Totally awesome Christmas special

This being a Bible theory blog, and it being almost Christmas, I’d better come up with something really groovy to say, something that nobody in 2000 years of exegesis has said before.

Sure, got that.

Most elements of the Biblical narrative have buddy-elements, so that one explains the other. God’s Spirit hovering over the waters in Genesis 1, for instance, is form-wise neatly repeated in Noah’s ark, containing the entire biosphere, bobbing about the flood waters, and again in Christ walking on water. If you want to know more about any of these scenes, then simply look at the others and see what you can learn.

Another example of this element & buddy-element is studied in a kind of Scripture theory called type-theology. Solomon, for instance, is an obvious “type” of Christ-as-king. If you want to know more about the kinghood of Christ, look at the kinghood of Solomon and start taking notes.

However, it sometimes happens that an element of Scriptures just sits there and has no buddy, meaning that the event or situation is nowhere repeated in Scriptures, which makes interpretation difficult. Such elements are called orphans. We don’t know where they come from, we don’t know what they’re doing there.

Finding a buddy for an orphan is really quite jolly.

One persistent Scriptural orphan is something that’s on display these pre-Christmas days in all corners of the Christian world, namely baby Jesus laying in the crib. All very romantic of course, but, cry Scripture theorists, what’s the Son of God doing laying in a crib? Why is that so important that it gets such prime Scriptural screen time?

Some have tried to tie the image of Christ in the crib to the Passover lamb introduced in the book of Exodus, but even in Exodus, no lamb is ever put in a crib. Then why is the Word In The Flesh put in a crib? The answer may lay in the book of Judges, in the nimble hands of arch-hooligan Samson.

But before we call on Samson, you need to know about an important principle in Scriptures called gender-inversion. That sounds rather invasive, and it probably is. Gender inversion is employed when an individual (male) turns into a group (female). Take Christ, for instance. He started His life out as a male, but now He’s incarnated in His people, which form the Body of Christ, which is feminine.

Another example is Jacob (male) who turns into Israel, which is a group and feminine. This particular gender inversion is described in gruesome detail in Genesis 32, where the English translations gingerly speak of the angel touching Jacob’s thigh, but the Hebrew reports that the angel whacks him on the membrum virile, and Jacob limps henceforth.

In Judges 14 Samson encounters a lion and rips it in half. When he returns to the scene he notices that a swarm of bees have nestled in the carcass. Samson uses this peculiar event to try to wing the Philistines out of their wardrobes, but this peculiar event is also a notorious Scriptural orphan. There is no other even that looks remotely like bees in a lion. That is, until the Christmas story was penned down.

The Hebrew word for bee is deborah. It’s a feminine noun from a root that means to speak, or rather to convey a formal message. A masculine derivative of this same root is the noun dabar, meaning word, as in the phrase Word of God.

One of the few Hebrew words for lion is ary. That’s a masculine noun from a root that means to gather up or gather around. The feminine derivative of this same root is aryeh, which means crib. In Hebrew both the lion and the crib were seen as entities that gathered, or around which a gathering occurs.

Ergo, the bee in the lion is the gender inverted equivalent of the Word in the crib.

Ho-ho-ho! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Why dark is not (really) the opposite of light.

In our world there are basically two ways of looking at reality: the Persian way and the Hebrew way. That’s sounds fantastically archaic, but they’re really quite hip.

The Persian perspective is by far the most prevalent way of looking at the world. Made popular by Zarathustra, the Persian model insists that everything comes in pairs, which are opposites, and which together either create a cosmic conflict or some harmonious whole: good versus evil, light versus dark, up versus down, yin versus yang, and so on.

The Hebrew way of looking at things supposes that there are no two sides, just one side, or rather no side at all. It’s just us in a big world, and we evolve from a chaotic past to a harmonious future. Another important factor in the Hebrew way of seeing things is that evolution is towards some kind of attractor; some kind of central entity towards all things move, evolve or simply revolve.

All story telling focuses on conflicts, but the big difference between Persian story telling and Hebrew story telling is that in Persian story telling the antagonist always comes from the camp opposite the camp of the protagonist. The conflict ensues and a happy ending revolves around the camp of the antagonist being defeated but not annihilated. The enemy retreats, regroups and will surely be heard from again.

