm guessing that it would've been a bad thing to have continued living immortally in whatever state man was after.
- Jews actually don't seem to generally interpret the Fall as a fall in the way that Christians do (consider also that original sin is a doctrine associated with Augustine and Western Christianity, whereas the Eastern Orthodox only believe in ancestral sin). Sin can be attributed as a cause of death somehow, but for Jews it was never really formalized into a dogma in the sense that Christians have it today - least, from what I'm reading, there's mostly just speculation on the meaning.
- the Fall (with regard to the origin of sin, you could have a full debate about it)
- Noah's Ark (to what extent were the deaths justifiable? even the potential babies?)
- the command to sacrifice Isaac (regardless of the fact that God stopped Abraham at the last minute... he was about to do it)
- Jacob deceiving Isaac to usurp his brother's blessing... and getting away with it.
- the rape of Dinah and the revenge her brothers take out on the city of Shechem.
and then some stories are just... what?
- Noah getting naked and drunk in his tent, discovered by his son Ham, and then proceeding to curse Ham's son Canaan.
- when the angels are trying to rescue Lot's family from Sodom and the locals are trying to... "sodomize" them, Lot basically responds, "No! You can take my daughters and do anything with them, but don't do anything to these guys!"
- Lot's daughters getting him drunk and having his babies. Although incest pretty much happens all over Genesis anyway.
- Abraham pretending that his wife Sarah is his sister (although it turns out later that she's actually his half-sister) in order to save himself from the kings that want her. Isaac pulls off the same stunt a generation later.
- Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for a meal, because he was that hungry.
- Laban pulling the wife-switcheroo on Jacob's wedding night. (Genesis 29:25 - "And in the morning, behold, it was Leah!") Moreso because Jacob doesn't even realize that he "went in to" the wrong sister.
- The back and forth between Leah and Rachel and their maidservants all having Jacob's kids. Rachel lets Leah sleep with Jacob for a night in exchange for her son's mandrakes, which made no sense to me the first time I read it until finding out that mandrakes apparently were supposed to help with getting one pregnant.
- Rachel stealing her father's household gods during the family escape.
- Judah's daughter-in-law, Tamar, tricking him into having kids after she fails with two of his sons.
- Jacob's final dying words to his sons, in which he apparently curses a good chunk of them.
If anything, the history of the lineage that eventually leads to the Israelites is incredibly messy. It's full of lies and deception on the part of multiple parties, polygamy and incest and rape and murder, family drama and sibling conflicts that go unresolved for decades, and then random dream-visions and visitations from God and men or angels or anthropomorphic beings out of whom one may or may not be God. God doesn't say or do anything, nor does the text provide any commentary, regarding most of the moral ambiguities and issues mentioned in the stories above. Whenever he does appear after the creation, it's either to rain down judgment because of how bad a particular situation's gotten (Flood, Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Onan, etc.), or to make promises or covenants with individuals (Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel... the last of whom he physically wrestles with) who don't generally see those promises fulfilled in their lifetimes, and even by end of Genesis, it's hard to see what the point of all these stories is.
Genesis by itself just feels incomplete... which ought to be the case, considering that it's meant to be considered as just one part of a bigger work, the Torah (Genesis-Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy), and not really as a standalone. The first several verses of Exodus even look as though they could have ended Genesis instead. I get the feeling that considering the fact that Moses's story dominates the latter four books, whatever it is that comes with Moses (say... the law and the actual foundations of Judaism) is meant to answer or act as the culmination of all of the problems and issues we've seen up to this point. Which is to say that that foreknowledge of what happens in the rest of the Bible helps a lot more in understanding Genesis, even though it's the first book.
Even aside from the moral issues, it's easy enough to get hung up over the factual details of the accounts and how they apparently seem to contradict reality, as well as each other in many cases. Given that Genesis was likely written much later than the events it transcribes (conservative accounts would attribute it to Moses; over the last century the documentary hypothesis has gotten popular and is supported by my NISB; I tend to lean towards some combination of the two plus even more edits/revisions), I think it's much harder to accept literally compared with the rest of the Bible, and it makes more sense to read from the perspective of the Israelites living in the later Kingdom/Exile years prior to Jesus. It's less about the historical fact of the events (although some aspects such as the Cave of the Patriarchs are worth looking into) and more about introducing the big ideas, like the nature of God's relationship with creation and humans and how it evolved over time. It's about explaining the basis for what would lead to their belief-system, and providing an explanation for how things got to be the way they were, things that would allow the Israelites to remember their culture and their identity even after their kingdoms were conquered and their peoples scattered during the Exile era.
One facet of the documentary hypothesis that my NISB likes to bring up is how many of the conflicting accounts- the two Creation stories, the two times that Abraham makes the same covenant but the person responding differs, the same lines or leadership being attributed to either Reuben or Judah, and so on- seem to arise from differing perspectives of its perceived different authors or editors. The Yahwist and Elohist share a perspective coming from the time of the monarchy, although they differ in how they prefer to address God (YHWH vs. 'elohim), one being from south kingdom of Judah and the other the north kingdom of Israel, whereas the Priestly author seems to come from a later period closer to the exile/restoration eras and is more concerned with religious ritual and genealogical details. Most of the conflicting accounts of the same or similar sounding incidents get attributed to one author or another. I find it more telling that the final redactor or whoever last worked on the Torah decided to keep all of the conflicts intact; and from an orthodox Jewish perspective it may even have been intended that way. For what reason, though, I don't know... although it's pretty reflective of how perspectives change with time and location.
