Jung’s understanding of individual evil is not a supernatural one; rather, he defines evil as something people are capable of. Individuals are not, themselves, evil. The personal nature of evil, he claims, simply consists of characteristics and urges rejected by the ego, or consciousness. Such inclinations are repressed by the ego, as it cannot countenance that within itself which it regards as evil. These characteristics then constitute the shadow, therefore “to become conscious of [the shadow] involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality” (1951: 145), that which the ego calls evil.

In “The Role of the Unconscious” Jung describes the compensatory function of the unconscious. Instincts “which we have repressed and suppressed… gradually accumulate and, in time… begin to influence consciousness” (1918: 18, 25). The shadow therefore retains those aspects defined by the ego as ‘evil’, and their constant repression causes them to build in intensity until they burst forth with far greater passion than if their manifestation had been allowed. When it is a potentially dangerous urge that is called evil and thus repressed, aggression for instance, the bursting forth of that aggression is unbridled and can become highly destructive. Evil thus occurs, not in the acknowledgement of dark urges, but in their violent expulsion as a result of repression.

Jung sees the same tendency in nations, “for nations are made up of individuals” (1918: 27, 45).  He attributes to Christianity and rationalism the repression of what he calls ‘primitive’ urges, particularly in Germans. The accretion and release of these urges, he claims, brought about the First World War, in which he sees a modern global manifestation of “the primitive’s distrust of the neighbouring tribe” (1918: 27, 44). It is clear that Jung sees this war as an expulsion on an international level of the darkness within the unconscious of nations. It is in the act of genocide, though, that evil on a national scale makes its most blatant manifestation. Rafael López Pedraza understands one example of genocide, the Holocaust, as “a shadow conflict” (1990: 73) in which Nazi Germany attempted to annihilate the Jews, onto whom they had projected their collective shadow. He also identifies the archetype of purity operating within Germany as a powerful repressive function, “[constellating] intolerance” (1990: 73) and drawing the Jews into its “dark shadow” (1990, 73) It is therefore possible to see two of the most serious conflicts of the early 20^th Century as expressions of repressed urges functioning within the shadow.

For this reason, more than any other, Jung claims that it is imperative that Europeans come to understand their shadows. It is in the recognition and acceptance of internal evil that he proposes more devastating, external evil can be prevented. Given that he considers modern Christianity and rationalism responsible for much of the repression that led to such expressions of national evil, his approach to this reconciliation is not only psychological, but also religious. It is in the unconscious that the potential for evil develops, and the language of the unconscious is that of myths. To address the evil that forms in the shadow, therefore, it is necessary to address the myths and archetypes that govern people’s lives. He proposes, therefore, a new understanding of God that takes into account the dark, visceral and destructive aspects of the Christian God, and attends to the needs of the collective unconscious, in which the potential for evil has accumulated through constant repression.

This proposed revisionism is not merely a utilitarian suggestion to prevent repeated upsurges of evil; it is in fact consistent with Jung’s own religious convictions. In his autobiography, Jung recounts two events of momentous religious significance to him. The first is a dream in which he feels he was presented with the vision of a chthonic deity which took the form of an enormous enthroned phallus. Jung asserts that “the phallus of this dream seems to be a subterranean god “not to be named” (1961: 13). If it is indeed God then it is one that responds to the visceral needs of the collective unconscious. The connection between the visceral and this image of a phallus is clear enough, its placement in the earth also ties it to desire and aggression, what Christian morality regards as base and earthy. Jung’s first vision of God is one divorced from the moral deity of Christian dogma; it embraces the desires held in the shadow.

The vision, nonetheless, is tied to Christianity, as it takes place within the cemetery outside Jung’s father’s church. Furthermore, while the burial of this object renders it dead, the phallus is a symbol of life. This thing that is ‘dead’ cannot truly be considered dead, but regenerates eternally. It is possible that Jung sees this as an aspect of the Christian God that is dead and yet regenerating. The second event involves the vision of God on his throne defecating on the cathedral in Basel, destroying it utterly. The act of defecation of course identifies this vision of God with the visceral, while the destruction of the church represents God’s vengeance against the structures of morality and prudishness that Christianity has imposed. Together, these visions of God express not only Jung’s understanding of the baseness of God, but also demonstrate the vengeance of such a god against the bonds of Christian dogma.

Heretical as it may seem, this vision of God as a dark and visceral entity is not inconsistent with the Judeo-Christian tradition. While contemporary Christianity may espouse a God of love, it is at odds to explain the actions of Yahweh in the Torah. This is a god whose wrath annihilates Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:23), who hardens Pharaoh’s heart against the Israelites and then sends plagues when he does not comply with Moses’ demands (Exodus 11:9) and who slaughters the firstborn son of every Egyptian household (Exodus12:30). Yahweh may love the Israelites but the experiences of the Egyptians and others are of God as evil, and this is to say nothing of the untrammeled violence that awaits us at the End of Days. Further, there is something particularly primal about the pleasure Yahweh derives from the smoke of animal sacrifices (Genesis 8:21). In “Answer to Job” Jung discusses the precedent set in the Old Testament for a God not subject to later Christian morality. He identifies in Job’s experience a raging, immoral God, attributing this to the fact that God is “not human” (1952: 547).

Columbus’ first action on Caribbean soil was to plant a flag and claim the land in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. This action was the first to take place with both Europeans and Taino present and both would have viewed the event in a completely different light. The Spanish would have seen the planting of the flag as very significant and reflective of the way in which the Feudal system of Spanish governance operated. This is evident in the special attention that is placed on the planting of the flag in the accounts of the occasion, in which particular emphasis is given to the King and Queen that the land is being claimed for. Columbus himself notes in his journal that he “had taken possession of the island … for his sovereigns.” This theme of claiming land and resources continues strongly through the Journals and they make many references to “Your Highnesses”, indicating that they were written for the Monarchy who had funded the voyage.The Taino, on the other hand, seemed to view the situation with initial curiosity and “swam out to the ship’s boats in which [the Europeans] were sitting”. After receiving “red caps, glass beads … [and] many other trifles” they appeared to view meeting the Spanish as a lucrative trade opportunity and “they willingly traded everything they had”. The Spanish had brought with them many things that the Taino had never encountered before and that would have represented a high market value for trade. While “glass beads, hawks and bells” would have seemed somewhat worthless to the Spanish, their rarity in the Caribbean made them worth a great deal to the Taino.

After this initial meeting and trading, Columbus was very concerned with fostering good will with the Taino to create a favourable impression among them. He writes “I was anxious that they should think well of us so that they may not be unfriendly when your Majesties send a second expedition here.” Columbus also made great efforts to open the communication barrier between himself and the Taino by “[taking seven Taino] aboard so that they may learn our language”. Unfortunately, until the Taino and Spaniards breached the language barrier there were some serious communication problems.

The main method of communication between the two groups was with “signs”. Signs, however lend themselves to subjective interpretation. In one such interpretation Columbus says “We understood them to be asking if we came from the sky”. This would be a fairly complicated concept to communicate in sign language, especially when between groups with significant cultural differences. The Taino in question could have been trying to communicate a great number of different concepts. Columbus’ interpretation gives us a good example of what Europeans might have thought about Non-European cultures with respect to their notions of spirituality or religion. It is unfortunately also an example of how limited the accounts can be in accurately depicting the culture and perspective of the Taino.

Columbus also states after his first encounter with the Taino that they “appeared to me to have no religion”. Like the assumption that the Taino believed the Europeans came from the sky, this also gives us a clue to what constituted religion to a European in 1492. While the Taino show evidence of being religious when Columbus discovers “many statues in the shape of a women, and finely crafted heads like masks”, they did not appear to worship in a church or create religious iconography that would be recognisable to a European.

Some of these attitudes regarding the Taino’s spirituality begin to change toward the latter half of Columbus’ voyage. When he discovers the statues in the shape of women and masks he cannot decide if they are for “decoration or worship”. Columbus even begins to doubt his interpretations of what the Taino have said to him, admitting “I do not know their language”[16]. It is especially interesting to note that towards the end of the journal entries Columbus doubts his ability to interpret the Taino language. In the letter he writes on his return voyage, however, he appears more convinced that his observations about the Taino with regards to the presence of gold, their belief in the Europeans as Gods and their suitability as Christians are correct, rather than taking his earlier doubts in the effectiveness of communication into account.

This is a major limitation of the Journals as a source of information on the Taino because they are written from a European perspective, which carries with it notions of what religion and civilization are. This is coupled by their inability to accurately communicate with the Taino. While the Taino had been settled in the East Indies for a long time, they were not settled or civilized to European eyes because the way that the Taino existed was radically different from that of Europeans.

The documents are also limited by the apparent European spirit of conquest. This is evident in the numerous references about the resources of the East Indies and their suitability for settlement that Columbus notes. On the first island that he encounters, Columbus dedicates an entire day to surveying its coastline “to decide where a fort could be built”. This seems to be another direct comment to Ferdinand and Isabella and he invests a great deal of time emphasising the Taino people as a resource in and of themselves. Columbus makes many comments about the suitability of the Taino as both slaves and Christians. In one journal entry he says that “I believe they would be easily made Christians” and in another (directly addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella) he says “All the inhabitants could be taken away to Castile or held as slaves on the island, for with fifty men we could subjugate them and make them do whatever we wish”. This is another clue about the European attitude towards Non-European peoples that designated them as a resource rather than people.

The comments about the Taino people are few compared the huge attention that Columbus pays to the resources available in the East Indies to cement their worth to the Spanish Monarchy. We can presume this was in order to secure funding for a return trip as special emphasis is paid to these resources in his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella. The most frequent resource discussed is gold; in fact the first Taino word to appear in the documents is “Nucay”, which is the Taino word for gold. In one of the biggest selling points of his letter Columbus speaks of an island the Taino tell him about “in which there is incalculable gold”. Gold, however, is not the only thing Columbus deliberately notes about the island’s contents.

