We have no king but Caesar

When the fledgling city of Rome was founded (traditionally, in 753 B.C.), it didn't have a whole lot going for it. In fact, according to tradition, in order to build a population large enough to sustain the city and protect it from intruders, the first king, Romulus, threw open its gates to all homeless and wandering riff raff, most of whom had already been kicked out of their previous cities. In that vein, Romulus is also credited with devising a fairly elaborate hoax in order to abduct the women (also quite lacking in early Rome) of a neighboring tribe and make them their own.

Over the next 500 years, however, that small, insignificant city would grow into one of the largest and most dominant empires the world has ever known.

The Romans accomplished this through a program of constant conquest and warfare, first taking over their own Italian Peninsula and then turning their sights on the dominant powers of their time, the Carthaginians (think: Attila the Hun) and the Macedonians (from whom had come Alexander the Great).

To illustrate this point, the historian, Livy, tells us that the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, had a temple built in honor of the god Janus (the god of hospitality), and instructed that, whenever Rome was at peace, the doors to the temple would be open, but, when she was at war, they were to remain closed at all times.

Want to know how many times the doors to that temple were open, from the time it was built (around 700 B.C.) until the time Livy wrote about it (around 30 B.C.) - a span of almost seven hundred years?   

Twice. 

Warfare was considered a Roman virtue, and victorious generals were welcomed home with lavish and extravagant parades, called Triumphs, in which they marched their men and all the spoils of their conquest through the city of Rome, to the loud and incessant cheers of her people. 

However, in all that time of bloodshed and expansion, never once had the Romans turned their weapons on themselves. For example, when the lower classes demanded more rights and protections against unfair treatment by the ruling class, they didn't do so through violent revolution (á la France or America of the late 1700's). Rather, they packed up their stuff en masse, and moved out, until the ruling class realized they needed them and granted the protections and representation they desired.

Yet, as the military evolved along with the empire, that was not to last.

Initially, being a member of the Roman army was a sure sign that you were a member of the aristocracy. Armor and weapons were very expensive and only the wealthy had the ability to leave their estates and occupations in order to fight, which put warfare firmly outside the reach of the working class.

But who wants to spend all their time fighting, when being born in the ruling class affords the promise of wealth and ease at home?

Soon, the upper class citizens figured out they could pay members of the lower class to go to war on their behalf and the face of the Roman army changed completely. Early on, when they were all of the same social class, generals may have exercised authority over their soldiers on the battlefield, but the loyalty of the men was to their land, to Rome, and not especially to the generals who led them.

However, once the army was composed of the lower classes, who owned very little if any land at all, its loyalties began to change. 

At first, the Capitol provided a wage for these lower class men who served in the military, but, over time, in order bolster their commitment, the generals began to supplement that wage with money and land until, eventually, some took over sole responsibility for providing for their men.

As a result of that shift, aspiring generals could travel the countryside enlisting men by promising them wealth and prosperity, and what they acquired were legions who were loyal to them and not explicitly to Rome.

The first general to realize the power that came with that shift was Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Outmaneuvered and shamed by a political rival, Sulla became the first man in the history of the empire to march his army on the city of Rome, itself. Having rounded up and either executed or expelled the supporters of his rival, Sulla believed he had secured his position within Rome and that life would return to normal. Instead, it seems, he merely initiated what would be almost a full century of rival generals and civil war.

First, Sulla's rival, Marius, who'd somehow managed to escape, rounded up an army of his own and marched on Rome while Sulla and his men were off fighting the Macedonians.

Then, when Sulla returned, he again marched on the city (this time, Marius had actually died of old age, even before Sulla came back).

After Sulla died, a man named Pompey used the support of his own men to secure his place as leader of Rome.

Yet, he was soon unseated by someone (about whom you may have heard), named Julius Caesar. Caesar looked to be, perhaps, the first man able to hold on to the power he had secured, but, unfortunately, as we know, it was not to be.

Caesar's assassination touched off a struggle between three other generals: Caesar's protege in the senate, Brutus (of the famed et tu, Brute?); Caesar's favored military commander, Antony; and a young man who was Caesar's great nephew (but was adopted as Caesar's son, in his will), Octavius.

When the dust finally settled, and after he had marched his own army into Rome, it was Octavius who emerged the victor.