A number of the odder stories in that respect seem designed to explain the geographical or cultural reality of the writer. Like the cursing of Canaan explaining Israel's subjugation of the Canaanites; the whole incident with Lot's daughters leading to the ancestors of two of Israel's neighbors, Moab and Ammon, and explaining the complicated nature of their relationship; likewise with Esau and his descendants, the Edomites, being subservient to the Israelites until their rebellion. And in Jacob's case, his speech to his sons seems to speak more to the situation of the tribes named after his sons rather than the sons themselves (for instance, arbitrarily blessing Ephraim over Manasseh- considering that the future tribe of Ephraim wound up standing in for the entire Northern kingdom of Israel). It seems like much of Genesis was meant to address or explain the present day reality of the Israel at the time it was written as much as it was to explain its past.
Given all of this focus on Israel, I find it odd that there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for why God chooses Abraham (or "Abram") of all people to start a covenant with. I know in the NT that Abraham's called a man of faith, for what it's worth, and you could use the sacrifice incident with Isaac to support that, but outside of that Abraham and his first descendants don't seem particularly special or even decent at the time that God reaches out to them, considering all the incidents of lies and deceit I mentioned earlier. It just happens that God chooses these people to enact his plan for a future nation, and they end up going along with it, and as such this is the legacy that the Israelites have been tasked with. I've heard a Jew phrase it as like being given the responsibility of an older sibling, in this case to the other nations of the world. The older sibling isn't really given the choice whether or not to have that responsibility... they're just born into that position and have to deal with it.
other random thoughts:
- So there's also the Oral Torah in Judaism, which is meant to complement the written Torah by providing more explicit interpretation and explanation (kind of like lecture notes) but generally gets ignored in Christianity. It supposedly came about around the same time as or perhaps even before the written Torah and was considered equally as important as the written Torah, but was forbidden from being written and had to be passed down orally. This tradition continued up until the destruction of the Second Temple (after Jesus), at which point it became apparent that the only way to preserve it was to transcribe it, resulting in the Talmud. I would look more into the Talmud if I had the time, since it does feel like there's some things missing from just reading the written books by themselves, but that'll probably have to wait till later.
- In the garden of Eden, there's two trees: the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. It's the eating of the fruit of the first tree that brings about the fall of man; and it's the possibility that man would then eat of the tree of life and thus continue living forever that prompts God's decision to banish from the garden. I'm guessing that it would've been a bad thing to have continued living immortally in whatever state man was after.
- Jews actually don't seem to generally interpret the Fall as a fall in the way that Christians do (consider also that original sin is a doctrine associated with Augustine and Western Christianity, whereas the Eastern Orthodox only believe in ancestral sin). Sin can be attributed as a cause of death somehow, but for Jews it was never really formalized into a dogma in the sense that Christians have it today - least, from what I'm reading, there's mostly just speculation on the meaning.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
YLT
Setlist
I arrived at the music store an hour ahead of schedule, picked up a copy of the new album + the free poster, and waited in front of the stage set up in front of several aisles of albums. The band entered and began tuning up their instruments, and suddenly started performing an impromptu song. For a moment, I thought they were starting a live show 45 minutes ahead of the official time (and wondering, this is kind of awesome but who does that???).
The audience clapped as the song finished, and Ira, in his soft-spoken voice, responded, "...Well if you enjoyed our sound test that much, we hope you enjoy the actual thing!" And then they left the stage.
I had to leave for a bit to repark the car, and when I got back I'd lost my place as the store was suddenly packed with people waiting around the aisles to watch the set. I snuck in between a few people slightly further away, and a quarter-hour later the band came back, starting up with the mellow-sounding "The Point of It."
And it was good. I don't think I've felt so at laid back and at peace while seeing a band live- even the mellower concerts (Beach House, Feist, Beirut?) still felt a bit theatrical in comparison, although that may have been due to the venue being much more vast and official in comparison to the interior of a music store.
They even made light of the fact that it was a music store a few times.
Ira (on a technical malfunction): "...and this would be a good time to peruse the items around you! We'll let you know when we're ready."
Ira (later): "We hope you come back even when we're not here!"
Despite often sounding so soft and mellow, when Yo La Tengo rocks, they rock hard. It was something to see Ira suddenly disappear under the heads of the front people in the audience during "Ohm," his back turned, hunched over while he rocked away a series of discordant guitar riffs set against the continuous background music of James's bass and Georgia's constant drum-tempo.
And then he'd suddenly come back to the microphone in a trance-like state, arms tense, eyes closed, struggling to resist the pull of his roaring guitar while singing the final lines in unison with the rest of the band:
But nothing ever stays the same
Nothing's explained
The stronger the wind, the faster we'll fly
'Cause this is it for all we know
So say good night to me
And lose no more time
No time
Resisting the flow
And after the song finished:
Ira: "Looks like we'll be doing one more song! ...I guess we'll be doing a Sun Ra cover since there's a poster of him behind us."
And they proceed to perform a Sun Ra cover on the spot. Wiki wasn't lying about their encyclopedic repertoire of cover songs.
Definitely seeing them again when they come back to SF for the official tour in May.
I arrived at the music store an hour ahead of schedule, picked up a copy of the new album + the free poster, and waited in front of the stage set up in front of several aisles of albums. The band entered and began tuning up their instruments, and suddenly started performing an impromptu song. For a moment, I thought they were starting a live show 45 minutes ahead of the official time (and wondering, this is kind of awesome but who does that???).
The audience clapped as the song finished, and Ira, in his soft-spoken voice, responded, "...Well if you enjoyed our sound test that much, we hope you enjoy the actual thing!" And then they left the stage.
I had to leave for a bit to repark the car, and when I got back I'd lost my place as the store was suddenly packed with people waiting around the aisles to watch the set. I snuck in between a few people slightly further away, and a quarter-hour later the band came back, starting up with the mellow-sounding "The Point of It."
And it was good. I don't think I've felt so at laid back and at peace while seeing a band live- even the mellower concerts (Beach House, Feist, Beirut?) still felt a bit theatrical in comparison, although that may have been due to the venue being much more vast and official in comparison to the interior of a music store.