Columbus makes many references to the abundant flora and fauna of the islands. He says that “it grieves me extremely that I cannot identify them, for I am quite certain that they are valuable”. In fact, so great is Columbus’ desire to find proof of the spices on the islands, when he discovers a spice he can identify, Aloe, he orders his men to collect all they can find.

This desperation to sell the value and profitability of the East Indies, coupled with a limited ability of the Europeans to communicate with the Taino forms the crux of the usefulness of these documents as a source on the interaction between the two cultures of the Tainos and Europeans. While we can certainly learn a lot about the Europeans, based on what observations they make in their accounts of the East Indies and the conclusions that they draw from them, we are limited in what we know about the Taino because of the subjective nature of these conclusions.

Disregarding these subjective conclusions, we are left with the observations that these conclusions arose from. If we are to learn anything about the Taino we need to separate these observations that the Europeans made from the opinions they offered to explain them. While we cannot avoid the cultural influences that coloured the Europeans view of the Taino, these journals and other personal accounts are all that we have left of these people. If we wish to learn about them we can only use the resources available to us and read them aware of the factors that may have influenced them.

Further Reading

• Cohen, J.M., (ed.) The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1969, pp. 50-76.
• Cummings, John, The Voyage of Christopher Columbus, London, Wiedenfield and Nicholson, 1992, pp. 109-112.
• Jane, Cecil, The Journal of Christopher Columbus:
  , London, Anthony Blond, 1968, pp. 191-202

]]> http://www.pleasantfluff.com/2009/09/06/christopher-columbus-the-tragic-poster-child-for-colonialism/feed/ 2 http://www.pleasantfluff.com/2009/08/08/smoke-signals-a-turning-point-in-indginous-media/ http://www.pleasantfluff.com/2009/08/08/smoke-signals-a-turning-point-in-indginous-media/#comments Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:35:29 +0000 Morgan http://www.pleasantfluff.com/?p=1794

Depictions of Native Americans in film have existed since the beginning of the film industry and similar depictions existed before film in the form of wild-west shows. Historically these depictions have been created by and for Euro-Americans and, as a result, present a skewed and stereotyped image of Native American people. While Native people have been involved in the film industry for over a century, it took until 1998 for a completely Native American production to arise with a Native writer, director and crew. Smoke Signals premiered at a time when, regrettably, many people thought that Native Americans no longer existed as a distinct culture or people. This essay will explore how Smoke Signals challenged contemporary and historical views of Native Americans in American film. However, before we can understand the significance of Native American depictions in Smoke Signals we must first gain and understanding of how Native Americans have been historically depicted in American films and entertainment and why such depictions are significant. Since the late 19^th century Native Americans have been exploited for the purposes of entertaining Euro-American audiences and it was during the late 19^th century that many of the media stereotypes relating to Native Americans were popularized. These began in the Wild West Show phenomenon, a traveling entertainment show which in equal parts reenacted and embellished upon “renowned battles” from the American frontier (King 12). These shows emerged at a time when the American frontier was essentially considered civilized and the focus on relations with Native Americans had shifted from a militaristic to an administrative nature (King 12). This presented a problem for the American public because it meant that a people who had, historically, been viewed as an enemy or threat were now, effectively under their care. The Wild West Shows “encouraged Americans to grapple with questions of racial difference and cultural evolution, while prompting nostalgic yearnings for nature, tradition, and indigenous communities destroyed by progress and manifest destiny” (King 12). In effect, with the war over, the Euro-American population needed ways to rationalize the treatment and ultimate fate of the Native American people and the Wild West Shows presented them with a set of cultural stereotypes which allowed them to do that. Native Americans were divided into a collection of archetypes; the noble savage, the brutal warrior, the loyal sidekick, the chief, the princess and the squaw (King 5). These early archetypes combined with a handful of narratives (civilization conquering the frontier and progress vs. primitive life were the most common themes) to create what would become the predominate Euro-American perception of Native Americans (King 12).

It is estimated that over 2000 films and over 10,000 television shows have been produced which feature Native Americans since the end of the 19^th century (Churchhill 43). The majority of these productions were created by and for the Euro-American market and perpetuated many of the stereotypes established by the Wild West Shows (the two, in fact, overlapped with the last of the Wild West Shows occurring in the 1930s) (King 12). More than any other culture, the Native American’s image has been defined through film (Rollins ix). The question arises then, how is it that these media depictions can define a people’s image and why does such a definition matter? For one thing, Native Americans represent a very small portion of the American population and, for many Americans, media such as film and television are the primary way in which they are represented (King 6). The ways in which people, places and ideas are presented in the media shape the conceptions of those who access that media (King 7). This is problematic for Native Americans when we consider that while there has there been a huge saturation of media with Native American content, the overwhelming majority of that content works to reinforce negative 19^th century stereotypes (King 7).  This has created a positive feedback loop where the Euro-Americans who had the means to produce this media had been consumers of it all their lives. After several generations of this style of media production the media is completely removed from any truth about Native Americans (or even from a deliberate intention to create anti-Native American propaganda) and relies on simulacra of Native Americans which were created at the turn of the century. Rather than producing films and television shows based on Native Americans, the industry was creating films and television shows based on earlier film and television shows. It is for this reason that Smoke Signals is such a significant film. For first time, Native Americans had the opportunity to represent themselves in film and to challenge many of the stereotypes which had plagued them for the last century. A major departure from the classic treatment of Native Americans, Smoke Signals is an outwardly human story, riddled with subversive political comment. Amanda J. Cobb, a Native American Studies scholar who has researched Native depictions in film extensively, attributes much of the film’s success to its quietly political nature and the fact that its political subtext “never becomes overtly political” (Cobb 213). The narrative is one which many could relate to, with its focus on human relationships and redemption. Two young men, Victor and Thomas grew up together on a Reservation. When the two boys were young there was a house fire on the fourth of July which killed Thomas’ parents and many of Victor’s relatives. Victor’s father, Arnold, saved the two boys from the fire, but was emotionally crippled by grief and turned to a life of alcohol and violence. Arnold eventually leaves the Reservation and, years later, Victor receives word that his father has died in Arizona. Someone must collect the Arnold’s estate but no one in Victor’s family has the money to travel to Arizona, and Victor has little but bad memories of his father. Thomas, who never experienced the alcoholism or domestic violence that plagued Victor’s childhood, idolizes the man who saved him from the fire and offers to give Victor the money to travel to Arizona, as long as he can tag along. On the surface, Smoke Signals is structured as a classical Hollywood buddy road movie, in which two friends or companions travel across the country together. Beneath this veneer of comedy and character development there exists a barrage of references to Native American history and culture (Cobb 210). The Reservation in which Victor and Thomas grew up is utilized extensively by the screenplay’s author, Sherman Alexie, who uses humor and elements of mise en scene to establish the poverty and socio-economic issues which still plague reservation life, while challenging the perceptions that people hold about life on reservations. The first thing we encounter on the reservation is the sounds of the KREZ radio station, accompanied by the housing and local businesses of the reservation. The radio station crosses to its weather and traffic van, which broke down years ago and whose driver\reporter still sits atop of.  This serves a two-fold symbolic purpose. Firstly, the reservation we are presented with is relatively modern, with individual housing, cars and commerce. The Native Americans here are living a comparatively modern existence (no teepees or longhouses). There is, however, a flip side to this modern depiction. Despite the modern veneer there are serious economic problems on the Reservation. We can speculate that while the community has a traffic and weather van, there is so little money that the van cannot be fixed when it breaks down (even after a number of years). This is echoed later when Victor and Thomas encounter their relatives, Velma and Lucy, who are driving a car which only travels in reverse. Anywhere else in the country the car’s gearbox would be replaced but here there is simply no money for such repairs.  Where many film makers would deal with these reservation related issues with heated political debate, Alexie uses strong political statements, “subtly veiled” (Cobb 210) with wry humor. Appropriately, much of the film’s political subtext relates to Native American representations and identity. In a particularly telling exchange between Victor and Thomas it is revealed that the negative impact of inaccurate media representations is not restricted to Euro-American consumers. Thomas, who styles himself as a latter day medicine man and dresses in cheap suits, is berated by Victor for not knowing how to act like a “real Indian”. Victor jeers at Thomas for styling himself as a medicine man and for being too influenced by films like Dances with Wolves. However, when Victor tells Thomas that he should look “stoic” and like he’s “just killed a buffalo”, Thomas counters this by telling Victor that their tribe, the Coeur d’Alene, never hunted buffalo and were fisherman. This exposes both young men as victims of the same cultural whitewashing that has shaped Euro-American’s perceptions of Native Americans through film and television. In this respect Native Americans are not only “objects of popular culture” but also “consumers and participants” in the same media and culture which capitalize on their image (Cobb 216). Ultimately, however, the real symbolic core of Smoke Signals exists in the personal relationships of the characters, particularly those they have with their parents. The precedent for this is established at the beginning of the film, during Thomas’ opening monologue: You know there are some children who aren’t really children at all, they’re just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them… Victor and me, we were children of flame and ash.

