This essay on Bob Dylan from 2020 was featured in three parts at VoegelinView.
Hope Amidst Crisis:
Bob Dylan has only gone and released a new song, his first original music in eight years, right in the heart of the crisis of Covid-19. This came as a seventeen-minute ballad named Murder Most Foul and ostensibly about the death of JFK. [1]
The song has been heard on YouTube a few million times in less than a week and asked some important questions. Dylan, who makes a habit out of asking probing questions at the right time, asks, who are we? Especially in times of great emergency.
With Covid-19 and the crises of 2020, we are now in the hard clutch of another great crisis, but we’ve been here before. Dylan reminds us that the road of history has been long and weary.
How timely then that America’s greatest living poet and musician Bob Dylan has, at the stroke of dark midnight, cast our minds back to another time of desolation in living history. With Murder Most Foul, he has reminded us of the dark day in Dallas in 1963, when Kennedy died. All of that and much more besides.
Whilst many of us have been waiting for the return of music’s stately king since his last new music release many years ago, many more were taken by surprise. However, the timing could not be better and Murder Most Foul has arrived by the hand of soothing providence.
With this seventeen-minute ballad – its title drawn from the great tragic bard of western civilization, William Shakespeare- Bob Dylan has gone full circle to the inspired days of his youth. Back to when he was known as ‘the voice of a generation’, and back to the deep roots of living civilization. [2]
America’s troubadour is looking back around after a long trek up the mountain, to his own foundational early songs of prophecy, With God on Our side and Pawn in the Game, and towards the great American songbook to which he belongs.
This haunting ballad may even be the ‘symphony’ that Dylan said he wanted to compose way back in 1965, at a famous press conference in San Francisco.
Dylan has walked a long walk through the decades since then. From the iconic early moments of the sixties, such as Newport Folk Festival and surrounding utopian promise of Woodstock, to New York City and Café Wha; Dylan has moved on through despair, divorce and disillusionment before rising again to ‘reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it’. [3]
He’s travelled the world many times over, through life’s valleys and troughs in love and loss but never lost hope in the midst of history. Murder Most Foul reiterates once again Dylan’s unceasing message of hope against the mess of death and decay. America’s troubadour is speaking to America’s soul once more.
But his soul was not there where it was supposed to be at
For the last fifty years they’ve been searchin’ for that
Freedom, oh freedom, freedom over me
I hate to tell you, mister, but only dead men are free
Send me some lovin’, then tell me no lie
Throw the gun in the gutter and walk on by
Wake up, little Susie, let’s go for a drive
Cross the Trinity River, let’s keep hope alive. (Murder Most Foul) [4]
The day has come for us to return home again. Even if Covid-19 has forced our hand. Yet, the timing of this release at the hour of the world’s dark midnight speaks to the providential light which has guided Dylan’s work all along.
America Today:
Now, in the age of ‘the Anti-Christ’, which had ‘only begun’ with Kennedy’s assassination and ‘the Aquarian age’, Dylan is calling us back to our Holy centre. Back to America’s great songbook, back to The Bible, ‘the port of King James’ and back to the enduring icons of literature: to Ovid and Homer and Shakespeare too. The song’s title is just the first clue. [5]
For any new fans or investigators amongst the millions who have now listened to Murder Most Foul on YouTube and been moved to read this essay, Bob Dylan is a complex songwriter who layers his songs with several meanings. Filling almost every sentence with allusions to events in history, music, literature and The Holy Bible.
With Murder Most Foul, ‘His Bobness’ beckons us to return once more to the giant sequoias of music, Beethoven’s Sonata, Gospel, ‘all that jazz’ and the southern Blues. [6]
Again, to receive the great books which speak what it means to live truly and become once more good citizens and children of God. Bob calls for a return to the beauty and drama of history, especially the history he knows best: the storied history of American music. From the North Country, Deep South, East Coast and The Old West.
Dylan’s calling the roll after a long and full musical life so far: Full of madness and loss, love and marriage, divorced despair and salvation, sin and death. He ‘knows the songs well’ and he’s still singing. [7]
‘I’m goin’ to Woodstock, it’s the Aquarian Age
Then I’ll go to Altamont and sit near the stage
Put your head out the window, let the good times roll
There’s a party going on behind the Grassy Knoll…
They killed him once and they killed him twice
Killed him like a human sacrifice
The day that they killed him, someone said to me, “Son
The age of the Antichrist has just only begun” (Murder Most Foul) [8]
Dylan’s unexpected return calls us again to ask the eternal questions. The same kinds of questions that he was asking way back in the shadow of Kennedy’s death and dark spectre of Nuclear War. There was a cold freeze over nations and the north country where he grew up.
‘How many years must one man have, before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.’ (Blowing in the Wind) [9]
For too long, our own present age has ignored the problems of death recalled by Murder Most Foul and the foul crises of 2020. The call to deep questions has been hushed for some time now. And it seems that Dylan has long cried out in the wilderness. But now that death is at the door, we might just pay attention once more.
We creatures of the internet age and the hyperreal tend to fluctuate between uninspired lives hiding death and morbid fascination with its seemingly unending power. But we inherit a dark tradition that goes back some time.
Soren Kierkegaard described the problem of The Present Age as far back as the nineteenth century:
‘The present age is one of understanding, of reflection, devoid of passion, an age which flies into enthusiasm for a moment only to decline back into indolence. Not even a suicide does away with himself out of desperation, he considers the act so long and so deliberately, that he kills himself with thinking — one could barely call it suicide since it is thinking which takes his life.’
Kierkegaard continues, ‘He does not kill himself with deliberation but rather kills himself because of deliberation. Therefore, one cannot really prosecute this generation, for its art, its understanding, its virtuosity and good sense lies in reaching a judgment or a decision, not in taking action.
Just as one might say about Revolutionary Ages that they run out of control, one can say about the Present Age that it doesn’t run at all’. Action and passion is as absent in the present age as peril is absent from swimming in shallow waters…’ [10]
The indolent cloud of mediocrity that has hung over many of us may be about to let out its rain. The silver lining of our current worldwide crisis might prompt us to act. We have a chance to respond to our enforced cultural climate change by entering deeper waters. We might hope with Dylan, who released Murder Most Foul in full mind of our struggle, that there be renewed attention to death and new life. The storm of 2020 may be the dreadful ‘whirlwind’ that blows away our complacency to make us anew. Like Job we might find some answers here. [11]
According to Alexander Schmemann, “…In order to console himself, man created a dream of another world where there is no death, and for that dream he forfeited this world, gave it thus decidedly to death.’
The Christian Dylan has posted Murder Most Foul as a letter to America that she might live.
Schmemann goes on, ‘Therefore, the most important and most profound question of the Christian faith must be, how and from where did death arise, and why has it become stronger than life?’ [12]
Murder Most foul ponders the same key question and wrestles with death.
‘We’re gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect
We’ll mock you and shock you and we’ll put it in your face
We’ve already got someone here to take your place
The day they blew out the brains of the king
Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing.’ (Murder Most Foul) [13]
Schmemann wonders, ‘Why has death become so powerful that the world itself has become a kind of global cemetery, a place where a collection of people condemned to death live either in fear or terror, or, in their efforts to forget about death, find themselves rushing around one great big burial plot?” (O Death Where is Thy Sting?) [14]
Now, let’s look at life. In particular, the life of our subject Bob Dylan. A young Jewish boy from Minnesota, born as close in time to the holocaust as he was in place to The Mississippi River. Dylan knew from early on, and knows better now, how powerful the current of life’s great suffering can be. However, as a descendent of Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Russia, and The Bible’s Job, he was brought up to know that suffering can form us into a deeper life. And what Rabbi Soloveitchik called ‘Halakhic Man’. We shall return to him shortly. [15]
First, we will continue to paint a brief sketch of our great artist, Bob Dylan. The songwriter, and performer, was originally named Robert Allen Zimmerman. The son of Abraham and Beatty Zimmerman, he was born in Duluth, Minnesota and spent much of his childhood in nearby Hibbing.
This was a pretty typical poor mining town with a small Jewish population. Young Robert celebrated his bar mitzvah in Harding but did not obviously identify with his Jewish identity.
From early on, he presented himself under the name Bob Dylan, adopting a persona as a typical mid-Western American. But under the surface the well of Jewish influence was far from dry and would provide plentiful water for the singer to draw on throughout his career.
It is easy to find Judeo-Christian influences in Bob’s catalogue not far in time from when Kennedy died in Dallas. The opening verse of “Highway Sixty-One Revisited” as early as 1965 retells the story of the binding of Isaac. God is telling Abraham to “Kill me a son!” Abe replies, “Man, You must be putting me on.” [16]
His comical relationship with God–the imagining of an argument with the Almighty–is a staple of Jewish culture found in Orthodox texts and Judaism in popular culture alike. (Fiddler on the Roof is one example.) Abraham is treated as family in the song: He is ‘Abe,’ just as Dylan’s father was named Abe.
Dylan has been concerned with life’s big questions forever and has waded into the deep waters of The Bible time and again. The songs on the later John Wesley Harding album, such as “I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine,” contain clear references to The Scripture. On this 1967 album, Dylan is conjuring up images from and commemorating the American Old West with a brush in each hand. [17]
Some colorful lifelong Dylan motifs made their way into view on this album. John Wesley Harding was a noble outlaw for one, with qualities reminiscent of medieval Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor. The young Zimmerman was sketching early outlines, drawn from the past, that would return in his later work.
Murder Most Foul’s appearance amidst the hard times of Covid-19 repeats a pattern for Dylan, who has rode into the storm of chaos many times before. One famous example can be drawn from the mid seventies when Bob went on a whirlwind tour, documented masterfully in Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue. [18]
At the time, America was continuing a decadent descent into chaos began in the ‘aquarian age’ of the sixties. By then, Dylan had been cast aside by some former fans as no less than ‘Judas’, and was going through a painful separation with his wife Sara. [19]
An immature Dylan responded to the chaos with his own disorder. Descending further into despair. The carnival atmosphere of the tour, made clear by Scorsese’s documentary, featured excessive masks, hysterics and performances of irreverent revelry. This circus disorder combined to ramp up the chaotic ardor in Dylan’s life and serves as an insight into the seventies more broadly. This is one way a jester deals with chaos. But later, Dylan would learn that there is another higher way and he was always more than just a jester anyway.
