thebibleisart

A few questions to think about regarding political signs and architecture. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins

In the 5th part of the series we look at the two most fundamental aesthetic properties: unity and diversity. And we see their theological and philosophical connections. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | Transcription | Unity and diversity are the most fundamental aesthetic properties. That is for a work to be beautiful or well designed it must have both unity and diversity. In this video I want to talk about why this is and provide some evidence. In most of the arts, you begin with unity. If you’re designing a brochure you will open up a new document in InDesign or Illustrator and you will immediately have a work of unity, a blank page, defined by 1 color and a few sides. In music you begin with blank ledger lines, completely unified. The work of art is, of course, boring and doesn’t do and communicate what you want it to do so your next act is an act of diversification. You add a shape, an image, a note. And then another and another. But as you keep adding elements you cannot add them indiscriminately, without thought to the other things you have already added. Each new element must retain and contribute to the unity of the whole. As I mentioned in a previous video, one of the questions I use when evaluating a piece of design that comes across my desk that doesn’t feel right is, is the work is boring or confusing. If it’s boring, that means there is not enough diversity, enough elements to keep my attention, keep my eyes interested and moving around the work. If it’s confusing, that means there is not enough unity, coherence, the elements are not harmonious enough to be one thing, but compete for attention. We have developed ways to ensure that unity is maintained. For instance, in music there is a key signature and the time signature. These maintain a consistent, a unified harmonic tone and rhythm. In graphic design, brands and companies have style guides. A style guide will ensure unity so that the company communicates in a consistent tone. It will indicate the type faces, the colors, patterns, and use cases for the logo and imagery. And problems arise when you abandon unity or diversity. In architecture the rules of unity are regularly abandoned. A famous architecture firm will be brought in for an urban building and ignore the aesthetic of the city in favor of their aesthetic predilection. But if you would transpose this architectural situation into a graphic design or branding situation it would never be allowed. So the whole process of creation is working with and balancing unity and diversity. And the necessity of both was accepted throughout most of artistic history. Interestingly, the modern period saw forms of art that erred on both extremes. We have seen innumerable works that are boring and confusing. Now aesthetic properties are instinctual; we naturally have them just like our moral and mathematical sense. This can, of course, be developed and trained so that you become more aesthetically astute and aware or they can be deformed so that you become less aesthetically sensitive, less able to know and appreciate when something is beautiful and well designed. Just like you can develop in your moral and mathematical understanding or you can deteriorate, become less able to distinguish between good and evil, wise and foolish, less able to understand mathematical structures. But there is a kernel that we have been created with, that all of us have. And this trans-cultural aesthetic sense can be seen in our most common and natural reactions and vocabulary that we use when we see different works. A lot of our language can be neatly split into words of unity and words of diversity. For instance if something does not have unity we will say that it is confusing or chaotic or it’s hard to understand or weird. These are all words that are fundamentally about lack of unity. So also if we say that something is boring, mundane, easy, simple, we are communicating that lacks diversity. But why are unity and diversity fundamental? Unity and diversity are fundamental aesthetic properties because they are fundamental theological properties. And it’s fascinating that these fundamental aesthetic properties were the fundamental theological properties at the beginning of the church. One of the most striking historical confluences is that the question of unity and diversity was one of the first questions in both philosophy and theology. The philosophical name for this is the question or problem of the one and the many. In philosophy, the pre-socratic philosophers puzzled over whether everything was fundamentally one thing, unity, or many things, diversity. This is because we observe both diverse things and unified things and that naturally leads to the question as to whether one or the other is fundamental.

In this video we’re looking at why the chief priests buy a field with the money Judas gives back to them. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | Best Books on How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Transcription | This is what Matthew says, When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor. Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." They said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money." So they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me." - Matthew 27:1-10 Now, this might seem like a strange text. Like why talk about the chief priests buying a field with money from betraying Jesus? But this is the last of 12 fulfillment sayings in Matthew where something will happen and then Matthew will say that this fulfills something from the Old Testament and then he’ll quote it. Now there’s debate about precisely what text he’s referring to. The three main candidates are Jeremiah 32, Jeremiah 18, and Zechariah 11. The wording is closest to Zechariah 11:12-13, but Matthew says it’s from Jeremiah. It was a common rabbinic practice to put two texts together and attribute it to only one author, you can see this in Mark 1 where he combines Malachi 3 and Isaiah 40 and just says it’s from Isaiah. It’s just a shorthand. Anyways, I think Matthew is referring to Jeremiah 32 and Zechariah 11 and it’s really cool. In this video we’re going to focus on Jeremiah 32, let me show you. The big picture of this passage is that Judas gives back the money that he was given to betray Jesus and the chief priests buy a field with it. Matthew tells us that that fulfills a similar situation in the Old Testament where someone buys a field, that is, in Jeremiah 32. In Jeremiah 32, Jeremiah is supposed to buy a field while the siege of Jerusalem is happening. This is the end of Israel and Jeremiah is told to buy property. Seems a bit strange. But there’s a positive and negative side to this. Positively, if you buy property that means you have some hope that you will have it after the city is destroyed. Negatively, this happened during the end of Israel, Israel is about to be exiled. So it’s the end and the beginning, the end of Israel but with property. So the same situation that happened in Jeremiah is happening now. It is the end of Israel, but also the beginning. The fullness of exile happens when Jesus dies, but it is also the beginning of a new Israel. Just as the purchase of the field happened during the demise of Israel, so it will be here. Matthew demonstrates how Jesus is a new Israel, doing the same actions Israel: attacked as a baby boy, like the Israelite boys in the Exodus, baptised in the Jordan river, tempted in the wilderness, brought to a mountain (the sermon on the mount), and much much more. The difference is that Jesus will not fail where Israel failed but will take the punishment of Israel’s failures, exile, on himself. But the purchase of the land is a foreshadowing that the death of exile is not the end, there will be earth on the other side. Notice another detail from Matthew. The field that is purchased is said to be the place to bury strangers and a field of blood. The money that was used to betray and ultimately kill Jesus was used to buy a field that is for the bodies of strangers. That is the new land that is bought with the money from Jesus’ betrayal to death. Jesus’ enemies are unwittingly doing his work.

