Loading...It is impossible to understand, let alone appreciate, many aspects of modern culture (“high” culture — art, music, poetry, fiction, etc.) without a relatively deep knowledge of the Christian tradition going back to the New Testament itself. I repeatedly tell my students this — becoming religiously literate in the western tradition is not simply for those who are religious, or are committed the Christian faith in particular, or are even just curious about ancient religion. It is important for making sense of many of the cultural glories of the modern world.
As a New Years Resolution this year my wife Sarah decided to memorize a poem every week. She’s an English professor who has no trouble knowing the best of the best. Her first week it was W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” a familiar poem to literary buffs but not universally, and one with deep resonances that take a lot of pondering, even if
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Thank you Dr Ehrman. Another very thought provoking post. Second Coming is a poem I’ve come across occasionally and it often gets quoted in books about the Sphinx (for obvious reasons).
But the line: “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” jumped out at me. I am watching the TV News, dominated at the moment with the precarious position of our Prime Minister here in the UK, because of the fallout from the release of the Epstein Files. “Things fall apart” indeed!
Yup…
Hi Bart. That’s a great poem. I especially like the ceremony of innocence drowned (baptism?) and the indignant birds looking for a safe place to land. But it’s political to me as I think it was to Yeats.
I read an article in which the author declared that “politics is the new religion”. I think it’s so true. It seems pretty clear to me that we looking for the next messiah in a world leader and worshipping at the altar of Christian nationalism. I don’t see any bible quotes about the poor, the hungry, the prisoner, the rich on the news. I think Jesus has left the building. Not for me though.
“We’re captive on the carousel of time” Joni Mitchell
Now spinning out of control.
Thanks for introducing me to this poem. I admit I had to read commentary on it to understand what Yeats was trying to say. When I consider the human condition from the ancient world until today, I tend to think the world is gradually getting better, not worse. It seems to me (if I zoom out enough) the moral consciousness is improving overall. But a close look at the violence of the 20th century could certainly cause one to question the moral and ethical trajectory of our human race. May goodness and love triumph!!!
Like a song lyric poems can mean whatever we want, need or think.
I think this one is saying the devil exists in parallel to Christ.
I love this poem. I studied it in college and still return to it. But I have since abandoned any allegorical approach to poetry, as if poetry must always “mean” something. To put it a way that would be helpful to students of the bible, we all, or must of us, know that the book of Daniel and Revelation “mean” something way beyond the narratively elements they employ. In those cases we have allegory, which is, at first, intellectually parsed.
But in much good poetry the “goodness” of it lies in the fact that one cannot “parse” it. We can talk about how it makes us feel, what strikes us. But we cannot parse it.
Yeats’ poem here is like that. I have read it for years. But I cannot exegete it. It scares the hell out of me, but I cannot tell why. The line “slow thighs” haunts me, there is something monstrous, not merely animal, suggested.
This poem is a mythical masterpiece and I think any attempt to allegorize it, to parse it into “discreet meanings” is to butcher it.
I am very glad Dr. Ehrman brought this poem to the attention of his members.
Such a powerful thunderclap ending!
I’m curious where you tend to land on the question of historical progress. Do you find yourself more persuaded by the kind of argument Stephen Pinker makes… that the measurable gains of the modern era (declines in violence, increases in health, literacy, and rights) undercut anxieties like Yeats’s fear that “the center will not hold”?
Or do you think that, even if Yeats hasn’t been decisively proven right, there’s reason to be cautious about that optimism, especially given how confident many people were about progress before the Great War? On that reading, Yeats isn’t rejecting progress outright so much as questioning the assumption that history moves in a steady upward line, suggesting instead that it unfolds in cycles of order, breakdown, and renewal.
I’d be interested to hear which of those instincts you find more convincing, or how you’d nuance the tension between them.
I’m torn on the issue of “moral progress.” On the whole, it’s true that stuatistically things are incomparably better than in previous centuries millenia. It’s also true that the human condition is continually being shaped and guided by uniquely modern economic, social, and political conditions. I guess my view most of the time is that we are far better off than most people since the advent of homo sapiens, and far more culpable for the horrible harms we both cause and ignore….
Joni Mitchell put music to the poem in “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”. Overall I liked the song, but didn’t care for some of her changes to the verses – though I did like her addition “the wrath has finally taken form”.
The Christian reference is mixed with the more ancient imagery of the Great Sphinx whose “slow thighs” move inevitably towards an apocalypse.
Each generation has its own angsts and despairs and horrors. Yeats poem seems to speak to them as evidenced by the many references to it in the years since he wrote the poem. It speaks to our time.
Lots of images: anarchy, sphinx like creature rising out of the sand as birds fly over head, waking from a slumber. Could it relate to our maturing selves? It’s a possible interpretation.