Back to Halakhic Man:
The works of the one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable spiritual figures, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s writings shine a light on the Jewish seeds of Dylan’s early spiritual genius. Especially his premier books: Halakhic Man (1944) and Lonely Man of Faith (1965). The man known as ‘The Rav’ paints a picture of the inner life of the religious Jew by comparing and contrasting between various religious and philosophical “types.”
‘In Halakhic Man, Soloveitchik analyzes the ideal religious Jew (“Halakhic Man”) in comparison with two other human types: Cognitive Man and hom*o Religiosus–Religious Man.
Cognitive Man’s approach to life is that of a scientist, in particular a theoretical physicist or mathematician, exploring reality by constructing ideal intellectual models and analyzing the imperfect, concrete world in their terms.
hom*o Religiosus, on the other hand, seeks what Abraham Joshua Heschel termed “radical amazement,” the capacity for spiritual experience, transcending physical reality by experiencing God’s presence in the world.
One might assume that the ideal religious Jew is similar to hom*o Religiosus, but Soloveitchik relates him (or her) to Cognitive Man: Just as Cognitive Man approaches reality armed with a pre-prepared intellectual model, so too Halachic Man comes to the world armed with the Torah, revealed by God at Mount Sinai.
If scientists initially understand reality in mathematical terms, Halachic Man understands it in Jewish legal categories.
For Halachic Man, seeing the first light of dawn breaking over the horizon is not primarily an aesthetic experience. Rather, his first thought is, “it’s time to recite the Shema.”
For Soloveitchik, Halachic Man intuitively experiences the world in Jewish categories, as if he were wearing a pair of “halakha-tinted” glasses. As such, observing the mitzvot (plural of mitzvah ) is no effort for him–an observant lifestyle is a natural outcome of his basic orientation to reality.’ [20]
It is within this milieu that we can see young Dylan more clearly. However, the law as understood by Soloveitchik and Heschel, is a stepping-stone to freedom. ‘The law’ forms Man as a moral and intellectual creature to see the world as it really is and frees him from the pretentious illusions of one-dimensional thinking. It is the height of Piaget’s ‘iterated game’, whereby Man asks what the best thing is in the long term, for oneself and others. [21]
Moreover, with the profound Christian influences pressing upon Bob from friends, his experiences with Yeshua and the spiritual fire he found in the old songs this Halakhic chapter was never going to be the whole of the story. [22] Those categories of Man were made to be ‘transfigured’ as he matured on his long sojourn. [23]
From near the beginning, Bob has been captivated by the end of time and what is referred to as ‘eschatology’. The Boy who grew up surrounded by the uncertainty of The Cold War knew from The Bible that ‘a hard rain’s gonna fall’ and felt an urgency to answer the essential call to honest living that his unripen halakhic instincts rang. He wrestled with drugs and the desire to end his own life at the height of his sixties fame, revealing the hard details of a suicide wish to Robert Shelton in an early interview. [24] But he was not destined to fall into the ‘27 club’ that took many of his musical fellows. [25]
Coming of Age and The Ages:
Dylan takes history seriously even when he doesn’t take it ‘literally’. In a culture where shared cultural and philosophical assumptions have conditioned our understanding of history in ways that make the idea of divine action in history problematic, Dylan is a breath of fresh air. The one-dimensional nature of secular history is too simplistic for Dylan and he rebels against the idols of time.
‘Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism
Fools making laws for the breaking of jaws
And the sound of the keys as they clink
But there’s no time to think.’ (No Time to Think) [26]
This is a remarkable quality shared with the world’s leading Biblical scholar, NT Wright, who argues that historical study can win from ancient Jewish and Christian cosmology and eschatology a renewed way of understanding the relationship between God and the world. He has even covered Bob’s song, When the Ship Comes In. [27] Which is a number saturated in musings about the end of the world and God’s work to redeem the cosmos: And the sea will split
‘Oh, the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin’
Like the stillness in the wind
Before the hurricane begins
The hour that the ship comes in
And the ships will hit
And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking
Then the tide will sound
And the waves will pound
And the mornin’ will be a-breakin’
(When the Ship Comes In) [28]
N. T. Wright mirrors our musical prophet by destroying socially constructed myths about the separation between ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’, ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’. [29] They re-enchant the world by re-entering real time. By focusing on the end -or the point- of creation, Dylan and Wright see anew past, present and future. This is a more ancient ‘shabbat’ mindset that provides ‘shalom’. R Dylan would have known this from a young age and returned to alongside his return to ancient Greek poetry and the many deep influences steering his music and lyrics.
By experiencing creation by the light of God’s time they are given peace. America may have won the Cold War but it came at the cost of destroying her older fabric. Logos Made Flesh shows this fall into slavery by mechanical time by comparing older views, symbolized by eternity, with newer time and its technologies. We rush constantly now to serve the idols of the age, whether that be the market, state or some other god that demands our time as a sacrifice. [30] Dylan describes this in No Time to Think:
‘Bullets can harm you and death can disarm you
But no, you will not be deceived
Stripped of all virtue as you crawl through the dirt
You can give but you cannot receive
No time to choose when the truth must die
No time to lose or say goodbye
No time to prepare for the victim that’s there
No time to suffer or blink
And no time to think.’ (No Time to Think)
The historian Wright joins Dylan in taking a different road- back from the illusions of ‘progress’. [31] Going back so that they may go forward again in the right direction and at the right pace.
‘We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.’ – C.S Lewis [32]
Wright develops a distinctive approach to ‘natural theology’ grounded in what he calls an ‘epistemology of love’. This approach, which sees the universe as good and receiving redemption along with Man, arises from his reflection on the significance of the ancient Judeo-Christian concept of the ‘new creation’. [33] This is revolutionary for our understanding of the reality of the world, the reality of God and their intimate relation to one another. Dylan accomplishes the same feat through his art and started in the sixties with stark warnings about the destruction of Man and the world.
‘And what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
And the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell and speak it and think it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
And I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.’ R (A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall) [34]
Let’s know our song well before we start singin’.
Disorder and Desolation:
‘Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety
You fight for the throne and you travel alone
Unknown as you slowly sink
And there’s no time to think.’ (No Time to Think) [35]
Murder Most Foul has fallen at a time of continued moral chaos and might help us restore a comforting moral centre. Dylan, besides serving us as a musical and literary icon, has acted as an authoritative moral leader for America and all Man.
All without succumbing to The Messiah Complex of many a celebrity. The more he refuses to offer oversimple moralist solutions, the higher his moral stature becomes. He has made some of the best ‘moral’ music of the last fifty years. Murder Most Foul follows this trend.
Dylan fan and former Chief Rabbi of Britain, Jonathan Sacks, has recently written an excellent book on Morality to combat the confusions of our culture about what it means to live rightly.
Echoing Dylan, he proclaims that we are living through a period of ‘cultural climate change’ that reflects the earth’s own. A discerning philosopher by training, he calls our attention to the central problems we face together.
Our communities, he says, have fallen apart as we have ‘outsourced morality to the markets on the one hand, and the state on the other. The markets have brought wealth to many, and the state has done much to contain the worst excesses of inequality’, but neither can bear the moral weight of showing us how to live a good and rich life.
This idolatry of market and state has had a profound impact on society and the way we interact with each other. Traditional Judeo-Christian values no longer hold, and recent political swings show that modern gods of tolerance and equality have left many feeling rudderless and adrift. Ill prepared for ‘when the ship comes in.’
In this environment we see things fall apart in shocking ways – poisonous public discourse makes genuine social progress almost impossible, and a more divisive society, without a common language or reverence for the word, is fueled by the consuming fires of identity politics and extremism.
The rise of the cult of victimhood calls for ‘safe spaces’ but stops honest debate. The inordinate influence of social media seems all-pervading and the fragmenting of the family is just one result of the loss of ‘social capital’.
Within this climate, many feared what the future might hold even before Covid-19 and the curses of 2020.
Sacks echoes Dylan by calling us back to more ancient ways that have stood the test of time. We are called to revere the word with careful and truthful speech, and to act with love by putting ‘We’ and ‘I’ in their rightful place.
Sacks’s book joins Dylan’s music by offering a devastating critique of our modern condition, uprooting many of its causes and idols. From the ancient Greeks through the Reformation and Enlightenment right up to the present day.
Rabbi Sacks argues that there is ‘no liberty without morality and no freedom without responsibility’. [36]
This is a message Dylan has been preaching and living for a half a century now, from his early ‘halakhic’ upbringing to later life in Christ. Bob offers us a model of how we should live in truth by approaching history, language, music, literature and our great religions with humble seriousness.
Many times, he has spoken out against injustice, taking on the cause of individuals and got to know them well. Most notably, Hurricane Carter upon who the song Hurricane is based. [37] This respect for persons and character is present in his art and moral life in equal measure.
With the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, he has also held his tongue when it has been a time for silence and resisted the restricting labels of ‘protest singer’, or ‘voice of a generation’. [38]
Why? So he could ‘reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it’ and speak for many generations. [39]
Unlike the ideologue, Bob knows in his bones that we live in a ‘symbolic world’ of meaning and moral purpose. R [40]
The follies of modern philosophers and sophists have failed to sway him from his foundations:
‘May you have a strong foundation; When the winds of changes shift.’ (Forever Young) [41]
Back in the moral revolution of the sixties, Dylan made his way from small town Minnesota to the city of New York. He was on a journey to meet folk singer Woody Guthrie as he lay sick in hospital. This was a formative time in young Bob’s life and the person of Woody embodied the well of American folk tradition that he’d grown to love.
The elder statesman of folk even impressed upon the young Jewish man’s soul the central role of Jesus Christ in history. Moving him by stories, music and by faith, and revealing the world of American symbols. At this point we might look to the lyrics of Guthrie’s song Jesus Christ, which he and Dylan would perform together in the late sixties. This song and the meaning behind it were to have lasting effects on Dylan until this day:
‘Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land
A hard-working man and brave
He said to the rich, “Give your money to the poor,”
This song was written in New York City
… Of rich man, preacher, and slave
If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.’ (Jesus Christ) [42]
A Poet of the Symbolic World:
A fellow traveller in the world of symbols, James B. Jordan, helps us get inside the world Dylan inhabits. By describing Judeo-Christian symbolism and decrying the make-believe and upside-down world of modern ideology.