In this video essay I look at Terrence Malick's Film "A Hidden Life" and the symbolism of why it's hidden. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins Video Essay on "The Peanut Butter Falcon" - https://youtu.be/4Qn2kW1Jxww | Transcription | In the book The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, Meir Sternberg has a chapter on gaps in stories. He says that “To understand a literary work, we have to answer, in the course of reading, a series of such questions as: What is happening or has happened, and why? What connects the present event or situation to what went before, and how do both relate to what will probably come after? What are the features, motives, or designs of this or that character? How does he view his fellow characters? And what norms govern the existence and conduct of all?” And it is in answering these questions, these gaps, that we will make sense of the work. But the problem is that “few of the answers to these questions have been explicitly provided [in the text]...From the viewpoint of what is directly given in the language, the literary work consists of bits and fragments to be linked and pieced together in the process of reading: it establishes a system of gaps that must be filled in.” And Sternberg notes that this is true with all stories, not just complicated ones. For instance, he tells a Hebrew nursery rhyme that goes like this “Every day, that’s the way Jonathan goes out to play. Climbed a tree. What did he see? Birdies: one, two, three! Naughty boy! What have we seen? There’s a hole in your new jeans!” We assume that Jonathan got the hole in his jeans from the tree, but that is nowhere said, we had to piece that together. Gaps are especially important in a film that deals with hiddennes. So let’s look at Terrence Malick’s film, A Hidden Life, and fill in some gaps. On the surface, A Hidden Life is about an Austrian farmer, Franz Jägerstätter, his wife and three daughters during World War II. The film follows the struggle of the family as Franz becomes a conscientious objector who is jailed and then executed. The title of the film is taken from George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch. The quote in full reads, that “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts ... is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” The most obvious meaning of the film is that the hidden life upon which the good of the world is dependent is Franz and his family. But how Malick directs this hidden life reveals depths of his art and the art of Franz’s life. There are many things hidden in this film. Perhaps most strikingly, World War II itself is hidden. While we see some historical footage of Hitler, the SS, some fire, Malick chose to show nothing of the war proper, no warfare, no fighting. The most obvious and popular aspects of the war he has hidden from us. He has also hidden heads. Yes, literal heads. In a strange compositional decision, Malick crops many heads out of the frame, hiding heads. Malick will also hide other things that we would expect to see. He often hides the priest and bishop in the sanctuary. While there are many scenes in the church and sanctuary we rarely see the local priest in the church, he is more often outside. In the jail the guard will say that no one knows what goes on behind these walls. And at the end of the movie, while it is implied that Franz is beheaded, that is hidden from us too. Malick intentionally hid and showed specific things because the main message of the film is that some of the most important things are hidden, and we ought to attend to those things. But if the most important things are hidden, then we need a guide to help us see them. Malick hides things, even things that we expect to see, in order to show us the things that we ought to see. By withholding the war from us, Malick is guiding our attention to the good that we ought to be seeing, a farmer and his family. But what about those hidden heads? Malick hides heads from us out of the necessity of the height of the camera. Often, if not most of the time, the average height of the camera throughout the film is not at the eye-level of an adult, but of a child. The implied viewer of the film is a child. And this is a brilliant decision because some things are naturally hidden from a child. But also, as Jesus taught us, some things are more easily seen by children. Jesus said that we must become like a child and Malick films in a way to help us in that becoming. The Character of the Hidden Life If Malick wants us to look away from the obvious things and look at the hidden things, that is Franz and his family, what are we supposed to see in them? What particularly about his life ought we to notice? We’ll look at 4 aspects of the character of the hidden life.

Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | Best Books on How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Transcription | The story of Zacchaeus is one of the most well known stories in the gospels. But when you read it there is a strange information distribution. Now, what’s information distribution? One of the helpful things that you can do when you’re trying to understand a story, especially a well-known one, is look at how much information is devoted to each major section or event or character in the story. The purpose of doing this is to see what the author actually focuses on, what he wants us to pay attention to. Because if it’s a very well-known story our attention naturally gravitates toward the parts that are popular. So let’s look at the information distribution in our story. The story of Zacchaeus is short, it takes less than a minute to read, so let’s read the whole thing: He entered Jericho and was passing through. And look, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” The story consists of 10 verses. Seven of the verses happen outside with the crowd with Zacchaeus running up in a tree and coming down and the crowd grumbling. Only three verses are the conversation between Jesus and Zacchaeus, you could say the moral of the story. So we have a strange amount of attention on Zacchaeus’ action and the tree. I mean, why have all the stuff about the tree anyways couldn’t we just have the conversation in the house, Zacchaeus telling Jesus that he’ll give away a bunch of his stuff and Jesus saying that salvation has come here? One of the fundamental features of great art, whether it’s architecture, music, or literature, is that all the parts work together to make the whole, all the parts, the sentences, the words, the images contribute to the main thesis of the work. So there’s never a shape or a note or an image that’s not serving the goal of the work. So let’s look at the craft of Luke and how these images and actions contribute to his message. Luke opens the story like this: “He entered Jericho and was passing through.” (Luke 19:1) Jesus has just about finished his journey to Jerusalem that started 10 chapters earlier and just like the journey of Israel in the wilderness ended with them passing through Jericho, so Jesus passes through Jericho. But this is not a little detail to fill out the scene, Luke is showing us that this Jericho scene is parallel to the Jericho scene in the book of Joshua. In both Jerichos you have a hostile group of people, the crowd here and the inhabitants of Jericho in Joshua. And in each story there is one exception, one convert, one faithful and unexpected one–a prostitute in Joshua and a tax collector here–whose home will be the place of their transformation. Notice, the Canaanites are parallel to the Israelite crowds here. Israel has been Canaanized and needs to be reconquered, but this time the warfare and the weapons will be different.

In this video I Iook at the the symbolism and meaning of Jesus being laid in a manger as well why there is a Joseph (Jesus' adopted father) at the beginning and and a Joseph (Joseph of Arimathea) a the end of the (some) of the Gospels. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | Best Books on How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we explore the literary artistry of the Bible and this week we’re going to look at why Jesus was laid in a manger. A manger is a feeding trough for animals. And in the two gospels that record Jesus’ birth, Matthew and Luke, they both include the detail that he was put into a manger. Three times Luke will tell us that Jesus was laid in a manger (2:7, 12, 16). “Once laid there, an angel told the shepherds that they would find their newborn Messiah and Lord “lying in a manger” (Lk 2:12” So why the triple emphasis? I think there are at least two reasons. First, Isaiah chapter 1. In Isaiah 1, Isaiah tells Israel that ox knows who it’s owner is and the donkey knows where it’s feeding trough, manger is, same word, but Israel does not know, that is, Israel does not know where her manger, her feeding trough is. That is, even dumb animals know it’s owner and it’s food, but Israel knows neither. Jesus is put in a feeding trough of an animal, a manger, to say that Israel is in the same state as she was back in Isaiah's day. In a beautiful combination, Jesus is both the food of Israel and her master, but Israel does not know that. If she did, Jesus would not be in an animals feeding trough. Second, Jesus is food for the world. Not only is Jesus put into a feeding trough, symbolically making him to be food, but at both his birth and his death Jesus’ vulnerable body is attended to by a Joseph. At his birth it was Joseph his adopted father and at his death it was Joseph of Arimathea who prepares Jesus’ body for burial. Why two Joseph’s? And why do they both work with Jesus’s body at its most vulnerable, birth and death? Joseph was one of the most well known characters in the OT. And one of his most well known actions was his feeding of the world. If you remember, Joseph interpreted the dream about 7 years of famine and then collected food during the time of abundance so that Egypt would be sustained through the famine. You see, when Jesus is in the manger that is because he is the food that Joseph offers to the world, the vulnerable flesh of Jesus. Just as Joseph in the Old Testament fed the world, so Joseph in the New Testament will feed the world, putting his son in a manger, the bread of the body of Jesus. And the gospel is framed by Josephs feeding Jesus to the world as if this encompasses his whole life. And that, my friends is why, the Bible is Art.

