It used to be a pond Sunday thing to drop in on the Sydney Anglicans and catch up on the Jensenist conspiracy, but these days, what with teh gaze and complimentary women at the top of the page, things have gone a little weird.
Luckily, the lizard Oz still has old-fashioned fundamentalists of the Pellist kind to hand, so the chance of a Sunday meditation isn't entirely lost.
Drum roll please, unleash the cracked kraken, and cue the Shanners ...
Oh look, the pond couldn't resist that juxtaposition thrown up by the logarithms …
"Bible allegory and it is spiritual intent"?
Only on the full to overflowing intertubes, where illiteracy and a tweeting Donald is a way of life …
But back to Shanners … racing to catch up with dashing Donners and the rest, who turned up in the lizard Oz, and so on the pond, yonks ago …
Actually, in the spirit of a few comments made about Shakespeare on the pond recently, a knowledge of German might help …
Let's face it, if you don't happen to know Biblical Aramaic and Hebrew, or the Greek into which it was translated, or Wycliffe's version, which was stolen and mangled by committee for approved political purposes, you really don't have much of a clue about what went down.
They even made a movie about it …
But to be fair, there's nothing so warms a fundamentalist tyke, or tickles their fancy, than a good old-fashioned image of the Daesh kind …
Oh yes, there's nothing like a good Daesh to titillate the little tykes ...
And for a genuine full-on genocide, why go past the long absent lord?
Rusty was there for the genocide?
Well at least it produced some dinkum Oz coal, oi, oi, oi ...
And yes, why not laugh at the name Delilah, though it was worth a Tom Jones' song, and a painting or two, and with naked breasts …
But there in that last line was a wonderful guide to a reptile sense of entitlement …
"… as anyone can discover on a trip to Israel and the Middle East."
Provided anyone has the cash …
Did someone mention the peculiarities of Catholic doctrine?
Oh goody-goody gumdrops … you see, the pond keeps banging on about the way Catholics have suddenly discovered the bible, some of them even think that the work of heretics and apostates in the King James bible is jim dandy, but in the pond's day, the King James bible was suspect …
(here at the Wayback Machine).
Ah good old tykes … "notorious homosexual". They should get their complimentary women on the job ...
But then any bible wasn't that necessary to Catholic thinking … and immaculate conception is a classic example …
Here's the immaculate notion ...
And here's the biblical justification …
There isn't one …
They just made it up, and then centuries after the actual events, the Pope signed off on it, and suddenly silly people of the Shanners kind have to sign up to this sort of twaddle …
There's more of the twaddle at the source of those quotes, here, but the pond better scurry to finish off its final gobbet of Shanners, before it starts going into its stale routine about Catholics being cannibals, devouring actual human flesh and blood on a Sunday ...
The art curators made a mistake?
No you goose, it's the twaddle about an immaculate conception that's ludicrous and a silly mistake, and inclined to get your average evangelical's knickers in a knot, and to confuse anyone, let alone curators with its arcane nonsense …
As for the Ten Commandments?
Oh sheesh … what was that one, commonly reckoned as being number 6 or 7?
Oh never mind, the pond has already been there this day …flashing back to the good old days of the Catholic church and bastard children ...
And in the process of covering that story, the reptiles broke the one that was reckoned to be number 7 or 8 in relation to Fairfax …
"Though shall not steal" …
And don't get the pond started on assorted false witnesses … all the reptiles would be up on a charge …
Now admit it, is there any doubt that Shanners is quite the silliest of the reptiles doing the rounds, and worthy of a Sunday meditation?
And so to a cartoon or two to cleanse the palate …perhaps we could start with a few "though shalt not covets" …
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteYou don’t need to be steeped in Judaeo-Christian culture to get to know the story of Noah and the flood as it was all directly plagiarised from the Babylonians.
If your cuneiform is up to scratch you can read all about Utnapishtim’s adventures on Tablet XI of The Epic of Gilgamesh;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth
Or you could even read an even older version in The Epic of Atrahasis (Tablet III);
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atra-Hasis
There’s even a Babylonian tablet that tells you how to build a round-shaped ark if you were so inclined;
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10574119/Noahs-Ark-the-facts-behind-the-Flood.html
No need for any knowledge of the bible at all.