Jordan warns that our present collective deception is even worse than the sophistry of the ancients. This modern ‘secular’ faith causes the chariots of civilisations to crash harder than the chaotic cyclical eras of antiquity. We will see later that the new moral disorder smashes the structure of great music too.
Jordan begins, ‘Modern philosophy, especially after Immanuel Kant, has taken an even more radical view. The modern view is that there is no demiurge, and that the universe is really ultimately chaotic.
Whatever order and meaning there is in the world has been imposed by human beings, and by no one else. We create our own worlds by generating our own worldviews. All meaning, all symbols, are man-made.’
This is a far cry from the rich musical archaeology of greats like Dylan and all those who appreciate what is truly given in this world. Including those inherited riches in the fields of music and literature.
For Jordan, ‘Symbolism, then, is not some secondary concern, some mere curiosity. In a very real sense, symbolismis more important than anything else for the life of man… the doctrine of creation means that every created item, and also the created order as a whole, reflects the character of the God who created it. In other words, everything in the creation, and the creation as a whole, points to God. Everything is a sign or symbolof God.’
He wonders, ‘How are we going to read these symbols? By guesswork?’ But finds, with Dylan, a firm foundation to build upon. A rock of ages. Both appreciate that ‘we have the Bibleto teach us how to read the world.’ [43]
Our unknown and often unproven modern assumptions are called out by the perceptive poet, Dylan, who returns to a childlike wonder to enter the kingdom,
‘Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now.’ (My Back Pages) [44]
Our sense of who and where we are is turned upside down.
‘Symbolism “creates” reality, not vice versa. This is another way of saying that essence precedes existence. God determined how things should be, and then they were.
God determined to make manas His special symbol, and then the reality came into being. Bavinckputs it this way: “As the temple was made ‘according to the pattern shown to Mosesin the mount,’ Hebrews 8:5, even so every creature was first conceived and afterward (in time) created.
Similarly, Manis a symbol-generating creature. He is inevitably so. He cannot help being so. He generates good symbolsor bad ones, but he is never symbol-free. Man’s calling is to imitate God, on the creaturely level, by naming the animalsas God named the world (Genesis 1:5ff. 2:19), and by extending dominion throughout the world.’
We are made free from the dizzying delusions of disorder by returning to right order and rewarded with the real world.
Again, Jordan calls us to, ‘Notice that naming comes first. Man first symbolizes his intention, conceptually, and then puts it into effect. Symbols create reality, not vice versa.
Or, more accurately, for God, symbols create reality; for man, symbols structure reality. Man does not create out of nothing; the image of God’s creativity in man involves restructuringpre-existent reality.’
The Grace of The Gospel transfigures the underlying structure of Halakhic Man and paves the way for the jester to become more than he was before. A priestly king and prophet in one. The times truly are a-changin’. [45]
‘Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin’
And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind.’ (Mr Tambourine Man) [46]
Jordan hints at the symbolic power of Jesus Christ in the music of Woody Guthrie and the gospel music young Dylan grew up with: ‘Grace gives us redeemed and restored men. The saved are re-symbolized as righteous and whole before God. Here again, we have two witnesses, the royal priesthood (believers) and the servant priesthood (elders).’ The road for the jester to enter the royal priesthood was set. [47]
Each of the key Judeo-Christian symbols informs Dylan’s entire oeuvre from the sixties until the twenty twenties and his we can see from Murder Most Foul that Bob’s vision is still clear.
Jordan focuses on three that we discover in Dylan over and again, ‘Books have been written on the interrelationship of the three special symbols: Word, Sacrament, Person. Here my point is simply this: These are the three special symbols God has set up. The restoration of the whole fabric of life takes place when these symbols are restored to power.’ [48]
The disorder of music and popular culture:
Bob Dylan is a special figure of pop culture and has proven a unique phenomenon over the last half-century. He has remained free from the musical constraints above and below.
Once famously and ludicrously labelled Judas by ‘fans’ for ‘going electric’, he has refused to bend the knee to demands that come from the mob, or from the high fashions of the music industry. He has a story to tell, and harmonises order and non-order to play the way he has been called to play.
Let’s listen to philosopher Roger Scruton as he describes some of the pitfalls of popular culture and its music.
‘Popular culture is not a system of moral and religious belief, does not find expression in customs and ceremonies, is not induced through rites of passage, and is often enjoyed in solitude and without any essential reference to a community of initiates.’
Popular culture is missing the ‘We’ of Rabbi Sacks and the qualities that attracted the young Dylan to folk, Gospel and The Blues. Each of which were infused with the power of community and common purpose. From the common experience of black slaves in the southern United States or poor immigrants arriving in the nation’s north during hard times.
Scruton contends that, ‘It is therefore not a culture in the anthropologist’s sense at all, and its very fluidity and open-ness enable it to flow over all traditional forms of social order and to break down the barriers between them.
Pop music is now a globalising force, creating adherents wherever the air-waves can flow: ‘one world, one music,’ in the slogan adopted by MTV…’ [49]
The unique appeal of Dylan is that he can be so quintessentially American and yet so powerfully universal. This is a quality he shares with two of the twentieth century’s other premier formalist poets, Ireland’s Seamus Heaney and Poland’s Czeslaw Milosz.
Each of the three men have been given The Nobel Prize for their priceless contributions to their nation’s cultures and the world’s common reserve. Each has mastered the forms and known the true power of language used the right way, ‘knowing their song well before they started singin’.
Each lived through harsh times and embodied their nation’s collective struggles. With the pressure serving to create precious diamonds for their kin.
Scruton laments how, ‘Pop Culture ‘is characterised by a peculiar feature, which I can only describe as the ‘externalisation’ of the musical movement.’
The spirit of the music doesn’t come from within, but from the spirit of the age and from fashionable demand. It is impersonal. This hurts the music and the lyrics.
Scruton continues, ‘Like music in our classical tradition, and like jazz, ragtime, blues and folk, pop has melody, rhythm, harmony and tone-colour.
But these seem to come not from within the music itself, but from elsewhere. The music is generated from a point outside, assembled from a repertoire of effects, according to procedures which involve little or no invention, but which set the music into a machine-like motion with repetition as the principal device.’
In an anti-human inversion of good music, Man begins to serve machines, the market, the musician’s ideology and what is ‘useful’ at the cost of true artistic integrity or the goodness of God’s creation.
Scruton continues by showing how this reflects the disorder or our present age, ‘In fact the externality of the movement is precisely what suits the music for its place in a society of overheard noise. The kind of music that I am describing might be called ‘music from elsewhere’ – it is churned out by the music machine and scattered on the airwaves. And this mechanical approach to the musical material serves a function.’
There is disharmony between Man and music, ‘When the voice is erased from the accompaniment, and re-processed as noise, the singer becomes the focus of attention. The music becomes the background to a drama, which is the incarnation of the idol.’ [50]
The power of Dylan lies in part precisely in his ability to point beyond himself, to keep our attention on the drama of the music and lyrics. And sometimes on characters he creates. Each composition is layered with rhythm, rhyme and complex narratives to claim our attention.
Bob offers ‘iconographic’ music to draw us into a grander symbolic world, creating and sometimes taking on characters to incarnate stories for the listener to share in. [51] He retains the humane honesty of the older musical and cultural forms. This is one of the key features of Dylan’s career. It can be seen in Scorsese’s No Direction Home, and Rolling Thunder Revue on Netflix, the latter based close to the time of what many consider his magnum opus Blood on the Tracks. That album portrays Dylan’s clear storytelling prowess.
Songs like Shelter From the Storm and Tangled up in Blue weave their way into the tapestry of Judeo-Christian civilisiation’s great art by virtue of Dylan’s humble and humane art.
He makes many layered and complex cross-references to ‘high culture’, such as Dante’s poems of love in Tangled Up in Blue and delves low into the fertile fields of The Mississippi Delta to draw upon the Blues’s hopeful resistance against oppression and fate.
Scruton laments immature characteristics of pop music and their cultural counterpart where, ‘The external movement of modern pop connects with an important fact of modern life. The modern adolescent finds himself in a world that has been set in motion; he is beset by noise, by external pressures, and by forces that he cannot control.’
This disordered fatal empathy observes a distorted form in the carnivalesque mirror of the pop idol upon the secular altar:
‘The pop star is displayed in the same condition, high up on electric wires, the currents of modern life zinging through him, but miraculously unharmed. He is the guarantee of safety, the living symbol that you can live like this forever. His death or decay are simply inconceivable, like the death of Elvis.’ [52]
The chaotic ‘disorder’ of popular music, Jeremy Begbie demonstrates, has fallen far from the sweet neat sounds of older ‘orderly’ music, but we do not long nostalgically for the heavenly middle ages but for transfiguration of what is good and humane. Begbie assures us that the great canon of Judeo-Christian music contains creative ‘non-order’ and ‘improvisation’ within its range. [53]
Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi has compared Bach, Cobain and their worlds to express where music has fallen from earlier ages and how this reflects digressions in wider society. We could perform a similar comparison between Bob Dylan and many a pop music idol:
Mangalwadi affirms that, ‘Augustine taught that while this musical code is “bodily” (physical), it is made and enjoyed by the soul. For example, the book of Job deals with the problem of inexplicable suffering.
In it God himself tells Job of the connection between music and creation: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? . . . when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
There is a healthy place here for music at the heart of ‘sacred’ life. Mangalwadi continues:
‘The Bible taught that a sovereign Creator (rather than a pantheon of deities with conflicting agendas) governs the universe for his glory. He is powerful enough to save men like Job from their troubles.
This teaching helped develop the Western belief of a cosmos: an orderly universe where every tension and conflict will ultimately be resolved, just as after a period of inexplicable suffering Job was greatly blessed.’
This helps us appreciate Dylan’s Judeo-Christian world, and the art it gives birth to.
Our Indian scholar shows us that, ‘This belief in the Creator as a compassionate Savior became an underlying factor of the West’s classical music and its tradition of tension and resolution. Up until the end of the nineteenth century, Western musicians shared their civilization’s assumption that the universe was cosmos rather than chaos.’
Because of the focus on Christ and His New Creation as the end, something we considered for Bob Dylan and NT Wright earlier,
‘They composed consonance and concord even when they experienced dissonance and discord. That is not to suggest that classical music did not express the full range of human emotions. It did.’
