Once Upon a Dissertation: Israel as the "Inheritence" of the LORD in Deut 32:8-9

Once upon a time, a boy living in New York City submitted a proposal for a PhD dissertation. The dissertation was never completed, and so the degree never won ... but this is a snapshot of how the boy saw the project as he wandered aimlessly west out of the big city.

Intro 
The project was to examine a metaphor used in Deuteronomy 32:8-9 (part of Deut 32 as a whole, which is a section known as the "Song of Moses"), where Israel is referred to as the "inheritance" of the LORD. The word can also mean "allotment." In its literal use, it is a term for physical material being divided among people, but I will go into more detail on that below. For here, what I will say is that the basic idea of the metaphor is that, just as something physical like land or other property can be divided into parcels, the world could be divided into different nations. Among all these nations, the one that belonged to LORD was Israel, also referred to as Jacob, the collective entity of the twelve tribes descended from Jacob the patriarch.

The resulting idea for this religious context (Israel's and Jewish thought on its place in the world of other nations and on its the relationship to LORD, especially what is constitutive of that relationship) is that Israel is "elect." Among all the nations of the world, Israel has a special relationship with the LORD.

I am discussing things in a certain order here. I am not going to give the central thesis here and risk a particular temptation I have to go on digressions by trying to work everything into the key thesis now, pretty much writing the whole thing in the introduction, but in a very jumbled manner. I am, instead, going to give the central thesis after I have built up to it by describing central elements systematically. The central thesis is labeled below if one wants to go see it now, if it makes it easier to read the elements if you know what they are leading to. This is just how I have to write it to stay as organized as I can (which is sometimes not too organized).


Paul Ricoeur's Literary Theory as the Conceptual Rurbic
One can look up Ricoeur on one's own to get a more detailed overview (herafter in this post I may just refer to him as "R." for ease in writing). He was a French philosopher in the 20th century. I read all 400 pages of his work, "The Rule of Metaphor" (French= The Life of Metaphor), for my PhD comprehensive exams. It is dense and loaded. His thought, in two instances, was to be the conceptual framework for my examination of the metaphor in Deut 32:8-9.

Ricoeur on Metaphor:
The first aspect of his thought to be used was his work on metaphor. There is way too much of it to give even an overall glance (he does a very thorough overview of the history of thinking about metaphor, from Aristotle up through the 20th century, but he gives it across the whole of his book, not just as an introduction, and each thinker he examines provides a distinctive piece of his own theory of how metaphor operates). But the key aspect of metaphor for the dissertation project was that he talked about metaphor as producing new meaning. This means that it does not just convey something already conceived of the thing spoken of through metaphor (in this case Israel), but actually generates new ideas about it.

Think about the common phrase of "water under the bridge," which is metaphorical in nature, even if it has been used so often that we forget it is a metaphor. (This is actually the nature of our language - it all originally starts off in metaphor, and then the metaphors "die" by becoming so common we no longer realize them as metaphors; the elements become parts of dictionary definitions - they become "lexicalized.") What people usually mean by "water under the bridge" is that the things of the past have gone by and are no longer present to irritate relationships. But people don't think that metaphor all the way through when they use it. Literal water under literal bridges takes soil with it, which is called erosion.  So, while the issues have been carried away by the flow of time like water, they have also impacted the relationship negatively. When we use the metaphor, we usually think of only the first aspect (passing, no longer present), but we have opened the door for all the possible aspects of the literal situation that could be applied, opened our expression to a meaning we did not intend, a new meaning.

Ricoeur's "Worlds" around the Text
This second tenet of Ricoeur's thought does not come from The Rule of Metaphor, but form other of his works. Rather than me piecing them together here, it is easier to send a reader to Walter Breugemann's Theology of the Old Testament, in the Intro, on pp 57-58, where he gives a brief overview. There, he describes R.'s concept of there being, for every text (meaning every utterance or communication), a world "behind" the text and a world "in front of" the text, with the world "of" the text being the connector. Hopefully the what is meant by the world in front and the world behind will be come clearer s I describe what they are in this instance, Deut 32:8-9.

R. said two main things (at least main for this discussion): (1) The world behind the text has been largely lost, or at least the reader cannot really connect with it, and (2) The consequence of 1 is that the world in front of the text is the real world for the reader ... in the case of metaphor (or at least this is my own interpretation of his thought), the world of the new meaning is the only real world for the reader. I don't know that I agree with him on the extent to which the world behind the text is lost (I was, after all, in Biblical Studies, a field which is historical in nature and largely concerned with retrieving the world behind the text), but for the dissertation, the focus was on the new idea that was the literary world in front of the text created by the metaphor as created by the historical world in front of the text, those reading it and receiving the meaning in their own historical religious world.

The basic gist of the project was to say that the world behind the text had been explored very thoroughly. While the work was valuable in and of itself, I felt like those projects had obscured working on the world in front of the text.

(At the time of my proposal, and even at the time I stopped working on the dissertation, I don't think I had incorporated this second element from Ricoeur. If I had, this might be being written in a different venue ... but who knows)

The World Behind This Text

The metaphor of Deut 32:8-9 had a background. The verses probably had a background further back than their being inserted into the Song of Moses (chapter 32 as a whole), and thus older than the insertion of the song in the book (actually in the work known as the Deuteronomistic History [the DH, for short], which, according to the DH theory, was originally a single work made up of Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings, with Deuteronomy at the beginning as a sort of introduction containing the key concepts for interpreting the rest - the division into "books" with these names was later, rather than the work being a compilation of boos that already existed).

The verses were borrowed form a polytheistic context (although not used in a polytheistic emphasis now that they were inserted into the Song and the larger work, which is why I was using R. for metaphor, because he focused on a new meaning ... the author's of the song were distinctly working contra polytheistic cultures). Deut 32:8-9 does not say just that the world can be thought of as divided into nations; it says that it actually had been divided thus, with each nation being given to a particular "son of god/s" ... in other words, each god got a nation. My initial formulation of my thesis was that I wanted to loosen the hold of a long standing debate over exactly where the authors (or the compilers who inserted the verses into the song) fell on the spectrum between ploytheism and monotheism.

The Term Itself
If the polytheistic background of those two verses was a first element in the "world behind the text," a second was the literal uses of the term itself ("inheritance/allotment," in Hebrew, nachalah) before the writing and reading the metaphor in Deut 32. The term had often been taken by scholars to be one of landed inheritance: the estate of a patriarch, upon his death, was divided between his heirs, one portion going to each (there are myths in the Ancient Near East of the world being originally divided among the gods this way; I mean actual myths we know of from actual cultures, not just the implication of these two verses).

Scholars usually took perpetual inheritance (being passed down from the heir to his own heirs) as a key idea in the term, but I began to sort of agree with the American scholar who had, in his own dissertation, done the most extensive study I had seen of the term. He said that it did not have to be just land and that it did not have to be division among familial heirs (and that the idea of perpetual inheritance was relatively late in the development of the term). It could be, according to him, any property divided by a superior for dispersal among his inferiors For instance (and an aspect very fitting for the particular Hebrew Bible material I was studying), it could be the spoils of war (land, livestock, money, and even, in those cultures, slaves and servants, all of it) divided by a conquering king among his generals who participated in the conquest, perhaps as reward for their role (although not necessarily).