Hebrew story telling focuses almost entirely on conflicts that arise inside the favored camp, or even inside our hero’s head. If there is an antagonist camp, it usually receives very little screen time, and a good look at the story reveals that the actual conflict of the story is that of our heroes. If there is an enemy camp, that enemy will either be completely wiped out, or they will reconcile with our heroes and become one with them.

A typical modern example of Persian story telling is found in the Star Wars cycle. The “dark side” is an equal counterpart of the side we’re rooting for. It’s peopled by darklings and captained by some arch-darkling. The Hebrew answer to Star Wars (although they came first) is Star Trek, in which a federation of heroes goes out to encounter strange new worlds and become one with a greater realm. Star Wars is always about the battle against the others. Star Trek is most often about our own attitude towards antagonism, and our personal or collective growth. An insurrection in Star Wars tells of the good guys finally rising up against the utterly other bad guys. An insurrection in Star Trek most often has to do with a person or group that breaks away from the larger fold and turns on it.

Similarly comparative are the movies It’s A Bug’s Life (Persian, by Walt Disney) and AntZ (Hebrew, by Steven Spielberg & co), which were published pretty much at the same time and were obvious reactions to each other.

We’re free to admire and utilize either perspective and it would be folly to state that either Persian or Hebrew is the right one or the true one. But it’s also wise to realize that the Persian way of looking at things is as poetic or experiential as the word sunrise. Of course the sun rises, in our experience, although in fact the sun stays were it is and the earth turns. What to an observer seems like an act of the sun is in fact an act of the earth. Take away the earth-bound observer and the sun never rises again.

In that same way, up and down aren’t opposites; they’re merely directions from an observer’s perspective. Take away the observer and neither direction is either up or down. The same goes for warm and cold, or any other duo. Even darkness and light aren’t opposites. Light consists of substance (photons) but darkness is not the presence of some other substance. When we turn the light on in a dark room, the room fills with light, but nothing actually leaves. Darkness does not get replaced with light; it doesn’t go away. It just seizes to exist.

Because the Persian way of seeing things is so natural to any observer, even the Bible often gets interpreted in a Persian way. Many people believe that God and the devil are equal opposites, each with their realms and empires, and that darkness belongs to the devil while light belongs to God. But no, we can safely conclude that the Bible works the Hebrew way.

In the Bible God is the legal owner of everything. Light belongs to God but darkness as well. In fact, some of the core scenes of Scriptures occur in darkness (like the creation, the covenant with Abraham, the death of Jesus Christ). God, or at least communion with God, is that attractor that all evolution naturally aims for, and the devil ‘rules’ separation. A consequence of this is that only God’s realm is organized and based on understanding, forgiveness and communication. The devil ‘masters’ chaos, which is a paradox because chaos can only exists when there is no rule. The devil is the emperor of an empire in which the subjects aren’t subjects.

The same difference between the realm of God and the realm of the devil - a.k.a. Beelzebub, which means Lord Of the Flies - is the difference between a colony of bees and a swarm of flies. Bees are organized; flies are not. Bees adhere to central rule; flies do not. Bees have a home; flies don’t. Bees focus on flowers and help them reproduce; flies focus on corpses and dung and aid only decay, and if they help reproduction, it‘s the reproduction of diseases. Bees produce honey and care for their offspring; flies produce nothing and don’t care for their offspring. Bees are armed; flies are not. Any bee can venture into a swarm of flies unscathed. Any fly foolish enough to come close to a beehive, won’t even make it past the first line of defense, let alone come near the entrance.

Next time you watch Luke Skywalker battle Lord Vader with a light saber (an obvious metaphor for an intellectual debate; for any physical fight both have access to grenades and laser guns and the likes), or Captain Picard zip through the Briar Patch (Moses in Exodus 3) and engage the Son’a in favor of the Ba’ku, and so doing create a conflict within the Federation that threatens its very existence, maybe you should take off your shoes…

Maybe not.

Is the Bible true?

Here at Abarim Publications we frequently receive emails from people who ask us – in various degrees of desperation – whether or not the Bible is true. Many of us have a lot riding on our conviction that, yes, the Bible is true, but we all hear about startling scientific reports that strongly suggest the opposite: The creation week made way for the Hot Big Bang Inflation Theory, the Ten Plagues never happened, the Exodus never happened, Solomon was just a minor tribal head, and so on. What’s with that?

