The Medo-Persian Empire
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Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Rachel Voytek.
We talked about Daniel in Babylon last week, and this week we’re talking about Daniel in a different empire. He’s one of these strange individuals who gets to be a high-up in two consecutive different kingdoms. I’m sure we’ll talk about how he managed that. It seems like quite a trick.
I don’t know how much of a trick it was, but there are reasons that I think I think we’ll stumble across along the way. We left off last time with Nebuchadnezzar having been dead for some time. Daniel is an old man, but he is still in the king’s service.
The throne has passed through a succession of weak hands, and Nebuchadnezzar’s son-in-law Nabonidus is in charge of the empire, but he’s had a spat with the priests of Babylon because he favors the moon god and they favor Marduk, so he’s moved the administrative capital down into the desert to a place called Teman, which is on a brand new trade route through the Arabian desert, where he’s raking in the bucks.
He’s left his son, Belshazzar, in charge of the city of Babylon. That’s where Daniel is hanging out these days, living out the end of his life – you’d think. Meanwhile, to the north and east there’s a new kingdom on the horizon.
This is one of the places where secular history and sacred history begin to intertwine or at least look each other in the eye and scoff a bit, because now we run into the Greek writer Herodotus, the father of history, the guy who’s free from nonsense and tells it like it is, the guy who looks for naturalistic causes and will have no mythology and no legend in his books.
There’s a line in Herodotus that says, “From the beginning the Greeks have been more free from foolishness than other people.” Then you read Herodotus.
I’ll tell you, I hadn’t cracked open my volume of Herodotus before prepping for this, and reading the first line I have to commend the translator, because I looked at another translation of the opening line of Herodotus’s history and it was nowhere near as arresting as this version. “According to the Persians, best informed in history, the Phoenicians began the quarrel.” Tell me that’s not a great line.
That’s a great line. I was skimming internet articles and I kept running across the idea that Herodotus is setting forth this conflict between eastern despotism (Persia) and western freedom (the Greeks). That’s got to be one of the stupidest ideas anybody has ever suggested for an analysis of history, but apparently the Greeks thought that. I don’t know why, given their love for tyranny and the rise of Alexander and all of that, but nonetheless, yes, the quarrel between east and west goes back to stealing women, Herodotus says. Even before Helen of Troy there were some other snatches back and forth.
There’s a line in Herodotus that amounts to, “You know, this kind of thing happens and the best thing to do is just take no notice of it because women aren’t going to be snatched unless they really want to be, so we should just get over that.”
Persia does not appear in the Table of Nations because Persia didn’t exist for a very very long time. In fact, when Isaiah and Jeremiah both prophesied the downfall of Babylon, they don’t specify Persian conquerors because there wasn’t a Persia. They used the word Media. The Medes are related to the Persians but there was no Persian empire until Cyrus comes along because he creates it, and there’s some of the story.
Herodotus, in order to tell us at least his version, popular legends, mythology or who knows, maybe it really happened this way because weirder things happen in politics, the king of Media, Astyages had a daughter who he had married off to a Persian lord, Cambyses. This daughter Mandane, push her aside, no big deal, until she gets pregnant. Then Astyages begins having dreams that from her private parts are coming out great vines that are reaching into Asia and Europe and taking over the world. He's very nervous about this because this is a weird dream to have about your daughter.
He calls the magi, the scholarly class, the priestly class and says, “What’s going on here?” They say, “Well, it’s obvious. Your daughter is going to give birth to a child who’s going to usurp you and take over all of these territories. You might want to do something about that, boss.”
Astyages says, “Hmm, well, that’s just not good,” so as soon as the child is born he has one of his generals, Harpagus, go and take the newborn babe, with instructions to destroy him. Now, we all know how this goes. You don’t give the baby to your right-hand man telling him to destroy the kid, because you know what’s going to happen.
Yes, he does not want to be the one who’s going to be blamed in the future, so he goes and finds a shepherd who works for the king, his boss, and says, “Here, take this baby and you destroy it and bring me proof again, and I’ll be back.”
The shepherd gets home and finds out, “A baby – I don’t want to kill it,” and his wife says, “Good because we just lost our baby.” This is right out of Oedipus Rex. “Let’s do a switch and you can dress our baby up in royal finery, hand him back to Harpagus and he’ll have his evidence and everybody will be happy. We’ll raise the little boy as our own son, and no one will ever know.”