The Allotments of the Then-Known World as the "world behind the text"
A further element from the world behind the text was dividings of the known world other than an original allotment among the gods. The idea of scholars who did this work was that the metaphor had behind it thoughts about particular divisions of empire territories by super-powers in that time, that it was sort of "code" for the world political situation at the time of the author. Which one a given scholar might say was behind it depended on what time period the scholar thinks the composition (and insertion into the Song and the DH) happened. One, who proposed an early date, thought that it was really about the division Assyria made of its territories. Another, who advocated a later date, thought its secret referent was the division of the Persian empire.

An important one was on a smaller scale, all the more important to my study because of the particular smaller scale. It was based on the theory that the conquest narratives I will describe in a little bit were formed together as a work (the DH) under the reign of King Josiah of Jerusalem in the kingdom of Judah, the southern kingdom when the kingdom of the people divided into two, a north and south. The theory is that the work described an original united kingdom because Josiah wanted to claim the land of the northern kingdom after it had been wiped out by the Assyrians, so the people who put it together (the literary work ... out of a larger body of sources they had inherited ... sort of their religious library) made a picture of the whole land being divided among the people at the time of the conquest. In other words, the original twelve-tribe division of the land was a retro-jection. But the most important point was that the model they used (according to this theory) was the real-world, present (at the time of Josiah) division of the Kingdom of Judah into twelve provinces ... the authors sort of projected that allotment schema onto a larger land that included both kingdoms (that's this theory anyway).

The World Immediately in Fronto f the Text 

My own work (or at least the work I proposed to do), was to focus on what the metaphor in Deut 32:8-9 made of all this in its present context. What did it mean for those reading it in the religious context of hearing an authoritative text talk about their own history as a religious people?

The DH
The first thing that has to be kept in mind is that those listeners were not hearing Deut 32 in isolation. Whether or not the DH theory (formulated by Martin Noth in the mid 20th century) was accurate, both that audience and all those down through the ages after heard the Song and the whole book of Deuteronomy as coming right before, and very much preluding, the people's entrance into and taking of the Promised Land, Canaan (the book is staged as one long speech by Moses on the verge of entering the land). The entrance and taking of the land is called the "Conquest narratives." And a central part of these narratives was that the land was divided among the twelve tribes in a particular way, a way "given" by the LORD by casting lots before the Tabernacle tent. Each tribe's portion was a nachalah, the same term used in Deut 32:8-9 to describe Israel as the LORD's "inheritance."

Thus, my theory was going to say that, in the world immediately in front of the text, all those repetitions of this tribe's and that tribe's and the other tribe's 'inheritances' (actually, two terms were used in Deut 32:8-9, both appearing heavily in the conquest narratives as well) would feed back into the metaphorical use of the term in Deut 32:8-9 to describe Israel's special relationship, election, with the LORD.

These texts were not read the way we read novels on a first read, where you can say, "well, yea, it has all those connotations when you get to those later parts, but you don't know that when you hear it earlier in the book." They were read the way we re-read a novel and say "Ahhhhhh, I see what that's eventually about now - the author foreshadowed it," and that changes what you see as the "meaning" even in the first instance. These texts were read again and again and again and again ... they were religious texts.

As a side note, this is where that scholar who said that it didn't have to be just land allotted or just familial recipients was going to come in handy. Indeed, the main material is land in the DH, and Israel is definitely conceived of as family. But this guy (Harold Forshey, who did his diss at Harvard in 1971 ... the year I was born) demonstrated a lot of contexts in historical records of nearby cultures in the Ancient Near East where spoils of war were divided among generals in the conquering army by the conquering king in texts describing those events using cognates (same word, different but close language, maybe some spelling differences) of the Hebrew term I was working ... which is pretty much the model into which the conquest, possession, and division narratives in the DH fit. Joshua was a military commander, and the people had to fight the former inhabitants for the land.

According to Forshey, the idea that an "inheritance" or allotment was to be handed down faithfully (a perpetual, trans-generational inheritance) was a result of the type of thing I am about to describe, not an original part of the meaning of the word.

The Central Thesis: The Land

So, what is the resultant "new meaning" I proposed? It goes back to the idea that a key way in which the LORD made Israel his special nation (a key constitutive element of the people as the unique people of the LORD, to use more academic lingo) was by giving them the land of Canaan. My theory said that it goes further than that. The use of the term metaphorically (which is poetic) would connect with all those descriptions of literal land being apportioned. The resulting idea would be that it wasn't just the giving of the land as a whole that constituted the people as the LORD's people; it was the giving of the land as apportioned in a particular way by the LORD (by casting lots before the holy Tabernacle).

For this reason, for the tribes to swap any land back and forth between them would be, in a way, to deny their very creation as the people of the LORD.

The World Further in Front:

Dissertations are lengthy things and need to be very thorough. I needed to work through all of the material in the Hebrew Bible, at varying levels, that used this term. But the one that would form the most central part of my thesis was the one that actually said, in actual legal material, that the tribes could not swap land between them (there is a lot of variance in the actualities behind this statement; I am simplifying a bit).

Some Background on Hebrew Bible Biblical Studies
The set of core theories that one has to learn in order to understand what was going to be said concern scholarship's picture of how the whole Hebrew Bible canon came into being. The longtime predominant theory (on which there is a consensus on the broader outline), is that the "Deuternomistic" corpus was the first big thing (Deut, Josh, Judges, 1-2 Sam, 1-2 Kings). Books like Jeremiah and some parts of the other prophets were in nascent stages at the time, but the first big thing was the DH. Then, after the Exile (which began in 587 when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and took the people captive), an author known as the Priestly author came along and put Genesis - Numbers together from a bunch of different sources and put that "tetrateuch" (book made of 4 books) in front of the DH, made Deuternomy to be the culmination of that unit, rather than primarily the intro to the DH, and gave us our present "Pentateuch" (book made of 5 books) - the Torah, the central and first section of the Hebrew/Jewish Bible.

The Book of Numbers
The book of Numbers is part of that tetrateuch and is about the events in the time between when, after the Exodus, the people got to Mount Sinai and the time when they reached the boarders of Canaan the second time and got ready to really go in. It contains material about the projected divisions of the land after entry and conquest.  There are stories of proposed swaps, with Moses telling them it is not allowed. They even have to make some special provisions because of some women who inherit and then marry into another tribe.

So, basically, at a later date than the composition of Deut 32:8-9, it's inclusion into the Song, and the Song's inclusion into the Deuteronomistic corpus, these Priestly/Legal writers (authorized and authoritative compilers of the book using sources that had been handed down for generations in the religion) came along and codified this rule of not passing land allotments among the tribes. This would support the position that the idea of a prohibition had been around for a long time, and this in turn would support the idea that there was a reason why it was prohibited: because the way the land was given, as divided in a particular way among the tribes, was part of the very constitution of the people as the people of the LORD.

My thesis was to be that the way the meaning got there in the first place was through the conjunction of the metaphor in Deut 32:8-9 and all the repetitions of the literal use of the term for dividing the land in the conquest narratives.

