Hippies

Rock 'n' Roll

in the Bible

CONTENTS

• Hippies and Rock 'n' Roll in the Bible
• hippies
• flower children
• a sociologist's perspective:
• The idea of paganism.
• (Job 38:39-40) "Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion?
• Who provided for the raven his food?
• The idea of changing place.
• Their young ones are in good liking, they grow up with corn
• The idea of salvation by the child.
• Who hath sent out the wild ass free?
• The idea of liberty.
• Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee
• The idea of psychological adjustment.
• She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers
• The idea of female equality.
• Hast thou given the horse strength?
• The idea of self-expression.
• Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom
• The idea of living for the moment.
• Rock 'n' Roll in the Bible
• the motion of the earth with respect to the sun.
• (Matt. 5:45b) "... your Father which is in heaven: ... maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
• Rock 'n' roll songs about various dances
• Songs about various historical events
• Songs about fashion
• Songs about various stages of age
• Songs about consumerism
• Songs about getting ones heart broken
• Songs about war.
• Sports songs.
• Rock and roll ballads and stories.
• The pursuit of courtship.
• A lot of car songs and racing songs, and accident songs for that matter.
• Songs about poverty and the economy

Hippies and Rock 'n' Roll in the Bible

I've read through brother Jed Smock's book Who Will Rise Up?, typical of evangelical sentiment—I'm not singling it out—and surmise he'd have us all be covenant keepers rather than rebel against God. I've no argument with him there. What I've noticed in chapter 3 on hippies, and in chapter 11 on rock 'n' roll is that he's used the word of God more like a blunt instrument than a fine edged sword. I'm wondering if we can't use it with more finesse.

Let's look at hippies, no mere passing fad. "We suggest that the most surprising development of the sixties and the one with the most far-reaching significance was the rise of the hippie culture and its impact on the world."¹ And:²

A quite [non-alarmist] assessment of hippies was made in 1968 at the peak of the "flower children" phase. It appeared in the Christian quarterly Religion in Life:³

Hippies are actually dropouts from the middle-class
society. They have disengaged themselves from the most
basic social institutions and have cut themselves free
from family and other established relationships. Their
life of poverty and unkempt dress and vernacular speech is
deceiving. They are not "kooks" or misfits, as is some-
times believed. Instead they are from the leadership pool
of the age group; usually creative, intelligent, deeply
committed to humanistic values, and come from affluent
backgrounds...  They are not slum children or from
impoverished backgrounds. The majority are educational
dropouts; not because they lack ability, but because they
are weary of mass education and feel that what they are
getting in school is not worth the effort. ...

More than 30 years ago (a "generation," as Karl Mannheim reckoned social time, two generations as Jose Ortega y Gasset reckoned it, and three, four, or more as contemporary journalists and other grabbers of the main literary chance reckon it), the literary critic Malcolm Cowley wrote Exile's Return, a book about the experience of American literary expatriates in Europe in the 1920's. In it he treats to some extent the history of bohemianism, starting back in the middle of the 19th century with that important document of bohemian history, Henry Murger's Scenes of Bohemian Life. By 1920, Cowley says, bohemia had a relatively formal doctrine, "a system of ideas that could be roughly summarized as follows" (and as I go through these eight basic ideas, please keep in mind the hippies—and the fact that these ideas were formulated 33 years ago about phenomena that were then more than a hundred years old):

1. The first point in the bohemian doctrine is what Cowley calls "The idea of salvation by the child.—Each of us at birth has special potentialities which are slowly crushed and destroyed by a standardized society and mechanical modes of teaching. If a new educational system can be introduced, one by which children are encouraged to develop their own personalities, to [listen!] blossom freely like flowers, then the world will be saved by this new, free generation."
2. "The idea of self-expression.——Each man's, each woman's, purpose in life is to express himself, to realize his full individuality through creative work and beautiful living in beautiful surroundings." This, I believe is identical with the hippies' moral injunction to "do your thing."
3. "The idea of paganism.—The body is a temple in which there is nothing unclean, a shrine to be adorned for the ritual of love." Contemporary paganism, by no means limited to the hippies but especially prevalent among them, is manifest in the overpowering eroticism that their scene exudes: the prevalence of female flesh (toe, ankle, belly, breast, and thigh) and male symbols of strength (beards, boots, denim, buckles, motorcycles), or the gentler and more restrained versions of these, or the by-now hardly controversial assumption that fucking will help set you free.
4. "The idea of living for the moment. ..." Today, this might be formulated as something like being super WOW where the action is in the NOW generation, who, like, know what's happening and where it's at.
5. "The idea of liberty."
6. "The idea of female equality.—Women should be the economic and moral equals of men ..." with respect to cultural differences between the sexes, and evident in the insistence that men may be gentle and women aggressive, and in the merging of sexually related symbols of adornment (long hair, beads, bells, colorful clothes, and so on).
7. "The idea of psychological adjustment.—We are unhappy because ... we are repressed." To Cowley, the then-contemporary version of the doctrine prescribed that repression could and should be overcome by Freudian analysis, or by the mystic qualities of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff's psycho-physical disciplining, or by a daily dose of thyroid. Today, repression may be up-tightness or "game reality," and it is not Freud but Reich, not thyroid but LSD, not Gurdjieff but yoga, I Ching, The Book of the Dead, or some other meditational means of transcending the realities that hang one up.
8. Cowley's final point in the bohemian doctrine is the old romantic love of the exotic. "The idea of changing place.—'They do things better in ...'" (you name it).

    ...

Hippie morality, then, ... seems only the most recent expression of a long tradition. ... Hippie morality is not new, but I think that more souls are believing it. The proportions of the age-grade may not be any larger, but absolute numbers are enormous—for two very good and rather new reasons. First, there is the unprecedented, colossal size of the cohort between, say, 13 and 25, even a small percentage of which produces very large numbers indeed. Second, this cohort of morally deviant youth has been swelled by the group known as "teenyboppers"—pre-adolescents and early adolescents who have not, to my knowledge, previously played any significant role in bohemian movements.

But these eight doctrines go back a lot further than just two centuries, back to Job, in fact, the oldest book in the Bible. In a list of eight common animals each animal corresponds to a point in the bohemian/hippie doctrine (but in a different order). Let me compare (Job 38:39-39:30). Take:

¶ "The idea of paganism.³—The body is a temple in which there is nothing unclean, a shrine to be adorned for the ritual of love." Contemporary paganism, by no means limited to the hippies but especially prevalent among them, is manifest in the overpowering eroticism that their scene exudes: the prevalence of female flesh (toe, ankle, belly, breast, and thigh) and male symbols of strength (beards, boots, denim, buckles, motorcycles), or the gentler and more restrained versions of these, or the by-now hardly controversial assumption that fucking will help set you free.

(Song 4:2) "Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them." She's had both her baby teeth and her regular ones, all of them even in a row, all clean, and no gaps.

(Song 4:3) "Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks." Her lips are a continuous thread—no cleft pallet—, her speech mechanism functioning well, and a smooth forehead, not a wrinkled prune.

Israel loved bright colors. They colored their dress, the walls of their houses, and the faces of their women. ... ¶Nature had given the land of Canaan one of the most wonderful painters' palettes. The children of Israel needed only to stretch out their hands. Pomegranates and saffron yielded a lovely yellow; madder root and safflower, a fiery red; woad, a heavenly blue; ... ¶The lips, cheeks, and eyelids of beautiful women were dyed. "Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet ...; thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate ..."; "... how much better ... the smell of thine ointments than all spices" (Song of Solomon 4:3; 4:10), sings King Solomon himself in his Song of Songs, one of the most beautiful love songs in the world.

In highly poetic language it refers to Israel's delight in adornment and discreetly deals with the secrets of the beauty parlor. These perfumes and paints, ointments and hair dyes, choice and expensive, manufactured with the best ingredients that the world could provide would still do credit to the much-lauded cosmetics industry of Europe and America.

Werner Keller, The Bible as History⁵

(Song 4:4) "Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men." Her neck is straight as a tower, no crick in it, on which lightly hang chains of jewelry.

(Song 4:5) "Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies." Her breasts are young and bouncy and identical.

(Song 4:6-7) "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee." He is enjoying the heightened sense of smell in the dark before daybreak. There is no decaying odor about her.

Now comes daylight. (Song 4:8) "Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards." Lebanon was noted for its tress. In a forest one is all closed in and can't see out. He wants to get away from that to a mountain top. From the top of a mountain one can see out, all over. Now that it's light he wants to see his spouse ... all over. "From the lions' dens." What can that mean but the boldness of the lion? The lion gets what it wants; it's not ashamed of its body and won't turn aside for any (Prov. 30:30). I shall use the following story to illustrate this verse.

As I lay half dozing, and the black Transylvania night turned to grey in the arrow-slit up in the wall, there was a gentle tap on the door, then another. I got up, cursing devoutly, and made my way across to the door, ...

'Who the Devil is it?'

A familiar musical laugh sounded from the other side. 'The Devil it's me, Elisabeth."

'Heilige Gottesmutter, Liserl — what on earth do you want at this hour?'

...

She placed a canvas haversack on the table. 'Come on, Otto my love, get dressed. We're going for a walk.'

'A walk — are you mad? What time is it in God's name?'

'It's 4.30 and we're going mountaineering.' She smiled and her dark green eyes sparkled. 'Really Herr Kommandant, I would hardly have thought that a distinguished Imperial and Royal U-Boat captain and officially certified war hero would have made such a fuss about being woken up just before dawn.'

'But mountain-walking, at this hour ...'

John Biggins, A Sailor of Austria⁶

We must have cut a strange figure as we climbed up the mountain pathway through the forest: a slim, pretty young woman who, but for her Magyar-Latin looks, might have been an English governess on holiday in Switzerland, accompanied by a Naval Lieutenant in a bow-tie and starched shirt. But before long there was no one to remark on our appearance. The path climbed steeply up the mountainside and before an hour was out we were sitting just below the tree-line eating a breakfast of bread and salami and brewing coffee in a Army mess-tin over a fire of twigs.⁶

We put out the fire and continued our climb up through the forest, Elisabeth striding ahead with that graceful, hip-swinging walk of hers, myself following with the rifle and the haversack. We climbed upwards until the oak and beech forest gave way to pine and birch. Then, quite suddenly, we found ourselves on the edge of a great expanse of mountain meadow on top of a ridge, about two hundred metres up I should think.

'Glorious, isn't it?' said Elisabeth, panting a little in the thin air.⁶

'Oh Otto, why can't it always be like this? No war, no U-Boats, no wounds to dress; only like this for always.'

'Yes. But I don't suppose it's a wish that will ever be granted. Somehow there always seems to be enough pain in the world to go round; and we've both got to go back to it all the day after tomorrow.'

She was silent for a while, then she said suddenly, 'Tell me Otto — why do you have to go back?'

The question was so directly put that it took some time to sink in.

'What do you mean, why go back? Damn it all, woman, if I don't go back I'll be arrested as a common deserter, even though I'm an officer, and probably get shot for it. Even getting back a day late without reasonable excuse would get me court-martialed.'

She looked at me, her eyes shrewd and searching beneath their strong, black brows. 'Very good then: become a deserter if that's what you want to call it; you'll certainly not be the only one. I was talking with Dr Navratil back at the hospital just before I left, and he said that the forests in Bohemia are thick with them. If they're going to shoot you for not fighting their rotten war for them then I don't think they deserve you anyway.'

I was speechless for a while, so outrageous — almost blasphemous — was this talk to someone who had spent his entire adult life as an officer of the House of Austria. Finally my voice returned.

'Elisabeth, have you gone completely mad? I'm an Imperial and Royal naval officer with twelve years' seniority, not some half-witted Ruthene ploughboy making a dash for the Russian lines ...'

'Yes, and I'm the woman who loves you and I don't give a copper farthing any longer for Austria or the Navy or the war after what I've seen. Listen, there's a shepherd's hut not far from here, over in that next valley. He owes me a good turn from when I was a girl and brought him some medicine when his wife had a fever. I got a message to him before we came here and he says that he'll gladly hide you. They'll never find you up here, or not until the war's long over, and I can always spin them some tale about you falling over a cliff. If the soldiers can walk out on the war, then why not the officers as well?'

'But Elisabeth — be reasonable for God's sake: I'm a U-Boat commander fighting the enemies of the Father —'

... No dearest, you're the only man I'll ever love and I'm not going to let them take you from me.'⁶

It now remains to look at "the mountains of the leopards" to complete the imagery.

We began to kiss: not with the decorum hitherto thought proper to our betrothed state but wild, intoxicating kisses. She pulled me to her lithe body, and began to fumble with my clothes.

'Otto, make love to me here ... don't go away from me.'

'Liserl, are you crazy? We're due to be married in July ...' ¶Well, here was a curious turn of events and no mistake: the seducer of many years' standing, practised in all the arts of getting women into the horizontal, now faced here with this delectable young woman importuning him to render his services — yet unaccountably reluctant to pay the tribute demanded of him. But please understand that whatever our own feelings in the matter, there were other considerations. Old Austria was a curious society, very prim in some respects and extremely licentious in others, but with very strict unwritten rules of behaviour. And while it was only expected that an unmarried officer should expend his vigour quite freely among actresses and shop-girls or even the daughters of the liberal intelligentsia, pre-marital relations with a noblewoman to whom one was betrothed were a slightly different matter. Quite apart from the lady's own honour, there was that of her family to be considered. I may sound like a cold-blooded calculating brute, but I knew that the Kelésvays would dearly like me out of the way: also that Miklos was reputed to be an excellent shot ...⁶

The same kind of imagery is present in The Warlord.⁷

It is a short northward trip to the town of Taian at the base of the central massif of Shantung. Tai Shan rises high above the other mountains, most of them barren, shorn of timber long ago by peasants needing fuel. Seeing Tai Shan in the distance with its crown of snow, the General remembers his promise to take Black Jade there. He has long carried a vision of them doing it: the two of them slowly mounting the famous brick-paved road toward the temples at the summit; at dawn, from that vantage point, they would have viewed the emerging world, pristine gold in the first light.

... Ahead is the long, winding six-mile Pan Lu Road, the Broad Way to Heaven, leading to the summit. ... Bending down, Tang picks up two palm-sized rocks and hands them to each of his aides. Do you know the practice? If you ever build a house for yourself, have your Tai Shan stone inserted in a corner. Get a carver to cut these words into the stone: 'A stone from Tai Shan. Let none dare harm the house that has it.'"

The exposure, the view, and the shelter for safety, unfolding in a leisurely walk: a trip that resonates with lovers.

Dr. Laura was offering advice on the radio to a married couple wanting to do something agreeable together. She suggested something "simple" like showering together three times a week. They liked that suggestion, and the man added they could go hiking in the mountains. Those two activities seemed to resonate together.

Have you seen the movie The Marine? In it a U.S. Marine John Triton gets summarily discharged after having ignored a direct order so he could save his fellow Marines in a hostile situation. His wife looking out her window sees John exiting a taxi, and she runs and is all over him for joy.

Soon they are seen but semidressed—but within the "sensuality" bounds of a PG-13 rating—discussing what he should do now. His wife says she wants him to do what makes him happy. At that he picks her up and starts carrying her off. She asks what he's doing. He responds, "What makes me happy." This works OK in a PG-13 film.

Next he loses his job as a security guard for going over the top. He discusses with his wife what can he do, he's trained in surveillance, tracking, infiltration, hand to hand combat, and rescue. Not much in demand in civilian life.

Well, they decide to enjoy themselves, to take a trip to—where else?—the mountains where they both have memories. Well, on the way there they are low on gas and stop to fill up. At the gas station some real bad guys kill one cop, wound another, kidnap the Marine's wife, and steal their car. John, the dazed Marine, commandeers the police car and takes off in pursuit, eventually pursuing them through an alligator infested swamp and beyond. Now, in movies that make us feel good, a Marine gets home and we want to see him do what makes him happy. A trip to the mountains goes well here too. And when the wife gets kidnapped, we are perfectly fine with the husband, a big ex-Marine, pursuing in a souped up police cruiser, the bad guys being chased by a determined husband who's trained in surveillance, tracking, infiltration, hand to hand combat, and rescue. It works in a movie, it resonates with Song of Solomon in the Bible.

Now, getting back to Job and hippies, God is not presenting the leopard, just the lion's den. He is not telling hippies to have unrestrained sex, but to have boldness with respect to duties to remain covered. The lion is not ashamed of its body in seeking its prey in order to feed its cubs, so why should a woman be ashamed to, say, breast feed her baby in public? (Num. 23:24) "Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain." (Nahum 2:11-12) "Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feedingplace of the young lions, where the lion, even the old lion, walked, and the lion's whelp, and none made them afraid? The lion did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin." And for that matter, it is downright inconvenient to cover up as the Muslim women are required to, and they could probably expose a "toe, ankle, belly, breast [to hungry baby], and thigh" without totally distracting the man with pure eyes—see Job 31:1. At any rate the hippies don't seem to be ashamed of their bodies, and perhaps there is something that could be said for that.

In case that explanation seems convoluted, let me clarify it:

Lion⁸
Asiatic lions disappeared from the Holy Land about the 14th century AD, though they remained in Mesopotamia and Syria until the 19th century.

---

Leopard⁸
Although leopards are now a vanishing species in the Middle East, in biblical times these large cats were plentiful in Lebanon and the Holy Land. Leopards inhabited mountainous terrain and forests ...

These were local denizens of the Holy Land in biblical times, but as types what they represent goes further, even down to today.

While they waited, Ruth Brandywine said, "Let me tell you about another classic experiment. There is a hallucinogenic plant in Peru that the Indians use to concoct a potent drink that gives them hallucinations that involve black panthers, leopards, flying snakes, the typical images that keep turning up in their art. Someone began to wonder what outsiders would see if they ingested this drug, and they tried it on Naïve North American students, people who knew nothing about it and its effects and the images. They saw black panthers, leopards, flying snakes." The waitress brought her drink; after she was gone again, Ruth Brandywine lifted the glass and said, "Many hypotheses have been suggested, but no explanation that satisfies has come yet. Cheers." She drank.

...

"But consider, Mr. Holloway. Worldwide—nationality aside, religion aside, belief systems aside—the same images turn up in the art of children. The same images turn up in the art of psychopaths. Would you see snakes and large cats under the influence of the Peruvian drug? Probably. We have the same latent images in our psyches, archetypes, if you prefer, the same pattern of behavior under certain conditions, all of us share them.

—Kate Wilhelm, Death Qualified⁹

What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria, on the side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip — labium, from labor (?) —laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused it to flow yet farther.

Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. ... You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.

I was invited to march with the La Leche organization in the Eugene Celebration parade, and why not? It's not gay pride or anything like that; their message is that breast feeding is healthy for baby, healthy for mother. In the South women in the holiness Pentecostal churches will breast feed their babies right in the front row.

A single gal I know who purports to be Christian had a baby saying she was only showing her boyfriend "hippie love." Yes, but she should have had a hippie wedding first.

Continuing down the list in Job:

Who provided for the raven his food? When his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat.

¶ Cowley's final point in the bohemian doctrine is the old romantic love of the exotic. "The idea of changing place.—'They do things better in ...'"

               The Twa Corbies

          As I was walking all alane,
          I heard twa corbies making a mane;
          The tane unto the t'other say,
          "Where shall we gang and dine to-day?"

          "In behint yon auld fail dyke,                  5
          I wot there lies a new slain knight;
          And naebody kens that he lies there,
          But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.

          "His hound is to the hunting gane,
          His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,          10
          His lady's ta'en another mate,
          So we may mak our dinner sweet.

          "Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
          And I'll pike out his bonny blue een;
          With ae lock o his gowden hair                 15
          We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.

          "Mony a one for him makes mane,
          But nane sall ken where he is gane;
          O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
          The wind shall blaw for evermair."             20
                                Anonymous
                    (Seventeenth Century)

     Title: "the Two Ravens."  alane (1): alone.  mane (2): moan.
     tane (3): one.  sall (4): shall.  gang (4): go.  auld fail
     dyke (5): old turf wall.  hause-bane (13): neck bone.  pike
     (14): pick.  een (14): eyes.  ae (15): one.  gowden (15):
     golden.  theek (16): thatch.

When I traveled around in a hippie commune bus, one of our favorite expressions was, "Keep on truckin'" which found universal acceptance among other hippies. Like we were always seeking something better and different. Here is another perspective:

Sam ducked his head and looked for a place as near the back as he could find, behind all the others except for a long-haired boy with the scruffy look of the '60s about him, who sat by himself at the very rear. ...

There was a scraping sound behind him, and Sam looked backward between the seats, to see the long-haired youth lifting a backpack from the rack above his head. Painted on the side, in orange Day-Glo letters, were the words THE CALIFORNIA KID IS ON HIS WAY! The pack was so old and worn that Sam wondered if he were still on his way to whatever he had had in mind when the words were painted. Perhaps ... he had never had any particular destination in mind, only the adventure of going.¹²

Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? Or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve? Canst thou number the months that they fulfill? Or knowest thou the time when they bring forth? They bow themselves, they bring forth their young ones, they cast out their sorrows. Their young ones are in good liking, they grow up with corn; they go forth and return not unto them.

¶ The first point in the bohemian doctrine is what Cowley calls "The idea of salvation by the child.—Each of us at birth has special potentialities which are slowly crushed and destroyed by a standardized society and mechanical modes of teaching. If a new educational system can be introduced, one by which children are encouraged to develop their own personalities, to [listen!] blossom freely like flowers, then the world will be saved by this new, free generation."

Who hath sent out the wild ass free? Or who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass? whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the crying of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing.

Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? Or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? Or wilt thou leave thy labor to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?

¶ "The idea of psychological adjustment.—We are unhappy because ... we are repressed." To Cowley, the then-contemporary version of the doctrine prescribed that repression could and should be overcome by Freudian analysis, or by the mystic qualities of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff's psycho-physical disciplining, or by a daily dose of thyroid. Today, repression may be up-tightness or "game reality," and it is not Freud but Reich, not thyroid but LSD, not Gurdjieff but yoga, I Ching, The Book of the Dead, or some other meditational means of transcending the realities that hang one up.

The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, 'the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman praetors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor.' Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam.¹³

Lester never got famous. But he was one of the early rebels. ... By day he was a dockworker, and by night he was an FM-listening hashish-smoking compadre of jazz musicians, painters of the New York School and poets of the Beat generation. Lester had the quintessential Beatnik look: sandals, blue jeans, sweatshirt, T-shirt. "Work is what you don't want to do," he told me. "Pleasure is what life is for."

... Much later I realized how inspirational Lester's life was, compared to the millions of people trapped in ruts, grinding out meaningless work, coming home and being satisfied by television.¹⁴

His life example is comparable to this exhortation given to the salesman:

Being a Two-Dimensional Man¹⁵

There is the mistake of being a "lopsided" man, a two-dimensional individual who never develops his true potential for living. He is not a whole man. His two activities are working and sustaining life. As a person, he is fast beating a path to mediocrity.

You have seen this man. He has never achieved a proper balance among work, play, love, and spiritual values. He has never gotten beyond his own narrow enclosure, even to the extent of tasting a new dish. A suggestion that he develop an avocation draws only a blank stare. He is a fractional man.

A successful salesman must work hard, but if he singlemindedly excludes all other activities, he fails. He fails himself, his family, his employer, and his customer. A drudge will be treated for what he is by his clients. A "whole man" emits a spark, a zest for living lacking in the dull plodder. The lopsided salesman may get his order from time to time, but his prospects are as limited as his horizon.

The well-balanced man, on the other hand, is sought out by friends and customers alike. He possesses a magnetism that attracts business, often without any apparent effort on his part ... not satisfied with that treadmill existence. ...

Anyone can—and should—build an outside interest or activity to give his life a sense of balance. The rewards may not be immediate, but in the long run this balance will become a sort of negotiable currency. The exchange commodity? Achievement, simple happiness, success in its broadest meaning.

Material gain is bound to follow.

With his sharp nose, red at the tip, and his thin pinched lips, he always looked as though he were raging inwardly; and he was concise in his speech to the point of rudeness. All his time off duty he spent in his cabin with the door shut, keeping so still in there that he was supposed to have fallen asleep as soon as he had disappeared; but the man who came in to wake him for his watch on deck would invariably find him with his eyes wide open, flat on his back in the bunk, and glaring irritably from a soiled pillow. He never wrote any letters, did not seem to hope for news from anywhere; and though he had been heard once to mention West Hartlepool, it was with extreme bitterness, and only in connection with the extortionate charges of a boarding-house. He was one of those men who are picked up at need in the ports of the world. They are competent enough, appear hopelessly hard up, show no evidence of any sort of vice, and carry about them all the signs of manifest failure. They come aboard on an emergency, care for no ship afloat, live in their own atmosphere of casual connection amongst their shipmates who know nothing of them, and make up their minds to leave at inconvenient times. They clear out with no words of leavetaking in some God-forsaken port other men would fear to be stranded in, and go ashore in company of a shabby sea-chest, corded like a treasure-box, and with an air of shaking the ship's dust off their feet.¹⁶

I need only quote the line, 'Achievement, simple happiness, success in its broadest meaning' to show it lines up with the hippies' idea of happiness by some meditational means to escape repression, 'a proper balance among work, play, love, and spiritual values'. Now they have medicinal marijuana, but then I myself take a daily dose of thyroid by prescription, so what can I say? For my part I recommend some kind of observance of a Sabbath day of rest to get one's life in balance.