Ten years later when Cyrus has grown up enough to be a strapping junior higher or whatever that would amount to, he’s out in the palace courts playing with other boys who are of higher rank than he is, but he does work for the shepherd of the king so he manages to get into this somehow, and he is the leader of the boys.
They decide they’re going to play king and he gets to be the king and boss people around and tell them what to do. There is a son of a lordling who refuses because, “You’re a shepherd boy. You’re not going to tell me what to do.”
Yes. The boy goes home and complains to his dad. The dad goes to the king and says, “What’s this with the shepherd boy beating up on my son?” The king summons the shepherd boy and looks at him and says, “You look awfully familiar. Tell me, shepherd, what happened. Your son here was acting like a king in the face of all these noble children.”
“Uh-huh. It’s just his way because he’s cool and all, but he didn’t mean anything by it. Sorry for any offense.”
“No, no, no, wait, wait, wait, I’ll tell you the whole story. My wife and I…” and apparently the wife’s name was the equivalent of a female dog, thus the legend that Cyrus was raised, like everybody else in this situation, by wolves, kind of.
Yeah. Anyway, Astyages says, “All right, fine.” As far as he’s concerned the boy is obviously his grandson. He’s alive. Killing him now is kind of… “I’ve always wanted a grandson and here he is. Nothing bad has happened. However, Harpagus disobeyed me, betrayed me, so someone’s got to do something about that.
So he calls Harpagus, who says, “Yes, your majesty. You see I knew that one day this would happen and one day you’d want your grandson, so I was just playing smart for all of us. Aren’t you glad he’s alive?”
“Yeah. In fact, I’m so glad, come to a party later. Come to a banquet, and send your son ahead. He can play with Cyrus while we’re waiting.”
Not reading between the lines very well, Harpagus sends his son along, who Astyages takes, kills, butchers, chops up, and has his chef cook. And when Harpagus comes, he gets served his son unknowingly until at the very end when he’s asked, “You want to know what this wonderful dish is you’ve been eating?”
“Open the little serving bowl,” and there’s the skull and the hands and the feet. “You know what this?”
Cyrus grows up and Harpagus wants to stir up the pot here. He begins sending messages to Cyrus saying, “Look, your grandpa would have killed you. I saved you. Forget him. You should be king. I’ll help you, and here’s some ideas,” and basically he sells out the empire to Cyrus.
Cyrus, according to Herodotus, now a grown man and wily in his own right, grabs the Persian soldiers who are subordinate to the Medians at this point and says, “Come with me. I’ve got something for you to do,” and he has them spend a whole day clearing land. It’s no fun – picking up rocks, digging ditches, stuff like that.
“Okay, come tomorrow,” and he gives them a great party, using all the money he has. He gives them this wonderful banquet, this wonderful party.
“Which would you rather do for the rest of your life? Yesterday where you’re slaves and have to work all the time, or today when you’re on top of everything and get to party all day?”
“Well, you know what? If you take the kingdom away from the Medians you’ll get to party all the time.”
So that’s, according to Herodotus, more or less what’s been going on. Cyrus is busy taking what had been Chaldean or Babylonian territory to the east and to the north and on into Asia Minor, to the Greek colonies. Along the way he runs into a king, and we all know this story. The king asked the Oracle at Delphi, “Should I challenge Cyrus?”
Exactly, so he says, “Cool!” and takes on Cyrus and loses and throws a fit. Finally, when Cyrus captures him and does not immediately kill him he says, “May I have permission to do one thing?”
“I want to send word back to the Oracle at Delphi and say, ‘What was that all about? You lied to me. You conned me. That’s stupid.’”
“Go for it. That’s fine,” and the Oracle replies, “Look, the reply was deliberately vague. Why weren’t you smart enough to ask which empire? That’s not on us, guys. You screwed up.”
That brings us more or less to Daniel chapter 5. The armies of Cyrus the Persian have closed in on Babylon. Now, Babylon is a huge city. The river Euphrates runs through it. There are fields and pastures. It’s supposed to be able to withstand a siege for 70 years, that is, anybody’s lifetime. Cyrus should not be able to get in this place.
All the Babylonians/Chaldeans have to do is hold it together. Make sure no one turns traitor and throws open the gates or anything like that. Short of that, just sit it out and eventually, as far as they can see, Cyrus and the Persians and the Medes are going to have to go away. So to stir up morale, the third in command, Belshazzar, throws a party for his lords. The goal here is to lift their spirits, call upon their gods, show how Babylon’s gods have defeated everyone else’s gods forever and ever. “Don’t worry, be happy. Let’s party. It’s okay.”