-Thomas, Smoke Signals

By styling himself as a latter day medicine man, with his incessant stories, Thomas seems to have little regard for hurting others feelings with his tales in fact, it often lands him in a great deal of trouble. In this respect, Thomas is a pillar of flame that burns everything he touches. Victor, conversely, is so emotionally devastated by his past that it is impossible for him to emotionally engage with anyone and, in effect, “fall[s] apart” when anyone touches him.  This is not only a neat metaphor for the psychological profiles of Victor and Thomas, but for those of many Native Americans. Let us consider those living on the Pine Ridge reservation during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. The reservation was under the control of tribal chairman, Richard Wilson who ruled the reservation with an iron fist (Iverson 152). Firsthand accounts of those living on the reservation allow us to categorize them into these two loose psychological profiles, laid out by Alexie in Smoke Signals. Many of those who lived in the reservation with Wilson (and his vigilante squads) lived in absolute fear and either became violent themselves (fire) or withdrawn (ash) (Iverson 152). Wilson and those who responded violently to him and the FBI could easily be described as “pillars of fire” like Thomas, “burning everything they touch”, while the more subdued members of the community simply could not. Both the Native American council on the reservation (Wilson) and the United States government (represented here by the FBI) had completely failed them and thus they “[fell] apart when [anyone] touches them”, like Victor whom family, government and ideology have failed. Ultimately, the greatest parallel between the narrative Smoke Signals of and the legacy of injustice between Native and Euro-Americans is the constant theme of betrayal at the hands of a father. Victor and Thomas have both been dramatically affected the absence of Victor’s father. Native Americans have a history of referring to the President of the United States as the “great white father” and this gains a special resonance when we consider Thomas’ closing monologue in the film: “How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? Or divorcing, or not divorcing, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left?“ This final meditation on Thomas’ part is a reflection on the relationship between a colonial power and the indigenous people it takes in its charge. The colonial past of Euro-Americans placed them in a traditionally antagonistic and authoritarian position, i.e. in the role of the father. By the tail end of the 20^th century, when Smoke Signals appears, Native Americans still find themselves subservient to an abusive, neglectful father. How are you supposed to feel towards this father who has alternately neglected and interfered with you? How do you heal a legacy of pain which has existed for generations? Finally, if you do decide to forgive this awful parent, what comes next? It is by virtue of these astounding layers of complex symbolism and political comment that makes Smoke Signals a departure from other depictions of Native Americans in film. While the significance of Native American involvement at all levels of the production cannot be ignored, it is the thoroughly human and emotional level with which Smoke Signals appeals to its audience in order to communicate its message that sets it apart from other attempts. Bibliography

• Churchhill, W. “American Indians in Film: Thematic Contours of Cinematic Colonization”, in Reversing the Lens: Ethnicity, Race, Gender and Sexuality Through Film, Jun Xing and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, eds. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 2003
• Cobb, Amanda J. “This is What it Means to Say Smoke Signals”, in Peter C. Rollins and John E. Connor, Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003
• Iverson, Peter. We Are Still Here: American Indians in the Twentieth Century, Illinios: Harlan Davidson, 1998
• King C. R., Media Images And Representations. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2006
• Rollins, Peter C. and John E. Connor, Hollywood’s Indian, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003.

• Smoke Signals Dir. Chris Eyre. Shadowcatcher Entertainment. 1998

When we consider the modern sexual politics of the Catholic Church they are, in comparison to those of the broader secular world, quite conservative. What many don’t realise is that much of what makes up the contemporary sexual politics of the Catholic Church stems from the works and thinking of one man: St. Augustine. This essay will explore the life and works of St. Augustine and how it was that he profoundly affected the thinking of both the Catholic Church and the broader secular community right up to the present day.

Essential to understanding the works of St. Augustine is an understanding of his background leading up to his career as a member of the Catholic Church. Augustine lived from 354CE to 430CE and was born to a devout Christian mother and devout Pagan father in Thagaste, a Numidian town. His mother was earnest to raise her son a Christian and this, coupled with Augustine’s brilliant scholarly ability and the patronage of a wealthy benefactor led to his education in Carthage. Augustine took easily to education and he exhibited an insatiable lust for knowledge, coming quickly to grasp Latin and the finer points of rhetoric. Early in his life Augustine had become a teacher of Pagan rhetoric at Carthage, regardless of his mother’s wishes. Augustine was very much his own man who not only went against the wishes of his family (especially his mother) but seemed to often behave in an actively antagonistic fashion. Augustine had a self-professed and over-active libido and, much against his mother’s wishes, Augustine took a concubine with whom he had a child, named Adeodatus, meaning “the gift of god”. Riling against his mother’s desire for him to seek Christian spiritual guidance, Augustine joined a Persian derived sect called the Manichaeans who related evil to matter and the realm of the physical. His devotion to the Manichaeans was shaken, however, when he met Bishop Ambrose at the request of his mother. Ambrose answered many of the Manichaeans’ objections to the Old Testament and exposed many of the flaws of Manichaean thinking with an eloquence and intellectual strength that amazed Augustine. The influence of Ambrose on Augustine was profound, as Bainton notes “here was a man who grappled with the problems of faith and who showed that one could be an intellectual and a Christian”. During Easter in 387CE Augustine and his son were baptised by Ambrose. Soon after this Augustine became a monk and then, in 396CE became a bishop in the town of Hippo in Northern Africa.

Throughout his career Augustine never lost his love of the scholarly pursuits and spent much of his time reading about and writing on Christian theology. Much of this seemed to be fueled by his apparent obsession with his own sexuality and with the nature of human sexuality in general. This is best displayed in his reflective autobiography and spiritual treatise Confessions which first appeared in 397CE. This document formed the core of what would become Augustinian sexual politics and, eventually, Catholic doctrine. Central to Augustine’s notion of human sexuality is that of Original Sin. According to Augustine, man was irreversibly corrupted by the fall of Adam and is inescapably tied to his sin against God. Adam’s (and by association man’s) punishment for disobedience to God was one of forced disobedience to one’s self. This is essentially the notion that the human body and mind became separate and opposed to one another. The free will of the human mind could no longer exert itself to control the base desires of the flesh. This is most notably present, Augustine claims, in the sexual passions of human beings. Augustine observed that sexual arousal seems to occur automatically, regardless of what the mind desires. Augustine saw this as proof that the body’s disobedience of the mind often manifested itself in the form of lust. The central problem for this explanation of the uncontrollable sexual desires of mankind was explaining how it is that something that Adam did could condemn every subsequent human.

Unlike the archaic biological notion of preformationism (which suggested that a child existed perfectly formed in miniature inside of its parent’s sex cells, extending all the way back to Adam and Eve), Augustine contended that the entire human lineage had not existed within Adam but that the whole of Adam had been corrupted, including his semen. This meant that every child that Adam created was imbued with evil, sinful seed which passed his sin onto all of his children. Therefore all descendants of Adam (that being the entire human race) were created with fundamentally flawed semen and inherited the Original Sin from all of their descendants. The implications for Augustine arriving at this conclusion were enormous. If all human beings were inherently flawed and sinful, then that meant they could not possibly be trusted to administer to anything without the constant guidance of God. This meant that perfection or a utopian, peaceful existence was impossible for mankind. Furthermore, if we couldn’t trust our bodies to behave appropriately towards sexual desire (because of the rampant influence of lust) then how were we to know what kind of sexual interaction or attraction was safe in the eyes of God? The only safe solution, according to Augustine, was to only have sex for the purposes of procreation which meant that only sex within marriage was acceptable. Augustine contended that the physical act of sex itself was not sinful, but that it was inexplicably linked to a lustful sexual desire that caused man to lose his rational control of himself and his body. However, because God ordained the marital bond, the lustful experience of sex within marriage was far more acceptable than sex outside of marriage that wasn’t for the purpose of procreation.

There was naturally opposition to these views. The transition from the writings of one man to official Church doctrine was by no means an instant or unanimous one. Julian of Eclanum was appalled at the notion that human sexuality or semen could in any way be sinful or anything but completely natural:

God made bodies, distinguished the sexes, made

genitalia, bestowed affection through which bodies

would be joined, gave power to the semen, and

operates in the secret nature of the semen – and

God made nothing evil.

-As quoted in Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent, p. 132

So why would St. Augustine’s beliefs become adopted by the Catholic Church as doctrine? One possible explanation is that it would have been a very effective way for the Church to assert its place and power within society. If mankind cannot be trusted to control his base physical urges and requires a constant spiritual communion with God to save his eternal soul, then the Church is there, ready to offer spiritual guidance. If human beings cannot be trusted to govern themselves without the guidance of God, and the Church is the representative God on Earth, then that places the Church in a unique position of power. This alone could not account for the adoption of Augustine’s stance on Original Sin. Elane Pagels suggests that is the simplicity and compelling nature Augustine’s theory that allowed it to endure. In the face of human suffering, it answers the question of “why is this happening to me” by simply and efficiently removing the immediate blame from the individual and placing it on our collective ancestors, Adam and Eve. Augustine’s thinking tells us not only the cause of our suffering but also gives our suffering meaning and significance. The other advantage in this kind of thinking is that it removes much of the responsibility or guilt which stem from suffering or wicked behaviour by removing the blame from the individual. If good and evil are predetermined and we’re all sinners, then we can do anything we like as long as we ask God for forgiveness and absolution.

Let us now consider the legacy that St. Augustine has left and where it endures to this day. The Catholic Church still has a hard-line policy with regards to sex. Sex before marriage is unacceptable, sex is to be strictly for procreation and, as a result, contraception is strictly forbidden. Catholic priests are celibate, in order to turn their attention wholly towards matters spiritual. We need to understand, however, that St. Augustine’s thinking has had a wide-reaching and insidious effect on broader, secular society. We are very body conscious and have a number of nudity taboos (such as the generally negative view of public breast-feeding or nude swimming) and tend to frown on excessive premarital sex (especially in the case of women). While contraception is more acceptable in secular society it is often more for its uses as a means to prevent sexually transmitted diseases or allow for family planning amongst married people or couples in ‘committed relationships’.

In conclusion, the works and thinking of St. Augustine has had a powerful effect on both the thinking of the Catholic Church and broader secular society. The concept of Original Sin provided both a platform for the Church to assert itself within society and a mechanism with which the lay person could rationalise and understand suffering in their lives and in the world in general. Many of the central elements of Augustinian politics are preserved in the beliefs and social conventions of both the Catholic Church and secular society to this day. St Augustine may not be a figure of popular conversation but when we examine his life and his works we can see how profoundly one individual can personally alter the thinking of millions.

