Blue Cord

The class I am teaching this semester is a one semester introduction to the Bible. I have always found it hard to teach the Bible in one year, but cramming it into one semester is just nuts. In order to get everything in, I have to teach the patriarchs in just one session. That session happened to be today. Ordinarily I would have 65 minutes per class. But today is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, so all of our classes have been shortened to 50 minutes. Poor Isaac only got mentioned in one PowerPoint slide!

Just when I thought my treatment of the patriarchs couldn’t get any more compressed than it already was . . .

On the other hand, I did coin the adjective “birthrightalicious” to refer to the soup Jacob gave to Esau for his birthright, so the day is not a total loss.

N.B. The following review contains no spoilers, so you may read it without learning anything about the plot that will distract from your initial viewing.

I took in a matinée showing of Cloverfield this afternoon. One of the nice things about living in Iowa is the fact that a matinée costs only $4.00, about a third of what a regular priced ticket goes for in Massachusetts.

I went to see the film in part because I love a good sci–fi horror film.¹ Having seen Alien vs. Predator: Requiem last week — which was almost as bad as the first Alien vs. Predator film — I was hoping for more from Cloverfield.² Like Chris Heard, however, I also went to see it because I knew they would be showing a trailer for the forthcoming Star Trek film.

Cloverfield does not disappoint. It has elements from the classic sci–fi horror genre, particularly the Godzilla films and War of the Worlds. Like the latter, it is told from the point of view of a civilian who is only seeing part of the larger picture.³ You never fully find out what is going on or the origins of whatever is terrorizing the city, and there are things that happen to some of the characters that are never fully explained due to the fog of war.

Unlike a lot of sci–fi horror, Cloverfield does not depend on things jumping out at you unexpectedly. I have always found that to be a rather amateurish way of scaring the audience, and Cloverfield makes only minor use of it. The plot moves nicely from action sequences to scenes focused only on the human characters. The director recognizes something that horror films often overlook: the audience needs to care about the characters. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem centers around too many human characters, so you never connect with any of them. When the aliens catch up with them, you don’t care if they live or die (which is good, because you know they are going to die in fun ways). In Cloverfield, we see enough of the main characters to develop an attachment. They come across as fully developed people instead of cannon fodder.

One slightly bothersome yet critical aspect of the film is that it is set up to be video footage taken by one of the main characters. This vomit–inducing cinematography — popularized by The Blair Witch Project — made me a bit leery of the film. It turned out not to be as distracting as I feared. In some ways, it serves as a commentary on our wired lives in which everything has to be documented on video. The director (J.J. Abrams of Lost and Alias) is obviously aware of this. In a wonderfully done scene, when the Whatever–The–Hell–It–Is tosses the head of the Statue of Liberty down the street,⁴ the people do not turn and run away. Instead, a multitude of them pull out their cell phones and began taking pictures of the head. This and a few other humorous moment are scattered throughout the film, and elevate what could have been a B+ monster movie to A– status.

1. I don’t really care for non–sci–fi horror, with the exception of the Silence of the Lambs films. [back]
2. One problem I had with the Alien vs. Predator movies was that is was a combination of two series: Alien, which I liked, and Predator, which I didn’t. Because of this, I kept wanting the Aliens to win, even though the film is set up in such a way that you are supposed to be rooting for the Predator. [back]
3. In fact, it is a more fitting tribute to that style of storytelling than Tom Cruise’s mediocre remake of War of the Worlds. [back]
4. A tribute to Escape from New York. [back]

The Jerusalem Post reported last Wednesday that Eilat Mazar has found a new seal in Jerusalem. She dates the seal to 538–445. Although the Post does not explain her reasons for this date, it is presumably based on the stratum in which the seal was found.

Mazar reads the name on the inscription as Temech and connects it with a family mentioned in Nehemiah 7:55. But as several others have pointed out, she is reading the inscription backwards. Seal engravers normally wrote in mirror image, because they wanted the seal to leave a positive image when pressed into clay. A more likely reading is Shelomith, a name found in Ezra 8:10. Of course, the fact that both names appear in the Bible tell us nothing about the seal except that it contains a known name. There is no reason that the person on the seal has to be someone mentioned in the Bible.

Even if it is someone named in the Bible, Mazar overstates the importance of this find. She says,

The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archaeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible. . . . One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find.

This seal does nothing to establish the credibility of the Bible. Even if it shows that the Shelomith in Ezra 8:10 (or the Temech in Nehemiah 7:55) were actual people, this is not exactly something that anyone has doubted. But just because the Bible is accurate with regards to post–exilic names does not mean that it is accurate in other respects. One would have thought that by now we would have moved away from trying to “prove” the Bible through archaeology. After all, the biblical archaoelogy movement ended a couple of decades ago.

For fuller discussions of the seal, please see Chris Heard’s post at Higgaion and Jim West’s discussion on his eponymous blog.

It just came to my attention today that two Old Testament scholars have passed away recently.

Bernhard Anderson passed away on December 26, 2007. I never had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Anderson, but I have used his Understanding the Old Testament when I have taught the Old Testament on several occasions. The fact that this book is now in its sixth edition is a tribute to his scholarship and his ability to teach. The SBL has his obituary up on its website.

Steve Cook reports that Lansing Hicks has died as well (either yesterday or today) on January 14. Dr. Hicks was Professor of Old Testament at Berkeley Divinity School and Yale Divinity School (after Berkeley moved to Yale). Although he was retired by the time I got to YDS, Dr. Hicks was still there from time to time and I had a chance to chat with him on several occasions. For more information from Steve Cook (one of Dr. Hicks’s students), please visit Biblische Ausbildung.

May light perpetual shine upon them.

As a whole, I am not impressed with the level of customer service offered by the majority of companies these days. Very rarely do I find companies to be responsive to their customers needs after the sale. Most offer warranties on their products, but getting service under those warranties is usually a hassle. Often, it is more trouble than it is worth.

I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, at the customer service I received from Jabra. I am not one to advertise for companies, but when they are as attentive as Jabra was, I think they deserve some praise.

Here is what happened. Five months ago, I purchased a new phone. Because it was Bluetooth enabled, I thought I would buy a headset to go with it. Because Jabra was the cheapest, I bought their bottom–of–the–line–model. After four month, however, the ear clip had broken. There were no extras included in the original box, so I went to the Jabra website to order new ones. There were none to be found for my model. So, I filled out an on–line help form asking where I could purchase new ones. Give the way most on–line help forms work, I didn’t expect to receive a reply that would actually be helpful.

To my surprise, I not only received a response from an actual person (as opposed to an auto responder); they also told me that if I would send them my address they would send me more ear clips free! Yesterday, a package arrived from Jabra with two new ear clips in it.

Most companies can make a decent product, so I primarily choose stores and products based on their customer service. Given my experience with Jabra, I will be shopping with them next time I need an earpiece.