What all of us need to understand is that what we call the Bible is nothing more than a best guess of what folks trough the ages thought that the source texts might mean. We work off translations and cultural interpretations of something that is vastly and unfathomably complex. In fact, our present understanding of the nature of the ancient Hebrew and Greek Scriptures is pretty much of the same level as the archaic  belief that the earth is flat and we might fall of the edge if we venture out to sea too much.

So no, the creation week doesn’t cover a period in historical time, and that hurts our pride a bit, maybe, but it doesn’t take anything away from the splendor of Genesis 1. Only from what we guessed Genesis 1 was about.

In the 20^th century we saw the rise of quantum mechanics, chaos theory and complexity theory, all new and smashing insights in the working of the universe, and lo and behold, these methods applied to Genesis reveal that Genesis is right on a par with the hippest scientific slings and arrows. When we look at Genesis from a complexity axis instead of from a temporal axis - which is a dumb thing to do anyway because time is a by-product of creation, and thus The Beginning can’t be a point in the past (see my previous post) -  Genesis contains natural structures that mankind could not have consciously known about up until a few decades ago.

Then how did we get it?

The Standard Model of elementary particles (that’s the fundamental organization of the building blocks of the universe – subatomic particles and all that) was completed in the late 1990’s. When we finally had it, the Standard Model appeared to be as good as identical to the family of Abraham as described in the Torah. That family, says God in Genesis 13:6, would be like the ‘dust of the earth,’ and ‘dust of the earth’ is what God made everything out of in Genesis 1.

Whoever wrote that passage also compared the multitudinousness  of Abraham’s offspring to that of the kernels of sand on the sea shore  - billions and billions of them – and, in the same sentence, also to the stars in the sky - a mere few thousand visible to the naked eye; a mere few thousand people would hardly fill a town (Genesis 22:17). How did the author know that there are indeed billions and billions of stars out there, as many as there are sand kernels on a beach? And why did he expect his audience to accept that, and not throw him and his story out with the trash?

So is the Bible true? Goodness, we don’t even have an idea what the Bible is, or how we could have gotten our hands on it. There is clear evidence that the original Hebrew authors knew about the nature of the universe, from the vastness of multi-dimensional space down to the complexity of DNA.

As far as we can tell, the source texts of the Bible are at least as mysterious as the pyramids at Giza or the dessert drawings in Peru. And we are clueless about the lot of them.

My clumsy guess is that the Bible is very true, more true than any one of us could have ever imagined, and we just have to keep at it, keep interpreting, keep translating, keep comparing the unclear whole story that we got from history to the few clear parts of the mostly obscured story we get from science. Or as Dory said: just keep swimming, just keep swimming.

And the translations that we have may run a bit off track where creation and human history are concerned, but the source texts don’t. And the joy and consolation that waits for us in the translated versions of these event, and the Psalms, the Gospels and the Epistles have always been very real and readily receivable for anyone who can read or listen.

Communion with God results primarily in a lot of joy and peace. This He achieves by means of the Holy Spirit, not by means of giving us a knack for relativity theory and sorts. But knowledge is also promised at many locations in the Bible. Paul urges us to investigate all things and keep what is good, so go ahead and investigate. In this school of life theories come and go, and the convictions of today’s best and brightest tomorrow are dusty relics showing in trophy cabinets near the coat racks.

You know what? I’ll see you at recess. I’ll be out in the yard, playing marbles in the sun.

Are we getting closer to the Big Bang?

Big new on the radio this morning: Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, European scientists have discovered the oldest star system ever (UDFy-38135539)! And, said the radio announcer enthusiastically, that means that we’re getting closer to the Big Bang!

Well, no, that’s not how it works.

It’s true that the farther you look into the universe, the further back in time you go. When you look at the sun, you see it the way it was eight minutes ago. That’s how long it took for the light to get here. As a matter of fact, you’re seeing the screen of your computer the way it was a fraction of a millisecond ago, because the light traveling from your screen to your eyes takes a while to get there. And that goes for everything you see. Due to the nature of time, light and space, we’re living a continuous season of re-runs. It’s how the universe works.

But, thought the radio announcer this morning, that must mean that the deeper we look into space, the closer we should get to that enigmatic beginning of the universe we call the Big Bang!

But the universe began in a singularity, tinier than the nucleus of an atom. And the past is all around us, in every direction we look. That would means that that enigmatic singularity in which it all began, lies like the peel of an onion everywhere around us!

