Tag Archives: Christianity

Christianity for Atheists

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This article first appeared at Splice Today.
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Why Niebuhr Now? asks John Patrick Diggins as the title of his brief, borderline hagiographic discussion of theologian Rienhold Niebuhr’s ethical and political thought. Why does everyone from Barack Obama to John McCain to Andrew Sullivan cite Niebuhr as an influence and an inspiration? Diggins’ answers are more or less what you’d expect—Niebuhr is profound, Niebuhr is thoughtful, Niebuhr’s analysis of power and evil and morality remains relevant.

All of which is no doubt true, but I wonder if Niebuhr’s ongoing popularity doesn’t rest on other sources. I think this passage from Why Niebuhr Now? is more to the point than Diggins quite intended:

Is the ethic of Jesus sufficient for mankind? It is noteworthy that Niebuhr’s own ethical teaching does not rely on it. Indeed, the theologian appeared at times compelled to remind the Savior not to forget that there is sin in the world… Niebuhr further diminishes the love ideal by suggesting in the politest terms that Jesus who died on the cross cannot be expected to offer useful instruction to humankind on how to live.

Niebuhr is a Christian theologian who believes that Christ is insufficiently realistic, and that those who follow Christ need to be taught “lessons about life.” In other words, he’s a Christian theologian who sounds like an atheist. In particular, he sounds like the atheist Nietzsche, who, Diggins says, Niebuhr read and appreciated.

The answer to “Why Niebuhr now?” therefore, could well be that Niebuhr is not all that Christian. In a secular society, a theologian of secularism is likely to be beloved. Certainly, as an atheist myself, Niebuhr’s skepticism of Christianity and tolerance of other viewpoints was one of the things I found most appealing in his writings. For example, in his essay “Can the Church Give a Moral Lead?” Niebuhr argued that Christians have no more access to the truth than anyone else—unless that access is the knowledge that they have no more access. “…the Christian faith gives us no warrant to lift ourselves above the world’s perplexities and to seek or to claim absolute validity for the stand we take,” Niebuhr maintains. Instead, Christianity “encourage[s] us to the charity, which is born of humility and contrition.” He concludes, “If we claim to possess overtly what remains hidden, we turn the mercy of Christ into inhuman fanaticism.” He drives this point home in “The Catholic Heresy,” in which he argues, “Nothing but embarrassment can result from the policy of commending Christ by pointing to the righteousness of the believers and the sins of the ungodly.” Christians are as much in need of repentance as non-Christians. All are steeped in sin.

Diggins argues that a consciousness of sin, and of human imperfectability, is at the heart of Niebuhr’s theology. This is so much the case that, as noted above, Niebuhr suggests that Christ himself did not take sufficient account of sin. Christ commanded human beings in this world to build their lives on love— a noble goal, but, Niebuhr says, not an actual possibility for sinful creatures.

For Niebuhr, sin is not primarily identified with desire, but with pride. Pride leads humans to believe that they know the mind of God and that they can perfect the world and themselves. It is pride that makes liberal reformers, Christian and otherwise, think that science and reason will solve the problems of inequality and prevent the misuse of power. It is pride that leads Christians to believe that they have the key to human happiness and salvation. And, conversely, it is pride that leads atheists to believe that, without religion, the world would be perfected. In what is perhaps Niebuhr’s most famous formulation, it is pride that leads to pacifism.

Pacifists, Niebuhr argues in “Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist,” have:

absorbed the Renaissance faith in the goodness of man, have rejected the Christian doctrine of original sin as an outmoded bit of pessimism, have reinterpreted the cross so that it is made to stand for the absurd idea that perfect love is guaranteed a simple victory over the world… This form of pacifism is not only heretical when judged by the standards of the total gospel. It is equally heretical when judged by the facts of human existence.

The last two sentences are quintessential Niebuhr. Christianity for him is not a challenge to “the facts of human existence,” but a profound description of them. It is not a utopian vision, but a chastening of utopian visions. Humans are flawed, but their own false pride tells them they can control destiny and achieve happiness. Christianity is the path to humility, because it knows that power, pride, and sin are humankind’s lot on earth.

Niebuhr’s philosophy is convincing; he’s a thoughtful, profound thinker, and his warnings about utopias, fanaticism, and modernity’s delusions of perfectibility remain relevant and telling. But when I see the eagerness with which he’s embraced by Neocons or Barack Obama, I wonder if his theology is really quite as opposed to pride as Diggins insists. Not to impugn Obama, but anyone who gets his butt behind the desk in the Oval Office is unlikely to be overly afflicted with humility.

In fact, I think that, despite pointing out the mote of pride in his neighbor’s eye, Niebuhr has a beam or two in his own. After all, you’ve got to have a fairly high opinion of yourself to tell God he doesn’t understand sin. Niebuhr saw clearly the pride inherent in optimism and utopian perfectionism. But he was less aware of the pride of pessimism and, indeed, of realism. Understanding the dirty, dark secrets of how the world works, understanding the ubiquity of power and the corruption of your fellow human beings—there’s a rush there, as there always is in being the one-who-knows. Obama can have a tragic sense of the limitations of humanity and of the inevitable imperfect consequences of his actions—and with that sorrowing Shakespearean insight, he can drop bombs on Libya and shake his head sadly at those who critique him for failing to understand the necessary compromises of power. Is that really less egotistical than George Bush exclaiming “Hyuk! Axis of Evil!” and sending the planes into Afghanistan? And, if we’re going to talk about pragmatic realism, what practical difference does it make exactly to the folks on the ground that they’re being bombed by a chastened realist rather than by a vaunting idiot?

Everybody complains about the religious right, but the real religion in America today, the faith of our rulers, is not in Christianity or utopia. It’s a faith in reality and pragmatism. If we only look at the world clearly, these rulers tell us, without rose-colored glasses or unnecessary ideological baggage, we can manipulate results in a bipartisan fashion approved by experts and arrive at solutions that, while not ideal, are the best that can be hoped for. Faith, hope and love allow us to better appreciate and tolerate the painful necessities of our pragmatic decisions. They certainly don’t challenge us to question those necessities. There are no miracles, which is another way of saying that we know how the world works.

Jesus died on the cross to tell us to carefully weigh power relationships and choose the least bad option. That’s a moderate, non-utopian message that technocrats can get behind. Which perhaps explains “Why Niebuhr now,” and why Niebuhr later, and why Niebuhr as long as serious people want to tell themselves they are behaving seriously when they exercise power, tragically or otherwise.

Creation Redux: Robert Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated

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Few comics in the last year have elicited as much critical attention as Robert Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated. Most of these notices have been positive with a number of publications affirming Crumb’s status as a cartooning god. Such has been the adulation that even the most ardent Crumb enthusiasts no longer clamor for more recognition but are now asking for deeper and more contemplative readings of the comic. Consider Jeet Heer in a recent post at Comics Comics:

“As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been disappointed by the critical response to Crumb’s Genesis book. It is not so much a matter that the book hasn’t won enough praise, but rather that the critics, with a handful of exceptions, haven’t had the intellectual resources to tackle the challenge presented by Crumb’s handling of the Bible.  Ideally, the critics of the book should be well-versed in both comics and Biblical scholarship.”

Heer’s statement suggests that Crumb’s book is of such learned complexity that only individuals of the greatest experience and intellect would be able to do it justice. Suffice to say, I found this statement to be at odds with my own experience with the comic which I felt offered more superficial pleasures.

In order to ascertain the truthfulness of this and various other statements in praise of Crumb’s comic, I’ve decided to examine his handling of what may be the two most famous chapters in Genesis, namely chapters 2 and 3 which concern the creation and fall of man. The importance of these two chapters in the context of Judaism and Christianity is such that their substance is widely known even by those with only a cursory knowledge of Genesis. They have also been the  subject of innumerable explorations and appropriations in art, film, poetry and literature. These factors will make the ascertainment of the extent of Crumb’s achievements in The Book of Genesis that much easier.

