For week 9 of the humanities crash course, I revisited the most important text in Western culture: the Bible. Of course, I didn’t read the whole book – only a small subset. Still, it was a lot. As I’ve done in previous weeks, I followed Gioia’s suggestions for the texts.
Readings
Gioia’s plan aims for around 250 pages per week. This week’s readings exceeded that. I tackled seven books: Genesis, Ecclesiastes, the four Gospels, and Romans. I said ‘revisited’ because in 2009, I read the whole Bible. But it’s been fifteen years, and these texts are important enough that they merited a second reading. (In the case of Genesis, a third.)
I used the English Standard Version. Yes, King James is more influential, but it’s also harder to grok – and I’m reading for understanding. I considered reading in Spanish this time, since my earlier reading was in English, but I couldn’t find a decent freely downloadable ePub. (What’s up with that?)
That was the plan, anyway. I soon realized that reading these books would require more time than I’ve allotted to the project. So I devised an alternative: listening to the work as an audiobook. I already did this for the Odyssey, which I justified because that work was originally oral. No such justification for the Bible. Oh well.
Audible has several versions of the ESV Bible read by different narrators. I picked the one read by Robert Smith, who has a wonderfully warm voice. Smith’s narration accompanied me during two long drives and several morning walks.
What can one say about the Bible? I kept thinking of something Bill Moyer said about Joseph Campbell when introducing one of their interviews:
Campbell told the story of the young Hindu who called on him in New York and said, “When I visit a foreign country, I like to acquaint myself with its religion. So I bought myself a Bible and for some months now have been reading it from the beginning. But, you know, I can’t find any religion in it.”
Genesis, in particular, reads more like tribal mythology than a work of spiritual guidance, such as the Dhammapada. Of course, for those of us raised in a Western culture, the stories in this book are very familiar: the creation of the world, expulsion from the Garden, Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, Noah and the Ark, Joseph and his brothers, etc.
Ecclesiastes feels closer to what Cambpell’s friend might have been looking for. Rather than chronological narratives, it offers advice for living – some of it surprising. The main gist: much in life is vanity; death is inevitable; you should fear God and enjoy life even amidst uncertainty.
The Gospels narrate Jesus’s life, each with a slightly different emphasis. Mark is the earliest and shortest. It, along with Matthew and Luke, focuses on the life of Jesus. John is more theological, exploring Jesus’s message and meaning.
The Epistle to the Romans, written by Saint Paul, is part of the theological framework developed by the early Christian community. It connects Jesus’s life and teachings with the earlier Jewish scriptures, but contextualizing it and making it relevant to a broader audience.
Audiovisual
Gioia recommended music and art inspired by these readings. I was already familiar with Handel’s Messiah, Thomas Tallis’s work, and The Byrd’s Turn! Turn! Turn!, a Pete Seeger tune that sets part of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes to music.
I saw Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling and sculptures in person when I lived in Rome in the early 1990s, so I opted to not dive in this week. But obviously, this week’s texts served as inspiration for the most important works of art and architecture in the Western world.
For this week’s movie, I opted for Martin Scorcese’s THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. I’d seen it shortly after it came out. I was familiar with the Gospel stories then, but hadn’t read the original sources. I revisited it now, primarily for its textures.
The movie features powerful imagery. The scenes of crucifixions effectively convey the horror, suffering, and shame entailed by this brutal method of execution. Willem Dafoe is magnificent as a conflicted and uncertain Jesus.
Peter Gabriel’s soundtrack and its companion Sources album have long been among my favorites; the music is even more powerful in context.
Reflections
I can see why THE LAST TEMPTATION was (and still is, in some countries) controversial. Although it features a prominent disclaimer, the movie diverges significantly from the Gospels. It also shows Jesus having sex. But the movie also addresses serious spiritual questions. What does it mean for somebody to be both human and divine? Did Jesus act freely? Was he predetermined to suffer? What is the role of suffering in salvation?
I was surprised to realize that two of the stars of previous movies in the crash course also have important roles in this movie: Andre Gregory (of MY DINNER WITH ANDRE) plays John the Baptist and Harry Dean Stanton (of PARIS, TEXAS) plays Saul/Paul. Both characters bookend Jesus’s arc.
Back to the texts: of this week’s readings, I was most pleased to revisit Ecclesiastes. I was struck by its parallels with the Buddhist scriptures. Both caution against becoming attached to transitory things – and in this sensuous world, all is transitory. Understanding that suffering comes with life is the first step in overcoming suffering. All else is vanity.
Notes on Note-taking
This week, I implemented a new note-taking habit: early each morning, after my daily journaling, I wrote down a few notes on the text I finished the day before. I’m still using Obsidian with the Text Generator plugin. The Judeo-Christian scriptures are part of the LLM’s training corpus, as is much of the commentary around them. I took advantage of this fact by asking GPT-4o for summaries in each text’s Obsidian note.
This week, I also started a new section in these notes. In addition to my reflections and GPT summaries, I’ve started reflecting on the influence and criticisms of each work. For the influence, I used variations of the following prompt:
Why is the Gospel of Matthew considered important? Focus on its overall influence but also relative to the other three Gospels:
For criticisms, I used variations of this prompt:
What are the main criticisms levied against the Gospel of Matthew?
GPT’s answers to these prompts were invariably insightful. It was especially helpful for understanding the differences and similarities between the four Gospels. I started a separate note in to examine the Gospels at this higher level, linking them together.
An obvious next step is creating more granular notes to capture individual ideas from the scriptures and linking those too. I’ll eventually get to that; this won’t be my last explorations of these scriptures. But now, we must move on to other works.
Up Next
We’re heading back to Ancient Greece: Sophocles’s Oedipus trilogy plus plays by Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes. Standard Ebooks has beautiful versions of Sophocles’s works, but I’m also listening to audiobooks. These plays come to life when dramatized, and Audible has excellent versions as part of their subscription package.
Check out Gioia’s post for the full syllabus. Again, there’s a YouTube playlist for all the videos I’m sharing here. And as a reminder, I’m also sharing these posts via Substack if you’d like to subscribe and comment.