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Watch the video below first, it gives some awesome examples of hollywood's use of intertextuality. Intertextuality is an idea that I was introduced to this semester in Dr. Crisler's Jesus and the Gospels course. Intertextuality occurs when a text, film, or other form of media uses an older text, film, or form of media. When it does this, it is not simply referencing this media, it brings the entire context of the media into the new context. In the video below, the example that is used is the rose and the phrase "be our guest" within the context of the new Beauty and the Beast film. That rose has a story that it brings to mind with a full cast of characters and moments.
We see intertextuality within the Bible as well, not just within film. Intertextuality is one of the main ways that the New and Old Testament relate to each other.  An example of this is when the criminal on the cross says to Jesus "remember me". You, as the good Jewish reader of the Old Testament that you are having read it many times over, would immediately understand what the criminal on the cross next to Jesus is saying. There is something going on here that is beyond a man asking to be remembered in his last moments. First off, it is quite bizarre that a dying man is asking another dying man to remember him.  Secondly, why is being remembered important?  This is where it is important to understand the intertextual nature of the New and Old Testament. Throughout the entirety of the Old Testament, when people are crying out to be remembered, especially as they are dying, it is almost always to YHWH. They cry out to God alone to be remembered by, because He is the only one who can do anything about their circumstance. Remembrance is a covenantal idea as well. Nearly every time that God is about to act to fulfill His promise to someone, the Old Testament text will say that God remembered the people who he made the promise to. We see this in Genesis with the story of Noah. The text tells us that God remembered Noah. God didn't forget Noah, but He is now choosing to act to fulfill his promise to Noah. So when the criminal on the cross asks Jesus to remember him, it is not simply a cry for his life to be remembered. This is a recognition of the Divinity of Jesus as well as a cry for Jesus to keep his promises and save.
Intertextuality then not only becomes a tool for referencing or communicating new ideas or truths, but intertextuality becomes a language for those who know the story to speak with. In another video I added to the bottom of this post, the intertextuality of Stranger Things is shown. Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons become the language that the kids in the show speak with. They are both familiar with the stories and the characters and the plot and seek to understand their lives and situations they are facing within these stories. They describe the evil creature they are facing as a Demogorgon.  The creature is not literally a Demogorgon, but the language of Dungeons and Dragons becomes how they are to understand the situation they are.  The stories we read and more importantly, the stories we share become a way of not only understanding our lives but also a way of communicating with others who share these stories with us.

Here is another really cool video about Stranger Thing's use of intertextuality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwTpsw-ufDA

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How Stories Control Our Economic Reality

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HELP ME MAKE MORE VIDEOS: http://www.patreon.com/nerdwriter TUMBLR: http://thenerdwriter.tumblr.com TWITTER: https://twitter.com/TheeNerdwriter Email me here: thenerdwriter@gmail.com i'll add the rest tomorrow. now: sleep

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I stumbled upon this video a few weeks ago on my youtube suggestions page. It goes very much in line with some of the videos I have posted previously about the importance of story and narrative. John Green, who I have mentioned previously in posts, advocates in this video for popular fiction. He explains how fiction is a break from life in one way. It can be an escape that actually grows you and challenges you as opposed to the mindless escapism of social media. Another thing that he draws attention to is the fact that fiction can give insights into problems and thoughts on life that people are asking. John Green in particular writes to teenagers, which he discusses can actually be very helpful because teenagers ask questions more directly than most adults to. What is so powerful about fiction is that it allows you to live many lives. Reading a story can literally let you see the world from someone else's point of view. It is not simply knowing someones story, it is following the way they see the world, the way they process things, the way they deal with grief and many other things that happen only within the mind. Fiction allows truth to be communicated in a way that prose cannot. Prose discourse often communicates facts or opinions quite directly, while narrative has a way of unfolding a certain truth or idea over an extended period of time. It does not simply say here is what is true; narrative allows you to come to those conclusions on your own about what is important or how to deal with difficulties of life. Stories are how people have always communicated and it is within stories that we can better understand others and better understand ourselves. With stories we not only live our lives, we are able to live hundreds of lives.

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Why Stories Matter - John Green (NerdCon: Stories 2015)

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John Green explains why he is thankful for the power that stories have to release us from the prison of ourselves, to broaded our perspective, and to let us break out of our default viewpoints. ----- NerdCon: Stories is an annual conference created to celebrate the institution of storytelling.