In this video I look at the first words of Ahab. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | Best Books on How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we explore the literary art of the Bible and this week we’re talking about the first words of Ahab. Robert Alter taught us but the first words and the first actions of characters are important for their characterization, revealing depths about who they are. They’re not just surface details. The first words of the notoriously evil King Ahab come in 1 Kings 18:5, “And Ahab said to Obadiah, "Go through the land to all the springs of water and to all the valleys. Perhaps we may find grass and save the horses and mules alive, and not lose some of the animals." This might on first reading appear to be a good characterization, a king, a man of the highest status, spending his time looking for food and water for the lowest of creatures in his kingdom. But this is actually an ironic portrayal. Ahab was the seventh (Jeroboam, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, Ahab), climatically evil king who catalyzed the arrival of Elijah. That is, things were so bad that we need to send in some serious prophetic power. And his catalytic action was idolatry and the murder of his own children, those who were closest to him. With this as the background, Ahab’s care for the animals appears as the action of a psychopath, one who slaughters his children but saves his horses. This also serves to contrast with David and parallel Saul. David was a good shepherd of sheep while Saul started his reign unable to find donkeys. Both Ahab and Saul are unable to care for neither the lesser (animals) nor the greater (people). Finally, Ahab should not be caring for animals at this point. David’s tenure as a shepherd prepared him for shepherding people. Abab is years into his reign trying to manage animals when he should be leading men. And when he tries, he ends up extinguishing them. And that, my friends, is why, the Bible is Art.

In this video we look at the fundamental properties of beauty. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | Best Books on How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we are currently in a series on a Christian Guide to Beauty and Design. If you haven’t seen the videos up to now I would recommend you watch those before you watch this. But if you’re ready to move on, today, we’re talking about the properties of, or, what makes something beautiful. One of the things that I’ve disliked in many aesthetics books is how long it takes to get to any punchline, any insight into beauty, so let’s just list the fundamental properties of beauty we will be talking about right at the beginning. Something is beautiful when it has the following properties: unity, diversity, hierarchy, layers, balance, and form. Now this is certainly not an exhaustive list but it is necessary. Beauty is deep and mysterious and we can never comprehensively understand its nature, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot truly understand its nature. Just because I cannot know all things about prime numbers does not mean that I can’t know some things about prime numbers. Skin is also mysterious and deep. We know that skin is made up of cells and chemicals, and the fact that we do not know the smallest particles that make up the parts of skin does not negate our knowledge that it is made up of cells and chemicals. So there’s much more to beauty, but these are some of the fundamental properties of beauty. In this video, I want to briefly review each of these properties of beauty because we will have videos on each one of them individually. But before we look at each of these properties you might be thinking, “wait, this seems kind of mundane, or matter of fact. How do you know that these are properties of beautiful things“? Well, one of the hazards of giving the punchline in the beginning is that you don’t get to set up the joke, I’m giving you the assertion before the argument. So the justification is coming. But if you haven’t seen the first video, I recommend you watch that because I deal with that question there. But a quick and dirty answer is the following. We know anything from four sources, revelation, reason, tradition/history, and experience. So just telling you some of the foundational properties of beauty is the same thing as if you were to ask me what water is made out of and I replied two hydrogens in an oxygen, A simple answer but it took a very long time, and a lot of hard fall to get there, scientists observing, thinking and testing. But now, to the nature, the properties of beauty Unity and diversity - these are the two most fundamental aesthetic properties. From the beginning of the artistic task you start with unity, a blank page, and your next task is to diversify adding an element in addition to the white page. And as you keep adding new elements you cannot add them indiscriminately. You must add them in a way that retains unity. I have a principal I use when I’m evaluating a piece of design that comes on my desk. And you can get at this principle by asking if the design is confusing or boring? If it is confusing, then there is not enough unity, and if it’s boring, there’s not enough diversity. This is because if it is confusing there are not enough visual features to give the piece a harmonious unity. If it is boring, there is not enough visual information to make it interesting, giving the viewer more and different things to look at. Furthermore, this principle of unity and diversity is not just an aesthetically fundamental principle, but philosophically and theologically as well. It is fascinating that one of the earliest philosophy questions was regarding the one and the many, how there can be unity and diversity. So also one of the first theological questions of the church was how God can be a unity and plurality, how there can be one and three. Hierarchy - Once you start adding things, words, images, shapes, to a blank page, increasing the diversity, in order for it to not be chaotic, there must be a hierarchy. If there are, for instance, three objects, most of the time there will be 1 that is most important, and that needs to be indicated visually. If there is no hierarchy established, people will not know where to look and where to look first. A good designer leads the viewers through the work, visually indicating the hierarchy.

Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible Is Art where we explore the literary artistry of the Bible and this week we are talking about the story of the paralytic. That one where the friends lower the paralytic man into the house to be with Jesus. And we will look at some fascinating details that clue us in to another level of meaning in this text. Let me show you how. This story occurs in all three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but we’re going to be looking at Mark's version. Let’s review the story. It’s only 12 verses so let’s read the whole thing: And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? yHe is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And immediately Jesus, aperceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!” Now, the story is pretty straightforward, but the extended descriptions of the actions of the paralytic or his friends is what caught my attention. In such short stories whenever there are a lot of words given to seemingly less important things, like the movement of the paralytic, it makes me wonder if our author is drawing our attention to it for a reason. Perhaps what on first reading appears to be minor or secondary is actually major and primary. So I want you to think about if any of these details sound familiar. Friends lower a body down then he rises and walks out. Mark uses words and actions here that he will use later with Jesus in his death and resurrection. So Mark has composed this story to look like, to parallel Jesus‘ death and resurrection. OK so that’s cool enough but the second question and equally important is why, why has he made this parallel, how does that contribute to the point Mark is trying to make about Jesus. Literary artistry rarely if ever exists as pure ornamentation, icing on the cake that doesn’t have any relation to the main theses and themes of the work. All the aesthetic features are building up one cumulative case. So what is the case here? Well let’s start with why do the friends lower him into the house? I think because lowering is a symbol of going down to death. Notice that when he is healed he exits the house whereas the Pharisees do not. Also notice that the teaching that Jesus is doing is in the home, in death. And this is because Jesus‘s death will be our tutor. Mark uses the same words “to rise” and “door” in this story and the resurrection story to tie the stories together. You also have similar actions. In each story you have a body laid flat and placed into a location that is taken apart. In the story of the paralytic, the roof is taken off and in the death and resurrection scene the narrator tells us that there was a stone cut out from the rock (Mark 15:46) Also in each story you have four friends who accompany the sufferer. In the story of the paralytic we are told that the paralytic is “carried by four men” (2:3) and in Mark 15 we are told about Simon the Cyrene who carries Jesus’ cross, Mary Magdalene, and Mary Jesus’ Mother, and Joseph of Arimathea who carries Jesus body. Notice the connection of carrying in each story. There is also a similar identification of Jesus. In Mark 2, the scribes respond to Jesus forgiving sins by questioning, “Who can forgive sins but God?” And during the crucifixion, the centurion declares, “Truly, this was the Son of God” (15:39). This identification of Jesus and divinity is rare in Mark’s gospel. This last connection also reveals a contrast. In Mark 2, the narrator characterizes the scribes as “sitting” (2:6) and the narrator leaves them there, static and inactive. This is in contrast to the paralytic who was inactive but because Jesus heals him he rises and walks out.