At the time Yeats wrote “The Second Coming”, many Christians held a Postmillennial view of eschatology. The Great War smashed the hopes of ushering in the Millennium through progress and evangelism. The middle and end of the 19th century saw great Evangelical fervor for missions and a belief the conversion of most or all of the earth to Christianity was imminent. They believed that if the world was populated with righteous believers, it would inevitably become a better place. They were wrong. In spite of their best efforts, even now the percent of Christians in the world is less than in 1900 according to the Lausanne Movement. Add to that the sobering fact that no Parousia happened, nor was it in sight. Yates appears to be offering a cynical, skeptical view of Christianity’s failure with it being replaced with a rough beast.
Dr. Ehrman,
Given Matthew (27:45), Mark (15:33), and Luke (23:44), when Jesus was crucified, the Synoptic Gospels say there was darkness. I have usually focused on the place of crucifixion. I’ve recently been made aware there are apologists say as far as China to the east and Central America to the west may have experienced the darkness. Tertullian (2nd century) claimed the event was documented in Roman archives as a cosmic event, and Origen and Eusebius quoted the historian Phlegon of Tralles regarding an extraordinary, darkened sun (source: Google AI overview).
#1 It may not have happened at all.
#2 It may have been an eclipse but maybe not because solar eclipses do not occur during a full (Passover).
#3 There were multiple volcanoes that darkened the sky in Judea, China, and Central America.
#4 “Jesus’ crucifixion was a big deal regardless of what happened.”
Do you agree with #1 and #4?
Do you agree with Tertullian?
Was it just local or was it global?
Is it misleading for apologists to make the darkness international or global?
Or is the darkness just symbolic as you said on Oct 9, 2022 when discussing the earthquake at crucifixion?
Thank you.
There’s no historical record of an eclipse or any comparable event at the time. It’s an apocalyptic image. Later authors, including modern ones, want to come up with a naturalist explanatoin to show “it’s really true,” but, alas …
Steefen:
Thank you.
Bart Ehrman:
It’s an apocalyptic image.
Steefen:
As a Christian I often think of the apocalypse to come, but given the first part of Jesus’ ministry, there was an apocalypse to the hope promised by the first part of Jesus’ ministry. As a literary device, the heavens should have expressed themselves that way over the first part of Jesus’ ministry ending as it did.
• Righteousness (義 – yì): This character is formed by combining the character for sheep (羊 – yáng) on top of the character for me/I (我 – wǒ). The argument is that this symbolizes “I am covered by the lamb,” or righteousness comes from the sacrificial lamb.
• Sacrifice (犧 – xī): This character contains the sheep radical (羊) and an altar/ritual symbol.
• Some cite the character for “beauty” (美 – měi) as a combination of “big” (大 – dà) and “sheep” (羊 – yáng), suggesting a “perfect lamb” or “great sacrifice”.
So the claim that one Chinese pictographic component originates with Jesus’ crucifixion (perfect lamb/great sacrifice) is interesting and intriguing, non-apologetic archaeology and linguistic history do not support a direct connection between the crucifixion of Jesus and Ancient Chinese etymology.
When I was a freshman in University in1968 this was included in required reading for an English Literature course along with T.S. Eliot’s “Prufrock.”. Is it a political statement to ask if this is still true?
Depends where you attend university. My wife is a professor of English, and it’s quite clear that in most cases the answer would be clearly no: neither is required reading (virtually anywhere) and normally not even offered optoinally. English departments, like everything else, have moved on, for better or worse, depending on where you stand.
One need only look at a few history books to see war after war after war all over the world. However, since
arguably the time of the US civil war a threshold was crossed where people had enough power to level a city
by mistake such as either an accidental explosion, failed water systems, Three Mile Island event, etc.
To me the ever widening chasm is the failure to be responsible for the technology because of cost. I also worry that religious and political belief substitutes to oversimplify the understanding of these man made systems.
This is a new one to me. Thanks for sharing.
To me this speaks to the human condition, the falcon not hearing the falconer. Our “True self” vs the ego self.
Sometimes we are too far gone to hear.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.” Swinging between the extremes seems to be what all of history tends to do. I suppose it is good because we are always left with the remnant of those who stay in “the center” hoping for the day that something slouches toward Bethlehem.
Just my interpretation. Thanks for reading
Brought to mind Shelley’s Ozymandias, written a century earlier.
Here is a link to some documentaries about the Baha’i Faith. The documentary “What Hath God Wrought” is about the Advent. Please let me know what you think about it.
https://www.youtube.com/@jqcotten
Joel Quentin Cotten
[email protected]
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;”
Let us hope or pray or both that the centre does hold. Better yet, let us take steps to ensure that it does.
First read this poem 60 years ago. Same reaction … chilling.