PaulC, on Mar 24 2008, 03:12 PM, said:
Hello Brendan. I think your work is quite spectacular. I love the way you use a very small amount of bricks to craft sweeping vistas with the use of forced perspective in pictures
Hi, Paul. Thanks for the kind words. That technique of forced perspective is something that I stumbled upon early in the Brick Testament project, but now it's hard to imagine how I would have been able to get by without it. I feel that it sometimes doesn't work quite as well as I'd like it to, but on the whole I think it's something I'm getting better at.
Although that Egypt shot was good for its time, it makes me cringe a little now to see the "Nile" flowing off into a diagonal horizon, not to mention a pyramid that was done in light gray bricks. Compare that with an example from my most recent set of stories...
...and the effect is much more subtle. To give the illusion of a city stronghold, I built only two small sections of wall. The closer one uses 1x6 arches, and the farther one uses 1x4 arches to look like more of the same style wall at a distance. And just a hint on the 1/4-scale buildings poke out above the wall to imply a fully inhabited city.
In general, I almost always try to make sure something microscale is in the background of any exterior shots (usually hills, mountains, trees, etc) to aviod the look of the barren land hitting the horizon that characterizes some of my earliest illustrated stories.
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If I had any criticism at all, it would be that sometimes the verses you've selected from the Epistles in the New Testament seem a little out of context. For example, you've illustrated Ephesians 5:24 "And as the Church is subject to Christ, so should wives be to their husbands, in everything" with a wife waiting on her husband. Ephesians 5:28-29 continues "In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church" and if you love your wife you won't be making her wait on you hand and foot!
I am mostly posting to Eurobricks to discuss the LEGO-related aspects of The Brick Testament. It's not that I'm at all against the idea of discussing or even debating the non-LEGO aspects of The Brick Testament, I'm just wary that other Eurobricks readers may find it annoyingly off-topic. Over at LUGNET.com (the only other LEGO-themed online community I've been a part of) there was a clear way to continue a discussion over in the designated "off-topic" forum, but I'm not sure what the etiquette and protocol are here. Anyhow, I'll be happy to answer any such questions, but if other folks are annoyed and wish us to take such discussion elswhere, I'm open to such suggestions. :-)
The part of The Brick Testament that you've singled out here is one I titled "Instructions for Women". From that alone, it should not be too surprising that I did not include the parts of Ephesians that give instructions to husbands, if only because husbands are not women. But I am guessing that the larger nature of your criticism is that I have selectively chosen passages from the Epistles that appear sexist when pulled out of context but are not sexist when read in their original context.
So let's put the verse back in context and see how it fares. I notice that in your quote of Ephesians above, you skipped over the verses in between my quote (verse 24) and your quote (28-29). Ephesians 5:25-27, which directly sets up your quote reads as follows:
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Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind�"yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.
I would contend that this is some highly sexist language in that it implies that, without some sort of death sacrifice from their husbands, wives are somehow unholy, unclean, and blemished.
I would also take issue with your actual quote itself, in which husbands are instructed to "love their wives as their own bodies" and where the author contends that "no one has ever hated his own body". This strikes me as being bizarrely opposed to most Christian writings which presume a pure dualism where mind/spirit is entirely separate from body/flesh, and where the spirit is often protrayed as being trapped within a worthless, sinful, fleshly body. Most of Christian teaching, including that of Jesus himself seems to denigrate the body. Whoever wrote this passage of Ephesians seems to be entirely unfamiliar with the longstanding tradition of Christian asceticism which would seem to date back to Jesus and his first disciples.
But my shorthand method to see whether something is sexist is just to switch the sexes and see how it reads. Let's try that for Ephesians 5:24-30:
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Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also husbands ought to be, in everything, to their wives. Wives, love your husbands, just as Christ loved the church and gave herself up for him, in order to make him holy by cleansing him with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to herself in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind�"yes, so that he may be holy and without blemish. In the same way, wives should love their husbands as they do their own bodies. She who loves her husband loves herself. For no one ever hates her own body, but she nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, because we are members of her body.
Finally, as for my illustration of the wife waiting on the husband found in The Brick Testament, given the larger context of the quote it seems even more appropriate. If a husband wants a beer, for example, he might command his own body to bring him one. If he is to love his wife in the same way he loves his own body, it makes sense that he view her primarily as an object to which he can issue commands in order to satisfy his own desires and achieve his own goals. Sure, you "love your own body" in the sense that you treat it relatively well in order to keep it in healthy working order, but the primary reason you "love your body" is so that it can continue to subserviently obey the commands of your mind, right?
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Thanks for the comments! I will keep at it.
-Brendan
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