The Bible and Literature - Writing Prompts

I regularly wonder about the possibilities for integrating the Bible and Literature. Specifically, I've often thought that there are a number of Biblical elements just waiting to be used as literary allusions (though, of course it's possible that they already have been used as such, and I just haven't been exposed to them yet). In my mind, some of the Bible's relatively obscure phrases or figures are so poignant and powerful that a modern-day adaptation is just begging to be written!

Just for the fun of it, I thought I would share some of the words and images which I consider to offer excellent potential for powerful story-telling. If any of you students of Literature would want to take any of these "writing prompts" and run with them, I welcome you to do so (even though I realzie that I run the risk of losing out on my own Pulitzer or Nobel prize, by giving away these gems). And if any of you students of the Bible have items to add to my little list, I would love to hear them. Here are some of the ones that stand out to me:

"My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!" 

This is a quote from the prophet Elisha, as cited in the story of Elisha's mentor Elijah being carried up to heaven in a firestorm (see 2 Kings chapter 2). To me, this line has a sort of inherrent power to it, much along the line of "Absalom! Absalom!" which William Faulkner used so effectively -- but, like "Absalom! Absalom!," the line also has a great story behind it, which makes the words themselves that much stronger. In the case of Elisah's quote, there are strong themes of perseverance, coming-of-age, grief, and fulfillment that can be drawn from the story around this quote. Seriously: a Nobel Prize for Literature just waiting to be won...

Mephibosheth.

Mephibosheth is a minor figure from the story of King David -- but aside from just having a cool and quirky name, he also represents a beautiful story of love, loyalty, and forgiveness. You can read more of Mephibosheth's story in the 4th and 9th chapters of 2 Samuel -- though you'd also have to look into the stories of David and Jonathan, to get the full effect -- but basically, the idea is that Mephibosheth comes from the line of Saul who is supposedly in stark opposition to the line of David, Saul's royal successor. But instead of having the last, crippled remnant of Saul's line killed, David gives him a place of honor at the royal table out of loyalty to Mephibosheth's father, Jonathan. I think any story about love, loyalty, and forgiveness would be greatly enhanced by including a character named and/or modeled after Mephibosheth...

"This man declared to Ithiel, to Ithiel and to Ucal." 

This is a reference to Proverbs 30:1, and I think it's cool because it's basically just a "coded" reference to exhaustion. From what I understand, this quote is a direct translation of the Hebrew in the original Masoretic text -- but if a slightly different word division of the Hebrew is used, the same text can be translated "I am weary, O God; I am weary, O God, and faint." Maybe it's just me (because this is a pretty obscure reference), but I think this phrase -- and/or the names Ithiel, Ucal, and Agur (the one who is doing the declaring in this quote) -- would be great allusions in any work about exhaustion, weariness, and hopelessness...

"Skin for skin!" 

This is a quote from the mouth of Satan himself, as cited in the second chapter of Job. Believe it or not, there are not actually that many direct quotes from Satan in the Bible -- but this is one of them, and I think it's an interesting take on the classic, "eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth" dictum. The context of this passage shows that it's about causing someone physical harm for the sake of testing him. On a broader literary level, I believe this phrase could be used as an allusion in any situation involving temptation, testing, or suffering...

Does anyone else know of any other Biblical phrases or figures that are just waiting to be developed into a Biblical allusion? This, of course, is not the primary purpose behind our reading of the Bible -- just to gather up clever quotes and allusions -- but it is a cool peripheral benefit. Also, if anyone ends up using any of these "writing prompts" (or finds them somewhere else within the greater body of Literature), please let me know!

When East met West: Ronin and the emergence of the comic-as-literature

 

If you’re a reader of Neal Stephenson or William Gibson or any of their disciples, you're undoubtedly accustomed to their fusing of Eastern history, philosophy, and martial arts with Western characters in Western settings. If you got in early enough, you were even able to look down your nose at Keanu Reeves’ virtual ninjitsu in The Matrix because you’d already been reading about it, like, a decade ago.  But before Keanu, before Hiro Protagonist, before the heady days of the “street samurai,” East rarely ever met and West in science fiction. This changed in 1983 around the time Frank Miller’s Ronin was published.

1983 was an exciting time to be a young nerd. I was still high as a kite from the conclusion of the Star Wars trilogy, and in the absence of jedi knights, New York movie theaters were chock full of barbarians and ninjas. I’d graduated from Basic Dungeons & Dragons to Advanced D&D, from the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series and Tin Tin books to Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan and John Carter series), Harry Harrison (the Stainless Steel Rat series), and Piers Anthony (anything Xanth), and although still into comic books, I’d deserted costumed super-heroes, looking for something deeper, darker, and more vital.