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Human Microbiomes and Our Decisions That Aren't Always Our Own

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Human Microbiomes and Our Decisions That Aren't Always Our Own

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One thing that has been a reoccurring theme within the class is about how often the decisions we make are not always our own completely.  As a result of the way we are raised, the schools we go to, the places we grew up, our friends, our parents, and a whole myriad of other environmental factors, often the decisions we make are not our own.  In addition to all these external factors, there are a great number of internal factors that effect the way we think and live. One of these factors is what are called microbiomes. This video does a wonderful job explaining it, but essentially all creatures are hosts to a number of microbes that live within their body, primarily in their gut. These microbes help break down foods and serve other purposes within a symbiotic relationship. There are usually just as many if not more microbes living within us as there are cells. It has been estimated that there are anywhere from 2 to 10 times as many microbes per cell within humans. These microbes can cause us to crave certain foods that benefit them or to detest other types of foods.  To some extent, we are still learning to what extent they can effect us.  This idea is explored further within the book, I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong and in Turtles All The Way Down by John Green. In other organisms, microbes have been known to have a lot of control over the decisions those organisms make. There is a microorganism that lives within a fishes eye, which is where it can mature, but can only mate within fishes digestive tracts. Thus, while the microorganism matures, it causes the fish to swim low out of the way of danger. Once the microorganism is fully mature and ready to multiply, it causes the fish to swim near the surface to be eaten by a bird, which just so happens to be where the microorganism can multiply. I think this raises some fascinating questions about how much the things within us, that aren't part of us, effect the way we think

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How Bacteria Rule Over Your Body – The Microbiome

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This past week in honors we were talking about how nature can be used to oppress and hurt other human beings. I brought up this video and thought I would share it so others could watch it. Borders is a series created by the youtube channel Vox.  Within this series they show how somewhat arbitrary lines on maps have created issues and conflict across the world.  In this specific issue they show how Haiti and the Dominican Republic, though they share the same land mass, have completely different economies and qualities of life.  Part of the reason for this was the way the land was used in the past by powerful European countries.  Spain simply used the land lightly and did not interfere too much with their part of the island, while France overworked the land to the point that to this day agriculture growth is still incredibly limited in Haiti. These people that share the same island live entirely different lives because of the way that land was used hundreds of years ago. We see this type of oppression frequently in European nations.  They often would come in and conquer people groups and take massive amounts of land for themselves without any consideration for the current inhabitants of the land.  They often draw meaningless lines in the sand, many of which still stand to this day.  I think this video is a good reflection of how decisions made centuries ago still can be hurtful to massive groups of people today.

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Divided island: How Haiti and the DR became two worlds

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This is a video that was recently released by the Bible Project. They are a nonprofit based out of Portland, OR. They make animated overviews of every book of a bible, introductions to reading different types of Biblical literature, and they create theme videos that cover the larger themes and ideas that cover the Biblical narrative. This video covers the theme of Justice and they pose some interesting questions at the beginning of this video that I raised in class on Thursday. They begin by asking why some things are moral for other creatures that are not acceptable for humans. The take the position that I come from, which is the idea that morals and justice is something that is revealed via divine revelation. Without some higher moral standard given to us, there really is no agreed upon moral framework to live by. One of the key parts that comes into this idea of morals among humans but not other animals is that humans are set apart and above all other creatures in the beginning of the scriptures. As we have read this semester, there have been a lot of different views on where morals come from. Within a Biblical Worldview, in the beginning of the Bible on page 1 you have God defining what is good. As humans cease autonomy from God, they define what is wise within their own eyes. Throughout the rest of the scriptures you constantly see people doing what was right or good in their own eyes. This is essentially moral pluralism, that everyone decides for themselves to do what is right in their own eyes. The Biblical call that is progressively seen is to bring justice into the world, taking care of the weak, the powerless, the oppressed, the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows. The prophetic books of the Bible are constantly calling out the leaders of Israel for their oppression of other Israelites. Within the New Testament, the people that the church are constantly taking care of is the orphans and the widows. Christ has given those who believe in Him righteousness so they can continue to act justly for the poor, the powerless, the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows. I think this is a better place to establish a Christian Worldview from than C.S. Lewis' odd metaphorical argument for absolute morals.

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Justice • This Is the Bible's Radical View

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http://ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/how-can-the-bible-be-authoritative/