Here's another example of my last point:

She finished the coffee and set the cup down. "Look, Ben, the last thing I want to sound like is a some kind of nagging wife, or something. But you can't just work all the time, you know. I mean, I know how much the job means to you, I really do. But there's more to life than being a cop, even though you don't seem to think so. Sooner or later you're going to say, Hey—what am I doing? Where's the time I ought to have for myself, and for someone I want to share it with?"

"Yeah, I suppose that's true." Why did women always pick a time like this to try to get you into a deep discussion?

She was holding him in a cool, steady gaze. "Nobody wants to wait forever, you know."

This was getting too heavy. He drained his coffee and put the mug down. "I'll call you, when I know what's going on."¹⁷

Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or wings and feathers unto the ostrich? which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them. She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers: her labor is in vain without fear; because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding. What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.

¶ "The idea of female equality.—Women should be the economic and moral equals of men ..." with respect to cultural differences between the sexes, and evident in the insistence that men may be gentle and women aggressive, and in the merging of sexually related symbols of adornment (long hair, beads, bells, colorful clothes, and so on).

What Women's Lib people hate in men, and in the "Aunt Toms" who do not agree with them, are often things they hate in themselves. Deeply inside, they feel they have failed as women because something has gone awry in their nature which makes cooking the bacon that Daddy brings home repulsive, and raising children less a fulfillment than an attempt to keep them down.

Hatred of the mother role is implicit in the Lib mythology. Two of the movement's chief demands, as of now, are free 24-hour child care centers, and free abortion on demand. ...

The Women's Lib Movement is a product of the restlessness and rootlessness of our time. When American women got the vote, their sexual roles were sorely disoriented.¹⁸

"So, you don't share Shelly's resentment of women who work?"

"Mr. Deleeuw," she said, fixing me with a firm stare, "I am a woman who works, okay? And a feminist too. I guess I just feel more ambivalence about these things than Shelly does. Women who go to an office aren't automatically betraying their children. Women who hang around them all day aren't necessarily cheating themselves or providing lousy role models. It's not that simple. We're all different. We just have to do what works for each of us, depending on a hundred things, from finances to temperament, and try to be tolerant of everybody else. I think women will have arrived when everyone's choice is considered valid and important."

"True," I said. But we weren't at that point yet, I knew. There is a low-level civil war raging in any given suburban neighborhood or kindergarten class about all this. Some stay-at-home moms are convinced that careerists are harming their children. Some working women, wondering why homemakers don't go mad, resent the time housewives have to spend hounding teachers, running the PTA, picking the perfect piano instructor. Part-time workers feel pulled in both directions, often unable fully to please their families or satisfy their bosses. Men, for the most part, watch in bewilderment, trying to figure it all out and stay out of trouble.¹⁹

Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? The glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha! And he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

¶ "The idea of self-expression.—Each man's, each woman's, purpose in life is to express himself, to realize his full individuality..." This, I believe is identical with the hippies' moral injunction to "do your thing."

I Am a Horse²⁰

Ignore the fact that I'm standing here placid and still; if truth be told, I've been galloping for centuries; I've passed over plains, fought in battles, carried off the melancholy daughters of shahs to be wed; I've galloped tirelessly page by page from story to history, from history to legend and from book to book; I've appeared in countless stories, fables, books and battles; I've accompanied invincible heroes, legendary lovers and fantastic armies; I've galloped from campaign to campaign with our victorious sultans, and as a result, I've appeared in countless illustrations. ...

Looking at me, observers frequently say, "Good God, what a gorgeous horse!" But they're actually praising the artist, not me. All horses are in fact distinct, and the miniaturist, above all, ought to know this.

Take a close look, even a given stallion's organ doesn't resemble another's. Don't be afraid, you can examine it up close, and even take it in your hands: My God-given marvel has a shape and a curve all its own. ...

I'm sick of being incorrectly depicted by miniaturists who sit around the house like ladies and never go off to war. They'll depict me at a gallop with both my forelegs extended at the same time. There isn't a horse in this world that runs like a rabbit. If one of my forelegs is forward, the other is aft. Contrary to what's depicted in battle illustrations, there isn't a horse in this world that extends one foreleg like a curious dog, leaving the other firmly planted on the ground. There is no spahi calvary division in existence whose horses saunter in unison, as if traced with an identical stencil twenty times back to back. We horses scrounge for and eat the green grass at our feet when nobody is looking. We never assume a statuesque stance and wait around elegantly, the way we're shown in paintings. Why is everybody so embarrassed about our eating, drinking, shitting and sleeping? Why are they afraid to depict this wondrous God-given and unique implement of mine? On the sly, women and children, in particular, love to stare at it, and what's the harm in this? ...

They say that once upon a time there was a feeble and nervous shah in Shiraz. He was in mortal fear that his enemies would have him deposed so his son could assume the throne; rather than sending the prince to Isfahan as provincial governor, he imprisoned him in the most out of the way room of his palace. The prince grew up and lived in this makeshift cell, which looked onto neither courtyard nor garden, for thirty-one years. After his father's allotted time on Earth ran out, the prince, who'd lived alone with his books, ascended the throne and declared: "I command that you bring me a horse. I've always seen pictures of them in books, and am curious about them." They brought him the most beautiful gray steed in the palace, but when the new king saw that the horse had nostrils like mine-shafts, a shameless ass, a coat duller than in illustrations and a brutish rump, he was so disenchanted that he had all the horses in his kingdom massacred. After this brutal slaughter, which lasted forty days, all the kingdom's rivers flowed a somber red. But Exalted Allah did not refrain from meting out His justice: The king now had no calvary whatsoever, and when faced with the army of his archenemy, the Turkmen Bey of the Blacksheep clan, he was routed and, in the end, hacked apart. Let there be no doubt: As all the histories will reveal, the nation of horses had taken its revenge.

When we chose a Bible translation, we weren't like many of today's believers keeping one foot firmly planted in current English usage while the other curiously probes the meaning of the ancient text, "extend[ing] one foreleg like a curious dog, leaving the other firmly planted on the ground," but we chose a dialect suitable for the Bible which is the King James Version.

We weren't the Sunday-go-to-meeting spiffily dressed churchmen who "assume a statuesque stance and wait around elegantly," but were down to earth as we lived out our dynamic faith.

When I read Job I see a bunch of relentless whiners analyzing the fairness of God in the face of a righteous life, and I see as part of God's response from the whirlwind a suggestion in the form of eight common animals, that there are actions we mortals can do, and perhaps have not been doing, that could increase our happiness without compromising our righteousness. One of them is that we don't have to be conformists afraid to do our own thing. If Jesus bids us consider the fowls of the air, maybe God would like us to consider the horse.

Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south? Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place. From thence she [motionless] seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off. Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she.

¶ "The idea of living for the moment. ..." Today, this might be formulated as something like being super WOW where the action is in the NOW generation, who, like, know what's happening and where it's at.

       But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
       In proving foresight may be vain:
       The best-laid schemes o mice an men
       Gang aft agley
       An lea'e us nought but grief an pain,
       For promis'd joy!

       Still thou art blest, compar'd wi me!
       The present only toucheth thee:
       But och! I backward cast my e'e,
       On prospects drear!
       An forward, though I canna see,
       I guess an fear!

Let's take a human example from down by the border:

Funny how often he recalled those early days in the valley now, as if they were some golden age, as opposed to the last days, which was pretty much how they had seemed to him at the time—recently divorced, house gone, job gone. Fifty years old and every expectation confounded. No money. No hopes. No plans. But he'd gotten a rush out of those runs to the border, thinking then there was really nothing left to lose and he supposed now the happier for it. Later would come the valley itself, Jack and the horses, the modest job and the trailer among the Oaxacans who had taught him something about life in the moment, which was, as near as he could tell, pretty much how one ought to live it—a far cry from the philosophy that had driven him in his previous life, selling real estate in the heart of Orange County, juggling mortgages on three properties, balancing his portfolio and looking toward retirement ... storing up treasures where moth and rust corrupt, just like the good book said.²¹

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. ...

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse and a turtledove and am still on their trail. Many are the travelers I have spoken to concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.²²

The momentary viewing of the eagle is, in fact, intimated in the Proverbs. Prov. 23:4-5 "Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven." Ah, the "treasures where moth and rust corrupt" are so quickly gone, like an eagle flying away.

Now, in Who Will Rise Up?²³ brother Jed castigates "'flower children' .. rebel[ing] against God and His standards of home, cleanliness, purity and order." This is good as far as it goes, but I'd like to point out that all through the book of Job was portrayed "God's standards of home, cleanliness, purity and order," but God's reply included the demonstration that he created flower children—"Their young ones are in good liking, they grow up with corn"— with all eight points of the hippie/bohemian doctrine represented, so it's not being a hippie per se that goes against God's standards, but rather all the youthful lusts from the youth influx into hippiedom.

And why does brother Jed include in the literature of "wisdom, madness and folly" Henry David Thoreau's, Walden Pond [sic]? Jed says that in turning to such literature he had "cast off the restraints of parental influence, job responsibilities, material possessions, financial burdens, and church teachings."²³ It seems to me that Thoreau for the most part is critical of unnecessary and burdensome material possessions just as was the Lord. As for job responsibilities, Thoreau's chapter on Higher Laws illustrates well, (Prov. 19:15) "Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall suffer hunger." He says:

From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious?

We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors — why the judge does not dismiss his case — why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.

Brother Jed (center) prays in the moment what to speak while students stream by on their busy schedules.

Hey, if you want to live righteously and preach the gospel, living in the moment, who is going to stop you? I mean, I was one of the workers the first year that was started the Renaissance Fair, now the Oregon Country Fair, which is a Mecca for hippies, and I go every year because I feel there should be a Christian presence there. I am not against hippiedom, as we find it in the Bible, book of Job, just against the excess of youthful lusts that have attended it. As a Christian worker it helps to have the sword of the word of God sharp enough to distinguish between the two. As brother Jed has quoted from Charles Finney's preface to his Systematic Theology:

A Christian profession implies the profession of candor and of a disposition to know and obey all truth. It must follow, that Christian consistency implies continued investigation and change of views and practice corresponding with increased knowledge. No Christian, therefore, and no theologian should be afraid to change his views, his language, or his practices in conformity with increasing light. The prevalence of such a fear would keep the world, at best, at a perpetual stand-still.

There has always been a counterculture, taking on different forms over the past several decades, from Bohemians to the Beats, from the hippies to the Yippies, from punk to hip hop. The first "underground paper" in prehistoric times was a boulder out in the field where kids could disagree with their parents' mainstream etchings on the walls of their caves.

God's listing of those animals, in fact, developed from a kid's disagreement with his elders' mainstream speeches—perfectly evident if we look at Job. In this book Job's comforters spend many chapters in argument with him over what constitutes righteousness and its results, what their values are and how well life will go if one lives them. They eventually run out of things to say, at which point a young fellow speaks up. (Job 32:6-12,16-20;34:2) "And Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite answered and said, I am young, and ye are very old; wherefore I was afraid, and durst not shew you mine opinion. I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom. But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment. Therefore I said, Hearken to me; I also will shew mine opinion. Behold, I waited for your words; I gave ear to your reasons, whilst ye searched out what to say. Yea, I attended unto you, and, behold, there was none of you that convinced Job, or that answered his words: ... When I had waited, (for they spake not, but stood still, and answered no more;) I said, I will answer also my part, I also will shew mine opinion. For I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me. Behold, my belly is as wine which hath no vent; it is ready to burst like new bottles. I will speak, that I may be refreshed: I will open my lips and answer. ... Hear my words, O ye wise men; and give ear unto me, ye that have knowledge."

After young Elihu's speech, God answers them all from the whirlwind and includes in his answer a response to Elihu. (Job 38:36) "Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? or who hath given understanding to the heart?" The answer, of course, is that God did, confirming Elihu's justification for speaking up to his elders: "there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding."

God continues: (Job 38:37-38) "Who can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can stay the bottles of heaven, When the dust groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together?" It is God who lets the clouds fill up with moisture until they have to vent themselves on the dry earth. The clouds are God's bottles of water that must be emptied when full. This answer is a response to Elihu's, "I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me. Behold, my belly is as wine which hath no vent; it is ready to burst like new bottles. I will speak, that I may be refreshed: I will open my lips and answer." So God not only gives wisdom to man—young men when their elders don't get it—, but he fills them up with it until they have to speak up: Elihu coming forward, or the underground paper, of the rock in the field with the animals on it.

Then in the very next verse, 39, God segues into his discourse on the eight animals which points are just those the young men will make to fill a void in the establishment's wisdom. If youth is to complain to the establishment, then God seems to be saying they should promote the hippie ideals.

Did Elihu the first hippie have long hair?

"During these ninety years I have made a careful study of human nature, and I know a person by the touch of the hand or the sound of the voice. Even the footstep is to me a token of the character of its owner. I never feel safe in the company of a person with a very pious, whining voice. I have seldom made a mistake in the selection of my friends during these ninety years. Once in a while I have been fooled by frauds, but not often. Dwight L. Moody once told me something that has often helped me. 'Fanny,' he said, 'be careful whenever you see a man with long hair or a woman with short hair. Usually (though not always) they are freaks; and schism and freaks were ever strong hindrances to the advance of the Christian faith.'

—Fanny Crosby,²⁵ 1912

From a Pauline point of view that is equivalent to her being bald. (I Corinthians 11:3-6) "But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered." A woman's covering symbolized the headship of her man over her. That Job's wife bosses him so is equivalent to her being shorn. Job on the other hand submits to the headship of God in accepting bad as well as good from Him. Job says his wife speaks as one of the "foolish women", or as Moody put it, "a freak."

What Kovalik sees is young women in the streets with their hair grown past their ears, when last in town, he'd seen them with their hair bobbed for the revolution.

—Malcolm Bosse, The Warlord.²⁶

---

You asked her that question I will never forget, "How come those women come in your beauty shop to have that stinky stuff put in their hair?" ...

To answer the question honestly would have been to acknowledge a quiet and long-standing acquiescence to an ideal of attractiveness that they aspired to and were imprisoned by. It put restrictions on how they could think about themselves. It would subordinate them. To sport a natural style would have been unthinkable to those women then (and in large part to their daughters and granddaughters now). In the business world, it's seen as unfeminine and slightly radical—a sign that this person might not be a team player. Nice middle-class black women (and those who aspire to that status) don't wear their hair in short Afros, braids, or dreadlocks; the acceptable thing to do is straighten the hair with chemicals and hot combs so that in texture and style it approximates that of white women.

What was the answer to your question?

"They come in here so they won't walk round lookin' like pickaninnies I guess."

—Brent Wade, Company Man.²⁷

Like most of the homegirls, she wears a plastered mass of straightened hair, dulled wisps, stiff as a hedgehog's, that go in one direction, another shiny patch of bangs shellacked in place with spray. The Afro, the do of liberation, is long gone, one more forgotten fashion of the disrespected past.

---

When he was last here, for arraignment, his hair was ponytailed and not especially clean. Since then, he's shaved and had a dramatic haircut too, albeit not a particularly becoming one. He looks as if he simply bargained to let the barber cut off half. Charged up by the winter static, his brownish hair Christmas-trees about his ears, resembling some hapless Dutch boy's. Nonetheless, as the resident emblem of authority, I'm pleased Nile has made these concessions to respectability, even if off the bench I'd regard the same gestures as silly or conventional.

—Scott Turow, The Laws of our Fathers²⁸

This drawing published in London, 1825, shows a dark and
curly haired Elihu seated between two of Job's long and gray haired
comforters on the right, the third one on the left.

A week, seven days and nights, sitting there after having "sprinkled dust upon their heads" does not leave much room for grooming. I mean they weren't going to any barber shop that week. So when we get to Elihu's speech at the end of Job we sort of expect him to be a longhair whose hair just grew some more.

Looking at hairstyles of the time:

Hair²⁹
In biblical times the Israelites—both male and female—wore their hair long. Barbers existed (Ezek. 5:1), but they apparently trimmed hair rather than cut it short. Absalom had hair so long and luxuriant that each year he cut off "two hundred shekels" (2 Sam. 14:26)—about six pounds.

By New Testament times, men tended to wear their hair much shorter than women, imitating Roman hair styles, which were cropped close to the head.

Here from James A. Michener's historical novel The Source—where he did some fine historical research—depicting a man's hair style in 1419 B.C.:

Governor Uriel was still laughing when the first Hebrew appeared. He was a tall old man, covered with dust and clothed in rough-spun garments, bearing a staff and nothing more. He was bearded, and his white hair fell to his shoulders. He wore a rope about his waist and heavy sandals and walked with a determination ...³⁰

AUTONOMIC SIGNALS³¹
Actions and other changes resulting from body-stress

There is another Autonomic Signal that deserves mention. It is a puny signal for the human animal, but a signal none the less. When adrenalin floods the system of a mammal, it has the effect of making the hair stand on end. This is part of the cooling system and exposes the surface of the skin more to the outside air. For many species this has led to impressive hair erection displays, with dramatic manes, crests and tufts expanding as the animal responds. For the wretched human pelt this is of little use as a display, but our short hairs stand on end all the same when we experience a strong enough shock. We feel the reaction as a creeping sensation on the skin, especially on the back of the neck and, although this may signal nothing to anyone else, it acts as a sure sign to us ourselves that we are experiencing a powerful body change.

Again from the Apocrypha, The Book of Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)
[The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus]
Sir 1
[A Prologue made by an uncertain Author]
This Jesus was the son of Sirach, and grandchild to Jesus of the same name with him: this man therefore lived in the latter times, after the people had been led away captive, and called home again, and almost after all the prophets.

About the time of the Maccabees, their revolt from Rome, hence an influence of Roman hairstyles. (Sir 27:14) "The talk of him that sweareth much maketh the hair stand upright; and their brawls make one stop his ears." Here he is talking of hair in general, presumably head hair which is now shorter per Roman hair styles.

Now the book of Hermas who was "bred up at Rome;"

                      VISION III.
         Of the building of the church triumphant,
         and of the several sorts of reprobates.

    7.  "When I saw these things ordered
    in this manner, and that there was
    nobody in the place, I began to be
    astonished, and my hair stood on end,
    and a kind of horror seized me;
    for I was alone."

In modern times it is more likely the short neck hair that one hears about:

... a sudden knuk-knuk sounds on his office door and his heart jumps beneath his shirt.

He had heard no footsteps, nor can he hear anything now. A ghost could have floated along the darkened hallway and tapped on his door. "Yes?" he calls.

Silence holds, while the hair on the back of his neck remains aloft. Pushing from his chair, he reaches to open the door, expecting—even as he knows he heard a knock—to see nothing.

— Theodore Weesner, Novemberfest³²

---

"Hackles rose when I heard that. Hair standing up on my neck, what the Russians call chicken skin. Sinclair'd had much the same response.

—James Sallis, Ghost of a Flea³³

First Elihu comes across as Mr. Natural. (Job 33:4,6) "The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life. Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead: I also am formed out of the clay." God made him out of clay and breathed into him the breath of life. What you see is what you get.

Then there is his example of a man finding God on his sickbed—a place where one's hair is allowed to grow uncut. (Job 33:19-29) "He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain: So that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat. His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen; and his bones that were not seen stick out. Yea, his soul draweth near unto the grave, and his life to the destroyers. If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness: Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom. His flesh shall be fresher than a child's: he shall return to the days of his youth: He shall pray unto God, and he will be favourable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy: for he will render unto man his righteousness. He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light. Lo, all these things worketh God oftentimes with man."

If God works this oftentimes, maybe Elihu went through that process himself and is so standing there with God on his side notwithstanding his hair being long. Moody says a long-haired man is "not always a freak." That would be one case, where a man is on a sickbed where he can't cut his hair and then he finds God and gets better but his hair is still long. He's okay.

Another exception that Elihu gives us is the man in prison, in fetters and irons, because he was bad, but he's learned his lesson. Can't cut his hair there either. (Job 36:8-11,16) "And if they be bound in fetters, and be holden in cords of affliction; Then he sheweth them their work, and their transgressions that they have exceeded. He openeth also their ear to discipline, and commandeth that they return from iniquity. If they obey and serve him, they shall spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures. Even so would he have removed thee out of the strait into a broad place, where there is no straitness; and that which should be set on thy table should be full of fatness." If a prisoner reforms but hasn't had time to get his hair cut, Moody won't hold it against him. Another reason Job should withhold judgment on Elihu's long hair.

Those were two examples Elihu gives, and now Mr. Natural ends up with a third. (Job 37:5-10,14,17) "God thundereth marvelously with his voice; great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend. For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth; likewise to the small rain, and to the great rain of his strength. He sealeth up the hand of every man; that all men may know his work. Then the beasts go into dens, and remain in their places. Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north. By the breath of God frost is given: and the breadth of the waters is straitened. ... Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God. ... How thy garments are warm, when he quieteth the earth by the south wind?"

Here is Elihu's reasoning: God makes the snow (and rain and showers) to fall on the earth—remember Elihu is a Mr. Natural too, to receive snow and rain on his head. God seals up the hand of every man, limits what men are allowed to do. Doesn't want them to be barbers, say. The beasts go into their dens to stay warm when it snows, so Elihu's head will stay warm under his full head of hair. Furthermore, God makes frost and ice. Job uses his coat to stay warm. How can he then hold it against Elihu to have long hair to help him?

Those are the three witnesses in his speech that Elihu feels self-conscious about his long hair, which we'd expect him to have anyway. How could he not have long hair? I can't picture him with his hair short. Can you? Of course, in those bible days all the men wore their hair long by our standards, so we are merely looking at relative hairiness here, perhaps a lack of trimming.

Elihu as well as Eliphaz promotes instruction in one's sleep : (Job 33:14-16) "For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, ..." What pair of hypnotists do these two dream learners remind us of?

The world of the wandering bishops is a small one, and everyone knows everyone else. Bryan belonged to the American Orthodox Catholic Church as did Ferrie. ... The parallels do not stop there, however. ¶David Ferrie was something of an amateur hypnotist, and he used hypnosis and drugs in some combination in his dubious "therapies." William Joseph Bryan was a much more successful hypnotist (it was his career), and often used hypnosis for pretty much the same purposes as Ferrie. A large, bearded man who taxed the scales at nearly 400 pounds, he was even stranger in appearance than hairless Ferrie; a fat man who used hypnosis to exploit others.

—Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces³⁴

Hippies were also known for not bathing, but I think that needs clarification. Hippies were first of all natural. Daily bathing removes the natural oils in the skin which then disrupts one's skin ecology A weekly bath is probably all one needs if it weren't for body odor. But if the hippies held to a vegetarian diet mostly, then their skins would not be releasing the sour toxins that come from meat. So, you see, infrequent bathing has a sort of logic to it among hippies and should not be taken as mere slovenly hygiene.

Let's see how an orthodontist regards Job's bathing:

The Skin of My Teeth

What did Job mean by his statement when he said, (Job 19:20) "My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth"? This much we know. He was afflicted with a disease which produced skin infections of some type in every part of his body. He was apparently starving also, because of the painfulness of lesions even on the inside of his mouth; he had some canker sores. He asked, (Job 6:6-7) "Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg? The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat." Try eating the pure raw white of an egg. In fact, this used to be a way to get children to vomit who had swallowed something they shouldn't have. It feels like you're swallowing nasal mucous.

He couldn't put salt on his food because it would have really irritated the sores in his mouth. Warm salt water rinses in dentistry help a patient with mouth sores only if it is very dilute. Too much salt in a wound is painful. ...

Satan Understood Skin Sensitivity

Apparently, the one "skin" of Job's body that wasn't affected by this skin disease was the skin on his teeth because it was so different and also put "out of bounds" by God. This tooth skin was an enamel-repairing mechanism maintained and fed by the saliva, unlike all the rest of the surface skin or mucous-membrane layers in his body. He was affirming that this tooth skin was intact by his famous statement later to be adopted only as a symbolic expression. I believe that he was declaring it to be crucial to the preservation of his life.

