Meeting Jesus, or Aragorn, or Viggo Mortensen on the Beach

I recently participated in a spiritual formation event where the leader invited participants to close their eyes and through guided imagery imagine meeting Jesus on a beach. I guess I should not have been surprised that the Jesus I encountered resembled the fictional character Aragorn as portrayed by Viggo Mortensen in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. After all, I had watched all three films over a four of five night period just a week or two before and images from the films were probably still freshly imprinted on my subconscious. While the character Gandalf is often interpreted as the Christ figure in Tolkien’s epic tale, it is Aragorn who is the king, the king who at first appears as a recluse ranger, often serves others rather than seeking to be served, defies death and even appears to be eresurrected, and ultimately receives the crown that acknowledges his kingship.

I first read Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was in high school. Once I started reading them I could not put them down. Eventually, one evening as I was reading, I realized that parts of the Lord of the Rings reminded me of parts of Scripture, especially the Jewish Scriptures or Christian Old Testament. It was then that I gained a new appreciation of Scripture, viewing it not as some dry, boring, religious text from the ancient past but as a spiritual story filled with epic adventure, ancient archetypal myth, conflict, love, betrayal, and struggle. It is no wonder then that decades later, when I imagined meeting Jesus on the beach, Jesus looked an awful lot like the character Aragorn portrayed by Viggo Mortensen.

Homage to a Hobbit

Roads go ever ever on,
     Upon the lands new and green,
Clearing obstacles hither and yon,
     Until they shine upon silver screen;
Electrons, photons, binary bytes,
     Images no eye has ever seen,
At last its tale will be told in lights,
     Opening in theaters December fourteen.

by John Edward Harris
with apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien

The cover of Tolkien’s The Hobbit first caught my eye in the spring of 1974. I was a sophomore in high school and attending a planning meeting for a regional week long youth conference. One of the other youth on the planning task force, an older youth, was carrying around and reading a copy of The Hobbit. The paperback’s cover fascinated me. I asked its bearer about it and either his reply, or the fact that I thought that he was really cool, convinced me that I needed to read The Hobbit.

I searched for, soon purchased, and read the Hobbit. The Hobbit led me to Tolkien’s classic The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien eventually led me to C.S. Lewis and his Christian Fantasy Chronicles of Narnia and Space Trilogy.

Tolkien and Lewis kindled within my adolescent heart and mind a new love of and respect for the Jewish Scriptures, what we Christians refer to as the Old Testament. They enabled me to read the Jewish Scriptures with new eyes and ears as well as a new awareness—to read the thirty-nine books of Genesis through Malachi not only as Holy writ but also as heavily layered, finely textured, highly mythic, and metaphorical literature filled with poetry and song which included stories of personal struggles and epic battles as well as genealogies and accounts of great kings and kingdoms—not unlike the fantasy works of Lewis and Tolkien, including The Hobbit.

Together Again

Maybe I am a just a Bible Geek and hardly anyone else really cares, but I find this exciting news.

The Associated Press is reporting that “two parts of an ancient biblical manuscript separated for centuries are going on display together for the first time.” “The pieces of the 1,300-year-old manuscript include the text of the Song of the Sea from the Book of Exodus.” The particular passage is Exodus 15:1-8.

I love the Biblical songs, especially the really, really old ones like the Song of the Sea. They remind me of the songs in Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and I am almost certain in part inspired Tolkien. Reading and especially singing text over 1,300 years old sends shivers up my spine and causes the hair on my arms to stand on end.

The accidental discovery that these two previously separated parts of a single biblical manuscript actually belonged together is evidence that our biblical resources and ties to ancient biblical texts is constantly growing and improving. This can in no way be compared to the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls but I do think it shows that there are still ancient biblical manuscripts waiting to be discovered, manuscripts once tucked away in dusty libraries and later forgotten about or stored in clay jars and buried beneath feet of earth or hidden in caves, or maybe inserted into other folios that have not been opened in ages.

Maybe someday we might discover a copy of a letter Christians in Corinth wrote to Paul.