Religions and Their Monsters Review Exam #1

Myth/Mythology

• A social object —> the content is not the important part, but the story itself, hence why myths remain even after science has proposed a feasible explanation

• Are possessed by a group rather than an individual —> no known author

• Use a cast of characters that are shared by other myths —> archetypes are set up

• Interpretation plays a huge role in the construction of meaning

• Mythology is the exaggeration of reality to provide a controllable narrative to combat logical or scientific understanding

Why is it important to the course?

• Monsters, though products of religion, are also products of myth —> there are archetypes

• Monsters represent a culture or a people

• Provides control when there is a lack thereof

• Chaoskampf

Religion

• Societal construct —> thus, it is subjective, it depends who and when you ask

  • Changes with time and spaces (context)

• Easier to look at it by asking what it does

• Creates maps of meaning to orient ourselves

• Does not exist outside of the people and practices that the groups who follow it create

• Combination of biological, psychological, and cultural experiencing

Why is it important to the course?

• Allows us to understand how monstrous bodies are created and changed through religion

• All the monsters we look at are from religion, hence we have to know what led to their creation

Teratology

• Study of birth defects/abnormal births

• A deviation from the perceived ideal

• Five causes

  • Supernatural

  • Hybridization

  • Maternal Impression

  • Genetics

  • Accident

Why is it important to the course?

• Teratological births were once viewed as signs/warnings

• This is one aspect that can make something monstrous —> something to look for in the creation of a monster

Abjection

• The state of being other, but very close

  • Being cast off

• Breaking of the barrier between the self and other i.e. bleeding

• Psychological project that derives from our production of the self

Why is it important to the course?

• Explains why we fear the monster —> it is so close to who we really are, but just slightly off and that scares us

Tiamat

• A god from the Enuma Elish

  • Written in Akkadian, a Babylonian creation story

• Mother of the gods

• Tiamat plans to kill the younger gods because they disturb her

• Marduk defeats Tiamat and creates the world out of her body

• Tiamat is a water monster

• Marduk becomes king of the gods by defeating her

Why is it important to the course?

• A shared story with the battle between Ninurta and Anzu —> an intentional scribal product that uses a variety of known popular sources to create a new story —> so they can learn and practice

• An example of chaoskampf

• Early monsterization of female figure to give rise to the patriarchy

Chaoskampf

• A cosmic battle connected to the establishment or order of the universe as we now understand it

• Features a monster in some way associated with water and chaos (frequently a dragon or serpent)

• The hero god defeats the monster in battle (usually gains power from this)

Why is this important?

• Present in many creation stories from different religions —> does this create a mythology?

• Tiamat, Leviathan, Baal Cycle, Ninurta and Anzu

Leviathan

• A serpentine watery chaos monster

• Sometimes has several heads, but there is never a direct description —> even breathes fire in Job’s description

• Directly connects to creation

Why is this important?

• An example of chaoskamph

• An example of category jamming —> threatens categorical understanding by giving overwhelming descriptions of the monster (category crisis)

• Used to establish a natural order and put God on a pedestal

• Central to Young Earth Creationists

Generative Incomprehensibility

• When a narrative is so difficult to make sense of that it is left open to reinterpretation

• Makes it easy to choose what is applicable at any given time

Why is it important?

• Allows for the bodies of revelation monsters to particularly often be cultural bodies

• This reinterpretation has significant implications, from colonialism to the patriarchy

• The book of Revelation was initially written for a specific cultural moment, thus, it has been reinterpreted for other cultural moments

Nephilim/Repha’im

Nephilim:

• Warriors and heroes of old

• They are demigods (sons of god) —> Not angels!!

• They have hybridity

Repha’im

• A group of giants who had lived in places that are now gone

• Also known in Cananite sources —> described as great warriors

• Likely a cultural other

Why are they important?

• Not initially described as giants, or not likely actually to be giants, but they are described as such

• Creates a cultural other

• Polices the borders of the possible (Repha’im), but then God destroys them so that the “in” group can live there

  • Show divine right

• Wiped out by the flood —> create a constant problem of chaos and need to assert order

Angels

• Servants of God

• They are shapeshifters who take the form most suitable to their task

• Do not initially have wings!!

• A liminal entity

Why are they important?

• They are liminal and cannot be confined to categories because of their shapeshifting ability as well as their role as messengers constantly traveling between heaven and earth —> they are given wings in the 3rd or 4th century, which binds and domesticates them —> no longer shape shifters

• Cultural body related to cosmology (spatially how a religion understands the cosmos)

Liminality

• The betwixt in between —> not a part of one specific group or category, in the middle

• Always on the threshold of something

Why is it important?