Exactly. Belshazzar decides he’s going to do it one better. For a long time, he’s had a resentment against the God of the Hebrew people. We’re not told all the details, but we will find out eventually he knows what happened to Nebuchadnezzar, how God humbled him. He knows that this guy Daniel has always been kind of on the fringes, and although he’s been a little demoted, he has worked for Belshazzar. In fact, he’s worked in Elan, the Persian court. Hmm, I wonder who he might have met while he was there.
So Belshazzar has this great idea, “Let’s go get the temple vessels.” Back in chapter 1 of Daniel we were introduced to the temple vessels. The young men and the temple vessels came together. The young men were put into service in Babylon, and the temple vessels were put in the temple of Bel Marduk, their chief god. There’s a correlation here – the bodies (the vessels) of the young men and the vessels that served God in his temple.
Has God forsaken his people? Has he forsaken his worship? Has he forsaken everything ordained? Is something going to happen here?
Belshazzar pushes the point. He takes those vessels out and brings them into his feast and uses them to toast his own gods and offer deliberate insult to Yahweh. And just to make sure there’s plenty of light, he lights the menorah and lets it illuminate his drunken party.
And as he sits there and watches, a hand appears in mid-air, scrabbling in the plaster of the wall words that Belshazzar cannot recognize, cannot read, and they’re being written by a disembodied hand. This is not good. His knees start knocking, he loses bladder control and other things, and calls for the wisemen. Have we been here before?
It’s so interesting that the light of the temple – bringing your deeds into the light of God, inviting evaluation, clear sight.
The light of God is often associated with the Word of God, so now God speaks. He doesn’t even use his voice. He speaks through just written words.
His finger writes in stone, as he did once before. The words, as the King James renders them, were MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. PERES sounds an awful lot like Persians. God is punning again – yes, God puns. They can probably read the consonants. There probably are no vowels, but they can read the consonants but what in the world does that mean?
If they were smart enough, they might recognize that these are all weights of money. We hear tekel but think shekel, and mina is also a coin. In those days we hadn’t gotten down to coining things. We weighed amounts of gold and silver on a scale, thus “you are weighed in the balance.”
Anyhow, the wisemen can’t do anything with this yet again, and Belshazzar is desperate. “Can’t somebody read this? I’ll make him third ruler of the kingdom,” that is after himself and Nabonidus, “and give him authority and all this stuff.” No one can help.
Then the queen mother shows up. It’s the queen mother because all of his wives are already present, so she comes in and she plays it real cool. She says basically, “Don’t worry, I know a guy. In him is the spirit of the holy gods, of Elohim. Wisdom and understanding was found in him in the days of your grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar, whom he made ruler over all the magicians, astrologers and so on. He’s capable of dissolving doubts and interpreting dreams. Call this man. His name was Belteshazzar. You may know him as Daniel.”
She does it all in the sense of, “Sure, you’ve never heard of him. Sure, he’s probably slipped your mind. I’m sure you’ll jump at this chance, grandson,” or son, I suppose, and he does because he’s desperate. This is scary stuff. He calls for Daniel.
“Are you that Daniel of the children of the captivity of Judah? Are you one of those slaves that we picked up a long time ago? I’ve heard about you.”
“If you can do anything here, we’ve got some rewards going on here. There’s a reward program.”
Daniel says, “Let thy gifts be to theyself and give thy rewards to another, but I’ll read the writing.” He walks him down memory lane and says, “Look, this is what happened to Nebuchadnezzar and this is how God humbled him. This is how God saved him, changed his heart, and you have not humbled yourself, though you knew all of this.” This is not some ignorant superstitious monarch who’s getting caught in a war of rival religions that are beyond his understanding. He knows exactly who Yahweh is.
Yes. His grandfather had come to faith in God and had written scripture, and he wants nothing to do with it. He wants to pretend he’s never even heard of this, and Daniel says, “No, that’s not happening.”
At this point I would interject one thing. As I was reading various things online, of course some of the people taking Daniel 5 were looking particularly at parallels to Revelation and spinning certain eschatological views from them. I think it’s really important to make the point that Babylon here is receiving more revelation from God because there were believers there.
There were people who the king had turned to God. There were others presumably that heard and believed, and they’re being judged for their apostasy, not for their paganism. It’s not just a false kingdom. It’s a kingdom that was belonging to the Lord and no longer does. So when we see Babylon appear again in Revelation we should be thinking this was a group that was God’s people that have turned from him.