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In some recent blog comments, Heer advised his readers that “Crumb was performing exegesis through his adaptation and thus is part of a long tradition of Biblical commentary”.  In another posting he writes that The Book of Genesis “deserves to be seen not just as an important work of art but also a significant commentary on the Bible.”

Of course, such an adaptation could not be anything else. For one, the practice of illustration itself presupposes the act of interpretation [exegesis: from Greek, from exegeisthai to interpret, from ex-1 + hegeisthai to guide]. The artist must provide expression, posture, dress, setting and reaction where the text is silent. He may even choose to provide a useful contradiction between word and imagery if he is so moved. We see this in the plethora of considerably less elevated Bible-related adaptations Charles Hatfield lists in his survey of a Genesis exhibition at the Hammer museum. Secondly, as the noted scholar, critic and translator, Robert Alter, states in his initial comments on Crumb’s book in The Nation:

“I stress that it is an interpretation, because the extremely concise biblical narrative, abounding in hints and gaps and ellipses, famously demands interpretation.”

Rather, the issue at hand here is whether Crumb’s adaptation of Genesis is “significant”, that is a work which cannot be ignored in any consideration of the art or literature connected to the Bible.

To be sure, the bulk of the praise extant has dwelt upon the artist’s reputation and his distinctive execution. Henry Allen of The Washington Post can hardly contain himself at the thought that the pope of impiety, political incorrectness and hedonism has decided to take on the Bible and God. Alter embraces this as well and has the following to say about the opening verse of chapter 2 of The Book of Genesis:

“Perhaps the most winning aspect of Crumb’s Genesis is its inventive playfulness… God’s resting on the seventh day of creation is shown by his sitting with his eyes closed, fatigued, his back against one of the trees of the Garden, while naked Adam and Eve in the background cuddle together in sleep.”

The scene is, of course, not so subtle satire; a reimagining of that unblemished garden as a kind of Disney cartoon (and every bit as ridiculous and fictional) with Bambi, Thumper and Faline in attendance.

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[Left: Bambi and Faline; Right: Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder; note the Christian iconography with the stag representing Christ]

The woodland creatures who espy the sleeping creator bear comparison with those which surround Snow White in her most popular incarnation. This gently mocking tone reasserts itself periodically throughout Genesis.

Crumb’s oft cited depiction of pure sexual disinhibition towards the close of chapter 2 is another example of this frolicsome spirit which in this instance seems almost self-referential in its longing.

 

[Gustav Klimt’s Adam and Eve (unfinished)]

 

[Fritz Comes on Strong”, 1965]

 

[Cave Wimp”, 1988]

 

As for the artist’s rendering of the creation of Adam, it has some similarities to that found in Basil Wolverton’s The Bible Story, a connection elaborated upon by Charles Hatfield at Thought Balloonists.

This solution was not an uncommon one during the Italian Renaissance, here made fresh by showing the stages in this act, in particular the breath of life given to Adam (the word “breathed” or “blew” here suggesting the intimacy of a kiss). Crumb’s adaptation is also notable for showing Adam in his clay-like state, a reminder of the Egyptian (see The Hymn of Khnum and Hekat) and Mesopotamian (see Enki & Ninmah, and Bel) myths which carry the same motif.

[The creation of Adam and Eve, Giusto di Giovanni de’ Menabuoi]

 

[Elohim created Adam (1795), William Blake]

 

As articulated in his short commentary found at the end of The Book of Genesis, Crumb is particularly interested in these ancient tales of creation and periodically inserts them while neglecting to emphasize the many internal consistencies, dilemmas and word plays in the Biblical narrative. Thus, for example, the “dirt of the ground” is linked to pagan tradition and not to a play on the words “man” (adam) and “ground” (adama) where “man is related to the ‘ground’ by his very constitution (Genesis 3:19), making him perfectly suited for the task of working the ‘ground,’ which is required for cultivation…his origins also become his destiny” (Kenneth A. Matthews).

The stated “literalness” of Crumb’s adaptation as well as its generally bland imagery will lull many readers into the false impression that Genesis intends a deep consideration of centuries old biblical scholarship. It doesn’t, an important point which I will address in more detail later.

What follows is God’s prohibition and warning concerning the consumption of fruit from the tree of knowledge. The Lord’s brows are knit, his figure towering over Adam. It is interesting to note the number of times Crumb portrays God from this standpoint in his comic; that of a person standing at the edge of reality who seems of human proportions, but who then takes on the space and terrifying air of something other worldly when provoked.

There is the instance of God’s act of creation…

…his anger as he calls to Adam & Eve who are seen hiding in some shrubbery…

…his curse on the ground and Adam…

[Genesis 3:19]

 

…his cogitations concerning the ambitions of man…

…his decision to invoke the great flood…

…and his sanction against murder.

In explication of his choice to so portray the Almighty, Crumb writes:

“After closely reading the beginning of the Creation, I suddenly imagined an ancient man standing on the shore of a sea, and gazing out at the horizon, and seeing only water meeting the sky.”

Much criticism has focused on Crumb’s use of the traditional image of a bearded old man to depict God. There are certainly glaring problems with this. For one, it conjures up all kinds of unflattering comparisons to his artistic forebears.

It also conveys an all too facile understanding of Adam being made in the “image of God” (imago dei), whether this is rooted in the theories and debates surrounding the terms “likeness” and “image” (e.g. in the writings of Irenaeus and Thomas Aquinas), the existential and relational readings of Karl Barth or the functional readings which altogether dispense with the idea that the “image” must consist of non-corporeal features (i.e. the “image of god” as seen in man’s dominion over the earth and animals). This is but one indication that Crumb’s journey through Genesis was more personal and instinctive than cerebral.

Hence we have Marc Sobel’s complaint that “part of the problem [he] had with this adaptation [was] the overly literal interpretation and the complete lack of insight about the actual ideas underlying Genesis:

“Thus, the depictions of God as an old man, the creation story, etc. that you [Derik Badman] commented on represent a very childish understanding of Genesis. That would be fine if this were a children’s book, but the problem is that, by presenting the entirety of the dense text… no child will be able to penetrate this book either. Thus, its an interpretation doomed to disappoint any potential audience other than fans of Crumb’s art.”

On the other hand, some might argue that Crumb’s portrayal of the creator (fleshy, interactive and emotional) is an acknowledgment of  the capricious Mesopotamian gods the artist is so enamored of. Crumb had the following explanation concerning his approach in his interview at Vanity Fair:

“I had several different approaches to making God. One was a tall thin man with no beard and another was a young looking man with long straight hair that looked more like an angel than a god. He had pupil-less eyes that were beaming light. But I decided to go with the standard, severe patriarchal God. It just felt like the right choice. That just seems to be what the God of Genesis is all about. He’s older than the oldest patriarch.”

Crumb’s almost anti-intellectual approach to Genesis continues to pose difficulties throughout the rest of these two chapters.

While few would question the rigor with which the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is drawn, it remains at best only a fruit bearing tree. One might view the central image of the tree of life (many branched, filled with knots and ramrod straight) as a representation of the masculine ideal and the tree of knowledge in the background as the curvaceous and deadly feminine, but there is little beyond this to recommend it.

What we don’t find in these illustrations is any evidence of the speculative richness the idea of the tree of knowledge has evoked through the ages; be they the ideas concerning sexual awareness proposed by Ibn Ezra, the capacity for moral discrimination, the granting of paramount knowledge or the bestowal of a divine wisdom. All that we find in The Book of Genesis is a personal mythology influenced in sections by the somewhat discredited theories of Savina Teubal (which I should add is still preferable to the alternative of unthinking transcription; see R. C. Harvey’s summary of this as well as another feminist perspective).