• Most monsters are liminal, they are at the borders of the possible, they bring category crisis, they cannot be contained —> this state of being liminal is why we fear them

  • Angels specifically are liminal creatures —> exist between heaven and earth

Cherubim

• There is no clear description of what they look like

• Can fly —> probably winged

• Assumed that people of the period would know enough that they don’t need to be explained

• Function to enthrone God

• Woven into sacred locations and objects

• Ezekiel’s Cherubim are different

  • Have human parts, though not in the right places (hybridity)

  • Unclear if this is Ezekiels own description or if the creatures had evolved with the culture

Why are they important?

• Stand at the center of liminality —> they guard the border between the sacred and profane space

  • Don’t only keep the danger out, but also keep the power in

• Part of an angelic hierarchy (bottom in Judaism, top in catholicism)

• Function as a cultural body as their role changes

• Ezekiel 1

  • Emphasis on mobility because the people are in exile —> the beginning of the movement to the idea that God can be anywhere —> God is everywhere (eventually monotheism)

Seraphim

• 6 winged creatures —> two cover face, two cover feet, two used to fly

• Pronounce the sacred character of a space

• Serpentine

• Their overall role is less clear than cherubim

• Fits expected form of religious monsters

Why is this important?

• Not initially seen as angels, but become them when they are given wings

• Evolved with the culture and are not now what they would have been seen as when the texts were being written

• Sometimes on the offensive

• Part of an angelic hierarchy (bottom in Judaism, top in catholicism)

Orientalism

• The way of the west in looking at the east

• A tale constructed by the west that has helped shape all other engagement with the east

• A box that Europe built through which to understand the east —> this then became the only way they could understand it and it would delimit thought and ideas

Why is it important?

• A feedback loop has been created and we are only able to look at the east through this lens, which is western and not actually the truth

  • The discourse has become a self reinforcing trend that has influenced all later understanding

Golam

Add definition

Thesis 1

The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body

• Monster born of particular cultural moments or one that adapts to cultures

• Emerges in moments when categories are unclear

Examples:

• Angels (as well as cherubs and seraphs) being given wings

• Tiamat as the female other (normative male view of power and defeating her is the “correctness” of the patriarchy)

• Changing descriptions of Leviathan

• Giants are known cross culturally, but their bodies vary

• Identity of cherubim and seraphim constantly changing and not having a clear definition

Thesis 2

The Monster Always Escapes

• Damage and destruction are present, but the monster vanishes into thin air, only to come back later

• The monster always comes back

• It has to keep coming back because our society is still scared

Examples:

• Nephilim are said to be wiped out by the flood, but there is the persistent problem of chaos

• Enuma Elish and defeat of Tiamat reenacted every year because the danger of chaos never fully disappears

• The potential for the return of giants is always a threat

Thesis 3

The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Chaos

• Defy established categories of our existence

• Cannot be captured because it is outside of the norm

• “Disturbing hybrids”

Example:

• Literally anything with hybridity

• Seraphim

• Dragon in Revelation 12 —> multiple heads and launches water from it’s mouth

• Tiamat is both monster and goddess, leader and female, destruction and creation

• First beast (leopard, lion, bear)

• Nephilim are both human and divine

• Angels —> give them wings to make ourselves more comfortable with them

Thesis 4

The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference

• The monster represents and embodies an exaggerated “other”

• Good for maintaining the boundaries of a positive “in” group

• We fear the most what we might actually be

Examples:

• Giants

  • Use of size as othering

  • They are close to being human, but not quite, hence, abjection

• Whore of Babylon —> keeps women out of positions of power in the early Christian church

Thesis 5

The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible

• Monster is there to prevent mobility

• Frighten us away from exploring and keep us from power/knowledge

Examples:

• Giants

  • Always stand between the new and the old

  • Rarity and abnormality

• Cherubim

• Tiamat is a warning against non-patriarchal rule

• Woman giving birth in Revelation 12 crosses boundaries in the act of creating a life

Thesis 6

Fear of the Monster is Really a Kind of Desire

• There is something desirable about the way that a monster exists outside of social norms

• Jealous of that freedom

• Safe expression of fantasies surrounding aggression, domination, and inversion

Examples

• Behemoth being the first creature that God created —> thus has a lot of freedom for us to be jealous of

• Whore of Babylon —> men wanted to lead in the early Christian church, so they villainized women through Revelation

• Giant’s strength and power can be objects of desire

• The liminality and freedom of angels

Thesis 7

The Monster Stands at the Threshold of Becoming

• Continually pose the question of why we have created them

• Tell us things about our culture

• Creates a feedback loop of constant questioning

Examples:

• Tiamat is both destruction and creation, on the threshold of becoming either

• Leviathan —> could become anything because of category jamming so we do not fully understand

• Interaction between giants and gods or humans always marks the transition to a new world order