While the war still raged, out of its distaste for Antony, and in order to curry favor with Octavius, the Senate (almost entirely powerless at this point) had voted to declare Julius Caesar a god (around 42 B.C.). As a result, Octavius had taken up the title divi filius, "son of god," and now he set about establishing a rule that would be reflective of that title.

He twice amended the Roman constitution in order to secure ultimate political and military control of Rome; when the pontifex maximus, or "chief priest," died in 12 B.C., he simply took the title for himself, making him supreme over all aspects of Roman life; and finally, in the year 2 B.C., he had himself declared pater patriae, or "father" of the whole empire.

~-@-~

Now, imagine you are a man or woman from a dusty corner of the Roman Empire called Judea, part of a province called Palestine that was won from the Parthians by a Roman general named Pompey, around the same time that Julius Caesar was starting to make a name for himself in Roman politics.

You are standing along a road that leads to Jerusalem with countless others waving palm branches and cheering loudly and incessantly as in rides a man named Jesus, in what many refer to later as his triumphal entry. 

This Jesus is wildly popular and has been traveling all around the countryside, gathering supporters by talking about a kingdom and storing up treasures. He's being called the son of God, and is claiming to be the true heir of the Father.

You may not be particularly educated, but you've heard stories of Rome, stories of victorious generals and extravagant processions, stories of armies being led into the city, of the declaration of one new ruler after another. More recently, you know the story of Augustus, once called Octavius, who took control of the entire known world. In fact, your current Hebrew leader, Herod Agrippa, was raised in Rome and is named after Augustus' best friend and most accomplished general.

Standing there, waving your palm branch and shouting,

  

"Hosanna...

 (which means "save us!", a Hebrew plea for salvation brought by the Messiah*)

...to the Son of David!"

 (the ideal Jewish king)

what exactly are you expecting of this Jesus?

When we talk about Jesus' ministry, we often give a nod to the messianic expectations he had to face -- that the Israelites were expecting one kind of king, but that Jesus came to be a very different kind of king -- but that's usually the extent of it.

The problem with that kind of cursory glance, however, is that so much of Jesus' life, in the Gospel accounts, directly engages this Roman world view. 

Think, for example, of the temptations he faces in the wilderness:

And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."

What had the Roman generals used to woo men into their service? Provisions -- wealth and land.

What is Jesus being tempted to create? Provisions.

Feed the people, and they will follow you. 

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.'"

How had these generals become so popular amongst the people? Spectacle -- through their extravagant triumphs and other celebrations, they ensnared the imagination of the mob and won their affections.

What is Jesus being tempted to perform? Spectacle.

Amaze the people, and they will follow you.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, "All these I will give to you, if you will fall down and worship me."

What was the desire of each and every one of the Roman generals who set their sights on the city of Rome? Worldly dominion -- to have control of an ever-expanding empire that already contained within its borders all of the lands of the greatest kingdoms of Western history (Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, etc.).

What is Jesus being tempted to seize? Worldly dominion.

Worship me, and I will give you the greatest kingdom the world has ever known.

And it's important to note that, while Jesus begins his ministry with an explicit denial of the Roman pursuit of power, he also ends his ministry before Pilate, a personal representative of that power.

In one of the more soul-troubling passages of all the Scriptures, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the region, looking for any way to avoid the crucifixion for which the crowds are screaming, parades Jesus out in front of them and, exasperated, asks:  

Isn't this your king? Do you really want me to crucify your king?

The response from the chief priests, the supreme religious leaders of all of Judea, is appalling:

We have no king but Caesar.

We cannot miss this. We must not miss this. The premier antagonists of Jesus' Earthly ministry, the group that stood at the apex of those who opposed him, the men who led the charge in his arrest and eventual crucifixion, these men - in their final act of defiance - end their conflict with Jesus by proclaiming their allegiance not to YHWH but to Rome.

~-@-~

We cannot escape being faced with the same question that confronted every member of the crowd that day.

Do we pursue power and dominion in the same way that the Romans did? Through provision, as simple as looking out for the needs and desires of those around us, and spectacle, being likeable and entertaining, do we attempt to control our world and our surroundings?

What about our churches? Do we attempt to "win people for Jesus" by pursuing the very methods He so strenuously rejected?

Things get even more difficult when we try to figure out the modern corollary for Rome.

