Fat 'n Happy the Rooster Holy Crow

Just Another Jim

Popeye Exegesis


I used to be involved in Ecunet, an online use-net community. This is a bit of silliness that came across the line a few years ago. This appeared on the b-greek list serve on virginia.edu, from there went to the IOUDAIOS and then the ECULAUGH meetings on ecunet. It is the best exegetical parody I have ever seen and just ran across it looking for something else.

I suppose a background in higher textual criticism would be helpful to understand this. I will note that Bernard Taylor's note was a perfectly serious note, although it was starting to get lost in that strange world of criticism, thus the parody in reply. I will offer a few words of explanation to help those not acquainted with Hebrew.

The discussion has to do with the Divine Name that was supposed to remain unspoken in Hebrew spirituality. In Hebrew only the consonants are written. Later scholars added what are called "points" to represent the correct vowels in each word. Thus, when Hebrew is pointed, non speakers (such as myself) can correctly pronounce the words. Since the name of God was never to be spoken the word was never pointed and its proper pronunciation has been lost. The Hebrew word is transliterated into English with the four letters YHWH. This is frequently called the tetragrammaton. The four Hebrew letters have a similar appearance to the Greek letters PIPI. This historical accident resulted in the following bit of exegesis. The sad part is that this bit of "exegesis" is probably just as accurate as some of the exegesis that is passed off as legitimate in some of the higher-critical journals.

Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1996 07:30:49 -0400
To: b-greek
Subject: The Return of the Sea-Hero [was: YHWH in LXX Papyrii]

Bernard Taylor wrote:

[...] In a number of mss the divine name is represented in Greek characters as PIPI. [...] Lacking any sensitivity to yod/vav represenatation, it was read as Greek (from left to right) as straight Greek characters. [...] Metzger makes mention of this in his volume: Manuscripts of the Greek Bible. [...] Jerome reported that some ignorant souls [...] even pronounced it as "pipi."

This is an altogether fascinating topic. Probably the best --and most provocative-- study of this material was that published in the early 80's by the Spanish scholar Tonto d'Abril.

d'Abril's work is perhaps best known for his demonstration that it was *not* simply the case that the tetragrammaton had been misread as "PIPI" but rather that the Greek-Semetic hybrid script had been mis-pointed; the correct vowelization (presuming the to be read as HOLAM) being "POP'I". Or more accurately, as d'Abril went on to argue, "POP'EYE".

Assuming this was too much of a coincidence, d'Abril collected a comprehensive list of the similarities between Yahweh and this semi-divine sea-hero. Among the more striking of these are:

Yahweh Popeye
Main statement of self-definition: "I AM THAT I AM" "I YAM WHAT I YAM"
Primary adversarial entity: Ba'al Bluto [Ba'al-uto? : Note 1]
Presumed consort of ambiguous gender characteristics: Asherah Olive Oyl [Note 2]
Male offspring (resulting from no known carnal contact): Jesus Sweetpea
selected from Revue du Poisson, IV:1, Paris, 1983

Of especial significance are the roots of the last two names ("Olive" and "Sweetpea"). While it is true that neither name shows a direct etymological relationship to its respective Yahwian counterpart, the persistent repetition of this vegetative theme, coupled with the source of the hero Popeye's strength (i.e. the magical "Spinach"[Note 3]) settles all question as to the fundamental soundness of d'Abril's thesis.

[Note 1: Meyerson's identification of the Bluto = Ba'al + Pluto is very promising. See his "Journey of the 'Long-eared Companion' into the Underworld", Working papers of the SBL Seminar on early animation, Anaheim, 1988.]

[Note 2: cf 2 King 18:32, where the King of Assyria attempts to lure the people of Israel out of their homeland with a promise of delivering them into a "...land of Olive O[y]l."]

[Note 3: We should note here, with d'Abril, the well-known iron-rich nature of this magical "Spinach". Moreover, this is exactly what we would expect in a quasi-historical narrative arising deep in the early iron-age. The cultic resonances here should be obvious.]