30 April 2014

Dust and Grail

A couple of years ago, we did a family read-aloud of "The Golden Compass". I'd read the book, we'd all seen the movie, but my husband hadn't ever read it, so every night after dinner, we'd sit down and one of us grown-ups would read a chapter aloud. If you've not read it, it's a little hard to summarize quickly. Suffice it to say that it interweaves magic, theology, science and armored bears, and that all of the humans have animal daemons, and that Dust is a mysterious important particle.

Towards the end of the book, Lyra finally makes her way to her father, Lord Asriel. [Note: this is a scene that's not in the movie.] In a long conversation about "dust", Asriel turns to the Bible to explain how sin came into the world, in Genesis. But the Golden Compass edition of the Bible - of course - includes daemons. Instead of reading thusly:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. (Genesis 3:6-7)

Pullman's version reads:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to reveal the true form of one's daemon, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they saw the true form of their daemons, and spoke with them.

But when the man and the woman knew their own daemons, they knew that a great change had come upon them, for until that moment it had seemed that they were at one with all the creatures of the earth and the air and there was no difference between them:

And they saw the difference, and they knew good and evil, and they were ashamed, and they sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness..." (The Golden Compass, p. 372)

This passage, which we made sure to point out was an adaptation of the King James, what with those daemons, led to a lively discussion amongst us, as to the origins of the Bible and what one might like to believe about it, and why it's important to read it and that it's a significant piece of the literary canon. Several days later, the girl asked me to get the Bible down from the high shelf it lives on, next to a hymnal and a concordance and not far from the third edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. I want to read about Jesus, she said. I made her start from Genesis; she slogged through several chapters and abandoned ship.

Until not too long ago, that is, when she - now ten - told me that she was reading the bible. Oh, said I, why? Well, I was watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and they were looking for the holy grail, and I thought I should learn more about Jesus. Okay, then.

* * * * * * * *


It is decidedly interesting to navigate the choppy waters of belief systems as a parent, especially given my longstanding status as a heathen pagan atheist1. The child apparently has had many conversations about religion at school - not in school qua school, but on the playground, in the cafeteria, on the bus. One boy told her he could never marry her because she's not Jewish. Other children are incredulous that she's not anything. You have to be something, they say. She tells me that she tells them that there's no scientific evidence that god exists. And she's curious. She's read One World, Many Religions: The Ways We Worship2. She knows, roughly, the difference between Catholics and Protestants because she's read about Bloody Mary. She's pretty good on the Greek myths, thanks to the D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. We're going to go on a field trip to church - an Episcopal church, on Staten Island, where I know the Priest in charge3. We talk about lots of things at the dinner table - one recent meal included these wide-ranging vocabulary words: vernal, polygamy, geopolitical, solstice, autumnal, chalice. In short, we're working on religious literacy.



1 The Belief-O-Matic says I'm a Secular Humanist.

2 Incidentally, Mary Pope Osborne totally redeems herself in that book; I'd have never thought I'd want to own any books by the author of the infernal Magic Treehouse books, but this is a good one.

3 He married us, using a secular edit of the ceremony out of the Book of Common Prayer.

6 comments:

She Curmudgeon said...

I always get the "oh, you're religious?" response when I leave work "early" (530) on Weds. for Quaker meeting. Funny how the age groups and social situations affect the response. No one questions the Muslims & the several Orthodox Jews since they know (at least) it isn't P.C., but admit that you're Christian & it's automatically suspect-- until you say you're Quaker, and then that's OK because Quakers are liberal, and they assume I'm not "really" religious, and I'm in it for the social justice organization.

I think it's great that the girl knows about the different systems from a cultural/academic perspective. Even if her choice ends up being none, information is always better than assumptions. :)

Bibliomama said...

I loved the Dark Materials trilogy - I tried to read The Golden Compass aloud with Angus but we didn't get very far - I should give it to Eve. I'm happy to know that Mary Pope Osborne wrote one book that didn't suck. :)

Jeanne said...

To cap off our kids' experience with church as cultural literacy, I took them to several different protestant churches in our small town. I'm still amused at their reaction to the Baptist one: "they said everything three times!"

Joybells said...

This is fantastic. I think learning to use a concordance while reading the Bible is a great skill in general, so I would encourage the girl to have at it with both books.

I'd also encourage her not to attempt to read the Bible from beginning to end. It's not a novel, it's a library of stories. Jump in somewhere randomly and read a story. Ask these questions: What do you notice? What is speaking to you? How might the events of the story still be taking place in our world today? What do you think the writers wanted us to know that we wouldn't have known if we hadn't read their stories?

Also remind her that all these texts were initially written down the way wordfind puzzles look to us on those little restaurant placemats. The Hebrew of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek of the New Testament were written without spaces between the words, without upper and lower case letters, and without punctuation. The texts have been translated (and mis-translated) over thousands of years. And the translations represent scholars best guesses as to 1) what the word(s) might actually be and 2) what they might mean. Words that either don't make sense to the translators, or that don't fit with their view of what the story should be, often are left out of the English translations that we have. For example, in the Hebrew Bible, God says, "Please" all the time when God is speaking with humans. Neither Jewish nor Christian Bibles translate that into English.

Punctuation got added to the texts hundreds (in some cases, thousands) of years after they were initially written. Turns out, punctuation can completely change the meaning of a story and the theology that is presented. Here's an example:

From John, chapter 9: As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.

My Episcopal priest wife thinks it should be punctuated this way:
As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind. So that God’s works might be revealed in him, we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.

A 10-year-old can read those two passages and see how different they are. No words are changed, added, or removed. The punctuation itself creates a completely different theological perspective.

Now I must get off my soapbox before I have a nosebleed.

leanne said...

"In short, we're working on religious literacy." I like that. I need to check out the "One World, Many Religions" book. My son has been curious about religion lately... wondering "what are we?"

Reine Marie said...

The Golden Compass isn't bad, it's cast is too good and it's too well made, but something fundamental to good storytelling - heart - has been lost, leaving a final product as icy and impossible to care for as Mrs. Coulter herself.