Let me say right off the top that this post isn’t so much about the movie Exodus as it is about God… and story. Still, I should probably warn, “spoiler alert.” But the two biggies below that might preempt one’s enjoyment of the drama hardly qualify as spoilers, and they bear immediately on the whole …
There’s a new game in town. Finally, a video game based on biblical, or sort-of-biblical, stories. Bible-reading folks frequently say that there are really great stories in the Bible; but what they usually mean is that its stories instruct, correct, or otherwise inform the ways that people should live. Sure, there are such didactic texts; but …
I just finished Anne Rice’s Servant of the Bones. From the original queen of vampire writing, who’d have thought? A book that includes not just the gothic but profound questions of purpose and identity and (here’s what’s especially intriguing to me right now) reflects some good research into ancient Near Eastern religion and history. Marduk, …
Word has it that the Good Word is jumping on the vampire bus. For all sorts of reasons, it’s not as great a leap as you might think — more on that later… Meanwhile, here’s the scoop: Will Smith as the lead in The Legends of Cain a re-telling of Genesis’ story of the first kids, …
Ok, there are probably a lot of problems with angels, but consider this: If an angel steps in to change the course of events to benefit a person, there may be a downside for someone else. What should we do with that? Related, what about the person who simply is not helped by an angel …
I’m really excited about my new project, which has me thinking about all things paranormal. Turns out, they’re all around us — almost, well, normal. The Bible is one source for images and ideas, but the appeal (some would say awareness) seems basic to our humanity. If we don’t believe, exactly, we are nevertheless captivated and strangely affected by the supernatural. There’s …
There’s Twilight of course, and True Blood, and going back in time a little, there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all those Anne Rice novels. I shouldn’t have been surprised to stumble on two more that feature vampires front and center — Moonlight and The Gates. You’d have to live under a rock in …
There’s something surreal about walking across the great plaza of the Louvre, riding the escalators under the modern glass pyramid, and coming face-to-face with Baal, etched in limestone some 3,500 years ago. That famous stela, discovered at the ancient city of Ugarit (now Syria’s Ras Shamra), depicts the storm god whose name became synonymous with wrongful worship …
“Yuck-o and the Fiery Serpent” sounds like a YA short story or moralistic tale. It is neither. Instead, it’s how anyone might react to reading about a particularly awful parasite called the guinea worm. Because it burns like hell on its way out, it shares description as a “fiery serpent” with strange biblical creatures. I’ll spare you the details …
Out of the heaps of snow we’ve been getting lately, someone in my neighborhood has fashioned a great big Cupid in her front yard…or is it a cherub? Shoot, is Cupid himself some kind of cherub? I stood contemplating those questions for a minute or so until my dog started snuffling about at the smooshed …