They even made light of the fact that it was a music store a few times.
Ira (on a technical malfunction): "...and this would be a good time to peruse the items around you! We'll let you know when we're ready."
Ira (later): "We hope you come back even when we're not here!"
Despite often sounding so soft and mellow, when Yo La Tengo rocks, they rock hard. It was something to see Ira suddenly disappear under the heads of the front people in the audience during "Ohm," his back turned, hunched over while he rocked away a series of discordant guitar riffs set against the continuous background music of James's bass and Georgia's constant drum-tempo.
And then he'd suddenly come back to the microphone in a trance-like state, arms tense, eyes closed, struggling to resist the pull of his roaring guitar while singing the final lines in unison with the rest of the band:
But nothing ever stays the same
Nothing's explained
The stronger the wind, the faster we'll fly
'Cause this is it for all we know
So say good night to me
And lose no more time
No time
Resisting the flow
And after the song finished:
Ira: "Looks like we'll be doing one more song! ...I guess we'll be doing a Sun Ra cover since there's a poster of him behind us."
And they proceed to perform a Sun Ra cover on the spot. Wiki wasn't lying about their encyclopedic repertoire of cover songs.
Definitely seeing them again when they come back to SF for the official tour in May.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Job
So technically the chronological plan started with Genesis, but right after Noah, it decided to skip ahead and cover the entirety of Job, which officially ended yesterday... except for whatever the reason I decided to breeze through Job within a few days and now I'm a week ahead of schedule. But anyway, I find Job to be one of the more interesting books of the Bible (although I suck at reading through the poetic parts without guided help).
The main point of Job is to address the problem of evil from a Hebrew/OT perspective, or particularly the issue of why bad things happen to good people. Jewish theology up to this point would've probably aligned more along the lines with "you reap what you sow," but as the author probably realized, there are too many cases of suffering in the world where this doesn't seem to apply at all. And so we end up with the story of a righteous, well-off man whose life suddenly falls apart thanks to a series of calamities, the death of his children, and later an onslaught of boils. His wife tells him to curse God and die; his friends yell at him for what they think he deserved, but throughout it all Job perseveres without saying a word against God. and then God shows up, chastises everyone, and rewards Job plentifully for the rest of his life for having passed the test.
The first takeaway that most Christians would probably get from this is a sense of admiration for Job. That despite all of the horrors that Job has experienced, as well as his sense that he himself has done nothing wrong, he still has faith in God's good-will and believes that God will come through for him in the end. Even though he has questions for God, he also still preserves a sense of reverence for him. The fact that God himself does show up and reward Job, and that the story ends happily ever after for the most part does lend credence to this. That said, I feel like focusing on that interpretation alone tends to overlook some of the other aspects and resulting implications that people would take issue with.
1. The prologue. Satan himself (or "the accuser" - some Jews see this more as a prosecutor-kind of angel than the devil, which is what satan in this context translates to) appears in front of God asking permission to torture Job, betting that Job will start cursing God the moment his life stops going his way. And God accepts.
2. Later, Job starts wanting to petition God regarding the reason for his suffering. He believes that he's done nothing wrong (which is true according to the story), and he wants to know the reason from God himself, seeing as how the only excuse his friends can give him is that he's wicked... which obviously doesn't help much. Then, when God finally shows up, he goes on about how there's so many things going on in creation that you wouldn't be able to comprehend and how God himself is greater than the Behemoth and the Leviathan and the thunderstorm and so on, without directly answering Job's question. And Job's just so overwhelmed and speechless at the end of the day that he decides to take back his request and repent in dust and ashes.
These in combination, to me seem more troubling than most of the other arguments and ideas presented in Job. I could more easily get around the message of the book if the prologue had not existed; essentially, the book would've ended with a simple "we don't know why people suffer because we wouldn't be able to comprehend it anyway." This wouldn't exactly be a satisfying conclusion- in fact I think a lot of people take issue with Job in part because of it and God's general attitude at the end- but it would at least make sense given the premise of the story.
However, we the readers, unlike Job, do get a glimpse into the reason behind the suffering: God's bet with the accuser, which comes across as somewhat capricious and selfish from a human perspective (at least, if it were anyone other than God more people would probably see it that way). It would mean that God himself is partly responsible for allowing suffering to happen in the first place. And if you look at it pessimistically, it would mean that he does it to prove a point- a point that he presumably already knew in advance, which still begs the question then of why? To make himself look better? So he can give that big speech at the end of how great he is? What would Job have thought if he had found out?
[Random aside, but I'm reminded of the take on this in Persona 2 with the bet between Philemon and Nyarlathotep. The game gives the player a chance to punch Philemon even though he's on the player's side; it strikes me as a rather human response. and it oddly feels more satisfying, haha. Granted, Philemon isn't really meant to be a stand-in for God in the traditional sense, though.]
From what I can tell there isn't really a clear answer or interpretation regarding these points, and what explanations that do probably wouldn't satisfy everyone, especially people who already find fault with God as he's portrayed in the Bible. That said, several points that stood out to me in the text:
- One could argue that the setup of the story with the prologue was necessary to create this conflict in the first place, and it's also worth noting that the main text itself (with the poetically written arguments between Job, his friends, and later God) seems to be written as a separate unit from the prologue/epilogue - which according to some sources may have been written later to frame the story within a book of sorts.
- The story, at least, clearly debunks the claim that good things only happen to good people and vice versa; God acknowledges that Job's friends (who have been arguing this point) are wrong. I think the text in general falls in line with the idea that justice itself isn't inherent or built into the natural world. However, it's something that we as humans have come to expect - from our own experiences, from each other, from God, and that sense is what ultimately fuels both Job and his friends' arguments.