Very good. And beyond that, this was the kingdom that had been charged to look after God’s people. That was their covenant responsibility as Gentiles. They were caretakers for Israel, for the promise, for special revelation, and Nebuchadnezzar had done that. He was the head of gold. That’s what set him apart, but now they’re turning on that and so the judgement falls.
This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. TEKEL: Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting. PERES: Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.
Apparently, Belshazzar says, “Oh, okay. Let’s go on with the party.” He goes to bed that night and never wakes up. They reward Daniel and we’re told in the last couple verses –
In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.
Darius the Median has given commentators a great deal of difficulty because as far as secular histories like Herodotus and archeology is concerned, there is no such person. Liberals have just said, “See, the Bible is wrong again.” Well, ignore them, but conservative commentators and people who want to do something with what the Bible says have tried a number of things, some of them very noble and seemingly promising until more archeological surveys have said, “No, that doesn’t work because…evidence.”
Let me just clarify why we should ignore the liberal commentators. They are willfully discounting some of the chief historical evidence available to us. It’s their fault they’ve discredited themselves, it’s not just that we’re painting with a broad brush and saying, “Well, if they’re liberal, no.” What makes them liberal is the fact that they’re ignoring the chief historical testimony.
There’s a book on secular archeology written by, as far as I know, secularists. I don’t know that any of the men involved in the project were Bible believers, but they’re taking about the chronology as it unfolds about through this era.
The chief author turns and looks at us and says, “You know, it’s really funny that archeologists, historians, and anthropologists have had all of this evidence in the Bible. If it were any other document, any other historical record they’d be digging into it. Even if they’re not convinced it’s all accurate, they would be looking into it to see what they could find there. And yet that’s not what happens here. What happens here is it gets written off without a look. Could it be that people would write off the Bible simply because it’s the Bible?” Then he goes off and talks about other things, but I thought it was a very perceptive move by someone who, as far as I know, isn’t even trying to defend Christianity.
He’s just saying, “Look, we have a source that’s proven incredibly accurate again and again and again. Why not try to untie the knots and see if there’s actually something we’ve missed, rather than just saying, ‘Well, that’s not how we call it, that’s not how we name it, that’s not the pieces we put together, so obviously it’s wrong,’ and drop it in the trash can someplace.”
The conservative commentators have tried to look for a historical figure. John Whitcomb Jr wrote probably the best. It’s called Darius the Mede. It held up for a while until archeology found that the man he was putting forth as a candidate for this position was dead. He wasn’t alive at this time, so that kind of ruled him out.
Some have suggested that it was Cyrus’s father or father-in-law or someone else, a Median. It wouldn’t be Cyrus’s father, it would have to be his son or something on his mom’s side. Maybe that’s it. Maybe there was an independent Median kingdom and that’s who this Darius was and he took the kingdom, and then shortly thereafter handed it over to Cyrus, because there is a reference later to Cyrus having received the kingdom.
There are several problems with that. First, historically it’s a nice speculation but there’s no historical evidence for anything like that. Biblically the prophecies come together in a weird way. Isaiah and Jeremiah do say that it will fall to the Medes, but again there were no Persians.
Daniel, as he’s waiting, realizes that the first year of Cyrus’s reign is the year when God’s people will be set free. He’s waiting for it and is a little surprised when it hasn’t happened, and this begins his prayer later on in the book that sets things in motion toward fulfillment.
Cyrus in his first year decrees that God’s people can go free. They can return home and build the temple and the city, and he sets in motion the restoration, the second exodus. There’s no place in here for any other person. As soon as the prophecies run out – boom – there’s Cyrus and Daniel’s saying, “Yeah, Cyrus. That’s who it’s all about.” So what do we do with this?
First we recognize, as we’ve noticed before, that kings in the ancient world often had many different names. This happens also with American presidents. There technically is no president named FDR or Tricky Dick.
Even the kings and queens of England, when they take the throne they choose a throne name.
How many names did Victoria have? They go on and on. I’ve never bothered to learn all of them. The question is what are people calling you, and who are the people we’re talking to?
Israel is looking for judgement by Medes so let’s look at the one candidate on the scene, Cyrus, and let’s pick whatever people called him as a Median, as he’s descended from the Medes on one side, and we’ll use that. But then when we want to emphasize, “Yes, and this is the turn. This is the new kingdom. This is Persia,” then we can use his Persian name.