I didn’t know it, but I wasn’t the only reader bored by the duopoly of DC Comics (publisher of all Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern titles) and Marvel (Spider Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk).  Frank Miller summed it up best

“…comics have reached the point where there are so many damn superheroes and so damn much superpower flying around that there’s no room left for anything human, and the only way to make the genre seem interesting is to wildly escalate the powers, the numbers, the quantity of planets that can be demolished per panel.”

Writers recognized that something was missing, and like Mao’s hundred flowers, the comic book shops in 1983 quickly blossomed with new writer/artist-owned titles and characters. These stories featured - among other things - elves, sea- andspace-farers, post-apocalyptic encyclopedia salesmen, and Robert Crumb-inspired weirdness.

It was in these conditions that the seeds were planted for comic books to develop into literature. My eyes were opened and I was enthralled. Three things struck me:

1. The absence of capes and tights (and when they did appear, the “heroes” were  usually homicidal or mentally ill).
2. This was adult stuff, and I don't mean nudity and violence (though there was plenty of that).
3. Unburdened by years of convention, formula, and character continuity, these were fresh, original, complex characters.

Most seeds took a long time to germinate. Not far from my family’s apartment, Art Spiegelman was still busy serializing Maus - a decade away from the Pulitzer it would eventually earn. Across the Atlantic, Alan Moore was serializing V for Vendetta; the Watchmen (listed in Time magazine’s “All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels") was still four years off. So while these best known examples of comics-as-literature still incubated, it was DC comics (in response to the upstart competition) publication of Ronin issue #1 that can rightly claim the comic-as-literature "firstie." They are also to blame for pushing me into full-on Nerd-dom - ensuring I would never kiss a girl until I was 16 (okay 17).

So what was it about Ronin that pushed me into teenage celibacy? Initially, I wasn’t floored; the artwork struck me as clumpy and uneven, but the prologue featured samurais versus ninjas, so I pressed on. Then the demon Agat murdered Lord Ozaki for stealing the blood sword, forcing Ozaki’s student - the Ronin - to flee across feudal Japan with the sword in hand. When the story flung me forward 400 years to a post-apocalyptic New York, I was hooked. My hometown was a nightmare, where Virgo, a sentient, self-propagating computer appeared to be the city’s only hope. Miller effectively creates two worlds, and then crashes them violently together when Agat pursues Ronin across time and space, hunting for the blood sword.



So we’ve got samurais, ninjas, demons, sentient super computers, the high-tech weapons of the Aquarius Corporation (who think they own Virgo), all in an Escape from New York setting. And he’s only getting started. New York is revealed to both reader and Ronin as he hunts Agat and is hunted by Virgo. As entertaining as this was on its own, Miller didn’t let it stay a violent but typical “fish out of water” story. There is something ominous about Virgo's matronly omniscience, like a biotech Nurse Ratched. And what exactly is her interest in the Ronin and Agat?



To find these answers, Miller gives us the Aquarius Complex’s Head of Security, Casey McKenna. Casey is a she, and she is bi-racial. I don’t know why that’s important, except I’d rarely (if ever) encountered either before. Casey is strong, capable, kick-ass, and determined to apprehend the Ronin.

As the story evolves seamlessly from one thread to the next, the cast of characters evolves with it. Ronin can bring all kinds of whup-ass, but he’s also sensitive, just, traditional, and even romantic. Casey McKenna is tough as nails, but is burdened managing complicated relationships with her wimpy (at the outset) husband, her staff, and the Ronin. Miller doesn’t even allow his supporting cast (Casey’s husband, the Aquarius CEO, Ronin’s hippie side kick) to stay static. In short, it was literary. The only cipher in all this is Agat himself, and the reasons for this are the greatest trick of all that Miller plays on his reader.

Are the story elements of Ronin original? Well, no. The cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers in Ronin are the "mashed potato people" (using the parlance from the novelized version) from Escape from New York. Apart from this, there are elements and tropes lifted from a number of films (the art has a cinematic quality to it) and books (including the Bible) that are immediately recognizable. These same influences also touched William Gibson's work, and that of dozens of other writers.