DiddyWrote
But, butt DW, Shanners is very clear that "the bible [was]...collected across several millennia " (3rd gobbet).
DeleteNow the Epic of Gilgamesh is much more recent, dating from only around 2100 BCE. It is therefore obvious that the Bible predated Gilgamesh which was therefore copied from the Bible and not vice versa. Or at least the infallible, immaculate Shanners would have us believe so.
Though, if I may be allowed an indulgence, since there is serious debate now as to whether homo sapiens (sapiens - ie us) is 200,000 or 300,000 years old - and we've been in Asia since about 100,000 years ago and in Australia at least 60,000 years ago - what was Shanners God doing for all that time if it only revealed itself, and informed us of our 'original sin', "several millennia" ago ?
"Oh yes, there's nothing like a good Daesh to titillate the little tykes .."
ReplyDeleteNot much of a 'giant' that Goliath chap, was he. From the size of his head he was barely any bigger that David. But I really would like to know how a slingshot, even if wielded by David, could actually decapitate him. Any ideas ? Any biblical references ? Any 'ex cathedra' approved by God papal bulls, decrees, edicts, rescripts or even pastoral letters that can explain it ?
Oh right, right ... I see now, it's just another one of those biblical miracles about on a par with an Ark in a global flood or an immaculate conception.
"... is there any doubt that Shanners is quite the silliest of the reptiles doing the rounds"
No, you're incontrovertibly right there, DP, but there's a few (like maybe just about all of them) who run her very, very close.
"It's a fun exercise to tell these stories to children" - well, no! I had to sit through a fair bit of this stuff & I wouldn't say it was fun, even with illustrations.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, David & Jonathan isn't appropriate, lets have David & Bathsheba. Angela can explain to the kiddies how adultery & murder fits into the grand plan.
When it comes to Biblical-themed art, I reckon you can't go past Caravaggio's "Judith Beheading Holofernes". Good, bloody fun that makes "David With Jonathan" look like the G-Rated wimpfest that it is. The kiddies in Bible class will love it!
DeleteHi Anon,
DeleteIt’s wonderfully gruesome and when you look at the angle of the hand of Judith, she isn’t chopping his head off, she’s sawing it off.
Definitely one for the young believers.
DW
If Cima de Conegliano hadn't provided a cartoon for Anshanners' "fun" indoctrination of children, we would hardly be talking about it now. As a piece of art its a piece of shit. If it were the case that no one understood what it was about, and so forgot it, that would be a net gain in our cultural learnings.
DeleteComparing him to a talent like Caravaggio is complicated by the incredibly dynamic century of development that separated them. But even in his own time, Cima was, frankly, a hack. There were dozens better - I could put together a long list, but why bother when poet Giovanni Santi saved me the trouble...
But if we do want to compare Cima to Caravaggio, take a look at their respective depictions of St Jerome. No comparison.
You wrote that as though maybe some of us - not Shanners to be sure - might appreciate the difference. Well, I have at least heard of Caravaggio, but ... Anyway, surely Cima is just your average village journeyman artist of his time - worthy of a spot in the Moomba Art Show (does Moomba still stage one of those ?).
DeleteBut I was impressed by Santi's list; apart from a couple of Netherlanders (including Jan van Eyck who apparently "perfected" the use of oil paints) there was nobody from Scandinavia, Russia, the Germanic states, France, Spain, Portugal or Britain. Was there really no artists throughout that space then, or had word just not reached Italy ?
Well, Santi's was a shortlist, and yes, there were many others one could name before getting as far as Cima. Outside Italy, Dürer and Holbein in Germany and Bosch in the Netherlands were rough contemporaries.
ReplyDeleteThe others you mention I'm less certain of - France's high quality craft tradition had not yet really spilled over into pure art (when it did it was partly due to the arrival of da Vinci and other Italian imports), and Spain, Scandinavia and Russia were firmly locked into decorating religious buildings, which limits the creative scope.