Well, no again. Time is a bit of a mystery in itself, but it’s safe to say that time has to do with information preservation. If you can’t preserve information, then there is no past and present, no cause and effect, and that means that there is no time. Time is a product of the universe. It ‘began’ when particles were formed and were able to stick together and make lasting structures in which information could be contained. The formation of hydrogen atoms is called matter-radiation decoupling. The making of protons is called nucleosynthesis. You need nuclei to make atoms, and you need atoms to make time.

Going back in time will eventually lead to traces of an era when particles began to stick together because that’s when time-as-we-know-it ‘began.’ The Big Bang occurs ‘long before’ that, but not at any point in time. As George Smoot and comrades proved in 1992 with their famous COBE photo: the remnants of the Big Bang are everywhere, not only in the past. We’re already at the Big bang. There’s no getting closer to it. We’re swimming in it.

Suddenly the most famous phrase of the Bible, “In the Beginning,” seems not so difficult to understand anymore.

Read Abarim Publications' article on In The Beginning

Does the Universe Expand?

What is Scripture Theory?

Scripture Theory is to texts what Chaos Theory is to creation. Scripture Theory tries to isolate patterns in the narrative, in order to understand it better and to finally arrive at some kind of system that describes the principles of a text's governing dynamics. The difference between a book and a great book is often the consistency of patterns in the latter. ...continue reading

Gerrit Aalten finds the Ark of Noah!

The weekend edition of De Telegraaf, a large Dutch newspaper, features a huge article on an intrepid Ark-hunter named Gerrit Aalten, who gained world fame by appearing on Chinese television as Ark expert. This is remarkable for more than one reason.

Apart from having no tradition based on the Torah, China’s government still restricts religious practices, and interest in the Bible is rare. But on the other hand, the Chinese are clever enough to understand that an exact replica of the Ark might prove to be a virtual magnet for Western tourists-slash-investors. Hence the primary expedition to Ararat was funded by a company that had built a restaurant in the shape of the Ark according to the specifications listed in Genesis 6.

One may wonder if this restaurant is vegetarian, but at least it’s such a success that it could pay for an Ark hunt. And wouldn’t you know, they’ve actually found a large wooden structure right where the Bible said it would be.

But finding a wooden structure on a mountain that may or may not be the Biblical Ararat is not where the hunt ends. Unless it comes with a plaque that says, “Noah was here,” a wooden structure is just a wooden structure. The purpose and validity of the story of Noah in the Bible may even be entirely disconnected from a possible historical event (see here our own humble opinion). But that something Ark-like happened at some point in the past is strongly argued by the fact that Noah appears in various forms in pretty much all major bodies of ancient literature. The Sumerians and Babylonians called him Gilgamesh. In Hindu tradition he’s known as Manu. In the Qur’an he’s called Nuh, because yes, De Telegraaf helpfully submits, Noah is also mentioned in the Qur’an.

During the last century, the Netherlands has seen an enormous decline in church attendance, and with that came an increasingly pressing attitude of derision towards Christianity or religion in general. And with the influx of cheap-labor Muslims, Islam became a target as well. Until bombs started to go off and folks were killed after they’d provoked the wrong people for years.

The last decade or so we’ve seen a very curious development in this arena. On one hand the resistance towards the dissolution of the Dutch culture found its scapegoat in Islam, and its identity in Christianity as a socio-historical phenomenon. The snickers of lame mockery have quieted and now it’s fashion to show ostentatious Respect to the belief systems we oppose. That’s very convenient for Christianity because suddenly Christians find themselves with a torch in hand that they never thought could have existed. We’re one of them now, it seems. It reminds me of my school days when Billy the Nerd was acquitted of all nerdery the day his brother Bob blew up the science building during an experiment.

It is from this perspective that Abarim Publications wishes to extend a heartfelt salute to Gerrit Aalten and his passion to find the Ark. Remember the promise of global restoration as written down by Isaiah, “Behold, these shall come from afar, and lo, these will come from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Sinim (that’s probably China)…” (49:12).

What is the number 666, and should we be worried?

It’s among the most recognized symbols and it shows up all the time, usually to indicate something nasty or wannabe. Scores of experts urge us to be worried, but is that warranted?

We know about the number 666 from the book of Revelation, the final book of the Bible.

