Re: Christian Themes in the Dawn Treader
Posted: Nov 06, 2009 8:57 pm
220christian wrote:Note: the pronoun "thee" -- "I will give unto thee" -- in 16:19 can have both singular and plural meanings, depending on the context.)
Actually, no. Thee is the objective case of Thou, which is "You" singular. The objective case of "You" plural is 'Ye'. You'd need to go back to the original Greek, Latin or Aramaean text to get the right meaning, as the English language of today has departed somewhat further from its original, more Germanic variety of English used in the KJV and Douay bibles, than is the case with other Indo-European languages. Modern German, for example, has kept the 'du' form, which was 'Thou' in English.
By the way, this is also why we use copies of those lovely International editions of the Bible at Church, left at the back of pews for everyone's consultation during church services, in a size print we can actually read comfortably without hurting our eyes, and in the Standard English of today.
Revelation 3:20: "Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." Context: Jesus' message to the Laodicean church. I've seen many beautiful paintings of this scene.
Thank you for supplying the reference, 220christian. We have a stained glass window of this scene at Church. And I agree with pattertwig's discussion of the Stone Knife, which was not only a reminder to Lucy, but clearly one for Edmund as well. Isn't that why he queried whether Ramandu's daughter could be trusted or not?
2. While Israel was in Babylonian captivity, King Belshazzar "drank wine" out of temple vessels {which were considered sacred by being used in temple worship} "and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone" {Daniel 5:4}. God judged Belshazzar by letting him be killed by the Medes and Persians that night and by stripping the kingdom from Babylon.
Yes, King Belshazzar, or King Baltasar would have done this. But he was hardly the only one to desecrate the Temple vessels. Earlier, the Philistines did something similar, installing the Ark of the Covenant in their temple of Dagon. And this sort of thing was standard practice, taking the religious goods of defeated peoples as booty, and as a way of crowing over them and asserting the superiority of their own gods, whom they expected their defeated new subjects to worship. The Israelites experienced this sort of conduct many times, such as by the Egyptian pharaoh, Shishak, Shoshenq 1?, (1 Kings Ch 14: 25-26), in the 5th year of Rehoboam's reign. Also later on, the same thing happened when Judea was part of the Seleucid Empire under Antiochus IV Epiphanes and under Pompey and the Roman Emperor Nero.
And yes, Chaldean rule was extraordinarily brief, being little more than a footnote to the earlier Assyrian empire. If you don't mind my telling you what I know about that period of history, the Assyrians had previously demolished Samaria (2 Kings 17 and onwards), sending in Assyrians to live in what used to be Israel, and deporting much of the Israelite inhabitants to various towns mentioned in 2 Kings Ch 17, verse 6, in particular to the cities of the Medes, in the North. That was under kings like Tiglath-Pileser III, Shalmaneser V and Sargon II. Under the Judean King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, the son of Sargon II, invested Jerusalem, itself, demanding tribute which he got according to his own records. Sennacherib came to a sticky end, and his grandson, Assurbanipal, the only Assyrian sovereign to ever learn to read and write for himself, and who founded the first systematically organised library, was the last great Assyrian sovereign before the Babylonians, with assistance from the Medes, finally took over that area of the world.
Nebuchadnezzar II, who razed Jerusalem, destroying its temple, and taking its young king Jehoiachin captive, and who also married a Median princess, was succeeded by Amel-Marduk, who released Jehoiachin from more than thirty years of captivity, and then was killed by his brother-in-law, Neriglissar, who took the throne. He, in turn, and his son, Labashi-Marduk were succeeded by Nabonidus, who was connected with Harran and who angered the priests of Marduk, the main god of Babylon. Belshazzar or Balthasar, Nabonidus' son, was the king in Babylon who was overthrown by the Medes and the Persians. (Medes again? Now who are the Medes?)
It sounds as if all this is more a Christian theme for Prince Caspian, since the Telmarines, according to Miraz, seem to have just as fratricidal ways of determining the succession as did the Chaldeans and the later Seleucids. It underlines however just how important it is for sovereigns to get married. So after Ramandu spells out what King Caspian has to do, why do we see Caspian suddenly behaving like Miraz, wanting to get his own way?
I might also mention that even the Bible, in recounting the stories of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus, mentions the way these Chaldeans absented themselves from their subjects for years on end, because of illness or contrary beliefs. Much like Caspian, on his Voyage, and later on, Rilian in his enchantment, were to do. In this case we have not only what their contemporaries have to say about them, but also what Greek historians like Herodotus learned about them to back up the Biblical account.
And if you were to get a further theme for several of the Narnian chronicles, not just VDT, there is nothing like the resistance of people like Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshak and Abednego against their Babylonian captors, their demands that these Hebrew captives conform to firstly Babylonian beliefs and secondly to worship of the Emperor, himself, and how it was this very resistance, including, I suspect, the compilation and reorganisation of what written records that remained to the captives, which enabled the Hebrews, maybe the Bible, itself, to retain their distinctiveness and relevance up until the time of Jesus Christ, and for thousands of years afterwards.
Have to follow up Ezra 4:10