The entire drama of salvation was offered in Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and the masters of music forms and centred around the source of life Himself. The Living God of The Scriptures and His good creation inspired these men to reach new musical heights and break new ground. Dylan has returned to the same rock over his long career, over and again.
Mangalwadi sees this faith in the goodness of creation echoed in the emphasis on tonality:
‘For centuries, Western music was tonal. That is, its hallmark was loyalty to a tonic key/home note. Every single piece gave preference to this one note (the tonic), making it the tonal center to which all other tones were related.’
The move away from this strong centre in music went hand in hand with moves towards new political ideologies and new desecrated centres.
He relates a fascinating piece of history for us to consider about the death of tonality in Judeo-Christian music: ‘The breakup of tonality in Western music is said to have begun with Adolf Hitler’s hero, Richard Wagner (1813–1883), who experimented with “atonality” in his opera Tristan and Isolde. Claude Debussy (1862–1918), Grand Master of the occult Rosicrucian lodges in France, took that experiment further.’
The quest to rebel against the real has continued to ramp up the chaos through the generations and claim it is good. Making chaos out of order to invert the creator of the cosmos.
Mangalwadi shows that ‘The West’s descent into the chaos of atonality accelerated in the twentieth century in Vienna, the capital of Europe’s cultural decadence.
Eventually the atonal composers had to create a new organization in their art to replace tonality—an artificial tonality called serialism. By dismissing tonality—the center—they lost something they hadn’t considered—form.’
Again, inverting Genesis, so that the world of music was formless and void.
Mangalwadi returns to Cobain to make clear his point about the chaos and idolatry of much modern music, ‘Technically, Cobain retained tonality, but in a philosophical sense the loss of tonality in Western culture culminated in Cobain’s music, the icon of America’s nihilism and an unfortunate victim of a civilization that is losing its center, its soul.’ [54]
Not everyone can live with this chaos in music and life. The ‘formless void’ often proves too much and the number of suicides in the year of Covid-19 is a bleak mark on the new popular culture. Many seek new idols instead and live by orders from their race, social class, politicians or businessmen. This is a life not much better than death however and marks the low road to what Dylan describes in ‘A Pawn in Their Game.’
‘And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.’ (A Pawn in the Game) [55]
Mangalwadi commends the consistency of Cobain who, at least, lived his beliefs out to their ‘logical’ conclusions:
‘It must be added in his defense that by killing himself, Cobain demonstrated that he lived by what he believed. His sincerity makes him a legitimate icon. Most nihilists do not live in the grip of what they believe to be the central truth about reality.
For example, French existentialists Sartre and Camus advocated choice despite the nihilism they embraced. In so doing they made a way out of Cobain’s problem. For them suicide was not necessary if one could create his own reality by choices.’
Amongst other things, Sartre and Camus underestimated the power of advertisers, as anyone au fait with pop music and culture knows. ‘Our choices’ are created for us and sold at a high price.
Mangalwadi suggests that, ‘Cobain remains popular because while many people claim to be nihilists, they don’t fully live it out. He did. He lived without creating his own reality through choice (or tonality through serial technique). He lived in the nihilism, in the “atonality,” and in that nihilism he died.’
It is here at this low ebb that we see how high Bach, Mozart, Dylan and the best musical artists have climbed and why they are so important for Judeo-Christian civilisation. They bring us home to the high beauty, goodness and truth of life.
Mangalwadi’s caution against the nihilism that killed Cobain continues by meaningful comparison between order and chaos, life and death, ‘In that sense Cobain stands as the direct opposite of the life, thoughts, and work of J. S. Bach. Whereas Bach’s music celebrated life’s meaning as the soul’s eternal rest in the Creator’s love, Cobain became a symbol of the loss of a center and meaning in the contemporary West.
While Western music has gone through dozens of phases with thousands of permutations since the time of Luther and Bach, in some ways it was only during the 1980s that a phenomenon like Kurt Cobain became possible.’
Mangalwadi, like Bob Dylan, tears down the false walls of separation between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’, morality and music once more.
‘The rejection of a good, caring, and almighty God and a rejection of the biblical philosophy of sin ensured that there was no way to make sense of suffering—personal, societal, or environmental. Reality became senseless, hopeless, and painful.’ [56]
Dylan offers a new highway, neither returning in mere imitation of the former maestros, nor sequestered in the existential deceptions of nihilism.
Musician and theologian Jeremy Begbie’s shown us that there is a hope for ‘non-order’ and its play with ‘order’. By virtue of remaining centred on the real, Bob Dylan plays creatively with order and non-order to make music both ancient and new. [57]
Bob’s distinct voice is at the centre of his work next to deep lyrics that can be heard and felt across ages. The layered sound of his songs echoes the great musical styles of folk, blues, gospel and the great canon.
The decidedly non-orderly Mr Tambourine Man sings this truth beautifully,
‘And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.’ (Mr Tambourine Man) [58]
For the Love of Language and Literature:
After a long career filled with lyrical genius and paying homage to the great poets and writers through the ages, Dylan was finally awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. [59]
This is especially sweet against the row of desolation we mentioned before, and within the scandalous study and practice of what passes for ‘literature’ today. The great artforms into which Dylan has stepped, music and literature, have each been brought to their knees by political idolatry. Several ‘theories’ serve powers and dominions not much different from the false gods of old:
Benjamin Lockerd decries the desecration of the great arts:
‘What these newer theories have in common is that they have taken the capital T away from truth and transferred it to Theory.
They are either materialist (Marx and Freud) or relativist (deconstructionist) or political (feminist, post-colonial), but they all assume that the ancestors were wrong and vicious and must be ignored or denounced. And they are all dedicated to abolishing the canon (the list of what we used to call great authors).’ [60]
The rebellion against the real has become very technical and created turgid new vernacular to worship with.
Echoing Lockerd, Eric Voegelin has rightly contended that, ‘The occupation with works of art, poetry, philosophy, mythical imagination and so forth, makes sense only if it is conducted as an inquiry into the nature of Man.’
Reminding us that ‘To be open to the gifts of literature, we must attend to her with love and wisdom. This is a far cry from the reductionist hubris of the social ‘sciences’ noted above.’ [61]
For the ideologue without a true centre, there is only power, and arbitrary centres of ‘meaning’ which should be desecrated with ceaseless revolutions. Like the revolutions of a Ferris wheel, this carnival of chaos can make Man very dizzy indeed.
Not many would have known how far Nobel Prize-Winning Dylan would come when he stepped onto stage at The Newport Folk Festival of 1964, to wow the crowd after an introduction by folk stalwart Pete Seeger.
But when we watch that magical performance and hear something unique like Mr Tambourine Man it is really no surprise:
‘Though I know that evening’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship
My senses have been stripped
My hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade
Cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it.’ (Mr Tambourine Man) [62]
Embry commends our wiser artistic statesmen who live with love at the centre of their concerns, and place us under their ‘dancing spell’ again.
The critic must be moved out of their detached complacency to judge art and the artist justly. This can only be achieved by returning to love:
‘For a literary critic to be first and foremost a philosopher would appear to be a formidable qualification, but in returning to the Platonic understanding of that term — as Voegelin did — we find that a philosopher need only be a lover of wisdom. This is a very important understanding of the term philosopher, because it places the accent on lover without forcing a definition of wisdom.’ [63]
To echo Abraham Joshua Heschel, ‘Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.’ [64]
We recover childlike wisdom when we stand before the best ancient artists and moral forces with due respect, learning from those who prop up the lasting edifice of beauty, goodness and truth. We are reminded of the cornerstones of true civilization and the type of eternal questions that have filled Bob Dylan’s longing ballads. Those questions of The Spirit that ‘blow in the wind’.
Embry argues that, ‘The philosophical search in which a lover of wisdom engages is fundamentally Socratic, characterized by an essential humility and knowing ignorance, which requires the philosopher to recognize that for human beings there can be no final, complete knowledge of wisdom.’ [65]
‘A self-ordained professor’s tongue Ah, but I was so much older then
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
I’m younger than that now
And worse
You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you, it’s alright ma.’ (It’s Alright Ma) [66]
After a startling rise to the heights of American music in the early sixties, Dylan was held to be a demi-god who could do no wrong. The fans were eager for a new idol to worship and made use of Dylan for their purposes.
That was until 1965, when Dylan became their ‘Judas’ because he ‘went electric’ and shocked folk to the core. At the time of this public divorce with fans he was getting married to Sara and beginning a new life.
Idols of power, and what should really be marginal identities, take centre stage in the passionless play of the present age. In a new form of an old problem, Tim Keller describes these counterfeit gods:
‘Our hearts are idol-making factories that make good gifts from God ultimate in our lives, thereby replacing God in our affections.’ [67]Before he asks one of those eternal questions we mentioned before. Like Dylan, he sees nowhere to turn but towards the authority of The Spirit:
‘And there’s no exit in any direction
’Cept the one that you can’t see with your eyes. (Series of Dreams) [68]
Keller asks, “What is an idol?’ Deciding that, ‘It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.”
Keller then wonders, ‘How can you identify these insidious idols? How can you tell if you are worshipping a counterfeit God?’
He ends up giving us a beautiful concise answer that should help us recentre on what really matters. “A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.” [69]
Who or what do we ‘need’ and what ‘must’ we have?
‘They say ev’ry man needs protection
They say ev’ry man must fall
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Some place so high above this wall
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released.’ (I Shall be Released) [70]
Bondage under Pharoah:
‘They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain
Only a pawn in their game.’ (Only a Pawn in Their Game.) [71]
As you may have noticed from the last few passages, idols demand churches and just like the Israelites who bowed in worship before the golden calf, ‘enlightened modern people’ will gather in the name of ‘progress’ or ‘equality’, just as easy.
Canadian Philosopher James KA Smith cautions against these ‘secular liturgies’ which worship (give ultimate worth to) chosen gods of this world. By reminding us we are primarily worshipping creatures, he makes it easier to discern false gods that demand our time and sacrifices.