In much the same vein, the encounter with the serpent in Genesis chapter 3 is reduced to a flaccid conversation with a walking reptile. Adam is absent throughout this version of events, though the presence of the plural form of “you” in 3:1-5 suggests he is with Eve but not deceived like she is. Crumb sticks to his vow of straight illustration, refusing to explore the reasons for Adam’s acquiescence despite his absence from the serpent’s exchange with Eve in this account. Genesis Rabbah 19.5, for example, posits the administration of cold logic and tears by Eve, which while clearly offensive in this day and age would still be better than this bland reading.

[Right: The Fall of Man by Hugo van der Goes]

 

Eve’s look of consternation at Adam’s betrayal and shifting of blame (he is actually indirectly blaming God) in Genesis 3:12 is better for it shows at least some artistic involvement with the terse text.

The entirety of God’s judgments from Genesis 3:14 to 19 are depicted without comment or analysis. The artist’s hand here is as distant as a machine-operated drafting tool. In response to Genesis 3:15 (“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”) we get a somewhat cursorily drawn snake wriggling away. It is common knowledge that Christians look upon these verses as the protoevangelium (for example, some church fathers saw the “woman” here as the virgin Mary and the “seed” as representing  the church and/or Christ in particular) while Jewish commentators sometimes view the “seed” as a metaphor for humankind.There is little evidence of a response to these or any other interpretations here.

All this can be easily explained by constraints of time, space and artistic lassitude, but it should also be noted that Crumb (a self-proclaimed Gnostic) has little interest in Genesis as a religious or sacred text, a tremendous hindrance in adapting a book which has been largely interpreted in that context. As he clearly states in his interview at USA Today:

“To take this as a sacred text, or the word of God or something to live by, is kind of crazy. So much of it makes no sense. To think of all the fighting and killing that’s gone on over this book, it just became to me a colossal absurdity. That’s probably the most profound moment I’ve had — the absurdity of it all.”

Nor is there any suggestion that he took it upon himself to find out why the book in question has remained coherent and relevant to a multitude of very rational artists, philosophers and scientists through the ages. One hardly needs to believe to read closely and with an intent to understand. Thus stripped of emotional and mental investment, Crumb’s Genesis frequently degenerates into half-digested pabulum.

As would be expected, these issues have generated a modest amount of discussion online. David Hajdu writing in The New York Times adopts a more religious approach in his disagreements with Crumb and The Book of Genesis:

“For all its narrative potency and raw beauty, Crumb’s Book of Genesis is missing something that just does not interest its illustrator: a sense of the sacred. What Genesis demonstrates in dramatic terms are beliefs in an orderly universe and the godlike nature of man. Crumb, a fearless anarchist and proud cynic, clearly believes in other things, and to hold those beliefs — they are kinds of beliefs, too — is his prerogative. Crumb, brilliantly, shows us the man in God, but not the God in man.”

Points with which Dan Nadel of Comics Comics disagrees:

“I can’t see how, as an irreligious reader, you come away with that interpretation. I mean, there are two conflicting accounts of creation. Not exactly orderly. Also, Crumb is not, as far as I know, an anarchist, but he is, by his own account, spiritual. Which is to say, Crumb seems to be exploring the sacred. Maybe not Hajdu’s sacred, but sacred nonetheless.”

Hajdu wants Crumb to add a spiritual dimension to his reading of Genesis, something which is clearly irrelevant in the context of creating a fine adaptation based on modern day archaeology or biblical scholarship. Nadel seems more offended by Hajdu’s suggestion that Crumb lacks a certain spirituality which is equally of no consequence to this project, since Crumb is far more interested in the historical and mythological aspects of Genesis (i.e. not a journey of the soul but one of personal discovery).

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It should be understood that while in-depth exegesis of the sort discussed above is frequently beyond the means of the single image (in painting for instance), it is certainly not unimaginable in the context of comics.

Failing to see this, Alter complains that “the foreclosure of ambiguity or of multiple meanings is intrinsic to  the graphic narrative medium, and hence is pervasive in the illustrated  text…The image concretizes, and thereby constrains, our imagination.” Then referring to the example of Genesis 9:20-27 where Ham sees “the nakedness of his father” he states:

“The most innocent reading, which is the one that Crumb chooses to  follow, is that Ham simply saw his father exposed, thus violating what  those who adopt this view assume was a grave taboo in Israelite society.  This reading may well be right, though the report that when Noah wakes  from his wine “he knew what his youngest son had done to him” might  suggest that an act more palpable than mere seeing was perpetrated. Some  interpreters in late antiquity, encouraged by these words and probably  thinking of the Zeus-Chronos myth, imagined that Ham castrated his  father, though this notion has always seemed to me rather unlikely. My own preference as a reader is to relish the shimmer of murky possibilities, including the more lurid ones, even if I am left without a  concrete or confident picture of what actually happened. Pictorial  representation forces you to decide one way–which, however appealing or  plausible that way may be, imposes a limit on the story told in words.”

What Alter fails to realize is that the presentation of a host of concomitant possibilities is not beyond the reach of a comics adaptation. This is true even if pictorial representation will never possess the elusiveness, comparatively speaking, of spare sentences on a page. If there is a weakness here, it lies with the choices and abilities of the artist not the medium.

It may be that a trace of this hoped for ambiguity can be found in one of Crumb’s more successful passages in The Book of Genesis, one which Alter bring ups for special mention in his review. Genesis chapter 34 tells the story of Dinah (the daughter of Leah), her defilement by Shechem (the son of a Hivite Prince), and the terrible vengeance wrought on his people by the sons of Jacob.

The story is rich in possibilities: the ethical questions are right at the forefront, the underlying textural discourse plentiful.

There is the question of the narrator’s attitude (for, against or ambivalent) towards the events, the episode here being a mere prelude to a host of base acts perpetrated by Jacob’s sons until they encounter Joseph in Egypt. There is a cohesion which is implied in this arc that suggests a descent into moral degeneracy before a final redemption in the land of the Pharaohs. We also have the views of some early Jewish interpreters who saw divine sanction in the acts of Simeon and Levi (the prime movers in the slaughter of Shechem’s people). The Book of Jubilees, for instance, states that “judgment is ordained in heaven against them that they should destroy with the sword all the men of the Shechemites because they had wrought shame in Israel.” We also learn by way of Jubilees that Dinah was a girl of 12, a “fact” which has been used to justify the vengeful extermination of the Shechemites and to rehabilitate the victim, Dinah (by Luther; she had been used by early Christian interpreters as an example of idle curiosity and lust).

Lyn M. Bechtel’s suggestion that Dinah was not raped is alluded to but not confirmed in Crumb’s comic. Her tears in the penultimate page of The Book of Genesis have been taken for those of sorrow though it is not so hard to imagine them as tears of relief. In Crumb’s rendition of Genesis 34:3 (“And his very soul clung to Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young woman, and he spoke to the young woman’s heart.”), an enraptured Shechem looks down on a woman who is caught somewhere between ardor and hopelessness (most reviewers have chosen to see the former). The greatest delights to be found in this section of The Book of Genesis may lie in this subtle play of facial and bodily expression.

This has some connection to a short comment by Tim Hodler (at Comics Comics) who takes a different tack in his response to Alter’s criticism stating that:

“Alter doesn’t then go  on to recognize that the choices Crumb makes enable an entirely new set  of ambiguities and artistic effects that aren’t present in the original  text, and make the  book worth evaluating as its own entity, and not  strictly as a one-to-one  translation.”

It must be said, that this an argument which I find of somewhat limited use in relation to The Book of Genesis, for the comic largely conforms to the circumscribed borders of traditional illustration impugned by Alter.  To be more precise, the “effects” Crumb presents his readers with are considerably poorer than those suggested by the text and subsequently developed upon by scholarship. A number of reviewers have strayed on the side of leniency in considering these issues, not once remarking on the mere utility of Crumb’s choices. Alter who is sometimes cited as being unduly critical towards the end of his essay was in fact being inordinately kind. He censures Crumb for the “hackneyed” depiction of “God as an old man with a white beard” but then compares his drawing of the expulsion of Adam and Eve to Masaccio’s fresco in The Brancacci Chapel in Florence without comment.

