godwho's Diaryland Diary

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Unfulfilled Promise?

On Hank Hanegraaff's radio show tonight, they were featuring a dramatized version of the New Testament that was released in October. You can watch a brief video to get a flavor of the sound of the thing on Amazon.com. They played portions of it during the broadcast, and the more of it they sampled, the more my stomach shriveled up and writhed around.

I have a question: Why is it that any time Jesus (or any Scripture, for that matter) is quoted orally, the person doing the interpretation has to sound overwrought and haughty? Yes, the orchestration and sound effects and production quality of this audio Bible are impressive, but everyone in it sounds like their nostrils are flared and they are doing a dead-on impression of Jon Lovitz�s character on SNL who used to go around flailing his arms and announcing, �It�s called� ACTING!�

Believe me, I fully grasp that the Bible is important stuff. But I think it can stand alone on its own merits without having to be orated in a grandiose fashion. It�s like typing in all caps to me. It�s exhausting. Plus, it isn�t realistic. And it reduces the Scriptures to a stylized Charlton-Heston-�Ten-Commandments�esque kind of interpretation that demeans the depth and reality of what�s there.

If I were casting a dramatized version of the New Testament, I wouldn�t choose Jim Caviezel to be Jesus (no offense to him). I wouldn�t choose Patrick Harris or anyone with a regal-sounding accent or anyone with perfect tone and pronunciation like James Earl Jones. I�d cast either Jeff Foxworthy or Bill Engvall as Jesus. I think I�d have a good case for it, too. When Philip, a guy who�d been called by Jesus to be an apostle, told his brother, Nathaniel, he had to come meet this guy from Nazareth, Nathaniel laughed and said, �Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?� And several years later, when Jesus was being tried for blasphemy, Peter was standing around in the courtyard trying to be inconspicuous when a guy insisted he had to be part of Jesus� crew because �your accent gives you away.�

Jesus and his people were seen as hillbillies! They didn�t sound like they�d just graduated from the Royal Shakespeare Academy (actually, people treat Shakespeare the same way� and originally, it was considered incredibly base and crude. It just sounds lofty in our lazy vernacular.).

Also, I�d have Jeff Foxworthy do part of the Sermon on the Mount as stand-up. That�s not sacrilegious; some of it�s really funny. It�s just that we�ve heard it so often, it�s not as fresh. But I can see him doing a �bit� about some dude with a 2x4 jutting out from his skull trying to lumber around (pun intended) to get a tiny grain of dust out of another guy�s eye. The people sitting on the mountainside would laugh, and they�d always remember that before they passed judgement on someone else.

In a warning about false teachers, Jesus says, �They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.� Again, �wolf in sheep�s clothing� is so common, it�s not absurd anymore. But if I tell you that my cat is so desperate to get inside the house that she put on a greyhound costume so we wouldn�t notice, that�d be pretty funny. First of all, sheep don�t wear clothes. Secondly, a wolf dressed up as a sheep is like the wolf dressed up as Grandma in Red Riding Hood, or Robin Williams dressed up as Mrs. Doubtfire. It�s ironic and startling, and it was told in a simple way so that simple people could understand it. I hate that it�s made to sound like everyone who talked in the Bible had a pinky stuck out, ate caviar at every meal, and never laughed because that would be improper.

Another thing I�m sure is missing in the always-conscientious-of-the-holiness delivery is the genuine camaraderie of Jesus and his followers. There�s such potential for a great scene where Jesus is walking through this crowd, and they�re practically mobbing him. A woman who�s basically had a period for twelve years straight crawls up behind him, touches his robe thinking rightly that this will heal her, and attempts to slink back into the crowd. But Jesus stops. He asks, �Who touched me?� In Mark, it says, ��You see the people crowding against you,� his disciples answered, �and yet you can ask, �Who touched me?��� A hint of banter here, and I know it�s just lost in the interpretation.

Anyway, my point is that I can appreciate the respect and reverence someone undertaking any type of work with the Bible needs to bring to it. But the more it�s handled with kid gloves, the further from reality I think it gets. It becomes more a caricature of itself than a real, true, genuine, not always pretty account of the God of the Universe.

I wish someone would do a REAL-sounding dramatized version of the Bible. I�d buy that one.

As long as I�m on a rant about trying to keep the Bible �respectable,� it�s interesting what interpreters do not to create a commotion. I guess they couldn�t take much of Song of Solomon out, but there�s an incident (recorded in both Kings and Chronicles) in which Solomon�s son is advised to tell the people of Israel something that in the NIV is rendered, �My little finger is thicker than my father�s waist.� If you look at a literal or amplified version, it is, �My little finger is thicker than my father�s loin.� So what he�s saying is, �My pinky is thicker than my father�s d!(k.� And the fact that that�s offensive shouldn�t keep it out of the text. It�s the truth, and one of the beauties of the Bible is that it�s not whitewashed. Even the �heroes� are real people who make horrid, stupid decisions. (Which is why the only real and worthy hero is God.)

It seems like translators are squeamish about men�s privates, though. In Genesis when both Abraham and Joseph ask for a promise on their deathbeds, it says, �Put your hand under my thigh.� This was a symbolic swear on the person�s future generations. And where do future generations tend to be warehoused? Right.

So, my point, I guess, is that I hate to see the Bible, which is an accessible love story for all people, artificially raised to intimidating �high art.� I wouldn�t want a copy of The Word of Promise (though I do think the choice of Kimberly Williams as Mary, Jesus� mother, compared to her slutty �Life According to Jim� character is interesting), and I can�t imagine any non-believer would.

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