He argues, ‘…forms are not neutral. Indeed, that was one of the core arguments of the first volume, Desiring the Kingdom.’ (In a series of books on Cultural Liturgies)
Before contending persuasively, ‘Cultural practices that we might think are “neutral” – just something that we do – are actually doing something to us. They are formative.But what they form is our heart-habits, our loves and longings that… actually drive our action and behavior.’ [72]
This points to the importance of musical icons like Dylan. A true icon points beyond itself to something more, and is not meant to be worshipped like an idol. Dylan points to the music, the stories and The Scriptures to fight the idols of infatuation. ‘It aint me you’re lookin’ for babe.’ [73]
Amidst fervent secularist worship lies a desire for earned righteousness that pressures the believer to be on ‘the right side of history.’ Again, one-time right-wing idolater Joseph Pearce had his heart changed by the power of Truth in history.
Pearce mirrors Dylan’s prophetic pronouncements and historical humility here:
‘Those who treat the past with contempt, refusing to learn its lessons and worshipping the imaginary machine of “progress,” will be the tools of tyranny today as they have been the tools of tyranny in the past. They are not only on the wrong side of history; they are on the wrong side of humanity…’ [74]
The progressive spirit of the sixties already seemed like an illusion to Dylan by the seventies, jaded by politics, romantic separation and the dark side of drugs, he knew that life aint ‘black and white’ as if he’d seen it in a dream. This was the ‘thorny crown’.
‘As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
And our choices they was few so the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split.’ (Bob Dylan’s Dream) [75]
Nowhere is this expressed more beautifully than in Dylan’s disturbing With God on our Side. Despite his rightful scorn directed at those who labelled him Judas Iscariot for musical ‘betrayal’, he knows that we all have some Judas Iscariot in us and has kept that in mind to create some of the most profound moral ballads in the history of music.
Like Solzhenitsyn on the Russian side, Bob was afraid of America losing her soul by Man making her an idol. Solzhenitsyn and this descendent of immigrants from Odessa, Russia both knew that ‘The line between good and evil cuts across every human heart.’ [76]
This is an essential and timeless truth that kept Dylan’s conscience clear during the moral haze of the Cold War and continues to set a moral pulse for his art.
In his music, Dylan was asking questions about American identity and what it meant to be truly human. Were they really on the ‘right side of history?’ Is there an obvious ‘right side of history’?
Dylan, like the prophets before him, calls us to think again about who or what we are willing to offer sacrifices.
‘…I’ve learned to hate the Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side
But now we got weapons
Of chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And ya’ never ask questions
When God’s on your side
Through many dark hour
I been thinking about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for ya’
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.’ R (With God on Our Side) [77]
The Jester and the King:
Many of us living through the crisis of Covid-19 find ourselves in unfamiliar territory. We millennials and younger generations have not lived through the same kind of testing times as the boomer generation, upon whom some have poured much scorn.
Now that we aren’t okay, it might be time to listen to some of those boomers who have lived through trials like this before. They have at least felt the freezing chill of The Cold War and spent many long dark nights not knowing what the morning would bring.
The Dylan of Murder Most Foul has been around the world and back and has seen a thing or two worthwhile. Much of which is still unknown. Between the heady days of the sixties and Dylan’s musical rebirth decades later, he remained a still small voice dedicated to plumbing the riches of tradition.
His later inspired albums such as Tempest and Modern Times, with their many creative references to Ovid, Shakespeare, tragedy and salvation, might not have taken place without a quiet return home. These mature works may even be the works from which we can learn the most. Dylan can show us how to grow old gracefully, deepen artistically and live morally.
At least this special boomer might serve as a model for us. Whilst we are now physically bound to home again and have been given time to reframe what is worth living and dying for, this growing icon can point a way forward.
Sean Wilentz kept faith in Dylan’s important artistic and moral importance even during those days when Dylan went into the wilderness. He believed he would ‘find his muse again’. [78] By returning home again, in body and spirit, and with the help of a good guide we might find ours too.
Don McLean’s American Pie plays the long game of American music history to show just a fraction of Dylan’s seminal role:
‘When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me
Oh and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned.’ (American Pie) [79]
In Don McLean’s song, we discover a jester long held to be Dylan. ‘Bob Dylan is the most likely candidate for a number of reasons. Including the fact that Dylan donned a windbreaker jacket like the one worn by James Dean in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’. This featured on the cover of his early ‘Freewheelin’ album. [80]
Polyphonic’s excellent short YouTube video on this popular song describes, ‘the jester on the sidelines in a cast’. Supposedly referring to Dylan’s motorbike accident, which left him injured and ailing for months. Bob was the jester who took over the throne from Elvis, only to find a ’crown of thorns’. [81]
This early history is well known and covered. And the later 1975 Blood on the Tracks is widely heralded as one of the greatest albums ever. [82] Yet, some of Dylan’s greatest work has come later and is unknown to all but serious Dylan fans.
Bob’s cold response to the cultish fever surrounding him in those days and later Christian conversion may have cost him many fans and turned much of the public off. He won’t complain, but it means that many don’t know the story since.
Yes, Dylan saw through attempts to make him ‘the voice of a generation’ from these early days and passed on the cup of national idolatry, but that’s because his eyes were cast higher. We should follow his ascent up the mountain from those early days to the clear heights of Murder Most Foul.
This playful jester, or trickster, role in Dylan goes far beyond the confines of the sixties however and has shown its non-orderly hand over Dylan’s long oeuvre.
The song Jokerman is a clear example. Whilst Dylan’s ‘The Man in Me’ was the song chosen for The Coen Brother’s cult classic The Big Lebowski, Jokerman best reflects the spirit of the movie. This complex song serves as a ‘carnivalesque critique of society’ by calling out lies, pernicious politics and a whole series of laughable self-deceptions. [83]
‘You’re a man of the mountains, you can walk on the clouds
Manipulator of crowds, you’re a dream twister
You’re going to Sodom and Gomorrah
But what do you care? Ain’t nobody there would want marry your sister
Friend to the martyr, a friend to the woman of shame
You look into the fiery furnace, see the rich man without any name.’(Jokerman) [84]
Dylan did not savor a savior complex nor seek out counterfeit godhood but longed instead to expose the presupposed pretensions of what Jacques Ellul named ‘world opinion’. [85]
The early halakhic influences of his youth have found new wine skins, under the influence of Yeshua, the cosmic joker who inspired his criticisms of false gods and prophets. This is still a scandal and foolishness to fallen Man. [86] The ‘Gospel Period’ of the late seventies and early eighties was only the beginning of a long period of rich songs alluding to The Bible and its answers to Man’s greatest questions. This has been covered in marvelous books by Scott Marshall, Phil Mason and others. This quieter but profound later spiritual period has also seen Dylan make ingenious plays on the work of Shakespeare, the ancient Mediterranean poets and classics of world literature. [87]
Shakespeare and Dylan:
‘Both are literary magpies. Dylan reworked the folk song No More Auction Block as Blowing in the Wind and he took the tune from Scarborough Fair for Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright. Shakespeare dusted down old history plays and turned them into riveting political dramas such as Richard III and Henry V. He also turned an old play about King Leir into one of his most powerful tragedies and remade Thomas Kyd’s revenge play Hamlet into one of the greatest works in literature. These are not isolated examples: almost everything Shakespeare and Dylan wrote has a source which they adapted.’
This comparison by Stuart Hampton-Reeves is enlightening. He goes on to tell us that, ‘Between them, Dylan and Shakespeare are probably the two greatest thieves in literature – but they always made the material better, their versions often superseding and obliterating what went before.
But the similarities do not end there, for few writers have elevated the common insult to high art as Shakespeare and Dylan. Dylan is famously unforgiving in his songs, many of which are caustic character assassinations. Take for example this unforgettable putdown from Positively Fourth Street (1964):
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You’d know what a drag it is to see you…But no one insults like Shakespeare. Try this from Henry IV Part One: “Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whor*son obscene greasy tallow-catch!” Or this, from As You Like It: “Your brain is as dry as the remainder biscuit after voyage.”
Both master the written word and put it to good use, whether through transcendent meditations or comical curses.
Hampton-Reeves says, ‘To my knowledge, Dylan has never written any plays, but characters from Shakespeare crop up in many of his songs. Ophelia appears in Desolation Row (1965), Othello and Desdemona exchange a few words in Po’ Boy (2001), and Shakespeare himself appears in the alley in Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again (1966). Tears of Rage (1967) is based on King Lear and Seven Curses (1963) retells some of the story of Measure for Measure. For his part, Shakespeare was also a songwriter.’
The line between music and literature is blissfully straddled in both, and each soothes Man’s burdens with smooth assonance and alliterations. Creating beautiful plays of language.
Hampton-Reeves argues, ‘As You Like It is the most musical of Shakespeare’s plays, including the classics ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ (later covered by Dylan’s contemporary Donovan) and ‘Blow, Blow, Winter Wind.’ Shakespeare also incorporated (and adapted) traditional ballads into his plays, many of which resemble Dylan’s early work.’ [88]
The long piece dedicated to Shakespeare in Dylan’s Nobel Prize speech can be heard against this fraternal backdrop. Perhaps the most comprehensive comparison of the two great artists so far has been written by Andrew Muir and is appropriately titled ‘The True Performing of It’. [89]
Dylan and Shakespeare share a great sense of humour and their works make many layered jokes about the tragicomedy of Man. We won’t do this now, but one could spend a lifetime delving into every line and appreciating the playful layered meanings of each.
Many Dylan fans do this often, me included, and Genius.com is a good place to begin. There, you will be met with some questionable speculation and some gold. But dedicated Dylanologists, who have followed his long journey and got to know our man and his work over many years, are your finest instructors for a deep dive. [90]
The Perennial Jester:
Let us now look at Dylan’s infamous relationship with the press. This is one of the key avenues for him to harness the power of the jester to confuse and frustrate peddlers of nonsense, by flipping over their laughable questions and presumptions. [91] He still calls out their assumptions and misconceptions in interviews, even after all these years. Like Christ and Socrates, Bob Dylan favours sharp questioning to confound the ‘wise’ and avoids simplistic answers to life’s central concerns. [92]
The influence of surrealism was there in the early days, on display in a famous 1965 press conference in San Francisco. [93] It has served its purpose well but this early trickster spirit has been replaced and reinforced since by more profound songs and playful responses as Bob has matured. This is glorious non-order used to restore precious order to a chaotic world fathered by lies.