- This doesn't seem to be brought up as much, but Job's fourth friend, Elihu, sticks out for showing up late and not being addressed directly by anyone before or after, notably including God. Some people think he was a late addition to the text by someone (or perhaps the original author) taking issue with some of the statements Job and his friends were making, and others see him as a transition between Job's concluding arguments and God's final appearance.
Elihu's speech generally focuses on how both sides have been running on misconceptions of God: on one hand, Job's friends have failed to see how God can use suffering to correct or teach and not just punish; and on the other hand, Job has misconstrued God's sense of justice by questioning God's reasoning in allowing suffering to happen. He asserts that righteous or sinful acts don't affect God in the sense that they don't obligate him to respond to humans in a particular way, but at the same time "God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice (34:12)."
If anything, Elihu strikes me as having the most nuanced view of how God handles suffering and justice; and the fact that God doesn't address him at all when punishing Job's other friends could possibly lend credence to his words, even if he does come across as a little... "holier than thou."
- You could argue that the suffering was necessary to teach Job (or the reader) a different lesson, and that God merely took advantage of or used the bet with Satan for this purpose.
1. That perhaps prior to his ordeal, Job would have shared in the mentality that his righteousness merited God's blessings, when it actually was the case that God didn't owe him anything regardless of how good or evil he was. (The latter point was brought up above by Elihu.)
2. Job may have in fact presumed too much about God and his methods, considering his speeches up to the point where God appears. Prior to God's appearance, Job may have been on the verge of questioning whether God knew what he was doing in allowing it all to happen, or God's sense of justice... especially since God sees the need to address that in his own speech more than the actual reason for the suffering.
3. Talmudic literature (according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, anyway) assumes that Job actually sinned or "rebelled" against God, based off of some of the assumptions and complaints in his speeches.
As a result, the whole ordeal was necessary to help Job reevaluate his own situation and standing with God, by providing him with a perspective that he wouldn't have considered before... back when he was still going through the pious-give-burnt-offerings-to-God-every-day routine. This would also fall in line with Job's decision to regret his petition to God and fall back in silence: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. (42:5-6)"
- Oddly, one of the notes in my NISB seems to prefer the translation of Job's final line to God as "I regret dust and ashes" rather than "I repent in dust and ashes," due to the lack of a direct object in the original Hebrew regarding the verb to repent/regret. This would fall more in line with the interpretation that Job is actually disappointed by the realization that God won't answer his question, and is masking that in his words. It's a bit unconventional and I don't think as likely considering the likelihood that God (or the author's conception of God) would've been able to tell such a thing, and also considering that every translation I've come across preserves the "myself" part. But interesting, nonetheless.
- From a Christian perspective, some people have suggested that God actually realizes the inadequacy of his own response (at this time) and the coming of Jesus later falls in line with his true answer (which also would resonate with Job's issue in ch. 9 about not having an arbiter between himself and God).
- The EOB actually contains a translation of both the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text's edition of Job, as both differ significantly enough to merit comparison. I didn't really go through the translation of the Septuagint's version myself, but I noticed that the ending in the Septuagint contains several more verses after Job's death, including one about him being resurrected with those the Lord raises up. This seems to lean more towards Job being a historical account, oddly considering a lot of other sources consider Job to more likely be an invented account or a myth.
To some people God's answer (or lack thereof) would still seem inadequate, though, and I can't really blame them for it either. I'm more inclined to think that the lack of a clear, unambiguous answer to the problem of evil even in this story resonates with how ambiguous the reality actually is. Even with the best of attempts, we can't really know for sure.
That said, I guess personally, I've been starting to see (both here and in real life) how some life lessons and meaningful experiences wouldn't be possible were it not for the fact that suffering does exist. That's not to say that we should seek out suffering; I think it's easy enough to run into it in life without trying to anyway. It's more about how we should respond to it, and what it teaches us, when we do inevitably run into it.
The main point of Job is to address the problem of evil from a Hebrew/OT perspective, or particularly the issue of why bad things happen to good people. Jewish theology up to this point would've probably aligned more along the lines with "you reap what you sow," but as the author probably realized, there are too many cases of suffering in the world where this doesn't seem to apply at all. And so we end up with the story of a righteous, well-off man whose life suddenly falls apart thanks to a series of calamities, the death of his children, and later an onslaught of boils. His wife tells him to curse God and die; his friends yell at him for what they think he deserved, but throughout it all Job perseveres without saying a word against God. and then God shows up, chastises everyone, and rewards Job plentifully for the rest of his life for having passed the test.
The first takeaway that most Christians would probably get from this is a sense of admiration for Job. That despite all of the horrors that Job has experienced, as well as his sense that he himself has done nothing wrong, he still has faith in God's good-will and believes that God will come through for him in the end. Even though he has questions for God, he also still preserves a sense of reverence for him. The fact that God himself does show up and reward Job, and that the story ends happily ever after for the most part does lend credence to this. That said, I feel like focusing on that interpretation alone tends to overlook some of the other aspects and resulting implications that people would take issue with.
1. The prologue. Satan himself (or "the accuser" - some Jews see this more as a prosecutor-kind of angel than the devil, which is what satan in this context translates to) appears in front of God asking permission to torture Job, betting that Job will start cursing God the moment his life stops going his way. And God accepts.
2. Later, Job starts wanting to petition God regarding the reason for his suffering. He believes that he's done nothing wrong (which is true according to the story), and he wants to know the reason from God himself, seeing as how the only excuse his friends can give him is that he's wicked... which obviously doesn't help much. Then, when God finally shows up, he goes on about how there's so many things going on in creation that you wouldn't be able to comprehend and how God himself is greater than the Behemoth and the Leviathan and the thunderstorm and so on, without directly answering Job's question. And Job's just so overwhelmed and speechless at the end of the day that he decides to take back his request and repent in dust and ashes.