In chapter 13, John the Revelator discusses two beasts. The first one (verses 1 to 10) comes out of the sea and seems similar to an earlier mentioned dragon who gives it its authority (v2). The second beast comes out of the earth (v11 to 18). This second beast exercises all authority of the first beast in the presence of the first beast (12). One of the acts of this second beast is to equip all people with a mark on either their right hand or on their forehead. That mark, John explains, is 666.

Is 666 the number of he devil?

Too bad for all the metal heads and horror fans who thought it was, but 666 is a human number, the number of a man (v 18). Some say that, surely, this ‘man’ must be demon possessed but that too is unbiblical. In the Bible no demon ever possesses anything and at best gets to influence people. In fact, God is the sole owner of everything: the entire world (Ps 24:1), and all souls (Eze 18:4).

The number 666 is often associated with the Antichrist, but it’s by no means certain that the two are the same. There are many more villains or mysterious entities mentioned in Revelation and other Bible books.

What might 666 mean?

John seems to invite the ‘wise’ among us to figure out what 666 means. He says, “Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast” (Rev 13:18). This may seem like a summons to all smarties out there, but in the Biblical arena, understanding means something else than being smart. King Solomon says it like this, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov 1:7).

Wisdom starts with reverence for truth, not with being clever, and certainly not with being hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic (that’s the fear of 666 - such a cool word, I had to put it in).

The beast

The word that John uses for the creatures from the earth and the sea is ‘therion.’ Therion usually denotes ferocious creatures like lions or vipers. A verb that’s tied into this word is ‘thera,’ which means to hunt or chase. Paul uses this verb in Rom 11:9 to describe a trap. He quotes Ps 69:22, which paints a picture of deception and dullness that leads to complete ruin.

It should be noted that the word ‘therion’ did then not carry the distinct negative connotation it does today. Aspiring beast-hunters should also know that the constellation we now call Lupus was called Therion in John’s time.

Suggested interpretations

The most popular approach in interpreting the number 666 is to render numerical values to letters, transnumerate personal names and add the letter-values together (this is called Gematria). By adding titles and trying different languages, the number of the beast has been pinned to a large amount of people and institutions, from Emperor Nero to Pope Benedict and the papacy at large.

Since 666 has to do with trade, especially global trade, people have wondered if this number may have something to do with the Internet. It has been overly reported that the name Bill Gates III converted to ASCII codes would add up to 666. But a little scrutiny shows that this isn’t true. The name Bill Gates in ASCII adds up to 663 but the decimal number 3 has ASCII value 51. That’s 714 together.

Others note that the ‘w’ is the transliteration of the sixth Hebrew letter (the waw), and that thus ‘www,’ the signature prefix of all website URLs, transnumerates to 666.

A similar construction (that none of the dozens of the consulted websites, including Wikipedia, mentions, so I reckon it’s my claim to fame) occurs when we realize that the Hebrew word for lily is ‘sixie,’ a word which is closely related to the word for six. Displaying three lilies (Pope Simplicius, 468-483, left, and pope Paulus VI, 1963-1978, right) does therefore seem not very clever.

All this would have been very worrisome is John the Revelator had said anything about six-six-six. He doesn’t. He is talking about six-hundred and sixty-six. And that is something completely different.


A more sensible attempt

Revelation 13 is mesmerizing but wildly guessing after its meaning has no merit. Even if we would accidentally guess right, it wouldn’t serve us much if we still don’t understand the meaning of the chapter, or the book, or even the Bible as a whole. Gematria certainly existed when John wrote Revelation, but nowhere in the Bible is Gematria employed or even mentioned. It is highly unlikely that John inserted a hip riddle in his book, and that the outcome of it denoted something that had nothing to do with wisdom, or even helped anyone who managed to figure it out.

Judging from the many references to established Biblical symbolisms, John obviously meant Revelation to be a commentary on the rest of the Bible. To be specific: it’s virtually doused with references to the tabernacle, which evolved into the Temple, which in turn evolved into the Body of Christ. All the lamp stands, the bowls, God’s throne, the trumpets, and perhaps even the sealed books, are all temple related. And so is 666.

Besides Ezra 2:13 - where 666 occurs as a literal amount, mentioned in a long list of numbers of tribesmen - the only other occurrence of the number 666 in he Bible denotes the annual amount of gold talents that Solomon received from the surrounding nations (I Kings 10:14 and II Chronicles 9:13).