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[Right: The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden by Masaccio]

 

Even those possessed of untutored eyes should be able to see the difference in ability and insight at work here. Masaccio’s Expulsion may be deficient in textural fidelity but its spiritual immersion cannot be disputed. The rigidity of Crumb’s chosen style in The Book of Genesis makes it difficult (he does succeed occasionally) for him to adequately convey anguish, pain or psychological depth in isolation from the text.

I suspect much of this critical kindness is due to a barely realized condescension towards both form and artist. Thus we find the following account in Alter’s review:

“When some chapters of the book were published in The New Yorker in June, a few people with whom I have spoken about them expressed disappointment. Just the same old R. Crumb, they objected: he has not succeeded in developing a visual style that is adequate to the power of the biblical text. Such criticism does not seem to me justified. Crumb has always been an artist with a single style, a distinctive and emphatic one–in this regard as in others he is certainly no Picasso; and so it should neither surprise nor disappoint us that he has used his style to interpret the Bible.”

It is clear from these lines that Alter’s conception of the possibilities of comics and one of its greatest cartoonists is very low indeed. It is impossible to be disappointed if we expect so little.

In fact, in terms of sheer technique, there is nothing in Crumb’s earlier adaptations which can compare with The Book of Genesis. The amount of detail and rendering lavished on each page dwarfs virtually any other in Kafka for Beginners for example. Yet compared to some of this earlier work (such as “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick” or his excerpt from Boswell’s London Journal 1762-1763), it suffers from a certain stifling of the imagination. The Boswell adaptation proved a success for two important reason. Firstly, its length (the comic is only five pages long and the simple but fascinating artistic counterpoint at work would have become tedious at a greater stretch) and, secondly, the perfect alignment of subject and adapter.

As with his adaptation of Genesis, Crumb tailored his presentation to fit the elegant but ribald narration; the scenes are proffered at a discrete distance and only periodically punctuated with close-ups of Boswell’s excesses. This is in stark contrast to the paranoia and claustrophobia of the Philip K. Dick adaptation which is marked by subjective phenomena, mystical emanations and frank representations of insanity. Neither of these adaptation bring a substantial amount of analysis to the text but create frisson by way of ironic juxtapositions and personal proclivities. These comics suggest that Crumb’s gifts do not lie in deep inquiry or inquisition but in his idiosyncratic approach; his talent for revealing the extremes of human behavior. Jeet Heer identifies another engaging aspect of Crumb’s art when he writes that:

“…Genesis is a book about bodies, a book where men and women constantly grapple with one another, where a servant swears an oath by putting his hand under his master’s thigh, where even angels are threatened with sexual violation. Crumb has long been the preeminent cartoonist of the body. His women are notoriously full-figured, with ample butts and protruding nipples (a motif he uses in this book). But more significantly, the bodies he draws—whether they are quivering or standing still, dancing or drooping—have a visceral impact few artists can match. That’s why he was the perfect cartoonist to illustrate the Book of Genesis…”

A survey of the reviews online would suggest that it is these elements which critics have derived the most pleasure from as far as The Book of Genesis is concerned. I would suggest, however, that this is mean recompense for a full engagement with the intellectual treasures of Genesis. This explains why any suggestion (made in all seriousness in the comments of a recent review) that Alter would feel threatened (the words used are “nervousness” and “professional jealousy”) by Crumb’s awful biblical scholarship is laughable if not symptomatic of a deranged comics provincialism.

As Robert Stanley Martin indicates in his disappreciation of The Book of Genesis, this project (Crumb’s largest to date) cannot be accounted a success even if viewed purely as an act of storytelling. In fact, it conspicuously reveals the artist’s limitations as far as long form works are concerned:

“The overwhelming problem with Genesis is that Crumb doesn’t seem to have thought it through as a dramatic piece. The scenes are not played off each other for dramatic effect, and he doesn’t imagine the characters as distinct, idiosyncratic personalities whose interactions are greater than the sum of the parts…The refusal to see the project as a challenge in terms of orchestrating dramatic choices led him to repetitiously wallow in hackneyed treatments of the material, with most of the clichés of his own making.”

Crumb can be seen as a master of bizarre and transgressive imagery; a self-lacerating maniacal comedian; or a lewd, boisterous and cynical poet of modern living but his personality and disposition have lent themselves poorly to this undertaking. The individuals who are likely take the most satisfaction from this book will be those with a prior interest in comics. It is, after all, a work by a cartoonist of immense stature in the field. If  this book does stand the test of time, it will be largely on that basis. For those with a serious interest in the original text and the rich tradition of biblical illustration, on the other hand, Crumb’s comic can only be seen as a well crafted curiosity.

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Update by Noah: This has started an ongoing series of posts on Crumb’s Genesis. You can see them all here.

Shorter Fiore

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I am not world weary and cynical, I am just Machiavellian. The west is not more reasonable than Islam, except that it is more reasonable than Islam. You can see this because of the reason and good fellowship that has prevailed in European countries such as Serbia. Regimes like Iraq were openly hostile to us until very recently which is why we armed them when they fought Iran. Also, Noah Berlatsky coddles terrorists, nyah nyah. I understand how Christians ought to act better than Christians do, which is why I can say with assurance that if Martin Luther King Jr. were a real believer, he would have advocated nuclear annihilation for commies. The fact that atheists and believers sometimes act alike shows that faith is only relevant to someone’s actions when I say that it is. Also, I’m a fucking materialist existential hero; please join me in weeping aloud for me in my tough-minded tragedy.

 

 

And hey, let’s hear it for this gem:

“Cultural materialism is the theory that there is a Darwinian process in the selection of social forms, and that therefore for instance no religion that is adopted by large populations for generations can be arbitrary or irrational, but rather must serve some purpose for its adherents.”

Translation:
Look, I dropped Darwin’s name, and concluded that religion must serve some purpose! Unlike lame-assed, half-baked, clichéd, swaggering cultural materialism, which is handed down from God…whoops! I mean from my own pure, indomitable brainstem! Which by coincidence I pulled yesterday out of my own indomitable ass.

 

 

If you missed it, here’s Fiore’s original post and my response to it.

Worshipping Nothing

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R. Fiore has a recent article up about the South Park censorship brouhaha in which he takes a brave, world-weary stand against cowardly corporations, crazy Muslims, and simplistic theists. As always with Fiore, it’s stylishly written…and as sometimes with Fiore, it’s pretty thoroughly vapid. He’s got that just-plain-common-sense-man-on-the-street approach, which involves repeating things everyone already knows, retailing banal prejudices as shocking insights, and patting yourself rhythmically on the back all the while.

Fiore’s argument is basically that we’d all get along better in this old world if we acted as if we didn’t believe anything. Or as Fiore says, “What the West has learned is that even if you do sincerely believe in God, if you want any peace you can’t act that way.” For Fiore, the South Park incident shows the eminent reasonableness of the Western world, and the fact that reasonableness is essentially useless in dealing with nutzo Islamist thugs:

The Danish Jyllands-Posten, lulled into a false sense of security by a period of reason and good fellowship in Europe dating all the way back to 1945, published their suite of cartoons featuring Muhammad on the assumption that no one was crazy enough to sacrifice their lives and liberty or commit horrible crimes over a drawing. The response of the fanatical end of Islam was, in effect, yes as a matter of fact we are crazy enough, and if that wasn’t sufficient please let us know and we’ll be crazier still. The position this places the would-be blasphemer in is that you can visually depict Muhammad, but only if you’re willing to see blood shed over it. Courage will allow you to express yourself, but it won’t prevent the violence. The net result is that the fanatics get their way and the only cost is to brand millions of completely innocent Muslims as murderous barbarians.

