How much do you like Christmas?

[Murfreesboro]

I thought Passion of the Christ was interesting, and I try to watch it every Good Friday (I am pretty much alone in my family in following that tradition, LOL). I don't think I'd want to see very many movies done like that, though. It's a little distracting to have to "read" a movie.

Since I studied Latin for many years, I was intrigued with the language change in the private scene between Jesus and Pilate. Pilate at first addresses Jesus in Aramaic, and Jesus answers in Latin. Pilate is visibly surprised, then switches to Latin. It's a subtle point that maybe not everyone caught.

How to handle languages and accents in Biblical epics is always problematic. In Ben Hur, they decided to have all the Romans speak with British accents, while the Jews speak with American accents. That way, the original American audience could perhaps feel more of an identification with the Jewish protagonist. (Of course, Ben Hur's love interest was played by an Israeli actress, so her slightly exotic accent was natural to her, I guess.)

Catzilla, I love celebrating as many holidays as I can find, too. The internet has made it so easy to research stuff. Like Groundhog's Day. I never had a clue what that was all about, so I researched it last February. It has an interesting history, actually. Not that I really "celebrate " that one, but it was interesting to learn where it came from.

My husband's Lutheran church ignores saints' days, but the Episcopal church of my childhood experience observes them, and I have always rather enjoyed at least the major ones of those, too. (They also figure into older literature--you'll find references in Shakespeare and writers of his generation, etc.). Interestingly, some of those seem to have been set at times that coincided with old Celtic practices, too, and doubtless were intended to distract the peasants from their old pagan ways. I guess All Saints/Samhain is the best known example of that, but there are others.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Actualy, Murfeysborow, it's funny you should mention that. I did, in fact, notice several places where the romans spoke Latin. I did nto study latin, but I did study Spanish, whichis very closly related to Latin, and what gave the Latin in "The Passion of the Christ," were the Cognates that sounded like spanish words. I think that the point of Jesus speaking Latin to Pontius Pilot was to show a miracle of sorts, that Jesus, as God is all knowing, and that all knowing includes languages.

I agree. Having to "read" a movie can be distracting, and you can miss a lot of the action because you have to visualy focus on the caption, and you might miss something on the main frame of the picture. That's why even though using Arimaic and Latin made it more "realistic" per se, it was rather hard to see a lot of the subtlies. For instance, there are a couple of scenes where you see the various demons tormenting Jesus Christ while he's being tortured. I noticed the demons who tormented Judas, and I noticed the one who he encountered ( I think it was satan himself) during the Agony in the Gardon, but I did not notice a very bone chilling demon scene while Christ was being marche to be brought before the sanheadron. It was a mother carrying a child. The child turns his head and it's a demon. That was IMHO a very chilling scene. Also, when Judas was tormented, and he hanged himself, it wasn't until I screened it the 2nd or thire time, that I noticed that he hung himself in Gahena. Gahena was a garbage dump outside the city of Jerusalem, and was also a reference to hell in Christ's teachings. In the movie, Judas takes a rope from a dead donkey and hangs himeslf with it after he's tormented by those children/demons, he dies, and falls into Gahena.

The last tiem I saw "Ben Hur," was when I was in high school, so I'll have to rent it again to see what you meant about that.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I agree, you have to view Passion of the Christ repeatedly to "get" it.

Ben Hur is on my personal top ten list for all-time favorite movies. I have loved it at every age and stage of my life. I have read a whole lot about its filming and the struggle to get the script right, so I knew to look for the contrasting accents in the cast of characters. That is another movie you have to watch repeatedly in order to "get" its subtleties, I think.

[Andybev01]

"There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin."

-Linus Van Pelt

[Murfreesboro]

Sorry, Andy. I guess I thought that discussion was more aesthetic than religious, but I can see how it could be taken both ways.

[Andybev01]

Ooo...you 'bold-ed' my name. Am I in trouble now?

I was raised by rabid Catholics and I find much to like about that faith, most of which is aesthetic, coincidentally.

All said and done most faiths offer some nugget of a greater truth, and we are tasked to piece it all together before we pass on. At least that's my take on it.

[Murfreesboro]

Ooo...you 'bold-ed' my name. Am I in trouble now?

Is it bad etiquette to bold someone's screen name? I've been doing that for years on other forums. In fact, most people do that on the forums where I cut my internet teeth. I know about the all caps rule, but I hadn't heard about bolding. I thought it was a polite thing to do, actually.

And, yes, you are right about the strong aesthetic element in many religions. Among Christian denominations, I think most of those that follow the liturgical year have a strong aesthetic component.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Basicaly, we were discussing movies, or at least I was at any rate. The movies, however, were religious stories based on the Bible, so I could see where the topic of Religion could creep in at times.

As for Christianity, I am likely in a very tiny minority both on this forum and in real life, but to me, Religionis first and foremost about God and Eternity, and secondly, but very importantly, about tradition. The Cathelic Church has over 2000 years of tradition that has become an integral part of many cultures through out the world. I"m of Irish ancestry, and we've been practicing catholics for over 1000 years. I traced back my family tree on both sides of my families, and I could not find any non Catholics or I should say non Christians anywhere in my family tree. My grandmother on my father's side, was born in Aberdine Scotland, and was baptised as an Episcapalian, but she later converted to Catholicisim.

So to me, the faith is a tradition handed down to me from my parents, who got it from their parents, ans so on. There is an asthetic aspect to it, but God and Tradition are what drives me to the faith.

