False Prophet (2020) part 1:  “The beam that is in thine own eye”

False Prophet (2020) part 1

by Jochen Markhorst

I           The beam that is in thine own eye

 The symbolic power is actually recognised right away; in the first centuries of our era the Romans were already saying pelle sub agnina latitat mens saepe lupina, “under the skin of a lamb lurks the spirit of a wolf”. But oddly, it takes another 12 centuries or so before the dramatic power of the wolf-in-sheep’s clothing image from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is appreciated by the poets. The Greek Nikephoros Basilakis is usually cited as the first, thanks to a fable in his Progymnasmata in which a wolf wraps itself in a sheep’s fleece (and then is accidentally slaughtered by the shepherd who randomly plucks a sheep from the flock). In the following centuries the image continues to be used, mostly in fables, so that a wolf in sheep’s clothing soon gains proverbial status everywhere. However, for the most amusing adaptation we have to wait until the 20th century, until the genius Friz Freleng.

Sylvester The Cat, Porky Pig, Tweety, and let’s not forget Yosemite Sam… without Friz Freleng, the 20th century would have been a lot duller. Not only because of the huge number of cartoons he directed (more than 300, more than anyone else), and their quality (which earned him five Oscars and three Emmy Awards), but also thanks to the multitude of characters he conceived or co-developed. Apart from the aforementioned VIPs colourful heroes like the first Pink Panther and supporting roles like Tweety’s Granny. And equally influential are the shorts that in turn inspired other greats. Walt Disney transformed Freleng’s Oswald The Lucky Rabbit into Mickey Mouse, Chuck Jones gratefully used the Elmer Fudd that Friz created for Confederate Honey (1940) and the same Chuck Jones built the successful Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog series (“Mornin’ Sam”, “Mornin’ Ralph”) on Friz’s 1942 short The Sheepish Wolf – the funniest adaptation of the wolf-in-sheep’s clothing-motif.

But the spiritual father of all these proverbs, fables, stories and cartoons is, of course, Jesus, the source being the Sermon on the Mount as recorded by Matthew in Matt 7:15: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”

It is certainly not the first time Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount has seeped into a Dylan song. Here on Rough And Rowdy Ways, Dylan quotes the Lord’s Prayer in “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” (second verse; “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory”), Jesus’ template for prayer that Dylan name-checks in “Foot Of Pride”; he sprinkles glitter from the Sermon throughout his gospel oeuvre (in “Do Right To Me Baby” and in “Precious Angel”, for example, and more); paraphrases Matt. 6:34, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself”, in “Mr. Tambourine Man” (Let me forget about today until tomorrow); variants of the town built on a hill and house built on a rock from Matt. 5:14 and 7:24 we hear in “Po’ Boy”, “Scarlet Town” and “Summer Days”… from I’ll reflect it from the mountain in 1962’s “Hard Rain” to The city of God is there on the hill further on in this 2020’s “False Prophet”, the Sermon on the Mount continues to echo in Dylan’s oeuvre. And explicitly Dylan refers to it in “Up To Me”, the 1974 Blood On The Tracks outtake:

We heard the Sermon on the Mount and I knew it was too complex,
It didn't amount to anything more than what the broken glass reflects

In short, in every decade of 60 years of Dylan songs, we come across references, a name-check or quotes – the Sermon on the Mount really is a constant in the oeuvre.

That review in “Up To Me” is a bit mysterious, by the way. “The Sermon on the Mount was too complex, being too fragmentary.” The Sermon on the Mount “too complex”? On the contrary, really; Jesus’ sermon excels in its plain language and clear messages – unlike his usual style of speech, with all those laborious parables and counter-questions, the Sermon on the Mount is completely unambiguous, spoken mostly in short, simple sentences. Jesus begins with the eight Beatitudes (“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth,” and so on), followed by the salt-and-light metaphors (“You are the salt of the earth”), metaphors that he explains right after, then stresses the validity and the correctness of the Laws of Moses, declares the Lord’s Prayer, and further meanders on about the importance of humility and modesty, and the horrors of hypocrisy and whoredom and the likes, and does all of this mostly in the classic and very understandable thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure.

The second part of Dylan’s critique in “Up To Me”, it didn’t amount to anything more than what the broken glass reflects, still makes sense then, but is most of all a chutzpah of course. Indeed, the content of the Sermon on the Mount does not have a comprehensive plot, it is not a continuous story – it consists of isolated statements, instructions and admonitions. With some good will, one can recognise a comprehensive chiasm structure, the x-structure with the Lord’s Prayer as the crossroads, as well as a comprehensive tone; mildness is indeed the overarching tenor of Jesus’ words (except his somewhat hysterical views on divorce and adultery – casting hell and damnation already if you only look at another woman with lust). Content-wise, though, it’s like what the broken glass reflects, that’s true. But from the pen of Dylan this is rather blatant, not to say a travesty – Dylan himself, after all, is the grand master who assembles disjointed, unrelated mosaic bricks into song lyrics. Song lyrics like “Up To Me” and like “False Prophet”, ironically enough.

Which seems to demonstrate that Dylan did not get to Matthew 7:3; “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

 

To be continued. Next up False Prophet part 2: The Dead are from a different world

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
• Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
• Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
• I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
• Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
• Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
• Bob Dylan’s 1971