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Three new illustrated stories have been added to the
King Saul section of the
The Brick Testament website. These stories
kind of tie up the loose ends from the first set of King Saul stories and set
the stage for the actual introduction of Saul himself in the next set, hopefully
coming soon.
God Tortures the Philistines
50,070 Israelites Killed by God
Samuel Becomes Judge
(NOTE: For anyone unfamiliar with The Brick Testament or the Bible, please take
note of the content warnings for the stories before viewing.)
Enjoy,
-The Rev. Brendan Powell Smith
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Hi Brendan,
Great work as always!
About those tumors: was the bible explicit that it was cancerous tumors just
like you illustrated them?
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Stephane Simard wrote:
Thanks, Stephane.
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About those tumors: was the bible explicit that it was cancerous tumors just
like you illustrated them?
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No, the Bible is not explicit about what exactly God afflicts the Philistines
with. In fact, “tumors” is just one possible interpretation of a Hebrew word
that has been variously translated into English as “tumors”, “hemorrhoids”,
“sores”, “boils”, or “growths on their skin”.
I simply went with “tumors” since it seemed plausible and would be easier to
graphically depict in LEGO than, say, hemorrhoids.
Interestingly, some ancient Bible manuscripts (the Septuagint and Latin
Vulgate) have an extra verse after the first mention of the “tumors” which
states “and rats multiplied in their land, and the terror of death was
throughout the entire city.” And this, in turn, has caused some to speculate
that God afflicted the Philistines with the bubonic plague!
The extra verse about the rats would better explain why the Philistines send the
ark back with golden tumors and golden rats (inasmuch as there can be said to
be any logic in that at all). But my understanding is that scholars tend to
favor the manuscripts which lack this verse as being more reliable. Without a
great knowledge in this matter, I would speculate that there likely was some
mention of rats in the original story at some point, but that it was somehow
dropped (probably accidentally as copies of copies were made), and that later
scribes noticed this strange missing introduction to the rat theme and inserted
their own.
I have to say, I am sometimes quite tempted myself to try to force certain Bible
stories to “make more sense” by a liberal use of paraphrase in cases where you
can tell what the Bible author was trying to get across, but it’s worded very
poorly (or translates into English extremely awkwardly) or by adding in some
piece of information that would make the story much easier for the reader to
follow.
But I have resisted such temptations in the interest of presenting the stories
“as the Bible tells them”. In certain cases, I will go so far as to rearrange
the order of verses in a story if I think it will make the story easier to
follow for the reader than how the Bible tells it. It’s not an attempt to
change the meaning of the story or any significant details of it, just to make
the storytelling a little less jumbled or needlessly confusing.
Of course, when it comes to something like The Gospels, I (and anyone else
attempting to present some sort of harmonization of them) take a fair amount of
liberty in mixing and matching bits from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in order
to tell “the story of Jesus”. And in upcoming stories, I will likely mix in
bits from Chronicles in with the books of Samuel and Kings since they report
differently on the same subjects.
What was the question? Oh, right! Tumors! Yeah, that’s just a possible
translation. And certainly no mention of cancer. They could have been
marshmallow tumors.
-Brendan
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Outstanding as usual, and love the design of those cattle.
-HRH
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Hey Brendan,
I can’t believe I somehow let this slip by without commenting. I would claim
that I was busy, but in the interim I commented on Barbara Werth’s Rembrandt
MOC, so that excuse won’t fly. Anyway, great work as always:
God tortures the Philistines: Great temple of Dagon, and the use of the
mer-person as the idol is a good choice, as is the use of hair piece to connect
him with your Philistines. The tumors are funny, though I do wish there was a
solution for this that didn’t involve cheating. I see what you said upthread
about the disputed verse about the rats, and I think it might have been okay to
put some LEGO rats here and there in the pics, even if you didn’t quote the
disputed verse.
50070 Israelites killed by God: Nice cattle - I’m sure I’ve commented on their
design before. Too bad you couldn’t gold-plate a rat to throw in the box. One
thing I dislike is the wheat - it really looks like they’re harvesting bamboo.
I’ve seen others use antennae for wheat,
as in this by Jojo,
though getting tons of tan antennae might be painful.
Samuel becomes judge: I love all of the idols being dumped into barrels. What
is that yellow fish behind the blue fairy? Also what is the dark gray lumpy
element in the very front barrel? In the burnt sacrifice scene, turning the
altar upside down works very well, as does sticking the flames through the grid
piece. For some reason I’m unhappy with the modified face in
this scene - it just looks a little unfinished and Mister Bill-esque. Nice
punchline in the last pic. BTW, I like your use of the black beard and modified
hairpiece. I shelled out the extra cash to bricklink a black beard a while back
and have been looking for a distinctive-enough character to use it on.
Bruce
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
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I can’t believe I somehow let this slip by without commenting. I would claim
that I was busy, but in the interim I commented on Barbara Werth’s Rembrandt
MOC, so that excuse won’t fly.
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I was honestly starting to think this would be the first update you’d miss! My
thanks as ever for taking the time to comment, Bruce.
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God tortures the Philistines: Great temple of Dagon, and the use of the
mer-person as the idol is a good choice,
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It might be a good choice. There seems to be some serious uncertainty about
how the Philistines pictured their god Dagon. It has become sort of traditional
to portray Dagon as a half-man half-fish, but this may be inaccurate, as their
is also good evidence to suggest Dagon was a wheat harvest god and not a fish or
sea god.
I actually had this other version of Dagon built that was kind of cool, but HUGE
by comparison, and though it looked cool from the front, it wasn’t very
recognizable as anything when face-down in front of the ark, so in the end I
went with the simpler merman design (which had actually been the reason I
purchase that merman figure a few months back).