As Americans can we really escape the sharp focus of Scripture in this regard?

When we, as Christians, write venomous screeds against those with whom we disagree, when we go on television and shout and scream and give in to the spectacle, when we align ourselves with and seek to wield the power of the ruling class -- even toward ends we think are just and righteous...

...are we pursuing Jesus? 

Or, are we pursuing the power of Rome?

____________________________
* See, for example: Psalm 118:25-27)

"Memory believes before knowing remembers..."

It is hard to overstate the importance of William Faulkner (who is responsible for the quote in the title) within the reemergence of (post Civil War) Southern literature and culture.

Though formally declared part of the Union after its defeat, the question of the South's "reintegration" lingered through decades of political and social wrangling. In fact, the first president ever impeached by congress, Andrew Johnson, endured that fate as a result of that precise question (he vetoed a constitutional amendment put forth by Northern congressmen - without any Southern representation - that would have dissolved the Southern states and reorganized them in five separate districts under the rule of martial law).

Of course, it's easy to understand why that was the case.

The South had been ravaged by the Civil War. Its economy, built so heavily upon an enslaved work force, was in shambles; its communities, pillaged and burned by General Sherman's Total War (as he made his way, state by state, from the Mississippi to the Atlantic); and its people, defeated and demoralized by the victory claimed by the North.

In almost all quarters, reconstruction and reintegration were just as much a question for the South as they were for the North. In fact, much of the literature that emerged from the South, shortly after this "war of Northern aggression", focused on the "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy, romanticizing the South as noble and chivalrous, whose superior military prowess was simply overwhelmed by the North's numerical and industrial advantage.

It is, of course, with no small irony that the South envisioned itself in the roll of the noble savage, its agrarian culture making it closer to the land than the modernized and greedy North who, by superior technical and industrial advances - but without heart or soul - was able to overcome and subjugate the South to its will. Yet, that narrative persisted into the early years of the 20th century.

However, with time (and distance from the conflict), came a fledgling critical spirit.

In the 1880's, men like George Washington Cable and Mark Twain began to criticize the racism of the South and mock its supposed chivalry; a decade later, Southern journalists began to question the intellectual mediocrity of their leaders; and, by 1903, an academic, at (what would become) Duke University, was calling Booker T. Washington "the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in a hundred years."

Yet, the problem with the critics and the romantics is that they only perpetuate conflict, each digging out their own particular trenches from which to attack the other.

So, it wasn't until the 1920's and 30's, through the writing of Faulkner and his peers -- members of the "Southern Renaissance" --  that the foundations were laid for the South's reemergence as a contributing and respected part of America as a whole.

Faulkner achieved that end through neither criticism nor romanticism but through inviting his fellow Southerners to remember.

See, both the Romantics and the Critics, avoided (honest) memory in some way. The Romantics could not admit anything worth criticizing, while the critics could not admit anything worth praising.

But, memories are not so neat and tidy. Memories are personal and as such are neither easily white-washed nor condemned. Through our memories we face equally those things of which we are proud and those of which we are ashamed.

For example: on the one hand, Faulkner's novels -- told in his distinctive style, as the stream-of-consciousness memories of his characters -- ring with the sensibility and culture of the Southern gentry and add to them an almost Gothic weight. His characters speak not as outsiders, by choice or birth, but as members of the South who find neither artifice nor superficiality, but deep reservoirs of communal identity in their individual experiences. However, on the other hand, they are also not blind to the horrors of slavery, to the dehumanizing aspects of owning people and treating them as commodities.

Thus, in Go Down, Moses, a series of stories told as an old man's recollections about the events and people that shaped his life, the memories we are shown both celebrate the Southern community's historic connection to the land (as displayed through ritualistic hunts), and stagger at its prejudice (when the old man remembers a letter between his uncles, which finds them unwilling to admit a slave could be capable of the broad and abstract thought that leads to suicide). In fact, the old man, himself, displays this dual nature, as he ultimately rejects his inherited plantation (lest he perpetuate the cycle of abuse) but then objects to the marriage of a white man and a former slave (lest it violate the social and cultural norms of his time).

