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(The Kennedy curse?) Which side of the family? John 19 New International Version (NIV)
"Shall I crucify your king?" Pilate asked. "We have no king but Caesar," the chief priests answered. 16. Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.
Howard Sounes is certainly a joke, at least as a religious commentator, and his spiritual insight zilch as he displayed in Bob Dylans Changing Times (BBC Radio 6, December 2009) and Blowing in the Wind: Bob Dylan's Spiritual Journey (BBC Radio 4, May 2011), in both of which he stroppily railed against Born Again Bob and repeated his spurious and misleading biographical assertion of Sara Dylans Jewishness -- but a box on the forehead really means nothing. Nothing more than an old Hewlett Packard inkjet-printer cartridge. From the Mick Brown 1984 exclusive in a Madrid bar:
Much of his time nowadays is spent travelling. He was in Jerusalem last autumn for his son Jesse's bar-mitzvah - "his grandmother's idea", he smiles. Israel interests him from "a biblical point of view", but he had never felt that atavistic Jewish sense of homecoming.
Compare Micks 2011 rehash (where hes still trying to get over himself) at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/bob-dylan/8480252/Bob-Dylan-Theway-he-sang-made-everything-seem-like-a-message.html
Listening back to the tape of our conversation now, I am struck by how sure he was of himself, and how candid he was. There was no attempt to self-mythologise, or to mystify. Only when I asked about his personal circumstances did he become vague. He had a farm in Minnesota, he said, and a house in Malibu where he had moved to raise his children good schools nearby but seldom used since his divorce from Sara Lowndes. He had recently visited Israel, for his son Jesses bar mitzvah: his grandmothers idea. Israel interested him from a biblical point of view, but he had never felt that atavistic Jewish sense of homecoming.
Jakob Dylan interview in Rolling Stone magazine 762 (June 12, 1997):
"Jake's family is a huge advantage to him," says T-Bone Burnett. "I'm not talking about the name. I'm talking about the people. They're all great kids. Sara is a beautiful woman, and Bob, well, no matter what anybody thinks or writes, he is a wonderful man." And, adds Jakob, a habitual seeker. When Bob Dylan, born Bob Zimmerman, temporarily turned his back on Judaism and declared himself a born-again Christian, there were interviews, concerts and albums (Slow Train Coming, Saved). "I went through different times," Jakob says of his spiritual upbringing. "During the conversion thing, I went where I was told. I was aware that it mattered to him. He's never done anything half-assed. If he does anything, he goes fully underwater." I've been Jewish for most of my life."
Someone disguised as Robin Hood, February 1998, on Dylan as the Sabbath gentile:
I was in St. Paul and living in the Jewish community (Highland Park) when Bob came poking around. His friend Larry Keegan, a quadrapalegic and he were very close around this time (1981-82) and Larry was involved with the Lubabvitchers. Dylan was only on a mission of discovery, not fully committed to becoming observantly Jewish as far as I could see. He had many discussions over that year with Manis Friedman, the Lubavitcher "pop philosopher:". The other Lubavitcher rabbis, conscious of Dylan's fame were, in my opinion, trying to exploit the relationship with Dylan to further the cause of their Lubavitch messianism. I think that Bob sensed this and backed off of his "discovery" after a while. One of the most amusing stories that I can recall about Dylan's interaction with the St Paul Jewish community was during a Sabbath afternoon meal at the St. Paul orthodox synagogue. Larry Keegan, with his caretakers drove to the synagogue (since he was quadrapalegic, this was accepted by the community) with Dylan in tow. Dylan was dressed in casual clothing (jeans etc.) which of course was inappropriate for attendence at the synagogue. During the meal (which is served between the afternoon service and the conclusion of the Sabbath) which consisted of herring, matzah, and some deli-salads, one of the elderly members of the congregation noticed Dylan, and, thinking that he was a "Shabbos goy", asked him to open a plastic bag of paper cups (which he thought was forbidden work on the Sabbath). Dylan kindly complied but the Lubavitch rabbis were falling all over themselves to "correct" the old man so as not to anger Dylan. It seemed to me that this "brownnosing" by the Lubavitchers pissed of Dylan more than being thought of as the "Shabbos goy".
Richard Wurmbrand on a self-loathing Jew called Karl Marx in Marx & Satan:
Here are further examples of Marxs use of inversion in his writing: Let us seek the enigma of the Jew not in his religion, but rather let us seek the enigma of his religion in the real Jew. Luther broke the faith in authority, because he restored the authority of faith. He changed the priests into laymen, because he changed the laymen into priests. Marx used this technique in many places. He used what could be called typical Satanist style.