As a Man, Dylan has refused to remain stagnant in the sixties or to be comforted by political ideologies forced down our throats as panacea for the world’s ills. This spiritual poet transcends the ‘disenchanted’ disorder of the age and will not rely on an ideological or mechanical fix any more than he did as a young man. He wants to be ‘re-enchanted’, but not have this enforced on him or others. [94]
From his troublesome time in the sixties, strung out on heroin and dedicated to the beat culture, to his motorcycle crash and Damascus-like conversion, Bob Dylan has been hungry for the bread of life. An older Dylan has shown how he overturned the famous Robert Johnson myth of the crossroads, by bargaining with ‘The Chief Commander’ instead of the devil. [95] This is the jester’s greatest trick and rewarded him with the spiritual food he was looking for:
‘Low cards are what I’ve got
But I’ll play this hand whether I like it or not
I’m sworn to uphold the laws of God
You could put me out in front of a firing squad
I’ve been out and around with the rowdy men
Just like you, my handsome friend
My head’s so hard, must be made of stone
I pay in blood, but not my own.’ (Pay in Blood) [96]
It has been a long and rising road since the iconic moments of the sixties which captured the nation’s attention, but he has ascended the mountain to earn the stars of literary genius by making and remaking great art.
The great jester figure performed another extraordinary flip, by overturning a resentful piece of poetry by Rimbaud into one of the most beautiful songs of human freedom in history. In Chimes of Freedom, he reverses Rimbaud’s poem of scorn for the poor and downtrodden and returns to Christ, the cosmic trickster. [97]
‘Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flared
And the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from driftin’
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
And for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed and laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time and we watched with one last look
Spellbound and swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse
And for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashin’. (Chimes of Freedom) [98]
Dylan grew to understand that, “There’s no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there’s only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I’m trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics. They have got nothing to do with it. I’m thinking about the general people and when they get hurt.” [99]
He has never looked back and his ‘re-enchantment’ belongs in a rigorously Judeo-Christian world. He is rooted in the ‘future tense’ [100] and most real of possible worlds, as Jordan reminded us with his quick dig into symbolism.
Enchantment can return for those of us happy to carefully consider the questions posed by our great world crises. David Brown walks with Dylan by suggesting we rediscover ‘place’ as more than just blind matter and space. He hopes God is understood to be ‘mediated through all of creation (human and divine) once again’. This is the return to the ‘symbolic world’ we spoke of before. Redeemed time and place reverses the world at the end of Bob’s scorn, that old world that has ‘no time to think.’ [101]
By following Dylan into ‘the divine realm’ [102] we revalue creation and the materials of human culture. To illustrate, Brown examines how this might occur with respect to place in all its various forms: nature, landscape painting, architecture, town planning, maps, pilgrimage, gardens, and sports venues. The ‘secular’ world is a myth and Dylan knows it. [103]
This re-enchantment of the world is everywhere in Dylan’s oeuvre, and has brought many of us home again. Dylan has brought us back to the symbolic world by invitation, in music and literature, via the myths of the Mediterranean and The Mississippi River. Riding on through the greats of the musical and literary ages, and by going back to The Bible. He is a rare storyteller, telling the ‘old, old story for modern times’. [104]
This is a man who claims that he ‘feels like he’s walking around in the ruins of Pompeii all the time.’ [105]
Michael Gilmour has shown, through precise images and events in Dylan’s life, such as a famous photo of Dylan next to Christ; how he has ‘sat at the foot of The Cross’ as both a ‘Roman soldier’ and as a ‘disciple’ like ‘the one whom God loved’. [106]
Displaying his knowledge of Bob as a deep symbolic artist. Dylan’s sensitivity to Christ and anti-Christ in one mind serves to remind us that we are fallen creatures mired in history but made for ‘transfiguration’. [107]
An interview with the classicist scholar, Richard Thomas, casts extraordinary light on Dylan’s lively experience with ‘transfiguration’ and his place in living history.
The interview beings, ‘Let’s go back to the classics. In “Why Bob Dylan Matters” you propose a new interpretation for Dylan’s concept of “transfiguration” that involves ancient Greek and Roman poets, and even a mysterious Rome library. Another word for transfiguration perhaps could be “intertextuality”. I believe that’s an essential part of your message and I’d be grateful if you could explain it.’
‘I’ll try. One of the many delights about being a classicist, working on the poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and on the literature that flows down to us from back there, and now includes the songs of Bob Dylan, is that you connect song and poetry across the centuries.’
Richard Thomas inspires us here to partake in history with greater imaginative power,
‘You connect to what human genius produces at the highest artistic and aesthetic level in different languages and cultures.’ [108]
We must become cultural translators across time and space if we are to properly understand Man and real history. Our lack of cultural translation keeps us paddling in Kierkegaard’s shallow waters and the reeds of ideology. This has been shown in Logos Made Flesh, citing Wittgenstein. [109]
Echoing the great French artist Rene Girard, Classics Professor Thomas says,
‘All art is in imitation of and emulation with something that went before, what the Greeks call mimesis and zēlōsis, it puts itself in a tradition and competes with what comes before. That’s what T. S. Eliot meant when he wrote “immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.”
We saw this before in our brief comparison with Shakespeare and Dylan is still our Robin Hood, stealing from the riches of history to give to the poor in spirit:
‘That’s why Dylan started Tempest with a stolen line. We are supposed to recognize the theft — along with the melody — compare the two and see that Dylan’s song is both in a tradition and surpasses that tradition. A seven-verse folk song becomes a forty-five-verse epic.’
It is here we can begin to see Dylan’s growth and maturation from icon of the sixties and ‘voice of a generation’ to a deep voice for many generations. Professor Richard places what Dylan is doing first within an academic context, before adding an essential civilizational and spiritual one:
‘In my business this process is generally called intertextuality. What I write about is the way Dylan has in recent interviews, in the Nobel lecture, and elsewhere brilliantly remade this conscious compositional process into a mystical or spiritual one, “transfiguration.”
Thomas doesn’t doubt that, ‘There’s undoubtedly a hint at the transfiguration of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, when Jesus shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzlingly white with God’s power on the mountain, and Moses and Elijah turned up to talk to him.’
Then he ties several Dylan’s symbolic threads together,
‘I think that’s why Dylan tells Mikal Gilmore in the 2012 Rolling Stone that it was in “a library in Rome” that he read about transfiguration.
But Rome is also there because of the intertexts of pagans, Virgil and Ovid, who once lived in that city.’
The symbolic importance of this eternal city and our ancient foundations live in Dylan’s present and invite us into their timeless space through music and captivating stories. Thomas mentions Modern Times as an example:
‘In 2006, after the release of Modern Times with more than 20 lines of Ovid scattered across the songs, he tells Sean Lethem the songs “seemed to have an ancient presence” when he sang them — “in a reincarnative way, maybe.”
Here we see an American master return to the centre and history’s foundations, sojourning through the ruins of time. Now Professor Thomas reminds us that ‘This sort of mystical metaphor goes way back itself. Ennius, the father of Roman poetry, was the first to write Latin epic in the meter of Homer.
Ennius reports talking with Homer in a dream, and Homer tells him his soul has passed into Ennius, by way of a peaco*ck, in accordance with Pythagorean principle of the transmigration of souls. You can’t make this sh*t up, as they say.’ [110]
Thomas is not alone, for those inclined to doubt. Grant Maxwell also locates Dylan’s references to books about ‘transfiguration’ within a fascinating layered history and appreciates the many levels of meaning Dylan is laying out:
‘The Transfiguration of Christ, which St. Thomas Aquinas referred to as “the greatest miracle,” is when Jesus shined radiantly upon a mountain (perhaps like the Beatles on the Cavern stage) and became mysteriously connected to the Hebrew prophets Elijah and Moses who appeared beside him.’
He goes on to say, ‘In the New Testament, Paul refers to the believers being “changed into the same image” through “beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,”[iv] which suggests that the witnessing of the transfigured individual can mediate a similar transformation in those who believe in that Transfiguration, acting as a mirror for the collective.’
Maxwell is astute enough to recognize something the Christian poet Dylan saw many years before, ‘Ultimately, the Transfiguration appears to have been fulfilled in the death and rebirth of Christ, which seems to be a kind of fractal reiteration of the archetypal death and rebirth of the shamanic initiation that Dylan appears to have experienced.’
Then we are shown a long lineage of those who have transfigured in some way, ‘As Dylan asserts, those few who are fundamentally transformed through this kind of process, by various accounts including primal shamans, ancient mythological heroes who traversed the underworld (Osiris, Dionysus, Heracles, Persephone, Orpheus, Psyche, Odysseus, Aeneas, Theseus, Gilgamesh, Odin, and others), figures from the Hebrew Bible (Jacob, Enoch, Elijah, Moses), the New Testament (Mary and Christ), and the Buddha, are reborn as new people, which separates them from the majority of humanity who have not undergone such a transformation.’
Maxwell quotes the transfigured Dylan himself to sharpen his point,
‘According to Dylan, this Transfiguration is not something that one can “dream up and think” in a hypothetical, conceptual way, but something that one either feels or does not.’
Maxwell finally distills the varieties of this religious experience into Dylan’s own:
‘From Dylan’s perspective, which is very much like that articulated by William James, one cannot choose one’s destiny. Rather, one either knows that one has been transfigured or one does not, and the skepticism of those who have not experienced Transfiguration, either in themselves or in others, has no bearing on the reality of the phenomenon. As it is expressed in several places in the New Testament, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” [111]
J. Robert Wright brings our eyes to a book on Transfiguration by John Gatta which, ‘demonstrates in a masterful way how the Transfiguration, largely ignored by modernist theologians of a secularizing mindset, is in fact an organizing principle that bridges the immanence of this world with the transcendence of that which is to come . . .’ [112]
Dylan has long centred around this ‘organizing principle’, the person of God Himself, to live in the tension between ‘immanence’ and ‘transcendence’. This reiterates our earlier point that he should be seen as an ‘eschatological’ figure constantly focused on the end, or ultimate point, of creation. He sees God as the point and top of the mountain. [113]
To be candid, Dylan’s compositions are carved out of the high edifice of ageless art, arranged to bring us back into the elemental mysteries of life. This is reflected in the eternal city of Rome, which captures his imagination.
This city of profound symbolic power takes us back to the crucifixions of Sts Peter and Paul, and news seeds of Judeo-Christian place, no less than the ancient Roman empire and her poets of eternal life.
