‘Pancake Day’ doesn’t turn up in the Bible – but plenty of food does. Here are some alternative pancake recipes drawing on food found in stories in the Bible. Locust and honey pancakes, anyone?
Pancakes of biblical proportions
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The Bible in memes
Downton Abbey, Christmas Day – What Would Jesus Do?
by Rach
CC Image from Patrick van IJzendoorn on Flickr
OK, I admit the last series of Downton Abbey wasn’t perfect. There were some awful lines: when Cora looked up from her newspaper and said: ‘Oh my, this Spanish flu news is awful,’ we knew that she, along with half the household, would be on their deathbeds by the next episode.
But who cares? The battle of the bustles was our Sunday night fix and I, for one, can’t wait till Christmas Day. Aside from the drama, suspense and gossip, I think we love Downton because we are all secretly obsessed with how other people live.
Downton represents a world where the toffs had it good. They were waited upon (dear Carson); cleaned up after; (inconvenient dead Turkish men); and lusted after (get down Branson, Sybil is too good for you). The downstairs lot, though, just had to get on with it. The family silver still shone – come war, unwanted pregnancies or murder trials. Servitude was their lot. They got on with because they knew their place.
Far from being an aberration, Edwardian values are pretty common in whatever period of history you choose to look. The New Testament is full of different groups of people who were either revered or loathed by others. The mutual distrust and loathing between Romans and Jews was what made Monty Python’s Life of Brian so funny.
The real story of Zacchaeus, in the gospel of Luke, shows us how utterly despised Jewish tax collectors were. They were seen as traitors working for the Roman Empire and yet Jesus calls this short and unpopular tax-collector down from a tree and tells him he is coming for tea.
Although people are horrified, Jesus couldn’t care less. In his eyes no one is untouchable – and that means lepers, prostitutes and Samaritans.
I suppose if Jesus appeared in the Christmas episode of Downton, he would marry Lady Sybil and Branson; take tea with Daisy; then tell the Dowager Countess that money and status count for nought – then again, I’m not sure even Jesus is that brave!
The hunt for the Higgs boson might not so much be trouble for God as material for Jesus
CC Picture from Lightmash on Flickr
The BBC reports that ‘the most coveted prize in particle physics – the Higgs boson – may have been glimpsed’. In the media, this elusive particle has been nicknamed ‘the God particle’ – despite the fact that the physicists involved in the research intensely dislike the term (‘it has nothing to do with God’, one said).
Whilst some people would like to draw up some kind of clash between God and the Higgs boson, I actually think the long and expensive search for this immensely important and potentially valuable discovery is more like the sort of thing Jesus would use as material for one of his parables.
In his parables, Jesus draws on events and situations around him, things his audience would know about – just like the hunt for the Higgs boson is for many of us now. And it’s a story of people searching for something precious, something hard to find, something that could change everything – just like several of Jesus’ parables.
Have a look at, say, the parable of the pearl of great value (Matthew 13.44-46), or the lost coin (Luke 15.8-10). If Jesus had been born in 21st century Britain, rather than 1st century Palestine, don’t you think we might have had a ‘parable of the hunt for the Higgs boson’?
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
Introducing the 10 commandments to Skyrim
Picture cc from -Dreamflow- on Flickr
I gave in to the hype and bought Skyrim over the weekend. I’m now thinking I might do a play-through where I try to abide by the 10 commandments.
As 21st century readers, I’d suggest we’re not always great at picturing/understanding how these sorts of biblical scenes would play out or what it would be like to receive those commandments in their original, ancient context. Now, I’m not saying the world of Skyrim is anything like the world of Moses and the Israelites in Exodus, but it’d just be interesting to try and explore them in a different world than 21st century Britain and see how they play out. Mind you, Skyrim – like Exodus – does seem to have plenty of stone tablets, idols and so on!
Has anyone done a 10 commandments setup already? If you play the game, what ‘code’ does your character live by? Who do you make the ‘authority’ in how you behave in-game?
UPDATE: I realised that one commandment in particular could cause serious difficulty in the game: ‘do not kill’. However, here’s one guy running a character with exactly that motto – he’s made it to level 9 without killing a single thing.
The Wire? Sounds like the Bible
Picture cc from itspaulkelly on Flickr
From the write-up on the back of The Wire series 1 box set: ‘told from the points of view of both the police and their targets, the series captures a universe where easy distinctions between good and evil, and crime and punishment, are challenged at every turn’.
Now go read some of Jesus’ parables – like the good Samaritan, in Luke 10, or the shrewd manager, in Luke 16 – or things like the pronouncements in Isaiah 44 & 45 about God calling and equipping Cyrus, the king of Persia and not a Jew, and tell me the Bible doesn’t do the same thing of ‘challenging easy distinctions’.
Tevez wants to leave Man City, Fabregas wants to ‘go home’ to Barca – how about a transfer window jubilee?
What would happen if we had a transfer ‘jubilee’ (as per Leviticus 25) this year? Click to see full-size image (pdf)…
