Film Noir, Calvinism, and Self-Surveillance in Paul Schrader’s Hardcore

This paper seeks to determine the author(s)’s rhetorical purpose in 1 Kgs 12:25-13:34 by exploring the similarities and differences between the characters, and examining related passages. After this examination, the following conclusions are arrived at: first, because of the old prophet’s deceit and the disobedience of the man of God, the true and false prophets are not clearly distinguished in the narrative; second, the comparison between Jeroboam and the old prophet reveals that disobedience, which is equated with idolatry, is more evil than false prophecy; and third, Yhwh’s prohibitions, which are associated with Jeroboam and the man of God, serve the rhetorical purpose of denunciating Jeroboam’s innovations and stressing obedience to Yhwh, that is, an adherence to Mosaic law. Consequently, the Mosaic law, which condemns idolatry, is seen to be more important than prophecy.

The hebrew bible is a prophetic document. It contains the words of a rare breed of people who appeared in a small corner of the ancient Near East 3,000 years ago and transformed history. Or, if you will, it is a divine message articulated by those highly unusual individuals over a period of some 1,000 years, beginning with Moses, whose historicity is shrouded in the mist of antiquity, running through someone like Jeremiah, whose historicity is fairly well established, and ending with Malachi, who is probably a composite figure rather than a specific individual.What is typical about the prophetic message is that it is loud and clear and unequivocal. Talmudic scholar Saadia Gaon compares it to the blasts of the shofar. The prophet Micah summarizes it in one sentence: “What does Adonai your God ask of you, but to do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with Adonai your God?” And yet, despite the fact that those prophets transformed history by bequeathing us words that have defined the morality of human civilization, we know very little about them. Bible scholars have labored long and hard in their quest for the meaning of prophecy, and yet many questions remain unanswered. As for the general public, here for the most part there seems to be a general confusion. Most people cannot tell an Isaiah from a Jeremiah or an Amos from a Hosea.None of this should surprise us, because a careful reading of the Hebrew Scriptures shows that people in biblical times were also confused about the meaning of prophecy. The first mention in the Bible of the word “prophet” refers to Avraham avinu, Abraham our Patriarch (Gen. 20:1–7). Traditional commentators, such as Rashi and the Rashbam, do not take this to mean an actual prophet, but rather someone with unusual mental gifts, or someone who converses with God and receives God’s favor. In Jewish tradition Moses is considered the first prophet, or the Father of the Prophets. Yet Islam and Christianity greatly expand the list of prophets, beginning with Adam. In the Bible we find God speaking to common people, such as Samson’s mother, yet this does not automatically make her a prophet.While the “job description” of the biblical priest, or the scribe, or the Levite is quite clear-cut, that of the prophet remains unclear throughout the entire biblical period. In the time of Jeremiah, quite late in the prophecy period, we have false prophets, quasi-false prophets, and true prophets. Jeremiah himself during his entire prophetic career of some forty years is always doubted and scorned by the people, and barely escapes execution for sedition. This is typical of nearly all the prophets, who are rejected in their lifetime and only recognized by later generations. While the prophets have provided us with enduring guidelines for “what is good, and what Adonai your God expects of you,” they have also left us with many unanswered questions.What is very clear in surveying the progression of prophecy from Moses to Malachi, is that over the centuries the nature of prophecy underwent profound changes, and once the era of biblical prophecy ended, the role played by the prophets was assumed by new kinds of teachers and prophet-like personalities, in and out of Judaism, who have been influencing human progress (as well as human setbacks) to this day.How does one group together Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Amos, and Ezekiel and apply to all of them the same title of prophet? While they all have a common denominator, which helps us define those who are referred to in the Haftarah blessings as “the prophets of truth and justice,” there are fundamental differences among them that need to be carefully considered. Let us first consider the common denominator. I like to refer to it as “moral compulsion.” They all display the same characteristic of being possessed by an uncompromising need to speak the truth and to uphold justice no matter the consequences. It is as though they have no control over it. Amos says: “A lion roars, who will not shudder? Adonai spoke, who will not prophesy?” (3:8)Amos cannot choose whether or not to prophesy. He is driven by his moral compulsion, which pre-empts his personal will. That said, as we go back to the stories and teachings of each of the aforementioned prophets, we begin to see vast differences between