I think my favorite part of that quote is the nostalgic harking back to “a period of reason and good fellowship in Europe”, coupled with Fiore’s utter lack of historical or intellectual curiosity. Presuming that this period of reason and good fellowship did exist for a moment — why did it end, precisely? What caused the Muslims to suddenly jump the shark? Is it immigration into Europe that’s the problem — which would lead to certain policy positions that I strongly suspect the carefully enlightened Fiore wants nothing to do with.

Or…as an alternate possibility, could it be that, from the Muslim perspective, there was in fact no “period of reason and good fellowship,” but rather decade upon decade of Western-supported dictatorships, quasi-imperialism, repetitive humiliations, and (in the case of Afghanistan, at least) vicious, unending warfare? Fiore muses with an air of non-plussed good humor at what could have possibly led some Muslims to set themselves against South Park so:

The Mafia is an appropriate comparison because the threats made against South Park are in some ways more akin to extortion than conventional terrorism. A typical terrorist campaign attempts to achieve an absurdly ambitious goal with an absurdly miniscule amount of force. For example, in 40 years of terrorism after 1967, Palestinian terrorists managed to kill something like 2100 Israelis. No one is going to surrender their country to avoid this level of casualties. A modern army can kill that many non-combatants in an afternoon by mistake. The campaign against depictions of the prophet Muhammad on the other hand brings to bear an absurdly disproportionate amount of force to stop something most people in the West don’t have the inclination to do in the first place.

The Mafia analogy carefully obscures the clear conclusion — Muslims have little if any way to address their political grievances to the foreign powers that repetitively kick them in the teeth. Terrorism is largely, as Fiore quite rightly notes, useless. So when you can’t do anything about the big insults, you naturally focus on the small ones. Surely segments of the Muslim world sees depictions of the prophet by the infidels not as the first insult, or the fifth or the 200th, but rather as part of one, long, sustained insult by a bully who has kept his foot on their throat for half a century plus.

Threats against newspaper publishers or television networks are petty and stupid and despicable, obviously — but they’re neither incomprehensible nor evidence of some sort of disconnect between religious thinking and rationality. Given the relationship between the west and the Middle East, the threats are, on the contrary, entirely comprehensible. That doesn’t mean that they should be condoned. In the first place, as Fiore points out, the whole brouhaha definitely makes things worse, not better, for Muslims worldwide. Moreover, while it isn’t as bad as the Taliban’s systematic oppression of women or al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks, threatening to kill innocents for drawing pictures does seem to me to be a fair definition of evil. Still, we can take comfort in the thought that we’ll go tit for tat or better in the near future, whenever the next American drone strike takes out the next Afghani wedding party.

Fiore’s a lefty too, and I doubt he supports the Afghan war any more than I do. But he doesn’t want to talk about it in too much detail because to do so would mess up his nice little binary; rational west as powerless, peaceful victims; nutty religious dickheads as powerful, violent thugs. To give Fiore his due, though, he is willing to follow his simplistic analogy wherever it takes him, no matter how idiotic the end location is. And so in the last paragraph we get this gem:

What the West has learned is that even if you do sincerely believe in God, if you want any peace you can’t act that way. After all, if you truly believed that those who follow the wrong religion will be subjected to eternal torment then you’re doing them no favors by allowing them to do so. For instance, during the Cold War, if you believed as Jesus told you that death is an illusion, and the atheistic regimes of the Soviet bloc were depriving millions of even opportunity to save their souls from eternal damnation, then you would be honor bound to not only risk nuclear war but to engage in it. After all, eternal bliss would compensate the just for any suffering they endured.

To call this a strawman argument is to cast scurrilous aspersions on the structural integrity of straw. Which Christians exactly is it who want to start a worldwide nuclear holocaust for the sake of the souls of atheists? Would that be the many Christians who, on quite good scriptural authority, believe that Jesus enjoined them to pacifism? Would it be the Catholic Church — still the largest Christian denomination — which holds to a just war doctrine that declared the Iraq war anathema? The Niebuhrian realist tradition, which stresses a humane concern for human life and justice? Hell, even wacko Protestant Christian right-wing apocalyptic fantasies like the Left Behind series doesn’t advocate genocide-for-Jesus as far as I know.

There are nutcases everywhere, obviously, and I’m sure there’s the random Christian out there who wants everyone to die in a fiery man-made holocaust — but to suggest that this is especially a hallmark of religious thinking as opposed to the rational atheist philosophies of, say, Pol Pot or Mao or Hitler…it’s nonsense on its face. And that’s to say nothing of our own lovely, rational, harmless, hapless capitalism, which can’t stand up for South Park, but which has, nonetheless, shown itself capable on occasion of a certain ruthlessness, as Chileans, Cambodians, and, for that matter, Native Americans would no doubt be willing to attest.

“What the West has learned is that even if you do sincerely believe in God, if you want any peace you can’t act that way.” I’ve quoted that twice already, and I’m quoting it a third time because it’s central to Fiore’s argument — and, I believe, to his belief. Because it is a belief, right? It’s certainly not a fact. Where, after all, is this peace we’ve found by acting as if we don’t believe in God, precisely? The U.S. is more religious than Europe, certainly, but by world-historical standards we’re a pretty secular society — and, by world-historical standards, we have probably the biggest military of all time. China’s fond of playing with weapons too, and they aren’t noticeably religious last time I checked. And, you know, on the other side, I was under the impression that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi both drew the inspiration for their non-violent resistance movements from their faith. Or does Fiore think that MLK was somehow acting as if he didn’t believe in God?

Fiore ends with a really tiresome roulette wheel analogy which I don’t have the heart to quote. But it’s telling that such vacuous modernity can only end by seeing faith in terms of gambling, money, and yes, capitalism. Fiore believes that believing in nothing will save him…but the truth is that nothing has its own rites and rituals, its own insanities, its own cruelties, and even its own genocidal impulses. The world isn’t divided into believers and non-believers, or into the sane and the insane. The only ones here are us chickens — or, if you prefer, us poor sinners, a long way from home.
_________

Update: R.Fiore has an extremely long response here.

And my short reply to Fiore is here.

Old Wine in New Wineskins: The Gospel According to Chester Brown

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In honor of Holy Week, I’m republishing (with some corrections) an old review which first appeared in the pages of  The Comics Journal (#261) in 2004.

For those whose memories don’t stretch that far back, Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur was one of the mainstays of the independent comics scene in the late 80s.  It was in the pages of Yummy Fur that some of his most important works first appeared, among them Ed the Happy Clown, The Playboy and I Never Liked You. He has since receded into the background once again following the publication of Louis Riel in 2003.

Brown began serializing his adaptation of the Gospels in Yummy Fur #4 in 1987. The entire series has never been collected and the only way to access them is through back issues of Yummy Fur or the magic of photocopying.

***

A Review of Chester Brown’s Mark and Matthew

Mark

Chester Brown once explained his decision to embark on a project to adapt the Gospels in an interview at Two-Handed Man. “Certainly at the beginning, it was a matter of trying to figure out what I believed about this stuff,” he informed his interviewer, “It was a matter of trying to figure out whether I even believed the Christian claims—whether or not Jesus was divine.”

As such a modicum of restraint appears to characterize the early chapters of Mark. Brown’s adaptation seems to reveal an artist who is still struggling with both his craft and the quality of the garment through which he’s picking. One may also choose to wonder if part of the reason for this is some residual Christian guilt. Some years earlier, in a conversation with Scott Grammel in The Comics Journal #135, Brown revealed that he was probably unable to say that “Jesus wasn’t divine without worrying whether [he] would go to hell”, and this as recently as the mid-80s.