Also:
A Housemaids Revelation An American, Commander Sergius Riis, had been a disciple of Marx. Grieved by the news of his death, he went to London to visit the house in which the admired teacher had lived. The family had moved. The only one whom he could find to interview was Marxs former housemaid Helen Demuth. She said these amazing words about him: He was a God-fearing man. When very sick, he prayed alone in his room before a row of lighted candles, tying a sort of tape measure around his forehead. This suggests phylacteries, implements worn by Orthodox Jews during their morning prayers. But Marx had been baptized in the Christian religion, had never practiced Judaism, and later became a fighter against God. He wrote books against religion and brought up all his children as atheists. What was this ceremony which an ignorant maid considered an occasion of prayer? Jews, saying their prayers with phylacteries on their foreheads, dont usually have a row of candles before them. Could this have been some kind of magic practice?
Dylan, again, on his own grandmother (rather than his childrens grandmother) in Chronicles p 93:
Originally, shed come from Turkey, sailed from Trabzon, a port town, across the Black Seathe sea that the ancient Greeks called the Euxinethe one that Lord Byron wrote about in Don Juan . . . My grandmothers ancestors had been from Constantinople.
The influence of Byrons Hebrew Melodies on the Infidels code in the lyrics? Tell Me about it. Ever thought the opposite of what the experts say? Jesse Byron Dylan, eat your heart out. Biblical scholar M F Unger in Demons in the World Today:
By rejecting Jesus Christ, God incarnate, Judaism temporarily forfeited its high calling and place in Gods purpose in history, until the Jews turn to Christ at his second advent (Zechariah 12:1013:1; Romans 11:25-36). Then their spiritual blindness shall be lifted and they shall be delivered from the demonic delusion that has rested upon them (Matthew 12:43-45) since they recklessly cried, His blood be on us, and on our children (Matthew 27:25).
(Wish wed all been ready, Larry for the Moshiach) Not this time babe, no more of this! Andrew Marvell in To His Coy Mistress:
I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews.
Not one more night, not one more kiss, Not this time baby, no more of this, Takes too much skill, takes too much will, It's revealing.
Not this time; [no more water but fire] next time. Fearful symmetry; the code in the lyrics. Luke 22:50-52 New International Version (NIV):
50 And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. 51 But Jesus answered, No more of this! And he touched the mans ear and healed him. 52 Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard,(A) and the elders, who had come for him, Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs?
Suffer ye thus far with Michael Grays reel feeling for the delicate bluesy nuances of the Authorized Version, the King James Bible (which King James never really authorized). Michael Gray in Song & Dance Man III (2000) p 404 footnote 7:
Which argues [Romans 8:18s beautiful Zen-like KJV English], despite Cartwrights suggestion to the contrary, that Dylans overwhelming preference shared, you might presume, by anyone with a real feeling for language is for the Authorized Version.
Bob left Michael reeling with this feeling. On p 672 barking Michael wields his big critical stick to beat Bob at the game of nursery rhyme and riddle -- unsuccessfully:
The mere inclusion of Born in Time disrupts. It belongs to another album1. Empire Burlesque, perhaps. Being charitable, Knocked Out Loaded. At any rate it has nothing to do with the use of nursery rhyme or fairy tale, and little to do with anything beyond the marketing notion that there ought to be a Seductive Big Ballad on each
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Bob Dylan album. It has two wonderful lines youre comin through to me in black and white, youre blowin down the shaky street but in the end its opaqueness exasperates and smacks of pretension: not only does the title provoke the question Born in time for what? and then fail to answer it, but it leaves you feeling that Bob Dylan doesnt know what he means either.
Born in Time:
You tried and tried, you made me slide You left me reelin' with this feelin'.
Michael Caiaphas Gray tried and tried; St Leo made him slide. John 18 King James Version (KJV):
24Now Annas had sent him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest. 25And Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. They said therefore unto him, Art not thou also one of his disciples? He denied it, and said, I am not. 26One of the servants of the high priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with him? 27Peter then denied again: and immediately the cock crew. 28Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover. 29Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man?
The accounts in the Gospels of the trial and death of Jesus are at variance with each other. For instance, the Gospel of John discounts2 the story of the three earlier Gospels concerning an actual prior trial by the Jewish Sanhedrin in the house of the High Priest, Caiaphus. But all of them have in common the urge to hold the Jewish religious authorities responsible, and to depict Pilate as reluctantly yielding to Jewish pressures.