God told Satan, (Job 2:6) "Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life." It was the only skin that Satan was not allowed to touch when Satan (Job 2:7) "smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown." Previously Satan had answered the Lord, (Job 2:4) "Skin for skin!". Satan understood skin sensitivity very well since the snake he inhabited lost his legs after the curse in the Garden of Eden and had to crawl on the skin of its belly. This was probably very painful until its underside skin toughened up from prolonged rough usage, like calluses on our hands.

We should also learn some information about the biological properties of saliva in order to understand what might be the meaning of the skin of the tooth which provided Job with a method to save his life.

In 1995, researchers at the Semmelweis University Medical School in Budapest, Hungary, concluded that the saliva has certain growth and healing properties that come from the substances secreted from the salivary glands of the mouth. They said in their title, "The fountain of youth resides in us all." They cited 90 reference studies in this review. In speaking about the biologic and physiologic factors of saliva, they said that there is a "wide range of growth factors" secreted in saliva. "Animal studies with epidermal growth factor have provided evidence of a role in both oral and systemic health, through promotion of wound healing rates."³⁵ The Nobel Award Committee in 1986 gave their prize in Medicine and Physiology to Levi-Montalcini; and Cohen for their identification and characterization of epidermal growth factor from mouse salivary glands in the 1960s. It has also been demonstrated that salivary hisatin 5 (a protein of the saliva) has anti-microbal action against such things as Candida Albicans, a type of yeast (Fungus).³⁶ It is candidacidal, meaning it kills them. Other proteins in the saliva are also anti-microbial, such as proline-rich proteins, lysozyme enzymes, and lactoperoxidase enzymes.³⁷ Let me add that my own opinion is that the quantity and potency of the anti-microbials today is probably infinitesimal to what it was in Job's day. But don't forget that Satan was really working on Job. As soon as one sore in his mouth would heal over, two or three may have popped up. Even his powerful regenerating mechanisms were fighting for dominance over these evil agents. ...

Job Spat on his Wounds

To come back to our modern level of battle against infection, just think of what a dog or cat does when a part of its paw or leg is hurt or cut. They lick it! God has built this response into their instinct system. Therefore, in regard to these growth factors, the Semmelweis researchers said, "Thus, the ability to manipulate their rates of synthesis and absorption from the saliva holds the potential to enhance tissue regeneration and homeostasis (health)." I would add here, yes, if we could magnify them.

Ancient people like Job and the Neanderthals probably had higher rates of saliva secretion in their mouths with very powerful regenerative capacities for teeth and the skin of their own entire bodies. We have [but] remnants today of this very potent system. It doesn't take much to destroy us.

Besides scraping his wounds with a broken clay pot (Job 2:8), Job probably was spitting on his wounds. How do we know this? He said to God during his agony and torment, (Job 7:19) "How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?" While this could mean: "Won't You leave me alone until I humble myself," if could also mean: "Won't You let me alone (stop allowing Satan to torture me) until I stop spitting on my wounds and swallow my spittle instead."

For Job to stop spitting on his wounds would be a sign of really giving up; complete brokenness and surrender, totally resigned to the will of God and, of course, death. Spitting on his wounds represented his only fractional means of healing. Maybe he did stop shortly before God healed him. Whatever the case, the story ends with God "turning" or "restoring" Job to health. The Hebrew word is "shub" which means to come again, to be turned, to be restored. Return again signifies a return to health. But to Job, he had escaped total decimation by the "skin of his teeth." He was expressing the fact that because this tooth skin was intact and it was dependent on the salivary glands for its very existence, then the saliva was still potent for healing purposes. ... ¶If the skin of his teeth and saliva weren't spared, I believe Job would have died. Remember, God commanded Satan to spare Job's life and Satan knew what that meant long before the biochemists at Semmelweiss did.

—Jack Cuozzo, Buried Alive³⁸

At this point we may surmise that Job sat back down and went about tending his wounds, bathing them with saliva. He still hurt, of course, and that was his only option. Now, how does Elihu regard Job ministering to himself, after having argued to a standstill his three comforters? (Job 33:5) "If thou canst answer me, set thy words in order before me, stand up." He wants Job to stand up, to stop his bath, as it were.

Then a little further in his speech he suggests, (Job 35:4-5) "I will answer thee, and thy companions with thee. Look unto the heavens, and see; and behold the clouds which are higher than thou." He wants Job to get his eyes off himself and regard something higher. Next, he wants Job to stop his pacing and regard the works of God, (Job 37:14) "Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God."

Now, this may seem to be an inconvenient interruption to Job's anti-bacterial scrub, but look how God directly addresses him right after that, (Job 38:3) "Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me." Like, God wants him to "gird up his loins," tighten further those clinging clothes. It makes sense only as "for Job to stop spitting on his wounds would be a sign of really giving up; complete brokenness and surrender, totally resigned to the will of God," which he then was, (Job 42:6) "Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

Whatever the attitudes of the people brother Jed preaches to, it seems to me that the long hair and limited bathing in the original context of Job were signs of brokenness before God and a complete surrender to his will. Brother Jed calls them "dirty hippies" but their prototype cast dust on his head to help Job mourn, so perhaps it's an epithet we should keep. God is not seen to rebuke Elihu for his long hair or for his forward speech or for anything else, but God does seem to channel Elihu's zeal into the stream of hippie-type values à la '60s. What is regrettable is that so many hippie ideals were so soon forsaken.

"Woodstock's commercial undertones foreshadowed the reality that the hippies of the 1960s would soon become the yuppie entrepreneurs of the materialistic 1970s and '80s. The counterculture's rebellious ideals eventually became just another facet of American consumerism."³⁹ That is not my subject here, so I shall leave it with an epitaph from Gina Arnold's book on The Death of Punk:

Only two rock movements have destroyed themselves for filthy lucre, and both, alas, are the ones that swore they never would: the hippies and the punks. Idealistic, angry, completely opposed to mainstream values—they are now besmirched beyond recognition by their dull and stupid associations. But the hippies have more to answer for than the punks. They did it first, and they did it worse.⁴⁰

Hebdige's work—Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979) pp. 94-95— on the British punk movement identifies this shift as the moment of incorporation or recuperation by dominant culture and perceives it to be a critical element in the dynamics of the struggle over the meaning(s) of popular expression. "The Process of recuperation," Hebdige argues, "takes two characteristic forms ... one of conversion of subcultural signs (dress, music, etc.) into mass-produced objects and the 'labeling' and redefinition of deviant behavior by dominant groups—the police, media, and judiciary." Hebdige astutely points out, however, that communication in a subordinate cultural form, even prior to the point of recuperation, usually takes place via commodities, "even if the meanings attached to those commodities are purposefully distorted or overthrown." And so, he concludes, "it is very difficult to sustain any absolute distinction between commercial exploitation on the one hand and creativity and originality on the other."

—Tricia Rose, Black Noise⁴¹

And to be fair, there are a number of holdouts not completely compromised.

What I know: If the Evaluator is married, it's to his work. He looks tired behind his glasses, is on his second or third cup of coffee. Middle-aged, idealistic hippie, hence his job within the System instead of a lucrative private practice at his age.

A workaholic chained to the here-and-now, which makes me his momentary mission in life.

—Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook⁴²

Michael Frain has this to say in "The Survivor's Guide," May 16, 1990:

The sixties are often regarded as a storm that came and passed, a cyclone that blew through, its damage long repaired. But among the era's more enduring legacies was established a style of youth, of being young, that's been passed on for thirty years now by example in an endless chain of kids. Whether it's matters of speech—using the word "like" as an article, or the omnipresent "man"—or the torn jeans, the shoulder-length hair like Spanish moss, or the hazards of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, we developed rites of passage of a surprisingly enduring nature. Listening to my daughter, I often feel a little like the American natives who puzzled as Columbus told them he'd discovered a New World.

Which only goes to augment the fundamental Boomer dilemma. Unable to reform the world, many of us decided to have families in hopes of creating a more perfect order at home. We didn't want children so much as allies. Thus, the sixties became the nineties tied together by the motif of child worship. And as a result there can be no generation more thoroughly unprepared for the inevitable discovery that we've become our parents.

Then we had a reunion. I still had my beard in the '80s and got voted "the person who has changed the least." You can see my picture below wearing the T-shirt I won, although by the '90s when it was taken, I'd shaved off my beard.

At that first reunion I was asked several times if I weren't reminded of the old days. My reply is that I was more reminded by the children and this "reunion" seems more like parents day, we being the parents.

To really be fair (and biblical), I believe we should briefly consider the conclusion of Job. Remember, (Job 1:1-3) "There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east." That was his start, then his trial, the cyclone as it were, and then: (Job 42:10-13) "And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold. So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters." Job ended up with twice as much as he had to start out with, and he was reintegrated with his family.

According to my Criswell Study Bible note, "Many scholars appear to be almost angry that this tangible, objective, material blessing poured out upon Job is a part of the ending of the book. They claim that the material blessings are not true to reality, overturning the entire debate by proving the friends to be right. But, in fact, this is a necessary part of the story because it represents God's promised healing and restoration."

I'd like to be permitted to look at the historical context of Job, which most scholars seem unable to discover. (Job 1:1a) "There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job." According to my Jewish Study Bible⁴³ "The location is Uz (1:1); this is the poetic name for Edom (Lam. 4:21). Transjordan, of which Edom is the southernmost part, is often referred to in the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts as Kedem, translated in 1:3 as 'the East,' and Kedemites were known for their wisdom (I Kings 5:10)." Remember from the story of Exodus: "The plan of campaign to conquer Jordan from the east, ... Edom [being] the first kingdom that has to be negotiated on the way to Upper Transjordan."⁴⁴ The land of Uz was close by to Egypt which figures in the story.

I shall compare three sources: a translator's note at the end of The Septuagint⁴⁵—which derives some information from the Syriac book—, the Book of Jasher, and Genesis in the Bible.

There was a baby boom of Israelites in Egypt which concerned Pharaoh. Feeling insecure he sought counsel. All of the details are not recorded in the Old Testament, but—per Joshua 10:13 & 2 Samuel 1:18—we are allowed to look for historical context in the Book of Jasher which is extant.

JASHER 66

12. And all the elders of Egypt and the wise men thereof said unto the king, May the king live forever; thou didst counsel us the counsel against the children of Israel, and we did unto them according to the word of the king.
13. But in proportion to the increase of the labor so do they increase and grow in the land, and behold the whole country is filled with them.
14. Now therefore our lord and king, the eyes of all Egypt are upon thee to give them advice with thy wisdom, by which they may prevail over Israel to destroy them, or to diminish them from the land; and the king answered them saying, Give you counsel in this matter that we may know what to do unto them.
15. And an officer, one of the king's counsellors, whose name was Job, from Mesopotamia, in the land of Uz, answered the king, saying,
16. If it please the king, let him hear the counsel of his servant; and the king said unto him, Speak.
17. And Job spoke before the king, the princes, and before all the elders of Egypt, saying,
18. Behold the counsel of the king which he advised formerly respecting the labor of the children of Israel is very good, and you must not remove from them that labor forever.
19. But this is the advice counselled by which you may lessen them, if it seems good to the king to afflict them.
20. Behold we have feared war for a long time, and we said, When Israel becomes fruitful in the land, they will drive us from the land if a war should take place.
21. If it please the king, let a royal decree go forth, and let it be written in the laws of Egypt which shall not be revoked, that every male child born to the Israelites, his blood shall be spilled upon the ground.
22. And by your doing this, when all the male children of Israel shall have died, the evil of their wars will cease; let the king do so and send for all the Hebrew midwives and order them in this matter to execute it; so the thing pleased the king and the princes, and the king did according to the word of Job.

Oh, yes, but how do we know that was what really happened, since it isn't in the Bible, only in the book of Jasher? Yes, but twice in the Bible we are specifically referred to the book of Jasher, and Job ends his speeches saying, (Job 31:29-30, 35) "If I rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me, or lifted up myself when evil found him: neither have I suffered my mouth to sin by wishing a curse to his soul. ... Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book." Who are these hated people? Why the Israelites, (Jasher 63:28) "But from that day forward the children of Esau hated the sons of Jacob, and the hatred and enmity were very strong between them all the days, unto this day." Job said that if he'd treated his enemy badly, he wishes it were recorded in a book and his adversary and God would say something. I'm just showing it recorded in the book of Jasher, which title means "True Record" and in fact Elihu and then God himself do answer Job presently right after he said that.

Perhaps God doesn't criticize Job specifically for this act of war, although God didn't seem to like Job's counsel in general too much. One thing is certain, and that is Job's comforter Eliphaz didn't criticize Job for being too harsh on the children of Jacob, as Eliphaz's son had been captured by them, and Eliphaz participated in war against them in which, CHAPTER 57 verse 35, "And it came to pass after the battle, the children of Esau turned back and came home unto Seir, and the children of Esau slew those who had remained in the land of the children of Seir; they slew also their wives and little ones, they left not a soul alive except fifty young lads and damsels whom they suffered to live, and the children of Esau did not put them to death, and the lads became their slaves, and the damsels they took for wives."

And then there is Elihu and his speech(es). Who was he? My Criswell Study Bible notes (Job 32:2) "Elihu appears suddenly and dramatically on the scene. The family of 'Ram' was part of the tribe of Judah (cf. Ruth 4:19, 1 Chr. 2:9). ... 'Huz' and 'Buz' were brothers, the sons of Abraham's brother Nahor (Gen. 11:29, 22:20-21)." When the children of Abraham go to live with Nahor's clan, it's usually for refuge. Was Elihu some kind of refugee from a persecution brought on in part by Job's counsel? Is this why Elihu is allowed to speak so much while contributing so little directly before the Lord himself speaks?

The one place in Job that might be a reference to this counsel of Job's is (Job 29:21-25) "Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my counsel. After my words they spake not again; and my speech dropped upon them. And they waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain. If I laughed on them, they believed it not; and the light of my countenance they cast not down. I chose out their way, and sat chief, and dwelt as a king in the army, as one that comforteth the mourners." If that's the case, his counsel might have been given in jest, where they didn't believe he was laughing at them. This would be similar to the dynamic in I Kings 22:13-17) [from the Living Bible]:

13. The messenger who went to get Micaiah told him what the other prophets were saying, and urged him to say the same [good] thing.
14. But Micaiah told him, "This I vow, that I will say only what the Lord tells me to!"
15. When he arrived, the king asked him, "Micaiah, shall we attack Ramoth-gilead, or not?"
        "Why, of course! Go right ahead!" Micaiah told him. "You will have a great victory, for the Lord will cause you to conquer!"
16. "How many times must I tell you to speak only what the Lord tells you to?" the king demanded.
17. Then Micaiah told him, "I saw all Israel scattered upon the mountains as sheep without a shepherd. And the Lord said, 'Their king is dead; send them to their homes'"

Here Micaiah first "laughed on the king"—"Go right ahead!"—and the king corrected him. Job at least once gave some mocking advice which wasn't taken for the ridicule it was. Perhaps that was his advice to Pharaoh. Who knows?

Let's try a different tack. If Job was perhaps the brother of Jobab the king, then the king directly preceding Jobab, Bela the son of Beor, also had a brother, Balaam the son of Beor. Let's look at what became of him:

JASHER 61

8. And amongst the servants of Angeas was a youth fifteen years old, Balaam the son of Beor was his name and the youth was very wise and understood the art of witchcraft.
9. And Angeas said unto Balaam, Conjure for us, I pray thee, with the witchcraft, that we may know who will prevail in this battle to which we are now proceeding.
10. And Balaam ordered that they should bring him wax, and he made thereof the likeness of chariots and horsemen representing the army of Angeas and the army of Egypt, and he put them in the cunningly prepared waters that he had for that purpose, and he took in his hand the boughs of myrtle trees, and he exercised his cunning, and he joined them over the water, and there appeared unto him in the water the resembling images of the hosts of Angeas falling before the resembling images of the Egyptians and the sons of Jacob.
11. And Balaam told this thing to Angeas, and Angeas despaired and did not arm himself to go down to Egypt to battle, and he remained in his city.

JASHER 64

1. And Balaam the son of Beor was at that time with Angeas in the battle, and when he saw that Zepho prevailed over Angeas, he fled from there and came to Chittim.
2. And Zepho and the children of Chittim received him with great honor, for Zepho knew Balaam's wisdom, and Zepho gave unto Balaam many gifts and he remained with him.
   ...
   
26. And Balaam the son of Beor the Syrian was there in the camp of Zepho, for he came with the children of Chittim to the battle, and Balaam was a man highly honored in the eyes of Zepho and his men.
27. And Zepho said unto Balaam, Try by divination for us that we may know who will prevail in the battle, we or the Egyptians.
28. And Balaam rose up and tried the art of divination, and he was skillful in the knowledge of it, but he was confused and the work was destroyed in his hand.
29. And he tried it again but it did not succeed, and Balaam despaired of it and left it and did not complete it, for this was from the Lord, in order to cause Zepho and his people to fall into the hand of the children of Israel, who had trusted in the Lord, the God of their ancestors, in their war.

JASHER 67

8. And it was after the death of the king of Chittim that Balaam the son of Beor fled from the land of Chittim, and he went and came to Egypt to Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9. And Pharaoh received him with great honor, for he had heard of his wisdom, and he gave him presents and made him for a counsellor, and aggrandized him.
10. And Balaam dwelt in Egypt, in honor with all the nobles of the king, and the nobles exalted him, because they all coveted to learn his wisdom.
11. And in the hundred and thirtieth year of Israel's going down to Egypt, Pharaoh dreamed that he was sitting upon his kingly throne, and lifted up his eyes and saw an old man standing before him, and there were scales in the hands of the old man, such scales as are used by merchants.
12. And the old man took the scales and hung them before Pharaoh.
13. And the old man took all the elders of Egypt and all its nobles and great men, and he tied them together and put them in one scale.
14. And he took a milk kid and put it into the other scale, and the kid preponderated over all.
15. And Pharaoh was astonished at this dreadful vision, why the kid should preponderate over all, and Pharaoh awoke and behold it was a dream.
16. And Pharaoh rose up early in the morning and called all his servants and related to them the dream, and the men were greatly afraid.
17. And the king said to all his wise men, Interpret I pray you the dream which I dreamed, that I may know it.
18. And Balaam the son of Beor answered the king and said unto him, This means nothing else but a great evil that will spring up against Egypt in the latter days.
19. For a son will be born to Israel who will destroy all Egypt and its inhabitants, and bring forth the Israelites from Egypt with a mighty hand.
20. Now therefore, O king, take counsel upon this matter, that you may destroy the hope of the children of Israel and their expectation, before this evil arise against Egypt.
21. And the king said unto Balaam, And what shall we do unto Israel? surely after a certain manner did we at first counsel against them and could not prevail over them.
22. Now therefore give you also advice against them by which we may prevail over them.
23. And Balaam answered the king, saying, Send now and call thy two counsellors, and we will see what their advice is upon this matter and afterward thy servant will speak.
24. And the king sent and called his two counsellors Reuel the Midianite and Job the Uzite, and they came and sat before the king.

There is a certain resonance here with the book of Job. There is the counsel of Reuel the Midianite which corresponds to that of Job's three friends, there is Job's counsel both here and in the book of Job, and later comes that of Balaam as did young Elihu's counsel appear at the end of Job.

Now, I won't quote it all here, but Reuel's position is basically that God is going to categorically bless his chosen Israelites, so the king should not try to interfere with that. Reuel was also called Jethro.

41. And when Pharaoh heard the words of Jethro he was very angry with him, so that he rose with shame from the king's presence, and went to Midian, his land, and took Joseph's stick with him.
42. And the king said to Job the Uzite, What sayest thou Job, and what is thy advice respecting the Hebrews?
43. So Job said to the king, Behold all the inhabitants of the land are in thy power, let the king do as it seems good in his eyes.
44. And the king said unto Balaam, What dost thou say, Balaam, speak thy word that we may hear it.

Then, in the Book of Jasher, comes Balaam's advice.

45. And Balaam said to the king, Of all that the king has counselled against the Hebrews will they be delivered, and the king will not be able to prevail over them with any counsel.
46. For if thou thinkest to lessen them by the flaming fire, thou canst not prevail over them, for surely their God delivered Abraham their father from Ur of the Chaldeans; and if thou thinkest to destroy them with a sword, surely Isaac their father was delivered from it, and a ram was placed in his stead.
47. And if with hard and rigorous labor thou thinkest to lessen them, thou wilt not prevail even in this, for their father Jacob served Laban in all manner of hard work, and prospered.
48. Now therefore, O King, hear my words, for this is the counsel which is counselled against them, by which thou wilt prevail over them, and from which thou shouldst not depart.
49. If it please the king let him order all their children which shall be born from this day forward, to be thrown into the water, for by this canst thou wipe away their name, for none of them, nor of their fathers, were tried in this manner.
50. And the king heard the words of Balaam, and the thing pleased the king and the princes, and the king did according to the word of Balaam.
51. And the king ordered a proclamation to be issued and a law to be made throughout the land of Egypt, saying, Every male child born to the Hebrews from this day forward shall be thrown into the water.
52. And Pharaoh called unto all his servants, saying, Go now and seek throughout the land of Goshen where the children of Israel are, and see that every son born to the Hebrews shall be cast into the river, but every daughter you shall let live.
53. And when the children of Israel heard this thing which Pharaoh had commanded, to cast their male children into the river, some of the people separated from their wives and others adhered to them.
54. And from that day forward, when the time of delivery arrived to those women of Israel who had remained with their husbands, they went to the field to bring forth there, and they brought forth in the field, and left their children upon the field and returned home.
55. And the Lord who had sworn to their ancestors to multiply them, sent one of his ministering angels which are in heaven to wash each child in water, to anoint and swathe it and to put into its hands two smooth stones from one of which it sucked milk and from the other honey, and he caused its hair to grow to its knees, by which it might cover itself; to comfort it and to cleave to it, through his compassion for it.
56. And when God had compassion over them and had desired to multiply them upon the face of the land, he ordered his earth to receive them to be preserved therein till the time of their growing up, after which the earth opened its mouth and vomited them forth and they sprouted forth from the city like the herb of the earth, and the grass of the forest, and they returned each to his family and to his father's house, and they remained with them.
57. And the babes of the children of Israel were upon the earth like the herb of the field, through God's grace to them.
58. And when all the Egyptians saw this thing, they went forth, each to his field with his yoke of oxen and his ploughshare, and the ploughed it up as one ploughs the earth at seedtime.
59. And when they ploughed they were unable to hurt the infants of the children of Israel, so the people inceased and waxed exceedingly.

Nikos took down an octagonal vessel with transparent sides and handed it to his friend. "I have had to learn a whole new vocabulary. ... The general term is domo or house. Peepholes on the divine. They are often made of precious metal and studded with gems," he said, "but the prize is within. ..."

The Egyptian touched the cross. "You think one of my ancestors built this?" It was an astounding notion.

"Perhaps not this very object," said Nikos. "But the Christians learned how to make puzzle boxes from someone. Someone highly skilled in a dying art. The art of preserving the dead. That would explain why some of these very early domos are so complex. Like your booby-trapped tombs and pyramids, they are meant to thwart the uninvited visitor."

Jeff Long, Year Zero⁴⁶

Balaam well understood the fruitlessness of fighting God's determined blessings on his people, but he nevertheless developed a plan. Curious thing about this plan is that one of the offspring of the Israelites named Moses, saved from the river, eventually finds sanctuary with Jethro, Reuel, the first counselor, even marrying his daughter. That helps us to understand that young Elihu must have also been one of these "river babies"—or "field baby" to be more exact—, eventually confronting Job whose advice gave Pharaoh a free hand. My Jewish study Bible⁴³ says "He is a Buzite, which may be etymologized as 'contemptible,' but of the family of Ram, 'elevated.' 'Elihu,' a variant form of Elijah ('Eliyahu'), means 'my God [is] the LORD'." Thus his name represents the status of the field babies: despised by the Egyptians (and then their parents by force), then exalted by God with the angels' care, showing God reigns.

Balaam's name also suits his role in all of this.

In Rabbinic literature the connotation 'devouring,' or 'consuming,' arose out of the description there of the analogue of 'Belial' or 'Bela^c' — 'Balaam,' one of the Talmud's several 'Enemies of God' — as his name is split into its constituent parts, 'Balla^c'–'Am,' specifically defined as 'swallowing' or 'consuming the people.'

—Robert Eisenman, The New Testament Code⁴⁷

Elihu is firmly convinced that God blesses the righteous. But towards the end of Elihu's soliloquy he shows an uncanny familiarity with the way God nourishes the field (Job 37:5-18) after having sealed (vs. 7) the hand of man. From the Jasher story these babies were bathed by angels, their hair allowed to grow long for covering, then nurtured inside mother earth, finally springing up like flower children, as herbs of the field, thus the hand of man being sealed from harming them. If the angels gave the babies sweets and milk, can we rue the provision of "a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold" from Job's friends and acquaintances? If the flower children were reunited and reintegrated with their families, can we complain that Job surviving his trial was welcomed back into his? And if it worked for Job and Elihu, how can we hold it against our modern hippies for following the same course?