The eternal quality of Dylan mirrors the eternal nature of that holy city. This point is revealed to us clearly in the composition of Blowin’ in the Wind and its questions that will not go away:
‘How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind
Yes, how many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind
Yes, how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind.’ (Blowin’ in the Wind) [114]
John 3:8 “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” [115]
You Gotta Serve Somebody:
At this point we might remember Dylan’s wrestles with those who peddle shameless falsehoods, selling untruths to be ‘relevant’. Those who desecrate words and their symbolic power.
The self-assured illusions of ‘priggery’, advertisers and false prophets are all guilty. Each of these, who twist the word have been exposed by Dylan. Dylan has replaced faith in them and their empire with a different kind of confidence, or trust, in God. [116]
Critics without ‘skin in the game’ [117] and those who ‘scapegoat’ [118] are condemned as being at odds with God and His non-orderly order.
Dylan has remembered God’s glorious Transfiguration at the top of the mountain and the dreadful ascent that saw The Christ’s skin pierced in agonizing crucifixion by those who turned against Truth. [119]
‘You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls
[Chorus]
But you’re going to have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re going to have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re going to have to serve somebody.’ (Gotta Serve Somebody) [120]
Transfiguration and Mature Man:
‘Peace will come
With tranquillity and splendor on the wheels of fire
But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall
And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
Between the King and the Queen of Swords.’ (Changing of the Guards) [121]
As we have seen, Bob Dylan has long been known as ‘the voice of a generation’, an icon of the sixties and America’s premier ‘protest singer’. Yet he has resisted unconstrained ideological ‘solutions’ that promise the sun, the moon and the stars forever, whilst playing a starring role in creating real justice. [122]
After the time spent out in the wilderness through the eighties and nineties, Dylan found his voice again. He found his ‘muse’ in the ruins of The Mediterranean, The Cross and the Music Canon. Murder Most Foul is the latest sign of this rediscovery.
He has returned to the heart of poetic and spiritual Man, releasing albums filled with mature ‘intertextual’ references to ancient poets, Christmas and continuing conversations with his musical guides.
We know from his songs, performances and rare interviews that he is still skeptical of utopian schemes and dreams, and still ‘a true believer’. [123]
Many of our own persistent problems come down to visions and dreams centred around Soveitchik’s ‘cognitive man’. This is the problem of ‘sin’ Dylan has dealt with. [124] Unlike Dylan, many of us never leave the lifeless desert wilderness we all face.
This is shown in the moral crisis we mentioned before and our inadequacy before the renewed spectre of death. Politics can’t save us, as Bob Dylan has shown us repeatedly. Dylan is a rare prophet of responsibility and right.
According to Thomas Sowell, ‘It’s fashionable now to blame tribalism’ for the world’s major problems. He… provides a different answer: Individuals hold different visions, “constrained” or “unconstrained,” which entail different views of human nature, different senses of causation, in short, different ideas about the way the world works.’
‘It is the conflict between these macro visions that Sowell argues dominates history.’ [125]
Our present generation might revel in the ‘protest’ label, but to restrict Dylan to this fraction of character is to miss how much he has matured over the generations. In his arduous ascent, he has come to resemble Isaiah or Jeremiah as much as Virgil or Shakespeare.
If we ignore this then we will miss what he can offer us in the twenty first century and long afterwards. [126]
The influence of Isaiah prints its indelible mark on Dylan’s American prophecy and was only germinating in his early career. We hear Isaiah’s existential lament echoed in All Along the Watchtower, later made famous by Jimi Hendrix.
“There must be some way out of here”
Said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth.’ (All Along the Watchtower) [127]
5: Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise, ye princes, and anoint the shield.
6: For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.
7: And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsem*n, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed:
8: And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights:
9: And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsem*n. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.
Mastered by the Servant:
Dylan has moved on from the early Gospel influences and inspiration of folks like Woody Guthrie to become ‘a property of Jesus’ through ‘a long obedience in the same direction’ with the prophets of Israel. [128]
The new disciple to Jesus, only ‘officially’ saved in the seventies has fulfilled the halakhic law of his youth and is demonstrably free from becoming the property of any mere ‘cognitive man’, or the works of their sinful hands.
Dylan’s experience of ‘being saved’ is more misunderstood than any other part of his life. The philosopher Dallas Willard can help us here by placing salvation next to discipleship in Christ:
“A discipleis a learner, a student, an apprentice – apractitioner…Disciples of Jesus are people who do not just profess certain views as their own but apply their growing understanding of life in the Kingdom of the Heavens to every aspect of their life on earth”
In a world of many ‘spiritualities’, both the sixties of Dylan’s chaotic youth and today, Willard shows what it means to be spiritual following Yeshua,“A person is a ‘spiritual person’ to the degree that his or her life is effectively integrated into and dominated by God’s Kingdom or rule”
It requires a work of cultural translation for the followers of secular faiths to begin to come to terms with the grammar of Christian life and inner laws, “The inner dimensions of life are what are referred to in the Great Commandment: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself’ (Luke 10:27).
Willard teaches carefully that, This commandment does not tell us what we must do so much as what we must cultivate in the care of our souls… a personality totally saturated with God’s kind of love, agape (see 1 Corinthians 13)” [129]
Dylan’s grown much since his youth in Hibbing, Minnesota, rambling through the songbook of American folk and canon of world music to create his unique sound. He has been formed as a disciple, writer and musician at the feet of good and living masters. His art is significant for America, her soul and Judeo-Christian civilization because it embodies spiritual power. Like Moses, he bears witness to the hard of heart and knows his song well that he is singin’. [130]
‘You can laugh at salvation, you can play Olympic games
You think that when you rest at last you’ll go back from where you came
But you’ve picked up quite a story and you’ve changed since the womb
What happened to the real you, you’ve been captured but by whom?’
He’s the property of Jesus
Resent him to the bone
You got something better
You’ve got a heart of stone.’ (Property of Jesus) [131]
Psychologist Robert L Moore once described the archetypal energies of Man by way of four images. Each of which can help us appreciate Dylan’s mature character: ‘warrior, magician, lover and king’.
America’s poet presents a model for these mature energies. The life blood from The Mississippi’s waters has met with the spirit of The Scriptures and heart of the great canon to create an iconic American Man for a nation of immigrants.
The mature Dylan casts a guiding light for those who fall short of the mature character of Man and is more important now than ever. America, in a time of increasing political idolatry, depression and substance abuse would do well to return to their central identities and what better guide than Dylan?
Moore reminds us that “In the absence of The King, the Warrior becomes a mercenary, the Magician becomes a sophist (able to argue any position and believing in none) and the Lover becomes an addict.’’
The US military-industrial complex, political sophistry and addiction to misplaced loves have all been condemned by Bob many times over as part of become the mature Man we see now and he has went through these shadow sands before coming out the other side.
According to Moore and Gillette, “The drug dealer, the ducking and diving political leader, the wife beater…all these men have something in common. They are all boys pretending to be men. They got that way honestly, because nobody showed them what a mature man is like.’’ [132]
Through listening to the ringing bells of real men like Dylan we might return to true living again. He imitates Christ to show what a true king, warrior, magician and lover looks like. We have his art as clear convicting testimony.
A Witness to the World:
Now travelling around the world on the never-ending tour, Bob Dylan has played in front of millions from The USA to China, and memorably Japan.
In Communist China, he brought the crowd the wisdom of Isaiah and All Along the Watchtower. Whilst in Japan, he has boldly called any nonbelievers to join the transfiguration of the world backed by a magnificent orchestra, (All in front of a golden statue of The Buddha) [133]
‘Ring them bells, ye heathen Ring them bells St. Peter Ring them bells Sweet Martha Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf Ring them bells St. Catherine
From the city that dreams
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
’Cross the valleys and streams
For they’re deep and they’re wide
And the world’s on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride
Where the four winds blow
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know
Oh it’s rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow
For the poor man’s son
Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one
Oh the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled
With lost sheep
Ring them bells for all of us who are left
Ring them bells for the chosen few
Who will judge the many when the game is through
Ring them bells, for the time that flies
For the child that cries
When innocence dies
From the top of the room
Ring them from the fortress
For the lilies that bloom
Oh the lines are long
And the fighting is strong
And they’re breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong.’ (Ring Them Bells)
Dylan’s mature moral leadership mirrors the magical measure of his musical restoration. Robert L Moore reminds us once again of Dylan’s ceaseless magical quality,
“The Magician archetype in a man is his “bullsh*t detector”; it sees through denial and exercises discernment. He sees evil for what and where it is when it masquerades as goodness, as it so often does.’
It is within this frame that we can see the complex canvas of Bob Dylan’s achievements. The tricky jester of the sixties bears witness to and becomes a new king in one:
‘In ancient times when a king became possessed by his angry feelings and wanted to punish a village that had refused to pay its taxes, the magician, with measured and reasoned thinking or with the stabbing blows of logic, would reawaken the king’s conscience and good sense by releasing him from his tempestuous mood. The court magician, in effect, was the king’s psychotherapist.” [135]
Murder Most Foul is the latest trick of the court magician to his ailing Republic but speaks clearly to any with ‘ears to hear’. [136]
The Mind of a Master:
Andrew McCarron has written a psychological biography of Dylan that breaks down our more usual one-dimensional readings of men and history. This type of biography plays a role in showing the complex confluence of forces in Bob’s life and his distinct American form of redemption. [137]
Moving from his early days listening to Gospel and Blues on the radio after midnight, straight up the Mississippi from the Delta and New Orleans, to the mature Dylan of recent years.
McCarron’s merit lies in placing Dylan’s character in co-operation with redemption and destiny at different stages of his life. He focuses on the key ‘transfigurations’ in his life and shows how redemptive patterns have communicated the word ‘destiny’ to him and through him.
McCarron’s book does not rise to the Mosaic heights of Phil Mason’s biography or reveal enough about the character of the God in whom Dylan is ‘a true believer’, but deals with some ways Dylan has approached God and seen ‘The Master’s Hand’ at work. [138]
As a fellow ‘true believer’, or at least I hope so, I wish to follow Mason paint a picture of God and Dylan on one canvas.