Unbelievable:
Turn your back, wash your hands Theres always someone who understands It dont matter no more what you got to say Its unbelievable it would go down this way
In Andrew Muirs erstwhile Judas! Number 7 October 2003, Michael Gray on Christopher Ricks Dylans Visions of Sin
Penguin Books, 25 September 2003: Perhaps I tire easily, but I tire also of prose about Dylan that reprocesses his own lines and phrases. Anyone can resort to it, and many do, yet what could be more subject to the law of diminishing returns? (p 57)
(Reading Michael Gray?) Feelin kinda lazy, Michael? Handy Dandy (1990):
Handy Dandy, sitting with a girl named Nancy in a garden feelin kind of lazy He says, Ya want a gun? Ill give ya one. She says, Boy, you talking crazy Handy Dandy, just like sugar and candy Handy Dandy, pour him another brandy
Or a girl named Sarah Beatty. Gray describes the Nancy line as this single confidently invented, supremely free-form line: then comments, p 670:
For all this audacity, all its refreshing sunlit glimpses for all its authenticity as a Bob Dylan song its one people dont altogether embrace. The chorus is to blame. No one likes a line such as Handy Dandy, just like sugar and candy (its the tautology I dislike most). Its there because its part of the songs traditional baggage, and Dylan leaves it in because hes feelin kind of lazy.
James Orchard Halliwell in The Nursery Rhymes of England p 187, a pretwentieth-century collection (and, it turns out, a book referenced by Gray in a footnote) p 229, no. 598:
There was a little nobby colt, His name was Nobby Gray; His head was made of pouce straw; His tail was made of hay; He could ramble, he could trot, He could carry a mustard-pot, Round the town of Woodstock,
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Jenny Diski? From BELIEF IN MOSHIACH POSSIBILITY OR CERTAINTY (c) 1992 Wellsprings, an interview with Dylans Lubavitch buddy Rabbi Manis Friedman:
FRIEDMAN: That's not faith at all. To say that there's a possibility - there are all sorts of possibilities. That's not "complete faith" - emunah shleimah. Emunah shleimah means you cannot conceive of a world today without Moshiach. Not that he could come, but that he must come . And Moshiach's coming is dependent on our doing God's will. We did his will; I did my best today; what else does He want?
[Oh, Jokerman, you know what he wants. Oh, Jokerman, you dont show any response.]
HANDELMAN: Maybe you did your best in fulfilling the mitzvos today, but not everybody did. Does the promise, that Moshiach will come today, "if you do My will" mean that everyone must do G-d's will? FRIEDMAN: That's a genuine point of contention. Are we good enough? Have we done enough? Are we ready for Moshiach? The Rebbe says we are. HANDELMAN: Why does he think so? FRIEDMAN: Because the Rebbe looks at us as a historical collective, not just as one generation. And the Jewish people, having gone through 2,000 years of this horrible exile, are more than ready, and more than deserving. HANDELMAN: Why, because we have suffered? FRIEDMAN: Yes, not only suffered, but we have suffered well. We have excelled in suffering, without losing our faith.
On the rising curve of Moshiach-Caesar (666): the analeptic story of a 2000year exile. If Michael can read this riddle, Ill give him a groat. Michael dont get anything he dont deserve where he was exasperated in time (under the red sky). An achievement that has gone entirely unrecognized, Michael . . .
World-leading Dylanologist, expert on the blues and nursery rhyme under the red sky Michael Gray says, in Song & Dance Man III p 14:
Its a pity Dylan pads out the album with some substandard rockism (Wiggle Wiggle and Unbelievable) and the ill-fitting3, foggy pop of Born in Time, because the core of the album is an adventure into the poetic possibilities of nursery rhyme that is alert, fresh and imaginative, and an achievement that has gone entirely unrecognized.
Recall:
At any rate it has nothing to do with the use of nursery rhyme or fairy tale,
Babyish nursery rhyme is the scholarly blind horse that led Michael around for most of the Nineties. In that early unadorned version of Born in Time to which Andrew Muir refers in Troubadour feature these lyrics:
You were high, you were low You were so easy to know Oh, babe, now it's time To raise the curtain, I'm hurtin'
Even were Grays critical snort true, what about riddle? Halliwells Popular Rhymes & Nursery Tales of England p 185:
HUGH OF LINCOLN He tossed the ball so high, He tossed the ball so low; He tossed the ball in the Jews garden, And the Jews were all below.