The defining quality of gold is that it doesn’t rust and seems eternal. Hence gold is often used in the Bible as a symbol for truth. In Rev 3:18 Jesus advises the church in Laodicea to buy gold from Him. But Jesus also explains that gold doesn’t make the temple holy, the temple makes the gold holy (Matt 23:17). In other words: knowledge doesn’t sanctify the Body of Christ but the Body of Christ sanctifies knowledge. And this knowledge is not vague esotericism or limited to philosophical or theological knowledge, but any kind of (scientific) knowledge that would help people serve others and glorify God (see Rom 1:20, Ph 1:9, 4:8, 1 Tess 5:21 and Hebr 1:11 – the latter two references were reinvented in the scientific method).

Why the six?

The Bible uses symbols and metaphors much more frequently than a modern text, and numbers are used symbolically as well. Apart from simply denoting a quantity, the number six often indicates an incomplete set or cycle (as seven denotes a whole set or cycle, still reminiscent in our phrase ‘the seven seas’).

Since the Greek language in which John wrote had no exclamation marks, he used an amplification technique that is common in Scriptures. Jesus does something similar in Matt 18:22, where He amplifies seven to seventy-times-seven. In effect, the number 666 could be interpreted as 6!!

Perhaps the author of the temple story literally meant that Solomon received 666 talents of gold each year (which today would come down to a cool four billion dollars) but perhaps this number was chosen to explain that no matter how much gold came, it was never sufficient.

If that is true, then Kurt Gödel earth-shattering discovery that any logical system based on axioms must always remain incomplete was preceded by Biblical insight by two and a half millennia.

Michael and the Dragon


The dragon & beasts cycle covers chapters 12 and 13, and its main theme is a handing over of the authority of the red dragon (who is known as the devil and satan – 12:9). Whatever that authority might be, the whole story is an obvious allegory of the evolution of knowledge, or rather the acquisition thereof. Here’s why:

John divides the whole of man’s mental activity in two, and depicts this division as a battle between the arch-angel Michael and the red dragon. The name Michael means Who Is Like God? Or rather: What’s God Like? And it denotes man’s quest to know God. The Greek word for dragon, ‘drakon’ comes from the verb ‘derkomai,’ which means to look at or behold, and seems to denote a greed for knowledge for the sake of self. The Hebrew word for snake, ‘nahash,’ is identical to the word for to observe or to learn by experience. All this ties wonderfully into the Eden story in which Adam and Eve are tempted by a snake to consume the fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

The difference between Michael and the dragon is often misunderstood and it must be stressed that both desire or promote knowledge. Yet Michael shows reality to be a kingdom, while the dragon shows reality to be a republic.

Michael’s efforts mould a mind into a centralized throne for the Word of God, while the dragon turns a mind into a cloud without a center. The Hebrew word for Word (or Logos) is ‘dabar,’ which is the masculine version of the feminine word ‘deborah,’ meaning honey bee. Bees dwell in centralized societies, may form vast armies, have a protective house, focus on living flowers, produce honey and care for their offspring. Flies on the other hand (Beelzebub means Lord of the Flies) are not centralized, are inveterately on their own, focus on dung and carcasses, produce nothing, and don’t care for their offspring. Bees are armed; flies are not.

Land and sea

Land vs sea is a very common Biblical metaphor for stability/security/certainty vs instability/insecurity/uncertainty (see for instance Mat 7:24-27). The Hebrew word for sea is ‘mayim,’ which is a plural word (literally: the waters). The singular form of this word would be ‘may,’ which is identical to the common particle of inquisition: what? who? It’s this particle that forms the first element of the name Michael.

To the Hebrews, the sea was in the west and land stretched towards the east. The Hebrew word for east is identical to the word for past. The whole metaphorical system is obvious: from the past comes experience, knowledge and thus certainty and footing. The future is fluidic and can only be wondered about. Depicting the disciples of Jesus as fishermen thus becomes a very bold statement about their ability to harvest the great unknown. And the story of the two fish and five loaves (= seven items) is much more than a miraculous picnic. (Also see Rev 21:1)

The beast from the sea

Any beast that comes from the sea therefore must have to do with something pertaining to the unknown. My guess is that with this beast John depicts the great human ability to plan ahead, to foresee either future or any underlying system to appearing chaos by means of reason. Why this beast should have seven heads and ten horns or ten diadems (compare Rev 12:3 with 13:1) is not explained, but the seven & ten couple also appears in the design of the tabernacle (Ex 25:37 & Ex 34:28 or 36:8 and 38:12). In addition to this, Solomon states that wisdom is based on seven pillars (Pr 9:1).

