“NOVA: The Bible’s Buried Secrets”: It might’ve been appropriate to open the Sunday sessions with a Bible story, but it was pretty heady stuff for us to absorb so early in the morning. Paula Apsell, producer of “NOVA,” introduced “The Bible’s Buried Secrets” thusly: “Shot in Israel, Egypt, Syria, and the U.S., the film challenges viewers to think about the Bible in an entirely new way, one that exams the message and the meaning even as it looks for a historical core. What emerges is provocative new evidence surrounding the origins of monotheism and the ethical code that accompanies it, ideas that change the world and resonate for us today as it did then.” Fascinating stuff, sure, but way too much to take in at 9:00 AM. But there was at least one portion of the discussion that captured my attention: the question about whether God had a wife.
Professor William G. Dever responds: “The reason why God is so bad-tempered in the Old Testament is mostly he was lonely. And if he had listened to his wife, he wouldn’t have done those bad things. We know that in the minds of many ordinary Israelites, there was a pair of deities. Why shouldn’t there be? There was everywhere else in the ancient world. You have to remember monotheism is a difficult consideration. The development of monotheism is late, in some cases arbitrary and even artificial. A much more natural system is to have a plethora of gods, one for each need. And that’s what most peoples in the ancient world thought, and so did they in Israel. The very fact that the prophets and reformers condemned the worship of other gods means it was going on all over the place. Otherwise, why talk about it? So it’s clear that while those who wrote the Bible and edited it and passed it down were rigid monotheists, so to speak, all men, in the minds of many, God, of course, had a consort. And why not? If women had written the Bible, the portrait of God would be different.”
How would it have been different? Too…many…jokes. Must…move…on…to…next…panel…
“NOVA: Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives”: This one was actually even more headspinning than its predecessor, since it was about the late physicist Hugh Everett and his Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which predicts that every time we make a decision, a parallel universe splits off from our everyday reality (ow, my head just exploded!), but what made it stand out was the fact that it views Everett’s work through the eyes of his decidedly non-mathematical son, Mark…who you may know better as E, the heavily-bearded frontman for The Eels.
The key to the show is the relationship between E and his father…or, more specifically, the lack thereof. Hugh Everett died in 1982, so he never saw his son become a famous musician (at least from a cult standpoint), but…you’ll pardon the unintentional pun…they really were living in two different worlds. “I think it is a common thread with a lot of families that fathers and sons have their issues and maybe don’t always connect,” said E, “but we didn’t connect at all. I mean, it was sort of shocking the degree of how isolated he seemed to me, growing up in the same house with him all those years. But how do you relate to the rest of the world when that’s what’s going on in your mind, you know?”
E did have some fond memories of his father, despite their lack of a connection. “I remember him delighting in things like ‘Star Trek’ and ‘The Twilight Zone’ and science fiction books. We’d have neighbors come running over and…they’d be sitting in a hammock one summer day, reading a science fiction book, and it would have a reference to my father, and they’d come running over and knock on the door, all excited.”
There’s a scene in the film when the producers find some tapes of E with his dad, and for all his enthusiasm about working on this project (he calls it “an extraordinary process” and “probably the single-most life-changing thing I’ve been through”), there was clearly still a certain amount of annoyance about the way he found his way to hearing these tapes. “I didn’t want to listen to the tapes,” he admitted. “It was a really awkward moment for me when I walked into the room. The filmmakers had already listened to some of the tapes, and they were all kind of looking at me like…it was like they set a trap for me. I was scared. It was just the weirdest thing was hearing his voice for the first time in, whatever, 25 years or something. I couldn’t even remember his voice, but then as soon as I heard it, I remembered it really well.”
E’s comments make it pretty clear that the gene for physics skipped a gene, but he’s resigned to it. “I’m not bitter about not being a mathematics genius at all,” he assured us. “I’d much rather be a rock star. The groupies are a lot better.
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