A Late Development
The Masoretic Text (MT) of the Hebrew Bible actually does not use "sons of god"; it uses "sons of Israel." However, our main witness of the MT is Codex Lenigradensis, a text from around 1000 AD/CE. The Greek Septuagint (LXX) version has "sons of god," and we have much older witnesses of this text. We also have the Qumran material (the "Dead Sea Scrolls," dated to around the time of Christ), in which it is "sons of god." So, the more original reading is that of the LXX and Qumran.

The interesting question is why it was changed somewhere in the MT traditions. A first obvious reason is that later interpreters handling the transmission of the text wanted to avoid any confusion as to whether this passage supported polytheism. They would have assumed (correctly) that it did not, in the way in which it was used in the passage, support polytheism, but there might have also been a need seen for a slight redaction of terminology to make sure there was no confusion on that issue.

However, the change also provides another possible insight. Perhaps it seemed a more natural and less forced shift because the significance of the passage for them had always been connected with a divisioning according to the sons of Israel (the tribes descended from the twelve sons of Jacob/Israel). Perhaps election from among the nations of the world, as the special people of the LORD, was always connected with the giving of the land precisely as apportioned in a certain way by the LORD.

The Role of the World Behind for the World in Front
 I said above that I am cautious about neglecting the word behind the text, even though I think a corrective is often needed to a myopic preoccupation with historical detail for historical detail's sake. But language does not come from nowhere, including allusions. Even in a more radical reader response criticism, the reader has to have something to which to respond.

Concerning Deut 32:8-9, the "world behind the text" groundwork that some scholars did on the possibilities that the hidden referent of the passage was actual empiric divisions of territory (Assyria and Persia) is useful. It shows that geo-political apportioning was a prominent association for the terms used in the metaphor. This supports the idea that, when a religious audience were to hear these terms (in a "world in front of the text"), one of the immediate associations opened up for that audience as a possibility of meaning would be a real geo-political apportioning of land ... at least conceived of as real by the conquest narratives in the DH.

The Point of Insertion
I just described several later stages in the proposed development of the concept: the crafting of the legal material in the Pentateuch and the redaction of Deut 32:8-9 in the MT to read  "sons of Israel." But the real focus of the dissertation was to be the presence of the concept in the earlier D material:  the verses as part of the book of Deuteronomy and their connection with the conquest narratives in the Deuteronomistic History. The verses were taken to be rather old, drawn from polytheistic narratives preexisting the Song of Moses and inserted into it. The proposed order of events was as follows: The verses were inserted into the Song and then the song was inserted into the D corpus. My contention was that, in order for the metaphor to work as I would describe, the insertion of the Song had to be later, but not by much, than the formation of the D corpus, the DH with some shorter core of the book of Deuteronomy as a prologue.

(Excursus: Jules Wellhausen was the most prominent advocate [possibly the original one to come up with it, but I would have to look that up] of the theory that Deut 12-26 was the original law code [DL], pre-existing the DH and used as a interpretive key in its formation. To sum up a combination of several theories: the DL may have been compiled in the southern kingdom, Judah, during the reign of Hezekiah by a prophetic circle that came to the south immediately preceding the fall of the northern kingdom to Assyria, having accurately guessed at that kingdom's fate. Then, under the reign of Manasseh [which was later characterized by the DH as apostate], the book was hidden in the Temple for safe keeping and the prophetic circle went underground.When Josiah began his reign, found the book in the Temple, and instituted his reforms [possibly coinciding with and connected with his geo-political aspirations regarding reclaiming the northern territory], the immediate descendants of the prophetic circle reemerged and crafted the DH, with the DL as a prologue and interpretive key. This was a first edition, or redaction, that ended with the Josianic reform, portraying him as the greatest of the kings, the one who fully lived up to the the expectations of the king described in Deuteronomy [the only one to receive the full accolade conforming to the Shema in Deut 6, and bookended with Joshua and the most like him as a military leader who was also religiously faithful]. A second edition was then done by the further descendents of the prophetic circle [possibly connected now with the descendents of the disciples of Jeremiah] either in the exile or immediately after it, in which the basic changes were the insertion of the descriptions of the apostasy of Manasseh and the insertion of the last four kings, following Josiah, as bad kings to explain the exile. If Josiah was so obedient and such a hero, the descendants asked, why did God send the kingdom into exile as a punishment? Their answer was that, while Josiah was great, he could not undo the negative effect of Manasseh's apostasy, and the kingdom slipped back into errant ways with the four kings after Josiah, necessitating the punishment of exile.)

This present section of this presentation of the project is the most difficult to pin down. This is the case on at least two levels. The first is what the reading requires in order for the metaphor to work thus on a mechanical level, or rather why it requires it. My idea, as stated, was that the insertion of the Song had to be not long after the formation of the DH. In order for the metaphor to rely on the conquest narratives for its meaning, the Song into which it had been inserted had to be itself inserted into the larger whole at a point when those narratives were already in place to guide that meaning. The one inserting the Song with the verses had to be doing so with an eye to those narratives and their role in the DH.

However, the second level is probably the deeper one for this project as one done by myself. My director once asked why the point of insertion was so important, why I was focusing energy on it (she was not necessarily challenging it, I do not think, but rather trying to draw out the reasons and what role they played in my concept of the project). I have come to the conclusion that the real issue for me was my own commitment to a particular theory of Inspiration. This section is difficult to write because I have not fully worked out what that theory is, but I do believe my own motivation in writing is slightly different than that of many scholars whom I was studying, even if the only difference is that it is at level closer to conscious intention in my own project (although I do suspect some more fundamental differences theologically and philosophically).

More traditional language models of Inspiration appeal to (or at least are interpreted by some more conservative modern scholars as doing so) the idea of a singular personage as the author whose intentions define, or rather reveal, the divinely inspired content. I do not think that I am in agreement with this concept (I am not sure that the modern conservative interpretations accurately represent the actual traditional models that I hold to be normative when defined in Catholic magisterial teaching - in fact, I distinctly doubt it). But I also cannot accept a total removal of the concern for the content of divine communication (in short, the whole question of Inspiration) from the study of these materials, as it seems to me like some modern exegesis does, treating the investigation only as uncovering a purely human evolution of religious thought. I can see largely bracketing the question of Inspiration in order to focus on the human "author" content on its own ground (actually I think that it is necessary to do so in order to pay full attention to the human side of the equation, as I think is demanded by a fully Incarnational model of Inspiration ... but that position also needs much clarification that I do not have the space for here, even were I totally clear in my own thinking about it, which I am not), but I also think an openness and consideration must be given to whether and when the content of the historical critical investigation might impact the theory of revelation.

While I do not think I can agree with a "single author" locus of Inspiration (at least in the simplistic forms sometimes offered by a "conservative" interpretation of magisterial teaching on Inspiration ... and it may be that those teachings draw differences between the process by which Inspiration of the Old Testament and New Testament happened, differences not accounted for by such "conservative" interpretations of the teachings, just as some conservative scholars working to reconcile those teachings with a positive role for the Historical Critical Method read them as differentiating between the modes of historicity of the OT, on the one hand, and the NT, on the other), I do feel a need to find some acceptable model of Inspiration that accommodates critical theories of multiple sources and redactional history. Such a theory as I seek, while not placing the locus of Inspiration in a single author, would provide some locus in the human process at which Inspiration occurs. For this project, I think I was looking to place that locus in the redactor who inserted the Song in the D material and intended the metaphor with the meaning I was proposing. For my religious/theological commitments, this "author" or series of "authors" would need to somehow have institutionally guaranteed authority, an authority based in and concretely passed down from a unique revelation to Moses on Sinai (necessitating a belief in a historical Moses, even though there may be significant clarifications needed in whether or not we judge the "historicity" of the biblical accounts by the modern scientific standards of "historicity").

