Sunday 31 March 2019

TL:DR: The Genesis Question part forty-seven

Hi, Everybody!

So, two things:

1, the bizness:
The Jaka's Story remaster has a Starcode!  APR191258 First month orders will be signed and numbered! "However many orders there are in the next 3 weeks, that's how many signed copies there will be. Diamond will order over the initial orders by some other amount, and those will become inventory books available after the initial order...but they won't be signed." [Thanks again, Sean!-Matt]

Greg Hyland is Kickstartering the second volume of the Monster Atlas, and if he gets another fifteen hundred and fifty-eight bucks [Erk! I'm using the AMERICAN figures. in CANADIAN, he needs another 674 bucks CAD-Matt], it'll have Gerhard art like the first volume. It'll look a little something like this.

There's more auctions up at ComicsLink (eight days left). And last week's update has a special AMOC auction. (Seiler's winning at $100 US.)

If you're waiting for a Indiegogo live for the Postcard Kickstarter, like the one for the birthday card Kickstarter, I don't know if there will be one.

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.

2, I ran out of pages from issue 289/290 to run in front of Dave's Genesis Question commentaries. Dave suggested I use Jewish, Christian or Muslim religious images. But then, Superman's Frenemy: David Birdsong sent in a bunch of (so far) unused Cerebus in Hell? images and now I'ma gonna run them. So:
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image by Doré, Sim & Birdsong

21 December 14

Hi Troy & Mia!

Short one this week: trying to catch up on my sleep after getting back from the Kitchens' last night:

Psalms 19:1-6

To the chief musician, A Psalm of David.
The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

It's interesting that these are expressed in the two different manners,  allowing for a multiplicity of inferences.  The fact that the first half of the verse expresses it as "declare" -- which can suggest either actual OR metaphorical speech  --  that is, the heavens actually speaking in a language while the second half of the verse expresses it as "showeth" (which limits the meaning to a depiction or incarnation or both) suggests to me that "showeth" is used to COMPEL the inference (or what I would INFER to be the right inference) that "declare" is used literally: the heavens do actually speak.

The references appear to hearken back to Genesis 1:6-8, but with a slightly different nuance, because the reference here is to "heavens", plural, while Genesis 1:6-8 addresses the creation of THE heaven, the firmament that separates "the waters" -- waters under the heaven and waters over the heaven.  So, it seems to me there is a comparable compelled inference being offered here.  Just as there is a suggestion of speech OR demonstration (first half) so there's a suggestion of demonstration, only (the second half), the way it is expressed suggests that There isn't just one heaven, there is more than one and that these "plural heavens" are different from, not only the firmament (Heaven), but from each other.  BUT that -- however many heavens there are (The Koran tells us that there are seven) -- each heaven, by means of literal speech, declares the glory of God.

Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge

As I read this, it seems to me obviously to relate to the dichotomous relationship between "day" and "night" -- that the day is God's first creation, while the night is God Himself.  And that they are separate consciousnesses.  God isn't His first creation, but God knows what His first creation is thinking at all times.

Thinking is, by its nature and in many of its aspects, self-directed.  We literally talk to ourselves inside our heads.  What this verse appears to suggest to me is that this is an invariable conditional aspect of creation itself. 

God's first creation, "day" has a specific consciousness and that consciousness speaks to itself.

"Day unto day".  And that "day speech" takes many forms.  Some of it is lucid and some of it is just speech -- talking for its own sake "talking just to hear myself speak".  Whereas, in the same sense, God doesn't speak to Himself in the same way.  Whereas "day", as a limited construct and entity, muses upon things, speculates, declaims (the actual AND the fictitious AND the delusional)...

