A brief trip turns into an odyssey

Carol was the first to get bit by the hype bug, and then she lured me in as well. So on Saturday we went to see "The Odyssey." I am not a movie critic and am loathe to dissect a story, its rendition, its dialogue, actor choice, etc. Although it was nearly three hours long, all in all it was a good show. It is funny how a year ago no one was interested in reading a story from thousands of year ago but now, with a little shove from some hype, people are expressing some (scant) interest in tackling the hundreds of pages. Some of us remember going over it in grade school. What with the cyclops and all, it made an impression. At first I tried to read various reviews of the movie, but that soon grew stale. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone can find a negative or positive if they are looking for it. Reading these can flavor a viewer toward acclaim or disparagement. So we just took it in. In an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal, Donna Zuckerberg touches on a resonating observation. She says, "It turns out a lot of people have a lot of opinions about what fidelity to an ancient text should mean." When I read that, I thought of two famous documents. The first is our Constitution. The words are all the same for everyone who reads them. But there continues to be a difference of opinion as to what they mean and how they are applied today. The other text is the Bible. Having read, studied, memorized and taught it for decades, her statement could have come from my Hermeneutics class. I used to use the glasses analogy. When you are reading a centuries-old text, you should take off your 2026 glasses and put on 1000 BC glasses, or whatever time frame fits. What it meant to them is not necessarily what it means to us, but that takes precedence. Also, I would suggest putting on "Jesus glasses" when reading the Bible. This is like wearing 3D glasses at a 3D movie. Look for Jesus in the stories. Charles Surgeon said, "From every text of scripture there is a road to Christ." So I left the inner critic at home and enjoyed the movie. Like ET, Forrest Gump and Dorothy from Kansas, (spolier alert) he comes home. Tom Rupp is a Folsom resident and weekly Telegraph columnist. You can reach him at truppfolsom@yahoo.com.