Further Reading

• Bainton, Roland, The Penguin History of Christianity, Vol. 1, London, Nelson, 1964, pp. 129-135
• Chadwick, Henry, The Early Church, London, Hodder Stoughton, 1968, pp. 216-236
• Pagels, Elaine, Adam, Eve and the Serpent,New York, Random House, 1988, pp. 98-150

It would be genuinely remiss, at this late stage, to discount outright any of the films considered momentous by the foremost critical minds of the Western World, as subsequently critically or cinematically unimportant, in opposition to their accrued reputations. The re-evaluatory anti-establishment instincts that reside within most contentious critics have wrought their best and their worst on our modern understanding of the world that the cinema gifts us with, and yet, these films still stand tall.

That having been said, it would be equally negligent not to consider the possibility that many of the films elevated to the status of pantheon members are as celebrated on account of their oft-torturous histories as their content, which is not to their detriment, but ought be taken into consideration nonetheless.

When French director, writer, actor Jean Renoir died, passing away in the February of 1979, at the ripe old age of 84, Orson Welles, quite possibly the greatest cinematic iconoclast of the 20^th century, published a heartfelt obituary in the Los Angeles Times for his close, late friend, and nestled amongst its paragraphs is a claim formed from wholesale immodesty and untold generosity, namely that “Jean Renoir stands on his own: the greatest of European directors: very probably the greatest of all directors, a gigantic silhouette on the horizon of our waning century.”

High praise, indeed, from a man in full possession of a character that Andre Bazin (his article featured in Mark W. Estrin’s collection of interviews with Welles, held as part of the Conversations With Filmmakers series of texts) once described as “god-like as Jupiter…an affable tyrant, wielding a ten-inch cigar instead of a bolt of lightning…truly Orson the Magnificent…the living illustration of [the] particular biology of genius, bent on growing to the bitter end” (p. 48), and yet, fitting.

Nine years earlier, in 1970, Jean Renoir gave an interview with Renoir scholar Leo Braudy (“Renoir at Home”, published separately from Braudy’s 1972 tome, Jean Renoir: The World of his Films). When asked, in passing, Renoir posits, “The best director in our days…that’s Orson Welles. He’s a great creator. The idea of a tycoon is not the same, can’t be the same, after Citizen Kane…” (p. 8 )

Renoir and Welles led separate lives and conducted separate careers, but as the years passed discussion of one would so often provoke mention of the other within the space of the same sentence, paragraph or breath until they were all but inseparable in the critical mind: in 1958, for instance, in the same moment that Bazin remarks on Welles’ Herculean ebullience and how such a thing stands at odds with his ever-advancing age, he illustrates the phenomenon by reference to what he believes to be a similar process at work within Jean Renoir, arguing “maturity…effects a strange metamorphosis…the Jean Renoir we know would be at least half a foot taller than the Jean Renoir of the thirties. Clearly he has amplified in all senses of the word; his very bones doubled in size.” (p. 49)

Whatever they shared personally, it is undebatable that they were both craftsmen of the highest cinematic order, and participated independently in what ought to have been a singularly prescient perception of the nature of film: at its most simplistic, this can be seen to be reflected in that together they occupied, between 1972 and 1992, the top two ranks (Welles’ at 1^st and Renoir at 2^nd) of the much-respected BFI Sight and Sound Critics’ Top Ten, and the first and third, respectively, in 1962 and 2002.

Craftsmen, then, but in the eyes of their many subsequent critical defenders and, by all accounts, from within the radius of their own appreciation, ones who went largely unappreciated for far too long, at least until they were well past their respective cinematic primes, and this was a growing and always bitterly-seasoned bone of contention shared out equally between the two, and perhaps over which they most ardently bonded.

Welles summarises Renoir’s forty-year cinematic career thus, with rancour and a crisp clarity of phrase that might lead an unsuspecting reader to imagine he was speaking of his own career (true of so much of Welles’ writing), rather than that of his beloved contemporary and colleague: “Some of [his films] were commercial and even, in their time, critical failures. Some enjoyed success. None were blockbusters. Many are immortal.” Taking all of these determinations together and at face value, there is only one product of Renoir’s dedication to his calling that can be said to fit perfectly the description attained: 1939’s La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game, as I will refer to it from now on).

The Rules of the Game was Renoir’s Citizen Kane, in more ways than one; indeed, it could be said to be Europe’s Kane, but while there are technical and historical similarities and comparisons to be made, there are also important differences, in the formation of an abiding legend as much as in elements of its formal construction, though despite that it remains a useful analytical tool when discussing critical cinematic watersheds.

It is, for instance, important to note that Citizen Kane’s popular reputation was formed largely on account of the colossal war of words and wills precipitated between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst (the cost of which was perhaps best totaled in W.A. Swanberg’s 600-page biographical tome, “Citizen Hearst” [1961]), and though it was hidden away from public eyes in the direct aftermath of the tremendous legal battle, critically it was immediately appreciated, if not, perhaps, lauded to the degree that it eventually would be. It did, after all, win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and was nominated for eight others.

The Rules of the Game, on the other hand, did not fare nearly so well, even relatively. Indeed, it is a film made infamous predominantly through the propagation of anecdotes regarding its popular reception (or hysterical lack thereof), up to and including purported attempts to incinerate cinemas wherein the film was showing, and it confused French critics almost as much as it did audiences, who reacted with hostility to its explicit contempt for the bourgeoisie.

In Janet Bergstrom’s article, “Jean Renoir’s Return to France”, she attributes a great deal of the critical disdain the film provoked to the fact that Renoir “changed the conception of the hero radically, in part by increasing the number of important characters so that no one of them would carry the action or the moral attitude of the film.” (p. 462) The resultant ensemble film “confused and alienated critics as well as the public.” (p. 462) Bergstrom quotes from numerous 1939 critical reviews of the film, noting the most common element, critical confusion as to where the audience’s sympathies should lie and with which characters. It was not until long after the shadow of WW2 had passed on that the film would begin to be re-evaluated, and late into the ‘50s that it would be acclaimed in Renoir’s native homeland. Truffaut, for instance, in a 1963 interview with Paul Ronder, is notably sympathetic: “Rules of the Game is one of those rare cases where a great film passed over the heads of its public… I’m convinced that sometimes a film-maker must violate his public.” (p. 10)

Still, Renoir’s “bitter disappoint at the hostile French reaction to this film he had put so much of himself into and staked so much of his future on,” (p. 460) was such that, in combination with the arrival of the Second World War on his veritable doorstep, it drove him from his first home and towards America and the American film system (and clearly, into the path of Orson Welles), a decision with which Bergstrom displays a restrained disgust, as she does with Renoir’s post-war work in general, feeling that, whatever merits one picks out, overall “it is simply a fact that the cinema, and not only French cinema, lost a lot when Renoir abandoned the direction he had pursued with so much conviction during the 1930s in France.” (p. 460)

Like Welles, Renoir’s subsequent critical decline, seen retrospectively, is such that it marks out films like 1937’s The Grand Illusion and especially Rules of the Game as almost crystalline in their encapsulation of everything that made Renoir great and, thus, everything his later work came to be seen to lack. Welles’ own personal narrative differs slightly, insofar as that Kane was Welles’ first feature-length film, leading to the propagation of a certain ‘enfant terrible’ mystique, while Renoir had amassed a formidable body of work by 1939.

Bergstrom (using numerous historical documents and comprehensively referenced technical studies) argues that Renoir’s incredibly accomplished directorial style, showcased in the long takes, deep focus and complex choreography of The Rules of the Game, was in later years compromised entirely by executives from RKO (Welles’ studio of choice) and Renoir’s “lack of confidence in his understanding of American business, the American idiom and the American public” (p. 468), arguing that Renoir was reticent, that “there were too many areas in which Renoir, still the new-comer, understandably lacked experience and deferred to the Americans.” (p. 470).

In summary, she notes, having built a strong argument from the exemplary statistically analytical work of Alexander Sesonske, “In Hollywood Renoir was no longer able to work as a writer-director within a system he understood or could influence effectively. None of his American films were as fully integrated, conceptually and technically, as his work of the 1930s.”

Thus, if Renoir’s films after The Rules of the Game were inarticulate through studio meddling and an authorial lack of confidence in the face of an unfamiliar and vaguely hostile system, then such films as he produced before the aforementioned landmark have been received by the passing of time with precious little in the way of extra patience.

Andre Bazin, in his foundational “What Is Cinema? Volume One” defines The Rules of the Game as a landmark in pure cinematic terms, saying, in the process of becoming the director and the man who could produce such a film, he “uncovered the secret of a film form that would permit everything to be said without chopping the world up into little fragments, that would reveal the hidden meanings in people and things without disturbing the unity natural to them.”

According to Stephen Tifft in his “Theatre in the Round: The Politics of Space in the Films of Jean Renoir”, the socialist politics of The Rules of the Game are implicitly and in permanence bound up in Renoir’s late ‘30s obsession with deep focus and long takes, arguing that in doing so one could “tame the disruptive tendencies of cinematic language in order to make the mediation of the imagine unobtrusive” in an effort to “reproduce…reality” (p. 329).