The reputation that Brown’s Gospel adaptations have for being ingeniously blasphemous is mostly based on his interpretation of Matthew. The Christ of Brown’s Mark, on the other hand, is serene and always in control. He is almost untouched by foul humanity and the rigors of life. His disciples act respectably and never display unscrupulous intent or a lack of etiquette at the dinner table. Judas, as we see him in this gospel adaptation, is neither craven nor a zealot but by all appearances merely youthful and naïve.

This in itself is not a criticism for Brown does achieve a degree of humanity and insight in this early adaptation, such as with the hemorrhaging woman and the widow in the story of the widow’s mite. When Jesus heals Jarius’ daughter (Mark 5: 41-42), Brown shows Jesus kneeling beside the awakened twelve year old girl with a smile on his face.  All this is in keeping with the placid figure of Christ the author presents in Mark. One might say that this is the kind of Jesus that children still learn about in Sunday school.

It is only in the later stages of Mark that Brown introduces his first piece of apocrypha. Derived from a letter of uncertain authenticity written by Clement of Alexandria, the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark is described by the author of the letter as a “more spiritual” gospel for the use of “those who were being perfected”, the interpretation of which would “lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of truth hidden by seven veils” (it can be perused on-line here):

In this “gospel”, Jesus raises the brother of a woman in Bethany. It continues:

“But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.”

It is often remarked that this passage bears comparison not only with the story of Lazarus but also Mark 14:51-52 where another unidentified young man wearing nothing but a linen sheet is found. This excerpt is dealt with at length in the pages of “The Fur Bag” (the letter column of Yummy Fur) in Yummy Fur #14 by letter writer Rob Walton and Brown himself. Here the baptism of special initiates and the homosexual undertones of the “secret gospel” are brought forth as well as the possible gullibility and motivations of Clement (if the document is in fact genuine).

Brown has indicated that he owes a debt to Morton Smith’s The Secret Gospel and Jesus the Magician for stirring him to revisit the Gospels. The former tome recounts Smith’s discovery of the aforementioned letter fragment. The latter book emphasizes Jesus’ position as a miracle worker and attempts to explain the manner in which some non-believers viewed Christ. It is a firmly critical and speculative text which cast the Gospels in the light of apology, unscrupulous “theological motives” and propaganda in addition to your basic lies and half-truths. With respect to the scribal view on Jesus, Smith writes: “his background and baptism prove him an ordinary man and a sinner, therefore, the miracles, success, impious behavior, and supernatural claims prove him a magician” (an appellation which Smith explains at length in his book). Smith also suggests a few qualities which he feels separated Jesus from other miracle workers and exorcists of the times, and which led to his being labeled a magician: “compulsive behavior, neglect of the Law and claims to supernatural status”. Some of these traits are highlighted in Brown’s Gospel adaptations, most notably in Matthew.

Even so, Brown’s Mark does not read like the work of someone who is challenging received wisdom but an exercise in illustration. One panel in the first part of his adaptation stands out and is at odds with the rest of the otherwise flat narration. On page 2, Jesus is shown being driven into the wilderness (Mark 1:12), his hands clasped to his eyes in translation of the word “driveth” which is said to be the same word used for Jesus’ expulsion of demons.

 

Another panel of interpretative interest (and one which departs somewhat from tradition) occurs in Mark 6:20 where Herod is shown listening eagerly to John outside his jail cell.

 

 

Brown only begins to bring a more creative and personal hand to his adaptation when Jesus enters Gennesaret. Here a number of the villagers are depicted (somewhat amusingly) with faces inscribed with stupefaction, while others look sternly and suspiciously out of their houses. For once, the sick and the infirm look weak, desperate and, occasionally, uncouth; something previously addressed only in relation to the Gadarene (or, in Brown’s version, Gerasene) demoniac. From this point forward, the crowd scenes become increasingly adept and Jesus begins to show a wider range of emotions – most notably anger but also a certain irritability. He begins to carry an almost threatening air and Brown slowly begins to distance himself from the previous depictions of tender righteousness.

Apart from these aesthetic considerations, there are also some unusual choices in Brown’s otherwise unadventurous transcription of Mark. When Jesus encounters a leper in Mark 1:41, he is said to be moved by compassion and not “anger” (as stated in Brown’s narration). Jesus, as depicted in the panel in question, seems at best to be irritated and one feels that Brown has over interpreted the stern warning given to the leper not to tell anyone of his healing, charging the episode with something more than what is suggested in the original text.

In such instances, we see Brown approaching Mark in the spirit of a student and not as a person who has fully immersed himself in the subject matter. He shows occasional delight (particularly in his notes) when he chances upon what he perceives to be deadly “mistakes”  in the text of Mark. In the notes for Mark 5:1, for example, he brings up the dispute concerning Jesus’s journey across the sea of Galilee to Gerasa (a translation which occurs in the NIV, NASB and RSV but not the KJV which translates as the country of the Gadarenes). Brown points out that the town of Gesara is “a good 30 miles south-east of that sea while other non-secular commentaries have also pointed out that Origen identified Gesara as an Arabian city “which has neither sea nor lake near it”.  It is an age old and complicated dispute which involves varying manuscripts and the possible misidentification of the village of Khersa. All of which has little place here. Suffice it to say, Brown reserves this kind of textural criticism for his notes, his adaptation of Mark generally being free from such gloating or any study of the unity or disunity of the gospels. For instance, he obscures Jesus’ final cry in the closing moments of his crucifixion as the exact nature of this exclamation is not stated in the Gospel of Mark. Further, the mention of two demoniacs in Matthew but not in Mark is not resolved, explained or questioned.

At times, Brown’s idiosyncratic choices hamper the sense of the text. In his notes to Mark 10:35 to 12:27, for example, Brown indicates that he has left the crowds out of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem because Mark does not specify them. Such a literal approach has limitations and is occasionally counter-productive and counter-intuitive. At one point, Joseph of Arimathea is shown closing Jesus’ tomb by himself and with his bare hands, while the panel which follows this (describing Mark 16:1-4) makes a nonsense of that depiction:

“And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great.” [emphasis mine]

The sense of the passage is embedded in Mark and it might have been more instructive if Brown had brought into play the fact that Joseph was a rich man. With this in mind, one would have expected a number of servants to have helped him remove Jesus from the cross and to prepare and transfer the corpse for burial.

Brown has explained his somewhat flat interpretation of Mark in his interview in The Comics Journal #135:

“People were expecting me to do something weird with Mark. And I am doing all the Gospels…And so starting from a traditional view seemed like a good place to start. And I can get weirder as I go along but…”

And later:

“ But what I was doing was trying to distance the reader. Because I’m going to tell it over another three times. The feeling was ‘I can draw in closer in Matthew, Luke, and whatever.  This is your beginning point, just kind of show the reader what’s there, don’t get him in too close.’ And looking over it I’m not too pleased with how it looks because I think I got in even closer than I wanted to.  If I was doing it again I would distance the reader even more, I think.”

The resultant comic will be of variable interest to the reader as a consequence of this decision.

Matthew

Brown’s adaptation of Matthew harbors more vitality than his work on Mark. It is also possessed of a more divisive purpose. He signals his new intentions right from the start in his exposition on the genealogy found at the beginning of Matthew. Here Brown elaborates on the story found in Genesis chapter 38 (which concerns the sordid tale of Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar).