Because of this, it’s not fair or accurate to say Frank Miller’s Ronin was the nexus of Western and Eastern thought in science fiction on top of its comics-as-literature firstie, but it is among the remains among the best. It functions as a lens through which we can view a time and a place where so many great ideas came together so effectively, creating a little bit of literary and pop cultural history in the process. Q.E.D.:

           

Above are the covers of Ronin issue #1 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles#1, published two years later. The Turtles were originally a send-up/encomium for Ronin and Miller's work on Daredevil and Wolverine. The rest is merchandising history. Ronin also set the stage for Miller's re-imagination of Batman in The Dark Knight Returns, which has been cribbed heavily for the Christian Bale Batman movies. This bridge between East and West traveled two ways, too; pick up any Battle Angel: Alita manga to read about another sensitive, yet highly dangerous, cybernetic fish out of water, and you'll easily spot imagery from Ronin (not to mention a dozen other Western books and movies).

So read it and judge for yourself if this is really the first comic-as-literature. At the very least, when the movie gets made (all indications are it eventually will), you’ll be able to look down your nose at it, because you’d already read it, like, a decade ago.

- Chris

Gone, But Not Forgotten: Vintage Books For Hipsters And The Rest Of Us

I'm the member of the Zolder Writers who moved from the Netherlands to Nashville. I left behind my fabulous critique group (along with wheels of cheese larger than my head and beautiful coffee shops where everyone can be a stoner with style) for the land of rhinestone cowboys and Ke$ha. A fair trade, but I still long for the old country... and for, in fact, anything old.

While I write all forms of fantasy (magical realism, interplanetary, fairy tale, you name it, I've written it), my first love is history. History shows us where we as a collective species have been, and lets me judge better where we're going. But I'm not talking about historical fiction, which is fun but pain in the you-know-where to write (take it from me - I have a two-part historical fiction novel moldering on my hard drive), but the fiction of history.

Let me confess-- I'm the 20-something girl with huge-framed glasses and a quirky haircut who liked vintage books before they were cool. Well okay, that's a lie. They aren't cool. I don't think they ever will be cool - that's why you can buy 20 of them for a dollar at most used book stores, yard sales, and on Ebay.  Which "them" am I talking about? The genre I would have never learned about in school: the vintage Gothic novel, which is really three genres in one, as each of these is a mystery/suspense with elements of old-school horror, and contains the obligatory romance. I don't mean books like Wuthering Heights (though I have no doubt it is the book that has inspired this genre) or Frankenstein (though that book is awesome. If you haven't read it, it's nothing like it is portrayed/parodied in Scooby Doo, it's a very complex and creepy book that questions the core of humanity. Get in there!). I mean the yellow-paged  soft cover cheap pseudo-mysteries my grannies might have read.

You can immediately identify these books by the bad artwork on the cover. There is always a beautiful young woman in a position of peril, and often a sinister brooding mostly dark-haired Heathcliff-type man somewhere on the cover. Whatever is happening on the cover  usually happens under the moon, or in a dark creepy house at nighttime, or in some deserted and precarious countryside.  The edges of each page are usually painted, sometimes red, green, or even gold. On occasion Reader's Digest has condensed several of these novels into one thick hardback treasure trove. If you find anything written by Victoria Holt (the undisputed Queen of this genre), or Dorothy Eden (my personal favorite), or Madeleine Brent (also very dramatic, though she was  actually the cover for a man named Peter O'Donnell), snap it up without thinking. Seriously. Go to your library's book swap shelf and find them. Go to the used bookstore's 99cent/pence shelf and snatch them. If you read one, you'll want to read all of them.

These books were big sellers in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, though publishers continued to churn these out well into the 80s. They were written by women who grew up in the oppressive postwar 1940s and 50s, and then tried to reconcile the way they were raised with the wave of upcoming feminism in the 1960s. Their books are a fascinating insight into the mind of women struggling to find their place, and how to relate with men in light of how their own past meshes with women's lib.

Many of these vintage Gothic books are also historical novels, meaning that they were written about an earlier era than the publication date. Reading them now, 40-70 years later, is like reading double the history. There's nothing like seeing how a woman from the 60s with her mores envisioned gender relations in the past. In the case of men like Peter O'Donnell writing under a female pseudonym it becomes even more interesting - how would a man writing as a woman of the 50s and 60s  perceive of gender in the past? 