Tifft’s work is based in the comprehensive groundwork of Bazin, but this fact is worth less than one might imagine simply by virtue of the fact that Bazin arrived on the scene first and has staked out of all the available ground, meaning one is all but forced to stand upon his formidable shoulders. Tifft does, however, locate one of the true origins of the later Italian neorealist tradition in Renoir’s 1935 work Toni, arguing it “[establishes] a highly naturalistic mise en scene…and [uses] non-professional or local actors who came from the region and class of their characters and spoke with native accents…his later films…continue to stake out a powerful claim to realism…but this now centers…on the naturalized standing of the spectator.” (p. 331)

Bergstrom feels similarly, noting “although Renoir kept his distance from party affiliations, his films showed a strong social and political sensitivity to the inequities of class structures in France and a sympathy for the working class.”  (p. 456)

Peter Harcourt concurs, arguing, “when a film-maker composes in depth, he allows the spectator to select certain features within the frame that he then can respond to. Hence the ambiguity of potential response…the film-maker who depends more upon editing, is more concerned to direct the response of the spectator.” (p. 23) This vaguely ‘democratic’ approach to formal composition resides fully in line with Renoir’s equally vague socialist, humanist politics.

There is a particularly cynical argument that routinely and inevitably raises its head when one professes a wish to discuss the idea and subsequent critical maintenance of a cinematic canon: to wit, the suggestion that the critical (as opposed, perhaps problematically, from popular appreciations, both in the moment and with an eye to retrospectivity) reputations of films like Citizen Kane and Rules of the Game are future-proofed, so to speak, by the anecdotally robust controversies (as discussed above) they evoked in the era of their assembly and exhibition, rather than by the fact that their critical and popular relevance remains a power in the world no matter how far from the origin of such monoliths we grow.

As I say, it’s a case formed from hardened cynicism and little else, assuming that critics are unable to determine for themselves the qualities of a film, formal, emotional or otherwise, or, perhaps more incredibly, that there is some conspiracy to keep truly ‘important’ films out of the public eye and to instead favour ‘safe’ films, whatever they are.

Boston University film theorist and Cassavettes scholar Ray Carney combines a particularly vitriolic form of this raison d’être with virulent anti-mainstream invective, leading to his declaring Kane, “one of the ten most over-rated American films of all time.” (”Citizen Kane on its Fiftieth Anniversary: The Greatest Movie Ever Made?”) and “[Schindler’s List] is a Hollywood producer’s self-congratulatory fantasy of how giving people a chance to work for you is doing them a big favor” (”Pulp Affliction: The Sorry State of Contemporary Film”). This is clearly his prerogative, and doubtless many possessing of a homogenous agenda will align themselves similarly.

For a defence of the films under attack to be mounted, however, is a simple matter, far simpler than one might imagine, and it’s one to be found, encapsulated in its entirety, in Peter Harcourt’s “What, Indeed, Is Cinema?”, wherein he states in no uncertain terms that “Bazin is at his best, as are all critics, when he is talking about the films that have engaged him most deeply.” (p. 28)

What more needs be said than that a critic’s engagement (indeed, an audience member’s engagement, for that matter) with a film should not be assumed to be false, no matter the intellectual or political contempt in which you hold the critical establishment that birthed them: when a film has touched and influenced so many both sentimentally and cognitively, it isn’t a ruse or grounds for derision. To continue to deploy such rhetoric in the name of questioning the fundamentals is to needlessly shake the foundations of your own house without desiring to build something more viable where the wreck might one day stand (perhaps the true purpose and calling of all self-identifying polemicists).

You can acquire the Criterion edition of Rules of the Game from Amazon.com.

Works Cited:

Bazin, Andre. What Is Cinema? (Vol 1) (What is Cinema?). New York: University of California P, 1968.

Bergstrom, Janet. “Jean Renoir’s Return to France.” Poetics Today (Duke University Press) Creativity and Exile 17 (1996): 453-89. JSTOR. JSTOR. La Trobe Library, Bundoora. 24 May 2009. Keyword: renoir.

Carney, Ray. “About Ray Carney: Career Overview.” People.bu.edu — people on the Web at Boston University. Boston University. 07 June 2009 <http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/aboutrc/bio.shtml>.

Carney, Ray. “Citizen Kane on its Fiftieth Anniversary: The Greatest Movie Ever Made?” People.bu.edu — people on the Web at Boston University. Boston University. 7 June 2009 <http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/carncult/orfilms.shtml>.

Carney, Ray. “”Pulp Affliction: The Sorry State of Contemporary Film,”" The Baffler May 1996.

Harcourt, Peter. “What, Indeed, Is Cinema?” University of Texas Cinema Journal 8 (1968): 22-28. JSTOR. JSTOR. La Trobe Library, Bundoora. 24 May 2009. Keyword: renoir.

Litle, Michael. “Sound Track: “The Rules of the Game”" University of Texas Cinema Journal 13 (1973): 35-44. JSTOR. JSTOR. La Trobe Library, Bundoora. 24 May 2009. Keyword: renoir.

Renoir, Jean, and Leo Braudy. “Renoir at Home: Interview with Jean Renoir.” University of California Film Quarterly 50 (1996): 2-8. JSTOR. JSTOR. La Trobe Library, Bundoora. 24 May 2009. Keyword: renoir.

The Rules of the Game. Dir. Jean Renoir. Perf. Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Jean Renoir. DVD. Criterion, 2004.

Swanberg, W. A. Citizen Hearst A Biography of William Randolph Hearst. New York: Collier Books, 1981.

Tifft, Stephen. “Theatre in the Round: The Politics of Space in the Films of Jean Renoir.” Johns Hopkins University Theatre Journal 39 (1987): 328-46. JSTOR. JSTOR. La Trobe Library, Bundoora. 24 May 2009. Keyword: renoir.

Truffaut, François, and Paul Ronder. “François Truffaut: An Interview.” University of California Film Quarterly 17 (1963): 3-13. JSTOR. JSTOR. La Trobe Library, Bundoora. 24 May 2009. Keyword: renoir.

Welles, Orson, and Mark W. Estrin. Orson Welles Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series). New York: University P of Mississippi, 2002.

Welles, Orson. “Jean Renoir: ‘The Greatest of All Directors’” The Los Angeles Times 18 Feb. 1979: 1-1. Orson Welles Archive. 23 Nov. 2006. 24 May 2009 <http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=120>.

Welles, Orson. “Jean Renoir: ‘The Greatest of All Directors’” The Los Angeles Times 18 Feb. 1979: 1-1. Orson Welles Archive. 23 Nov. 2006. 24 May 2009 <http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=120>.

If there is one truth to the art of theatre in the age of Shakespeare and the period directly following it (the Jacobean era, during which Ben Jonson ascended to the literary throne left empty by the Bard’s death), it is that boundaries, borders and segregating lines of distinction are not what they seem. They are, in fact, in a constant state of flux despite their apparent and implicit immutability, and this is never truer then when it comes to the depiction of what might perhaps be referred to as tertiary characteristics of gender and sexuality (that is, those characteristics of behaviour, dress and appearance that are entirely socially constructed rather than reliant on biological imperatives). However, this truth, much like the borders it describes, is itself subject to change and exceptions, and only through comparison with other forms of Shakespearean drama can these be truly appreciated or defined.

Three perfect examples of this behaviour as it relates to the theatre of Shakespearean times are the Bard’s Twelfth Night (1601), a classic comedy concerned with the manipulation of gender through the act of cross-dressing, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1612), which follows the narrative form of a modified revenge tragedy while depicting an overwhelmingly and oppressively male reaction to the concept of an apparently unmarried woman at the center of a sphere of political power, and the tragedy Titus Andronicus (1584-1589), which combines notions of racial difference with the threat of uncontrolled and uncontrollable female sexuality, its avatar of matriarchal terror simultaneously juxtaposed with the actualised notion of violated feminine innocence.

The Twelfth Night is a play most definitely born of the spirit of Elizabethan theatre, one which opens and immediately, confidently occupies itself (and thus, its audience) with the extended comedic implications of cross-dressing (that most classical of comedic tropes), the maintenance of a confused and confusing love triangle and the exacting of similarly comedic, though infinitely darker, revenge upon a figure of Puritan authority (a contentious issue in itself, given the historical context in which the play came to be written and performed). The play subsequently manages to manufacture a considerable degree of thematic stratification in a somewhat inadvertent fashion, thanks to the theatrical conceit of having its female roles played by pre-pubescent male youths.

Where, for instance, are the audience’s sympathies to lie in the confusing entanglement of role and gender which can be described as that of a man (Cesario) who is actually a woman (Viola), who is simultaneously adored in her male role by a woman (Olivia) and, implicitly, a man (Orsino) whom she in turn falls in love with, in a form only truly visible to the audience who are external to the play’s contrivances, as Viola (who is, in the physical reality outside of the play, actually being played by a feminised boy)?

The above-described sexual cacophony formed the basis for the so-called Puritan complaint on the nature of the theatre, best summarised in Phillip Stubbes’, “The Anatomie of Abuses” (1583). Stubbes wrote that there “are good Examples to be learned in [plays]. Truly, so there are: if you will learn falsehood; if you will learn cozenage; if you will learn to deceive; if you will learn to play the hypocrite, to cog, lie and falsify…”.

Though the passage goes on in a similar fashion for more than fourfold the length of the above quote, and though this was not the sole facet of the theatrical tradition the Puritans took issue with, the essential “complaint” was that, in the theatre, one transcended boundaries in an unacceptable and sacrilegious manner, and all through the association of manners of dress both with position and gender, so that boys were women, and lowly actors took on the role of royalty.

The practice of associating gender with accepted Elizabethan behavioural models and manners of dress (that is, for instance, a woman was readily identifiable as a woman because she dressed and acted like one) had the two-fold effect of both producing the complaint and allowing for the theatrical trope of the so-called “convincing cross-dresser” whose disguise is utterly impenetrable to the other characters in the play (Viola, in this case).
Indeed, so deeply-rooted is this concept that Shakespeare happily switches Sebastian with Cesario and Viola the same, in Twelfth Night’s final moments. While the misunderstandings are now cleared up in the climax, Orsino continues to refer to the now-revealed Viola as “Boy”, which in the context of lines like, “Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times / Thou never shouldst love woman like me” (V.i.258–266) implies a certain homoerotic attraction and questions whether Orsino is, in fact, in love with Viola or Cesario.