Why one of the seven heads gets mortally wounded by a sword and is then healed is also not clear, but the sword is a very common metaphor for the Word of God (Eph 6:17). It should be noted that Moses the law-giver married Zipporah (which means bird but is closely related to the word for diadem, see here) and she was one of seven sisters.

When Moses came down from the mountain with the Law, his face shone with the radiance of God (Ex 34:29). Since the Hebrew words for radiance and horn are nearly identical, theologians of old thought that Moses had grown horns in God’s presence. Hence Moses is often depicted with horns, by Michelangelo for instance:

I’m guessing that the mortally wounded head depicts mankind’s natural sense of religion. It must have been through this avenue that God was able to speak to the first believers such as Seth, Noah and Abraham. Paul actually pulls off something similar when he invades the Greek mind through the temple of the unknown God (Acts 17:23). Also compare Rev 13:3 with Zech 8:23.


The beast from the earth

Following the previous, the beast from the earth must depict mankind’s entire body of knowledge. John sees this body as having the appearance of a lamb, which is an overly obvious reference to the redemptive element of Jesus’ earthly mission. Perhaps John wants his audience to also think of Dan 8, where a two-horned ram represents the Medo Persian empire (8:20). But I’m guessing that he still has the temple in mind, the temple that would become the body of Christ, which John most frequently depicts as a lamb. Just outside Solomon’s temple stood two pillars which had no other function than to just stand there. Their names are Boaz and Jachin, and these names put together mean: By Strength He Will Give Certainty (1 Ki 7:21).

John’s description of how society presently runs is chilling because indeed everything is based on information and the gathering thereof. It’s not enough to simply be a human being; nobody will do business with you or even let you subscribe to any service, unless you bring your social security number, address and bank account numbers. Our entire collective identity is based on the exchange of data. As John notes, there’s no way around it: all people are to receive the mark (13:16). The key difference between those who end up in the fiery lake and those who don’t is the same difference as that between the mission of Michael and that of the dragon. Those who worship God live, those who don’t die (14:9, 15:2, 16:2). And the cause of death is not their worship of the beast, it’s the lack of worship of God. See Numb 21:8.

The beast from the earth also creates an image of the beast of the sea (in blatant violation of the 2nd commandment – Ex 20:4-5). Again, I too am not sure what this might mean but, following the previous, I’m guessing this has to do with mankind’s absurd insistence to mark their mental territory with symbols. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we should adorn the countryside with crosses, or stars, or half moons and the likes. In fact, Jesus says, “By this shall all men know that you are My disciples: that you have love for one another” (Joh 13:35).

Should we be worried?

John the Revelator doesn’t paint a very pretty picture and if any of the described horrors will have a physical manifestation we’re all in for a rough ride. But I strongly suspect that neither of the two beasts will turn out to be something organic, as some religions teach. They would unceremoniously be nuked if they emerged.

Should we be worried? I don’t think so. The devil’s battle is with Michael, not with God. And there is no power anywhere in existence that can separate us from Him (Rom 8:38-39).

Nobody will be condemned by accident or because they didn’t manage to figure out a highly complex riddle, or any other conundrum. Salvation is not a matter of knowing all the right things (as Tony Campolo once said, “Even the devil knows all the right things”) but about being in with God. Some of us might make it through pretty clean, but I suspect a large majority of us will be slimed upon, bitten, marred by a wide variety of marks and claims, bent, broken and sunk nose deep in puddles of murk.

But there’s no way that any of us will end up on the wrong side of the fence.

Or as Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33)

M. Night Shyamalan’s Happening: The Apocalyptic Genre and the Bible

M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film “The Happening” is a strangely braided tale of mass obtusity and private sophistications, or so this reviewer devilishly advocates.

Although the hybrid concept is riveting, Shyamalan’s Happenings doesn’t really happen. Perhaps it came too soon after I Am Legend, is too similar to Signs, or counts too much on people being subtle. And M. Night Shyamalan should know by now that when the masses miss your subtleties, your movie gets cudgeled.

