okay so I'm going to read you something
from the book of Job and this is God
harassing job so I don't know if you
know the story of job but it's a very
interesting story and basically what
happens with job is that God and the
devil have a bat which seems a little
you know on the unreasonable side for
God but he gets to do whatever he wants
so he has a bet with Satan roughly
speaking and says he says well job
he tells Satan that job is a good guy
and that he's faithful to God and Satan
says yeah let me let me out him for a
while I bet you we can do something
about that and God says roughly speaking
no you could torch him all you want
he's gonna stay faithful and and and
Satan says well we'll have a bet on that
and so God hands him over and what
happens to job it's like everything
terrible that you could imagine then
happens to job right his his all his
family dies all his possessions are
destroyed he gets a horrible skin
disease and so then he's sitting there
by the fire sort of scraping himself
with bits of broken pots and all his
friends come around and tell him that
the reason all this happened to him was
because he deserved it so it's perfect
right it's it's it's it's like an
ultimate suffering story it's a
precursor to the idea of the crucifix
that's one way of thinking about it so
and Joab has a child with God and asked
some like Cain did roughly what's going
on and God attempts to he's irritated
that job would even dare to question him
it's like he's God it's gets to do
whatever he wants it's a very strange
book anyways this is one of the things
that God says to job well God is trying
to justify himself I would say to job
and the reason I'm telling you this you
see is because so imagine that you're
trying to analyze a literary work you
might say well where's the meaning in
the literary work and the answer is it's
in the words word by word it's in the
phrases it's in the sentences it's in
the relationship of the sentences to
each other it's in the relationship of
the sentences within paragraphs it's in
the relationship of the paragraph
within the contexts of the chapters and
it's in the relationship between the
chapters and the whole book and then the
book in the whole culture so you can't
it's not easy to localize the meaning it
exists at all those levels
simultaneously and they all inform one
another and what that means and it's
even worse in a book like the Bible I
want to show you a picture this is an
amazing picture so let me tell you what
this is so the Bible is the world's
first hyperlinked document that's a good
way of thinking about it so what you
have here so what you see at the bottom
there's a line along the bottom and then
there's small lines coming down from it
okay each of those the line has dots on
it each dot is a is a verse okay and
then there's a line associated with the
verse that's a varying length and the
length corresponds to how many times
that verse is cross-referenced somewhere
else in the document and then these
rainbow-colored lines are the cross
references so now that's really worth
thinking about so then you think well
that book is deep well why is it deep
well it's because every single thing in
it refers to every other thing it's
connected like your brain is connected
like it's not a linear document and the
really the thing is a book is a very
strange thing right because when you or
even a story because when you lay out
the story in some sense you're like god
you're outside of the space and time of
the story and so you can adjust the end
to make the beginning different you know
how if you watch a movie and then it's
got a surprise ending it changes the
beginning you thought the beginning was
one thing but it isn't it's something
else well when you lay out a story you
can fiddle with the story anywhere in
the story and so and you can also make
something that happens before dependent
on something that happens after which is
very strange and that's what's happened
with the Bible because people have
worked on it worked on it worked on it
worked on it trying to synthesize it and
make it coherent and make it make sense
and so they're continually connecting
everything that's inside of it to
everything else and so you end up with a
document map that looks like that so now
so you think about that everything is
connected to everything in that document
not chaotically but meaningfully just
like your brain
is connected in a meaningful way it's
not everything isn't connected to
everything it's connected in a
meaningful way and then you think well
where what do the stories mean and then
the answer is well that's a hard
question because all of them are
connected with each other and then
there's all these different levels of
analysis and so you can pull out
meanings at one level of analysis that
aren't self-evident at another level of
analysis just like if you're listening
to a complex piece of symphonic music
you can follow a bass line or you can
follow the strings or you can follow the
horns and they're all harmoniously
interrelated but they're also separable
okay so there is an image that lurks in
the Old Testament and the image is the
same image it's roughly the same image
as the image of Marduk confronting time
at so for example at the at the
beginning God makes here's here's how
the beginning goes in the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth and the
earth was without form and void and
darkness was upon the face of the deep
and the Spirit of God moved upon the
face of the waters and God said let
there be light and there was light okay
so we got a look at the first few lines
here so this is God justifying himself
to job he says can you pull in Leviathan
with a fish hook or tie down its tongue
with a rope can you put a cord through
its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook
will it keep you begging for mercy will
it speak to you with gentle words will
it make an agreement with you for you to
take it as your slave for life can you
make a pet of it like a bird or put it
on a leash for the young women in your
house will traders barter for it will
they divide it up among the merchants
can you fill its hide with harpoons or
its head with fishing Spears if you lay
a hand on it you will remember the
struggle and never do it again any hope
of subduing it is false the mere sight
of it is overpowering
no one is fierce enough to rouse it who
is then able to stand against me who has
a claim against me that I must pay
everything under heaven belongs to me
more computer trouble no there we go I
will not fail to speak of leviathans
limbs its strength in its graceful form
who can strip off its outer coat who can
penetrate its double coat of armor who
dares opened the doors of its mouth
ringed about with fearsome teeth its
back has rows of shields tightly sealed
together each is so close to the next
that no air can pass between they are
joined fast to one another they cling
together and cannot be parted its
snorting throws out flashes of light its
eyes are like the Rays of Dawn's flames