While the ending that traditional Comedy required (one of semi-absolute resolution) has been produced, it also has the effect of underscoring the essentially conceited nature of the play’s characters, who are in love with the concept of loving, to the point that Olivia accepts Sebastian for Cesario unconditionally, as if she were simply in love with his/her physical appearance.

By the same token, Orsino waxes poetic to Cesario, of all people, on the deeper nature of a man’s love as compared with a woman’s love, which is made up in the “palate” and not in the “liver”, and states that Cesario should, “Make no compare / between that love a woman can bear me / And that I owe Olivia” (II.iv.91–101), the irony of his speech being that the charges he makes of a ‘woman’s love’ (i.e. “They lack retention” or may have their feelings changed easily) are qualities he fosters within himself, and which lead him to instantly accept the now-revealed Cesario/Viola gestalt in Twelfth Night’s climax. The gulf he quantitatively ascribes to the emotional characteristics of the genders is clearly not nearly as wide as he believes.

This self-indulgence is one reflected in the many upper-crust characters throughout the play, mirrored in the most decadent member of the cast, Sir Toby Belch, who simultaneously contrives to teach the Puritan steward Malvolio his place and, to a modern mind, hypocritically “marries down” to the gentlewoman Maria, whose aspirations are not condemned and punished as the former’s are. In Shakespeare’s world, however, marriage is not only a matter of class but also a matter of direction of intention and gender, as an aristocratic man may choose a mate regardless of social class, but a plebeian male does not have the same ability, nor may a woman of simple breeding actively seek out a partner above her supposed “station in life”.

Illustrations of this are wide-ranging, but the best example comes not from Shakespeare himself, but from the lesser-known John Webster, in his The Duchess of Malfi, which, along with his The White Devil (1612) deals with many of the darker aspects of human nature, to the point that T.S. Eliot, in Whispers of Immortality (1920), wrote of Webster as always seeing “the skull beneath the skin”.

The titular Duchess is, to a surprising extent, one of the strongest heroines of the Jacobean period, even despite her untimely death well before the play’s end. She actively defies the stereotypical conventions of her gender which should by all rights make her simply the unwitting victim of this revenge tragedy, rather than its heroine. Instead she is both, a dichotomy reflected in her dual status as both a head of state and a woman supposedly unmanned, though in reality this is a ruse to protect her status and center of power, as well as her secret family fathered by Antonio, ostensibly a representative of the lower-class.

In many ways, the Duchess bears a strong resemblance to the previous ruler, Elizabeth I, referred to as the ‘Virgin Queen’ or ‘Gloriana’, who was simultaneously deified by her public and rumoured to have been maintaining a romantic relationship with her cousin and royal Master of Horses, Robert Dudley. This reflection on the passing of the Tudor era appears in many works of the Jacobean era, including The Revenger’s Tragedy (1607), where the skull of a certain ‘Gloriana’ is key to the revenge plot, in itself surely not a coincidence. but it is only through her, in many ways inordinate, suffering that the audience gains knowledge of her inner strength. In many ways, Webster defies his contemporaries (of which Shakespeare was one) in structuring this revenge tragedy in such a way as to leave the “protagonist” dead well before the end of the play, her presence replaced by the (in many ways) generic male revenger, Antonio.

(The above is a short excerpt from the Richard III-esque cinematic interpretation of The Revenger’s Tragedy, starring Christopher Eccleston.)

The play is one made up of boundaries, and this understanding is reached within its first Act, during which Antonio returns from the French court full of admiration for its form and function, and implicit in his praise is a disdain for the Italian court to which he belongs and with which he is making a comparison. However, the reality is that borders in Webster’s play are much closer to home, and are circumscribed most particularly between the aristocratic upper class and the common man, as we discover when the Duchess is barred from remarrying by her controlling (and in many cases incestuously minded) brother Ferdinand, his apparent reasoning for which is his fears for the family bloodline, which he attempts to master and purify through his sister.

The Cardinal ponders, “Shall our blood/ The royal blood of Castile and Aragon/ Be thus attainted?” (II.v.22-24), a woman being simply a vessel for the fathering of heirs. While it is normally the place of a father and/or a husband in this social context to control a bloodline, Ferdinand takes it upon himself to perform this duty in place of either (one of many hints as to his desire for his sibling), and the Duchess’s refusals and flagrant disregard for Ferdinand’s commands drive him to have her murdered.

While revenge plays were generally written with a moral lesson at hand (as a form of theatre they were related to the 15th century ‘morality play’, after all), most often to do with the expunging of corruption and then, suitably, the death of the wronged revenger to correct the social order, most often due to a tragic flaw. How, then, do we reconcile the brutality of the almost saintly Duchess’s treatment at the hands of her brothers with her supposed crime, that of marrying beneath her social status, an act which Sir Toby on a whim manufactures without serious comment?

Indeed, such a reaction to female independence generally rested upon proof or suspicion of female infidelity (as with Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello), and Nicholas Brook surmises in his “Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy” (1979) that, “It has often been pointed out that there is a violation of the correct ‘order’ which is supposed to have affected Jacobean audiences with the moral force of a tragic ‘flaw’ but […] the play entirely assumes the audience’s complicity and therefore approval of the Duchess’s action”.

Titus Andronicus explores the touched-upon concept of female sexuality and conversely, chastity, in greater detail, both as a concept and as an almost physical item in itself, to which a form of ownership is ascribed. Here, we are presented with contrasts of character made through extremes, in the forms of the Lavinia/Tamora juxtaposition (that of virginal innocence versus the shadow of uncontrolled female power and sexuality in its ultimate combination, the barbarian Queen), and the equally extreme depiction of the Moor Aaron as simultaneously a singular force of evil and a loving parent as played against the the confused, wearied and titular Titus Andronicus, who starts the play as an Andronici war-hero and ends it crazed and more importantly, dead, but remembered as the type-cast revenging murderer, chiefly responsible for his daughter’s death.

(Above, the Anthony-Hopkins-flavoured adaptation of Titus Andronicus.)

Titus appears a play chiefly concerned with the control and dominance of female agency, and categorises it thus as entirely something for men to fear. Tamora is a representation of pitiless violence and sends forth her two lustful and murderous sons to do her bidding, and actively encourages their rape of Lavinia, and the Act in which this takes place places special significance on the horror of the ‘hole’ or ‘pit’ into which Bassianus (dead) is placed, and Quintus and Martius are held captive, whilst Aaron buries his treasure in a similar hole, all the while referred to as “this unhallowed and bloodstained hole” (II.iii.210) and “this fell devouring receptacle” (II.iii.235), and so the comparison between literal graves (holes in the earth) and the metaphoric imagery of the consuming female icon or genitalia is made (the concept that Freud would later christen “vagina dentata”, the toothed vagina which is linked with male castration anxiety).

Tamora is given power but this is a power that must be righted by the play’s end, as its only result is injustice, and so the ‘true’ male hierarchy must be reinstated, which it is. An understandable criticism of Titus has been that it is over-zealously misogynistic, and punishes both female characters in the play simply for their gender, a criticism borne out as even despite her brutal rape and disfigurement Lavinia is treated cruelly by her suspiciously deranged father, Titus, who as her father had previously denied her the right to marry Bassianus (thereby retaining and possessing Lavinia’s chastity).

While gender and sexuality may be alternately capable of flexibility and mutability within the typical structure of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic traditions, the unfortunate truth of the matter is that these changes are short-lived and attempt to highlight, for the intended original audience, the requirement for a return to the accepted social order and the curtailment of excess female agency.

Amazon.com stock the 1999 Hopkins adaptation of Titus Andronicus, the 2003 Eccleston adaptation of Revenger’s Tragedy, T.S Eliot’s The Wasteland, Prufrock, and Other Poems, and, of course, the complete Shakespeare.

Works cited:

BROOKE, Nicholas. Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

ELIOT, T.S. The Wasteland, Four Quartets and Other Poems. Caedmon Press, 2000.

WEBSTER, John. The Duchess of Malfi. A.C. Black, 2003, 4th ed.

SHAKESPEARE, William. Twelfth Night (Folger Shakespeare Library Ed.), New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.

SHAKESPEARE, William. Titus Andronicus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

When we turn to significant landmarks in human cultural history it is often easier to acknowledge that a landmark occurred than it is to pin down the specific details of that landmark. It is an oft touted idiom that “history is written by the victor” and, even when we are not concerning ourselves with military victories, the same phenomenon of historical whitewashing occurs with cultural revolutions. While historians agree that the Western world is a predominantly democratic one, one would be hard pressed to find two who reached a consensus about the origins, birth and development of the concept. Did it begin with the Ancient Greek senate or was that such an alien form of democracy from that which we practice today that it doesn’t bare comparison? The same problems arise for any historian that attempts to trace the origins of the momentous cultural development that was Israelite Monotheism. This article will attempt to trace the roots of Monotheism in Ancient Israel and assess the speed with which it was adopted.

Before we can examine the rise of Monotheism in Israelite culture we must ask the crucial question of why such a belief system arose. Polytheism was and had been the accepted model of worship in every major civilization in the region, from the Egyptians to the Mediterranean to the Babylonians and Assyrians of Mesopotamia. It was not only an established model, but likely an apparently sensible one to those living in the ancient world, particularly those in the Ancient Near East. Firstly, the natural environment in which people found themselves was a harsh and contradictory one. Subject to droughts, floods, sand and dust storms as well as fierce electrical storms assailed the settlers of the Ancient Near East (Boadt 545). It would be difficult or near impossible for people to simply rationalise these natural occurrences as the work of a single deity. Such a deity was surely a cruel and fickle one who cared little for the plight of his people. It was almost certainly much easier to believe that these natural misfortunes were the work of several conflicting gods, some of whom were benevolent (or at least indifferent) towards human beings. Furthermore, when there is more than one entity which has an influence over the world of men it is easier to rationalize faults in those entities. Each god has their strengths and weaknesses, areas of responsibility and personal shortcomings (Boadt, 245). Across the entire pantheon these various strengths and weaknesses balance one another out in such a way that everything is under the control of a god and any discrepancies in the expected outcomes or events of these gods’s work can be explained away by inter-deity conflict or shortcomings. Finally, representing the gods as a community of interacting entities, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and interactions with one another creates a set of higher beings who are, ultimately, easier to understand and identify with. The question then, is why would a culture develop a need for Monotheism?