We have been discussing postmodernism and the idea that we find ourselves in these great meta-narratives. N.T. Wright contributes to this conversation within the idea of how the Bible contributes to the meta-narrative of the reality that Christians see themselves in. He opens this lecture (now essay) with the question of how can the Bible be authoritative? Christians often say that the Bible is an inspire, authoritative document. But what does it mean for a book to have authority? We understand the idea of books being authoritative when they are law or moral codes, commands for how to live our life, but the idea of an authoritative document gets lost on the Bible. The Bible is 43% Narrative, 33% Poetry, and 24% Discourse. Most of the time when we think of a document as to being authoritative, we are thinking of discourse. The problem we come across in the Bible is that it is primarily narrative and poetry. Even the discourse we find in the Bible usually contributes to the narrative and does not function as rules to follow. The question then becomes how can narrative be authoritative? Wright poses that the Bible's authority is an extension of God's authority. He suggests that the Bible is a worldview shaping document. It is meant to be read time and time again throughout the lifetime of a person. As you read this ancient text, you will find the way in which you view the world being shaped by it. Your view of how God operates in the world and how you are called to live is slowly shaped by the narratives that you are reading. These stories become your stories and your history. It is the narrative that you find yourself in. Every worldview has claims about what it means to exist, what man's purpose is (or is not at all), and who God is (if he exists at all). Wright's suggestion is that we don't come to the Bible with questions and it provides the answer or that it simply provides us a moral code to live by, but more complexly over years of reading the Bible slowly, diligently shapes its readers and their worldview. Just a note: I am not suggesting that this is what makes the Bible a more truthful or authoritative document than others, but foreshow to suggest how the Bible exercise's its authority and how it shapes the view of the world one has.  This article is a bit lengthy but I think is well worth the read. Below I have also posted a video by the Bible Project that explores this idea in a different way, through the concept of the Bible as Jewish meditation literature.

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This is a video created by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, where they explore things that are peculiar in our society that we treat as normal. In this mini episode they explore the idea of Christopher Columbus Day. I thought this critique of Christopher Columbus and the celebration of him as an official US Holiday was very much in line with some of the things we had discussed about post-modernism. A day that we celebrate about the discovery of the Americas. The problem with this is not only that Vikings had come to America much sooner than Columbus did, but also that millions of people already inhabited the Americas long before any European "discovered" them.  By means of disease or violence he killed a great number of people. In spite of all of this, it is still a day that remains on our calendar and is recognized in our country In this video, they also comment on the way we teach the history of our country in schools. He is usually portrayed as this great hero. It is usually not brought into question as to whether Europeans invading the Americas or even the founding of the United States was a good thing. It is just assumed to be an objectively good thing because we not benefit from it and thus we flatten out history and ignore the flaws, failures, and cruelties of those in history.

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Columbus Day - How Is This Still A Thing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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This is a video created by Hank Green on his channel with his brother John Green, called the Vlog Brothers. He explains how young people are not starting small businesses as much as they used to. Many say that small businesses are the backbone of America or the backbone of capitalism and yet via corporate consolidation (covered more extensively by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver here: https://youtu.be/00wQYmvfhn4) and less people starting small businesses, small businesses are getting fewer by the year. In this video Hank attributes this not just simply to the anxiety and stress of starting a business or the fact that young people don't want to start a business, but that those who have money are not investing as much in small businesses and that young people, on account of massive amounts of debt, are simply not in a financial position to start small businesses. People who have lots of money may be hesitant to invest in smaller business start ups that have a decent chance at failing. As college gets to be more expensive and debt increases among younger generations, it is more difficult to start small businesses. I found this to make sense but also to be surprising. I did not realize how much small businesses were being effected by larger corporations in every area and how student debt is effecting our economy. I thought these would be some interesting points to contribute to our discussion of economics with Marx and Weber.

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Watching this video, I can see someone getting the impression that I think you /should/ start a business. That's not true, I think you should be able to if you want to, but there are lots of good reasons to not want to, and very much support people who are more interested in working for other people, especially if you work for me!

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In light of our discussion on Darwin, I thought this lecture on a Biblical view of human origins would be interesting. In total it is 2 hours but you can get the general gist of his argument within the first 15 minutes. This is a really fascinating lecture by a leading Old Testament scholar named John Walton. He has done a lot of studies on the Bible within its context within the Ancient Near East. Essentially his argument is that to interpret Genesis 1-3 properly, one must understand it in the way that Ancient Israelites would have understood it. Christians often conflate the Bible with modern science which usually gets in the way of interpretation. The biggest problem with interpreting the Bible through 21st Century science is that science is constantly changing. If 5 centuries from now a large portion of 21st Century science has been proven wrong then all interpretations of Genesis that were interpreted through 21st Century science will be proven wrong with it. Walton proposes a different way of interpreting the Genesis stories that is routed in how the original readers would have understood it. When the interpretation stands on its own, it preserves the truthfulness of the text within its original context and meaning. Genesis 1 and 2 speak far less about a debate between evolutionists and creationists, but speaks to who God is in the creation of the world and who he has set humans to be. It speaks much more of the worldview people see themselves in than it does of the process of creation.

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Lecture on Human Origins with John Walton

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In our second lecture in the Year of Biblical Literacy lecture series, author and Old Testament Scholar Dr. John Walton spoke on the Ancient Near Eastern context of Genesis 2-3. He offered a unique perspective on the story of Adam and Eve in order to create space for a faithful reading of Scripture along with full engagement with science.