Mike

[Spookymufu]

Ooo...you 'bold-ed' my name. Am I in trouble now?

Is it bad etiquette to bold someone's screen name? I've been doing that for years on other forums. In fact, most people do that on the forums where I cut my internet teeth. I know about the all caps rule, but I hadn't heard about bolding. I thought it was a polite thing to do, actually.

And, yes, you are right about the strong aesthetic element in many religions. Among Christian denominations, I think most of those that follow the liturgical year have a strong aesthetic component.

no, Andy was truly flattered, no one shows him that kind of respect around here

[Andybev01]

Spooky's just jealous 'cause Murf likes me best!

[Murfreesboro]

You all are funny!

Mike, when I was a kid, I think religion seemed sort of like magic to me. As I matured, I began to be drawn more by it aesthetically without being so sure if everything was really true. It's only been in my mid-life that I have begun to believe in a more heartfelt way the truths of the Bible. But the aesthetic part is still very important to me.

For those of us who are literary types, it is a truism that there is a profound connection between religious ritual and drama. In both ancient Greece and in medieval Europe, drama arose from religious ritual. If you saw that Live from Lincoln Center broadcast of South Pacific back in August, you probably heard the producer of that revival talking about this connection in his experience. He said that he had been raised an orthodox Jew, and had seen the curtain drawn to reveal the Torah many times during services. For him there was a connection between that religious mystery and the drawing of the curtain in the theater.

My religious background is a lot more diverse than yours, but I have at least one Catholic in the mix, too. My mother's maternal grandmother was raised in a convent in Germany, from the age of 3 to 13. Of course, anyone of Western European ancestry most likely has Roman Catholicism in the background if you go back far enough.

[Pumpkin_Man]

That's a very interesting way of putting it, but then when you're talking about God, how can you avoid there being some drama? That's an interesting take on the Torah and on theatre, too. Every easter we have "passion plays," not only in Catholic churches, but in almost all ther Christian denominations. Some of the most beloved movies, as we were discussing earlier in the thread, were movies about Christ, the very "passion plays" put on by Christians all over the world every Good Friday. Also, other movies, like "THe Ten Comandments," "THe Fall of Sadam and Gamorah," "THe Greatest Story Ever Told," "The Bible" (A film based on the first chapters of Genises, which started with the story of adom and eve, and ended after the great flood.) "Quo Vadis," which is the story of what the very first Christians were up against. All of those movies, based on Religion, were also some of the best Dramatic productions ever to grace the screen. And that's supported by both critical acclaim and the numbers at the box office.

Then you look at the fact that man kind is allways looking for a "sign" from God in one type of another, which makes Astethics a very integral part of teaching God's truths.

Intersting thoughts.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I've seen most of those movies you mention. Quo Vadis is a very good novel, too, though it's been decades since I read it.

The Bible is really a treasure-trove of stories. Did you happen to catch the recent TV mini-series Kings? Hardly anyone watched it, but my husband and I stumbled on it and realized it was a contemporary version of David vs. Saul. It was fun for us to look at the modern characters and figure out who they were supposed to be from the Bible. I am not aware that this angle of that series was publicized, though.

W/re/to "signs" and religion--your statement reminded me that when I was studying Chaucer in graduate school, I was required to read Augustine's On Christian Doctrine. My professor told us that Augustine's instructions on how to read the Bible permeated medieval literature. It was the way people back then understood how to read, and how to write stories. Augustine talks a lot about allegory and "signs." I believe he said everything in the Bible has a fourfold meaning. I've forgotten all the levels now, but they were something like, literal, historical, allegorical, and eschatalogical (end times). That's one reason it doesn't bother me when some critics point out that something in the Bible "really" refers to events happening centuries ago. Augustine would say, "Of course. And they are also symbolic, and they are prophetic." Nothing with him was ever "either/or." It was always "both/and."

[Pumpkin_Man]

Well, you can swallow that all up into theold clache, that History repeat's itself. And that is quite correct. An event that already happened in the Bible can very well also be the fortelling of an event that's about to happen in the future.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I was thinking again about Augustine's theory of Biblical interpretation, I guess since I mentioned it here yesterday. I know most people are not too interested in this stuff, so maybe I should let this be my last post about it. But you can understand it pretty well by thinking about the story of Moses and the Exodus. Augustine would say that everything happened literally the way the Bible says. He would also say it is historically true and has epic significance for the Jewish people. (Literal & historical levels). But he would go further and say it is "allegorically" true, because Moses, the great liberator of his people, was a foreshadowing or "type" (sign) of Christ, who comes in the New Testament to liberate mankind from sin, death, & the devil. I suppose the end-times (eschatological) significance would be the Second Coming of Jesus, foretold in Revelation. Augustine thinks everything in the Bible can be read this way--every portion of it alludes to other portions and foretells the future, too.

I think about this theory around Christmastime, because I have heard Jewish rabbis object that the word used in Isaiah about the "virgin giving birth" merely means a "young woman," not necessarily a virgin. I have also heard historical critics argue that the whole passage in Isaiah refers to something that was going on in his own generation, some prince or other who was about to be born. Augustine wouldn't have been shaken up by these views, because he would have said that Isaiah's "prophecy" worked on several levels at once. (Personally, I have never been too worried about the ambiguity of the Hebrew word, either, since I don't think anyone would need a news flash to be told that a "young woman" was going to give birth, but that's just me.)

And that is my roundabout way of trying to bring this thread topic back to Christmas again--