…and I would argue that that's what Scripture IS: mostly "day" musing, speculating and declaiming and God, intermittently, interjecting Reality…

…"night unto night" -- God speaking to God -- is just a pure demonstration/expression of invariable knowledge.  God doesn't speculate because God Knows.  It's the definition of God: omniscience. God doesn't declaim in the sense that the YHWH does -- rule upon rule upon rule, proscribing and attempting to micro-manage human behaviour -- God just expresses the nature of Reality, the construction that God made in which we ALL enact our lives.  "Here's where you are, here's the order everything was created in, 'Be fruitful and multiply'" and in God's sure Knowledge, that's really all that's needed to be expressed.  We, as human beings -- and "day" as God's first creation with delusions of being God -- will pursue multiple enactments and examine all possibilities over the course of our billions of years on planet earth and, at last, thoroughly understand Reality.   

As if this wasn't complicated enough -- but, I have to say, very lucidly and specifically expressed so as to limit -- but not eliminate -- incorrect interpretation -- the third verse seems to create no end of problems for the KJV translators.  I suspect because they didn't really understand what the first two verses were saying, so it was impossible for them to arrive at a translation that continued the sense of 19:1 and 19:2 as they read it. What they came up with was:

[interpolated: There is] no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. 

and then added, as an alternative translation in the margin:

No speech nor language without [interpolated: these their] voice is heard

And only after these variations, do they offer the literal English translation of the Hebrew:

No speech nor language without their voice heard.

Which follows naturally and smoothly, I think, from how I'm reading it.  God's first creation expresses him/her/its self in terms of thought and speech -- musing and speculating and declaiming -- while God expresses Himself in demonstrations of God's Knowledge which is Absolute and Irrefutable…BUT! characteristic of God's grace, God's undeserved kindness: there is "no speech nor language without their voice heard".

That is, that that's the purpose of speech as an attribute of human beings. 

Everything we say, we express either what God's first creation is musing, speculating and declaiming upon or we express God's Reality.  ALL voices are heard, though.  Arguably -- and I think it's the purpose behind the Psalm itself -- this is the driving idea behind creation:  expression.  The sheer magnitude and panoply of ideas, good, bad, indifferent, right, wrong and everything in between that came into existence as an implication of God's first creation having autonomy and free will needed something as immense as the known universe just to make sure that it could all -- however long it took -- find voice, express and enact itself.

This thought, as I read the text, continues in the subsequent verses:

Their [line/rule/direction] is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world: In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun

Of course, at the time, David wouldn't have had an idea of the immensity of what was being expressed.  To David the sun was just a ball of fire that passed through the heavens every day.  He had no idea of the relative size of the earth and the sun or the implications of the context as expressed. He would have read it as being aligned with what would be revealed in Ezekiel with the eastward facing gate: sun worship, but in the name of God/YHWH.

 "Day unto day" (YHWH) expressing and "night unto night" (God) demonstrating not only holds true as the nature of human beings and human societies, but also as the nature of the earth itself -- "THROUGH ALL the earth, and their words to the END of the world" --  and extends from there to the sun.  The discussion, the expression, musing, speculation and declamation in tandem with God's knowledge, is taking place on and in the sun as well: as the roiling conflagration/discussion between helium (YHWH) and hydrogen (God).

And then God provides an analogy of what this Reality is, the nature of What God Is Doing and Has Done and Will Do which couldn't really be appreciated until our present day with our own Sure Knowledge: that the earth is a tiny chunk of rock orbiting a mid-sized star and that all the stars visible in the night sky are a mere fragment of the totality of God's creation.  It took literally thousands of years to go from God's revelation of His Reality in Psalm 19 to the point where a human being would know enough to understand Who He Is which, as I read it, is expressed as:

Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race

His going forth from the end of the heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof

Next week, God willing:  More Psalms.

A Very Merry Christmas to both of you and to Drexel!

Best,


Dave
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Next Time: Alright, enough of this Aardvark bullshit, I'm switching this blog to a REAL comic book treasure: Rob Liefeld!

5 comments:

Slumbering Agartha said...

Man. These David Birdsong collages are getting better and better. This is the one that made me realize something cool is happening, here. At some point these should be collected in some fashion. I get the impression he's trying to subtly outdo his previous effort with each subsequent effort, rather than just "eh, I have to do this today, here we go". I'm at the point now where I'm looking forward more to what he's going to do each Sunday than the actual post itself.