This historical context from the Book of Jasher corresponds to the first chapter of Exodus in our Bible.

Exodus 1

6. And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.
7. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.
8. Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.
9. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we:
10. Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.
11. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.
12. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel.
13. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour:
14. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.
15. And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah:
16. And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.
17. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.
18. And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive?
19. And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.
20. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty.
21. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses.
22. And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

Both in the Book of Jasher and in the Bible, there was a double whammy. The midwives were supposed to kill the male babies, but didn't, then, that having failed, Pharaoh commanded the male Israelite babes cast into the river. The second solution seemed the worse of the two from the Israelite point of view.

There was a double whammy on Job also, Satan first taking his possessions, including children, and that having failed, the health of Job's skin. Of course, the skin resonates here with hippie reluctance to take baths or get haircuts, both concerned with skin. God answers Job twice from the whirlwind.

Furthermore, take this Balaam a magician of sorts. What kind of sacrifice did he use in Numbers to curry favor with God? (Numbers 23:1-2) "And Balaam said unto Balak, Build me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven oxen and seven rams. And Balak did as Balaam had spoken; and Balak and Balaam offered on every altar a bullock and a ram." And what kind of sacrifice did Job offer? Well, God commanded Job's three friends, (Job 42:7-8) " ... Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job." Same seven oxen and seven rams. But Job himself had sacrificed for his seven sons, (Job 1:5) "And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually." Presumably this is the same seven oxen and seven rams. (I think that particular sacrifice is found but once more in the Bible when David sanctified the returning ark.) Some sort of connection seems to be there.

And it seems to be for the same purpose. God was unwilling to follow Balaam's counsel in Numbers to destroy the Israelites. (Numbers 23:21) "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them." But Job was worried that God might find iniquity in his seven sons, perhaps from a deep seated fear that Job's earlier counsel to Pharaoh about destroying the Israelite male offspring might somehow return on him. (Job 3:25) "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me." Perhaps that was what was referred to at the end of Job, (Job 40:8) "Wilt thou also disannul my judgment? wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous?"

It all seems to fit into place, although this is not the usual interpretation placed on Job. First reactions seem to confirm the Jasher account. (Job 3:11-14) "Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck? For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest, With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves." Job's immediate identification, at his calamities, is with newborns that didn't make it, and then in a Freudian slip, "with kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places." But he was a counselor with a king in the Book of Jasher, a result of whose counsel was the angels building some kind of underground city in desolate places to house the newborn Israelite males.

The first reaction of his three comforters is, (Job 4:3-5) "Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands. Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees. But now it is come upon thee, and thou faintest; it toucheth thee, and thou art troubled." Job is first seen as a counselor who got into trouble.

And if that were not enough we find that God from the whirlwind first addresses Job as a counselor, (Job 38:1-2) "Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" And in fact the whole tenor of God's answer to Job is as if Job didn't know all the workings of the Almighty, like in particular his chosen people who shouldn't be destroyed just because they appear to be warlike, if we accept The Jasher account as accurate.

A good parallel example to Job, then, would be the father of John the Baptist who was also a righteous man, (Luke 1:5-6) "THERE was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." Job was, of course, considered a completely upright man, as well. An angel gave Zacharias a revelation concerning a son that was to be born to him an old man with an old wife. (Luke 1:18-20) "And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years. And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings. And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season." The angel struck him dumb, and he had to have the patience of Job to endure it until his son was delivered. At least he didn't have Job's critics.

But who else was struck by an angel, or dodged the attempt? Balaam. (Numbers 22:32-33) "And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times? behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me: And the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times: unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive." So the incident of Balaam in Numbers devolves into a discussion of an animal as does the end of Job.

Both stories involve an element of debate with regard to the realm of heaven. Satan presented himself with the sons of God to debate Job's righteousness, and there was a poignant question asked by the Lord, (Luke 20:4) "The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men?"

If all this were not enough to lend credibility to the Jasher account, we might also want to consider a parallel in Daniel chapter 2. King Nebuchadnezzar seeking counsel from (vs. 27) "the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers" Job (the shoe being on the other foot from him advising Pharaoh) looking for sympathy from his three comforters. Nebuchadnezzar and his counselors reaching an impasse because the king quite forgot the content of his dream Job and his comforters reaching an impasse because Job was quite unaware of any wrongdoing he had done. In stepped Daniel and in stepped Elihu who seem to unlock the whole plot, Daniel being (vs. 23) "a man of the captives of Judah," and Elihu being a relative youth, both with low status. Daniel was given (vs. 19) "a night vision," and Elihu seems to be expressing his past familiarity with the elements: the one receiving the image from the king's dream, the other the result of Job's long ago counsel to pharaoh. Both stories end with a vision or a manifestation filled with symbols subject to interpretation.

It was certainly consistent with Egyptian practice to call counsel on perceived problems. The Execration Texts, 1900-1700 B.C., for example, were prepared by priest-sorcerers on Pharaoh's orders to curse their enemies.

There is also a witness of sorts in Micah, which we shall mention. (Micah 6:1-2) "Hear ye now what the LORD saith; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye, O mountains, the LORD's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the LORD hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel." God is talking to the hills, the mountains, and the earth which he must control and who are witnesses of sorts.

(Micah 6:3-4) "O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam." Now he is talking (to the hills and the earth) of his deliverance of his people from Egypt, by Moses, Aaron, and Miriam who came through the baby-casting-out episode.

(Micah 6:5) "O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal; that ye may know the righteousness of the LORD." Now we are talking about Balaam, right after mention of deliverance from Egypt. But didn't Balaam in the book of Jasher, at least, counsel Pharaoh against the Israelite babies?

(Micah 6:6-8) "Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Job started off with offerings, worried about his sons, but he ended up claiming to have lived a life of "do[ing] justly, and lov[ing] mercy, and walk[ing] humbly with God."

A discussion of Job proper is beyond the scope of this study. There are many fine theological papers on him. I only want to look at Elihu, our first hippie, as it were. As for Balaam, his role in Jasher is at least consitent with what the New Testament says, (2 Peter 2:14c-16) who "... cursed children: Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbad the madness of the prophet." In fact the enigmatic "cursed children" above makes sense in the context of Jasher, as do the angelic intervention and the change in the natural order reflected in the talkking ass. Having shown some kind of relation between the Book of Jasher's account and our book of Job, I now want to look at the two enigmatic beasts God presents at the end of Job. These beasts are so terrible in their descriptions they seem almost mythological, although they may have existed in the ancient world. I sure wouldn't want to meet one here.

Job 40

Another illustration by English artist William Blake

15. Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
16. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.
17. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
18. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.
19. He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.
20. Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.
21. He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.
22. The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about.
23. Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.
24. He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.

Job 41

1. Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?
2. Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?
3. Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee?
4. Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?
5. Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?
6. Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?
7. Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?
8. Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.
9. Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?
10. None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?
11. Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.
12. I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion.
13. Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can come to him with his double bridle?
14. Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.
15. His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.
16. One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.
17. They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.
18. By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.
19. Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.
20. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.
21. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.
22. In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.
23. The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved.
24. His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.
25. When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of breakings they purify themselves.
26. The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.
27. He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.
28. The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him into stubble.
29. Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.
30. Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire.
31. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.
32. He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.
33. Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.
34. He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.

Behemoth⁴⁸

Behemoth is a mighty beast that serves as a lesson to Job of the power of God. Its description sounds most like a hippopotamus: it has enormous strength, eats grass "as an ox," and lives "in the covert of the reed, and fens."

Leviathan⁴⁸

In ancient mythology, Leviathan was a primeval sea monster that battled with the gods. ... In the Old Testament Leviathan, or DRAGON, symbolizes the watery forces of chaos that God had to defeat in order for creation to take place.

Okay, what the two have in common is their power over the water. Behemoth can seem to drink up Jordan, while Leviathan can make the deep luminous. God has control over both the quantity and quality of the water. Behemoth pierces snares while Leviathan is a king over the children of pride.

These two monsters that God created mock the Egyptians' attempts to hold power over God by using their great majestic river to drown God's people. In fact, the whole account above is delivered in a mocking tone. You think your river is so great as to thwart God's purpose? But two of his created beasts have great power over that river, and you can't touch them, let alone God.

There is added significance to Behemoth and Leviathan which would have been well understood at the time and place of Job. Some background:

THE NEW KING who "knew not Joseph" (Exodus 1:8) was most likely Ramesses II or one of his predecessors. His ignorance is understandable, for Joseph had lived centuries before him in the days of the Hyksos. The names of these Hyksos rulers who were so cordially detested by the Egyptians have hardly been recorded, much less the names of their dignitaries and officials. Even if this Pharaoh of the new dynasty ... had known of Joseph, that is as far as he would have wanted it to go. Joseph was bound to be an object of contempt to any nationally conscious Egyptian for two reasons: one, that he was an "Asiatic" and a miserable "Sand rambler," and, two, that he was the highest official of the hated occupying power. From the latter point of view any appeal to Joseph would hardly have been a recommendation for Israel in the eyes of a Pharaoh.

---

Something incredible and frightful had befallen the Nile country about 1730 B.C. Suddenly as a bolt from the blue, warriors in chariots drove into the country like arrows shot from a bow, endless columns of them in clouds of dust. Day and night horses' hooves thundered past the frontier posts, rang through city streets, temple squares and the majestic courts of Pharaoh's palaces. Even before the Egyptians had realized it, it had happened; their country was taken by surprise, overrun and vanquished. The giant of the Nile, who never before in his history had seen foreign conquerors, lay bound and prostrate.

The rule of the victors began with a bloodbath. The Hyksos, Semitic tribes from Canaan and Syria, knew no pity.

---

For a hundred and fifty years there is a silence in Egypt. The prelude to the reawakening of the giant of the Nile opens with a remarkable motif: the roaring of hippopotami. ...

Sekenenrê was out of luck. For when the Hyksos ambassador departed, he had a promise from the prince in his saddle bag, written on papyrus: "All that you have told me to do I shall do—get rid of the noisy hippopotamus pool in the east end of the city. ...

In the Cairo museum lies the mummy of Sekenenrê. When it was discovered at Deir-el-Bahri near Thebes, it attracted special attention from medical men, for there were five deep sword cuts in the head. Sekenenrê had lost his life in battle.

It sounds like a fairy tale, yet it is an attractive possibility that the roaring of hippopotami at Thebes should have unseated the Hyksos rulers up in the delta. The roaring of a hippopotamus is probably the most extraordinary casus belli in world history.

—Werner Keller, The Bible as History⁴⁹

Then we are told about Leviathan, the DRAGON. But how is Egypt's self image portrayed—a little bit later in history, to be sure? (Ezekiel 29:3-7) "Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself. But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales. And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee and all the fish of thy rivers: thou shalt fall upon the open fields; thou shalt not be brought together, nor gathered: I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven. And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the LORD, because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel. When they took hold of thee by thy hand, thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder: and when they leaned upon thee, thou brakest, and madest all their loins to be at a stand." If Egypt is a dragon, well God shows it in Job to be mighty hard to defeat. Why they is Egypt so worried by these sand ramblers if Egypt is to strong? At any rate, Egypt seems to have hurt Israel like a reed piercing a man's hand who leans on it, so God judged that dragon, even expelling it to the fields where Israel's field babies had once been deposited.

I'm not sure how wise counselor Job could have used these two illustrations, but God sure uses them mockingly.

There is, I notice, an interesting play on the record of Job's debate. Job, as a prelude to his well-remembered quote about knowing his redeemer, demands a record of his calamity. (Job 19:23f) "Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!" We do have his words in a book, the book of Job in our Bible, but what about the iron pen and lead in a rock? Is there some other side to the story we're missing?

Writing Materials

Stone texts written with ink on plaster: Moses had said to the Israelites, "On the day when ye shall pass over Jordan unto the land which the Lord your God giveth thee, thou shalt set thee up great stones and plaister them with plaister: and thou shalt write on them all the words of this law ..." (Deut. 27:2-3). And Joshua had done this (Josh. 8:22).

One inscription of this kind, ink on plaster, has been discovered rather recently. ... It is an Aramaic text from the plaster of a temple wall in the Jordan valley. The first line of the text reads, "This is the record of Balaam, son of Beor ..." This clearly is a reference to the biblical Balaam (Numbers 22-24).⁵⁰

We are given his record, "the spirit of God having come upon him," in Numbers 24:2-9, which ends with this pronouncement of Israel, (vs. 9) "Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee." That would seem to reflect on Job's complaint, if we can take seriously the background in the book of Jasher. I am not going to here to analyze Job but Elihu.

Elihu was privy to a long learned discussion about sin before giving his own answer. Evidently (from Jasher), he was not unfamiliar with the results of men trying to thwart God's plan, if in fact he was one of these outcast babies. We could well expect him to contribute to the whole discussion, but what would he say. Like, "out of the mouths of babes", what is a child's answer? I share with you a story by Muriel Hanson:

God Calls It Sugar?⁵¹

I came into the kitchen unexpectedly and caught little Sheri in the act. She had done it once before and now as I saw her helping herself to a spoonful of brown sugar from the canister, I reminded her that she was being disobedient.

Then a thought came to mind. We had been reading a little devotional book before her nap time each day. In this little volume the subject of sin is dealt with in a manner easily understandable by a child her age. So I thought I would put it to a test and see how much she had absorbed.

"What does God call it when you do something you are told not to do, Sheri?" I asked.

Looking me squarely in the eye, she deflated me thoroughly when she answered most emphatically, "God calls it sugar!"

Now, the whole of Job chapter 37 which winds up Elihu's answer is given over to the elements, to the weather having long term effects making, among other things, smooth stones, two of which were given to each abandoned baby for a source of miraculous nourishment, milk and honey. Let's think for a moment what would be the human equivalent to smooth stones holding nourishment. A piece of glazed pottery would be the closest we come, I would say. What problem might we cause baby using it?

English research done in the 60's showed that many children classed as hyperactive by doctors or schools were children who had lead poisoning from parents who smoked and the lead that comes from certain coal and gas fires. ... ¶Many cases of mental retardation can be traced to high lead levels in the air or the parents' bodies. ... Eating apples, dark green veggies, beans, garlic, and sea veggies can help remove the toxins, but an holistic practitioner can design a specific program for detoxifying your system of this ancient and modern curse. Lead pipes, pewter, brightly colored pottery, old paint, synthetic gardening sprays, and automobile exhaust all can contain lead levels high enough to cause a reaction in a child's body.⁵²

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Sources of Lead Contaminants in Food:
                                        Lead crystal, improperly manu-
                                        factured and old ceramic ware,
                                        paint, old plumbing, and leaded
                                        gasoline.

In the United States, lead poisoning ranks as one of the most common childhood environmental health problems, affecting some three million children under the age of six.

Lead usually does not poison a person all at once; rather, low levels build up gradually in the soft tissues of the kidneys, bone marrow, liver and brain. Over time, the accumulated lead can cause such health problems as diminished intelligence and impaired development. Pregnant women and young children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of lead because their bodies absorb high levels of calcium to meet their growth needs but the body cannot distinguish between lead and calcium. As a result, they readily absorb lead. ...

Lead solder used to seal the seams of cans was long a source of contaminant. ...

Do not feed babies from crystal bottles.⁵³

---

According to Florida epidemiologist Jeffry Stacks, many prize traditional folk remedies contain dangerously high, sometimes fatal, amounts of lead. ¶In one recent case, for example, the death of a nine-month old Gainesville, Florida boy baffled investigators until the parents, immigrants from India, handed over three home medicines. All contained lead, with the highest amount in a brownish powder called ghasard. Mixed with water and honey, this "tonic" had been given to the infant daily.

In yet another case, 24 Vietnamese children living in Minnesota had dangerously high levels of lead in their blood; at the root of their trouble were various home remedies including a red and orange powder called pay-loo-ah, used to bring down fever. And finally, officials report that Mexican-American children living in Wisconsin have been poisoned, sometimes to the point of death, by azarcon, an orange powder that eases diarrhea—and often contains 70 to 90 percent lead.

—Omni⁵⁴

Lab tests on bone and tissue samples from Torrington, Hartnell and Braine showed the same excessively high lead content as the Booth Point skeleton and the bones we found in our 1982 investigation of the Boat Place. And an analysis of the hair samples proved that these men had suffered from acute lead poisoning while they were on the Franklin expedition.

I was struck by the horrifying truth—lead had contributed to the declining health of the entire crews of the Erebus and the Terror. Not only did the sailors suffer from loss of appetite, weakness and other physical symptoms of lead poisoning, but the lead probably also affected their minds, making them behave strangely. Many of them may have been unusually irritable, filled with unreal fears, incapable of clear thought and unable to make important decisions.

...

I then carefully studied the tin can fragments that I had collected at Beechey Island. In Franklin's time, this new invention had allowed food to be preserved indefinitely, so that explorers could take with them supplies for long voyages. But the cans Franklin carried were seriously flawed.

I could see that the metal edges and seams of the cans were sealed on the inside with large pieces of solder made of melted lead and tin. In some cases there was so much solder that it had dropped and hardened like candle wax. While the can was full, lethal doses of lead from the solder would have dissolved into the food.

Our research also proved that the lead that poisoned the sailors could only have come from the canned foods—the composition of the lead in the bodies and in the solder was identical. How ironic it was, I thought, that the canned foods which should have allowed the men to survive for years in the Arctic were instead the cause of the early deaths of many sailors. It was not until the 1890s, long after the disaster, that the British government finally banned soldering on the inside of food tins.

—Owen Beattie and John Geiger, Buried in Ice⁵⁵

Somehow our modern hippies are prone to a philosophy that many of the world's problems could be solved if we just ate right, ate organically. We should eat food as little processed by man's technology as possible. But Elihu the first hippie as a baby drank his nourishment from a couple of smooth stones, not any kind of ceramicware fashioned by man.

Elihu, our first "hippie," avoided the "draft" (river), had long uncut hair and a bath only by angels, and he lived in a special community close to nature until ready to reunite with a society he felt confident to challenge. Sounds to me like a longhaired unwashed hippie living in a commune until he's ready to be integrated with society and who doesn't refrain from speaking his mind. Let's look at the 1960s - 70s communal living phenomenon to see if there is not something in common with Elihu's early arrangement.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF YOUTH CULTURE AND YOUTH MOVEMENTS⁵⁶

Recently [circa 1972], a sociologist has noted that "youth culture is located at the point of conflict between the bureaucratic ethos and ethos of modern childhood" (Berger, 1970:34). The separation of family and childhood from the productive process, the shrinkage in family size, and the diminishing likelihood of death during childhood have converged to produce a contemporary middle class childhood which "is vastly more humane than it was before" and which "brings forth more humane individuals" (Berger, 1970:35). Continuity is disturbed, however, because the humanistic and personalistic values fostered by the milieu of modern childhood cannot be carried over into the instrumental processes of the adult occupational milieu. The bureaucratic aspect of many post-childhood occupational and educational milieux is in some ways the antithesis of the "humanistic" patterns of childhood.

---

In contrast, the adult occupational structure (including preparatory higher educational institutions) increasingly stresses roles which are functionally specific, affectively neutral, univeralistic and performance-oriented, in short, "bureaucratic" and "impersonal" instrumental relations (Eiswnstadt, 1956). The transition between the familial milieu and the adult instrumental milieu thus becomes increasingly difficult and young people experience sharp role conflict. Within the terms of this analysis, youth movements, although they may have explicit "anti-establishment" overtones, can often be seen as devices to ease the tension of the familial-occupational transition. They do this by constructing value orientations and normative frameworks which combine elements of both familial and bureaucratic role systems (e.g., bureaucratic universalism and familial diffuseness). Through youth movements, adolescents and postadolescents work out roles and relations consistent with selected aspects of both "childish" and "adult" milieux.

The underground youth movement from the Book of Jasher served the same purpose of that in the 60s and 70s, only at a different age bracket. The infant male Israeli babies needed a happy nurturing environment at the time the bureaucracy assigned them to be cast into the river. Their parents left them in the field where the angels bathed them and provided for their sustenance, letting them be reared in their own underground place until toddlerhood or when it was they were ready to be reintegrated with their families and society.

Elihu the first "hippie" got started at an early age. Although there were anti-establishment undertones to his reply to Job and Job's friends, we can see he was also addressing his earlier situation which better counsel from Job to Pharaoh could have prevented. God had told Abraham he would "bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you." Job's curse seems to have resulted from a true ignorance of the workings of God when Job so readily advised disposing of a people God protects—albeit a belligerent one. God's reply, if nothing else, shows Job to be profoundly ignorant of many of God's ways. Job was later restored as was Zacharias who for his part also misspoke through not understanding God's power. Both Job's friends and Zacharias's family seem to have been kept in the dark concerning the exact transaction that brought on their chastisement, although Zacharias's family seems to have been more sympathetic than was Job's friends. Echoes of God's reply have been manifest through the ages and more recently in the hippie phenomenon with its doctrine corresponding to eight creatures listed in God's reply. Mine is not a complete analysis of hippies, but a showing of their earliest roots. This hippie phenomenon occurred at a time of a protested military conflict and an unpopular draft.

Indo-China's wartime history was that although the Japanese had exercised complete military control there since 1941, French paramountcy was not formally challenged until early 1945. The Japanese had amalgamated Annam, Cochin-China and Tongking to form a new Vietnamese state under the Emperor of Annam. As soon as the Japanese surrendered, Ho Chi Minh, the chief of the local communist party, installed himself in the government palace at Hanoi and proclaimed a Vietnamese republic. The revolutionary movement supporting him spread rapidly. It was soon evident that for the French to re-establish themselves would not be easy. ... At the end of 1946 a war began in which the communists struggled essentially for the nationalistic aim of a united country, while the French tried to retain a diminished Vietnam. ... By 1949 they had come round to including Cochin-China in Vietnam and recognizing Cambodia and Laos as 'associate states.' But new outsiders were now becoming interested. Ho Chi Minh's government was recognized by Moscow and Peking, and that of the Annamese emperor (whom the French had set up) by the British and Americans. ¶Thus Asian decolonization had quickly burst out of the simple processes envisioned by Roosevelt.

—J.M. Roberts, A History of Europe⁵⁷

---

Vietnam had long been a part of the French colonial empire in Southeast Asia and was known in the West as French Indochina. At the beginning of World War II, the Japanese had driven the French from the area. Under the leadership of Vietnamese nationalist (and Communist) Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese had cooperated with American intelligence agents and fought a guerilla-style war against the Japanese. When the Japanese were finally driven from Vietnam in 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent.

The Western nations, however, did not recognize this declaration. ... ¶Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese felt that they had been betrayed. They believed that in return for fighting against the Japanese in World War II, they would earn their independence. Many Vietnamese viewed the re-entry of France, with the United States' assistance, as a broken promise. Almost immediately war broke out between the French & their westernized Vietnamese allies and the forces of Ho Chi Minh. ...

The fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 spelled the end of French power in Vietnam. ... Rather than let the area fall to the Communists, President Eisenhower and his secretary of state eventually allowed the temporary division of Vietnam into two sections—South Vietnam, ruled by westernized Vietnamese loyal to the French, and North Vietnam, governed by the Communist Ho Chi Minh.

Free and open elections to unify the country were to be held in 1956. However, the elections were never held because American policymakers feared that Ho Chi Minh would easily defeat the unpopular but pro-United States Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States choice to lead South Vietnam. ...

President Kennedy did little to improve the situation. ...

Lyndon Johnson, the Texas Democrat who had succeeded Kennedy in 1963 and won election as president in 1964, ... was increasingly drawn into the Vietnam war. Actually, President Johnson and millions of other Americans still perceived Vietnam as a major test of the United States' willingness to resist the spread of Communism.

Under Johnson, the war escalated rapidly, and in 1964 the Vietcong controlled almost half of South Vietnam. Thus when two American ships allegedly were attacked by the North Vietnamese that year, Johnson used the occasion to obtain sweeping powers from Congress to conduct the war as he wished. ...

In June of 1971, the Pentagon Papers, a secret 1967 study of the Vietnam War, was published in installments by the New York Times. The Pentagon Papers revealed that government spokespersons had lied to the American public about several important events, particularly about that Gulf of Tonkin incident.

—William and Susan Wheeler, Discovering the American Past, Vol. II⁵⁸

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This was the atmosphere in the United States of America in the late sixties.
...

For the first time in the postwar era, America had become polarized unto an Us and a Them. One could tell who was who by such simple matters as a haircut (or lack of one), a clothing style, or a method of employment.
...