These in combination, to me seem more troubling than most of the other arguments and ideas presented in Job. I could more easily get around the message of the book if the prologue had not existed; essentially, the book would've ended with a simple "we don't know why people suffer because we wouldn't be able to comprehend it anyway." This wouldn't exactly be a satisfying conclusion- in fact I think a lot of people take issue with Job in part because of it and God's general attitude at the end- but it would at least make sense given the premise of the story.
However, we the readers, unlike Job, do get a glimpse into the reason behind the suffering: God's bet with the accuser, which comes across as somewhat capricious and selfish from a human perspective (at least, if it were anyone other than God more people would probably see it that way). It would mean that God himself is partly responsible for allowing suffering to happen in the first place. And if you look at it pessimistically, it would mean that he does it to prove a point- a point that he presumably already knew in advance, which still begs the question then of why? To make himself look better? So he can give that big speech at the end of how great he is? What would Job have thought if he had found out?
[Random aside, but I'm reminded of the take on this in Persona 2 with the bet between Philemon and Nyarlathotep. The game gives the player a chance to punch Philemon even though he's on the player's side; it strikes me as a rather human response. and it oddly feels more satisfying, haha. Granted, Philemon isn't really meant to be a stand-in for God in the traditional sense, though.]
From what I can tell there isn't really a clear answer or interpretation regarding these points, and what explanations that do probably wouldn't satisfy everyone, especially people who already find fault with God as he's portrayed in the Bible. That said, several points that stood out to me in the text:
- One could argue that the setup of the story with the prologue was necessary to create this conflict in the first place, and it's also worth noting that the main text itself (with the poetically written arguments between Job, his friends, and later God) seems to be written as a separate unit from the prologue/epilogue - which according to some sources may have been written later to frame the story within a book of sorts.
- The story, at least, clearly debunks the claim that good things only happen to good people and vice versa; God acknowledges that Job's friends (who have been arguing this point) are wrong. I think the text in general falls in line with the idea that justice itself isn't inherent or built into the natural world. However, it's something that we as humans have come to expect - from our own experiences, from each other, from God, and that sense is what ultimately fuels both Job and his friends' arguments.
- This doesn't seem to be brought up as much, but Job's fourth friend, Elihu, sticks out for showing up late and not being addressed directly by anyone before or after, notably including God. Some people think he was a late addition to the text by someone (or perhaps the original author) taking issue with some of the statements Job and his friends were making, and others see him as a transition between Job's concluding arguments and God's final appearance.
Elihu's speech generally focuses on how both sides have been running on misconceptions of God: on one hand, Job's friends have failed to see how God can use suffering to correct or teach and not just punish; and on the other hand, Job has misconstrued God's sense of justice by questioning God's reasoning in allowing suffering to happen. He asserts that righteous or sinful acts don't affect God in the sense that they don't obligate him to respond to humans in a particular way, but at the same time "God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice (34:12)."
If anything, Elihu strikes me as having the most nuanced view of how God handles suffering and justice; and the fact that God doesn't address him at all when punishing Job's other friends could possibly lend credence to his words, even if he does come across as a little... "holier than thou."
- You could argue that the suffering was necessary to teach Job (or the reader) a different lesson, and that God merely took advantage of or used the bet with Satan for this purpose.
1. That perhaps prior to his ordeal, Job would have shared in the mentality that his righteousness merited God's blessings, when it actually was the case that God didn't owe him anything regardless of how good or evil he was. (The latter point was brought up above by Elihu.)
2. Job may have in fact presumed too much about God and his methods, considering his speeches up to the point where God appears. Prior to God's appearance, Job may have been on the verge of questioning whether God knew what he was doing in allowing it all to happen, or God's sense of justice... especially since God sees the need to address that in his own speech more than the actual reason for the suffering.
3. Talmudic literature (according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, anyway) assumes that Job actually sinned or "rebelled" against God, based off of some of the assumptions and complaints in his speeches.
As a result, the whole ordeal was necessary to help Job reevaluate his own situation and standing with God, by providing him with a perspective that he wouldn't have considered before... back when he was still going through the pious-give-burnt-offerings-to-God-every-day routine. This would also fall in line with Job's decision to regret his petition to God and fall back in silence: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. (42:5-6)"
- Oddly, one of the notes in my NISB seems to prefer the translation of Job's final line to God as "I regret dust and ashes" rather than "I repent in dust and ashes," due to the lack of a direct object in the original Hebrew regarding the verb to repent/regret. This would fall more in line with the interpretation that Job is actually disappointed by the realization that God won't answer his question, and is masking that in his words. It's a bit unconventional and I don't think as likely considering the likelihood that God (or the author's conception of God) would've been able to tell such a thing, and also considering that every translation I've come across preserves the "myself" part. But interesting, nonetheless.
- From a Christian perspective, some people have suggested that God actually realizes the inadequacy of his own response (at this time) and the coming of Jesus later falls in line with his true answer (which also would resonate with Job's issue in ch. 9 about not having an arbiter between himself and God).
- The EOB actually contains a translation of both the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text's edition of Job, as both differ significantly enough to merit comparison. I didn't really go through the translation of the Septuagint's version myself, but I noticed that the ending in the Septuagint contains several more verses after Job's death, including one about him being resurrected with those the Lord raises up. This seems to lean more towards Job being a historical account, oddly considering a lot of other sources consider Job to more likely be an invented account or a myth.
To some people God's answer (or lack thereof) would still seem inadequate, though, and I can't really blame them for it either. I'm more inclined to think that the lack of a clear, unambiguous answer to the problem of evil even in this story resonates with how ambiguous the reality actually is. Even with the best of attempts, we can't really know for sure.