Still feeding off the success of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan amazes movie goers once again with a script that nobody else would have been able to sell to anyone. What could have been a powerfully portent addition to the apocalyptic genre does grave injustice to the subject of the story, the stars that play it and the humanity it portrays.

Without any hint of urgency, the audience is informed that the world as we know it is coming to an end because for some unidentified reason all the bees have gone missing. That must have upset the plants, explains the plucky hot-dog eating breeder, because plants are more talkative than most humans. Apparently, we plastic MacHumans are too spiritually morose, even, to show some decent hysteria when our fellow men jump off buildings by the bushel or offer both arms for lions to devour. Blood-and-guts gush, sound effects thunder, but no tear is shed as the invisible foe prowls along in windy undulations and makes us kill ourselves in the most creative ways.

But then, there’s this curious, albeit completely over-acted, display of emotions when one single guy, who’s demonstratively not affected by the killer pollen, takes up a riffle and shoots some other not-infected person. At once Zooey Deschanel’s amazing blue eyes water up and fill the screen, and our hero – played by the usually well-composed Mark Wahlberg – bursts into feelings that weren’t there before when he and thousands of others were trying to escape mass execution by patiently waiting for a train, courteously exchanging tickets or the muffled bickerings of toothpaste-cap level arguments.

And the audience is left to pray: If the three concepts of Holocaust, some guy named Joey, and munching tiramisu can somehow find a way to go together, please God, let there at least be a very good reason!

But there is none, and God stays silent. Now why is that?

Religion is ubiquitous in the US, whether you like it or not. How can there be an apocalyptic movie without some mouth-frothing extras screaming quotes from the Book of Revelation in it?

The Book of Revelation is the most famous member of a body of apocalyptic literature that was produced two millennia ago. This genre was a typical result of the formation of empires that were as large as the known world, because to any human individual, empires are so huge that only a divine power can bring them to an end. Apocalyptic literature invariably showed God’s wrath being brought about by known natural events such as earth quakes, volcanoes or even meteorites.

In the twentieth century, the apocalyptic genre was revived by mankind’s growing global awareness but the rise of technology sired an apocalyptic sub-genre: movies and books began to identify mankind as rival God as the cause of global destruction. During the cold war we thought that nuclear weapons might do the trick, or else some martial virus that would escape from secret military labs. But in recent years our increased concern for the environment opened a market for the classical nature-strikes-back story. Hence we see Armageddon come in the wake of a mindless meteor, or The Day After Tomorrow mathematically triggered by pollution.

Shyamalan’s Happening however lets us guess at the nature of the story and leaves us indignant with the desire to know what we’re getting killed for. Is Syamalan saying that our collective behavior of the recent age translates into, or triggers, this mass self-suicide? Or has nature consciously declared war on us? Or are we all the victims of some transgressed critical-mass threshold? Why is the girl near the window with the tree saying that she sees “in calculus”? Why does neither the math teacher nor the science teacher submit some scientific substance to this ordeal, other than the glorious insight that there are some forces of nature that we don’t understand?

Are we supposed to quickly forget that to help us deal with exactly that, mankind has come up with religion, and that excursions into religious thought are deeply human? Shyamalan’s movie, however, is peopled by puppets that have not a thing to do with human beings, our true need to know, and the consolation of the belief in a God. Unless you count the sinister Mrs. Jones, who maintains her signature ignorance with signature zeal, while displaying Bible texts and Jesus statues all over her house. When she goes, and she goes grimly, she’s singing Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd, while the green pastures that He leads us to are known to be the very fields that kill us.

Luckily, our hero is a stud and our heroine is hot. And that kid’s cute too. Too bad the kid’s not clairvoyant, the heroine a retired missionary and our scientific hero an Indiana Jones kind of theologian. He would have revealed within the first minute of the movie that the Hades-trailing fourth horseman of the apocalypse is chlorophyll-green, that the Biblical word for bee is closely related to the word “Word” (of God), and that the Biblical word for wind is identical to the word for spirit.

Nah. That would have made that movie perhaps too scary all at once.

But where a wrathful God would have saved a city on the merits of five righteous inhabitants, so Shyamalan’s The Happening is rescued from complete failure by Mark Wahlberg’s smile in the last minute of the movie. That two-second smile alone tells more story and shows more character than the entire preceding drag. It makes the movie mesmerizing and shows that somewhere deep under the roots of the killer grass there lies an initial intention of making a truly great film.