In this video I look at Matthew's quote from Micah 5 in Matthew chapter 2 when the scribes tell Herod were the Christ is to be born. There's more going on that you might think. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Matthew has opened his story with a genealogy locating Jesus in the family of Abraham and King David. Then Matthew narrates the strange circumstances of his birth with Mary as the seventh woman in the Bible to have a story told about their inability to conceive. With the previous 6 women (Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Samson's mother, Hannah, and Elisabeth, John the Baptist’s Mother), they were unable to conceive even though they were having sex with their husbands when God miraculously gives life. But Mary, being the climactic seventh, has not even had sex and conceives. We’ll have a later video on the purpose of the barren women, but after the scene about Mary’s conception of Jesus and Joseph’s dream about not divorcing Mary, the narrator changes scenes from Mary and Joseph to Herod. Foreigners, wise men, come to Herod and tell him that they’ve heard that there is a king of the Jews who was recently born but they don’t know where he is, like what city. Herod doesn’t either, he didn’t even know a king had been born, so he asks the priests and scribes. They correctly quote from Micah 5:2: “‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” As is often the case, there is a lot more going on than a simple prophecy saying that something is going to happen in the future. But to understand what’s going on we need to look at the book of Micah. The book of Micah is organized in seven sections as explained by David Dorsey: A - Coming Defeat and Destruction (chap 1) A - Corruption of the people (chap 2) C - Corruption of the leaders (chap 3) X - Glorious future restoration (chap 4-5) C’ - Corruption of leaders (chap 6) B’ - Corruption of people (chap 7:1-7) A’ - Future reversal of defeat and destruction (chap 7:8-20) Micah has separate sections that condemn the people and leaders for sin. One of the unique features of Micah is what he condemns the leaders for. Micah has been the only prophet of the 12 minor prophets up to this point to condemn the leaders for attacking, killing their own people. In 3:1-3 Micah says, “ And I said: Hear, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Is it not for you to know justice?— you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin from off my people and their flesh from off their bones, who eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones in pieces and chop them up like meat in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron. These corrupt leaders were anti-leaders. The first job of a leader is to protect those whom he leads, and here, they are killing their people. And in response and instead of this leader, God will raise up a leader who is from the humble city of Bethlehem. Note the contrast of consumption. The evil king consumes his people. In contrast God will provide a king from Bethlehem, a city whose name means house of bread. As a good ruler God does not consume his people but provides them with food. Okay now back to Matthew.

In this video I look at the meaning of the number of the beast: 666. G.K Beale's Article: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-is-the-number-of-the-beast-666/ Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Greg Beale has a great article on The Gospel Coalition Blog about Why Is the Number of the Beast 666 in Revelation 13:18. I wholeheartedly agree with everything he says there but think that there is a layer that's missing. Whenever you are interpreting a text, you should always look to the closest connections first. The number "666" occurs with three people: Solomon (1 Kings 10:14 and 2 Chronicles 9:13), the returned exiles (Ezra 2:13), and the beast (Rev. 13:18). Given how specific and rare this number is, it seems that John is alluding to one of the two of these OT references and I believe the allusion is to Solomon's 666. 1 Kings 10:14 states, Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold This may seem unconnected to the beast in Revelation, but when you discover the purpose and the placement of this text in the book of Kings, layers are opened up in Revelation. Up to 1 Kings 10:14, Solomon has been a paradigmatic king: he built God's temple, he prayed for wisdom instead of wealth, and he included gentiles in both the construction of the temple and in the teaching of wisdom. But 1 Kings 10:14 starts a sequence of three paragraphs that detail Solomon's violation of the three laws of kingship given in Deuteronomy 17:14-20: don't accumulate much gold, horses (for warfare), or many wives. Thus 666 is the pivot between the man of the highest wisdom and deepest folly; indeed the deepest folly because he had the highest wisdom. Solomon, the son of David, embodies the best and the worst of humanity. 666 in Revelation When we look at the beast in Revelation, along with those who are aligned with the beast (those who follow the beast of earth, the other beast, the harlot, etc.) commit the same three sins. As evil kings, the beast the woman and false prophet, multiply horses for warfare (Rev. 19:19), committing sexual immorality with the kings of the earth (Rev. 18:3), and make themselves wealthy on gold (Rev. 19:19). But the point of John's identification of the beast's number as 666 is not just that they commit the same sins as a paradigmatic fallen king, Solomon, but that evil is so evil because it is the corruption of the good. As one interpretation of Babylon holds, Babylon the harlot is Jerusalem, not (or not just) Rome. Much like Matthew's characterization of Israel as Egypt (The Art of Genius), John is communicating that the holiest city has become the harlot city, killing God's king. This Calls for Wisdom Now before John tells us that the number of the beast is 666 he says, "This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast..." Why do we need wisdom and understanding for this number? Perhaps because the identification is so counter intuitive. If Hitler was the beast, that would not need wisdom. But if the beast were compared to a man of the highest reputation and righteousness, that would require wisdom. Nero would make sense, Solomon needs wisdom. This is John's warning that the beast is not a foreign, nefarious creature, but could be us.

In this video we look at the art of the whole book of Deuteronomy. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | The book of Deuteronomy is confusing for many. And this is because it seems to repeat a lot of the history of Israel that has already happened as well as many of the laws. I mean there’s another copy of the Ten Commandments and the title of the book itself means “second law”. But there are important differences between the first occurrence of these stories and laws and the second. And when you understand the differences, you’ll understand the art and genius of Deuteronomy. First, by the time we get to Deuteronomy, Moses has lived, breathed, and applied God’s law for 40 years, wandering, leading his people in the wilderness. God’s words have become Moses’ bones. It’s like the difference between being so fluent that you can understand poetry, shades of connotations and subtle allusions and being a beginner, having to look up every word. That’s the difference between the first time we read those laws and the laws here in Deuteronomy. So far from being a simple repetition of the law, Deuteronomy is a master’s exposition of a lifetime of living and loving the law. It’s the wisdom, the depth of the law. Second, Deuteronomy is the final speeches of Moses. And this is significant because up to this point in the Bible it is by far the longest direct speech from a character. The last large section that was one characters’ extended speech was the book of Leviticus. Leviticus is almost entirely God’s direct speech. So there’s a shift from God speaking to man, Moses speaking. The last time the laws were listed it was God speaking them in Exodus and Leviticus. The second time they're repeated or explained here, it is a man, Moses explaining them. There’s been a progression, from God doing all the explaining to Moses. God is growing his people up. You see God taught our forefathers, then they teach their children, and the children teach their children and so on. And with each passing on of God’s word, the understanding of his word gets deeper and richer. And we see the first deep passing on here. Deuteronomy is designed in three major speeches with an introduction and conclusion. In the first section Moses retells Israel’s history, but only part of it. And there’s an important principle here. Whenever there is a seeming repetition in the Bible, pay attention to the details, the specific words the author uses, what he chooses to include and exclude from the story, because all those details will clue you in to the real meaning of the repetition. Here, Moses doesn’t review Abraham or Adam, Joseph or the Exodus. He starts from the end of the time at Mt Sinai and brings it up to the present time for the readers, Israel on the plains of Moab, right outside the land of Canaan, ready to go in. But even out of all that time he covers in his retelling he focuses on two things: the story of the spies spying out the land, and the relationship between the Israelites and other people’s like the Moabites and the Ammonites.