Through the use of memories, Faulkner was able bypass the defensive stance of his Southern peers, to invite them into his stories, and evoke their own memories, which were much more nuanced than either the romantics or the critics were willing to accept. As a result, he and the other members of the Southern Renaissance were able to build bridges for the South to emerge from the darkness of their heritage of slavery without being forced to abandon the light of their agrarian and communal identity.

-~@~-

It should probably not surprise us, that the Bible -- which is equally concerned with building bridges out of darkness while reclaiming light -- would also be written not as list of critiques or romantic ideals, but as a history, the collective memory of a people, about the events and the People (YHWH / Jesus / Holy Spirit) that shaped their identity.

Indeed, the Scriptures positively resound with both the command to and the act of remembering.

When God reveals himself to his people, he often does so in ways that appeal to memory: 

"I am the God of your fathers... 

...of Abraham... 

...of Isaac... 

...of Jacob"

"I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt"

"Before Abraham was, I am"

Whenever God encourages his people to obey, He does so on the basis of their memory: 

"Remember my commands"

"Remember how I fed you in the wilderness"

"Remember how I brought you out of Egypt"

"Remember the result of your Fathers' disobedience"

And, as with Faulkner, this is an earnest history that portrays both the good and the bad.

The same Noah who built the Ark, finds his way into a naked, drunken stupor when the waters recede.

The same Moses who led the Israelites to freedom, began his adult life with the murder of an Egyptian guard.

The same David who defeated Goliath as a display of the faithfulness of YHWH, the archetypal Israelite king, steals a man's wife and has that man murdered on the battlefield.

The same Paul who spent his life carrying the good news of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome, not only participated in the arrest of believers but approved of their stoning.

In this sense, when we interact with the world in terms that are purely romantic (become a Christian and everything will be amazing!) or critical (you must abandon everything you know about yourself and your life, because it's all wrong!) we are actually acting in a way that is unbiblical.

However, when we remember, when we deal honestly with both our failures and that which is valuable from our past - even before we were believers - we invite others into our story (in the same way that Faulkner invited his fellow Southerners into his stories), and build bridges for them to emerge from their own darkness while also avoiding the insistence that they had no light to begin with.

And maybe -- through our willingness to accept that there is light out there, outside our own particular tradition, that the imago Dei is not exclusive to those with whom we agree -- just maybe we might be humbled and realize we are still in need of our own bridges out of our own darkness.

Isn't that the point of all this, anyway?

Mytho... what??

Mythopoeic (adj.) /mith-oh-pee-ic/ - Of or pertaining to the creation of myths. 


Now, I'd wager, for most -- if I asked, "What is myth?" -- your response would follow closely with the modern sense of "fake stories about fake beings composed by primitive societies to explain natural phenomena (like lightning, or earthquakes, or why turtles have shells, etc.)."

The problem with our modern definition, however, is that it doesn't actually have a whole lot to do with the original meaning of the word. 

In his classic work, Poetics (written around the middle-to-late 4th century, B.C.), Aristotle uses the term mythos (from which we get our term "myth"), in his discussion of tragedy, to refer to "plot."

That might not seem very consequential, but, for Aristotle, the plot was the beating heart of a good tragedy, more so than its characters, style, or even its theme or moral. The plot was the vehicle that drew you in to the world of the tragedy and allowed you to experience the action and crises as if they were your own.

See, for Aristotle, tragic plays were not merely an expression of culture or high society (the way we tend to think about art or the theater, today). Rather, good tragedies, like the kind written by Sophocles, for example, were crucial in that they cleansed society of the pernicious emotions of pity and fear.

Insofar as we might feel pity for Oedipus, as he unknowingly stumbles into the grotesque situation of having killed his father and married his mother, or fear, as he gradually works his way toward the truth, we are then freed from feeling those emotions for ourselves.

Given that self-pity and fear are thoroughly destructive of the cooperative living necessary within any stable society, going to the theater to see one of these tragedies was not simply entertainment but an exercise in strengthening the community.

However, not just any tragedy, with any plot, will do.

For the plot -- the myth of the play -- to function as it ought, there had to be a degree of realism, a sense that, given the appropriate circumstances, the action of the play could have actually happened as depicted.

We've all seen movies where the characters say or do things that leave you thinking, "what??"

They do something that seems so contrary to what any normal, rational person would do, or they say something - with a straight face - that seems so cartoonish or ridiculous, that it jolts you out of the experience of the movie and leaves you feeling bored or frustrated.