I am not saying here that my theory (even if I could pin it down further right now) would be right and defensible either philosophically or theologically in general, or in accordance with Catholic magisterial teaching. I am mainly trying to find clarity on how my concern for this was the real source of my concern for pinning down the point at which the Song was inserted into the D corpus relative to the compiling and redacting of the conquest narratives into a coherent whole narrative.

Conclusion
So, there you have it. I don't have anything else to say in wrapping it up, really. Except maybe that I kind of wish I had made it further in seeing if it was a viable thesis. I mainly wrote this for my own edification, to set it down in some complete, even if very abbreviated, form, since I spent a few years pouring energy into thinking about it. Who knows, maybe I wrote it as closure. But it feels good to have written it. Maybe I wrote it as a "once and future" kind of thing ... a boy can dream.

Arnofsky's Pi afterthought: Economics

It's going on 5 am and I haven't been able to sleep ... so might as well write and amp the hypomanic thought patterns up a little more so I really can't sleep lol

But, seriously, speaking of hypomania and over the top ... I think I have written on Arnofsky's Pi here before. If I haven't I will have to do that ... but I think I did when I wrote about the Person of Interest episode that used Pi.

Anyway, here is the thought I had while playing text-twist and solitaire trying to get sleepy:

The number is all these different things: the silicon identity of a nascent and still-born AI, the 216 digit name of G-d embedded in the Torah, and the secret to figuring out and picking the stock market. But I think it is interesting to ask which of them came first.

The stock market did. That is Max's project that led to the whole thing. So, what is the stock market? It's all about economics. I'm sure people much more erudite than I will ever be able to become in my life can say many things and make many clarifications about whether it's a cause of economic movements, or a gauge, or location of the movements etc. But, one way or another, it's about economics.

So, what is economics? Is it just "money"? What is money? Is it gold or minted dollars or bit coins or whatever? Money has only ever been a stand in for power ... the ability to acquire what you want or need. That's why I always laugh when people talk about those who seek only money and power, because they're really the same thing. So, is this post a ranting moralistic diatribe about power-hungry people, or how the search for power always leads to pain (Max's drill to the head etc)? No.

Let's examine it from another angle - the etymological angle. "Economic" comes from two Greek words: "oikos" (house) and "nomos" (law). So, it is "household law" (I got this from a professor while I was working on my MA). It's how things work in our day to day lives really, if you take the "house" as the whole society/civilaztion/culture/fill in the blank. It's the system of how we leverage what we have to get what we need to survive (whether physical survival by getting food, or emotional survival by observing or participating in the arts, what have you).

My main point of interest is that the whole thing in Pi begins with trying to figure out this practical-level system of how people use what they have to go about getting what they need (or think they need etc) to live, which is what economics really is. Max's search begins with the practical.

We live day to day doing what we do without really thinking about it that much on the theoretical level, how the system all really works in its interconnected complexity (a butterfly farts in Tanzania and it makes my team lose Sunday's game, that sort of interconnectedness thing). BUT, that is a survival mechanism. If we start to think too much about it on the meta-level like Max does, it can crush us, as it does him.

Just a thought. I don't know if it means anything. I guess it could be just a word of caution, or maybe a pet peeve being voiced about people praising understanding too much, and if some of us who have some hypomanic tendencies and feel a bit of a tug sometimes in the direction of Max and John Nash (think of that scene in Beautiful Mind where the numbers start coming of the screen at him), people sometimes act like we're crazy, maybe even immoral (with tropes that ease the mind, like how "we" are truly virtuous for seeking understanding, versus "they" who do not etc ... the same thing can happen with "honesty" - too much honesty can kill you because your own mind is actually very hard to understand, so it can become debilitating to try too hard to understand enough of it to be "honest" about what you're thinking, and then guilt complex ensues from feeling like a fraud ... these are real experiences for some phobics and anxiety patients who have gone un-counseled in a religious setting that offers only moral categories for interpretation).

Keep in mind that when I speak of understanding, I am thinking in terms of the thought of Paul Ricouer, who said that we exist in continual flux between the two poles of understanding and explanation. Understanding is "getting it" on an intuitive level, what the Greeks called "nous" (one immediate vision). Explanation is trying to communicate it discursively, scientifically. To see the difference, think about a joke ... you get the joke, but when you try to explain it, it becomes way less funny, because you have moved away from understanding, from the experience of "getting it."

I've sometimes thought of this "arc" Ricoeur talks about in terms of language - poetic language is understanding and scientific language is explanation. We always begin with poetic language (all the great epics are in verse, the Hebrew Bible is the first place we really find a development of religious prose). But we always strive towards scientific language to try to communicate ... an objective medium by which to be sure that the other person has "gotten it" too. And we always gravitate back to poetic language because the scientific has to have something to describe.

I guess what popped into my head tonight (or this morning now, or whatever time it is) was two-fold. The first thing is that the drive towards scientific language is a survival instinct. The second is that one of the ways too much understanding kills is by solipsism. Too much staying inside the private languages of one's own act of understanding without making the attempt at communication through explanation kills one. We see this in Max going nuts and the answers offered by those around him. Devi (the really cute mid-eastern neighbor woman) tells him he needs to get out more. Sol tells him to take a bath, like the Archimedes - who finally listened to his wife.

Anyway, there you have it, for what it's worth ... maybe a PB and J will help me sleep.

(Republish) Story Time: Chronos and Kairos in Harry Potter

 ‘Story Time:’ Chronos and Kairos in Harry Potter

(this is a post I believe I first did on www.mugglematters.com. I do know that I shared this version on www.hogwartsrofessor.com, regardless of whether edited from a muggle matters post or written fresh. I'm putting it up here just to have more things up here, since it where I am writing my ramblings more recently and in case it interests any who stumble on this blog for other pieces, and might like this one, but who are not likely to stumble on it at either of the two other locations).

 

 

I have a joke that when I am not doing much and a friend asks what I am up to, I reply that I am busy committing “chrono-cide” … just killing time. “Chronos” is one of two Greek words for time. It means “clock time,” the simple material succession of events. The other Greek term for “time” is “kairos.” This is the term for “special time,” unique moments. In this post I will discuss narrative in Harry Potter (and in general) as an intersection, and special relation, between these two concepts of time. In short I will say that Harry Potter as “story time” is part of what attracts us so much to the works.

