let me hear your bible talk.

the famous 15th century cloistered reflective st. olivia de newton of the john once wrote, in what is widely considered to be her most plaintive and delightfully overt treatise, these simple lines: “i want to get biblical, let's get into biblical – your bible talk, let me hear your bible talk.”

now then.

i was reading the bible yesterday. going back to this same passage that has kept bound me to it for the past month, trying to qualify it in a way that allows for enough understanding that i can absorb it and go on. and i was getting there – i’d just decided to draw out a fabulously relevant parallel between elisha and tony montana, pacino’s character in scarface – when i got buried beneath these unwanted considerations about the way the story is told. about the language. what happened was i found myself thinking: we have the past as it is given to us. smacks of maxim, i realize, but consider it. in the case of the bible, particularly the old testament: just the way people described each other had an almost unknowable matter-of-factness, as when the king of samaria, in 2 kings 1, asks his messengers “what kind of man” had just predicted his death to them, they replied that elijah “was a hairy man and had a leather belt around his waist.” and dude, that is just so sweet. not “he seemed vengeful” or “he had the fire of god in his eyes” or even “he was this crazy-lookin’ mo-foh, and i mean crazy crazy,” but “he had a garment of hair and a large belt.”

but i don’t even know if that’s a halfway worthy point. because yes, our understanding of the way life happened clear back then – of what consitituted the surprising, the out-of-norm – is drawn by how the noteworthy is described. and, one thing about the bible, sometimes the parallels between then and now are really obvious. like in 2 kings, when it says that “moab rebelled against israel. now ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in samaria and injured himself. so he sent messengers.” right, of course he did. and is that really so different? just one day ago i got an email from my good friend dalton at 6:03am, which said, “sump pump gave out in the night. went down to get the baby and stepped in ankle deep water throughout the basement. so i sent messengers.”