The answer lays in an unusual permutation of the common Near Eastern Practices of adopting and distorting the myths of neighbouring peoples and the tying of the actions of the Gods to the events in the world of men. The successes and defeats of the deities of the Ancient Near East were, naturally, tied to the successes and defeats of their earthly subjects. Let us examine the Canaanite pantheon as an example, as it is in this region that Israelite Monotheism would eventually arise. The Canaanite religion was typical of the Ancient Near Eastern polytheistic religions described above, with each god controlling a specific portfolio, each of which directly related to a component of the natural world and the impact that component had on the pantheon’s mortal subjects. A brief summary of each major god of the Canaanite pantheon follows:

El: The father of all gods and chief creator of all creatures. The authority figure of the gods, El is the chief judge of any dispute amongst the gods but is apparently distant from his human subjects.

Baall: The god of the storm. Baal is responsible for the annual rainfall and fertility cycle of the earth. Baal is often also depicted as the triumphant General and lord of War.

Asherah: The Goddess of the Sea and wife of El. An important council to El with a minor association to fertility.

Anat: Sister and wife of Baal. Like the Babylonian Goddess, Ishtar, Anat combines the aspects of the goddess of love and war simultaneously.

Astarte: Another Goddess relating to fertility, strongly resembling Anat.

-All sourced from Boadt, 218.

We can see from this brief summary that, in this small sampling of Gods, each has a link to both the natural and human world. Baal is the god of storms (natural) and the god of war (human). Asherah is the goddess of the sea (natural) and the goddess of conciliation (human). Astarte and Anat are goddesses associated with both natural and human fertility, as well as human passion. Even in these god’s portfolios we find a direct relationship between the events of the human world and actions of the Gods. To further illustrate the relationship between the actions of the gods and the world of men, we must turn to the Epic of Baal, which accounts a conflict between Baal and Mot, the personification of death (Boadt, 219). Through a successful military campaign, Baal becomes the king of the gods. Unhappy with this and believing that he is more deserving of the kingship, Mot demands that the other gods to hand over Baal to him. Baal accepts the challenge and travels to the underworld to battle Mot, but eats the bread of death and is overcome. Without the god of storms, the earth wilts from lack of rain. Anat goes searching for Baal, finds him and frees him. Anat battles with Mot, who she defeats, shreds to pieces and sprinkles like seed across the earth. Baal returns and, with him, comes the rain that the earth was lacking. The rain of Baal causes the seeds of Mot to sprout and the earth is rejuvenated (Boadt, 219-220). We can see, very explicitly, in this story that conflict of wet and dry seasons in the Ancient Near East was tied directly to the trials and tribulations of the Gods. In order for civilization to prevail, Baal must prevail (Boadt, 220). We can see exactly the same thinking in the creation, depiction and evolution of Yahweh, the god of the Israelites.

It is crucial to understand that, for the Ancient Israelites, there arose a point in their history when, besieged from all sides, the most important and significant element of the divine to them was that which protected the Israelite people and destroyed their enemies (Boadt, 221). Many accounts openly steal from the other Near Eastern accounts of the triumphs of the Gods who were sympathetic towards human beings over those who were not (Boadt, 222). As Boadt astutely observes, “While rejecting the multiple gods and the nature myths of Canaan, Israel felt itself free to use many of the themes to enhance the power of Yahweh” (Boadt, 222). An excellent example of this is the manner in which the Israelites selectively condemned parts of Baal’s portfolio while adopting and attributing those that suited them to Yahweh. While the Israelites were uncomfortable with the fertility rights associated with Baal and his wives and condemned them, they were happy to adopt other aspects of Canaanite worship and adopt them to suit their needs (Boadt, 223). For example, both the Canaanites and Israelites placed a large significance on the power of sacrifice and the Israelites adopted many of the rites and details of Canaanite sacrifice (down to modelling their sacrificial altars in similar shape to those of the Canaanites) they dispensed with and forbade the Canaanite practice of child sacrifice (Boadt, 223). When we examine the development Israelite monotheism we can see that it appears to be an amalgamation of polytheism in which the powers and portfolios of all of the Gods are brought under the single name of Yahweh.

If we examine the early works of the Torah we can the pushing and pulling of these schizophrenic divine personalities pushing and pulling against one another. In Genesis we can see a suggestion of a dual male/female identity for Yahweh, despite the assertion that of Genesis 1:1 that “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth” (King James Bible, Genesis 1:1). This position of a solitary creator is diametrically opposed to other Near Eastern creation myths, like the Babylonian Enuma Elish, in which creation results from the interactions and conflicts of many gods. We still see all of the portfolios of Near Eastern God’s represented in Genesis, except they are either subsumed by Yahweh himself or his actions/creations. For example, each of the stages of the Genesis creations myth mirrors the stages of creation in the Enuma Elish except that in the Enu Elish, a different god is responsible for each stage (Frymer-Kensky, 154). Instead of Apsu and Tiamat creating water from their mere presence in the chaotic void, Yahweh wills there to be water from the chaotic void. The end result is the same, but the origin has been subtly altered to allow for a single deity. Hooke presents and excellent example of this in his analysis of the story of the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis 3 and its similarity to the Babylonian myth of Enki and Ninhursag:

“According to Sumerian myth the only thing Dilmun lacked was fresh water; the god Enki (or Ea) ordered Utu, the sun-god, to bring up fresh water from the earth to water the garden… In the myth of Enki and Ninhursag it is related that the mother-goddess Ninhursag caused eight plants to grow in the garden of the gods. Enki desired to eat these plants and sent his messenger Isimud to fetch them. Enki ate them one by one, and Ninhursag in her rage pronounced the curse of death upon Enki. As the result of the curse eight of Enki’s bodily organs were attacked by disease and he was at the pain of death. The great gods were in dismay and Enlil [the chief god] was powerless to help. Ninhursag was induced to return and deal with the situation. She created eight goddesses of healing who proceeded to heal each of the diseased parts of Enki’s body. One of these parts was the god’s rib, and the goddess who was created to deal with the rib was named Ninti, which means “lady of the rib”.”

-Hooke, pp. 114-115

The parallels here to the tree of knowledge story in Genesis 3 are obvious. What is significant, for our purposes, is that rather than the eating of forbidden fruit and the consequences of such an action are not a collection of happenstance interactions between various gods, but stem from the deliberate action of Yahweh (who created the tree of knowledge), the folly of man who disobeyed him and the fallout from such disobedience. We see the same plundering of myth and absorption of foreign gods in the Genesis flood story and the flood stories found in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish (Hooke, 127).

We can see from these parallels in Genesis that there was no instant ‘switch’ between monotheism and polytheism. While lip service is paid to the notion of one God, the behaviour of that single god is drawn directly from the myths of polytheistic cultures. In many cases Yahweh behaves in contradictory or inexplicable ways, which are not easily rationalised in terms of a single god. It takes a long period of time until Yahweh is completely unified with a purpose for himself and the Israelite people and there is a gradual evolution of concrete monotheism. In Exodus 34:14, in which Yahweh commands “thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (King James Bible, Exodus 34:14) he does not deny the existence of other gods, merely prohibits their worship. This is immediately reinforced in Exodus 34:15 in which Yahweh forbids his followers from making “a covenant with the inhabitants of the land” and “whoring after their gods” (King James Bible, Exodus 34:15). By the time we reach Deuteronomy 4:39, however, the message could not be more absolute.

“Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the LORD he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else”

-Deuteronomy 4:39

Furthermore, when we arrive at the books of Joshua and Judges the classic model of Israelite Monotheism is complete, with the firm depiction of Yahweh as not merely a single god, but the God, with the Israelites as his chosen people (Herrmann, 155).

It is impossible for us to say precisely when the Israelites completely embraced monotheism (Garbini, 32). There are too many unknown variables at work. For example, let us entertain the question of whether there was a discrepancy in monotheism’s adoption in the cities over the rural areas? Centres of spiritual and military might, as well as being the symbol of centralization and streamlining, the cities were likely to adopt the notion of Monotheism faster. Conversely, rural farmers, shepherds and pastoralists were more intimately concerned with the themes present in and adopted from the Babylonian myths, specifically as fertility and the cycle of seasons. Surely, the people in these rural communities would take much longer to fully embrace the tenets of monotheism. We run into further problems when, as we have seen above, the nature of Israelite monotheism was not a static one. The faith begins with the amalgamation of many local deities and myths, under the banner of one God. Yahweh is not instantly a unified entity, but becomes one, slowly over time and under the supervision of countless authors and editors. All we can say, with any certainty, is that the introduction of Monotheism to the Israelites was definitely a gradual one.

Bibliography

• Boadt, L. Reading the Old Testament, New York, Paulist Press, 1984
• Frymer-Kensky, Tikva, “The Atrahasis Epic and its Significance for our understanding of Genesis 1-9” Biblical Archaeologist 40 (4), 1977
• Garbini, G. History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, London : SCM, 1988.
• Hermann, S. A history of Israel in Old Testament times, London: SCM Press Ltd, 1981.

• Hooke, S. H. Middle Eastern Mythology. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. 1978.
• King James Bible.

