Often, if I read a novel before it’s made into a movie or a TV
series, I often don’t like the screen version.
It’s different if I see the film or the TV series first. It’s often a good introduction to the book.
My introduction to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was via
the various film versions which I saw as a young boy well before I read the
book. Please don’t judge me if I tell
you that my favourite was the “Mr. Magoo” version. (I was only ten or so, after all.)
Similarly, my introduction to Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
came, as it did for many people, through the classic TV adaptation in the early
1980s.
Both became favourite books of mine, which I’ve re-read frequently. (And, you know, I even collect DVD versions
of A
Christmas Carol.)
If, on the other hand, I read the book first and it had a powerful
impact on me, I’m often reluctant to view any later film or TV version of the
book. For example, I haven’t seen the
drama series The Handmaid’s Tale on SBS, even though I found Margaret
Atwood’s novel incredibly gripping.
It’s set in a chilling version of the future, in the Republic of
Gilead, formerly the United States, in which a fanatical sect of supposedly
“Christian” religious fundamentalists (the sort of “Christians” who give
Christians a bad name) … a fanatical sect staged a coup and implemented a
series of oppressive policies including reducing all women essentially to the
status of slaves.
The main character in the book is a woman named Offred. The two parts of her
name says it all: “Of” and “Fred”. She
was the sex slave – or “handmaid” – of a man named Fred. She was the handmaid of Fred. All she was known as was Offred.
I first read The Handmaid’s Tale during one of my
early Tasmanian ministries in the 1980s, in a rural community. In this community, many people persisted in
referring to a married woman by her husband’s first name. A married woman in that community was frequently
called Mrs. Ed Smith, even by people who knew her name was Betty. It wasn’t only in formal settings where such
language could be expected, but even in some casual settings. People would say to one another, “I was
talking to Mrs. Ed this morning”, as
if it was the most normal thing in the world to say … in the 1980s! (I don’t think it happens there now, thankfully.)
Think of Offred and Mrs. Ed as we hear of the time when
Jesus met Bartimaeus. Mark tells us that
Bartimaeus was the son of Timaeus.
That’s true. but possibly a bit redundant. Bartimaeus
means “Son of Timaeus”. When Mark refers
to “Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus”, he was literally saying the same thing
twice.
In Aramaic, “bar” in front of a name means “son of”. This sort of thing goes on in other
middle-eastern languages, with “ben” in Hebrew and “ibn” in Arabic also meaning
“son of”.
This also happens in other language groups as well. For those who have a Celtic surname such as
MacArthur, or O’Brien, or Williams, or Pendennis, your surname began in terms
of one of your ancestors being identified – somewhat like Bartimaeus was – as the
son of Arthur, or Brian, or William, or Dennis.
Here in Tasmania, there was a similar language thing going on,
particularly among rural communities and working-class communities, until
fairly recently. A child or a teenager
was frequently called “the boy of
Kellys” or “the girl of Smiths”, rather than Tom Kelly or Jane Smith. If an adult was still called “the boy of Kellys”
or “the girl of Smiths”, it was a sign that the community held fairly low
expectations of him or her, and was fairly open about its low expectations.
This sounds cruel, but anyone who’s ever lived in a country town or
a working-class suburb knows that both settings can be cruel places for those
who don’t really “fit in”. I say this from
my own experience as someone who grew up in a working-class suburb and who’s
been a minister both in country towns and in working-class suburbs.
Now, Bartimaeus was an adult.
The fact that he was still called, in effect, “the boy of Timaeus’s” may
have indicated a similar set of low expectations on the part of his
community. That may have merely been
because of his blindness, or it could have been for other reasons.
Jesus met Bartimaeus on Bartimaeus’s
own terms, not on the terms of some stereotyped “boy of
Timaeus’s”. He treated Bartimaeus as a
person of value. This has made all the
difference. Jesus calls us, as people
who seek to follow him, to do the same thing.
This, then, is good news, not only for the boy of Timaeus’s, but
also for the boy of Kellys, … the girl of Smiths, … Offred, … and Mrs. Ed.
It’s good news for you and for me.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