In this 3rd video in the series "A Christian Guide to Beauty and Design" I look at what makes something beautiful. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | Best Books on How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Best Books on Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Best Books on Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we’re in a series on a A Christian Guide to Beauty and Design. In the last video we were looking at how beauty is objective, a feature of things and not subjective, like our preference for a certain kind of ice cream. In this video we’re going to look at what makes something beautiful or more precisely, the ground of beauty. While this might seem to be a difficult question, it is actually quite simple, because it’s the same structure of every other question about a good property like justice or goodness. Something is just, loving, and beautiful if it reflects God and his justice, love, and beauty. God is eternal, the creator, and the source of all life, of everything. And when God created the world, none of the diffuse variety of things surprised him. Every emotion and action, every property and relation was always already within him. There was no novelty. So when he created the world it reflects, is an image of his character and nature. Everything is grounded in him. So something is just if it reflects his justice, something is love if it images his lovingness. So all things find their ontological explanation in him, the originator and source of all goods. Now you may be thinking, “Okay, but this certainly does not fully answer our question about what makes something beautiful.” That’s true. When we say that something is just because God is just and it mirrors God’s justice, we are saying that there are a set of properties, attributes that together constitute justice and those properties are properties firstly of God. And the same is true of beauty. What we mean by “Justice” is that there are a collection of attributes or properties of God that together constitute justice, so also there are a collection of properties in God that constitute, that name his beauty. This might sound a bit weird but this is the normal, common sense understanding. When I say that Sally is kind I mean that 1) she has a good, positive disposition toward people 2) that her speech is graceful and gentle 3) that she generous and patient with her attention and so on. Those properties constitute her kindness. So saying that something is beautiful because it reflects God’s beauty does not provide us with the properties of beauty, but it provides a path to answering it. That is, if we want to know what makes something beautiful, we must look at God’s beauty. But here we run into a problem because God has not revealed or explained every aspect of his character and world. For instance, while economics and physics have their explanation in God we cannot go to the Scriptures for a detailed explanation of how this is the case. We can’t look at God and discover the structure or purpose of plutonium or supply and demand curves. And there is two reasons why, two reasons why God has not explained everything about himself and reality:

In this video we explain the literary art of Ecclesiastes 3. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we explore the literary artistry of the Bible and this week we’re going to explore that great poem in Ecclesiastes 3 about Time. a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. Whenever you have a text this famous and repetitive, in order to understand the depth of the art of the author, you have to pay precise attention to the particularities. What words and phrases and in what order. What words does he choose not to use. What repetitions or omissions, patterns, and breaks in pattern. We need to do this because our familiarity can conceal subtly. So let’s look at some particularities and then put those together to discover our author’s art. First, there are all sorts of things that are perfect in this poem. There are 7 poetic couplets, totaling 14 lines (2x7). The keyword, time, is used 28 times (7x4). A similar technique, that is using seven to connote perfection, is used in Genesis 1 and I made a video about that I’ve linked in the description. There is also perfect comprehensiveness. You begin with the extremes of an individual, birth and death, and end with the extremes of a nation, war and peace. And inside this frame you have the whole range of human experience. All of life is in its proper place, good and bad, or is it? And I say this because of the second set of particularities. That is, there are things that are not perfect, that are off, that are confusing and ambiguous. For instance in a poem that’s clearly been composed with a thought to Numerical perfection, having variations of the perfect number 7, it’s strange that in total the poem contains 60 words, that is, not perfect number. Furthermore, the whole poem is organized around the central two lines and it’s almost perfectly balanced, almost. There are 25 words before the central couplet and 24 words after. And although most of the couplets are perfectly balanced couplets with 4 words in each line the central couplet has 6 and 5 words. So there’s things that are slightly off. Now, we know it’s organized around the central two lines not only for the balance of words before and after but also because the main word in each of the lines is repeated only here. Notice, you have a repetition of stones and embracing: a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; Also you have a unique feature here in that the line about stones is the only line with an object. All of the other lines have a time for and then some verb, a time to die or a time to laugh, but here you have a verb with an object, to cast away stones, to gather stones.

In this video we're looking at Ezekiel's fascinating literary art where he connects dates and measurements to create a literary Temple. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we explore the literary artistry of the Bible and this week we’re talking about where Ezekiel’s New Temple is. Ezekiel is a strange book and its strange in many ways. One of the ways it is strange is that there are a lot of numbers in Ezekiel. And these numbers come in two forms. First, there are dates and second, there are measurements. Regarding the first, there are more dates in Ezekiel than any other book in the Bible, 14 in total. And most of the time they’re very precise, including the year, month, and day. For instance, in the first verse of Ezekiel it says, “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month…” So why all these dates? Some have thought that they relate to something that happened on or around those dates that we might know about from other sources inside or outside the Bible, but the problem is that we can’t make it work, most of them don’t really line up with other events we know about. Now it’s certainly possible that it may relate to other events, but before offer that explanation, let’s see if there’s any other explanation that might be more credible and explanatorily powerful. Furthermore, to use a wonderful phrase from pastor Brandon Levering, the Bible is a relatively closed cognitive environment. That is, most of the meaning can be found inside the Bible, not in external sources. The second set of numbers are measurements. The last major section of Ezekiel, chapters 40-48, describe a new temple. And Ezekiel is brought on a guided tour through this temple and the tour guide describes tons of measurements and quantities: walls, doors, rooms, etc. And once again, we wonder, why are we told this. Well, there’s a fascinating connection between these two sets of numbers, these dates and measurements, and that is that most of the numbers in the dates are also found in the measurements. So the dates are repeated in the measurements of the temple. Here are some of the connections between the dates and the measurement and quantities in the Temple. For instance, the first date, in Ezekiel 1:1, “In the thirtieth year…” And in the outer court of the temple there are thirty chambers. Also, in the temple building proper there are 30 side chambers on each three stories. Or in Ezekiel 29:1 the date is the 10th year, 10th month, and 12th day of the month and you have ten steps, things measuring 10 cubits, and twelve gates. And on and on the connections go. Out of the 40 numbers there are 39 matches to measurements or quantities in the Temple. Now I’m not saying these dates have direct connections to their corresponding measurements, like the 7th month corresponds to the 7 steps, because I don’t think that’s true. But, the author of Ezekiel is making the is connection by duplicating those numbers because he wants us to push us to understand that these two things are related. And the connection that the author wants us to make is that the book itself is Ezekiel‘s temple, not fully but partly. That is the readers of this book back in Ezekiel‘s day and today are already participating in the new temple.

