next rabbit trail

Well, the library seized my Shakespeare and the Bible book... Apparently keeping it for over a month is against the rules...

The next rabbit trail that I am supposed to be chasing is, how does Christianity enter into the law field? So I googled "Christianity in the law field" (let's be honest, that is how I find most of my information) and found a number of books to add to my reading list.

Surprisingly, most of them are British...

• Christianity and Law: An Introduction by John Witte and Frank Alexander
• The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature by the same authors
• Life, Death and the Law : Law and Christian Morals in England and the United States by Norman St. Johns-Stevas
• Faith and Law: How Religious Traditions From Calvinism to Islam View American Law by Robert Cochran

So, if anyone recommends any of these books, let me know! (Let's be honest again, the only people that read this are my mom and my Nana....maybe.) But for real. I'm going to read them and then I'll will tell if they are worth the read. What would you do without me?

more "Genesis in The Tempest"

So now that I’ve given you a whole twelve hours to contemplate the greatness that I bestowed on you yesterday, let me continue.

• I think my last point was that both God and Prospero undo an act of creation - God with the flood and Prospero with the banishment of Caliban. This is true, but they also both make vows of mercy with a rainbow. After the flood, God sends a rainbow to Noah and his family, promising never to destroy the earth again. Prospero eventually also apologizes to those that he tormented with drowning and to Caliban for putting him into slavery after expulsion. After this, he presents a rainbow and a blessing of prosperity (here's the theme again!).
• Both books show an important example of lifelong love. Examples from Genesis are Abraham and Sarah (who didn't receive the gift of a baby until they were 100 and 99)AND Jacob and Rachel (whom Jacob had to work fourteen years for in her father's house). In The Tempest, Ferdinand and Miranda seem to have a "love at first sight" encounter when they first meet each other.
• Ferdinand and Jacob both had to yield to father-in-laws. Genesis 29 depicts Jacob and Rachel's marriage. Jacob agreed to work seven years for her father-in-law, Laban, in order to take her hand in marriage. After the seven years, however, Laban secretly switched Rachel with her sister, Leah, without Jacob knowing. Jacob then had to work seven more years in order to actually marry Rachel. Ferdinand also moves logs for Prospero in exchange for his daughter, Miranda.
• Later on in Genesis, Joseph is introduced. Joseph is one of twelve sons born to Jacob, and, as you can imagine, there is intense sibling rivalry amongst the group. Eventually, Joseph's brothers get fed up with partiality within the family, and plot to kill Joseph, just like Prospero's brothers plot to kill their other brother, Alonso.
• What both sets of brothers don't know, though, is that they will both end up at their brother's mercy in the future. Joseph gets sold to slave traders from Egypt and prospers there (there it is again!). He works his way to second in command under the Pharaoh and saves the country from seven years of famine. Even his brothers, who do not recognize him, come to him for food when the famine reaches them. Prospero's brother also come to him, "waterlogged, bereaved, and exhausted."*
• Once both sets of brothers repent of betrayal, "the focus shifts to the hidden controlling brother,"* Joseph and Prospero. The reader starts to feel compassion towards the once corrupt brothers. Personally, I think that this is the perfect picture of Jesus - compassion for the repentant.

Okay, are you ready to know the one difference that Marx points out?
The Tempest opens with chaos that divides species and classes, while the Bible opens with perfect unity and peace.
God walks with Adam and Eve and they don't eat other animals - they abide with them. The Tempest opens with a dark, turbulent feel to it.

Well there you go. I think that Steven Marx sums the similarities up the best when he says,
"I doubt that Shakespeare intended to marry his book to the Bible, as did Dante, Spenser, Milton, and Blake, but I do think he intended them to embrace."





*-From Shakespeare and the Bible, Steven Marx

"Genesis in The Tempest"

In the first chapter of Shakespeare and the Bible, Steven Marx analyzes the book of Genesis and Shakespeare's, The Tempest. In the introduction of the book, Marx says that each chapter would show similarities and differences between the two works being studied, but in this chapter, he seemed to have only made similarities:

• In the title, the word "tempest" literally means a violent windstorm, especially one with rain, hail, or snow; a violent commotion, disturbance, or tumult.* He points out how Genesis started out "formless and empty" with "darkness…over the surface of the earth."** He notes the obvious correlation between Shakespeare's title and the beginning of the first book.
• At the beginning of The Tempest, the protagonist, Prospero, waits for his daughter to awake from periodic deep sleeps, similar to how Adam was put to sleep while God made Eve.
• In both stories, the setting eventually expands. In Genesis, the population of people expands from Eden (when Adam and Eve were expelled) to Egypt (when the Hebrew slaves were in captivity in the next book, Exodus). In The Tempest, Prospero is released from his cell and the story expands to Mediterranean Europe.
• A reoccurring theme in each story is prosperity. In Genesis 1:28, God tells Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and increase in number." Also, "Prospero's" root word is "prosperity."
• God and Prospero both bless their descendants. Like the Creator God, Prospero has a "chosen family"*** to carry out his plans set in the beginning of the play. God establishes the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through which His son, Jesus, will carry out the master plan of salvation.
• Both God and Prospero are protagonist and author of their works. (The idea that Prospero is the "author" of The Tempest is simply a theory, but is hinted through his "role as author of plays within the play"***, his addresses to the audience, etc.)
• God and Prospero undo a creation act. God sends the great flood of Noah's time in Genesis chapter 6 because He "regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled." Likewise, Prospero banishes Caliban, the previous ruler Sycorax's son, for trying to take the throne. This act in The Tempest actually has several correlations to Genesis:

"Prospero re-establishes his dominance... by throwing Caliban out of his home, forcing him to live by the sweat of his brow [expulsion from the garden], and reducing his language that he taught him into profitless cursing [the Tower of Babel - Genesis 11]... and by tormenting his countrymen with the prolonged ordeal of death by drowning [the flood]." -The Tempest, pg. 25

Well Marx makes about nine more similarities worth noting, but I think this is enough for now...

*- from dictionary.com

**- from Genesis 1:2

***- from chapter one of Shakespeare and the Bible, Steven Marx