Beyond gender the themes of colonialism and empire are also strong. Many of these books, like Moonraker's Bride, by Madeline Brent (Peter O'Donnell) deal with Britain's colonial heritage and how it influences gender. In this gripping tale, English narrator Lucy Waring grows up in a Chinese Orphanage on the eve of the Boxer Rebellion. At age 17 she is sent to England for safety, and is plunged into the familiar vintage Gothic romance/mystery setting of a creepy mansion filled with double-crossing distant relations with a sordid past and surprising ties to the events unfolding abroad, fighting over an uncertain fortune. While the young narrator must sort through all the lies to find the truth, she must figure out which of her relatives are the double crossers, and choose between potential suitors. But can she listen to her heart when one of these said suitors wants to plunge a dagger into it? Maybe the people she knew in the Chinese orphanage hold the key to the answers she seeks. (Not Maybe, definitely. They definitely hold the key to the answers - that's how these novels work.)

These books are like serious crack to my soul. I love them more than hipsters love PBR. Most of them stick closely to the formula, and even those written in the author's present-day time period often involve a foreign theme. What's most important, is that the narrator be plunged into an entirely new situation - new country, new relatives,  and a new creepy formerly-bustling manor now desolate and in a state of decay and disrepair. And the details! The details are what make it. For example, in Moonraker's Bride, the mansion is named "Moonrakers" because it was once inhabited by some batshit-crazy relatives who would see the reflection of the full moon in the inky waters of the lake on the estate and one of them drowned using a rake trying to capture it. And this becomes the heritage of the people with whom our Lucy Waring deals. Every single person in that book spoons liberal portions of the insanity- flavored porridge for breakfast, and it's undeniably engrossing.

Most Gothic romance/mystery/suspense/horror stories written in the mid to late 20th century also feature an implied supernatural element. Sometimes it is a ghost which throws visions (sometimes helpful, other times deceptive) into the mix. Sometimes this supernatural manifests itself in the form of a crying baby, or loud footsteps in a fog-shrouded ruin at the edge of the moor. At other times, the supernatural element belongs to the colonized culture of which the heroin is entwined and tries to help her, only she is unable to understand the cultural significance of what this Othered ghost is trying to tell her. Another popular form of the supernatural is when it masquerades in the form of a rogue demonic adventurer, sexy dangerous pirate, or, as in the case of Barbara Michaels' Wings of the Falcon, a Zorro-like masked Italian revolutionary (called "The Falcon," of course)  with a reputation for supernatural abilities. 

And all of these clichés wrapped into one book are incredibly satisfying because the books are so cut and dried. The main character gets terrified, finds her courage, and figures it all out in time to have a satisfying relationship with a broody dark man (bonus points if this man is a sexy sailor like Captain Rex Crediton of Victoria Holt's The Secret Woman, because... yeah). The evil man who  deceptively gained our protagonist's affections in order to find out what she really knows, or worked to scam the inheritance of which she was unaware, or tried to gaslight our protagonist for personal gain, gets the most poetically just death possible without tingeing the protagonist with guilt. (And I mean the most - we have villains being weighed down and drowning due to the weight of  the inheritance they tried to steal from the protagonist, we see baddies being catapulted over the edge of cliffs onto the insanely sharp rocks below during a scuffle with our heroine, and there's plenty of accidental drinking of the poisoned cup meant for our protagonist).  The hysteric best friend/caretaker/creepy old lady in the tower turns out to be either a distant relative to the main character who was faking it and gets to live out her life with her in the big castle, or turns out to have been plotting against the protagonist all along and gets some gristly and well-earned comeuppance. Everything else gets explained away neatly, and by the end you feel that either the supernatural element has come to accept the protagonist as the new rightful ruler of the land, or goes back to whichever hell spawned it with the souls of the evil characters in tow.

This sort of neatly-wrapped ending is totally taboo in today's novels. Nothing is allowed to be neat. We aren't allowed proper happy endings anymore. All endings now have to be unsatisfactory or tinged with bittersweet. No antagonists are allowed to be unremorsefully evil - they always have to be complex. We always get to see what made them evil, and we sympathise because we know we ourselves might have been made evil under those circumstances.  A compelling villain is one whose good motives led them down dark paths, and who therefore still have the potential to be redeemed right up to the very end of the book. In the vintage Gothic novels, however, evil is purely selfish evil, only masquerading as good. And evil gets what it deserves. It's simplistic and wholly satisfying on a whole other level. I could never write something like this, but don't judge me for devouring it until you've tried a few yourself.