In this video I look at Matthew's quotation from Isaiah 7, "The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel." Map from Holman Bible Atlas (https://www.amazon.com/Holman-Bible-Atlas-Expansive-Geography/dp/1558197095). Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible as art, where we explore the literary artistry of the Bible. And this week, we're talking about that great quotation from Isaiah, “The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel. And we will see how this is one of the most misunderstood texts in the entire Bible. In Matthew’s Gospel, after the Angel visits Joseph and tells him to marry Mary and to name Jesus Jesus, Matthew, the narrator, tell us that “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet” and then Matthew quotes from Isaiah, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.” Which means “God with us.” Now, the most important principle that we have to understand when we are trying to understand how the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament, is that most of the time they are referring to more than just the verse that they are explicitly quoting. Normally, they're referring to the whole passage in which that text is contained, and sometimes even larger sections, say multiples chapters or even to a whole book. So to understand what Matthew is doing. Let's go back to Isaiah chapter seven and see what was going on there. In Isaiah 7, Israel has been split up into the northern kingdom, called Israel, and the southern kingdom, called Judah. And the northern kingdom, Israel has allied together with the kingdom of Aram or Syria depending on your translation, the nation just north of them and they are coming down to attack Jerusalem, the capital of Judah. The king of Judah, Ahaz, is freaked out. So God sends the prophet Isaiah to reassure Ahaz that there’s nothing to worry about because very soon they’re going to be gone, deserted. While they looks strong, in reality they’re weak. And Ahaz needs to stand firm in faith. Ahaz doesn’t respond when Isaiah tells him this, so God says, listen “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” That is, I know this is scary so I’ll give you any sign you want as proof that I will protect you. And Ahaz says, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” That is, he responds with false piety. I would never ask for a sign, that would be putting God to the test. Ahaz is referencing a text from Deuteronomy that says you should not put God to the test. But if God is telling you to do something that’s not testing him, it’s obedience. And here’s what God says in response: 13 And he said, "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. The LORD will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father's house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah-the king of Assyria!" - Isaiah 7:13-17

In this second video in the series A Christian Guide to Beauty & Design I talk about the objectivity of beauty. Video 1 - Introduction (https://youtu.be/xDe5X6Yl-WI) Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins Images: Paweł Czerwiński (https://unsplash.com/@pawel_czerwinski) | Transcription | Welcome back to The Bible is Art. We are currently in a series where I bring you along with me as I write a book on a Christian Guide to Beauty and Design. This week we’re talking about the objectivity of beauty. Beauty is objective. That is, when I say that poster or a painting is beautiful or well designed, I am saying something about the work, not something about how I feel about it. I’m not offering a preference. I am saying something about the work’s nature or essence, it’s structure and the relations between its parts. You certainly should feel a preference toward beautiful things, but that has nothing to do with whether it is or is not beautiful. Whether you have good feelings toward a well designed painting is predicated upon your aesthetic development, a topic I shall discuss later when we talk about the Fall and Aesthetic Discipleship. No all this is confused by our language. When we point to a poster, a painting, or album cover and say that it’s “good” or “beautiful”, that could mean three things. First, it could mean that I am saying something objective about it, that it is well designed, that is, it has the properties of a beautiful design. Second, It could mean a subjective preference. That is, I am saying something about myself and my internal state that may or may not relate to objective features of the object. Or third, both. That is, I am saying that I do think the object is objectively well designed and I subjectively enjoy it. Unfortunately, this linguistic confusion has caused a lot of confusion in aesthetics. It has contributed one more brick in the house of relativism. But there is no need to conclude that beauty is subjective because of an opaqueness in our language. Let me pause here. While there are subjective aesthetic preferences (for instance, cultural or individual preferences for certain colors or patterns), this has no effect on the objectivity of beauty and its properties. Just as people have preferences for different types of food, there are foundational properties of what makes good food for humans. Arsenic, for example, would not be good food. But the existence or culinary preferences in no way affects the necessary properties to make something good food. Okay, back to the argument. Beauty, good design is objective. It is a feature of objects and we know this for a number of reasons. Intuition. Most people naturally believe that beauty exists and that when we identify something as beautiful we are saying something about that thing and not something about ourselves. And if that’s a natural intuition, we would need to have a really good reason to disbelieve. Individual Practice. Every wife assumes that when you tell her she is beautiful that you are saying something about her, not you. And the same goes for the Grand Canyon, iPhones, and stories. And if this is our common practice, the way we live. And there is intelligence in our actions. And, once again, we only need to change our assumption if we have reasons to do so. And I don’t think we do. Commercial Practice. When you read standard graphic design texts the rules for good design are universal and widely agreed upon. And when you work for a creative or ad agency these are the standards that are assumed. And when your work is critiqued by an art director, the unspoken assumption, the presuppositions are those universal, objective principles. Cross Cultural Studies - There has been a whole spate of studies that demonstrate that there is cross-cultural agreement on the principles of beauty. Once again, there are still preference, but that does not preclude the existence of objective properties of beauty. For instance, symmetry is cross-culturally identified as an attribute of beautiful things. For instance, In 1995 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers did three studies on the cross cultural identification of facial attractiveness and found in all three studies there was a high correlation, that is there was consistency across cultures as to what was considered a beautiful face. Furthermore, they found that “Exposure to Western media did not influence attractiveness ratings in either study”. Dr. Gad Saad discussing cross-cultural aesthetic research states that “it is unequivocally clear that many [metrics of beauty] are universally defined, as these constitute cues of phenotypic quality that hold true irrespective of cultural setting or time period.”

I'm starting a new series on a Christian Guide to Beauty and Design and I introduce it in this video Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art and this week we’re starting a new series on A Christian Guide to Beauty and Design. For awhile now I’ve been writing a book. And I’ve been writing a book because it didn’t exist. You see, years ago I was teaching a high school course on Christian Worldview where we had sections on every main area of knowledge. So we had a Christian view of economics, science, ethics, mathematics and aesthetics, the study of beauty and design. And as I looked for material on Christian aesthetics I found that the books that were available were too broad, that is, books talking about the general importance of beauty in the Bible or theology. There wasn’t anything that talked about what makes something beautiful, visually beautiful for a Christian. So life went on and my professional life moved into design and photography. So while my undergraduate and graduate training was in Biblical Studies, Philosophy, and Theology, my professional work was and is in an aesthetic discipline. And as I lived in the worlds of design and theology, some very obvious connections became clear to me. But in discussions with people and reading books on beauty, these simple insights were missing. It was for these reasons that I started to write a book on A Christian Guide to Beauty and Design. But as I was writing, I also started this YouTube channel and decided to just release videos on it as I write the book. That way I can get feedback and the book can be truer, better, and I hope more beautiful. So the goal of these videos and the book is simply this: to explain what makes something beautiful and why. And with that let me leave you with these words from the poet Francis Thompson: “The Church, which was once the mother of poets no less than of saints, during the last two centuries has relinquished to aliens the chief glories of poetry, she has retained the palm, but forgone the laurel. Fathers of the Church (we should say), pastors of the Church, pious laics of the Church: you are taking from its walls the panoply of Aquinas; take also from its walls the psaltery of Alighieri. Unroll the precedents of the Church's past; recall in your minds that Francis of Assisi was among the precursors of Dante, that sworn to poverty he forswore not Beauty, but discerned through the lamp Beauty the Light God. What you theoretically know vividly realize: that with many the religion of beauty must always be a passion and a power, that is only evil when divorced from the worship of Primal Beauty.”