That said, I guess personally, I've been starting to see (both here and in real life) how some life lessons and meaningful experiences wouldn't be possible were it not for the fact that suffering does exist. That's not to say that we should seek out suffering; I think it's easy enough to run into it in life without trying to anyway. It's more about how we should respond to it, and what it teaches us, when we do inevitably run into it.
Friday, January 11, 2013
starting a 1 year Bible... and versions
This year some people in my small group decided to start an attempt at reading the entire Bible in one year, and I figured it was good time to finally do something I've been meaning to do for years anyway. In the process so far, I've been coming across a lot of ideas that I never would've considered or thought of the first time I read some of these books, so I guess you could say I'm starting a series of posts here to chronicle thoughts and findings along the way.
The one (or was it several?) times I tried this in the past, I was only able to get up to the point in Exodus where the laws suddenly start popping up... but I was also at an age where I figured that all of the instances in Genesis of people "sleeping together" meant that they literally slept on the same bed together, and then *poof* the wife just magically got pregnant... so I'm really getting a completely different perspective in on this run-through now. -_-
We're going through a chronological plan of the Bible (in the order the events supposedly happened) organized by the Blue Letter Bible; if you have a smartphone it's on the YouVersion Bible app. I have to admit, however, that the ordering doesn't feel entirely accurate already. The entirety of the book of Job is read before Abraham's story in Genesis, but Job has references to Rahab (who doesn't exist until Judges - although you could argue that it was inserted by the author, who existed post-Rahab) and one of Job's friends is supposedly a descendant of Abraham's grandson, Esau. Eh, whatever works, I guess.
I'm hoping that all of the years that have passed since my first attempt will have provided me better "insight" (and hearty skepticism! ish.) into reading now, but just in case, I'm doing some follow-up research on the side online and with commentary from my New Interpreter's Study Bible. Trying to keep it at mostly layman-accessible stuff. Over the past year, I've grown more interested in understanding how other traditions (my background is non-denom Protestant) have interpreted Scripture, particularly the Orthodox and Jewish faiths for historical reasons, so I'll be looking into commentary from those sides as well later on.
But anyway, for starters... the neverending Bible version debate. I randomly went on a semi-personal/research tangent with this.
- From the Protestant side: I grew up on the NIV (with memorization from the KJV sometimes) in elementary school, and I still have the copy of the NIV study Bible I used in middle school sitting with my other books right now. Since high school, though, I've been finding myself more distancing away from them for various reasons (a desire for more accuracy to the original texts and less Protestant evangelical bias/editorial agenda controversy... although most of the widely read versions I know of still fall under the mainline Protestant tradition).
For versions under the more formal equivalent (literal)-Tyndale (revisions since KJV) tradition: I recall my old apartment-mate Mark telling me that he thought the NASB was the least "blasphemous", as it does happen to be the most literal-to-the-source English one out there. Regen had the ESV on its pews, which I liked a lot and am currently using for a first pass-through before re-reading; it's a bit more readable in comparison while still being fairly literal. In Mark Study we used the NRSV, which is less literal than the previous two, and it's considered more liberal for its use of gender inclusive language and emphasis on translating based on the original historical context of the text rather than the traditional evangelical interpretation of it (the ESV was commissioned in part as a conservative reaction to it). That said, it seems to be the best version for serious academic study for being ecumenical, including Jewish, Catholic, and Orthodox representation in the people who worked on it. Not to mention, both the New Oxford Annotated and the New Interpreter's use it, and it also normally includes the Apochrypha used in the Catholic/Orthodox canon. I'm doing a second-pass/mainly commentary reading based off this one, just cause it reveals a lot of stuff in the text I would've never considered otherwise.
I haven't looked at other versions in as much depth yet, but for more recent non-Tyndale tradition translations with moderate dynamic equivalence (between literal and thought-for-thought) that aren't NIV related, both the HCSB and the NET look pretty good; the NET actually has the most abundant and in-depth translator's notes I've ever seen in a version outside of a study bible.
- From the Orthodox side, the two things that separate their versions from the other denominational translations is their reliance on the Septuagint for the OT (the Greek translation of the OT - the other versions I've listed rely predominantly on a version of the Jewish Masoretic Text, which came after. considering that the original NT authors actually quoted from the Septuagint whenever they referenced the OT and not the Hebrew, it makes more sense), and on Byzantine text-types for the NT that are currently used in the Orthodox Church itself (aside from the KJV/NKJV, the other versions I've listed rely on another text that focuses more on the generally older but less common Alexandrian text-types). For this, I'm mainly looking at the EOB, which came out recently. There's also the Orthodox Study Bible, although some Orthodox find that it has too much Protestant influence from primarily relying on the NKJV and having been worked on by people who were Protestant->Orthodox converts.
- From the Jewish perspective, it seems the most popular English translations of the Tanakh(MT) are the nJPS and Judaica Press translations. The latter comes included with commentary from Rashi, which is the most complete English translation of a Jewish commentary out there as far as I've heard.
-I'm personally not as interested in reading a Catholic Bible (for reasons better left in another post - more to do with Catholicism itself, although that may change later on), but I hear that aside from the Catholic editions of the RSV/NRSV, the NJB and NAB are largely used (the former is widely used in Europe; the latter is the most used in America for Mass readings).
More to come later.
The one (or was it several?) times I tried this in the past, I was only able to get up to the point in Exodus where the laws suddenly start popping up... but I was also at an age where I figured that all of the instances in Genesis of people "sleeping together" meant that they literally slept on the same bed together, and then *poof* the wife just magically got pregnant... so I'm really getting a completely different perspective in on this run-through now. -_-
We're going through a chronological plan of the Bible (in the order the events supposedly happened) organized by the Blue Letter Bible; if you have a smartphone it's on the YouVersion Bible app. I have to admit, however, that the ordering doesn't feel entirely accurate already. The entirety of the book of Job is read before Abraham's story in Genesis, but Job has references to Rahab (who doesn't exist until Judges - although you could argue that it was inserted by the author, who existed post-Rahab) and one of Job's friends is supposedly a descendant of Abraham's grandson, Esau. Eh, whatever works, I guess.