In Genesis 1:14 kairos is translated “seasons” and coupled with “signs.” There is a world of significance (pardon the pun) that could be drawn from this single verse concerning kairos itself. For instance, “signs” is the same Greek word in the Septuagint version (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was authoritative for Christianity, and even for most of Judaism at the time of Christ), as is used in the New Testament Gospels for the miracles of Christ. But for here what is important to note is that in the Hebrew Bible kairos is the word for “loaded” or special time, such as liturgical festivals – times that are packed to overflowing with the reality and meaning of religious interaction with the divine, or at least meanings that go beyond the merely material (when we think of Christmas and Advent, we mean much more than simply four weeks in December every year). In the sense of literature in general, I would say kairos describes the “meaning” of a work.

(But just as a taste of the riches of Potter-connections I must pass by to stay focused, the Greek “seimeia” for “signs” is where we get the word “semiology” for language as a system of signs. But it is also used in medieval debates on theology, philosophy and science, for the “semiological” side of astrology – basically “signs” in the sense of divination.)

The other, and most important, reason that I begin with Gen 1:14 is that “signs and seasons (kairous)” is followed by “days and years,” terms of chronological time. My definition of “narrative” (or simply “story”) is that it is a “kairotic chronology,” a series, or chronology, of loaded events (with meaning), in which not only the moments as individual events are loaded, but also the plot movement between them, the chronology itself. In this verse of Genesis we see chronos (days and years) subjected to kairos (signs and seasons).

But there is a further part to my definition of narrative: chronos is not only subjected to kairos … it always breaks under its weight. I use the term “weight” and the image of breaking under it because of the particular discipline I work in academically, Hebrew Bible. The term for the “Glory of the Lord” that is used in the Pentateuch for theophanies such as the cloud and pillar connected with the Tabernacle comes from the Hebrew verb that literally means “to be heavy.” I find it particularly apt because the central examples of chronos breaking under kairos, or the meaning of the events/plot/work, that I will be drawing from Harry Potter come from Goblet of Fire, a book that is all about the eternal glory of the Triwizard Cup (as evidenced in the fact of Cedric “walking away from the sort of glory Hufflepuff house hadn’t had in centuries” [GOF 634] – forecasted on GOF 293, “Hufflepuff house very rarely got any glory.”)

(And for a trip, try the SS opening potions lesson on for size as a 2-4-6 ring/chiasm connection with: Bottle Fame = Lockhart in COS, Brew Glory = GOF on glory, Stopper death = Dumbledore’s hand in HBP, as per the excellent sleuthing done by many on the presence of the first portions lesson in HBP for stoppering death, with a nice tie-out of the glory theme in Dumbledore’s confession speech in the King’s Cross chapter of DH. And if you haven’t looked into Prof. Granger’s newest work on Ring Composition … it is a must read.)

So, where do we find chronos in Harry Potter? A standard image for chonos is the clock or watch, like, say, Harry’s wrist-watch issues across out seven book canon. The issue of Harry’s wrist-watch is a strand that presents itself, although sparsely, yet at key points in the series, and beyond the watch formerly owned by Fabian Prewett, although that watch, as I hope to show, is the culmination of the theme and the tie-out of the intersection of chronos and kairos in the series (and props to Travis Prinzi for his excellent work tying out the Order of the Phoenix to the real-world Fabian Society).


It is a little noticed, but I think very important, fact that Harry has been concerned with a watch since the very beginning of the series. SS 29 finds him in his cupboard under the stairs wishing he had a wrist-watch. Further interestingly, he is in the dark, which could be taken as an absence of the kairotic light and luminaries of, respectively Genesis 1:3 and 1:14 (and, on a side note, this might be a thematic correspondence between books 1 and 5 to add to Red Hen’s “redux” theory of the structure of the series as a whole, because book 5’s intro is all about how upset Harry is that he is being kept “in the dark” … but that is a story for another day).  The “dark cupboard image” also resonates strongly with Plato’s “analogy of the cave,” but that is a whole other body of background literature.

As we will see (in GOF), he obviously eventually, at some point, gets a watch … and it broke. And, as we will also see, he eventually gets an even better one (one that represents time by kairos elements, stars), one which JKR makes a specific point of mentioning at the very closing of the series. I think this is a progression: the desire to mark the time of one’s life; the finding of the fact that that chronological projects cracks under the weight of experience; and the finding of a new, richer, concept of time by realizing that chronos is ruled (and broken, although not obliterated) by kairos.

So, we see that Harry has a desire for a watch, a chronological reference point by which to map his experience. And, as I said, in GOF we see he has obtained one. The important thing from here on out is where it breaks. Materially we know that is breaks at the bottom of the lake when he has arrived at the hostages (GOF 500). It may have stopped, and probably did stop, some time previous to this, after he entered the lake, but this is the point at which he notices it, the point at which he is faced with making a decisive situation about saving a friend, and worried about a time limit.

The issue of friendship is key for the series, and most importantly here. I have always felt that the lake bottom scene is important. Here there are three kinds of “friendship” present in four relationships. Harry’s direct type is a sort of brotherly love, his concern for Ron. Fleur and Gabriella are obviously familial love. The other two relationships (Krum-Hermione and Cedric-Cho) are romantic love in a situation where all four of the elements in classical/medieval four-element cosmology (which Rowling confirms as the basis for the four-house system) are present: Hermione = Fire (Gryffindor); Krum = water (Durmstrangs in general connect with Slytherin House); Cedric = earth (Hufflepuff); and Cho = air (Ravenclaw).

Friendship/love, when we get down to talking about its role in human experience and meaning, is obviously a deeper element of our lives than words can usually express (at least discursive expression – we usually have to put it in a story, which is part of what this post is about). There are two further pieces of evidence I wish to give here as to the profound weight of the scene in the lake, and the first relates to two terms I have just used, “deep” and “profound.”

To return to Genesis 1 for a moment, the NRSV translation of Gen 1:2 says that the spirit of God hovered over the face of the “waters.” That term, however, has a broader translation of “the deep.” In Gen 1 it is the potential chaos of the primordial world, but a very close term gets used in Psalm 130:1, “from the depths I cry to you, Lord.” This latter verse is even used in pop lit in M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Sixth Sense. There it is actually used in the Latin of the Vulgate (the Latin translation of the Bible done by St Jerome, the authoritative translation for Western Christianity for almost a millennium and a half): De profundis clamo ad te Domine. And there is my second word I dropped in earlier, profound. This is the profundity and depth (in a very literally murky way in the lake) of human experience, and I believe it is what JKR is meaning when she starts off the lake-bottom scene by noting that Harry dove “into the depths” (GOF 495).

My second piece of evidence from this section concerns the issue of story and myth. On GOF 497 Harry encounters the rocks on which the mer-people have drawn their stories about their own identity, such as them chasing the giant squid (itself a potential sea monster character like Tiamat in the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish, Leviathan in the Hebrew Bible, and the Kraken in other mythological sets, also used in CS Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the Pirates of the Caribbean films, all of which creatures represent the potential chaos of human existence). Here we are definitely in the land (or water, as it were) of story as a way of understanding our own existence and experience not only as individual persons, but as a collective, as a community. And, most importantly, at one and the same time we are in a mixture of chronos and kairos. We are within the one hour time limit, which is the whole reason Harry checks his watch, right?