(Side note -- The best of them, in the ironic sense of that phrase, used to end up being ridiculed at the hands of the folks over at Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- man, I miss that show!)

For a plot to be good, on the other hand, to be one that draws us in and maybe even effects some change in us, it must be decidedly human. 

Good plots present us with situations and experiences that speak to the deeper realities of who we are as people, of the emotions we feel, the causes with which we align, the broad narrative of what it means to be human in our particular context. 

Even fantasy films abide by, what we might call, this rule of good story-telling.

What is Avatar if not a reworking of the basic themes of Pocahontas - the inner tension we all feel between our greed and our compassion or empathy for others? (Not sure you feel that tension? Let someone ask to borrow your car for a few days and tell me what you feel.)

Or, consider that the whole Zombie genre began as someone's musings on the consumer culture of the modern, industrialized world. Don't we all mindlessly and insatiably consume things in the same way that zombies supposedly consume people? Don't we all tend to react to those who have somehow avoided our materialistic plague with the same irrational anger and desire to destroy?

- - -

What made the ancient myths so powerful was not that people were somehow dumber or more naïve back then (consider that the Greek philospher, Democritus, proposed the existence of the atom almost 2000 years before we had the technology to observe one). Rather, what made them powerful was that they identified and articulated some fundamental aspect of human experience.

For example, why does Kronos swallow up all of his children (except for Zeus, in whose place he mistakenly swallows a boulder in swaddling clothes)? Why does Ra - in Egyptian mythology - curse his consort, Nut, so that she cannot have a child on any day of the year? Why does Apsu - in Sumerian mythology - decide to destroy all his children for making too much noise?

 

Because in Patriarchal societies, where your well-being is tied to the land you own, at some point every man must go from being the head of the household to simply an old man we allow to live here.

All men lived within the tension that their children were simultaneously their legacy (what they would leave behind of themselves, the continuation of their name) and their undoing (the ones who would ultimately replace them and seize their authority for themselves).

Is it any wonder, then, that their myths overflow with this tension?

And, really, can't we still relate to this? Doesn't anyone in any position of authority still feel this tension? Think about the leaders within movements and organizations who were ultimately replaced by their prodigies.

Et tu, Brute?

Has there ever been a generation that was not simultaneously criticized by the ones that preceded it and critical of the ones that followed?

When we relegate these old myths to the realm of the primitive, to the silly things our ancestors told themselves to explain the weather, we rob ourselves of the ability to consider our place within the continual struggle between one generation and the next, and to think about our own feelings and actions that maybe even perpetuate that struggle.

- - -

The interesting thing is that the Bible doesn't ignore these myths, it simply re-purposes and reorients them around YHWH.

For example, in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth, the first two beings to exist - before anything else is created - are the primordial water gods. Apsu represents the fresh water and Tiamat represents the salt water. They give birth to the gods who then go on to create all other things.

In Egyptian mythology, the first being to exist is the great expanse of water called Nu. He brings into existence Ra, who initially hovers, like a golden egg, over the water god, and then speaks all things into existence.

Now, consider the opening verses of Genesis:

It was in the beginning that God created the heavens and the earth,

And the earth was formless and void,

And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters,

And God said, "Let there be light"

  

The similarities are pretty obvious, but what is truly striking are the differences. Notice how clear it is, for instance, that God is the initiator and he is not derived from any other source. In the Babylonian and Egyptian myths, it is the waters that begin this process, they birth the other gods who then go on to form the rest of creation. In Genesis, these waters lack any of the personal dignity or creative force we see in the other narratives. They do not act. They have no names. They are simply tohu v'bohu, "without form and empty."

 

And those aren't the only parallels..

In the Enuma, after Apsu and Tiamat create a new generation of gods, those younger gods fly around and make a lot of racket. The noise gets so bad, that Apsu decides he's had enough and is actually going to kill his children in order to get a little peace and quiet (I mean, seriously, if you have small children, can't you relate to this feeling just a little?). 

One of those gods, Ea, the sky god, learns of Apsu's intention and hatches a plan, which he then successfully executes (mind the pun), to kill Apsu instead. Out of Apsu's body, Ea creates a domain for himself and the other gods (what we might call heaven). 