I'm hoping that all of the years that have passed since my first attempt will have provided me better "insight" (and hearty skepticism! ish.) into reading now, but just in case, I'm doing some follow-up research on the side online and with commentary from my New Interpreter's Study Bible. Trying to keep it at mostly layman-accessible stuff. Over the past year, I've grown more interested in understanding how other traditions (my background is non-denom Protestant) have interpreted Scripture, particularly the Orthodox and Jewish faiths for historical reasons, so I'll be looking into commentary from those sides as well later on.
But anyway, for starters... the neverending Bible version debate. I randomly went on a semi-personal/research tangent with this.
- From the Protestant side: I grew up on the NIV (with memorization from the KJV sometimes) in elementary school, and I still have the copy of the NIV study Bible I used in middle school sitting with my other books right now. Since high school, though, I've been finding myself more distancing away from them for various reasons (a desire for more accuracy to the original texts and less Protestant evangelical bias/editorial agenda controversy... although most of the widely read versions I know of still fall under the mainline Protestant tradition).
For versions under the more formal equivalent (literal)-Tyndale (revisions since KJV) tradition: I recall my old apartment-mate Mark telling me that he thought the NASB was the least "blasphemous", as it does happen to be the most literal-to-the-source English one out there. Regen had the ESV on its pews, which I liked a lot and am currently using for a first pass-through before re-reading; it's a bit more readable in comparison while still being fairly literal. In Mark Study we used the NRSV, which is less literal than the previous two, and it's considered more liberal for its use of gender inclusive language and emphasis on translating based on the original historical context of the text rather than the traditional evangelical interpretation of it (the ESV was commissioned in part as a conservative reaction to it). That said, it seems to be the best version for serious academic study for being ecumenical, including Jewish, Catholic, and Orthodox representation in the people who worked on it. Not to mention, both the New Oxford Annotated and the New Interpreter's use it, and it also normally includes the Apochrypha used in the Catholic/Orthodox canon. I'm doing a second-pass/mainly commentary reading based off this one, just cause it reveals a lot of stuff in the text I would've never considered otherwise.
I haven't looked at other versions in as much depth yet, but for more recent non-Tyndale tradition translations with moderate dynamic equivalence (between literal and thought-for-thought) that aren't NIV related, both the HCSB and the NET look pretty good; the NET actually has the most abundant and in-depth translator's notes I've ever seen in a version outside of a study bible.
- From the Orthodox side, the two things that separate their versions from the other denominational translations is their reliance on the Septuagint for the OT (the Greek translation of the OT - the other versions I've listed rely predominantly on a version of the Jewish Masoretic Text, which came after. considering that the original NT authors actually quoted from the Septuagint whenever they referenced the OT and not the Hebrew, it makes more sense), and on Byzantine text-types for the NT that are currently used in the Orthodox Church itself (aside from the KJV/NKJV, the other versions I've listed rely on another text that focuses more on the generally older but less common Alexandrian text-types). For this, I'm mainly looking at the EOB, which came out recently. There's also the Orthodox Study Bible, although some Orthodox find that it has too much Protestant influence from primarily relying on the NKJV and having been worked on by people who were Protestant->Orthodox converts.
- From the Jewish perspective, it seems the most popular English translations of the Tanakh(MT) are the nJPS and Judaica Press translations. The latter comes included with commentary from Rashi, which is the most complete English translation of a Jewish commentary out there as far as I've heard.
-I'm personally not as interested in reading a Catholic Bible (for reasons better left in another post - more to do with Catholicism itself, although that may change later on), but I hear that aside from the Catholic editions of the RSV/NRSV, the NJB and NAB are largely used (the former is widely used in Europe; the latter is the most used in America for Mass readings).
More to come later.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Dream Post #48
1. Don Draper from Mad Men goes to a barber I've been thinking about checking out sometime and gets a haircut. He disapproves.
2. I'm trying to rearrange furniture on the ceiling of a living or bedroom using a crane that hasn't been calibrated properly and keeps missing the furniture I'm trying to reach. Dad meanwhile chastises me for how bad of a job I'm doing.
I haven't been remembering the dreams I've been having very well as of late... although I tend to remember nap dreams better and I haven't been taking naps much lately, I guess.
2. I'm trying to rearrange furniture on the ceiling of a living or bedroom using a crane that hasn't been calibrated properly and keeps missing the furniture I'm trying to reach. Dad meanwhile chastises me for how bad of a job I'm doing.
I haven't been remembering the dreams I've been having very well as of late... although I tend to remember nap dreams better and I haven't been taking naps much lately, I guess.
musical list update
(What started out as a single post on random subjects suddenly grew too long for one post, so I'm making several unrelated posts instead.)
I went on a musical watching/listening binge over the break, after seeing Book of Mormon live in SF (which was really good! if a bit raunchy, but I actually like raunchy humor - like Louie and Archer). It started with the TV movie version of Gypsy, the new Les Mis movie, and a live showing of The Addams Family in Irvine with the brother, but then it progressed into a bunch of Sondheim musicals: a rewatch of PBS's filmed version of Company, followed by Follies, Into the Woods, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park with George, and A Little Night Music.
Sondheim musicals have this thing for not tending to be inherently popular or conventional like the more prevalent musicals out there- I think most of them never really turned up a profit on Broadway- but they end up being more musically and lyrically... complicated, I guess. I keep having to look up the lyrics whenever a new song comes up because I don't readily catch the meaning or some of the more clever rhymes and alliteration present in the lyrics on a first listen. Some songs or moments don't even strike me as memorable until a few listens later. But overall I end up liking each musical as a whole a lot more after revisiting it again or listening to the soundtrack right after watching it.