stream from its mouth sparks of fire
shoot out smoke pours from its nostrils
as from a boiling pot overboard burning
reads its breath sets coals ablaze and
flames dart from its mouth strength
resides in its neck dismay goes before
it the folds of its flesh are tightly
joined they are firm and immovable its
chest is as hard as rock hard as a lower
millstone when it rises up the mighty
are terrified they retreat before it's
thrashing the sword that reaches it has
no effect nor does the spear or the dart
or the javelin iron it treats like straw
and bronze like a rotten wood arrows do
not make it flee sling stones are like
chaff to it a club seems to it but a
piece of straw it laughs at the rattling
of the Lance its undersides are jagged
potsherds leaving a trail in the mud
like a threshing sledge
it makes the depths churn like a boiling
cauldron and steez up the sea like a pot
of ointment it leaves a glistening wake
behind it one would think the deep had
white hair nothing on earth as its equal
a creature without fear it looked down
on all that her haughty and his king
over all that are proud well so what's
God doing he's describing what he
defeated in order to create the world
that's Martha can't I Matt okay so
that's that's one reference like that
all right so now another reference like
that this is from Psalms 74
yet God is my king of old working
salvation in the midst of the earth thou
didst break the sea and pieces by thy
strength thou didst shatter the heads of
the sea monsters in the waters thou did
crush the heads of Leviathan right
that's the creature that we just heard
described thou gavest him to be food to
the folk inhabiting the wilderness
now you remember so Tod when Marduk
defeats time at he cuts her into pieces
and makes the world out of her pieces
and here what's happening is that the
force that that encounters the Leviathan
is able to break it into pieces and feed
everyone with it now the reason I'm
telling you that in relationship to this
is because and the earth was what
without form and void and darkness was
upon the face of the deep let me tell
you a little bit about that those lines
before God's God begins to create the
world is Tohu Wabo who that's from the
Hebrew the word Tohu by itself means
emptiness or futility so there's a
psychological element to that a-and that
emptiness or futility in some sense is
what you confront when you're trying to
extract your life from the world it is
used to describe the desert wilderness
as well Touhou Wabo whoo chaos is the
condition that bara ordering remedies
okay so there's the idea in the first
verses that this initial chaos is being
ordered and the order is what makes the
world so the it's it's it's standard
cosmology order emerges out of chaos and
the thing that makes it emerges the Word
of God
now darkness and deep which is tale in
Hebrew are two of the three elements of
the chaos represented in Toa Touhou Wabo
who the third is the formless earth in
the ANU mulisch the deep is personified
as the guy god has time out the enemy of
Marduk here it is the formless body of
primeval waters surrounding the
habitable world okay so but we know Te'o
and Tiamat are the same word or at least
tale most
arrived from time out so the idea that's
presented at the beginning of Genesis is
the same it's an abstracted and
Psychologist representation of the story
that the Mesopotamians put forward so
yahwah is Marduk roughly speaking going
out and conquering the dragon of chaos
and making order out of it and then
there are these allusions later saying
joband in the psalms of him doing
exactly that conquering a primordial
monster and making the world out of its
pieces well so what does that mean
exactly well it means that the highest
ordering principle is the spirit that
goes out into the darkness or the deep
that encounters the dragon of chaos
because of obviously Leviathan is a
dragon and defeats it and feeds the
people as a consequence while we are
hunting creatures after all and in order
to establish our place in the world we
had to go out there and conquer the
Dragons of the wildering
why does it dragon breathe fire well
there's a bunch of reasons as far as I
can tell
fire is awe-inspiring so fire and a
terrible predator are the same thing
because they both inspire off fire is
transforming but credit like what's a
good metaphor for being bitten by a
poisonous snake well have you ever seen
the wounds that a poisonous take
produces if you're bitten by them it's
like someone took your arm and
incinerated it and so the idea that a
snake has fiery breath is well let's
call it close enough from a metaphorical
perspective right now God is claiming to
job that he's the spirit that cleave
that clears the wilderness and then
builds order out of chaos and because
because because he's the embodiment of
that spirit in some sense job has no
reason to ever question his moral
decisions it's something like that in
the story of job but the point that that
point will leave aside because it's a
more complicated issue the point is that
the writers of the Bible are trying to
dream up a representation of the spirit
of civilization that's the right way to
think about it you can think of yahwah
as the spirit of civilization and what
is that well it's the thing that
encounters the wilderness and makes
habitable order but then it's also the
spirit of the order it
self and that's I think why in
Christianity there's a representation of
God the Father because he's a
representation of the the culture that's
generated after the the chaos is ordered
right
you have the spirit that goes out into
chaos and orders and then you have the
spirit of the order and then the spirit
of the order and the spirit of the
ordering principle have to figure out
how to coexist that's partly what the
Egyptians were trying to figure out
right there's a dynamic relationship
between the culture and the spirit that
generates the culture and then you might
also ask should the culture be
superordinate or should the spirit that
generates the culture be superordinate
and the answer seems to be the emergent
answer seems to be that the spirit that
generates the culture should be
superordinate to the spirit of the
culture it's something like that and
that's also why I think that one of the
brilliant discoveries let's say of
Western individualistic civilization is
that the group is there to serve the
individual because the individual is the
thing that revivify is the group so with
each depend on the other integrally but
if you subordinate the individual to the
group then the group stagnates and dies
and so that's a very bad long-term
strategy even though the group and
belonging to the group is clearly
necessary you need to uphold the values
of the group but the values of the group
should be subordinated to producing the
individual who gives the group vision
and the Mesopotamians figured that out
the Egyptians figured that out we've
figured it out we just don't know that
we figured it out and it's not a mere
arbitrary supposition all right
you