Birdsong said...

Thank you, Mike. I was really trying to get Cerebus deep into these images. One of the biggest differences is that I attempted to adjust the shading on Cerebus to match the scenes he is in. You may also notice that they are not from Dore’s Inferno (the ones with Dante and Virgil are from Purgatory). The idea is that Cerebus is “somewhere else” before he got to Hell? Or after? Dave has copies, but hasn’t done anything with them yet. Matt came up with a funny caption for one of them. It might be another fun audience participation activity.

Steve said...


Hiya David -

I have a Dore question for you, how can I contact you?

Steve

and yeah, I second what Mike had to say.

Birdsong said...

Steve, you can reach me at birdsongdr@gmail.com

David Johnson said...

Thanks a lot Dave. Man, that is something what you said! Like your earlier statements in a commentary that God's chariot possibly literally divided Elijah in two, making it possible for Elisha to receive the double portion of his spirit, I like how your literal word for word reading of the scriptures thinks of these things. You are like the Bereans and search the scriptures daily to see how these Godly things are true, and Jesus Lamb will continue to bless you.

As for the 19th Psalm, first let me say that you saying its opening would mean that the heavens do speak, to me spiritually is just what it was pointing to because it meant God's people. I also like your use of the word showiness for this, which goes along exactly with what I said last fax to you about the meaning of Eve's Hebrew name being sheweth, in relation to what you said about that in another commentary.

The above helps me see, how Genesis 1:6-8 is talking about Jesus as the heaven, but that Psalm 19 is talking about his followers. The separating of the waters from the waters by the heaven in Genesis, points to Jesus separating his followers from Satan's. John shows this too in his gospel by explaining how John the Baptist, who took Lucifer's place, is likewise separating those living waters (Those being baptized) from Satan's (The Pharisees who come to question John). Thanks for helping me see this.

As for, "Day unto day utterth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge.," I think the Day points also to Jesus, not as created, but manitested into the world because of Satan. I think night was first Lucifer, but replaced by Jesus who became sin and darkness for us by his death on the cross. Your thoughts on the day being an actual creation and the night being like God are interesting. I see Jesus as the living 7th sabbath day of rest also (I see him as all 7 days). You having said that God was like the night, to me points out where Lucifer got it from. Light and Darkness or Day and Night or the Law and The Law of Liberty, have to exist and both scriptures say are holy and just, but once Christ came and comes into one's life, the school teacher falls away, and Jesus fulfills the scriptures.

When I learned about the law of inference, I next used a Bible concordance. My thought had been, that any Old Testament word or thought, had to have its fulfillment in the New Testament, and I found the inference does simply that. In the case of the words about how scriptures say, "And the evening and the morning were the (fill in the blank) day.," I quickly found Psalm 19, and then the New Testament scripture saying how, have the people not heard the gospel, but they have it says, and that the saints voices went around the earth testifying to God's words, which perfectly ties into what verse 9 says in Psalm 19. Yes, in a much better living way, creation points to what you called the expression, of what I call the gospel.

I believe the tabneracle for the sun pointed to Jesus as that Light that spiritually fulfills the 6 days (Days and nights) of creation in that Jesus and Satan wrestling match over our souls, where I think the tabernacle more so points to our temples being where the Holy Ghost dwells. There are other scriptures that imply the duo meaning of sun (Like in Malachi) also meaning the son, and how it like a bridegroom (Jesus) makes it circuit from one end of the heavens to the other (Jesus' bride and followers through faith before he came, or those afterwards until this time.).

So, yes, I think God's relationship with his Father as he described in his prayer to him in the garden, shows simply as you say, how that in my thinking, the son's relationship to the Father, was constantly God's expression of creation pointing to him fulfilling it, inside of the son, who asked that we could someday be in God as he was also in Him before time began.