them. Moses, as is pointed out in the last chapter of Deuteronomy and further elaborated by Maimonides and others, is in a class by himself: “There never arose a prophet in Israel like Moses.” To simply refer to him as a prophet diminishes his stature. He is the liberator, the law-giver, the one who leads his people to the Promised Land. He performs miracles (such as the crossing of the Sea of Reeds) that no other prophet ever performs. His life story encompasses an epic historical drama where reality and mythology intermingle. He belongs in the same class as the other founders of the world’s major religions.Samuel, the first major prophet following the conquest of Canaan, is also in a class by himself. He is referred to as the Seer, the visionary leader. He starts out in life as a priest who is transformed into a prophet. He is also a judge and a reluctant kingmaker. He lives in a time when prophecy becomes a movement, and there are schools of prophets called b’nei neviim (sons of prophets) who roam the countryside in search of divine inspiration. By choosing Saul as the first king of Israel, he completes the work of Moses in unifying the twelve tribes into one nation. By anointing David as the second king of Israel, he establishes the House of David, which acquires a messianic status for all time. Thus, Samuel too is not a typical prophet either. He is sui generis.The next major prophet lives in the Northern Kingdom after the monarchy splits following the death of Solomon. He is Elijah the Tishbite. He is a man of the people, a folk hero, and a miracle worker, whose main mission is fighting the false prophets of the Baal supported by King Ahab and his Phoenician wife, Jezebel. Elijah is a figure of legend, and so he remains in post-biblical Jewish history, as stories about his miraculous powers become a major feature of Jewish lore. He too like the House of David acquires a messianic status as the future forerunner of the messiah.The one who is the first, or among the first, to fit the “job description” of a Hebrew prophet is the prophet Amos, who claims that he is “neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet.” Here biblical prophecy finally reaches its classical period of the so-called “literary prophets,” the ones who have left us a written record of some or all of their prophecies, and who are perfect examples of the concept of “moral compulsion.” Amos, Hosea, Micah, and the rest of the so-called “Twelve Minor Prophets” (only minor in that they left us short books), form one unit with the First Isaiah and Jeremiah, representing that classical period. Here biblical prophecy reaches a high point. Miracles all but disappear during this period. Angels are rare. Here the emphasis is on helping the poor, the weak, and the strangers in our midst. Here we have Isaiah’s and Micah’s vision of the End of Days and world peace. Here is where the cycle of exile and redemption starts and will continue to this day.The final stage of biblical prophecy is represented by prophets like Ezekiel and the Second Isaiah. In Ezekiel we find the people of Judah exiled in Babylonia, and the concept of Jewish life outside the Land of Israel is born. What is also born here is personal responsibility: each person is accountable for his or her own actions. Now the Jews are no longer tribal or territorial. They can await redemption in exile and return to their land in due time. Their God is no longer tribal or territorial, but rather the one God of the universe. This monotheistic concept is further refined by the mysterious and nameless prophet whom we call the Second Isaiah. Here for the first time God is not “above all the other gods” (as we hear in the Song of the Sea in the time of Moses: “Who is like you O God among the gods?”) Here the other gods are dismissed. Monolatry is replaced by pure monotheism. Prophetic Judaism has now reached its apex.When the Jews return to their land after the Babylonian exile, the monarchy of the House of David is not reestablished. The Holy Temple is rebuilt, and the priestly hierarchy is reinstated. We still have prophets like Hagai and Zechariah, but the age of prophecy is coming to an end (though Christianity will later proclaim Daniel a prophet). In the book of Ezra, prophets like Moses (“the man of God”) and Jeremiah, who predicts the return from Babylonian exile, are enshrined for all time. All Jewish law and learning will flow from their teachings. In time, their teachings will give rise to Christianity and Islam, and their influence will also be felt beyond the monotheistic faiths. The golden rule imparted to Moses in Leviticus, “Love the other as yourself,” will become the golden rule of all the world’s religions.Another major development in the history of biblical prophecy is the shift from prophets such as Samuel and Elijah who operate in the here and now, to prophets like Amos and Isaiah who set their sights on the future. This may be the reason why, unlike a Samuel or an Elijah, they began to write down their prophecies. They were preserving them for future generations, for those who would return to their land after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom in 722 bce and later the Southern Kingdom in 586 bce. What is set in motion here is the beginning of the transition from prophethood