In 1968, this was followed by the horror of the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, only to be intensified by that of Bobby Kennedy. Many historians look back on that period from a safe distance and try to explain it all in terms of dialectical materialism or some other force of history; we knew differently. We knew that there was a war between two opposing forces in America, and that one side was winning. ...

What most Americans do not know, however, is that American lives had been bartered for power. ... As revealed in the Anthony Summers work on Nixon, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon had performed ... a deplorable maneuver in a desperate attempt to ruin the upcoming peace talks, arranged by outgoing President Lyndon B. Johnson. It was in the final weeks of the 1968 election. ...

The deal was simple: torpedo Johnson's peace initiative and Nixon (once elected) would prop up Thieu's regime with guns and money and a more aggressive stance against the North. Had Thieu gone to the peace table with Johnson, it is not certain he would have left with anything more substantial than an uneasy truce and a Demilitarized zone à la North and South Korea.

It would have meant peace, it would have meant the end of war and atrocity and the suffering of civilian and soldier alike, but that is obviously not what either Nixon or Thieu had in mind. Thieu agreed, and in the eleventh hour, only days before the election, he announced that he would not be a party to the peace initiative for various reasons. Nixon beat Vice President Humphrey at the polls, and the war in Vietnam continued for American forces for five more years, with the deaths of tens of thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese casualties. ...

Nixon's program in Vietnam did go on, however, regardless of the empty posturing for peace. ... All this was defended by Henry Kissinger, who believed that Nixon's "constituency" supported the war and would abandon him if Nixon worked too hard for peace. In other words, Nixon's domestic political future outweighed any consideration of the cost of life.

—Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces⁵⁹

---

There's only one year I can't remember much of, the summer I turned sixteen, of course, your summer, which would be 1969. The same summer as Woodstock, though we were far from Yasgur's farm. Same summer as the landing on the moon, though we were even farther from that. Same year as Altamont—getting closer. All of it overshadowed (as was everything at that time for any young man) by what we echoed the soldiers in calling 'Nam. Yes, overshadowed by Vietnam, by the prospect of our brothers or our heroes or our friends going there, by the prospect of having to go ourselves, by the awful and just barely subliminal message that our fathers wanted us dead, that presidents and senators and congressmen—proxy fathers all—would see us dead in stupid and wasteful violence, make us pay for their own bad trips in World War II.

—Bill Roorbach, The Smallest Color⁶⁰

---

   "Be the first one on your block
   To have your boy come home in a box"

   —Country Joe McDonald and the Fish

---

Contrast the reaction of American youth to the wars in Korea and in Vietnam. Both were wars in Asia, both exacted high prices in Americans killed or disabled, both had only the rationale of containing communism, both soon became unpopular. Yet American youth went willingly, if not gladly, to Korea, while they demonstrated against Vietnam, marched on the Pentagon, threw blood on draft records, fled to Canada and Sweden, and denounced "Amerika." Something in our culture, or at least the culture of our youth, had changed between the two wars. Vietnam was a powerful metaphor for what was in reality the belief that America's culture, society, economy, and policy were corrupt.

One must not, of course, discount the great reservoir of self-interest that underlay much of the rhetoric of morality. The generation that fought in Korea had not grown up with affluence. Many had served in World War II or grew up during the war. The middle-class youths who were asked to fight in Vietnam were of a pampered generation, one that prized personal convenience above almost all else. The prospect that their comfortable lives might be disrupted, or even endangered, by having to serve their country in Vietnam was for many intolerable. Thus, the student protests wound down when the draft ended.

It may be doubted that a difference of opinion about strategy brought the radicals into the streets. SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) did not arrive at its position on the war through a close study of Clausewitz and Jomini. Nor has anyone persuasively explained why the war was morally reprehensible or unjust in its brutality. It was a time of very worrisome communist expansion by force around the world. The United States had succeeded in saving South Korea by force of arms but had seen China and Cuba fall and was facing an aggressive and heavily armed Soviet Union. Attempting to contain communist dictatorships was hardly an immoral project. It was known at the time that Ho Chi Minh's triumph in the North had resulted in the killing of about 100,000 people, and it was certainly reasonable to anticipate a larger slaughter in the South if we lost the war.

The subsequent fate of the South Vietnamese people ought to convince anyone that the war should have been fought and won. We know of the tortures and murders in the re-education camps, and of the "postwar terror which destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and which produced over a million refugees."⁶¹ To anyone with the slightest knowledge of communist takeovers in other countries, these things were entirely foreseeable. The almost complete indifference of American antiwar radicals to the terrible fate of the South Vietnamese after the Communists' victory demonstrates that the protests were not motivated by concern for the people of Vietnam. The protests were primarily about the moral superiority of the protesters and their rage against their own country.

Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah⁶²

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Communist strategy perceived ... the Vietnam War as one battle in the universal class war. President Kennedy and his advisors understood that the Communist conquest of Southeast Asia would be a major advance in encircling the United States and that it should therefore be resisted. The Communist conquest of Vietnam would lead to a chain of events that would finally add all of Southeast Asia to the Communist empire. This was called "the domino theory."

These convictions led to the dispatch of the U.S. military to aid the Vietnamese who were resisting the conquest of South Vietnam by the Communist armies of the north led by Ho Chi Minh.

One of the main architects of this policy, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, with benefit of hindsight, published the book In Retrospect in 1995. In this book he declared that U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was terribly wrong, and that it led to inevitable defeat and humiliation. Is this true, half true or false?

Shakespeare wrote:

    There is a tide in the affairs of men,
    Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
    Omitted, all the voyage of their life
    Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
                                  (Julius Caesar IV. iii)

Despite the defeat of the U.S. forces and the fall of Vietnam to the Communists, the loss was not total. The Communists had been prevented from seizing Southeast Asia when the tide was "at the flood." One immensely important asset, time, had been won.

—Dr. Fred Schwartz, Beating the Unbeatable Foe⁶³

I remember finishing my last quarter of a five year engineering program in Ohio, the first half of 1970, about to be graduated and deprived of my student deferment. The National Guard shot and killed some students at neighboring Kent State, and to be safe my college closed down and just graduated us seniors. I had a falling out with my dad who was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves. Very tense scene at home, so I returned to Ohio.

There were some hippies across the street fixing up a bus for a communal tour of the country. My folks planning to move to Florida swung by Ohio to see how their recently graduated son was doing. They knocked on the door of my apartment. "Oh, Earl," my housemate replied. "He's not here. ... He left yesterday. ... On the bus."

Our bus threw a rod somewhere in the expanse of Ohio. Everyone was hunkered down afraid of the "rednecks," how they might react to us. My hair wasn't as long as the rest as I'd just recently joined their ranks, more like "a toupee that had slipped back" as one of my friends remarked—I had a receding hairline too—, so I decided to brave an excursion into town. I turned a corner to spot a group of people gathered on a lawn. This was the night of the Baptist church's annual ice cream social. I returned with an offering of cake. The natives were friendly.

One farmer towed us to his farm where we worked in exchange for food. We split up and I lived in a series of communes, eventually in a Christian commune on the West Coast. We were isolated unto ourselves. Definitely an Us and a Them, although we evangelized. We figured out for ourselves how to live the Christian life, ignoring other churches to the extent of reinventing the wheel when we had to.

Eventually in the 70's the commune fell apart, and even then I was living pretty much isolated from society. I went to a lot of local church functions. I had a job as chief engineer of a country radio station, but I didn't even have an AM radio at home, to say nothing of no TV, no contemporary literature.

It was only at the end of 1979 that I decided Jesus wasn't isolated and neither should I be. I moved into town. I joined a neighborhood round-singing group. The women had a lot of strange looking feminist magazines strewn around. Every so often they decided to modify and correct the "sexist" language in our songs. I had no idea what they were talking about. I had never heard of sexism before, but I was a bit of a poet and was able to show them there was no sexual imbalance in these fine old English round songs from the 1800s. They just didn't know where the balance was.

Bryan Gardner in his book A Dictionary of Modern American Usage devotes some time showing one how to avoid "sexist language." He also gives us a statute of limitations, as it were, of 1980. Anything written before then should be accepted without judging it in terms of sexism, because they just didn't think that way before. William Safire in his language column in the New York Times Magazine was coming along on the subject of sexist language.

Goodbye Girl⁶⁴

A woman's voice came on the telephone the day the column appeared to say, "I am outraged." ... She resented—as a sexist slur—being referred to as a "girl." ...

I objected: Didn't everybody say "boiler-room girls" in 1969, referring to the persons who man the telephones in a political campaign? You could say 'girls' in 1969," she responded, but not in 1979."

---

"Maybe you're right. What do I know? I'm just a law professor, trying to have a good meal with his girl."

"Girl?"

"Woman. Okay? Jesus, honey. Cut me a little slack."

—Ellis Cose, The Best Defense⁶⁵

Now, Elihu makes a big deal about speaking, he being younger than the men he addresses, and all. (Job 34:3) "For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat," he says. But that's about how it is with people trying to avoid sexist language: they try it out much as they taste food, to discern the flavor. Someone who has lived through an experience will have a different slant on it than someone who hasn't. A grieving widow is more receptive to the sympathy of someone sharing from experience her grief that a wellwisher trying to cheer her up. Somehow God's options he gives Elihu in those animals he brings up are the same as the eight point hippie doctrine I am familiar with. We speak the same language though one is couched in animal symbolism.

Elihu's position can be illustrated by: (Psalm 68:13) "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold." The pots here, in their own context, I take to mean the spoils of war, but they are at any rate lowly household containers. Elihu at the first seems to fit the lowly place once given the Israelite male babies according to the Book of Jasher, but eventually he takes off shining in the book of Job, God seeming to take his part in his own answer. Elihu's elders seem to fit in with: (I Peter 4:17-18) "For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" Job would be the righteous who is scarcely saved. Job's three comforters have him pegged, though, for

17. one of "them that obey not the gospel,"
18. "the ungodly,"
18. "and the sinner."

Peter's question seems to refer to his earlier verse: (I Peter 4:15) "But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters." Job's three comforters seem to have been criticizing him as if he were being punished as

• a murderer
• or a thief
• or an evildoer

Let's finish with the derivation of the word hippie.

Several etymologists point out that hep—U.S. slang for aware, well informed, up-to-date—became popular during World War I and therefore may have come from the drill sergeant's counting cadence for marching, "Hep, hep, hep." A recruit who got out of step was told to get hep, that is, wake up and conform; hence hep came to mean knowing one's way around. Exactly the same thing is meant by hip, which also came into use in the early twentieth century, and in mid-century became the source of hippie.

—Christine Ammer, Fighting Words⁶⁶

Let's take at an illustration of hip usage.

They were the only couple on the block close to our age. Besides that, they gave great parties and had a lively multiracial group of friends. Only on a few rare occasions did we feel they were going out of their way to prove their hipness, as it was. Bruce made an exaggerated point one evening of letting us know how much he liked what he called "soul food." He used the term with an unabashedness that was meant to suggest some deep and shared understanding between us. He went on to say how he and Steffie would sometimes drive all the way down to Anne Arundel County just for "ribs and greens" at Bill Dotson's. Steffie loved Sly and the Family Stone and Bruce truly thought that James Brown was the greatest one-man show since Moses. (Bruce is still the only white person I've ever heard sing "I Got You" while painting his porch.)

—Brent Wade, Company Man.⁶⁷

We can find the New Testament hippies by using this concept and a parallel between Job and Saul of Tarsus. Saul (later called Paul) was righteous in the law to a great extent, as was Job righteous for his time. Paul's credentials include (Philippians 3:6), "Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless." Job on his part struck a blow for victory against the Israelites. Both carried their persecutions to other cities. Saul was confronted with a light from heaven on the road to Damascus, and Job was confronted by the voice of God from a whirlwind.

The place where Job advises Pharaoh, "Behold all the inhabitants of the land are in thy power, let the king do as it seems good in his eyes," (Acts 8:1) "And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles." It was Stephen's death, and Elihu's sentence as well. Therefore we should look at Stephen as a candidate for a New Testament hippie.

Well, Stephen fulfills the elements of the hippie doctrine as portrayed by the eight animals we've discussed from Job: (ch. 38:39-40) The lion's unashamedness of its body, the hippies' male symbols of strength (beards, boots, denim, buckles, motorcycles), or the gentler and more restrained versions of these, (Acts 6:15) "And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel." (Job 38:41) The raven scrounging food from afar, the hippies' changing place.—'They do things better in ...'", (Acts 7:55-56) "But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." (Job 39:1-4) "Their young ones are in good liking, the hippies' salvation by child, Each of us at birth having special potentialities, (Acts 7:20) [from Stephen's speech] "In which time Moses was born, and was exceeding fair, and nourished up in his father's house three months." (Job 39:5-8) "Who hath sent out the wild ass free?" The hippies' idea of liberty," freedom, (Acts 7:36) [from Stephen's speech] "He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years." (Job 39:9-12) "Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee?" The hippies' idea of psychological adjustment—"We are unhappy because ... we are repressed," (Acts 7:34) [from Stephen's speech] "I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have head their groaning, and am come down to deliver them." (Job 39:13-18) "The ostrich leaveth and forgetteth her eggs in the earth." The hippies' female equality, (Acts 6:1,3,5) "And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. ... Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. ... And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost." (Job 39:19-25) "Hath thou given the horse strength?" The hippies' idea of self-expression., to "do your thing." (Acts 6:8) "And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people," Elihu also having been the recipient of miracles, and this is the one place in the whole New Testament that the incident of those river (field) babies are mentioned, in Stephen's speech, (Acts 7:18) "Till another king arose, which knew not Joseph. The same dealt subtilly with our kindred, and evil entreated our fathers, so that they cast out their young children, to the end they might not live." (Job 39:26-30) "The eagle doth mount up and seeketh her prey." The hippies' idea of living for the moment. ..." (Acts 7:60) "And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." I'd sat Stephen was taking care of the moment to forgive his slayers when he could have continued in his mind the comparison with their evil fathers, or he could have focused on his soon to be acquired heaven. Here let us contrast Stephen with another character:

I Am a Corpse⁶⁸

... the surprising sense of release I felt during the unequaled moment of my death. Yes, I instantly understood that the wretch wanted to kill me when he unexpectedly struck me with a stone and cracked my skull, but I didn't believe he'd follow through. I suddenly realized I was a hopeful man, something I hadn't been aware of while living my life in the shadows between workshop and household. I clung passionately to life with my nails, my fingers and my teeth, which I sank into his skin. I won't bother you with the painful details of the subsequent blows I received.

When in the course of this agony I knew I would die, an incredible feeling of relief filled me. I felt this relief during the moment of departure; my arrival to this side was soothing, like the dream of seeing oneself asleep. the snow- and mud-covered shoes of my murderer were the last things I noticed. I closed my eyes as if I were going to sleep, and I gently passed over.

Add to this that he was a real tour de force, Stephen was a hippie in the sense that if it walks like a duck, if it flies like a duck, if it quacks like a duck ..., then what is it? A duck.

There is an interesting mnemonic device in the questions posed in the form of who, what, where, when, why, and how. Elihu finishes his speeches asking, "Dost thou know when God disposed them? ... Dost thou know how thy garments are warm?" (Job 37:15-17), while God begins by asking, "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? ... Where wast thou when I laid ...?" (Job 38:2-4), and Stephen quotes God, "Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me?" (Acts 7:49), while Jesus asks, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" (Acts 9:4).

The most defining act of Stephen was his ability to debate and show people how to get in step with God, how to get hep, get hip, as it were. (Acts 6:10) "And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake." Stephen was a hippie par excellence.

I questioned brother Jed about his unqualified castigation of hippies, and he said the influx of "youthful lusts" seemed to overpower all other aspects of hippiedom which is what gets his censure.

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Look at the motion of the earth with respect to the sun. The sun rises and sets, indeed traces a path, varying with the season. Over the course of a year it rocks back and forth once, an effect of the tilt of the earth's axis. Rock, rock, Rock, year after year. But every day the sun rises and sets as the earth turns on its axis. Roll, roll, roll, day after day. So the motion we perceive as we live on this planet is, you guessed it, rock 'n' roll.

I asked my housemate Asha Khazad—who's among my near-genius friends—where this rock 'n' roll movement is mentioned in the Bible. He answered right away, and he doesn't even study the Bible as much as my church friends do. It's pretty obvious, actually. (Matt. 5:45b) "... your Father which is in heaven: ... maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." The rocking of the seasons produces rain, and the rolling of the days makes the sun to rise. Rock and roll happens to good and bad alike on this planet according to Matthew's Gospel. It's this rhythm the musicians feel in their bones which gives rise to a musical form. It is well stated in:

               The Beat Goes On
                Sonny and Cher

          The beat goes on, the beat goes on.
          Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain.
          ...

          Charleston was once the rage, uh huh.
          History has turned the page, uh huh.
          The miniskirt's the current thing, uh huh.
          Teenybopper is our newborn king, uh huh.

          ...

          The grocery store's the supermart, uh huh.
          Little girls still break their hearts, uh huh.
          And men still keep on marching off to war.
          Electrically they keep a baseball score.

          ...

          Grandmas sit in chairs and reminisce
          Boys keep chasing girls to get a kiss.
          The cars keep going faster all the time.
          Bums still cry 'Hey buddy, have you got a dime?'

          ...

     Copyright 2000-2004 © Lyrics XP.com. All rights reserved. 

Let's look at the various song themes. "Charleston was once the rage, uh huh." We have songs about various dances: the twist, the locomotion, etc.

"History has turned the page, uh huh." We have rock 'n' roll songs about various historical events: sinking of the Bismark, the battle of New Orleans, etc.

"The miniskirt's the current thing, uh huh." There are songs about fashion, itsy bitsy teeny weeny, yellow polka dot bikini, short shorts, blue suede shoes, etc.

"Teenybopper is our newborn king, uh huh." Songs about various stages of age, sweet sixteen, young girl, etc.

"The grocery store's the supermart, uh huh." Songs about consumerism, e.g. popsicle.

"Little girls still break their hearts, uh huh." Songs about getting ones heart broken. There are a lot of those.

"And men still keep on marching off to war." Songs about war. The green berets.

"Electrically they keep a baseball score." Sports songs. All that surfing music.

"Grandmas sit in chairs and reminisce." Ballads and stories.

"Boys keep chasing girls to get a kiss." The pursuit of courtship. This is the "innocent love songs" mentioned in Jed's book.⁶⁹

"The cars keep going faster all the time." A lot of car songs and racing songs, and accident songs for that matter.

"Bums still cry 'Hey buddy, have you got a dime?'" There are songs about poverty and the economy, down in the boondocks, the ghetto, etc.

All these themes affect us in one way or another, be we good or be we bad. Perhaps you, or Brother Jed, don't like the Mama's and Papa's. Not a very devout group or devout music to use for rock 'n' roll examples. Okay. What do you like? Hymns. Church Hymns. Okay.

Let's take one well respected composer of hymns, Fanny Crosby, who wrote literally thousands. If you've gone to church at all, you will have sung some. Like Rescue the Perishing. There's one brother Jed would like:

                Rescue the perishing,
                Care for the dying,
        Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;
                Weep o'er the erring one,
                Lift up the fallen,
        Tell them of Jesus the mighty to save.

There's music in the air
  When the infant morn is nigh,
And faint it's blush is seen
  On the bright and laughing sky;
Many a harp's ecstatic sound
Comes with thrill of joy profound
While we list enchanted there
There is music in the air.

There's music in the air
  When the noontide's sultry beam
Reflects a golden light
  On the distant mountain stream;
When beneath some grateful shade
Sorrow's aching head is laid,
Sweetly to the spirit there
Comes the music in the air.

There's music in the air
  When the twilight's gentle sigh
Is lost on evening's breast   As its pensive beauties die;
Then, O then, the loved ones gone
Wake the pure celestial song.
Angel voices greet us there
In the music in the air.

She has taken imagery from the sun, the brook, and the celestial to make up her pseudo-rock 'n' roll poem. These three are found in the prophets. (Jeremiah 31:35-37) "Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD." The sun and the moon and the stars roll across the heaven, of course, and the sea is crossed by waves which make the rocking motion of a boat (or of anything afloat).

God through his prophet ties this rock and roll to the permanence of His people. Jesus said (Matt. 5:17) "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Aside from the restoration of Israel or the wandering of the lost tribes, there is spiritual Israel whom all mankind may join by faith in the Jesus who fulfilled the law and prophets, repenting from all one's sins as the door is open for entry into God's people.

... Her nails work the built-in wall console searching for a soft spot on the dial where she can get her shot of sixties music. She gives the gin and ice a few good turns, then tests those babies to make sure they are bone dry.

...

By the time number three hits the deck, she's got a good buzz on. She starts to mind-walk through the music, picking and choosing her memories as selectively as she would a dress for a first date, or a dance, or her wedding ... An old Beach Boys tune ... one of those girlie groups singing, "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" ... Percy Faith's "Theme from A Summer Place."

To her those songs represent a time of permanence. The time of the rock-ribbed world. Of simplicity squared. We were, she feels, a country that seemed to eat from the same plate. God who looked down on us with His blessings, as we were the one people of His image.

Of course she knows this is all so much prepackaged memory. But she sits there anyway, a little drunk, a little teary-eyed ...

—Boston Teran, God is a Bullet⁷⁰

God's answer in Jeremiah was that of "the rock-ribbed world, of simplicity squared." As long as the waves beat out their rhythm and the celestial bodies roll across the sky.

Let's look at one of Fanny's stories for a theme.

A Little Love Story

"Now for my little love story. Some people seem to forget that blind girls have just as great a faculty for loving and do love just as much and just as truly as those who have their sight. I had a heart that was hungry for love. When I was about twenty a gifted young man by the name of Alexander Van Alstyne came to our Institution. He also was blind, and a most talented student. He was fond of classic literature and theological lore, but made music a specialty. After hearing several of my poems he became deeply interested in my work; and I after listening to his sweet strains of music became interested in him. Thus we soon grew to be very much concerned for each other. One day in June he went out under the elm trees to listen to the birds sing, and the winds play their love-song among the leaves. It was here the voice of love spoke within his breast. Listening, he heard its voice of music trilling its notes to his heart. Just then another to whom the voice was calling came towards the spot where he was musing. I placed my right hand on his left and called him 'Van.' Then i was that two happy lovers sat in silence while the sunbeams danced around their heads, and the golden curtains of day drew in their light. 'Van' took up the harp of love, and drawing his fingers over the golden chords, sang to me the song of a true lover's heart. From that hour two lives looked on a new universe, for love met love, and all the world was changed. We were no longer blind, for the light of love showed us where the lilies bloomed, and where the crystal waters find the moss-mantled spring.

"On March the fifth in the year 1858 we were united in marriage. Now I am going to tell you of something that only my closest friends know. I became a mother and knew a mother's love. God gave us a tender babe but the angels came down and took our infant up to God and to His throne.

"Van went home to his Father's house in the year 1902. During my stay as a teacher in the Institution for the Blind I touched the poetic garment of Mrs. Sigourney, sat long at the feet of Bayard Taylor, slaked my thirsty soul at the living streams of Frances Ridley Havergal, and drank deeply from the chalices of Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell. During these years I heard the best in music and read the purest in poetry and prose. This has of course helped me in my own work. From the master singers of my own country I have gathered inspiration for my own writing, and whatever my hymns have helped to do in the world has been much stimulated by my having sat at the feet of the great ones in the temple of song."

⁷¹

Jed's book goes on to mention, "in the sixties they sang, 'I want to hold your hand.'" But that's not exclusively a sentiment of rock 'n' roll music. Our fathers heard:

                "Walking my Baby Back Home"

Gee, but it's great              We stop for a while;
After staying out late,          She gives me a smile,
Walkin' my baby back home.       And cuddles her cheek to my chest.
Arm and arm                      We start in to pet
Over meadow and farm,            And that's when I get
Walkin' my baby back home.       Her powder all over my vest.

We go along                      Just when I try
Harmonizing    ...,              To straighten my tie,
...             a poem.          She wants to borrow my comb.
...                              One kiss and then
...                              We continue again,
Walkin' my baby back home.        Walkin' my baby back home.

                         Fly Me to the Moon

          Fly me to the moon,
          And let me play among the stars.
          Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.
          In other words, hold my hand!
          In other words, darling, kiss me.

I maintain that if we put the rock 'n' roll Beatles song about holding hands into a proper historical frame of reference, the next songs in the sequence would properly be ones like,

               If you wanna know
               If he loves you so
               It's in his kiss
And then
               Going to the chapel
               And we're gonna get married

               Going to the chapel of love

In Who Will Rise Up?⁷³ brother Jed tells us, "When I was a rock 'n' roll, hippie freak, Mick Jagger came out with the song, 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction.' ¶Jagger's song could never appeal to the believer who has peace that passes understanding." Yes it could, if one takes it as a "both ... and" rather than an "either ... or," along the lines of (John 16:33) "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." This is beyond the scope of my philosophical discussion, so allow me to give but a single example.