This connection may take a little more stretching but I think it is there at least latently. In our story in the lake, “hour” is a chronological term. But in the Christian tradition from the New Testament, from which we know JKR has directly lifted at other points, the term is one of kairos, as in “My time has not yet come” (John 7:8 – kairos used), and “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23 – the more specific Greek term for an hour, “hora,” is used as an equivalent of the kairos in John 7:8).

Further support for the importance of the whole issue of the hour time limit is Ron’s criticism/exposition of the time limit, in the context of the song (and that Harry should not have believed the song) on GOF 503. But there are also other instances in GOF as a whole that show that JKR has time “on the brain.” I have usually read the lake-bottom as the center of the whole series.

However Prof Granger, in his new work on Ring Composition for the whole series and for each individual book, has read the first task as the mid-point of GOF, and since GOF is the mid-point of the series, that task would be the very mid-point of the series. In a way I think we are both right, but it would take a really long time to explain that one. Why I bring it up here is that going into the first task, JKR describes Harry’s experience by saying, “time was behaving in a more peculiar fashion than ever, rushing past in great dollops” (GOF 347). She is spending a great deal of time thinking and talking about time in this book.

The important thing to note, and really the crux of my whole exposition in this post, is that it is in the lake, at the bottom, in the “profoundness” (the depths) of human relation (the lake as kairos, an hour devoted to decisive saving action in human relation), that the symbol of chronos, the watch, breaks … in the place of myths that portray the fundamental mystery of human existence and relation, chronos breaks down.

Lest someone might argue that the watch breaking is just a side detail of no real significance, JKR mentions the breaking of the watch no less than three times subsequently in the book. At one point Harry has to check Ron’s watch in history of magic because he has finally discarded his own because it doesn’t work (GOF 569). Before this, during the niffler lesson with Hagrid, Harry takes off his watch, “which he was only wearing out of habit, as it didn’t work anymore” (GOF 543). But before either of these, and my favorite instance because she puts the “hour” term on the page, “Harry checked his watch, then remembered it hadn’t been working since it had spent over an hour in the lake” (GOF 533); chronos just couldn’t take the pressure.

So, now Harry needs a new watch and we finally eventually arrive at that old watch of Fabian’s that Molly gives to Harry for his seventeenth birthday. First, it’s very interesting that a watch, a time symbol, is the standard gift for a wizard coming of age, becoming an adult. Beyond this however, note that, like the watch given to Ron, Harry’s new watch is marked by astrological symbols (stars), the heavenly bodies (likeness of the two watches stated on DH 114)… just like the luminaries are created in Gen 1:14 to rule kairos (signs and seasons), under which is subjugated chronos (days and years). That watch is a symbol of chronos being ruled by kairos (the actual presentation is of the heavenly bodies).

It is also, I think, a symbol of “story time,” narrative time – the way we construct the chronologies of our “days and years” for ourselves in our memories to try to understand the “meaning” in our lives. And that watch is among the special elements from the series that warrant a presence in the epilogue, closing out the story: “He checked the battered old watch that had once been Fabian Prewett’s” (DH 757).

Although this post is about time as narrative in the series, I would like to provide another example of material accuracy breaking under the weight of meaning, this time in the realm of space (being as we all talk about time and space as a pair, Star Trek TNG always talking about the space-time continuum and all that). As far as I know, Red Hen (Joyce Odell) was the one to discover the missing fourteen feet in the graveyard in GOF, at least I think that is where I first encountered it, in her essay in Who Killed Albus Dumbledore? (Granger et al), in which she was trying to pin down objective physical characteristics of the Avada Kedavra curse. She found it because she was looking at the physical distances. I would say that “distance” is to space what chronos is to time. I read the books looking at them differently, but am eternally grateful to Rd Hen for discovering the discrepancy because it provides me with a wonderful example here (and in my Introduction to the Old Testament course for college sophomores, as a way to understand what scholars mean by saying there are a variety of “methods” for studying texts).

I think that Rowling wrote two moments loaded with meaning in the form of characterizing first Voldemort and then the Death Eaters. The first requires Harry and Cedric to be about six feet from Voldemort and Wormtail. The second requires a circle with a forty foot diameter (twenty foot radius) because it must accommodate thirty-plus Death Eaters, and Cedric (whom, at this point, I would call the “dearly departed”) must be outside that circle. (This is where I would differ from Red Hen on the use of space in constructing meaning: rather than focus on quantifications like distance, I would emphasize relation shown through physical positioning, qualification in the service of characterization). But when you put these two moments side by side to show the mentality of the leader flowing into the mentality of the group, material accuracy cracks and breaks under the strain of characterization, of meaning.

All this is not an attempt to diss focus on chronos. As with the example of the fourteen feet, that dealt with material accuracy in the realm of space, sometimes the places where chronos breaks down are the most interesting places to investigate for deeper meanings. But even beyond this revelatory role in its collapse, chronos has a role to play in its positive existence by interacting with kairos, for if we had pure kairos we ourselves would break under it. We live in chronos and it is how we experience our lives; their meanings are meted out to us over time.

I am going to step outside of Potter-dom here because there is an ingenious example of what I am talking about (the positive role of chronos in and of itself, and of its breaking) in the film Stranger Than Fiction (2006, starring Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emma Thompson – our favorite diviner from the Potter movies – and Dustin Hoffman … and, SPOLIER WARNING: I’ll be giving away the ending of the movie – sorry, but I have to in order to make my point).

In the film we find Thompson narrating Ferrell’s life without knowing he is a real person, and Ferrell kind of bugging out because sometimes he can hear her voice in his head doing the narrating. The thing that causes Thompson trouble once she finds out what is going on is that the logic of the story, where the themes lead in order to fulfill them in the best way, demands that Ferrell die by the novel’s end (and obviously this causes a rather large problem for Ferrell himself when he finds out). But where the film ends is with a saving resolution in which what does the saving is a shard of his wristwatch lodged inside his body, and it cannot be removed or he will die; it must stay there for the rest of his life.

Here the watch is still shattered, but it is still also a piece of chronos, and it is essential to his continued life. Chronos always shatters under the weight of kairos, but it is always precisely that shattered chronos that saves the person from being crushed by the sheer weight of pure kairos (which undo the person, much like God and Moses worry that if the Israelites break through to actually touch Mount Sinai and view God in his unmediated glory they will perish, in Exodus 19:21). Dustin Hoffman’s review of the final version of the novel is that it is not as great as it would have been (he read the original ending), but that it is still good. And Thompson’s response is that she can settle for that if it means saving Ferrell’s life.

We spend our lives in the intersection of chronos and kairos, that tension between what is believable in the sense of scientific, material accuracy (which we need because we are humans, biological and time-bound creatures), and what we need to believe in the sense of faith (which JKR has said is very much what the books are about – and we see this strongly in Harry’s resolution of his feelings about the past of Albus Dumbledore in DH, in the conversation with Aberforth), about that which is beyond us (and our time-bound experience) but in which we believe we participate, in some way or another, that in which we need to believe in order to be human.

Chronos always breaks under the weight of kairos, but in a certain sense this is only really the fact that meaning breaks into our daily existence and gives us faith, hope, and (that deeper magic) love. This is what narratives, stories, myths, express for us. This is what Harry Potter has done for us as readers. It’s one of the reasons the books resonate so strongly for us and have sold so well.