Now, there’s more to it than that and it’s a detailed and at times little bit tedious study, so I’m not going to try to pound all this out right now, but I do believe this is the answer because here’s what really changes things. When Cyrus makes his decree he says, “The God of heaven has ordered me to build him a temple in Jerusalem. All of you people who are free minded, go do that and I’ll fund it.” Along the way he makes this parenthetical little statement, “Oh, and this God? He is the God.”
How does Cyrus know about Yahweh? How does he know that Yahweh has commissioned him to build the temple and the city? Where did God do that anyway? God did that in Isaiah. Isaiah long in advance, hundreds of years before, named the man who would restore God’s people to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple and named him Cyrus and calls him his shepherd, his anointed, his man who will do all his bidding, “the one who is going to set my people free.”
He is one of the most messianic typical Gentiles in the whole Bible. You have to go back to Melchizedek to find a Gentile who is so typical of Jesus. How did he get there?
I suggested that maybe Daniel met Cyrus when Daniel was acting as an ambassador to Elam, but that’s not enough for this. That’s enough for true conversion. Is there something here in this first encounter that’s recorded in scripture that would move Darius/Cyrus to suddenly conclude that Yahweh is the king, and that would open him to Daniel saying, “King, there’s something you need to read.”
That brings us to one of the most famous stories in all of scripture. Every Christian child knows it. It’s called Daniel in the lion’s den. This new Median/Persian king wants to organize his kingdom. It’s his kingdom, not someone else’s kingdom. He’s in charge and he’s rearranging the administration.
Remember, Daniel was just made third ruler of the kingdom of Babylon, and when the Persians come in they don’t kill him. They say in effect, “Hey buddy, pal, how’d you like to help us run this kingdom?” Do you do that? Well, if you know the guy already you do. If you already know his character and you know he’s trustworthy and you know his loyalties are not to Babylon, then maybe you do that.
Everybody else gets jealous because this guy’s really competent. “This Daniel guy, he knows what he’s doing. He knows what it’s all about.”
“He’s a slave. He’s a Jew. We’ve got to get this guy.” And thus we are introduced into a Persian custom. Once the king makes a law he cannot alter it. The laws of the Medes and Persians alter not. Here it’s Medes and Persians. In Esther it’s Persians and Medes because by then the Persian influence is more dominant.
This king, who here is called Darius, misses it. It goes right over his head. He’s busy with all kinds of things. He’s just conquered an empire and he’s doing administrative work and it sounds good. “Let everybody channel their prayers and petitions through me. I’ll go directly to the gods.” In Babylon they collected all the idols and put them there.
Yes, so Cyrus can just go and be Western Union and present the messages to the gods, and it will seem in everyone’s idea that he’s now the guy. He’s the mediator, so he’s not processing this but Daniel does. Daniel sees exactly what’s going on, so he goes into his upper room and prays, although he’s not supposed to now. His enemies catch him, the king finds out, and the king is horrified. This is not what he had in mind. He didn’t see the trap and he walked right into it.
He spends all day trying to find a legal solution and his guys say, “No, no, no. Law of the Medes and Persians, can’t change it, because if you don’t do it you lose your throne. Our respect for you is gone,” so he throws Daniel into the lion’s den.
Then the king goes and fasts and won’t have any music or food or anything. He just waits, and early in the morning he goes and calls out lamentably, “Oh Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God whom thou servest continually able to deliver thee from the lions?” You can just see him collapsing on the great stone that’s been rolled in front of the tomb, as it were.
You can tell what he thinks about all the Babylonian gods. “Sure, there’s all these gods, but that’s a lion. What are they going to do against that?”
Exactly. Then Daniel’s voice rises up from the pit and says, “Oh king, live forever.” In the mouth of any other court member those are just words. From the mouth of Daniel that’s a prayer for his salvation. The king is excited and grabs Daniel up, and all the enemies come and say, “Well, I bet they were stuffed lions or fed lions.”
“Everybody else in!” So Cyrus/Darius figures he now has divine approval to reverse all that nonsense, but this is how it ends.
Then king Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth…
Notice again this is not a sub-king, a puppet king, an underling king. This is the guy at the top. The guy at the top at this point is Cyrus and this is what he says –
I make a decree that in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, and steadfast forever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end.
He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions. So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.
That little word in Hebrew can mean “and.” It can also mean “even” or “that is to say,” or “to wit.” If you render it that way, suddenly things make sense. “So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, even in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.”
So we’ve come to the first year and now Cyrus is primed to listen to the prophecies of Isaiah and to say, “Oh, that God. He wants me to do what? How long do I have? Should I get on this right away?”