Jagger's song was about a man doing this and that, traveling around the world, and meeting a girl on a losing streak who tells him to come back next week. He wasn't getting any satisfaction, so the song goes. Let's look at the Preface to John Pollock's biography⁷⁴ of the apostle Paul.

I felt ... that it would not be impertinent for a biographer who has enjoyed the intense satisfaction of getting closer to those of whom he has written to approach Paul as I did my previous biographies: ... my wife and I drove in a Volkswagen along the roads he had walked two thousand years before, and I studied the New Testament and waded through learned volumes. ...

When I had finished writing I felt rather as when nearing the summit of a high mountain. You recognize other routes up; you realize how little you know of the terrain. Yet you get a grand view—of the mountain and of the world around.

But I have not got to the top. There are some unattainable crags, just below the summit. No man on this earth today quite sees the view Paul saw.

Jagger was traveling around the world, and Pollock was driving a Volkswagen around the Holy Land environs. Jagger was doing "this and that," and Pollock was studying learned volumes. Jagger was trying to meet some girl, and Pollock was trying to meet Paul the man. The girl was on a losing streak and the top of the mountain was unattainable by any route. Jagger had to come back next week and Pollock has to wait to interview Paul in heaven.

Can a Christian relate to Mick Jagger's I Can't Get No Satisfaction? Only the ones who have ever experienced disappointment to some degree. Would it be their favorite song? Probably not. Could it appeal to some? Yes, even to those with very satisfactory lives as they can relate to that experience in others.

Nicetas Stethatus in The Philokalia reminds us, "The nature of things is judged by the inward disposition of the soul," meaning we get our ideas about others from what's inside us. He continues, "He who has attained to true prayer and love has no sense of the differences between things: he does not distinguish the righteous man from the sinner, but loves them all equally and judges no man, as God causes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust." God made all kinds of people in the world, with all kinds of musical taste.

The sun shines on brother Jed (center) as well as on the sinners he preaches to. His briefcase in front of him is to protect his stuff from the rain which he is not immune from either.

Rock and roll in 1965 seemed to be going in several billion directions at once. The Beatles, a year and a half earlier, had sprung forth at exactly the right time, when American music was suffering from a bad case of Lesley Gore. Born of a marvelous mixture of influences, like the litter of a promiscuous cat, rock and roll had been homogenized into something horrible, had skipped both the baroque and the rococo stages of evolution and been steered straight into a state of banal decadence. But the British groups had resurrected the old vitality, and now things were going crazy.⁷⁵

It is helpful to our discussion to look at the start of rock 'n' roll. A disc jockey named Bill Haley included rhythm and blues music on his show in the late 1940s. Having deep country roots he blended rhythm and blues with western swing in the band he formed: the Four Aces of Western Swing. Let's take the band's name as an acronym to see what we can get. (This is almost too easy.)

FOUR ACES OF WESTERN SWING
FOUR SEASONS WINTER FEW C G

Come 1954 the group now known as Bill Haley and His Comets" recorded "Rock Around the Clock" subsequently featured in the 1955 movie Blackboard Jungle and later in Haley's rock film with the song's own name. It doesn't take an Einstein to first of all picture a comet against the blackboard of space, and then see this earth rocking w.r.t. the Sun as it turns through its 24 hour days, rocking around the clock. "More than any other song, 'Rock Around the Clock' gave birth to modern rock 'n' roll."⁷⁶

If MGM had not rushed to make a film of Evan Hunter's 1954 novel The Blackboard Jungle, it might have remained as nothing more than a particularly strong example of JD fiction. It was given a 1955 release [and] in a case of pure serendipity, the song that is played under the film's opening credits, Bill Haley & His Comets "(We're Gonna) Rock around the Clock" electrified young moviegoers. It was a catchy but unremarkable tune that had been a minor chart success in 1954, but pegged to the montage of wilding teenagers that opens the film, the song took on another dimension. On July 9, shortly after it had been re released, "Rock" became the number-one record in America, and there it remained for nearly two months—the first rock 'n' roll song to top the Billboard chart, with total sales climbing into the two million range. By the time Blackboard Jungle had finished its run, Hollywood knew what rock 'n' roll was, and so did American teens from coast to coast. From that moment on, the music would never be absent from their lives.⁷⁷

Another film montage, in the research of anthropologist Edward T. Hall, author of The Silent Spring and The Hidden Dimension, who has taught at Northwestern University, the University of Denver, Bennington College, the Washington School of Psychiatry, the Harvard Business School, and the Illinois Institute of Technology, consultant to business and government agencies, supports my premise of a natural rhythmic origin of rock 'n' roll.

A striking example of group synchronous movement was once captured by one of my students on film as a seminar project. Using an abandoned car as a blind, he photographed children dancing and skipping in a school playground during their lunch hour. At first, they looked like so many kids each doing his own thing. After a while, we noticed that one little girl was moving more than the rest. Careful study revealed that she covered the entire playground. Following procedures laid down for my students, this young man viewed the film over and over at different speeds. Gradually, he perceived that the whole group was moving in synchrony to a definite rhythm. The most active child, the one who moved about the most, was the director, the orchestrator of the playground rhythm! Not only was there a rhythm and a beat, but the beat seemed familiar. Seeking help from a friend deeply involved in rock music, who also viewed the film several times, we found a tune that fit the rhythm. Then the music was synchronized with the children's play and once synchronized remained in synch for the entire 4½ minutes of the film clip!

However, when some people actually saw the film and heard the explanation of the experiment, they had trouble understanding that an unconscious undercurrent of synchronized movement tied the group together. Because they didn't understand this, they felt compelled to invent explanations. One school principal who heard the explanation and saw the film after it had been synchronized with music spoke of the children as "dancing to the music"; another person who read the description wanted to know if all the children were "humming the tune." Both were wrong. The children were screaming and yelling and laughing and making all the playground noises that children make. Without knowing it, they were all moving to a beat which they generated themselves. This did not mean that they were all moving at the same time, just as there are times when different sections of an orchestra are silent. They even had a conductor who kept the beat going continuously.

The process is not easy to understand, because most of us are much too used to dealing with second, third, or fourth-generation communication systems such as language and writing. My student had identified the source—where the music that gets composed and played came from. I am sure that there will be composers who will know immediately what I am talking about just as there will be those who won't, because they have been taught to look to other musicians for their music and to disregard the ocean of rhythm in which they are immersed in everyday life. ...

All living things internalize and respond to dozens of rhythms—night and day, lunar, seasonal [emphasis added], annual, as well as the shorter cycles and rhythms such as breathing rate, heart beat, and the various brain waves—to say nothing of the rhythms of hunger and of sex. ...

Music and dance, by extension transference, are looked upon as activities that are produced by artists and are independent of the audience. The data on synchrony strongly suggest that this is not so. The audience and artist are part of the same process.⁷⁸

From a fictional PBS TV show:

An old sepia of Dockery Plantation came onscreen.

"Much of what we know about early country blues centers about this Mississippi farm. And from here came the first of the magic names in country blues—Charley Patton."

Photo of Patton, pompadour hair, Indian cheekbones, Creole skin. In the background, "Some these days."

Patton's photo giving way to an artist's sketch of Robert Johnson and "Come in My Kitchen."

Bessie Smith and "Empty Bed Blues," Lonnie Johnson, Bukka White and Son House, Sonny Boy Williamson's "Been So Long" with mournful, sobbing harmonica over a vocalized bass line.

"Big Joe Williams." Full screen, then quarter screen above and to the left of Corduroy Steel-rim. "He once told an inerviewer that all these young guys had it wrong. They were trying to get inside the blues, he said, when what the blues was, was a way of letting you get outside—outside the sixteen or eighteen hours you had to work every day, outside where you lived and what you and your children had to look forward to, outside the way you just plain hurt all the time."

Very low behind him, some sprightly finger-picked ragtime from Blind Blake, segueing into Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night."

James Sallis, The Long-Legged Fly⁷⁹

---

The journey of the blues started somewhere outside, somewhere in a heated evening about a century ago. The blues was born in the rich, brown earth of the Delta, a region stretching two hundred miles from the Peabody Hotel in Memphis to the edge of Vicksburg, Mississippi. It was once a frontier of mean swamps with bears and water moccasins, a land broken in by blacks who worked from sundown in levee and prison camps. Sometimes at gunpoint.

From that soul-breaking work came the blues. Like their African forefathers, they used songs to make the work pass—sometimes alone, others in unison—as they picked cotton, unloaded steamship cargoes, or beat their tools into the rich earth. Soon, they coupled the hollers with guitars and harmonicas.

The music worked its way into backwood shacks where couples danced, bathed in sweat, as the music brought back the spirit. The early players thumped drumbeats on the buckled wooden floors making the guitar talk back to them. The instruments just an intimate extension of the players' voices.

Blues became a core of Delta life and of the southern black community.

And in the late thirties and forties, blues followed that community. About five million blacks left the south between World War II and 1970 for northern cities in a shift that changed the complexion of America. It used to cost about twelve bucks for a ticket from Clarksdale to Chicago on the Illinois Central—about a week's pay for most. Some families, like Old World immigrants, had to split up. They would send money home to bring everyone over to the other side.

In 1943, Muddy Waters caught a train to Chicago with nothing but a yearning soul, a single change of clothes, and his old Silvertone guitar. He knew fame was just a trip away.

[It's] believed that's when the blues really left the Delta and started a new life in the Windy City. Muddy would help mold that country sound into a tightly backed band with piano, drums, bass, and harmonica. The future of the blues arrived with Muddy at the Twelfth Street Station.

—Ace Atkins, Leavin' Trunk Blues⁸⁰

Mornings, the kitchen is a frantic place. There is never enough time—not for me to make hot breakfasts or for the kids to eat them, not for Jane to get set for her brutal days at the clinic. But the kitchen has its own manic rhythms, and I can tell right away when they are off.⁸¹

"Blues changed," Nick said. "I mean the classic stuff was still performed at revivals and as covers but it didn't grow. It evolved into something else. It switched from a remembering song to a song of protest. Buddy Guy and Elmore King sang about the northern oppression and made the guitar speak for them instead of with them."

...

The gospel edge [was] such an important part of the blues, [it was as if] all you had to do was replace "oh Lord" with "oh baby" and you had a great rhythm and blues song. A lot was the same. The hand clapping, the call and response, and the moaning voices.

All the Delta players had a church background. And almost every great blues singer Nick knew spent some time with a gospel choir. That edge is what gave blues its soul. If you don't have the soul, you're just faking it. It's why most white guys look like mannequins trying to be bluesmen.

Blues is religion..

...

He never liked to think the music would die but he knew today's blues lacked an emotional intensity it had with the golden-era folks. A friend of his once wrote that blues was a remembering song just like the African slaves played in Congo Square in New Orleans. Tribal rhythms played on jawbones and wooden horns to evoke the homeland.

There was no doubt the great bluesmen and women of Chicago were recalling their southern home. But, like Ruby said, these days amplification had taken over soul. Life experience didn't mean as much. It was more about learning another's style played louder and fancier.

Where were the spirits of Robert Johnson, Son House, and Charley Patton?

Nick remembered that great line from Deep Blues. Something about the Zen-like attitudes of rural musicians: "The intimate link between worlds outside and inside our bodies that city dwellers aren't attuned to but country people simply know."

Maybe that was the key.

...

The West Side school of guitarists was a group of four men born in the South but who only knew a declining Chicago. Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, and Elmore King. Their music spoke of tattered tenement buildings, unemployment, and the Chicago dream beginning to disintegrate. Their white neighbors refusing to let anyone past the Black Belt.

The West Siders introduced heavier gospel-style singing coupled with the first use of an electric bass. The sound had more in common with B. B. King or T-Bone Walker than with Muddy or Ruby.

They put emphasis on the guitar as lead instrument with their urgent, fiery style. String bending. Biting notes.

It was when the blues sound grew closer to rock. The men were a wind of change in the late fifties—as biting and angry as the Hawk—in a style that has remained as the Chicago sound until today.

—Ace Atkins⁸¹

Everything in that room had a pulse to it—the way people flipped through Jet, the way mothers popped their sons on the side of the head for fidgeting in the barber chair, the way strokes of Mr. Walt's clippers sent two weeks of bushy Afro floating earthbound, and the way his son, Little Walt, guided his broom across the light beige linoleum, pushing masses of dirty, dandruff-infected hair into the corner, and the way scissors put the finishing touches on yet another beautifully sculpted head. When Mr. Walt was on his game, brothers and sisters left his establishment with wondrous black halos that put a bob in their step, a sway in their hips.

Not only was Mr. Walt's place as funky as fatback in August and his skills as precise as the right amount of vinegar in pigs' feet, but he was a joy to be around Not that he was a talker. On the contrary, Mr. Walt was a conversation facilitator. It was all "Mmmm hummm" and "Ah ha" and "You don't say" and "How 'bout that?" and "I read somethin' 'bout that in the Daily News" and "Goddamn!" add, when he was really excited, "Goddamn" twice with more emphasis on the second "damn." Whether you were in the barber chair or sitting on one of the brown and yellow checked vinyl kitchen chairs he used for seats, Mr. Walt was like a laser that moved about the shop seeking out the voice that could keep the flow going. There were other barbers there—his cousin Big Al and a kid named C. C. from Tennessee—but if Mr. Walt took a day off it was like the tempo was off, as if Booker T. didn't show up for a Stax session with Otis.

---

I've been a songwriter who's been labeled a tunesmith, a hack, an artist, and a thief depending on the year, the place, and the speaker. Personally, I think I'm some kind of channel through which God (or, on occasion, the Devil) speaks. Combinations of lyrics and melodies pop into my head, and I grab them before they disappear. As in that old Police song "Voices Inside My Head," my mind fills up with music and I pour it out. On the subway. Rounding third in a softball game. When dead tired and depressed. It doesn't matter the circumstance or the time. They come to me and I listen.

That's not to say I don't have to work. Often what I receive is a fragment, a sentence, enough notes to constitute a hook. Rarely am I so deeply blessed or cursed as to be given a whole song from stem to stern. But a little bit can be enough if you let it breathe a while.

It comes to him later in the day that the statute of limitations on such suits is three years, and Shifrin had observed the third anniversary yesterday.

But he hadn't considered the significance of lunar time versus solar time. The moon's rotation around the earth controls the Jewish calendar while the earth's rotation around the sun controls the Gregorian calendar. As a result, the two are never in synch. On the Jewish calendar, each month begins on the first day of the new moon. One moon cycle multiplied by twelve equals roughly 355 days, which means that each year the Jewish calendar falls another ten days behind the Gregorian one. To keep the days in harmony with the seasons, the Jewish calendar inserts a leap month every third year, which is why Hanukkah and the other holidays seem to jump around the Gregorian calendar.

The Jewish calendar governed the yahrzeit for Judith Shifrin while the Gregorian calendar governed the statute of limitations for her wrongful death claim. On the Jewish calendar, Judith Shifrin died on the twenty-eighth day of Kislev, which meant that her yahrzeit would be on the twenty-eighth of Kislev each year no matter where in December that date fell that year on the Gregorian calendar. This year, the twenty-eighth day of Kislev happened to fall on the sixteenth day of December. Three years ago, when the attending physician at St. John's Hospital pronounced Judith Shifrin dead on arrival at 10:14 P.M., the date on the death certificate was December 18.

All of which meant that her death claim was still alive.

Just barely.

Take the country song "Don't Rock the Jukebox." Interesting choice of words. The singer doesn't want to hear any rock 'n' roll on the jukebox, only country songs. Rocking the jukebox is in the song a metaphor for rock 'n' roll, but it can also be a rock 'n' roll metaphor in the scheme I've developed above. The record inside is spinning round and round as the earth's spinning on its axis—roll—, and rocking of the jukebox back and forth would represent the rocking of the earth w.r.t. the sun, back and forth, first one hemisphere leaning towards the sun, then the other, as we go from summer to winter. In the song he says he doesn't want any rock 'n' roll playing to his broken heart, but wants to hear a steel guitar. What would the steel guitar be a metaphor for? Take the first two letters of steel and the ending of guitar and combine them to get star. The stars are another rhythm. The earth doesn't revolve around them. It points to the North Star all the time and as it spins on its axis, the stars traverse the heavens. No rocking.

Well, it so happens that song is right out of the Bible. (Isaiah 16:6,9-11) "We have heard of the pride of Moab; he is very proud: even of his haughtiness, and his pride ... Therefore ... the shouting for thy summer fruits and for thy harvest is fallen. And gladness is taken away, and joy out of the plentiful field; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither shall there be shouting: the treaders shall tread out no wine in their presses; I have made their vintage shouting to cease. Wherefore my bowels shall sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts ..." Moab being judged for its pride, its harvest has failed and there is no foot stompin' music but a mournful harp.

Let's consider worldliness in general for a moment. (I John 2:16) & (Titus 2: 11-14)

  "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the
  eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."
  "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
  Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live
  soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that
  blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour
  Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all
  iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."

"But one thing that people should know is that just because people make records, it doesn't mean that their political views are correct, or it [may] mean they're just trying to yell something. Because every rapper, including myself, may not be on point. Some people think that just because you can make a record, it means you're intelligent. And that's not true. Just because someone has a guitar and enough money to get on a piece of wax, does not mean that he has the correct views. I listen to a lot of rappers who say shit that is totally outrageous to me, that's like, 'What the fuck are you talking about?' The listener has to go through it all and decide for himself. Like I always tell people, 'Don't think everything I think, 'cause then only one of us is thinking.'"⁸⁴

"My father believed the race always had to be ready for labor. He'd say, 'You're only two generations removed from the field. I don't ever want you to forget the dignity of hard labor.'"⁸⁵

Even so, rock 'n' roll music is not inherently sinful but can be subverted by the sin of pride. An older generation might prefer a more familiar style of music, that of the steel guitar, or "the joy of the harp" (Isaiah 24:8). "Take an harp, ... make sweet melody, sing many songs, that ... may be remembered" (Isaiah 23:16). An older generation reacting against rock 'n' roll, may prefer the sweet familiar sounds of their favorite melodies, and can be put off by the foot stompin' loud shoutin' energizing music of rock 'n' roll. Nevertheless, it's not the form itself that's sinful but the "pride of life" that has crept in. If II Timothy 2:22 does tell us to "Flee also youthful lusts," then the earlier verse (16) says to "shun profane and vain babbling: for they will increase unto more ungodliness." Doesn't that sound a lot like some of the language of rap music—"one of aggression, assertion, and attitude"?⁸⁵ According to Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole gangsta rap lyrics harm a whole generation of listeners:

If such words and images are where many young Black folks get their ... ideas about sex, love, friendship, dating and marriage, then rap music tells us some disturbing things about ... the hip-hop generation ... ¶I strongly believe that hip-hop is more misogynistic and disrespectful of Black girls and women than other popular music genres such as the blues. The casual references to rape and other forms of violence and the soft-porn visuals and messages of many rap music videos are seared into the consciousness of young Black boys and girls at an early age. The lyrics and the images—and the attitudes that undergird them—are potentially extremely harmful to Black girls and women in a culture that is already negative about our humanity, our sexuality and our overall worth. They are harmful to Black boys and men because they encourage misogynistic attitudes and behaviors—woman hating—[that] is not in the interest of men no less than women.⁸⁶

"My audience is being fooled now by people using tricks. This stuff here, all this technology we have now, can produce gold and it can produce shit and if the record companies aren't careful with these tools—and you and I both know they won't be—one day we'll look up and my people won't be able to tell the difference. ...

"Ray Parker & Raydio originally had four pieces. Then he had him and a bunch of toys. Instead of splitting the money Ray kept it all. It costs to feed a real band. Our fees stayed the same while everybody else was getting smaller. Earth, Wind, & Fire. Cameo. Con Funk Shun. Kool. George even cut back here and there. If people hadn't gone for the tricks, things might have been different.

"You see, I eventually ended up replacing the entire band, all Celestial Funk, with lots and lots of toys. Even now, as I prepare to go back out, I don't really want to do this but, like Jerry Butler said, 'Only the Strong Survive.' And I am a survivor."

---

There is nothing inherently corrupt about the music business. It is no more corrupt than the trucking business or garment business or the software business. People in all these businesses work hard to carve out a niche, work hard to hold on to what they got, and will rip you off if you're not able to handle yourself. That's just human nature.

The difference is that we don't view singers and songwriters the same way we do truckers or seamstresses.⁸⁵

"Kenya," he said to his daughter, "this is Derek Harper. Remember I told you about him?" Kenya surveyed me with a penetrating mix of intensity and precociousness unique to little children. She asked, "Do you make rap records?"

"No, Kenya," I said earnestly. "I don't make them. I'm working with some rappers, that's all." I felt awkward contradicting what her father apparently had told her, but I sure didn't want any confusion over my role with the tour. If I was uncomfortable with my answer, Kenya's next question really had me going.

"So if you don't make rap records, does that mean you accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"

I looked at Vernon, not sure what to say, and then blurted out a firm, "Sure, I believe in God." He seemed to savor my discomfort and then, apparently deciding I'd squirmed enough, picked up Kenya. "That's enough questions for now darling."⁸⁵

For a parallel illustration let's look at a curtailed history of:

A New Rap Language⁸⁷

In 1976, Dennis Wepman, Ronald Newman and Murray Binderman published a landmark study on black prison culture entitled The Life: The Love and Folk Poetry of the Black Hustler. The book documented "toasting," a form of poetic storytelling prevalent in prisons throughout the '50s and '60s. "Toasts are a form of poetry recited by certain blacks—really a performance medium," wrote the authors. "They are like jokes: no one really knows who creates them, and everyone has his own versions ... Most recitation sessions are somewhat structured: a reciter performs to a silent, appreciative audience."

---

Although James Brown's vocals could not really be called rap, they provided the perfect accompaniment for dance records: They encouraged the audience to participate more fully in the music. They emphasized rhythm and raw emotion over melody. And each syllable was spoken directly on the beat—something that had not been attempted with toasting, which put its emphasis on vocal ingenuity and lyrical content rather than rhythm. (Douglas attributes the difference to a change in musical styles. "The Last Poets were jazz-heads," he explained, "while today's rappers are into disco, rock, and rhythm and blues. The Poets didn't care if one could dance to the rap. The point was a story was going down that was memorable.")

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"The way rap evolved is from people trying to outdo each other," said Grandmaster Caz.

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RAP MUSIC⁸⁸

Although makeshift stereo outfits in public settings are not unique to rap, two innovations that have been credited to Jamaican immigrant DJ Kool Herc who separated rap music from other popular musics and set the stage for further innovation. Kool Herc was known for his massive stereo system speakers (which he named the Herculords) and his practice of extending obscure musical breaks that created an endless collage of peak dance beats named the b-beats or break-beats. This collage of break-beats stood in sharp contrast to Eurodisco's unbroken dance beat that dominated the dance scene in the mid- to late 1970s. ...

While working the turntables, Kool Herc also began reciting prison-style rhymes (much like those found on The Last Poet's Hustler's Convention). ...

Grandmaster Flash is credited with perfecting and making famous the third critical rap music innovation: scratching. ... Scratching is a turntable technique that involves playing the record back and forth with your hand by scratching the needle against and then with the groove. ...

The new style of DJ performance attracted large excited crowds, but it also began to draw the crowd's attention away from dancing and toward watching the DJ perform. [According to Flash and Red Alert, a still crowd seemed to be more prone to fighting and confrontations.] It is at this point that rappers were added to the DJ's shows to redirect the crowd's attention. ... Flash began to attach an open mike to his equipment inspiring spontaneous audience member participation. ...

The most frequent style of rap was a variation on the toast, a boastful, bragging, form of oral storytelling sometimes explicitly political and often aggressive, violent, and sexist in content. Early toasts are as vulgar as any contemporary rap lyrics. ... #182;Rapping moved center stage.

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"Rap music emerged from New York City's underclass more than 30 years ago."—AP,⁸⁹ 4/14/2007

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Rap and Hip Hop: The New York Connection⁹⁰

The Beginning of Hip Hop

When DJ Kool Herc began dee-jaying at house parties he found that the New York black crowd would not dance to reggae. So he began talking over the Latin-tinged funk that he knew would appeal. To start he merely dropped in snatches of street slang, like the very first toaster DJs who worked for Coxsone Dodd's system in the 1950s. He would shout phrases like "Rock on my mellow! This is the joint!" The talk was meant to keep the people dancing and to add to the excitement that comes from "live" performance. Gradually he developed a style that was so popular...