Suffer ye thus far Michael left reeling without much wiggle room. Suffer he till thither. Not this time; next time. Wycliffe New Testament (WYC):
47 Yet while he spake, lo! a company, and he that was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them; and he came [nigh] to Jesus, to kiss him. 48 And Jesus said to him, Judas, betrayest thou man's Son with a kiss? 49 And they that were about him, and saw that that was to come, said to him, Lord, whether we smite with sword? 50 And one of them smote the servant of the prince of priests, and cut off his right ear. 51 But Jesus answered, and said, Suffer ye till hither. And when he had touched his ear, he healed him.
Compare (my selection from) the Contents page of the Opies Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book:
i. iii. v. viii. ix. Baby Games and Lullabies Little Songs A Little Learning Riddles, Tricks and Trippers Ballads and Songs
The Contents page of Halliwells Popular Rhymes & Nursery Tales of England contains Riddle Rhymes p 131. Recall Michael Gray:
. . . but in the end its opaqueness exasperates and smacks of pretension: not only does the title provoke the question Born in time for what? and then fail to answer it, but it leaves you feeling that Bob Dylan doesnt know what he means either.
An unfairness that time sorts out (p 696). The Incarnation: The Creator of Time is Born in Time St. Leo the Great Early Church Father and Doctor of the Church
This excerpt from a Letter by St. Leo the Great (Ep. 31, 2-3: PL 54, 791-793) is used in the Roman Office of Readings for December 17. Saint Leo emphasizes the meaning of the genealogies of Jesus given us in Luke and Matthew's gospels--that Jesus was truly one of us, possessing a complete human nature. He did not merely appear in human form, as in the biblical types and scriptural symbols of the Old Testament. The mystery of our reconciliation with God recorded in the Bible could not have occurred unless he had stooped to assume our lowly nature even while fully possessing the divine nature of his heavenly father.
To speak of our Lord, the son of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as true and perfect man is of no value to us if we do not believe that he is descended from the line of ancestors set out in the Gospel. Matthews gospel begins by setting out the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, and then traces his human descent by bringing his ancestral line down to his mothers husband, Joseph. On the other hand, Luke traces his parentage backward step by
step to the actual father of mankind, to show that both the first and the last Adam share the same nature. No doubt the Son of God in his omnipotence could have taught and sanctified men by appearing to them in a semblance of human form as he did to the patriarchs and prophets, when for instance he engaged in a wrestling contest or entered into conversation with them, or when he accepted their hospitality and even ate the food they set before him. But these appearances were only types, signs that mysteriously foretold the coming of one who would take a true human nature from the stock of the patriarchs who had gone before him. No mere figure, then, fulfilled the mystery of our reconciliation with God, ordained from all eternity. The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon the Virgin nor had the power of the Most High overshadowed her, so that within her spotless womb Wisdom might build itself a house and the Word become flesh. The divine nature and the nature of a servant were to be united in one person so that the Creator of time might be born in time, and he through whom all things were made might be brought forth in their midst. For unless the new man, by being made in the likeness of sinful flesh, had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Fathers substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan. The Conquerors victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition. But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to have been born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Dylan-Christ and the Incarnation in the Garden of Gethsemane, addressing the Jewish people from then until the Parousia next time. In the Garden revisited.
You came, you saw, just like the law You married young, just like your ma,
Ronnie Keohane, from somewhere in the foggy Web of destiny around 1999 or so, on In the Garden (1980):
From the Life of Christ from a Jewish perspective class taught annually at Ariel Ministries Camp Shoshanah by Dr Arnold Fruchtenbaum, I was taught the following: According to the Jewish procedure that is reflective in the New Testament, if there was any kind of messianic movement, the Sanhedrin had to investigate the situation in two stages. The first stage was the stage of observation. A delegation was formed to investigate only by way of observation. They had to observe what was being said; what was being done; and what was being taught. They were not permitted to ask any questions or raise any objections. After a period of observation they were to return to Jerusalem, report to the Sanhedrin and give a verdict: was the movement significant or was the movement insignificant? If the movement was decreed to be insignificant, the matter would be dropped. Dr Fruchtenbaum: But if the movement was declared to be significant, there would then be a second stage of investigation, the stage of interrogation. In this stage, they would interrogate the individual or members of the movement. This time they would ask questions and raise objections to discover whether the claims should be accepted or rejected. The leadership learned several things. The crucial thing that they realized was that Jesus was not going along with Pharisaic Judaism. He was not accepting the Pharisaic authority. He was teaching things which contradicted the
Pharisaic interpretation of the Mosaic Law. In the Sermon on the Mount, He had repudiated Pharisaism on two accounts: First, as a proper interpretation of the righteousness which the Law of Moses demanded; and second, as the righteousness necessary for entering the Kingdom.