Afterthought as Conclusion:
As a disclaimer, I have to admit that for me a reading like this is also very tied to being an avid student of Post-Modern thought. The 20^th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger is thought to be the grand-father of Post-Modern thought, and his most defining work was entitled “Being and Time.” By the word “being” he means specifically human existence in the sense of human experience, and being time-bound is essential to that experience. Of course, in his 1949 “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger also wrote that, “language is the house of being.” However, my thoughts on how magic and spell-work represent language as human expression must wait for another post (especially after some much-desired source-work on the Avada Kedavra I have been progressively trying to pin down for some time now … and some equally desired delving into some concepts from Derrida on language). Also, while I came up with this definition of narrative before reading (well, more like studied certain selections of) Paul Ricouer’s three-volume “Time and Narrative” (and, if you believe it, having had to revise the definition from “a chronology of kairotic moments” to “a kairotic chronology” because of the Star Wars prequels), I must also mention that work because Ricouer, in his own language, deals with some of the same concepts.

Argument: Ethics as the supernatural and miracles and the possibility of God

Ok, I am going to try to keep this brief so as to get the core idea concisely. I'll openly admit at the outset that my method of philosophical argumentation is much like my style of street and trail cycling, which I often describe as being a barbarian on two wheels.

I should also add that I honestly did come to this argument on my own as far as I can recollect, but I would not be surprised if philosophers much more erudite etc than myself had formulated it long ago. If anybody reads this and knows of somebody else who said it before I did, please share it in the comments (I'll try to figure out how to make sure they are turned on ... I think they are as long as you have a blogger account or a gmail account to sign your comment with, but I will try to check if there are any settings on my blog dashboard end of things).

I used to (try to) cover this material/argument with college freshmen when discussing T. H. Huxley on the supernatural.

This is not, in its nature, an argument for the existence of God. It is as argument that if you hold to ethics in any form whatsoever, then you have already accepted:
1. the actuality of the supernatural in general
2. the actuality of miracles (the supernatural directly controlling the natural)
3. the possibility of God

Again, this isn't an argument for the existence of God, simply an "if, then" argument. I had one student talking to me after class, and she said that she has no problem seeing all of her actions as determined. As a college instructor, I had to say that, in the context of us talking about the class material, that was fine, as long as she understood the argument I was making (which she did, she was one of the few ... really bright)

So, the argument: If you believe in any form of ethics you have already accepted the supernatural, miracles, and the possibility of the existence of one highest supernatural, personal in nature, called God.

Ethics is defined by the word "ought" or "should," based in three concepts: (1) there is some event within the system of determination we call "nature" that is not determined in its actualization, (2) there is something outside the system of determination surrounding that event that can impact the material outcome of that event, and (3) there is some code in which the "ought" is based.

For class, I used to describe three kinds of "ought"s. The "scientific" says simply that the hypothesis is a best guess; the information is never complete, so a theory is always a guess at what "should" happen within certain control parameters in an experiment or how the outcome will change if you alter those parameters in certain ways. The "pragmatic" out simply says that if you want these results you "should" use that method. The example I always gave was lifting weights: if you want bulk, do high weight at low reps, but if you want tone, do low weight at high reps ... but there is no real declaration on which you should want. But the "ethical" ought, this one does get to bigger questions of what you should want, and the capacity for choosing as a free-will agent.

The supernatural that you have accepted is called the human free will. In order for ethics to make any sense at all, you have to believe that the person whom you are telling they should act in a certain way has the capability to choose acting one way rather than another. That places their action outside the system of determinacy we call "nature." I would argue that most people who advocate ethical action accept it in this sense, even though many people who try to believe in ethics from an atheistic/anti-supernatural standpoint would try the procrustean bed project of trying to fit their ethical beliefs into the category of a "scientific" or "pragmatic" "ought."

The miracle you have accepted is that this undetermined thing (the free will) has entered into and directly manipulated or controlled elements within the system of determination, even in ways that go contrary to the progress of the system of determination as dictated by the forces in play up to the moment of interference. We may not be able to see all the factors at play (and, indeed, we never can see all of them) to verify the ways in which the new course initiated varies form what would have happened if governed simply by the factors within the system of determination, but by its very nature and logic, the free will must alter the results in that system somehow (otherwise there would be no need for an ethical "ought").

The possibility for the existence of God (and therefore of God's miracles) flows naturally. People may have an aversion to the "super" in "supernatural," but once you have opened the door for the "extra-natural," anything outside the system of determination (as I have been discussing, the human free will), you have opened the door to, at the very least, the possibility of the existence of the "supernatural" and a highest, singular supernatural being who might be, like the humans that you began your investigation, personal in nature.

If all of this (belief in God, belief in miracles, belief in the existence of "logic" and the possibility that my argument conforms to it) is said to be simply ephemeral, epi-phenomenal sensation, then so is the impression of ethical obligation of any kind.

Lazarus Effect Review

Flatliners meets Lucy meets Event Horizon meets Resident Evil ... glad family video gave me a free rental to entice me back to more regular renting, so I can console myself that I at least I didn't pay for that one.

I liked Flatliners and the RE franchise, and, at best, really couldn't get into Event Horizon or Lucy. But even if I liked all of them, doing a mash-up of all four is so derivative as to leave no room for any originality. And they swapped the only real chance at resolution in the story (the little girl maybe opening the door as being able to move on) for the cheap and obvious set-up for a sequel ... Lazarus Effect is a bust as far as I'm concerned.

Batting 50-50 with horror panned by the critics - totally disagreed with them on As Above, So Below, but totally agreed with them on this one (and I really wanted to like Olivia Wilde, since I really liked her in Tron Legacy, and this was done by the makers of Paranormal Activity, of which I thought the first two movies were good, so I wanted to like it on those grounds too, but it's just no good ... not as horrendous as Prometheus, but getting there)

Person of Interest Season 4 Finale (YHWH): God in the Box

This is more simply raw found footage - I posted it originally on FB, a friend said "why don't you put this stuff up on your blog?" - I thought it a good idea but don't feel like doing much real editing of a post on here ... I think it's pretty coherent; just has some extra stuff in on likes and dislikes after seeing the finale

OK, so, after a season (4) with only a few real bright spots, namely character-driven stand-alone episodes, Jonathan Nolan, creator and co-runner of Person of Interest, paid it back ... with interest ... THAT was excellent sci-fi

Loved seeing John get god mode

I was happy to see Dominic go, and sad to see Elias go, but that ending scene was KILLER

... and it paid off the debt of so many episodes with so little music - EXCELLENT use of the Pink Floyd Song, excellent setting

I'm glad they stayed true to form and finished it out with their signature slow-mo with a good song in the foreground

I think the case is the ark, being as the episode is call YHWH (with maybe a very latent veiled reference to Jeremiah's hiding of the ark on the eve of the Babylonian invasion in, I believe, 1 Maccabees ... after all, one of the episodes this season was called "Prophets")

The case could also be the tomb, buried to rise again, in a phoenix sort of way.