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The Rap on Rap⁹¹

"Hip hop," the music behind the lyrics, which are "rapped," is a form of sonic bricolage with roots in "toasting," a style of making music by speaking over records. Toasting first took hold in Jamaica in the mid-1960s, a response, legend has it, to the limited availability of expensive Western instruments and the concurrent proliferation of cheap R&B instrumental singles. ... Kool DJ Herc, a Jamaican who settled in the South Bronx, is widely credited with having brought toasting to New York City. Rap spread quickly through New York's poor black neighborhoods in the mid- and late 1970s. ...

Although rap is still proportionally more popular among blacks, its primary audience is white and lives in the suburbs. And the history of rap's degeneration from insurgent black street music to mainstream pop points to another dispiriting conclusion: the more rappers were packaged as violent black criminals, the bigger their white audiences became.

... Since the early 1980s a tightly knit group of mostly young, middle-class, black New Yorkers, in close concert with white record producers, executives, and publicists, has been making rap music for an audience that industry executives concede is primarily composed of white suburban males. Building upon a form pioneered by lower-class black artists in New York between 1975 and 1983, despite an effective boycott on the music by both black and white radio that continues to this day [1991], they created the most influential pop music of the 1980s. Rap's appeal to whites rested in its evocation of an age-old image of blackness: a foreign, sexually charged, criminal underworld against which the norms of white society are defined. ...

The ways in which rap has been consumed and popularized speak not of cross-cultural understanding, musical or otherwise, but of a voyeurism and tolerance of racism in which black and white are both complicit. "Both the rappers and their white fans affect and commodify their own visions of street culture," argues Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University, "like buying Navajo blankets at a reservation road-stop. A lot of what you see in rap is the guilt of the black middle class about its economic success, its inability to put forth a culture of its own. Instead they do the worst possible thing, falling back on fantasies of street life. In turn, white college students with impeccable gender credentials buy nasty sex lyrics under the cover of getting at some kind of authentic black experience."

Gate goes on to make the more worrying point: "What is potentially very dangerous about this is the feeling that by buying records they have made some kind of valid social commitment." Where the assimilation of black street culture by whites once required a degree of human contact between the races, the street is now available at the flick of a cable channel—to black and white middle class alike. "People want to consume and they want to consume easy," Hank Shocklee says. "If you're a suburban white kid and you want to find out what life is like for a black city teenager, you buy a record by N.W.A. It's like going to an amusement park and getting on a roller coaster ride—records are safe, they're controlled fear, and you always have the option of turning it off. That's why nobody ever takes a train up to 125th Street and gets out and starts walking around. Because then you're not in control any more: it's a whole other ball game."

          "Can you sing?"
          "No, I lost my voice in prison.
          I can rhyme a few lines,
          But I can't carry a tune."

Let's look at the two sides of rap music itself:

On the Question of Nigga Authenticity⁹²

Nigga to Nigger

Thinking about the nigga, to put it schematically, lies at the crux of two genealogical procedures. One, which traces the origins of rap to recognized African American rhetorical forms (toasts, shouts, and various forms of signifying or verbal games) and tropes, leads to a kind of utopian historicism that is grounded in the concept of the morally legitimate tradition of African American resistance to dehumanizing commodification. This account allows for a morally legitimate form of rap that is stylistically hard core, while still belonging to the tradition of the African American liberation struggle dating back to spirituals, a struggle characterized by the deification of "knowledge as possessing an inherent power that emancipates."—Spencer, The Emergence of Black, 2. The other genealogy traces the development of gangsta rap as a rupture in this morally legitimate tradition of resistance, whose origin is not the form of rap itself but in a moral malaise engendered by the conditions of capitalism's hegemony over all aspects of life.

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The Culture of Hip-Hop⁹³

Many mainstream blacks and whites persist in categorically negative appraisals of rap, refusing to distinguish between enabling, productive rap messages and the social violence that exists in many inner-city communities and that is often reflected in rap songs. Of course, it is difficult for a culture that is serious about the maintenance of social arrangements, economic conditions, and political chaos that create and reproduce poverty, racism, sexism, classism, and violence to display a significant appreciation for musical expressions that contest the existence of such problems in black and Latino communities. ...

The increasing social isolation, economic hardship, political demoralization, and cultural exploitation endured by most ghetto poor communities in the past few decades have given rise to a form of musical expression that captures the terms of ghetto poor existence. I am not suggesting that rap has been limited to the ghetto poor, but only that its major themes and styles continue to be drawn from the conflicts and contradictions of black urban life. ...

Rap expresses the ongoing preoccupation with literacy and aurality that has characterized African-American communities since the inception of legally coerced illiteracy during slavery. Rap artists explore grammatical creativity, verbal wizardry, and linguistic innovation in refining the art of verbal communication. The rap artist, as Cornel West has indicated, is a bridge figure who combines the two potent traditions in black cultures: preaching and music. The rap artist appeals to the rhetorical practices eloquently honed in African-American religious experiences and the cultural potency of black singing/musical traditions to produce an engaging hybrid. They are truly urban riots dispensing social and cultural critique, verbal shamans exorcising the demons of cultural amnesia. The culture of hip hop has generated a lexicon of life that expresses rap's B-boy/B-girl worldview, a perspective that takes delight in undermining "correct" English usage while celebrating the culturally encoded phases that communicate in raps's idiom.

On the negative side let's look at Jeremiah's "den of thieves" comparable to the seamy side of prison rap.

  (Jeremiah 7:3-11) "Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel,
  Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this
  place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The
  temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these. For if ye throughly
  amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly execute judgment between
  a man and his neighbour; If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless,
  and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk
  after other gods to your hurt: Then will I cause you to dwell in this
  place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever. Behold,
  ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, and
  commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk
  after other gods whom ye know not; And come and stand before me in this
  house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all
  these abominations? Is this house, which is called by my name, become
  a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the LORD."

For that matter, don't we have at least one series of "toasts" in the Bible, which for their sheer raw emotion could conceivably be classified as rap?

  (Revelation 5:9) "And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art
  worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast
  slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred,
  and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings
  and priests: and we shall reign on the earth. And I beheld, and I heard
  the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the
  elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and
  thousands of thousands; Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb
  that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength,
  and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in
  heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the
  sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and
  glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the
  Lamb for ever and ever. And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and
  twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever."

THE SINGING OF Christmas carols at the College of Charleston took place each year on the Sunday evening after the last classes before the holidays. Students, faculty, employees, and their families assembled en masse outside the main building, candles were handed out, and the College glee club led the procession on a tour of nearby streets.

In character, if not in all the songs sung, the event was secular, enthusiastically participated in by almost everyone, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. It had taken Dolf Strongheart, being Bronx born, several years to accept the fact that no theological significance need be attached to the communal caroling of "Gloria in Excelcis Deo," "Silent Night" and the like. Now he and his family were among the most enthusiastic carolers. Rosy, who had been singing the likes of "Holy infant, so tender and mild" since childhood at school assemblies without so much as a second thought, had gone caroling when an undergraduate at the College, and resumed it when he returned as a faculty member. "When in Rome, do as the Charlestonians do," he told Dolf when his friend had expressed his misgivings. "Singing 'Rule, Britannia' doesn't make you a Limey, does it?"

"That's all very well, but what about singing 'Christ our Savior is born'? He's their Savior, not ours."

"What do you want them to sing, 'Where was Moses when the lights went out'? Besides, you don't have to sing every line of every carol."⁹⁴

My music of choice this morning was a little old-school rap by way of Doug E. Fresh, Ice-T and Grand Master Flash. Say what you want, but the new rap songs got nothing on the tight lyrics and booming bass lines of the old days. ...

Sniper or no sniper, today would be a good day.

As I was finishing brushing my teeth, my doorbell rang. I answered it with the USP tucked by my side.

A tall black cop in a uniform stood in the front hall.

"Hi."

He grinned ... at me. "I haven't heard Doug E. Fresh in years."

I nodded. "The good ones are all gone nowadays."

"Damn shame." He glanced around. "You need a hand getting down to the office? We were told to make sure you get down there in one piece."

Jon F. Merz, Danger-Close⁹⁵

"All Aboard the Night Train"⁸⁸
Flow, Layering, and Rupture in Postindustrial New York

As music historian Reebee Garofalo points out, "rap music must be understood as one cultural element within a larger social movement known as hip hop."—Garofalo, 'Crossing Over: 1939-1989' ... Clearly, rap's oral and protest roots, its use of toasting, signifying, boasting, and black folklore are vitally important; however these influences are only one facet of the context for rap's emergence. Rap's primary context for development is hip hop culture, the Afrodiasporic traditions it extends and revises, and New York urban terrain in the 1970s. ...

Fab Five Freddy, an early rapper and graffiti writer, explains the link between style and identity in hip hop and its significance for gaining local status" You make new style. That's what life on the street is all about. ... Styles "nobody can deal with" in graffiti, breaking, and rap music not only boost status, but also they articulate several shared approaches to sound and motion found in Afrodiaspora. As Arthur Jafa has pointed out, stylistic continuities between breaking, graffiti style, rapping, and musical construction seem to center around three concepts: flow, layering, and ruptures in line. In hip hop, visual, physical, musical, and lyrical lines are set in motion, broken abruptly with sharp angular breaks, yet they sustain motion and energy through fluidity and flow. In graffiti, long-winded sweeping, and curving letters are broken and camouflaged by sudden breaks in line. Sharp, angular, broken letters are written in extreme italics, suggesting forward or backward motion. Letters are double or triple shadowed in such a way as to illustrate energy forces radiating from the center—suggesting circular motion—yet, the scripted words move horizontally.

Breakdancing moves highlight flow, layering, and ruptures in line. Popping and locking are moves in which the joints are snapped abruptly into angular positions. And yet, these snapping movements take place one joint after the previous one—creating a semiliquid effect that moves the energy toward the fingertip or toe. In fact, two dancers may pass the popping energy force back and forth between each other via finger to finger contact, setting off a new wave. In this pattern, the line is both a series of angular breaks and yet sustains energy and motion through the flow. Breakers double each other's moves, like line shadowing or layering in graffiti, intertwine their bodies into elaborate shapes, transforming the body into a new entity (like camouflage in graffiti's wild style), and then, one body part at a time reverts to a relaxed state. Abrupt, fractured yet graceful footwork leaves the eye one step behind the motion, creating a time-lapse effect that not only mimics the graffiti's use of line shadowing but also creates spatial links between the moves that gives the foot series flow and fluidity.

The music and vocal rapping in rap music also privileges flow, layering, and ruptures in line. Rappers speak of flow explicitly in lyrics, referring to an ability to move easily and powerfully through complex lyrics as well as of the flow in the music. The flow and motion of the initial bass or drum line in rap music is abruptly ruptured by scratching (a process that highlights as it breaks the flow of the base rhythm), or the rhythmic flow is interrupted by other musical passages. Rappers stutter and alternatively race through passages, always moving within the beat or in response to it, often using music as a partner in rhyme. These verbal moves highlight lyrical flow and points of rupture. Rappers layer meaning by using the same word to signify a variety of actions and objects; they call out to the DJ to "lay down a beat," which is expected to be interrupted, ruptured. DJs layer sounds literally one on top of the other, creating a dialogue between sampled sounds and words.

What is the significance of flow, layering, and rupture as demonstrated on the body and in hip hop's lyrical, musical and visual works? Interpreting these concepts theoretically, one can argue that they create and sustain rhythmic motion, continuity, and circularity via flow; accumulate, reinforce, and embellish this continuity through layering; and manage threats to these narratives by building in ruptures that highlight the continuity as it momentarily challenges it. These effects at the level of style and aesthetics suggest affirmative ways in which profound social dislocation and rupture can be managed and perhaps contested in the cultural arena.

In the case of the South Bronx, which has been frequently dubbed the "home of hip hop culture," postindustrial conditions were exacerbated by disruptions considered an "unexpected side effect" of the larger politically motivated policies of "urban renewal." In the early 1970s, this renewal project involved massive relocations of economically fragile people of color from different areas in New York City into parts of South Bronx. Subsequent ethnic and racial transition in the South Bronx was not a gradual process that might have allowed already taxed social and cultural institutions to respond self-protectively; instead, it was a brutal process of community destruction and relocation executed by municipal officials under the direction of legendary planner Robert Moses.

Between the late 1930s and the late 1960s Moses, a very powerful city planner, executed a number of public works projects, highways, and housing projects that significantly reshaped the profile of New York City. In 1959, city, state, and federal authorities began the implementation of his planned Cross-Bronx Expressway that cut directly through the center of the most heavily populated working-class areas in the Bronx. The Expressway was clearly designed to link New Jersey and Long Island, New York, communities and to facilitate suburban communication into New York City. Although he could have modified his route slightly to bypass densely populated working-class ethnic residential communities, he elected a path that required the demolition of hundreds of residential and commercial buildings. In addition, throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, some 60,000 Bronx homes were razed. Designating these old blue-collar housing units as "slums," Moses's Title I Slum Clearance program forced the relocation of 170,000 people. These slums were in fact densely populated stable neighborhoods, comprised mostly of working- and lower-middle class Jews, but they also contained solid Italian, German, Irish and black neighborhoods. Although the neighborhoods under attack had a substantial Jewish population, black and Puerto Rican residents were disproportionally affected. Thirty-seven percent of the relocated residents were nonwhite. This, coupled with the subsequent "white flight," devastated kin networks and neighborhood services. Marshall Berman, in All That Is Solid Melts into Air, [(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982) pp. 290-92.] reflects on the massive disruption Moses's project created:

Miles of streets alongside the road were choked with dust and fumes and deafening noise. ... Apartment buildings that had been settled and stable for over twenty years emptied out, often virtually overnight; large and impoverished black and Hispanic families, fleeing even worse slums, were moved wholesale, often under the auspices of the Welfare Department, which even paid inflated rents, spreading panic and accelerated flight. ... Thus depopulated, economically depleted, emotionally shattered, the Bronx was ripe for all the dreaded spirals of urban blight.

Tricia Rose, Black Noise⁹⁶

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They sat and smoked. Elba let a handful of sand run through her fingers. "This is as white as the sand in Cuba, and as fine as the sand in an hourglass.

"Or in an ash tray." He buried his cigarette butt in the sand. "The WPA hauled it here from Long Island when they built the place.

"It seems like it's been here forever."

"Nothing in the Bronx has been here forever. Except maybe the rocks. The rest of it, sand, people, and the animals in the zoo, all arrived from somewhere else."

—Peter Quinn, Hour of the Cat⁹⁷

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Geographically, the Bronx is the odd man out amongst the five boroughs that comprise the metropolis of New York. Unlike Manhatten or Staten Island, which are enisled by water, and Brooklyn and Queens, which are part of Long Island, the Bronx is on the mainland of the United States. It is a stolid place of apartment buildings and modest homes, crowded in its southern and western regions, adjacent to Manhatten, still rural in the north and the east, but everywhere characterized by the aspirational plodding of its hard-working, if Depression-chastened inhabitants, most of whom are only one or two generations removed from the old world villages of their immigrant ancestors. Possessed of a first-class zoo and botanical gardens, several colleges and universities, one of which houses the American Hall of Fame, and a baseball stadium made famous by Babe Ruth, the Bronx has only one hotel worthy of the name. Rare is the visitor to New York who will spend more than a few hours in the Bronx, though those who do are often rewarded by the discovery of unexpected attractions.

—Ian Anderson, "New York, Home to the Next World's Fair," World Traveler Magazine⁹⁷

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The human and economic toll was measurable. The deepest impact of the hurricane [of 1938] was not. The swiftness and totality of the disaster were so stunning as to defy reason, logic, credulity. Social change evolves. Dunes and beaches and shorelines are shaped over a century of wind and wave. Lives and landscape require years of patient building, grain upon grain. They cannot be redrawn in two or three hours. On September 21, 1938, what couldn't happen did, and even for those who had been cushioned from the ravages of the Depression, life seemed suddenly fragile.

The vagaries of nature shook the status quo and weakened its underpinnings. On that rough September afternoon, wealth, social position, and property provided no buffer from the fury of wind and water. The comfort zone they had ensured would never seem quite as insular again. The hurricane has been called "a savage leveler." Chaos blew in, and in some ways it stayed on after the hurricane left town. The well-ordered life with its distinct rules and classes came to an end, replaced by a world with new rules, new liberties, new equalities, and a new tempo. Some line had been crossed ... and nothing would ever be quite the same again.

—R.A. Scott, Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938⁹⁷

I found myself trying to reconstruct what happened between New York and New Orleans, to make a story of it, the plan, the execution. Getting on the plane knowing what she was going to do, her future in a suitcase at her feet. It all seemed so voluntary. But was she really in control? Or driven?

Finally, I guess, it wasn't that much different from the way we all make up our lives by bits and pieces, a piece of a book here, a song title or lyric there, scraps of people we've known, clips from movies, imagining ourselves and living into that image, then going on to another and yet another, improvising our way from day to day through the years we call a life.

—James Sallis, The Long-Legged Fly⁹⁸

Now for breakdancing:

1. Unto thee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens.
2. Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the LORD our God, until that he have mercy upon us.

Now, for rap, we shall take GENESIS, CHAPTER 23

3. And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying,
4. I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.
5. And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him,
6. Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead.
7. And Abraham stood up, and bowed himself to the people of the land, even to the children of Heth.
8. And he communed with them, saying, If it be your mind that I should bury my dead out of my sight; hear me, and intreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar,
9. That he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he hath, which is in the end of his field; for as much money as it is worth he shall give it me for a possession of a buryingplace amongst you.
10. And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying,
11. Nay, my lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee: bury thy dead.
12. And Abraham bowed down himself before the people of the land.
13. And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the people of the land, saying, But if thou wilt give it, I pray thee, hear me: I will give thee money for the field; take it of me, and I will bury my dead there.
14. And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him,
15. My lord, hearken unto me: the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead.
16. And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant.
17. And the field of Ephron which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure
18. Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city.

Let's look at another metaphorical use of the rocking motion of the earth's seasons.

"I tell you," Elaine Martin said, coming around. "You want something for the record?" Her voice was softer now, taking on a burdened timbre. Jesse waited. "Brenda? When she was little, kindergarten age, her father and I one time had a fight. Pete, he used to like his cocktails back then, and it was real bad. He was never a mean drunk, never raised a hand, but it was hell, and I told him that I was taking the kids and leaving—I had had it—and, he started crying, telling me he'll straighten out. He's crying, I'm crying. We're both in the kitchen, and Brenda comes in. She comes in, sees us, and gets this stricken look on her face. And we had a radio in there back then. And the song that was playing was 'September Song,' being sung by, if you can believe it, Jimmy Durante. Brenda, she looks at us crying, and I say, 'Sweetie, isn't that a sad song? Me and Daddy are crying because that song is so beautiful and sad.' So of course she starts crying too, so I go and pick her up and it kind of broke my train of thought there with Pete, so I don't go through with it. I don't walk out on him so—which was good—but, Jesus, Jimmy Durante. You know, I have never heard him singing that song on the radio ever again. Not before, not after, OK?"⁹⁹

Jimmy Durante croons in reminiscence of days gone by—September—from the vantage of old age—"deep in December," thus the tilting of the Earth away from the Sun as the seasons progress is used metaphorically to depict the passing of time as one ages. It is an obvious straightforward metaphor. The parents themselves use the metaphorical sadness of the song as their source of tears when it is real life making them cry. The generalized rock metaphor helps the child and the older generation cope with an intrusion into their orderly world. Still, the parents must deal with their own sins of drunkenness and lack of patience, but it is not the music's fault. Music can be an aid to understanding the new generation. Here's an Old Testament example.

Judah Under the Yoke of Assyria¹⁰⁰

At that time (725-697 B.C.) Hezekiah was king of Judah, "and he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD." (II Kings 18:3) Since the father of Hezekiah had voluntarily submitted to Tiglath-Pileser III in 733 B.C., Judah had been a dependent vassal state, whose deliveries of tribute were carefully noted in Nineveh. Hezekiah was not prepared to follow in his father's footsteps. The reaction set in when he came to the throne. "He rebelled against the king of Assyria." (II Kings 18:7)

Hezekiah was no hothead, but a clever, cool, calculating, and farsighted man. He knew very well that what he was about was a highly dangerous and risky business for himself and his people. ...

Now, Canaan was an inexhaustible treasure house of musicians, from which court chamberlains and seneschals obtained singers and even orchestras to provide entertainment for their masters on the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris. Above all ladies' bands and dancers were in great demand. Artists with international engagements were by no means a rarity. And King Hezekiah of Judah knew very well what he was doing when, in 701 B.C., he sent men and women singers to Sennacherib, the formidable king of Assyria.

9. The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness:
10. I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years.

11. I said, I shall not see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world.

12. Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

13. I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.
14. Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O LORD, I am oppressed; undertake for me.
15. What shall I say? he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it: I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.

16. O LORD, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live.

17. Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.

18. For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.
19. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth.

20. The LORD was ready to save me: therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the LORD.

21. For Isaiah had said, Let them take a lump of figs, and lay it for a plaister upon the boil, and he shall recover.
22. Hezekiah also had said, What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the LORD?
4. Then came the word of the LORD to Isaiah, saying,
5. Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years.
6. And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria: and I will defend this city.
7. And this shall be a sign unto thee from the LORD, that the LORD will do this thing that he hath spoken;
8. Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down.

I believe part of the bad rap rock 'n' roll got from brother Jed and others like him derives from it having been the music of choice of a younger generation, youth being susceptible to foolishness and rebellion. Pitting rock 'n' roll against our parents' music brings into the fray all the disagreements between the generations, on some of which brother Jed (and others) is right to side with the older generation. Rock and roll then became a victim of friendly fire as it were.

Those in the rock business understood very well that the music's subversion of authority was a large part of its appeal to the young. An impresario who developed one rock star after another was asked how he did it. He said, "I look for someone their parents will hate." As Professor Todd Gitlin notes, the blues had been music for adults, but rock was about teenage problems. Its "incoherence, primitive regression, was indeed part of the music's appeal" to the young. "Rock 'n' roll, a raw and powerful new form of music, crystallized all the youthfulness, dynamism and hypersexuality on the loose—the Pied Piper's tune of the new freedoms."¹⁰¹ An apt metaphor: I have read that the historical Pied Piper led the children into the forest, where he massacred and dismembered them.

Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah¹⁰²

I suggest we attempt a more dispassionate approach, and for an example I shall take from the story line in Peter Turchi, The Girls Next Door,¹⁰³ the music conflicts of a young couple in the 1960s married less than a year. Our first intimation of such a conflict occurs during a peaceful domestic scene where she is sewing and he is writing.

From the living room Donna said, "Do you mind if we listen to some music?"

She was always good about asking; sometimes I couldn't concentrate with the music on.

"Go ahead." I thought about what else I needed to write Lou. ...

"What do you want to hear?" Donna said.

"Anything, sweetheart."

... ¶As I wrote I was dimly aware of orchestral music in the background. Suddenly a violin soloist went wild. I tried to ignore it, but it was like ignoring an albino on a bus.

"Honey?"

She didn't hear me.

"Honey? What is that?"

She was engrossed in her sewing. "What's what?"

"That music."

"Paginini. Concerto Number One. Why?"

"Isn't there something a little less dramatic?"

Donna let the material sink to her lap and looked over at me. "I guess so." She walked over to the record player and lifted the tone arm. "Do you want to hear classical? It doesn't have to be. I'm just in the mood for music."

"Great," I said. "Fine. Play anything you want."

"You're sure? We could listen to Big Joe—I don't care."

"Anything," I said. "Let her rip."

She put the record in its jacket and looked through our albums.

I wrote, ...

"I'm sorry," Donna said, "I know you're busy. Mozart?"

"Sure. Mozart. Great." I lost my train of thought. ...

My pen was making a pond of ink on the paper—I couldn't start the next sentence.

"Hey, I said. "How do you expect me to concentrate with this?"

Donna looked up. "It's Mozart."

"It sounds like something from a circus."

"The twenty-fifth symphony is not circus music."

"It sounds like—" I stopped. "All right, it's not. But could you turn it down?"

She walked quickly across the room. "We don't have to hear anything—that's why I asked you in the first place." She switched the record player off.

"You didn't have to do that."¹⁰³

We find out a little later how he feels about his wife.

Donna encouraged me in everything I did. She listened to and remembered everything I told her about work, every story about my family. No one had ever cared so much about me, and I wanted to be everything she wanted me to be: strong, brave, loving, wise. But we listened to completely different music.¹⁰³

Now comes the acid test. George the husband accompanies his wife to a dinner with the parents of a young lady Roxanne whom she is tutoring in classical flute.

Mrs. Chapman said, "You certainly are lucky, getting to hear Donna. Roxanne won' play for us. If she knows I'm listening when she practices, she stops."