[Robert Crumb’s take on the same subject for comparison]

This is followed by his depictions of Rahab (a Canaanite woman and a harlot), Ruth (a Moabite woman who is asked by her mother-in-law, Naomi, to sexually entrap her kinsman, Boaz) and Bathsheba (an adulteress whose history is well known). Traditional interpretations have suggested that the willful inclusion of these women on the part of the author of Matthew presents a confrontation of the androcentric interpretation of Israel’s history, a desire to strengthen the earthly origins of the Christ and a means of characterizing a new attitude towards foreigners and outsiders following the passion and resurrection. However, Brown’s citation of Jane Schaberg’s The Illegitimacy of Jesus appears to indicate that he feels that the “mention of these four women is designed to lead Matthew’s reader to expect another, final story of a woman who becomes a social misfit in some way; is wronged or thwarted; who is party to a sexual act that places her in great danger; and whose story has an outcome that repairs the social fabric and ensures the birth of a child who is legitimate or legitimated” (Schaberg). Schaberg argues the case for a strong tradition of Jesus’ illegitimacy (as opposed to his virginal conception), suggesting that the key verses in Matthew such as Matthew 1:20 (“Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost”) should be taken in a figurative and not a literal manner, in essence adopting the increasing fashionable rejection of a literal virgin birth. Morton Smith (whom, you will remember, Brown admires) also mentions the genealogy in Jesus the Magician where he suggests that “Matthew wanted to excuse Mary by these implied analogies”.

One may choose to differ with many of Brown’s choices in Matthew but these choices are, in general, more interesting than those in Mark. For instance, Brown’s decision to depict the magi as “poor wandering holy [men]” while not thoroughly convincing, feels correct in spirit. His point that the costly gifts “are often considered to be an indicator that the magi were rich but…they aren’t necessarily so” is a weak one but it allows for a certain tension in the scenes showing the traveling magi.

In his interpretation of Matthew 8:21-22 (“And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.”) he forsakes the unvarnished and doggedly literal readings he administered in Mark. Instead he chooses a well known but more creative reading where the father is seen to be Zebedee and the disciple, John. In so doing, he appears to take into account the use of the word, “disciple”, which was given to a select few and Matthew 20:20 which contains the phrase “the mother of Zebedee’s children” which suggests that Zebedee was no longer alive.

The notes which accompany Matthew, on the other hand, are seldom profitable. For example, in his depiction of the holy family’s return from Egypt, Brown reproduces Matthew’s quotation of Jeremiah writing, “In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted because they are not.” In his notes, he innocently wonders if “Matthew [is] saying that the king’s men, who were supposed to kill the baby boy’s in Bethlehem, got mixed up and killed the baby boys in Ramah by mistake?” It is a query which seems obtuse since commentary is widely available on the passage. One traditional viewpoint indicates that the prophecy was fulfilled during the Babylonian captivity in which Nebuzaradan conquered Jerusalem and assembled and disposed of the captives at Rama. The quotation is seen to be used in poetic comparison. There are other more involved commentaries on Matthew’s use of this verse, all of which are far more complex than Brown suggests in his notes. Seen in this light, Brown’s remark does nothing for the reader’s confidence in his research at this early stage in his career.

Brown follows this by recounting Joseph’s rejection of Judea (which was ruled by the tyrannical Archelaus, Herod’s successor and son) in favor of Galilee (which was governed by Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great and Malthace). The Bible passage reads as follows:

“When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.’ Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee.” (Matthew 2: 19-22, NRSV)

Brown depicts Joseph fleeing back to his wife who is shown lying beneath a tree in a desolate landscape. In his “Notes on Matthew”, Brown cannot resist a snide aside and suggests that “the angel was apparently unaware that Galilee was also at this time ruled by one of Herod’s sons — Herod Antipas”. This somewhat sloppy comment highlights the spontaneous nature of Brown’s notes. They rarely suggest the wealth of commentary which feeds off the texts of the Gospels. There is, for example, the more well-disposed and Christian viewpoint by Adam Clarke (in his commentaries from 1810-1825). He states concerning the move to Galilee:

“Here Antipas governed, who is allowed to have been of a comparatively mild disposition; and, being intent on building two cities, Julias and Tiberias, he endeavored, by a mild carriage and promises of considerable immunities, to entice people from other provinces to come and settle in them. He was besides in a state of enmity with his brother Archelaus: this was a most favorable circumstance to the holy family; and though God did not permit them to go to any of the new cities, yet they dwelt in peace, safety, and comfort at Nazareth.”

This is but one viewpoint among many, and it is a particularly old and traditional one. Suffice to say, there is an atmosphere of carelessness in Brown’s notes which suggest that they should be thoroughly revised in any reprint or dispensed with altogether.

Between Brown’s adaptations of Mark and Matthew, there occurs a change in authorial temperament and viewpoint. There is a more radicalized disbelief and a greater focus on the fleshy and earthly aspects of the story. This is most evident in Brown’s conception of biblical figures. The hardened Christ of Brown’s Matthew is in marked contrast to the Jesus of Mark who, for all intents and purposes, could have taken a step out from a kindergarten school painting – smartly berobed, well coiffured and immaculate. In Matthew, We no longer see this calm aspect of Christ but the scowling features once used to depict the jealous Pharisees in his adaptation of Mark. There is also the figure of Herod the Great who is now depicted as a man on the edge of violence, driven to extremes by his unyielding character and a chronic, incurable disease. He is the man we picture when Josephus writes, “A man he was of great barbarity toward all men equally, and a slave to his passions, but above the consideration of what was right”.

Satan who once appeared as an angel in white raiment in Mark has been transformed into a thin, ebony-hued youth with pallid lips and hair.

John is no longer the rugged but respectable prophet but a wizened, decrepit mad man screaming in his cell. Like Jesus himself, he has become sharp featured, aggressive and utterly determined; a screaming, scabby looking creature tripping on the borders of sanity. In his illustration of Matthew 3:7-8, we are not given the traditional “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance”, but rather, “You fucking vipers! Do you really expect me to baptize you in the Jordan?! You could at least try to look repentant!!”

Jesus’ disciples are acne-ridden, surly, ill-bred louts. They pick their noses and eat their snot, mimicking the cartoonist’s own proclivities. They are possessed of unrestrained gluttony, feel up women as a matter of course, and are callous and rude to their relatives when asked for assistance. In other instances, there is the hint of cunning managerial skills as they selfishly protect their restricted communion with Jesus.

Brown’s approach emphasizes the poverty and crudeness of the people who once inhabited Palestine. We are allowed to see a diverse set of motivations as well as the naked selfishness and cruelty of a series of non-entities. He is like a latter-day Pasolini, rejecting purity in favor of an honest depiction of men and women. In an interview with Steve Solomos (Crash #1), Brown, insists that the snot-eating was not included for “shock value”:

“Solomos: There will be a perception that you’re doing it for some nominal level of shock value…Do you feel that you’re including it for that reason?

Brown: No. When I was growing up, it always seemed to me that what I wanted to do when I became an artist, was to show life the way I thought it really was.”

Here we see an echo of the writings of Celsus the Platonist, author of “The True Discourse” (the original being lost, it was reconstructed from the refutation written by Origen, Against Celsus) who describes the disciples as “tax collectors and sailors of the worst sort, not even able to read or write, with whom he ran, as a fugitive, from one place to another, making his living shamefully as a beggar”. This passage is cited in Smith’s Jesus the Magician and dismissed as “typical ancient polemic [which] may have come from any opponent…though the picture may be correct”. It is a tradition which continues today in the form of studies of the historical Jesus.

In accordance with his desire to bridge the distance created in Mark, Brown dispenses with the narrator’s voice thus allowing the plot and dialogue to flow more naturally. The conversations in Matthew are no longer paraphrased at length and in respectful tones but are shortened and contemporized – transformed into quasi-modern sentences, short exclamations and guttural snaps. Here we find the influence of Andy Gaus’ The Unvarnished Gospels (one of the translations which Brown says he used) which is noted for its literal translation of the gospels which eschews much theological baggage.  The Sermon on the Mount is similarly altered to a form which best fits Brown’s appreciation of Jesus’ recorded words. Jesus is shown in close-up for nearly seven pages and Brown strays perilously close to the kind of boring conception which he accuses Scorsese of in his remarks on the film adaptation of The Last Temptation of Christ (in TCJ #135). This sequence may be compared with Brown’s flat handling of Jesus’ parables in his adaptation of Mark and comes across as tedious and uninspired, the familiar stories and words floundering on bland imagination.