to messianism. It begins with the prophets’ belief in the “offshoot of the root of David” who would redeem his people, and it becomes the post-biblical belief in a messiah with supernatural powers who will appear one day to redeem his people and fulfill the prophecy of the End of Days.This new belief gives rise to Christianity, and later to Islam. In Judaism, on the other hand, it results in messianic movements and individuals who are either self-proclaimed messiahs or are identified as such by fervent followers. Those have often been referred to as “false messiahs.” The first such figure is the heroic Simon Bar Kokhba, who defeated the Romans some sixty years after they destroyed Jerusalem and the Holy Temple, and for about two years was able to rule over a free Judea. There is no record of Bar Kokhba proclaiming himself a messiah, but his great contemporary, Rabbi Akiba, did consider him a messianic figure. The Bar Kokhba rebellion was suppressed by the Roman emperor Hadrian, resulting in the slaughter of anywhere between 400,000 and 600,000 Jews, and putting an end to Jewish militarism for the next eighteen centuries.As a general rule, would-be messiahs have appeared after major catastrophes in Jewish history. In the Middle Ages the major catastrophe was the Crusades, which decimated Jewish communities in Europe and also affected Jews living under Islam. Here the key figure is David Alroy, who appeared in Iraq in the twelfth century and was going to take the Jews of Baghdad back to Jerusalem, but failed to do so. In the fifteenth century, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain resulted in two false messiahs, David Hareuveni and Shlomo Molcho, who were going to redeem their people. Instead, Molcho underwent martyrdom by the Inquisition, and Hareuveni disappeared from the pages of history.Jewish history’s best-known false messiah appeared after the next major disaster when, in 1648, the Cossack revolt led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in Poland and Ukraine resulted in the death and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of Jews. Messianic yearnings ran high throughout European Jewry. Kabbalists determined the year 1648 to be the year ushering the messianic era. It is at that point that Shabtai Zvi makes his appearance in Turkey and the word spreads quickly throughout Europe and the Middle East that the redeemer has appeared. Jews all over Europe sell their property and their businesses and embark on the journey to the Land of Israel.Zvi, a would-be messiah who turns out to be a very dramatic personality, acts as though he is God’s emissary on earth. He arrives in the Holy Land where another dramatic personality named Nathan of Gaza proclaims himself Elijah the Prophet who is ushering in the newly arrived messiah. The ruler of the land at that time is the Turkish sultan, who does not take kindly to this disruption of the Ottoman rule. When Shabtai Zvi goes to Constantinople to receive the blessing of the sultan, he is thrown in jail and is given the choice of conversion to Islam or death. He chooses the first, and loses the support of most of his followers, who find themselves betrayed and humiliated. A dark cloud settles over Jewish life, and messianism loses its momentum for the next three hundred years.But this is not where the story of Jewish messianism ends. Following the Holocaust, two things happen in the Jewish world. The first is the crowning of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Lubavicher or Chabad leader, as the messiah by a faction of his followers. As could be expected, the Jewish world has not welcomed this latest manifestation of messianism, even though the late rebbe was a much admired Jewish spiritual leader who, unlike the leaders of other Hasidic sects, had reached out to all Jews; his emissaries had been praised by Jews around the world. Moreover, the rebbe himself routinely discouraged his overly enthusiastic Hasidim from singing songs to him at the Farbrengen gatherings at his court in Brooklyn, which proclaimed him the melech ha’moshiach, the King Messiah.The other messianic phenomenon dates back to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, which led to the proliferation of settlements on the West Bank and gave rise to messianism among some settlers who have reached the conclusion that holding on to the “whole land of Israel” and rebuilding the Temple will hasten the coming of the messiah. Here again the consensus among Israelis and world Jewry does not support this view. One can only wonder what the biblical prophets would have had to say about the messianic movements that have sprung up among Jews in the past twenty centuries.Regardless of how we assess Jewish messianism, the essence of biblical prophecy remains what it has always been, namely, the unity of God, social justice, and the mission of Israel. The Second Isaiah defined this mission as “a light to the nations.” God is not the exclusive God of Israel, and the purpose of the mission is not for Jews to look only after their own interest. To do so is to betray the teachings of the prophets. The prophets have taught us that God made a covenant with Abraham for a purpose, namely, “so that all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.” It may be a very heavy