In this video I look at the dense style of biblical authors and show how rich it can be with 1 verse: Genesis 37:2. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we explore the literary artistry of the Bible and this week we’re talking about the dense style of biblical narrators’ as well as the sophistication you can achieve in one verse. Let me read to you two different styles of storytelling. First, Thomas Hardy from his book Under the Greenwood Tree. This is the first sentence: To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality. (Thomas Hardy,) And this is one of the first sentences from the Joseph story, “Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers.” Notice the difference? The biblical narrators are sparse, not florid, unadorned, but dense, dense with meaning and symbolism, dense with details that will be apropos, important to the story. Much of modern literature invests a lot of time in describing scenes and physical characteristics of characters. The biblical narrator, by contrast, very rarely includes those details, and when he does include details, it will always have a plot function, it will be important in the story. Let me explain the beauty of this dense style with the text we just read from the Joseph story. Now, you may have not thought much of it when I first read it, but in one sentence the author crams four pieces of plot significant information. First, we’re introduced to the main character, Joseph. Second, we’re told his age and thus maturity, “seventeen.” And there is a subtle irony here, Joseph bears a symbolically perfect age, 7+10, but he is not perfect. This will mirror the fact that he has a favored relationship with his father but does not know how to handle that privilege. Later in the story after God has matured Joseph, the narrator will mark his age again, 13 years later, 13 years of discipleship, through slavery and prison. Third, we’re told his vocation, “pasturing the flock.” This, of course, is his training for his final vocation, pasturing people as second in command in Egypt. But here, he is unable to pasturing well with his brothers. By the end of the story he will have been trained to pasture with them and others well. He will rise not to first in command in Egypt but to second, and he can do that skillfully. He will also learn to care for his brothers and not bring bad reports about them and gloat in his blessings, but using his blessings to feed the world. And fourth, in that first sentence we are introduced the conflict in both form and content. We are introduced to the antagonists: the brothers. And our author ingeniously implies their conflict by semantically separating them as far as possible in the sentence. Listen to the sentence again, “Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers.” Joseph is the first word and “the brothers” are the last words. They are separate semantically because they are separate relationally and they will be separated physically for a good portion of the story.

In this video we look at the symbolism of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we explore the literary artistry of the Bible and this week we’re looking at the symbolism of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, and its both different and deeper than I originally thought. We all know the story. Jesus is born and wise men come and bring three gifts to Jesus, Gold, frankincense, and Myrrh. But the question I want to explore is why three gifts and why these gifts. As always in the Bible, if you’re trying to understand something the answer is often found in something that came before. And Gold, frankincense, and Myrrh have all appeared in the Bible before. And while these different things occur in different places in the OT, they only occur together in one place, The Temple and Tabernacle. Gold was the characteristic material in the Holy of Holies. The ark of the covenant was made of solid gold and the room was overlaid with gold. Frankincense was used in the offerings, specifically the grain or gift offering. And these offerings only happened at the temple in the first section or courtyard of the temple. Myrrh was used as the first ingredient in the mixture that was burned in the alter of incense by the priests in the holy place. So notice, there is one material that is found in each of the three sections of the Temple. So what significance does that have? Well, there’s one more text or group of texts that we have to bring in. There are a set of texts that talk about in the future the nations of the world will bring gifts to Jerusalem and to her King. So Psalm 72 talks about Israel’s king and says “May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands render him tribute; may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts! And Isaiah 60 speaking of the glorious future of Israel says, “ Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you...and nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. - Isaiah 60:3 A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the LORD. - Isaiah 60:6 And In Solomon’s life, the Queen of Sheba brought him gifts. So with these texts as backstory, we can begin to put together the pieces. These three gifts are brought because Jesus will be building a new temple. It is not surprising that later he will cleanse the temple and foretell its destruction. In Matthew 21 when he is cleansing the temple he will get angry because the temple is being used for commerce instead of prayer for all nations. And even in the beginning of the gospel the connection of the temple and all nations is here because the gifts for the construction of the new temple will be brought by foreigners, magi. So even as an infant Jesus is bringing Jew and gentile together in a way that the temple in Jerusalem couldn’t do, even having been around for so many years. In the story, after the Magi offer their gifts and worship Jesus, an angel warns them of Herod and instructs them to depart another way. That is after they offer their sacrifices at or for the new temple, God responds by protecting them. The new temple Jesus is building is already open for use.

The Peanut Butter Falcon is an exquisite piece of literary craft and in this video I explore some of the symbolism of the film. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | Transcription | The Peanut Butter Falcon is a work of the highest literary and dramatic skill. But because it has been described by many critics as a “feel good movie” I worry that its depth, symbolism, careful attention to detail, surgical development of themes and images might be lost. So in praise of this great film, let’s look at the art of the Peanut Butter Falcon. Peanut Butter Falcon is a story about Zak, Tyler and Eleanor. Zak is a 22 year old with Down Syndrome who wants to escape his retirement home where has lived since his family abandoned him and to go to a professional wrestling training camp. Tyler, also a young man, fisherman, and thief has a hard time keeping down jobs because he lost his brother one night when he fell asleep at the wheel. After setting fire to a rival’s fisherman's gear, Tyler sets on the road to Florida where he runs into Zak whom Tyler agrees to take to the wrestling school in Florida. Eleanor works at the retirement home where Zak lives and will chase after after him before joining their journey Like any good journey narrative, this external journey mirrors the internal journey, the transformation of persons and relationships. Zak and Tyler as a pair are contrasting as well as complementary, similar and different. That is, they have multiple needs, multiple things that need transformation and one of them they share and one is different. They’re similar in that they have both lost family and need a new one. But they are different in the following ways. Tyler is self-sufficient/independent and able-bodied, Zak is dependent and has a physical difficulty. And as they go through their journey both their similar needs and different difficulties will be transformed. Tyler’s journey will be a journey out of self-sufficiency and selfishness while Zak’s will be a journey out of his self-perception of deformity, disabled. And they will find this as they create a new family The first two scenes of the movie open with solitary characters. A shot of Zak and then a shot of Tyler, symbolically communicating their lack of family, their loneliness. This will symbolically change by the end of the movie where the last frame will be Zak, Tyler, and Eleanor, a worker at the retirement home who will run away with them. But let’s not jump too quickly to the end. When the story begins Tyler is stealing crabs from other fishermans’ traps. The other fisherman confront him, beat him up, and then Tyler sets fire to their equipment. The fisherman see the fire and start to chase after Tyler. Tyler escapes in a boat that unbeknownst to him, Zak hid himself in, looking for anyway to get to his wrestling school. After some convincing, Tyler finally agrees to drop Zak off at the school on his way to Florida. Notice, Tyler begins thinking two false assumptions: first, that they are on different journeys and second, that he is leading Zak. The first rule that Tyler establishes is that Zak cannot slow him down. So between geographically leading them and physically being faster, Tyler assumes that he is the independent, strong one, leading a physically slow, Down Syndrome boy down south. But Tyler doesn’t realize that leading the physical journey pales in comparison to the importance of the internal journey of transformation and in that journey he is the follower. This inversion of the leader follower relationship between Tyler and Zak is beautifully and symbolically communicated in multiple ways. First, Zak is the first to accept baptism. In response to the offer of baptism Tyler responds that he is more of a “baptism-by-fire-type.” The man performing the baptism says that he doesn’t perform those. But that creates an expectation of baptism by fire to come, and come it does. Instead of accepting water baptism, Tyler will experience all sorts of baptismal adversity. First, his raft will be burned, baptism by literal fire, then he will physically hit with a metal bar and symbolically killed. I say symbolically killed because the director edited the sequence in the hospital to lead the viewer to believe Tyler was dead. Zak did not have to endure all that baptismal fire because he didn’t have the self-sufficiency, the selfishness that Tyler had and instead accepted baptism. He acknowledged that he needed cleaning up, whereas Tyler needed to be shown that. Zak was leading Tyler in selflessness.