I actually wound up buying the Hat Box collection as a result- it contains all of the lyrics Sondheim wrote for every major musical he's worked on, including the ones whose music he didn't compose, like Gypsy and West Side Story, and the songs that didn't make it into the final work of each. I haven't read far into them yet, but one thing that struck me from the preface was his insight into how song lyrics differ from poems. It's kind of ironic to have a book that collects all of the lyrics, he says- considering that unlike poems, lyrics are meant to be sung rather than read (silently or aloud), with music, and musical lyrics in particular are meant to be sung within the context of whatever musical show they're a part of. Consequently, simpler lyrics tend to have more power than lengthy, complicated or "poetic" lyrics, as the accompanying music will generally either amplify the meaning (in the former case) or make the entire work feel clumsy (in the latter case). Reading a lyric for the first time without its context robs it of the power it would otherwise have being heard the way it's meant to be heard... but it helps to have the complete lyrics available for reference anyway.
Random aside, but I tend to think of my liking of anime music in a similar sense. I have the guilty pleasure of having a playlist of anime songs on my phone... that I probably would never play in front of anyone unless someone asked. Even to me, if I had heard the songs outside of their visual context in the show, I probably wouldn't think much of them - I actually wind up hating most full size versions of anime opening and ending songs; they sound better to me the way I originally heard them, in their shorter TV sized format. Most of my enjoyment of them is from being able to recall the visuals associated with them in my head. In the same sense, a lot of my enjoyment of listening to the soundtracks of musicals comes from being able to recall the physical scenes associated with them. It just winds up being harder to share these kinds of songs with someone who hasn't seen them in their original context, but I wind up playing them on repeat more than the normal music I listen to... although normal is up for debate anyway, haha.
If I were to rank favorite musicals now...
Seen live:
1. A Chorus Line
2. Book of Mormon
3. You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown
4. Sweeney Todd
5. Spring Awakening
6. Wicked
Seen recorded (but definitely will see live if the opportunity comes up):
1. Into the Woods
2. Follies
3. Sunday in the Park With George
4. Company
5. Les Miserables
6. Merrily We Roll Along
I realize now that I missed the chance to see the Follies revival in LA and Les Mis in SF last year, but oh well. Next time. (and also that Sondheim's dominating these rankings now. >_>)
I went on a musical watching/listening binge over the break, after seeing Book of Mormon live in SF (which was really good! if a bit raunchy, but I actually like raunchy humor - like Louie and Archer). It started with the TV movie version of Gypsy, the new Les Mis movie, and a live showing of The Addams Family in Irvine with the brother, but then it progressed into a bunch of Sondheim musicals: a rewatch of PBS's filmed version of Company, followed by Follies, Into the Woods, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park with George, and A Little Night Music.
Sondheim musicals have this thing for not tending to be inherently popular or conventional like the more prevalent musicals out there- I think most of them never really turned up a profit on Broadway- but they end up being more musically and lyrically... complicated, I guess. I keep having to look up the lyrics whenever a new song comes up because I don't readily catch the meaning or some of the more clever rhymes and alliteration present in the lyrics on a first listen. Some songs or moments don't even strike me as memorable until a few listens later. But overall I end up liking each musical as a whole a lot more after revisiting it again or listening to the soundtrack right after watching it.
I actually wound up buying the Hat Box collection as a result- it contains all of the lyrics Sondheim wrote for every major musical he's worked on, including the ones whose music he didn't compose, like Gypsy and West Side Story, and the songs that didn't make it into the final work of each. I haven't read far into them yet, but one thing that struck me from the preface was his insight into how song lyrics differ from poems. It's kind of ironic to have a book that collects all of the lyrics, he says- considering that unlike poems, lyrics are meant to be sung rather than read (silently or aloud), with music, and musical lyrics in particular are meant to be sung within the context of whatever musical show they're a part of. Consequently, simpler lyrics tend to have more power than lengthy, complicated or "poetic" lyrics, as the accompanying music will generally either amplify the meaning (in the former case) or make the entire work feel clumsy (in the latter case). Reading a lyric for the first time without its context robs it of the power it would otherwise have being heard the way it's meant to be heard... but it helps to have the complete lyrics available for reference anyway.
Random aside, but I tend to think of my liking of anime music in a similar sense. I have the guilty pleasure of having a playlist of anime songs on my phone... that I probably would never play in front of anyone unless someone asked. Even to me, if I had heard the songs outside of their visual context in the show, I probably wouldn't think much of them - I actually wind up hating most full size versions of anime opening and ending songs; they sound better to me the way I originally heard them, in their shorter TV sized format. Most of my enjoyment of them is from being able to recall the visuals associated with them in my head. In the same sense, a lot of my enjoyment of listening to the soundtracks of musicals comes from being able to recall the physical scenes associated with them. It just winds up being harder to share these kinds of songs with someone who hasn't seen them in their original context, but I wind up playing them on repeat more than the normal music I listen to... although normal is up for debate anyway, haha.
If I were to rank favorite musicals now...
Seen live:
1. A Chorus Line
2. Book of Mormon
3. You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown
4. Sweeney Todd
5. Spring Awakening
6. Wicked
Seen recorded (but definitely will see live if the opportunity comes up):
1. Into the Woods
2. Follies
3. Sunday in the Park With George
4. Company
5. Les Miserables
6. Merrily We Roll Along
I realize now that I missed the chance to see the Follies revival in LA and Les Mis in SF last year, but oh well. Next time. (and also that Sondheim's dominating these rankings now. >_>)
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