In his portrayal of Matthew 4:23 to 5:10 (which includes the Sermon on the Mount), Brown, for once, chooses to expand upon and dramatize the gospels by means of a digression concerning a mother and her two daughters. The mother is blind and disfigured, and the younger daughter, a coarse and sickly individual. They form part of Brown’s recreation of the reality and texture of the times, his vision of what the author of Matthew suggests when he writes, “all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.”

Amidst all this harsh reality, Brown remains strangely faithful to the text where more rigidly secular and atheistic authors would defer less. The healing of a leper is presented as miracle rather than myth. The centurion’s servant is similarly raised without disagreement or question. In response to Scott Grammel’s (TCJ #135) query concerning this seemingly unquestioning acceptance of the gospel stories, Brown answers:

“Well, I’m adapting the Gospel, and…That’s what it says in the Gospel. It says he drove a demon out, so why not show it?”

Such jarring turns and discrepancies in presentation result in a certain inconsistency of tone. What one detects on a reading of Matthew is not a man struggling with a neglected text or his spirituality but an artist who has allowed his occasional whims to supersede any general thrust or plan. This leads to the narratively unremarkable and somewhat juvenile tenor of Jesus’ healing of the two blind men where one blind man, upon being healed, says to the other, “Hey man, you’re really ugly.” In another instance, when one of John the Baptist’s disciples informs his master that his jailer has kept the wild honey (to be taken with the Baptist’s locust) for himself, John replies, “Bastard.” These episodes suggest an attempt at humor in the vein of Monty Python’s Life of Brian which seems out of place in an adaptation which is for the most part quite serious.

Brown’s view of reality permeates his adaptation of Matthew.  As he has stated in relation to autobiography in his interview in Crash:

“…if you just concentrate on telling whatever story you’re telling that’s fine, but any given story can be told in a number of ways. If you expand your parameters, for instance, you’re not just telling your story, you’re also talking about life, about how you see the world around you.”

 

Pertinent to this view are Brown’s views on Gnosticism which he explains in TCJ #135:

“I’ve called myself a gnostic, but I’m not really sure I fit into the…The part that appeals to me is that you accept yourself as the true authority on God. You don’t rely on outside sources. You don’t rely on your preacher. You don’t rely on the Bible or anything. You just say, ‘What is my opinion? What in me tells me about God, about the world?’”

In The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels describes these individuals as follows: “Like circles of artists today, gnostics considered original creative invention to be the mark of anyone who becomes spiritually alive…Whoever merely repeated his teacher’s words was considered immature….Most offensive, from [Irenaeus’] point of view, is that they admit that nothing supports their writings except their own intuition. When challenged, “‘they either mention mere human feelings, or else refer to the harmony that can be seen in creation’”.

Brown has adapted this approach for both sacred and profane purposes. What has been “revealed” to him not only includes his interpretation of the Gospel message but also the altogether worldly emotions and mannerisms of the biblical characters; a modern day twist on the gnostic tradition of continuing revelation which is not hindered by direct experience. Needless to say, Brown’s irreverence does not match the spirituality displayed by the gnostic texts but he once displayed some interest in them as evidenced by his adaptation of a portion of the 61st chapter of Pistis Sophia for Prime Cuts #3 (1987). In the story, Mary relates an event from Jesus’ childhood in which she encounters the Spirit which she mistakes for a demon or “a phantom to tempt me”. She binds the Spirit to a bed and goes out in search of Joseph and Jesus. The family returns to their house where the Spirit is released and becomes one with Mary’s son upon kissing him. Brown’s extract is told without elaboration or embellishment and the reader is left to search for the mystical interpretation of the passage in the rest of Pistis Sophia.

The world of Matthew, on the other hand is fueled less by numinous revelation than by the fluctuating moods of the artist. In his interview at Two-Handed Man, Brown reiterated what has always been a variable interest in the project: “…I don’t think I’m going to be getting to Luke or John. But you never know. My interest in Swedenborg might get me wanting to do Luke or John now.” Matthew feels more like a diary of the artist’s feelings which range from a sudden interest in the text which is then periodically overtaken by boredom resulting in a lack of inspiration. A meticulously crafted plan is rarely in evidence. A somewhat haphazard method of working (in relation to that period) is described by Brown in The Comics Journal #135:

“When I have something really plotted out, really planned, by the time I’m half-way through a story I’m bored with it, and I want to do something different. Often I’ll have a specific plan – ‘Yeah, I know where I’m going with a story’ – and then half-way through I say, ‘No, I don’t want to do that. Let’s take off in this direction and do this instead.’ To some degree just to keep myself interested in the work.”

But what worked to a certain extent (when played to its limit) for the surrealistic tales from Yummy Fur, founders and fails in these Gospel adaptations if only because of undue moderation. Further, while the reader is frequently invigorated by Brown’s skillful use of comics narrative, the sharpness of his perceptions is often wanting. This is highlighted by any number of famous or more recent literary comparisons. Brown, himself, claims to dislike Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ for its style of writing (TCJ #135; “I just couldn’t get into the writing, and gave up after a couple of pages”) but had he persisted, he would have witnessed a highly charged and ostensibly heretical faith generating a novel told with uncommon passion and intensity. Jim Crace’s Quarantine (a novel which post-dates Brown’s adaptations and which is concerned with the mythical and human aspects of the Christian faith) creates a microcosm of the narratives and teachings of the New Testament through the device of Jesus’ forty days in the desert. Bruce Mutard’s Abba (from the SPX 2002 anthology) is a fine example of intellectual rigor and creativity in conceptualizing the Gospels in comics form. More pertinent, as far as Brown’s desire to inject humor into his story is concerned, is Mikhail Bulgakov’s amiably sacrilegious The Master and Magarita which has such a keen insight into the politics and philosophy of the passion story that one’s imagination is immediately seized.

Brown’s poorly-thought out blasphemy, on the other hand, is often quite unimaginative, and there are few things less needful than dull blasphemy. The extensive back catalogue of novels or redactions concerning Jesus and the gospels (and there are very many others by D. H. Lawrence, Norman Mailer, José Saramago et al.) present themselves as models for what has been accomplished with the basic text of the Gospels. It behooves any serious author to educate themselves as to what has been achieved that they may identify what is aesthetically and intellectually profitable in further explorations of the text. This is something which Brown has patently failed to do in his adaptations.

Still, Brown’s Matthew is not without its own, quite insular pleasures. At the outset of his adaptation, there is a fairly delightful and quite unbiblical panel in which an angel adorned in loose robes is seen diving down through the heavens with some pyramids in the background.

The gentle wafting of this heavenly being through earthly abodes and then into Joseph’s dream is done with wonderful rhythmic delicacy.

When Satan carries Jesus through the air to the top of the temple there is an unmistakable feeling of lightness and elegance.

At periodic intervals in the story, we see the familiar motif of minute individuals fleeing across sparse landscapes; a dispassionate “God’s-eye” view used with even greater frequency by Brown in Louis Riel. The calming of the storm from Matthew 8:24 is illustrated with a care unseen in Mark. Here the elements are transformed into symbols and the short passage elevated to the level of a mythical quest or journey.

It is a far cry from the poorly drawn waves and boats in Part 3 of Mark where the sequence of panels showing Jesus stilling the waves seem particularly rushed and poorly thought out.

Nevertheless, Brown’s Gospel adaptations remain exploratory devices with a very selfish purpose. They may have worked as journeys of discovery for the author but they fail when assessed as fully formed works of art. Excessive restraint, a lack of coherence and a paucity of invention dampens both adaptations. What we are left with are snapshots of the state of mind of the artist resulting in an ephemeral experience lacking intellectual weight.