Tiamat, the other water god, learns of this and decides to carry out her husband Apsu's initial plan as vengeance, at which point Ea gives birth to another sky god, stronger than himself, Marduk, whose greatest weapon is the flood-storm. Marduk proves his power by speaking and making a constellation disappear and then speaking and making it reappear, and then goes off and defeats Tiamat. Out of her body, Marduk creates the earth, and on that earth he creates a great shining city, in honor of his conquest and supremacy, where the gods rule and are served by the humans that Marduk also created from the blood of one of Tiamat's consorts. That city is named, Babylon.

Now, remember that line from the opening verses of Genesis:

"And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" -- as in, where the sky would be? 

If you are someone living in ancient Mesopotamia, with the Enuma as your cultural background, and you hear those lines, your expectations are pretty clear: there is about to be a fight.

And that's what makes what follows so shocking. 

The creation of the heavens and the earth are not the product of patricide and bloodshed (the Enuma describes Marduk splitting Tiamat like a shellfish in order to create the sky and the land!), but of the peaceful and orderly intention of a God whose creation can all be described as "good". 

Nor are there a host of intermediary gods between the Creator and his creation. The Bible, for example, calls the sun simply "the greater light," conspicuously avoiding the hebrew word for sun (shemesh) lest it be confused for the Babylonian sun god (shamash).

Notice also, the placement of violence: In the Enuma the gods themselves are violent, territorial, and usurping (thus giving tacit justification for men to act the same way). On the other hand, in Genesis, violence only comes as a result of the fall and is therefore rooted in our brokenness and not the divine nature (thus offering a critique against men acting this way).

However, these parallels really come home when we consider what the Bible has to say about Babylon.

Just before the narrative of Genesis really picks up with the story of Abram (later, Abraham), we have a very short and intriguing vignette, as it were, about a misguided construction project. 

Remember what the Enuma taught about Babylon -- it was the creation of the supreme god, Marduk, in honor of his conquest and supremacy. It was the first and greatest city on earth, meant to be ruled by the gods and inhabited by the humans created to serve them.

Genesis, on the other hand, tells us that a large group of men gathered together in a single place named Babel - which sounds an awful lot like Babylon (wink, wink) - where they (not the gods) built a very large tower, not out of pride but out of fear, lest others attack and scatter them. 

And, if we weren't quite picking up on all the hints here...

The bible immediately shifts to the story of Abram, who lives in Ur, which just happens to be one of the crowning cities of the empire of Babylon, AND it just so happens that Abram's first recorded act of faith is to leave.

- - -

The argument that some have attached to the parallels between Genesis and the mythic literature of people from around the same time that discredits the Genesis account as simply borrowed from its larger cultural environment is, as we have seen, demonstrably false. The Bible does not unquestioningly borrow but knowingly references and critiques. 

However, fear of that confusion should not push us to the opposite position, that Genesis is completely distinct and has nothing to do with that literature, either.

For one, the arguments and shifts in Genesis are made largely by means of conspicuous absences rather than formulated, positive arguments. 

The fact that Genesis does not give a name for the primordial waters or the sun or the moon only stands out as significant if we know that other contemporary literature does.

The fact that men built the tower of Babel seems like a rather obvious detail to us, until we realize that other contemporary literature claimed Babylon to be the handiwork of the gods.

The fact that Abram was called to leave Babylon only seems curious, until we realize that other literature argued the greatest existence for man was found in Babylon.

However, the thing that seems most significant to me is that the Enuma and the Bible basically agree on one key point: Human society has most commonly expressed itself throughout all of history as violent and imperialistic.

The reason that's important is that it is as true today as it was nearly thirty-five hundred years ago, and, where the Bible and the Enuma diverge on the causes of that violence and the appropriate response to it, we have the amazing opportunity to examine our own thoughts and instincts (as well as those of the culture in which we live) and ask: am I thinking about this in a way that reflects the Bible? Or, would my thoughts be more at home in the worldview of the Enuma?

When we look at things like the slave trade or Manifest Destiny or even something like drone strikes and the Iraq War...

...when wildly popular country singers write wildly popular songs identifying putting "a boot up their ass" as the "American way"...

 

...would these expressions of both our American heritage and our contemporary culture be more at home in the Bible, or in the Enuma?

Now, I'm not saying everyone must answer those questions the same way, but aren't they worth asking?