Month: March 2021

In President Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address, he speaks about the dangers of slavery in the United States to a group of young men trying to educate themselves, which therefore could be the reason that Lincoln incorporated religion and biblical references into his speech in order to at least unite the members of the Lyceum under one common belief. 

President Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address speech has many biblical references and like many of his other speeches and writings, it is evident of the influence that the Bible had on Lincoln. To begin, in Lincoln’s opening of the Lyceum address, he classifies the nineteenth century as the “Christain era”. This particular declaration may be used to unite the people in which he is speaking as the rest of his speech is suggesting amendments to the Constitution. A bit further down in the speech, Lincoln references blood, oath, sacrifice, and altars which are words that are symbolic of the Bible: “Let every America, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country….sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.” Lincoln also makes a comparison between Moses taking the Hebrews out of Egypt and through the desert to find their freedom and the creation of a Hebrew community under God sworn by blood and sacrifice to the blood and sacrifice of the Revolution by which Americans took an oath to the laws of the Constitution. In the case of the American Revolution, it was the blood of the Revolution that made America as people, not the constitution. 

Lincoln also uses the analogy of the breaking of the tablets in the Bible to symbolize how a re-doing and amending of the Constitution may be necessary and would not be a detriment or betrayal to American history. 

Based on the Lyceum Address and other speeches by Lincoln, it seems that as Lincoln is calling for a change, he may be comparing America as an Egypt, a nation of enslavement, rather than a New Jerusalem. 

While Lincoln acknowledges the importance of the Constitution especially for ensuring stability, he also is aware of the costs that it brings to certain people in the nation. And while reform is sure to bring violence (which we can verify 150 years later), Lincoln’s view is that violence may be necessary to ensure a better future for America. 

I think that Lincoln not only uses biblical references because it is what he understands, but also as a way to unite opposing groups together with a religion that they all believe.

Draft Enthymeme Argument Sentence

The fantasy novel turned film, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, written by C.S. Lewis has overt Christian symbolism and its story is structured around the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ as well as infiltrated with other messages relating to stories in the Bible, and can therefore can be noted as to have been influenced by the Bible.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe  (film)

• Mr Tumnus refers to Lucy as a “Daughter of Eve” (Narnians refer to all human women this way and men as “Sons of Adam”)
  • biblical reference points to humans as divine creations in God’s image, and their fated destiny to rule Narnia above all of the other magical creatures who live there is in a way a divine right
  • Genesis 
• Sin and corruption in Narnia in the absence of its ruler, Aslan (representative of Christ in the movie)
• Father Christmas 
  • “Long live the true king!” 
    • Reference to Aslan but also to Jesus 
• Snow melting
  • Symbol of the strength and power of christianity against nonbelievers (the White Witch)
• Aslan and the White Witch battle at the Stone Table (biblical reference to the stone tablets bearing the ten commandments)
  • Exodus 
• The White Witch as an allegory to Satan
  • When she has the “right” to kill Edmund for being a traitor similar to Satan in which sinners “belong” to in hell 
• Aslan’s death 
  • Symbolic of the crucifiction 
  • Taunted, shamed, and shaved in public 
  • Sacrifices his own life for Edmund (like Jesus’s sacrifice)
  • Matthew 
• Aslan’s resurrection 
• The 4 siblings and Aslan’s triumph at the end of the movie 
  • Represent the inherent righteousness and ultimate unassailability of Christian values
• Central focus of movie to bible
  • the struggle between Christianity’s tenets of sacrifice, empathy, and striving towards goodness and godlessness, sin, and selfishness
  • Self-discovery and redemption 
    • Story of David or Joseph 
  • 4 siblings are prophesied to save Narnia 

Scholarly Sources 

https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/sociologyofreligion/tag/the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe/

Walls, Kathryn. “An Analogous Adversary: The Old Dispensation in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 28, no. 2 (99), 2017, pp. 202–218. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26499447. Accessed 16 Mar. 2021.

• http://ezproxy.bucknell.edu/login?qurl=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26499447

Ruud, Jay. “Aslan’s Sacrifice and the Doctrine of Atonement in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.’” Mythlore, vol. 23, no. 2 (88), 2001, pp. 15–22. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26814624. Accessed 16 Mar. 2021.

• http://ezproxy.bucknell.edu/login?qurl=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26814624

“The Christian Imaginary: Narnia.” C.S. Lewis, by William Gray, Liverpool University Press, 1998, pp. 60–89. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv5rf40g.11. Accessed 16 Mar. 2021.

• http://ezproxy.bucknell.edu/login?qurl=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv5rf40g.11

Because the style and diction of the two translations, King James Version and Sidney’s Psalter, are so different, the exactness of the translation is more questionable in Sidney’s  Psalter translation due to the added tone, style and diction. 

Psalm Chapter 51 (King James Version of the Bible) is written by David in response to his great sin that he committed with Bathsheba, one of his mighty men’s wives. Knowing that Bathsheba is Uriah’s wife, David decides to commit adultery with her anyways while her husband is away at battle and she becomes pregnant. In an attempt to fix his problem, David has Uriah placed at the frontlines of a deadly battle in which Uriah is killed. After all of this sin, God sends the prophet Nathan to rebuke David for his sins. In the end, David repents and God removes his sin, but not without forever consequences. In Psalm 41:4, David pleads for God’s forgiveness saying “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” meaning that David believes that the only one that he sinned against was God, not including Uriah whose wife he got pregnant and had him killed. However, ultimately, David believes that the greatest sin was to God. In verse 5 of Psalm chapter 51, David admits that he was conceived and born with sin, concluding that the sin is his alone and that he deserves whatever punishment he will receive from God. 

Moving on to the Psalm chapter 51 translation of the bible in the Sidneys’ Psalter, there are immediate differences between the two translations. First, and most obvious to me, is the rhyming pattern. In verse 15 of Sidney’s Psalter, the same message is revealed that was written in verse 5 of the King James Version reading, “My mother, loe! When I began to be, conceiving me, with me did sinne conceive”. While the message is the same, the style and diction is very different. With the rhyming pattern implemented into this translation, it would be difficult to have an exact translation considering that words must be chosen carefully. While the same message may be made as in the King James Version, the diction, style, and tone make the read entirely different.