And Keohane, Messianic Jewess from a line of Catholics who converted some two-hundred years ago, missed the prophetic meaning of Born in Time the capstone of the album (that nursery-rhyme builders Michael Gray and Andrew Muir rejected). Michael Gray p 247 on the evangelistic period:
. . . and that what makes these Born Again albums so flawed and shallow in the context of Bob Dylans whole catalogue is that he has been satisfied, on these records, to assert and argue and declaim but he has hardly bothered anywhere on them to fulfil the more important tasks of the artist: he has not created worlds here, he has only argued about them.
As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are Bob Dylans thoughts higher than Michael Grays thoughts. To quote some eternal verities from Michaels favourite version of the Bible, the KJV Isaiah 55:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: 11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
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Jonathan Cott, the loquacious laconic4 Jonathan Cott, in Dylan (1985) p 202:
To give the devil (or should I say angel?) his due, I should remind both myself and the reader that, as the Jungian analyst Jeffrey Satinover has written: "Once the star is established, his fans will tear him to pieces should ever he fail to carry for them the projected childhood Self. A recent example from pop culture is the fans' vituperative reaction to Bob Dylan's unexpected changes of style. Once a narcissistic complementation has been set up between any leader and his following, he is as
Loquacious if you are Terry Kelly or (implicitly) laconic if you are Michael (p 255) commenting on the predominance of photos in the book Dylan.
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bound as they. The rigidity of the relationship and the strength of the forces maintaining the status quo stem from the mutual common individual fear of fragmentation." Or as Dylan told the Minneapolis weekly City Pages in 1983: "People want to know where I'm at because they don't know where they're at."
Cotts laconicism expasperated Michael (on p 255). In the moderately uncompelling Michaels footnote to p 566:
An artist as immoderately compelling as Bob Dylan is to those he gets his hook into inevitably attracts oceans of this specious amateurish commentary, as you will know if you have ever wandered through the websites and newsgroups devoted to him the muddiest superhighway in the universe or the deliberately unedited pages of the Dignity magazine.
Again from Andrew Muirs erstwhile Judas! Number 7 October 2003, Michael Gray on Christopher Ricks Dylans Visions of Sin
Penguin Books, 25 September 2003: Where there is criticism there is often much hissing and venom. Worse, poor critical writing is plentiful and can strangle up your mind (p 56)
http://michaelgrayouttakes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/blue-sky-thinking.html
BLUE SKY THINKING I'm always behindhand reading my copies of the London Review of Books, which arrive fortnightly (though it seems more often than that), and yesterday, still on Vol.33 no.22 from last November 17th, I reached Jenny Diski's review of a book called The Myth and Mystery of UFOs by Thomas Bullard. Her review began with this admirable argument: The problem with that blue sky thinking we were introduced to by New Labour is that we happen to perceive the sky as blue only because of our particular physiology and arrangement of senses on this particular planet. Blue sky thinking doesn't so much encourage limitless imagination as embed in its own metaphor our absolute inability to think outside our perceptual and conceptual limitations.
Michaels blue-sky thinking under the red sky. Or red-sky thinking under the blue sky? Hey, Jenny Diski, hey!
There was a little nobby colt, His name was Nobby Gray; His head was made of pouce straw; His tail was made of hay; He could ramble, he could trot, He could carry a mustard-pot, Round the town of Woodstock, Hey, Jenny, hay!
On the rising curve of Moshiach-Caesar. Call him the Antichrist. Robert Graves in The White Goddess (p 336) on his own particular slant on 666, the number of the (Neronic or Domitian[an?]) Beast in Revelation:
Poets will know what I mean by slantwise: it is a way of looking through a difficult word or phrase to discover the meaning lurking behind the letters.
Page 339:
The proleptic or analeptic method of thought, though necessary to poets, physicians, historians and the rest, is so easily confused with mere guessing, or deduction from insufficient data, that few of them own to using it. However securely I buttress the argument of this book with quotations, citations and footnotes, the admission that I have made here of how it first came to me will debar it from consideration by orthodox scholars: though they cannot refute it, they dare not accept it.
Atonement and the Incarnation in Bob Dylans under the red sky (1990): an achievement that has gone entirely unrecognized. By Michael Gray the Caiaphas of Dylanology. 2012 Paul Kirkman, Messianic Dylanologist.