The Bible and Literature

My "day job" is church leadership. I'm the pastor of a church called Amsterdam50. As such, I thoroughly enjoyed T. David Gordon's Why Johnny Can't Preach. It was recommended highly by a good friend, and indeed it's a fascinating book about communications and ministry. One of its most significant points is that most ministers today preach ineffectively because they are poor students of written communication: literature and textual criticism in particular. In effect, Gordon argues that one's study of the Bible is considerably enhanced by one's experience with studying the sonnets of Shakespeare or other great works of literature, which must be digested slowly and deliberately (as opposed to the more immediate and more practical forms of electronic communication that are more widely used today). I don't know if I agree with everything that Gordon has to say, but it is certainly some noteworthy food for thought: namely, that a thorough understanding and appreciation of great Literature enhances our study of the Bible.

I happen to agree with this particular assertion, but it also intrigues me because I've recently been considering the fact that to be an effective student (or a producer/writer) of Literature, a significant level of appreciation for the Bible is essential. In short: appreciation of the Bible and appreciation of great Literature go hand in hand.

I remember sitting in a 300-level English literature course at Bowling Green State University, examining at a cross-section of early-American literature in which repeated references were made to some place called "Pisgah." Despite the professor's leading questions -- indicating that these "Pisgah" references were an important key to understanding the overall message of the narrative passages -- the lecture hall sat in silent confusion as to the significance of what that word meant. Eventually, the professor revealed that "Pisgah" was a Biblical allusion, referring to Moses viewing of the Promised Land that he would never be privileged to enter, described in Deuteronomy 3:21-29. And indeed, when I went back to my dorm room and read the Biblical account for myself later, the early-American literature made so much more sense and carried a significantly greater emotional weight.

Ever since that discovery, I've been captivated by the literary power of Biblical allusion.

The Literary Power of Biblical Allusion

Some Biblical allusions have been so widely used that they now border on being clichéed: phrases such as "milk and honey" (referring to an idealistic description of the Israelites' Promised Land, as described in Exodus 3:7-8 and numerous other sections of the Old Testament of the Bible) or "loaves and fishes" (referring to the miracle in which Jesus' provided food for 5000 people from just five loaves of bread and two fishes, recorded in Mark 6:30-44). It's astonishing, really, to realize how many of our casual turns-of-language find their roots in the Bible. Still other examples of these common Biblical allusions include "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," or "turn the other cheek," or "the extra mile" (all three of which can be found in Matthew 5:38-42). These types of phrases are peppered throughout the English language (and, I would wager, also throughout other languages of the Western Hemisphere). However, the power of Biblical allusion runs much deeper than these standard references.

Consider, for example, two of the greatest American novelists of all time, who clearly understood the power of Biblical allusion: John Steinbeck and William Faulkner. John Steinbeck's East of Eden -- which the author considered to be his greatest work -- drew heavily upon the stories of deception, disobedience, hatred, and murder found in the Biblial accounts of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, as found in Genesis 1-4. Likewise, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! -- often cited as the greatest novel ever written about the American South -- drew its title and its inspiration from the story of King David and his rebellious son Absalom, as found in 2 Samuel 15-18. Both of these works of literature are rooted in the great (though perhaps somewhat obscure) stories of the Bible, and they alone make a strong case for the serious student of Literature to also become a serious student of the Bible. But truthfully, Steinbeck and Faulkner are just two small examples of countless other great writers who have drawn heavily upon the narrative history of the Bible to provide their books with multiple layers of meaning. William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, George Bernard Shaw, Toni Morrison... the list goes on and on and on. Probably half of the writers who have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature have included significant elements of Biblical allusion in their most significant and celebrated works!

So indeed, I believe that appreciation of the Bible and appreciation of great Literature go hand in hand.

What's odd, however, is that my natural impression -- from knowing people who are serious students of the Bible and knowing people who are serious students of Literature -- indicates these two realms of study are often viewed as being mutually exclusive. As I've previously noted on my own website, most contemporary Christians tend to look down on fiction as being frivilous, insubstantial, and a waste of time. But it's not just the Christians who miss the boat on this one. Similarly, most contemporary enthousiasts of Literature look down on the Bible as being dogmatic, irrelevant, and boring. If you'll allow me to use yet another Biblical allusion, it's as if the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing (see Matthew 6:1-4). So how can these two disciplines be brought into more meaningful interaction?!? I wish I knew! I certainly feel challenged to step up both my study of the Bible and my study of great works of Literature; but until my Christian friends and literary friends take similar steps, I fear that I will always be looking down at the world from the vantagepoint of Pisgah...