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The tumors are funny, though I do wish
there was a solution for this that didn’t involve cheating.
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Amen to that.
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I see what you said upthread about the disputed verse about the
rats, and I think it might have been okay to put some LEGO rats
here and there in the pics, even if you didn’t quote the
disputed verse.
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You’re probably right. Even with what is in the Bible, it’s clear that the
rats were part of the plague. I cut this dialogue from the script for the sake
of succinct storytelling, but the Philistine priests and diviners do say “You
should make impressions of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the
land.”
This tends to be an occasional difficulty with the my methodology of
illustrating only direct Bible quotes. It’s entirely clear from context that
the rats were part of the plague, but since they are not mentioned in the part
of the story that describes the plague actually happening, they got left out.
I remember this being a frustrating problem back when I was illustrating the Ten
Plagues in Exodus. My favorite plague has always been the Plague of Frogs, and
I was so excited to have all these LEGO frogs to use for it. But the way the
Bible tells the story, all the detail of the frog plague is given when God is
telling Moses what is going to happen. When the frogs actually show up,
little detail is given. One can presume that the frog plague happened exactly
as God said it would, but the Bible doesn’t actually spell it out.
In that case I took one of the larger liberties I’ve ever taken with the text,
and worked in God’s description of what was going to happen into my telling of
what did happen. I wasn’t happy about resorting to that tactic, but I just
couldn’t let all those details of the frog plague slip away. Of course, anyone
who doesn’t constrain themselves to direct Bible quotes to retell the stories
would do the same thing without batting an eye. But they would also take all
sorts of other liberties in the retelling that I chose this methodology to
avoid.
There’s an interesting new dilemma I faced in illustrating one of the new
stories I put up today, but I’ll leave discussion of that until later.
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50070 Israelites killed by God: Nice cattle - I’m sure I’ve commented on
their design before.
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Thanks. I thought my original cattle were decent, but when I had the idea to
rebuild them studs-down so that they have visible eye dents, I thought that gave
them loads more character. The neck joint was another improvement thrown in at
some point.
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Too bad you couldn’t gold-plate a rat to throw in the
box.
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Yeah, I couldn’t think of anything to represent that. We’ll just have to assume
the golden rats are in the box beneath the golden tumors. Or the rat models are
“life size” in minifig scale, so a 1x1 round is really the best anybody could do
to represent something so small.
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One thing I dislike is the wheat - it really looks like they’re
harvesting bamboo. I’ve seen others use antennae for wheat,
as in this by Jojo,
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Oh, as I think I said before, I agree 100% that Jojo’s wheat looks much better
than mine.
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though getting tons of tan antennae might be painful.
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They’re about 6 or 7 cents each on Bricklink, but same as last time, it’s more a
matter of failing to plan ahead. Hopefully by the next time I have casue to
illustrate a wheat field, I’ll have ordered a shipment of tan antennae.
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Samuel becomes judge: I love all of the idols being dumped into barrels.
What is that yellow fish behind the blue fairy?
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That’s um... some sort of DUPLO or Scala fishing rod with a fish attached to the
line. I liked the fish, so I hid the rod behind the barrels so that only the
fish part is showing.
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Also what is the dark gray lumpy element in the very front barrel?
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That’s the head of a Star Wars EpII Geonesian figure. The guy on the left is
carrying another one over with some matching dark gray battle droid legs
attached. :)
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In the burnt sacrifice scene, turning the altar upside
down works very well, as does sticking the flames
through the grid piece.
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Thanks. I was glad to have figure out a way to use the flame pieces in a way so
that only the top half is showing. Seeing the bottom part can kind of diminish
the fiery look.
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For some reason I’m unhappy with the modified face
in
this scene - it just looks a little unfinished and Mister Bill-esque.
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Yeah, though I guess I was looking for a Mister Bill expression in that shot.
I’m just sad that LEGO still has not come out with a fairly generic
shocked-looking expression. It’s the original reason I modified a minifig face
for The Brick Testament five years ago when I illustrated Adam & Eve realizing
they were naked.
There’s the face I used for Eli the priest, but it’s so distinctive I can’t use
it too often (though I’ve used it a lot, I know!). Every time new minifig faces
are released, I hope and hope, but so far I’m left with my own crappy drawn-on
slack-jawed expression. :/
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Nice punchline in the last pic.
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Thanks. I don’t remember offhand if the Israelites do indeed get around to
truly wiping out the Amorites. I keep confusing the Amorites and Ammonites. I
hate when I do that. The Ammonites are seen again in today’s update.
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BTW, I like your use of the black beard and
modified hairpiece.
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It’s a nice combo. I had to specially cut that hair to accommodate the beard.
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I shelled out the extra cash to bricklink a black beard
a while back and have been looking for a distinctive-enough character to use
it on.
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Heh, yeah, for a while the black beard piece was so rare that I was reluctant
to use it too, and for the same reason. What character is so important he
gets to use this ultra-rare beard?
But once I broke it in, I feel like there’s really no reason not to use it as
often as I’d use the gray or white beards. But just today I finally got my
hands on another ultra-rare piece: white standard male hair! Again, this brings
me back to the whole reason I first modified any LEGO brick--to make God’s
hairpiece out of a white helmet.
So of course the first thing I did was try the standard white hair piece on God,
and I have to say it looks very odd to me now. It looks like God combed his
hair all neat for a special occasion or something. I don’t think I’ll be
switching God’s hair at this point, but there’s a couple of minifig faces with
white facial hair that this white standard hair looks great with. Can’t wait
to use it! Can’t believe LEGO still hasn’t used it in a commercial set! (Found
this one on Bricklink for $6.)
Off to post the new stories...
-Brendan
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