burden, and in the post-Holocaust world it may be more than many Jews are willing to shoulder. But it is not a matter of choice. Each people on this earth seem to have a purpose or mission, and each have to live up to it.As we look at human history since biblical times, we discover that there have always been prophetic personalities everywhere, both true and false. They seem to fall into three categories: true prophetic personalities; misguided prophets; and prophets of evil. Among true prophetic personalities of our times I would point to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela, all of whom have changed their people’s lives for the better not through violent means but by fighting evil with good. I would also include Theodor Herzl, who foresaw the Holocaust and enabled his people to reenter the stage of history as free people in their historical land after centuries of exile.As an example of a misguided prophet I would point to the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who sought to elevate man by proclaiming the death of God and by extolling the “Overman.” While it is easy to misinterpret and misrepresent Nietzsche’s teachings, it is clear that now, a hundred years after his own death, God for millions on the planet has not died, and the concept of the Overman (or the Superman) has not brought about a better world but has given rise to misguided philosophies such as Ayn Rand’s “Objectivism.” Finally, our age has seen and continues to see the rise and fall of prophets of evil who have sought to remake the world according to what they have believed to be the greater good, which turned out to be the greater evil. First among them is Adolf Hitler, who in his speeches before the Reichstag often referred to himself as a prophet, but whose contribution to the world has been the greatest slaughter in human history. Another is Pol Pot of Cambodia. The list goes on and on.We are living in difficult times in America, in Israel, and around the world. There is a multitude of reasons to despair of the future. But, to rephrase Charles Dickens, while it may not be the best of times, it is also not the worst of times. The prophets did not see the world through rose-colored glasses. They were always brutally honest with their people, which is why they were routinely persecuted. But their faith in their people and in the future was stronger than that of anyone who has ever lived. Notwithstanding Isaiah’s prophecy of the end of days, or Jeremiah’s prophecy of the return of the exiles, it is wrong to refer to these men as “prophets of gloom and doom.” Rather, they were prophets of faith and hope.

In my paper, the version of Urizen�s creation and existence particularly refers to/concerns the contrast/conflict between energy and reason. In Blake�s mythological system, Urizen is a false God which represents the distortion of truth and concerns the pragmatic, unspiritual apprehension, and appreciation of the mundane world as a creation of falsity which must be accepted by humans in order to survive, to secure life and multiply. Urizen creates and lives in an alienated and enslaving realm, a distorted mental state which is detached from God�s truth. Personified in Urizen, the human reason is false consciousness and derives from impure energy. Urizen is an abstraction of the human self. It is the �holy� God of pragmatism in real life. The [First] Book of Urizen presents Blake�s ideas about human error, false consciousness and its aftermaths. The book is an exposition of man�s slavery to a false God and miscommunication with divinity. Miscommunication is the result of reason�s interpolation, suppressed desires and illusory delight. Los, the universal man, the eternal prophet is a false prophet who must acquire true consciousness and humane identity. The estranged, isolated, and false human self must realize his self-delusion and renounce this false God, so as to embrace truth and authenticity. Consequently, believing in this false God man is not an artist and his mundane work has no quality and value. Art, which is communication, is distorted by the human urizenic, false identity. Reason, the reasoning power, rationalization is unable to shape life artistically because Urizen, as a false God hinders genuine creation. Art is an internal discourse of active communication which is based on pure energy and intellectual beauty. Urizen has no position in this discourse because it disrupts the artistic vision and produces false art. Urizen represents inartistic ugliness. It is the representation of error, the devourer and degraded intellect. Urizen is considered Blake�s negative aesthetic and represents the aesthetic category of the ugly. It is also Blake�s aesthetic realism, the �negative sublime� of his aesthetic vision and stands in juxtaposition with his aesthetic idealism. Thus, in Blake�s aesthetics there are two different aspects of the sublime, its negative and positive forms. Urizen being Blake�s negative aesthetic, is a separate category which juxtaposes with the �Sublime of Imagination� and completes his aesthetic vision. Although aesthetic realism is necessary to offer a complete depiction of Blake�s sublime, it is not the vision of beauty and spirituality. Nevertheless, it is essential to supplement Blake�s aesthetics.