But, back along the OT lines suggested by the episode title (YHWH), the theme of mobility is also there, which is a central theme in the book of Ezekiel, when E. sees the Cavod (glory/presence) that is supposed to be limited to the Ark in the temple in Jerusalem, but he sees it by the river Chebar in Babylon (the vision in chapter 1 ... E. was originally a priest in Jerusalem temple, taken to Bab in the deportation of 597, 10 yrs before the invasion and destruction of 587) - E.'s theme is that God is not limited to the temple, but is mobile and can go wherever his people are to aid them (represented visually by the wheel-within-a-wheel structure that can "go every way, without turning")

Lots of possibilities. From the side of concern in my Christian background, I think you can avoid "God is really only an evolution of human/machine." AI is always symbolic of  something in humanity. Especially logic is traditionally viewed as part of being made in the imago Dei (I think that was technically redundant, but I didn't think most people would understand assimilating the Latin ablative into an English grammar flow). So, while the imagery is God, the symbolism is still in referent to human existence, and I think its advocating ideas that are actually heresy or anything like that. BUT, the possibility of exploring this theme of stripping the machine down to its core is really interesting. What will the machine look like if reborn? And the whole spin put on the mobility theme is interesting. Before the machine was mobile by being in the power grid - actually it was NOT mobile because it didn't have to move because it was everywhere, so I guess it had all the benefits of mobility without the limitations. Now it has actual mobility, which actually limits it.

For those who dislike seeing religious themes in sci-fi and literature in general, please realize it doesn't have to be a decisive conquest of "ah, you atheist assholes got owned by the Christians again!" (I'm Christian, but I get tired of the triumphalist attitude on both sides ... and ftr, I'm a rather conservative Christian, very in line with hierarchy and formal rites - I like Gregorian organ, and as loud as I like TransSiberian Orchestra and Kings X ... Kumbaya and John Denver don't really do anything for me). Dune used the Messiah theme, and Matrix borrowed it from Herbert; BSG reboot used the Resurrection and the Emmaus road encounter with Thrace/Starbuck; but I don't think you could demonstrate any of those three as distinctly Christian projects; I don't think even Tolkien was doing simple partisan allegory of the Bible, and he used the tropes A LOT more heavily (but you should be wondering why the religious themes work so well for literature).

Person of Interest as Batman for a post-9/11 World and law enforcement

So, this post is just what the title says. Intro linkage is a bit sparse because I am cutting and pasting from my own rambling on FB. This was written upon re-viewing season 3 of Person of Interest. Some details I tried to be as circumspect as possible in discussing to avoid spoilers, and I am too lazy to rewrite ... but I did do it with enough detail that, if you have watched it, you know what it is.

My former roommate made the brilliant observation when, as roommates, we first got into season 1 (while season 3 was in progress), which I had not noticed, that Finch and Reese are the two sides of Batman: the active and deadly operative with nearly superhuman abilities (and calling him "the man in the suit" was a really nice touch) and the reclusive millionaire. This makes total sense because this is Jonathan Nolan fresh from writing the batman trilogy with his brother Chris. But I think it also provides a little extra opportunity for tension between those two sides (e.g., Reese trying to figure out what Finch's deal is in the first season, sort of the batman side not getting what the Wayne side is all about and being suspicious of it).

Even that decisive moment in season 3 when Simmons comes out of the shadows is an echo of the man coming out of the shadows and killing Bruce Wayne's parents, and Simmons' actions have a strong effect in the next episode (the one with the Johnny Cash version of "Hurt") of bringing out Reese's dark side, just as the man in the shadows is the trigger of Wayne's dark side.

 (Aside: my favorite shot in the Hurt episode is Shaw punching the guy in the face with the picture of Simmons such that the picture comes away smeared in blood. I take this as he is marked by blood, both in that he is a murderer and in that he is slated to die for his crimes ... I think they did this also with Turney's identification of Quinn).

(Brain Boiler: Is Carter Harvey Dent? Needing to exit before the tension destroyed her through bifurcation? I don't think these kinds of things work that tightly, but the comparison is interesting.)

Main Point:
Watching season 3 this time, it occurred to me that PoI is Batman for the real world - namely, the post-9/11 world. Even though the recent Batman trilogy could be assumed to be happening in a post-9/11 world, you could not really work that in concretely because, while it is obvious especially in Dark Knight Rises that Gotham is NYC, it is still the fictional city that stands in for it, not the real thing. PoI takes the themes and issues and character tensions of Batman and interprets them in an actual post-9/11 NYC.

The post-9/11 texture has been one of the key things that the show has been praised for since the beginning. I think it's cool that they have melded it with batman tropes ...the Nolan's really are geniuses.

Reese as Law Enforcement in a Post-9/11 world

I will throw in another Post-9/11 thing here from an FB post somewhere back along the line at the beginning of season 4. I don't feel like going back through to look that one up and I can remember the basic idea, and I don't feel like making another separate post, since this one already concerns the Post-9/11 thing.

At the beginning of season 4 , we find that the machine has given Reese the "secret identity" of being a cop. Now, this has a mechanical purpose for both the machine and the show: he has the extra resources a cop has for doing the work. But good literature is able to make its elements work well on both the mechanical level and the symbolic ... if it's good, it doesn't have to choose between overdone material credibility and cheap allegory --- it can do both material functionality and symbolic meanings without them being the negative formulations I just used of them.

On the symbolic level, Reese represents a very real question in law enforcement in the US after the two wars fought after 9/11. Many combat veterans returned from the wars disabled, but many came back physically capable and in need of work. It is always a real concern when a country has foreign war combat veterans serving in domestic law enforcement because the two things require two very different mentalities: The one whom a soldier encounters in war is the enemy; The one whom the peace officer encounters is a fellow citizen needing simply to be kept between the lines.

I'm not commenting negatively on either combat veterans or police who have maybe legitimately had to fire in real life. Combat is real, and a mentality of "execute with extreme prejudice" is unfortunately necessary, and there are also real situations faced by cops in which the antagonism displayed by some fellow citizens approaches the level of an enemy in war (they call it Chiraq for a reason). But I am noting that the residual presence of combat mentality can be problematic for "peace officers." The general tension between the two perspectives has been noted by much more knowledgeable people than myself - it is the reason that martial law is to be avoided if at all possible, so that you don't have your military filling the role of your police force (great exposition of this in the Battlestar Galactica reboot).

Reese was foreign ops all the way. His military service was Army and his intelligence service was CIA rather than FBI (if he was in England, he would have been MI6 rather than MI5). We can see the tension theme at play even before the machine puts him as a domestic law enforcement officer for his cover in season 4. There was always a tension between Carter and Reese over doing things through the law and doing things the CIA way. But especially when the machine makes Reese a cop in season 4, the issue distinctively on the page.

And on the whole "to kill or not to kill, that is the question" thing, I still get chills every time I listen to Medicine by the band Daughter (which was used for the visual storytelling at the end of the episode in which they choose not to, but Harold's relationship with the machine is damaged)

Update 10/14/15:
Just tonight I rewatched the episode in season 4 called "Pretenders" (the immediately preceding episode was call "Prophets). The Batman connection was REALLY heavy in this one, particularly with the Nolan iteration of the franchise. An imposter cop (imposter Batmans in Dark Knight) trying to fill in for a missing "man in the suit" whose disappearance (like in Dark Knight Rises) led to a rise in crime on the street going unchecked.