Roxanne ignored her. "What's your favorite piece?"

I reached for my coffee cup and nearly knocked it over. "It's hard to say. I have trouble renumbering the manes." Mrs. Chapman looked over curiously. I tried again. "Remembering the names. There's one ... something by the French guy—"

"Debussy," Donna said. "Syriax."

"That's pretty," Roxanne said.

"I listen to a lot of jazz and blues. Traditional."

"I like to listen to other things too." Roxanne stared intently at me ...

"Lately I've bee listening to one blues singer in particular. Joe Turner."

"He's great." Roxanne nearly reached across the table. "'Shake, Rattle, and Roll.' 'Honey Hush.' A friend of mine has some of his albums. Do you know 'Cherry Red'?¹⁰⁴"

"Sure."

"I love that one. 'I want you to boogie my woogie 'til my face turns cherry red.'" She laughed.

Mrs. Chapman glanced around nervously. "That old music certainly was colorful."

Her husband said, "Does he call himself Big Joe Turner? Boss of the Blues?"

"Sometimes," I said. "That's the one."

Mr. Chapman sat back. "Is he, what, about fifty now?"

"That's right."

"I saw him perform back in the early forties. He used to sing in a bar in the old Negro district in Kansas city. Fellow named Pete Johnson played the piano."

"You heard Joe?"

"Back then they billed him as one of the Kansas City Shouters. something like that."

"He's got a wonderful memory for details," his wife said.

I tried to match his nonchalance. "So how was he? What was it like?"

Chapman smiled patronizingly. "I suppose it was all right, if you like that sort of thing. There were a few people back then who really got all excited about it. It's very primitive music,¹⁰⁵ actually."

I looked at Donna to let her know that I felt no obligation to continue the conversation.¹⁰³

Ecclesiastes 3 teaches us that things are to happen in their own time. Once married, of course, it is okay to make babies. But "Cherry Red" also portrays the passage of seasons in time. Boogie rhymes with woogie in the way that summer rhymes with winter. "Face turns" refers to fall the time when the face of nature turns color, and the cherry trees blossom in the spring. I don't know how strongly I'd be allowed to insist on that interpretation, but explained to the young girl, it gives her something to think about as she listens to the music.

What is more defensible are the archetypes that "boogie woogie" is based upon. Remember the places in Genesis where God told mankind to reproduce. (Gen. 1:27-31) "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. and God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." (Gen. 9:7-17) "And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth."

Before Noah's Flood there was a vapory canopy covering the earth being watered by its mist, so there was never seen a rainbow, the sun not getting through. The rainbow was a sign given Noah and his descendents us that God won't destroy the world with a Flood any more. What's pertinent to our discussion is that if you take the word bow and divide it into two words the first starting with bo and the second with wo, then end it with the good, good, goodie with which God pronounced his creation, you get boogie woogie, the context in which mankind was told to propagate.

Have you ever studied the book of Proverbs? A lot of wise sayings but for the most part not grouped by category so that one has to pick them out here and there for any particular subject. Sort of like "renumbering the manes" at the dinner party, easy to get tripped up. Well, just as Mr. Chapman spoke up and added his bit to the conversation, so does in Proverbs a personification of Wisdom speak directly to us about herself and her vast ageless experience. At one point her speech covers about a chapter and a half from Proverbs 8 into 9. After recounting in detail her presence at the creation of the world, being there when God did it, she portrays herself: (Prov. 8:30-31) "Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men." Now, what kind of rejoicing was she doing delightfully with the sons of men way back then. I maintain that—per the earlier discussion—it was boogie woogie. What else could it be?

This is sort of like Mr. Chapman recounting his having heard Big Joe Turner in person in a bar in the Negro district in Kansas City, Wisdom having boogie woogied with the sons of men in the habitable part of God's earth. When we study Proverbs we have to maintain a certain decorum when we get to this verse. We have to treat it nonchalantly and be ready to go right on to the next verses without dwelling on it. We dare not allow ourselves to get all excited about it. Not in a church.

Remember what happened to Jimmy Swaggart's cousin Jerry Lee Lewis. Jerry Lee was attending a Bible School in the South and it was his job to play the piano in church. Well, he started playing a boogie woogie version of the hymns which landed him in trouble and he left the school. He wrote a song about his experience. In it there appears to be something wrong with him so he is sent to a doctor who connects him up to some kind of instrument. The "liberty meter" goes right off the scale and he is given this advice immortalized in the fast paced song:

Don't boogie woogie when you say your prayers at night.
You gotta tune into Jesus whenever you turn out the light.
Don't boogie woogie when you say your prayers at night.

Some of the art in Haussner's was beautiful. Some of it, like the painting of the little girl and the St. Bernard, was junk. What about the woman with the goat's head? I had wanted to laugh—it looked absurd. But to laugh would have been just like Mr. Duncan and the rest of us making fun of Mr. Mead.

But maybe the painting was ridiculous. Maybe Mr. Mead's poem really was awful. It certainly sounded awful. And even if the poem was good, it was a mistake for him to read it when he knew that no one in the room would have the slightest notion of what he was trying to do. He could have tried to explain—and Haussner's could tell us something about their paintings, and Mr. Chapman could have told us what he was looking for in that wine. Standing in a grab bag of a museum, half-drunk, I thought: Knowing about wine or poetry or music isn't any great virtue in itself. The important thing is to try to understand more, and to share what you know.¹⁰³

Turchi's novel ends up with discussion of the planned baby.

"What if he's a musician? What if he wants to play the flute?"

"What if she's a carpenter?"

"Boys run in the family."

"I'll tell you what," she said. "If it's a boy, and he does, I promise to teach him 'Take me Out to the Ball Game.'"

"It's not the same." I rolled the dice. "What if he—or she—doesn't like baseball or music? What if it's an insurance salesman?"

"We'll love it as if it were our own." She walked to the record player and hunted for an album.

"Let's have some real music."

"You had your turn." She put a record on the turntable and set it spinning.

A string bass beat out a fast dance rhythm as a booming voice sang:

Got a cold-blooded woman lays steel on the railroad tracks
Got a cold-blooded woman lays steel on the railroad tracks
She got a hug like a bear, she almost breaks my back.

"Since when have you been a Big Joe Turner fan?"

"Ssh," she said. "Listen."

I said ooo-ouch stop, baby you hurtin' me
I said ooo-ouch stop, baby you hurtin' me
But it feels so good from my head down to my knees.¹⁰³

"Now there's great poetry."

"You missed it," she said. "He lifted that phrase from Wagner."

"What?"

"The Ring cycle. His estate could sue."

"I'm not listening to this."

"Astonishing similarity." But she couldn't keep a straight face.¹⁰³

Just as the plowmen having the right earth to work with means the hind has her grass and can show affection to her calf, so per Joe Turner the woman laying steel on the railroad tracks means she has those big arm muscles to hug him with like a bear. That's what the song says. Compare that with Elvis Presley, Stuck on You: "I'm gonna run my fingers through your long black hair,/Squeeze you tighter than a grizzly bear."

Joe has her making him "feel so good from my head down to my knees" while Proverbs has him being "ravished always with her love." Song of Solomon (1:2b) says, "... for thy love is better than wine," (4:9) "Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck." A great similarity at the very least.

For a comparison muse on (Prov. 5:18-20) "Let thy fountain be blessed:" I'll quote from Malcolm Bosse's bestseller The Warlord.¹⁰⁶

He rereads the passage:

    Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of
      thy youth.
    Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her
      breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished
      always with her love.
    And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange
      woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?

Embree is engaged to the daughter of his father's best friend, also a missionary. The fathers worked together in India many years ago for the love of God Almighty. Ursula is a fine girl, Embree surely acknowledges that, but she does not have breasts. Or she doesn't seem to have them—he has never had the chance to find out. A persevering girl, Ursula wore out a Bible before her fifteenth year. She is fully capable of matching Embree stride for stride on a hike, although he was captain of the Yale rowing team and a superb athlete. A strong, persevering girl committed to high moral standards, as befits the daughter of a Servant of God.

"Be thou ravished always with her love." It is difficult for Embree to envision such a love with Ursula. They have kissed dryly a few times, and the frustration shining in her eyes must have been shining in his too.

Her name itself is Latin meaning little bear. You might recall the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the Big Bear and the Little Bear. Although she may have been named after Saint Ursula, "a patroness of unmarried women; invoked for chastity and holy wedlock," the name itself is not all that unusual. One of our local librarian's friends, a Latin scholar, named her daughter Ursula. The above Ursula giving her fiancé a bear hug would be eminently natural as well as scriptural. I mean, the Bible has other themes besides salvation, in the sense that Handel wrote more music scores than The Messiah, and they might be worth listening to.

The world's very first disc jockey, arguably Reginald Fessenden, (1866-1932) son of a Canadian Anglican minister, made a surprise broadcast on Christmas Eve, 1906, from Massachusetts to ships at sea playing for them an Edison wax-cylinder recording of Handel's Largo. His wife and secretary were supposed to read some seasonal passages from the Bible but they froze at the microphone with "mike fright" and Fessenden took over for them. Rather than speculating, whether he should have rather played The Messiah, we might wonder if our attention were not better directed at Christians who don't much share their faith, rather than at disc jockeys who may or may not play the world's most edifying music.

The truly objectionable music is not garden variety rock 'n' roll but rather something on the order of drug idolatry:

... the corridos that spilled from the cheap ghetto blasters and funky dives sang the praises of mota and the principal shrine was that of Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of narcotraficantes. ... the banda music played on—songs in praise of peasants become drug lords and of the crops that had made them wealthy: "Me paso la vida sembrando mota ..."¹⁰⁷

An Elvis song started. "You like Elvis?" he asked.

"Mark, believe it or not, when I was a teenager growing up in Memphis, a bunch of us girls would ride over to Elvis's house on Sundays to watch him play touch football. This was before he was really famous, and he still lived at home with his parents in a nice little house. He went to Humes High School, which is now Northside."

...

"We'd go to his concerts, and we'd see him hanging out around town. He was just an average guy, at first, then things changed. He got so famous he couldn't live a normal life.

—John Grisham, The Client¹⁰⁸

Contrast that with:

On the television screen, the animated, antic figures of impossibly good-looking people writhed, rocked, spun, stomped to a harsh percussive music, unmistakable as the rhythms of copulation.

—Rosamond Smith, Double Delight¹⁰⁹

So far, one low point has been followed by another even lower. It is hardly surprising that rock was followed by such delightful art forms as punk rock, heavy metal, speed metal, death metal, rap, gangsta rap, and grunge. And it is hardly to be doubted, as Martha Bayles says, that these have effects on their "vulnerable target: angry, troubled adolescents. Only a fool would argue that music—especially music combined with gut-wrenching spectacle—has no impact on audiences. Yet this is exactly what the defenders of heavy metal do when they suggest that a steady diet of gleeful sadism does no harm."¹¹⁰ The music industry executives are most assuredly not fools, but they must think the rest of us are.

Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah¹⁰²

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NOTES

1. Harold Lindsell, editor, "Farewell to the Sixties," Christianity Today, Dec. 19, 1969, p. 269. Back to document

2. Joe Peterson, Jesus People, Communes and the Counterculture of the Late Twentieth Century in the Pacific Northwest (Eugene: Joe Peterson, 1991) pp. 4-5. Back to document

3. Allen J. Moore, "The hippies—1968: The Revolt Against Affluence." Religion in Life: A Christian Quarterly of Opinion and Discussion (27). 4, Winter, pp. 509- 518. Back to document

4. Bennet Berger, "Hippie Morality - More Old Than New," From Transaction/Society magazine, reprinted in John Gagnon & William Simon, The Sexual Scene, (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1973) pp. 66-7. Back to document

5. Werner Keller, translated by William Neil, The Bible as History (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1964) p. 213.
Back to document

6. John Biggins, A Sailor of Austria (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994) pp. 239-245.
Back to document

7. Malcolm Bosse, The Warlord (New York: Bantam Books, June, 1984), pp. 731f.
Back to document

8. Reader's Digest Illustrated Dictionary of Bible Life & Times (Pleasantville: Reader's Digest, 1997)
Back to document

9. Kate Wilhelm, Death Qualified (Ontario: MIRA Books, 1991) pp. 357f.
Back to document

10. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, Collector's Library—2004), pp. 324-5.
Back to document

11. C.F. Main & Peter Seng, Poems 4th ed., (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1978) p. 370.
Back to document

12. James Preston Girard, The Late Man (New York: Atheneum, 1993) pp. 15-16.
Back to document

13. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, Collector's Library—2004), p. 14.
Back to document

14. Steven Hager, The Octopus Conspiracy and Other Vignettes of the Counterculture—from Hippies to "High Times" to Hip Hop & Beyond" ... (Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 2005) p. 276.
Back to document

15. George Kahn, The 36 Biggest Mistakes Salesmen Make and How to Correct Them (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968) pp. 18-21.
Back to document

16. Joseph Conrad, Typhoon and Other Stories (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 2nd printing), pp. 178-9. Back to document

17. James Neal Harvey, Painted Ladies (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992) p. 14. Back to document

18. Charles McCabe, Tall Girls Are Grateful (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1973) p. 38. Back to document

19. Jon Katz, The Last Housewife (New York: Doubleday, 1995), p. 39.
Back to document

20. Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) pp. 216-19.
Back to document

21. Ken Nunn, Tijuana Straits (New York: Scribner, 2004), pp. 159-60.
Back to document

22. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, Collector's Library—2004), pp. 21-2.
Back to document

23. George E. (Jed) Smock, Who Will Rise Up? (Newark, OH: The Campus Ministry, U.S.A., 1994) pp. 22, 25.
Back to document

24. Steven Hager, The Octopus Conspiracy and Other Vignettes ... (Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 2005) p. vii.
Back to document

25. S. Trevena Jackson, Fanny Crosby's Story of Ninety-Four Years, (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1915) pp. 170f.
Back to document

26. Malcolm Bosse, The Warlord (New York: Bantam Books, June, 1984), p. 472.
Back to document

27. Brent Wade, Company man (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1st. ed., 1992) pp. 125f.
Back to document

28. Scott Turow, The Laws of our Fathers (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st ed., 1996) pp. 146, 47.
Back to document

29. Reader's Digest Illustrated Dictionary of Bible Life & Times (Pleasantville: Reader's Digest, 1997)
Back to document

30. James A. Michener, The Source (New York: Fawcett Crest, © 1965 Random House) p. 207.
Back to document

31. Desmond Morris, Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Pub., 1977) p. 168.
Back to document

32. Theodore Weesner, Novemberfest (New York: Alfre A. Knopf, 1994), p. 14.
Back to document

33. James Sallis, Ghost of a Flea (New York: Walker & Company, 2001) p. 202.
Back to document

34. Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft Book One: The Nine (Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 2005) p. 312.
Back to document

35. T. Zelles, K.R. Purushotham, S.P. Macauley, G.E. Oxford, and M.G. Humphreys-Beyer, "Saliva and Growth Factors: The Fountain of Youth Resides in Us All," Journal of Dental Research 74(12), Dec. 1995, p. 1826-1832.
Back to document

36. P.A. Raj. S.D. Soni, and M.J. Levine, "Membrane-induced Helical Conformation of an Active Candidacidal Fragment of Salivary Histatins," J. Biol. Chem., 269,(13):1994, pp. 9610-9619.
Back to document

37. Zelles et al, "Saliva and Growth Factors: The Fountain of Youth Resides in Us All," (ch. 31, note 12). Back to document

38. Jack Cuozzo, Buried Alive The Startling Truth about Neanderthal Man (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, Inc., 1998) pp. 224-6. Used by permission.
Back to document

39. John W. Whitehead, Grasping for the Wind (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2001) p. 225.
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40. Gina Arnold, Kiss This, Punk in the Present Tense (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997) p. 32.
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41. Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Middletown, CT: ϛesleyan University Press, 1994) pp. 39-41.
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42. Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook (San Francisco: MacAdam/Aage Publishing, 2002) p. 32.
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43. The Jewish Study Bible, Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler EDITORS, Michael Fishbane CONSULTING EDITOR Jewish Publication society TANAKH Translation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) pp. 1503, 1547.
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44. Werner Ϗeller, translated by William Neil, The Bible as History (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1964) p. 137.
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45. Sir Lancelot C.L. Brenton, The Septuagint With Apocrypha: Greek and English Originally published by Samuel Bagster & Sons, Ltd., London, 1851 (USA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997) p. 698.
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46. Jeff Long, Year Zero (New York: Pocket Books, 2002) pp. 25, 33.
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47. Robert Eisenman, The New Testament Code (London: Watkins Publishing, 2006) p. 589
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48. Reader's Digest Illustrated Dictionary of Bible Life & Times (Pleasantville: Reader's Digest, 1997)
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49. Werner Ϗeller, translated by William Neil, The Bible as History (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1964) pp. 100, 83-84, 90-91.
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50. Neil R. Lightfoot, How We Got the Bible (New York: MJF Books, 2003) p. 14.
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51. Muriel Hanson, Honey and Salt (Minneapolis: His International Service, 1971) pp. 42-3. © 1965-1971 The Evangelical Beacon
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52. Kathleen O'Bannon Baldinger, The World's Oldest Health Plan (Lancaster, Penna: Starburst Publishers, 1994) p. 161.
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53. Marie A. Boyle, Ph.D., R.D., Gail Zyla, M.S., R.D., Tufts University, Diet & Nutrition Letter, Personal Nutrition Third edition (Minneapolis: West Publishing Co., 1996) pp. 434-6.
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54. Rob MacGregor and Trish Janeshutz, POISON CURES, "AntiMatter," Omni, Sept., 1985, p. 84.
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55. Owen Beattie and John Geiger, Buried in Ice The Mystery of a Lost Arctic Expedition (Toronto: Madison Press Books, 1995) pp. 59-60.
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56. Thomas Robbins, Sociology Dept., Queens College, City U. of NY, & Dick Anthony, Dept. of Psychiatry, Med. School, U. of NC, Chapel Hill, "Getting Straight with Meher Baba: A Study of Mysticism, Drug Rehabilitaion and Postadolescent Role Conflict," from Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion II, no. 2 (June 1972): 122-140. Reprinted in Patrick H. McNamara, Univ. of New Mexico, Religion American Style (New York: Harper & Row, 1974) pp. 369-70, ref. 380-1 n.
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57. J.M. Roberts, A History of Europe (New York: Penguin Books, 1997) pp. 517f.
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58. William Wheeler, University of Tennessee, and Susan Wheeler University of Tennessee , Discovering the American Past, Vol. II, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1994) pp. 285f, 316. Back to document

59. Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft Book Two: A Warm Gun (Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 2006) pp. 36f., 67-69.
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60. Bill Roorbach, The Smallest Color (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2001) p. 128.
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62. Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996) pp. 18-9.
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63. Frederick Schwartz, M.D., Beating the Unbeatable Foe, One Man's Victory Over Communism, Leviathan, and the Last Enemy (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1996) pp. 392f.
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65. Ellis Cose, The Best Defense (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990) p. 70.
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66. Christine Ammer, Fighting Words (New York: Dell Publishing, 1990) pp. 158-9.
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67. Brent Wade, Company man (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1st. ed., 1992) p. 32.
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68. Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) pp. 4-5.
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69. George E. (Jed) Smock, Who Will Rise Up? (Newark, OH: The Campus Ministry, U.S.A., 1994) p. 125.
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70. Boston Teran, God is a Bullet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) pp. 108f
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71. S. Trevena Jackson, Fanny Crosby's Story of Ninety-Four Years, (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1915) pp. 55-8.
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72. Excerpt from "Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)," words and music by Bart Howard, The Richmond Organization copyright © 1954 (copyright renewed) by Hampshire House Publishing Corp., New York, NY
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73. George E. (Jed) Smock, Who Will Rise Up? (Newark, OH The Campus Ministry, U.S.A., 1994) pp. 126-7.
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74. John Pollock, The Man Who Shook the World (Wheaton, Ill: Victor Books, 1972) Preface
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75. Peter Delacorte, Games of Chance (New York: Seaview Books, 1980) p. 180.
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76. John W. Whitehead, Grasping for the Wind (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2001) p. 127.
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77. Michael Barson & Steven Heller, Teenage Confidential, An Illustrated History of the American Teen (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005) p. 54.
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78. Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1977) pp. 76f,79,80.
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79. James Sallis, The Long-Legged Fly(New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992) p. 141.
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80. Ace Atkins, Leavin' Trunk Blues (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 28-9, 207, 214, 219, 249.
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81. Jon Katz, The Last Housewife (New York: Doubleday, 1995), p. 1.
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82. Nelson George, Seduced The Life and Times of a One-Hit Wonder A Novel (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1996) pp. 28, 3.
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83. Michael Baron, The Mourning Sexton (New York: Jove Books, 2006) pp. 7f, 19.
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84. Gina Arnold, Kiss This, Punk in the Present Tense (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997) pp. 155f.
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85. Nelson George, Seduced The Life and Times of a One-Hit Wonder A Novel (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1996) pp. 193, 170, 267f, 330, 218.
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86. Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole, president of Bennett College for Women and president emerita of Spelman College, "What Hip-Hop Has Done to Black Women," in Ebony, March, 2007, pp. 90-94, drawn from her book co-authored with Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities
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87. Steven Hager, The Octopus Conspiracy and Other Vignettes of the Counterculture—from Hippies to "High Times" to Hip Hop & Beyond" ... (Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 2005) pp. 129, 132f.
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88. Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Middletown, CT: ϛesleyan University Press, 1994) pp. 51-5, 24-26, 38-39.
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89. Marcus Franklin, The Associated Press, "Slurs by radio host bring glaring rap themes to light," The Register Guard, April 14, 2007, p. A10.
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90. Dick Hebdige, "Rap and Hip Hop: The New York Connection," in Cut 'n' Mix: Culture, Identity, and Caribbean Music (London: Comedia, 1987) pp. 136ff.
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91. David Samuels, "The Rap on Rap: "The 'black music' that isn't either" in The New Republic, November 11, 1991. pp. 24-29.
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92. R.A.T. Judy, "On the Question of Nigga Authenticity," in boundary 2, 21:3. pp. 211ff. © 1994, Duke University Press.
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95. Jon F. Merz, Danger-Close (Walterville, Maine: Five Star, 2004) pp. 159f.
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96. Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Middletown, CT: ϛesleyan University Press, 1994) pp. 30-31.
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97. Peter Quinn, Hour of the Cat(New York: The Overlook Press, 2005) pp. 136, 243, 353.
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98. James Sallis, The Long-Legged Fly(New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992) p. 49.
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99. Richard Price, Freedomland(New York: Broadway Books, 1998) pp. 209f.
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100. Werner Ϗeller, translated by William Neil, The Bible as History (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1964) pp. 256, 179-80.
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101. The Sixties, ed. Gerald Howard (New York: Washington Square Books, 1982), p. 18.
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102. Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996) pp. 23-4, 134-5.
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103. Peter Turchi, The Girls Next Door (New York: New American Library, 1989) pp. 48ff, 91, 105-7, 274.
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104. "Cherry Red" Words and music by Pete Johnson and Joe Turner. Copyright © 1941, 1944, 1948 by MCA MUSIC PUBLISHING, a Dvision of MCA INC, New York, NY 10019
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105. An excerpt from Peter Turchi's novel appeared under the title "Primitive Music" in New Times. Copyright © 1986. Back to document

106. Malcolm Bosse, The Warlord (New York: Bantam Books, June, 1984), pp. 11-12.
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107. Ken Nunn, Tijuana Straits (New York: Scribner, 2004), pp. 84, 89.
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108. John Grisham, The Client (New York: Dell Publishing, March, 1994) p. 460.
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109. Rosamond Smith, Double Delight (New York: Dutton, Penguin Books, 1997) p. 23.
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110. Martha Bayles, Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music (New York: The Free Press, 1994) pp. 258-9.
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Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Earl S. Gosnell III
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Permission is hereby granted to use the portions original to this study—with credit given, of course—in intellectually honest non-profit educational material. The material I myself have quoted has its own copyright in most cases, which I cannot speak for but have used here under the fair use doctrine.

I have used material from a number of sources for teaching, comment and illustration in this nonprofit teaching endeavor. The sources are included at the end in notes. I simply quoted some partial song lyrics from memory and don't mean to neglect the authors whom I can't remember. Such uses must be judged on individual merit, of course, so I cannot say how other uses of the same material might fare.

The banner "Where Have All the Hippies Gone?" was copied from an msn groups source.
Picture of old can courtesy National Maritime Museum
The horseman drawing his bow (detail) is from an Ottoman miniature, fifteenth century, Istanbul. Giraudon/Art Resource, New York.

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Paper on hippies and rock 'n' roll in the Bible.