That brings us to the beginning of Ezra and the end of 2 Chronicles where we have the decree of Cyrus.
That’s great because this is probably a good place to make the transition. Next time we should talk about Cyrus as the temple builder, as the second Moses, the one who sends God’s people back out of captivity, the commander at least of a new exodus and of the beginning of the restoration era. Here we’re going to run into Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rebuilding of the temple, and then eventually into Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.
So once again God is tying the history of the covenant people to some very important historical things as reckoned even by secularists. The secular world knows all about these things. It just doesn’t take seriously why they’re important.
We will see Cyrus in heaven. He’s God’s anointed, God’s shepherd, the man who does all his pleasure. That’s pretty cool. He was a friend of Daniel. That’s even cooler.
We can also see some of that transition from gold to silver in that we see both Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus as those we would expect to see in heaven, and yet the grandeur of the revelation to Cyrus in some ways seems smaller to us than it was to Nebuchadnezzar. There’s not as many big visions and signs and miracles, and yet Cyrus we would say was actually more significant because we’re moving into that restoration period where the big glory is more veiled. But the Lord is actually preparing us then for the coming of the new covenant.
So we will pick up there. Also maybe if we can remember we’ll look a little bit at Persian culture – magi and getting drunk before you make a vote and Zoroastrianism.
Rachel, you’re the church historian. You want to tackle Zoroastrianism next time?
Sure. Even its modern version is still an allowed religion in Iran, funny enough. I looked it up to confirm but the Islamic Republic allows Zoroastrianism.
I look forward to hearing more about that. Before we go let’s give some recommendations.
My recommendation for today is Fever Tree Premium Ginger Beer, which you can get at Costco. It’s yummy. It’s a mixer and meant to go in a cocktail so it’s a very strong ginger flavor so that when you make the cocktail you can still taste it, but I’m drinking it straight because it’s good stuff.
Recommendation: Fever Tree Premium Ginger BeerYes. I’m going to recommend a music group called Ordinary Time. They’re kind of a folksy sounding group and they have a song that they did of this episode with Belshazzar and Daniel. Some of their things are hymns that we know, and others are ones we’ve never heard of, but I enjoy them as kind of a folk group that does pretty much all Christian stuff. I would never think to do something like Daniel and Belshazzar, so there’s mine.
Recommendation: Ordinary TimeI’m going to recommend Gilbert & Sullivan, because why not? In drama class, having finished producing Pride & Prejudice, we had to kill time so we went back and watched two of our school’s old productions, HMS Pinafore (the second time we did it) and we just finished Pirates of Penzance, and they were so much fun.
They were. I looked around on the internet afterward just to see other professional versions done, and you know, it was a little disappointing. Opera companies are good at singing, one hopes, but they’re not necessarily good at doing group comedy. Sometime in the late 20th century it was more about being avant garde and cool and different and trendy then it was about convincing people you were pirates on some island someplace. I was disappointed. Some of the pieces were good, some were not. Ours honestly was just a lot of fun.
There you go. One of these productions where there’s supposed to be all these young maidens had women instead, most of whom were in their 50s and 60s.
Yes. It just lacked something. Anyway, do what you can. There’s always the pirate movie with Linda Ronstadt, but there are probably better versions. You might want to look around a little bit, especially if you’ve never encountered Gilbert & Sullivan and don’t even know what I’m talking about.
The Simpsons do a tribute to it. Who’s the bad guy in the Simpsons? That’s assuming you watch the Simpsons.
For other people maybe who watch Star Trek there is a scene where Picard is trying to distract Data, who’s mind-wiped or controlled or something, and he starts singing “A British Tar,” and Worf reluctantly goes along and Data starts singing and it saves the day.
And, of course, Indiana Jones, our friend in Egypt who starts singing again, “A British Tar…” If you don’t know what it is, watch it and you’ll suddenly realize, “Wait, I’ve seen this before.” There you go.
I would make a plug that there actually is a Cornerstone drama YouTube channel where you can go watch the full-length productions, which is very funny.
I remember Greg telling us at some event or other than the first time you did Pinafore at your school no one had really heard of it, and even looking up the professional performances they were like, “Why would we do this? This is not funny or fun or anything.” And then they do it and it’s like, “Oh, this is hilarious!” because it has to be done in the proper spirit.
On that note, thank you both so much for this conversation. It’s been a delight. Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully wedded husband. Thank you to our dear transcriptionist for the transcripts. If you’d like to receive those in your email inbox you can subscribe to our Substack. Just search Halting Toward Zion and it will come up.
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