BOOK REVIEW: Religious writings, as poetry

[rug]

A master translator reconstructs the poems of Jesus Christ for a new millennium

The Poems of Jesus Christ
Willis Barnstone
W.W. Norton
April 2012

By Roberto Perez-Franco
STAFF WRITER
June 8, 2012

I remember the exact moment when I realized some of Jesus’ utterances only made sense as poetry. The time was an evening in early January 1994. The place was the public square in Chitré, a small city in Panama’s countryside. While hundreds of youngsters rode their new Christmas bikes in the tropical summer breeze, I — at the time an 18-year-old devout Christian — sat quietly inside my father’s car, reading my Bible under a dim yellowish light. The version was Nácar-Colunga’s direct translation from the original Greek and Hebrew into my native Spanish. I remember the exact passage I was trying to assimilate: Matthew 6:25-34. “Do not worry about your life,” said the Lord. “Look at the birds of the air … Consider the lilies of the field.” And then the inspired prescription: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow.”

I remember having underlined those verses with orange fluorescent gel ink (hey, it was the ’90s!) and shaken my head in awe. “Is He saying that one should not prepare for the future?” I asked myself in disbelief. Unless you can multiply fishes and breads on command, the policy of making no provisions for future nutrition doesn’t fly as a practical logistics. People starve to death all the time, everywhere, so why did Jesus preach that they should not worry, since God would feed them? After a few minutes of rumination, the idea hit me: this statement is not a moral teaching, and one would be a fool to follow it as a command against long-term planning. The birds of the sky and the lilies of the field are something else. They are poetry! The evidence of malnourished kids around the world attested that these words have to be poetry.

A less charitable interpretation of these teachings “central to the doctrine of Jesus” is provided by the late Christopher Hitchens, of “new atheism” fame, who said that the instruction to “take no thought for the morrow, no investment, no thrift, no care for your children” is a ridiculous and immoral proposition. It can only be interpreted as the words of someone who honestly believed the world was coming to an end before the next meal, or else — in the words of C.S. Lewis — was “a lunatic” or “the Devil of Hell.” With all respect to both C.S. Lewis and Hitchens, I think Lewis’ Trilemma of mad, bad, or god, is incomplete without a fourth option: poet.

I invite you to read the following text as poetry (divinely inspired if you want, yet poetry nonetheless):

“Consider the birds of the sky.
They do not sow or reap or collect for their granaries,
Yet your heavenly father feeds them.
Are you not more valuable than they?
Who among you by brooding can add one more hour To your life?
And why care about clothing?Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow
They do not labor or spin
But I tell you not even Shlomoh in all his splendor
Was clothed like one of these lilies.
And if the grass of the field is there today
And tomorrow is cast into the oven
And in these ways God has dressed the earth,
Will he not clothe you in a more stunning raiment,
You who suffer from poor faith?”

http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N27/poems.html

[Jim__]

1. Was Jesus a great poet? I don't know.

I don't think that was his goal. I also don't know how these verses sound in Aramaic; but the English version of these lines from Matthew Chapter 6 in the American Standard Version isn't that much different from the poem:

6:25 Therefore, I tell you, don't be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food, and the body more than clothing? [compare]

6:26 See the birds of the sky, that they don't sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you of much more value than they? [compare]

6:27 "Which of you, by being anxious, can add one cubit to the measure of his life? [compare]

6:28 Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don't toil, neither do they spin, [compare]

6:29 yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. [compare]

6:30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won't he much more clothe you, you of little faith? [compare]

6:31 "Therefore don't be anxious, saying, 'What will we eat?', 'What will we drink?' or, 'With what will we be clothed?' [compare]

6:32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. [compare]

6:33 But seek first God's Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well. [compare]

6:34 Therefore don't be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day's own evil is sufficient. [compare]

The verses may actually be a form of good advice. The birds don't sow or reap. Yet they eat. Maybe the message, as presented, has value in itself. There are people living today that have over a billion dollars. If they just stuffed that money into a mattress, they could live off $100,000 / year for the next 10,000 years. If they put it into treasuries, they could live off it forever. But they'd never do that. A billion dollars is not enough. Not for them, and, if we had the shot, it wouldn't be enough for most of us either. Maybe the message itself has real value. Enjoy today and let tomorrow take care of itself. It's a utopian idea and utopian ideas never actually lead to utopia, but they may lead to an improvement over the present.