In this video we look at the literary parallel of Jesus and Samson in the annunciation in Matthew 1:18-25. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we explore the literary artistry of the Bible and this week we’re talking about the riddles of Jesus and Samson. Let me read for you the annunciation scene from Matthew’s Gospel: “Now the birth of Jesus took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, look, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus” There are many parallels in the OT to Jesus’ annunciation, where the angels come and announce that a woman will have a son. For instance, Sarah and Hannah both have angels visit them with this news. But the closest parallel is to Samson’s mother. So why make the strongest connection to Samson, what connection does Matthew want us to make between Samson and Jesus? Samson is a strange judge and he’s different from the 11 other judges. His is the longest narrative and it is also the most puzzling. Samson was a nazirite from birth. A nazirite was someone who specially devoted themselves to God for some period of time, in Samson’s case, his whole life. And there were some rules for being a nazirite, one of them being no touching dead animals and no eating or drinking anything from the vine. Another law that will be important for understanding Samson is that the Israelites were not to marry wives of some foreign places. And finally, we have to remember that the author of Hebrews places Samson in the hall of faith among the men and women of greatest faith. With this as the background we can start puzzling over Samson. The first thing that Samson does in the story is demand a Philistine wife. His parents protest but Samson insists. Seems like not an ideal first action for the climactic judge. Next, when he goes down to get his wife he stops in the vineyards of the city of Timnah. Strike two, why would he stop in a vineyard when he couldn’t partake of anything there? While he’s there a lion attacks him and he kills it, presumably touching a dead animal, then later he will scoop out honey that is in that dead animal. Strike three.

In this video I look at how exactly is everything vanity. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we explore the literary artistry of the Bible and this week we’re talking about the book of Ecclesiastes and how everything is vanity. Imagine this. The wisest man whoever lives comes to town and you get to go hear him give a talk. You’re excited because you think that now he’ll be able to bring everything together, make sense of it all, provide some secret that we haven’t uncovered yet. But the first thing he says is that everything is vanity and he repeats that throughout his whole hour long talk. You leave and as you process it you think that you must be missing something, he’s the wisest man who ever lived. So you start to think and puzzle. And you start to wonder maybe what he says and what he means are two different things. Maybe he’s trying to do something with words. Maybe he doesn’t actually believe that everything is vanity but in order to get us to understand that he has to tell us that everything is vanity. Maybe the fact that you’re spending so much time thinking is part of the point. This is exactly what is going on with Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes opens up with Solomon declaring, “Vanity of Vanities, All is Vanity.” And this is repeated throughout the book. But Solomon doesn’t actually believe that everything is vanity at least not in the way that you might think and there’s reasons in the text that indicate that for us, but the first thing to understand is that Ecclesiastes is a riddle. You see, Ecclesiastes is wisdom literature, that is it’s designed to make the reader wise and as any great artist or author knows you don’t make people wise simply by giving them simple facts to memorize. Sometimes you learn things better when they’re difficult than when they’re easy. In the introduction to the book of Proverbs Solomon gives us a list of the ways that he will teach wisdom and one of them is by means of riddles. Proverbs 1 To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, 3 to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; 4 to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth— 5 Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, 6 to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. And this is because sometimes hard intellectual work Will do a better job of working wisdom into us then clear statements. Later in Proverbs were told that it is the wisdom of God to hide things and the wisdom of kings to search things out. So how is it that Ecclesiastes is a riddle. Well, it’s a riddle because it was written with a great contradiction a paradox that needs to be resolved. Solomon, the wisest man whoever lives, says that everything is vanity. Now that’s a riddle because the wisest man knows better than everyone else that the world is not vain. The Bible up to Ecclesiastes as well as after it communicates that it is not vain. Everything from God redeeming the slavery of Joseph where he will say to his brothers that what they meant for evil God meant for good, to David declaring that the heavens declare the glory of God, to Paul in Romans saying that God works everything for good. So if Solomon knows that everything is not in vain why does he say that it is?

In this video I look at why Mary's birth looks like infidelity and why Joseph's righteousness is strange. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J) | Transcription | Welcome back to the Bible is Art where we explore the literary artistry of the Bible. And this week we’re talking about some strange and lovely things about Jesus’ birth. Matthew begins his gospel with an expansive, and exhaustive genealogy. Where Jesus is identified with the highest members of the Israelite family. Kings, priests, prophets, and psalmists. And in all this Jesus is this climactic cumulative character encompassing all of humanity in his body. This is the king about whom this gospel will be about. And in line with this grand backstory Matthew announces to us that he will now give us the story of this King’s birth. But as will become a theme in Matthew’s gospel this opening story does not unfold as we are expecting. Here’s what the text says, Matthew 1:18–21: Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” With Jesus’ pedigree we are expecting a parade. But instead, King Jesus’ birth almost divides a family, causing a divorce. Furthermore, his birth will look like infidelity, adultery. Mary is pregnant without being with a man. Now why did this climactic king’s birth take place in this strange way? Matthew could have easily left it out and he did not include it just for its drama or to give the story texture. So why did he include it? And why did God design his son’s birth in this manner? Well first, as we saw in the video about women in Matthew’s genealogy, there is an appearance of infidelity, impurity, but in reality, it is the exact opposite. Mary appears to have been impure, sleeping with another man and becoming pregnant, but in reality she has the purity of soul to accept the savior into her body. You see, Jesus’ whole ministry will have this same shape. He will constantly be accused of violating the law, of sinning, but in reality he is doing the opposite. He is accused of sin because he is healing on the Sabbath when in reality he was doing what the Sabbath was designed for, the restoration of life. And this is the same shape of Jesus‘s greatest act. It will appear to be the opposite of what it is. It will appear to be defeat when in reality it is victory. Second, this strange birth will show us the first example of the different kind of righteousness that Jesus describes. Remember, he will say that we need to have a righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees. But he is not talking about in quantity, just more righteous acts, but in quality. There is a new kind of righteousness that is needed. Notice, our narrator, for the first time in the Gospel has evaluated a character as righteous. In verse 19 it says, “And Joseph, being a righteous man…” And given how uncommon it is for biblical narrators to give explicit evaluation of characters, why here?

In Matthew 1, Matthew changes two names in the genealogy and he has a fascinating reason for doing so. Support the Channel: https://www.patreon.com/thebibleisart Website: https://www.thebibleisart.com Email: thisdivineart@gmail.com Twitter: @johnbhiggins | How to Learn to Read the Bible as Literary Art | Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (https://amzn.to/30LzaRa) Narrative Art in the Bible (https://amzn.to/30RVGIb) The Art of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/3aDrIfk) Old Testament Narrative: A Guide to Interpretation (https://amzn.to/38rcE2C) The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (https://amzn.to/2Gh4cqE) | Literary Structure | Literary Structure of the Old Testament (https://amzn.to/30Jdm8X) Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative (https://amzn.to/2RDTTlQ) | Genesis | Creation: The Story of Beginnings - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2GlPwq9) Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative - Grossman (https://amzn.to/2v7id7Z) Narrative Art in Genesis - Fokkelman (https://amzn.to/2ulmd4t) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2NOAhdt) A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part II) - Cassuto (https://amzn.to/2Gcuk6d) Genesis: A Commentary - Waltke (https://amzn.to/2vaBvt7) The Gospel of Genesis: Studies in Protology and Eschatology - Gage (https://amzn.to/2RGjRFo) Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12-50 - Janzen (https://amzn.to/2TVyCqJ) Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/2TQnYRO) Genesis 16-50, Volume 2 - Wenham (https://amzn.to/3aDY21J)