Welcome to what is, I hope, the first of many history articles on Wonderbread. In completing a double major in cinema and history I’ve learned many interesting things and would love to share some of them with you. Some of my fellow history students will also be contributing articles, so keep your eyes on the History category. I’d like to open with an article I wrote earlier this year for a class on Ancient Israel. It explores the similarities between the Ancient Israelite creation and flood stories and those of the Babylonians before them. Ultimately, we can see that there is common mythic tradition in the Ancient Near East.

-Morgan

When we examine the narrative and thematic structure of Genesis 1-2:4a we can see a structural and thematic core which appears to originate from a broad mythic tradition which existed in the Ancient Near East, long before the Israelites codified their scripture in writing. The central parallels exist in the Babylonian texts of the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Atrahasis epic. We can find elements of each of these ancient stories present in Genesis, however, it is the differences (rather than the similarities) in these narratives that reveals to us the details of the philosophy of the Iraelites which distinguished them from their contemporaries. It is worthwile, however, to consider the similarities because these provide us with useful information about the collective experience of life in the Ancient Near East.

The central and broadest similarity that exists between Genesis 1-2:4a and Babylonian myth comes in the form of the Creation Myth presented in the Enuma Elish. The notable (and obvious) exception between the two myths is that, while the Enuma Elish presents a polytheistic model, the Genesis creation myth seems to lean towards a monotheistic model (we will address this after we examine the structural composition of the two myths). It is worth noting that, while they arrive at completely different answers, all of the myths which we will discuss attempt to define the relationship between divinity and humans and to why life in the ancient near east was so difficult. Let us begin by examining the narrative structure of the Enuma Elish.

We begin with two Gods, Apsu (male, relating to fresh water) and Tiamut (female, relating to salt water and chaos?) who exist in a formless void (Heidel, 3). From this initial generation comes Ahmu (male),  Lahamu (female) who are both silt deposits as well as Anshar (the rim of the sky) and Kishar (rim of the earth). Anshar and Kishar engender Anu (the sky). Anu gives birth to Ea and his wife is named Damkina.

At this point, we can already see similarities to the Genesis creation story. The basic, fundamental material elements of creation appear first (before they are structured and joined by life) but rather than these elements being made or shaped by a single God, acting as a divine architect, the Gods themselves make up the raw material of creation. This is a trend which continues throughout the Enuma Elish, which we will see as we return to its narrative.

The younger and older Gods are divided into two generations. Apsu and Tiamut form the elder generation, who have stagnated and prefer a lack of activity. The younger generation (comprised of all the Gods spawned by Apsu and Tiamut) have grown noisy and, irritated by this imposition, Apsu plans to kill them. The younger Gods learn of this plan and Ea puts Apsu to sleep and kills him. At this point Ea and Damkina build a house on Apsu’s body and have a son, Marduk. Anshar asks Marduk to kill Tiamut and Marduk agrees, as long as he’s made ruler over all of the Gods. Marduk and Tiamut meet in a titanic battle and, when she opens her mouth to swallow him, he sends the winds to lock her jaws open and shoots an arrow down her throat which pierces her heart.

He then vanquishes her army and captures her son and consort, Kingu. Marduk splits Tiamut in half, dividing the waters above from the waters below. He removes her eyes and the Tigris and Euphrates are formed. He puts the Gods in the heavens, which form the stars and is proclaimed King of the Gods. The Gods begin to work the land which Marduk has created but soon find that the work is too hard. Ea creates human beings out of clay and the blood of the executed Kingu so that the Gods will no longer have to work.

We can see from this summary that the prevailing message from the Enuma Elish is that the Babylonian Gods have, at best, an antipathetic relationship with Human beings and the world that they have created. The structural nature of the world is directly related to the creation and activities of the Gods and the Humans are only created as a subservient means to save the Gods from working the land. It establishes a series of etiological explanations for why life in the ancient Middle East was hard and the resounding explanation is the presence of an uncaring, fickle pantheon.

The Genesis narrative, on the other hand, presents a very similar narrative with two key (and significant) changes. The first is that the creation myth is presented with a single God. The Enuma Elish’s basic structure is kept, but rather than the birth and actions of various Gods being responsible for the stages of creation, each stage results directly from the action of a single deity and is represented by a single day:

Day 1 Created light. Light called day and darkness called night.

Day 2 Expanse between water from above and below. Expanse = Sky

Day 3 Dry ground / Vegetation: Plants and Trees. ” According to their various kinds”

Day 4 Light in sky to separate day and night. Sun / Moon / Stars

Day 5 Life in water and birds in the air. ” According to their various kinds”

Day 6 Land Animals ” Each according to its kind”     Then God created man in his image to rule over: Fish / Birds / Livestock     Every green plant is given for food.

The second significant difference lies in the relationship which is established between human beings and the divine. While in the Enuma Elish man is created to be a slave to the Gods, the prevailing message throughout Genesis is a single, loving and involved God who creates the earth and mankind in his own image. This distinction in divine attitudes persists when we compare the Genesis Flood Story with the other flood narratives of the Ancient Near East.

The accounts are nearly identical in their narrative. Each of them follows the basic formula of :

1. God(s) create humans
2. There is a problem with the humans.
3. God(s) send a flood.
4. A new order is created to fix the problems which existed before the flood

The differences lie in the moral tone of each story and the manner in which God(s) are depicted. Let us begin by examining the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Gilgamesh epic uses the flood story as method of explaining human mortality. The story focuses on Gilgamesh’s quest to become immortal, after the death of his friend Enkidu. Because this issue of mortality is the central narrative thread in the story the flood component is only used in relation explaining human mortality. Gilgamesh encounters Utnapishtim, an immortal man and asks him how he gained his immortality. As Utnapishtim relates his story, we can see clear parallels between him and Noah in the Genesis flood story. However, the reasons for the flood are not stressed, only that Utnapishtim’s reward for being a dutiful servant and saving humanity was immortality. In this sense, the Gilgamesh epic is not concerned with the hows and whys of the Flood, only in its usefulness for explaining the problem of why people die (Frymer-Kensky 154-5).

In the Atrahasis epic, on the other hand, is a more direct parallel with the Genesis flood story (the scope of the Atrahasis epic is much broader than merely describing the flood, but we will focus on the flood component alone for now). In the Atrahasis the flood is used to describe the antagonistic relationship between the Gods and humanity (the flood is sent because the humans have grown to populous and are too noisy). The narrative of the flood itself is almost identical to that of the story in Genesis, but there is a major difference in tone. The Atrahasis epic gives us an interesting window into the psyches of the Babylonian people (Boadt 127).

When we consider the climate and geography of the ancient Middle East, with its droughts, storms and floods it is easy to imagine why their Gods were depicted as angry, fickle beings. It is the obvious explanation for the climatic woes which beset them.

If we turn now to Genesis we can see that while the flood narrative is essentially the same, the moral and depiction of God’s relationship to mankind is completely different. While in the Atrahasis epic presents a relatively flippant reason for the floods (the humans were annoying) the Genesis flood is released by God because the world has become corrupted. To say that it was simply because humans had been wicked undermines the deeper meaning of the shift in moral and tone. If it were merely a case of human beings being wicked, why not simply wipe out the humans rather than killing the humans and everything else on earth? We can gain an understanding of both God’s motivations for the flood and society and belief in ancient Israel if we examine the covenant God presents to Noah and his sons after the flood.

• God’s covenant contains 3 basic rules:
• Be fruitful and multiply
• You may eat animals, but not alive and no drinking blood
• No one, beast or man, may kill a human being

The first covenant seems to be in direct opposition to the Babylonian explanation of overpopulation and the annoying nature of humans as a reason for the flood.

The second covenant contains clues about both Israelite society and culture and the third covenant. First we can infer that before the flood, if vegetarianism wasn’t the norm then eating meat was, at the very least, a taboo. Second, the mention of blood and the prohibition of drinking it hints at the strong significance of blood in Israelite culture.

Frymer-Kensey (152) comments that blood holds a special significance for the ancient Israelites. They believed that the spirit of an animal (and possibly humans?) existed in the blood. It was a great taboo to spill the blood of an animal anywhere outside of the temple. The blood spatter on the altar was considered redemptive.

The commandment against killing human beings is a new one. In other near eastern legal systems it seems that capital punishment is widespread. We need only to look to Hammurabi’s law code, which proscribed capital punishment for many offences. Frymer-Kensey (152) notes that in Israel, capital punishment was reserved only for the most serious offences against God and was ‘never invoked for offences against property’. Conversely, murder could not be rectified by commercial means, only the death of the murder could set things right.

We can infer from the 3^rd commandment that the antediluvian Israel was as enthused with capital punishment as the rest of the world. Frymer-Kensey (153) suggests that it is this which is the reason that God sent the flood in genesis. He suggests that Murder has its consequences for both the murderer and the earth itself. In Gen 4:10-12 God tells Cain that the blood he spilled on the ground has made it infertile for him. In Israelite theology, the blood of innocents, when spilled on the ground, passes a physical taint to the earth itself, corrupting it. By the time of the flood, the sheer scale of the murder of innocents meant that the whole earth was physically corrupted from the blood spilt upon it. We know (from Acts, Leviticus and Ezekiel) that the ancient Israelites believed that physical acts of moral wrongdoing tainted people and places physically.  Frymer-Kensey (153) sums it up beautifully:

“The flood is not primarily an agent of punishment … but a means of getting rid of a thoroughly polluted world and starting again with a clean, washed one”

Bibliography

• Boadt, L. Reading the Old Testament, New York, Paulist Press, 1984
• Frymer-Kensky, Tikva, “The Atrahasis Epic and its Significance for our understanding of Genesis 1-9” Biblical Archaeologist 40 (4), 1977 pp.147-155
• Heidel, A. The Babylonian Genesis, Chicago: University of Chicargo Press, 1963
• King James Bible.