In his book, McCarron mentions the philosopher Paul Ricouer and his ‘dialectical tension’ between our ‘personas’ and ‘teleology’ or ends. The One God to whom Dylan has remained faithful offers fulfilment by placing this ‘tension’ and ‘resolution’ at the centre of life. In The Trinity, we find ‘personas’ acting, but becoming more than they are or ever were. This character of love has guided Dylan in his art and life like other Christian artists of different media: Such as Tarkovsky and Van Gogh [139] This is ‘being as communion’ according to Zizioulas. [140]
This becoming something more, Bob’s ‘transfiguration’ is given direction by love. Phil Mason persuasively places love at the crossroads of Dylan’s oeuvre alongside Ricks’s central motif of ‘sin’. This is right. [141]
As we saw, our troubadour has overturned Robert Johnson’s enigmatic crossroads myth [142] by making a bargain with ‘the chief commander’ of ‘this world and the one that can’t be seen’ bringing a new chapter to American music and lore. [143]
Despite silly claims online that Dylan has sold his soul to the devil, the gloss about the chief commander can clearly be seen as referring to God and highlights the subtle power of this old trickster.
Bob Dylan, who grew up in Hibbing listening to The Staple Singers, knows that ‘low is the way’ but that the road doesn’t end there. [144] The Dylan of Murder Most Foul goes through the pain but doesn’t lose faith. While he laments the loss of ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’, he stands in the adversarial Hope that they will return and answers with a deep love for his unfailing foundations. After all, he knows ‘despair is not the last word, only the penultimate word’. [145]
In a documentary about the late Robert Johnson, the seminal blues musician and influence on Dylan, one interviewee passes off a mistaken conceit that claims The Blues come to us from ‘the fields’ and Gospel from ‘The Church’. This either/or won’t do and is the kind of crude sacred-secular binary that Dylan has blown apart in his life and work. He knows well the deep Biblical soul of African American music styles and plays the folk traditions of the fields and churches in one chord. ‘Pay in Blood’ is the perfect example of the deep Christian foundation behind Blues and Gospel. This song combines the earthy quality of the blues, aching for exodus from the fields with the heavenly lyrics of Gospel and finding Canaan. This is a marvelous late work of cultural appreciation. [146]
Bob Dylan knows the God who is in involved with ‘every grain of sand’ and that He is the air that great American Music breathes. The incarnate God of The Bible is a God of fields and churches, who stays with His people through it all. Dylan has seen ‘The Master’s hand’ in both and the city too. Bob knows the Christ who was crucified outside the city walls but who set up His church inside. [147]
God’s cruciform ‘dominion’ is present there in the buildings and the fields of American music, through words, feelings and stories of Exodus. [148] In the lyrics and structure of the songs as well as the people. [149] (Raboteau and Turner)
Dylan knows The Man from Galilee who stood incarnate in the garden even when His church was asleep.
‘When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
He said, “All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth.”
Did they know right then and there what that power was worth?
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?’ (In the Garden) [150]
Dylan is familiar with the poetic depths of life and death contained in The Parable of the Farmer Scattering Seed and still sees ‘The Master’s Hand’:
3 He told many stories in the form of parables, such as this one:
“Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. 4 As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them. 5 Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn’t have deep roots, they died. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. 8 Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! 9 Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand. [151]
Loss and Love Again:
Psychologist Robert L Moore continues to remind us of the central power of archetypes in the process of personal transfiguration: “The “death” of the Hero is the “death” of boyhood, of Boy psychology. And it is the birth of manhood and Man psychology. The “death” of the Hero in the life of a boy (or a man) really means that he has finally encountered his limitations.’ By dying as the voice of a generation and protest singer, Dylan has emerged a mature Man for many generations and prophetic singer and artist.
Over the years, ‘He has met the enemy, and the enemy is himself. He has met his own dark side, his very unheroic side.’ Again, Dylan’s willing ability to shine a light on Christ and Anti-Christ in one breath has brought a death to his darkside, especiallyof the sixties and his painful divorce in the seventies, to give birth to a higher historical and literary hero.
Moore would say, ‘He has fought the dragon and been burned by it; he has fought the revolution and drunk the dregs of his own inhumanity.’
In Bob Dylan’s many failed romantic relationships we have seen his lamentable incapacity to ‘love the princess’ combined with a transcendent desire to do so rightly as a Man. These feelings of love and longing show in ‘Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather’ and other gorgeous love songs. [152]
‘Ah, but I just thought you might want somethin’ fine Well, if I had the stars from the darkest night Well I might be gone a long old time
Made of silver or of golden
Either from the mountains of Madrid
Or from the coast of Barcelona
And the diamonds from the deepest ocean
I’d forsake them all for your sweet kiss
For that’s all I’m a-wishin’ to be ownin’
And it’s only that I’m asking
Is there somethin’ I can send you to remember me by
To make your time more easy passing
Oh, how can, how can you ask me again I got a letter on a lonesome day If a-you, my love, must think that-a-way
It only brings me sorrow
The same thing I would want today
I want again tomorrow
It was from her ship a-sailin’
Sayin’ I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back again
It depends on how I’m a-feelin’
I’m sure your mind is a-roamin’
I’m sure your thoughts are not with me
But with the country to where you’re goin’
So take heed, take heed of the western winds
Take heed of the stormy weather
An yes, there’s somethin’ you can send back to me
Spanish boots of Spanish leather.’ (Boots of Spanish Leather) [153]
Like biographer Andrew McCarron, Robert L Moore shows us why we must go beyond the hero Dylan of nostalgia and the sixties. ‘He has overcome the Mother and then realized his incapacity to love the Princess. The “death” of the Hero signals a boy’s or man’s encounter with true humility. It is the end of his heroic consciousness.” [154]
The humility which arrived on the other side of Dylan’s earlier painful experiences now shines from the top of the mountain as a light of mature Man. The ‘hero’, or ‘voice of a generation’ pictured on Highway 61 Revisited with his lost love Suzie Rotolo, has become a more iconic man and good king. [155]
Moore reminds us that, “The good king delighted in noticing and promoting good men to positions of responsibility in his kingdom. He held audience, primarily, not to be seen, but to see, admire, and delight in his subjects, to reward them and to bestow honors upon them.”
Dylan, the jester who became king, has long noticed and promoted the greats of his realm and delighted in his ‘subjects’. [156] To return to the new beginning of Murder Most Foul, we see how he graciously assumes his royal position in American lore and calls us to:
‘Play Jelly Roll Morton, play “Lucille”
Play “Deep In a Dream”, and play “Driving Wheel”
Play “Moonlight Sonata” in F-sharp
And “A Key to the Highway” for the king on the harp
Play “Marching Through Georgia” and “Dumbaroton’s Drums”
Play darkness and death will come when it comes
Play “Love Me Or Leave Me” by the great Bud Powell
Play “The Blood-stained Banner”, play “Murder Most Foul” (Murder Most Foul) [157]
While our American troubadour can be read at several levels, we can see now why his central role must be as one ‘a spiritual poet’. Bishop Barron is right, as is so often the case. [158]
Dylan as a Priest, a Prophet and a King:
The team at Word on Fire describe the triune vocation of a mature Man as a priest, a prophet and a king. Our subject serves as a model of all three: ‘A priest fosters holiness, precisely in the measure that he or she serves as a bridge between God and human beings. In ancient Roman times, the priest was described as a pontifex, bridge-builder, and this remains a valid designation in the Christian context.’ This universal vocation is the fulfilment ourformer shamanism mentioned by Maxwell and the ‘transfiguration’ of Thomas. How fitting that we return to Rome.
They go on to ask, ‘What does it mean for the average baptized person to be a prophet?’ Suggesting that, ‘A person is a prophet in the measure that he or she bears the truth of God.’ [159]
The great trickster GK Chesterton shows how the jester role is fulfilled in the prophet,‘…in an upside-down world such as ours, the prophet is the one who stands on his head so that he might see things aright.’’ [160]
This speaks to the prophetic history of our Jokerman and ‘This is why, of course, prophets have always appeared more than a little insane. In fact, the Hebrew word for prophet, “nabi“, has the overtone of madman.’
In our decentred world only recentred on idolatrous lies, this comes as no surprise:
They make the point clear again, ‘Well, of course: in a world that has lost its bearings, those who speak the divine truth will, perforce, appear unhinged.’
Dylan has cultivated his special salutary madness by farming the great fields of history to separate the wheat from the chaff.
We might ask, ‘How does one cultivate this salutary madness?’ Like Dylan,‘Baptized prophets should exercise their brains by studying philosophy, theology, spirituality, church history, and the lives of the saints.’
We conclude by asking, ‘Finally, what does it mean for the ordinary Catholic (Christian) to be a king? In the theological sense, a king is someone who orders the charisms within a community so as to direct that community toward God.’
Ring them bells!
Our American king surely serves his republic well in the absence of an established monarchy.
Dylan inherits his artistic throne and acts accordingly, ‘In this way, he is like the general of an army or the conductor of an orchestra: he coordinates the efforts and talents of a conglomeration of people in order to help them achieve a common purpose. Baptized kings who refuse to reign are like a hilltop city covered in clouds.’ [161]
‘Well I’m pressing on
To the higher calling of my Lord.
Many try to stop me, shake me up in my mind,
Say, “Prove to me that He is Lord, show me a sign.”
What kind of sign they need when it all come from within,
When what’s lost has been found, what’s to come has already been?’ (Pressing On) [162]
We agree with Bishop Barron and his subjects that,
‘The key to the renewal of our society is a recovery of the deepest meaning of baptism, to become priestly, prophetic, and kingly people.’ [163]
‘I was blinded by the devil
Born already ruined
Stone-cold dead
As I stepped out of the womb
By His grace I have been touched
By His word I have been healed
By His hand I’ve been delivered
By His spirit I’ve been sealed
I’ve been saved
By the blood of the lamb.’ (Saved) [164]
A key part of priesthood of mature Man is preaching from the mountain of transfigured light. Pastor Timothy Keller describes this vocation by first asking, ‘What, then, is good preaching?’
He affirms, ‘It is “proclaiming the testimony of God” (1 Corinthians 2:1)—preaching biblically, engaging with the authoritative text.’
The bard who has been ‘tangled up in The Bible’ has long engaged with the authoritative text.
Keller suggests, ‘This means preaching the Word and not your opinion. When we preach the Scriptures we are speaking “the very words of God” (1 Peter 4:11).’ We can understand the claims about Dylan’s Prophetic Oracles in Phil Mason’s extraordinary book under this clarifying light.
Keller doesn’t stop there, ‘You need to make clear the meaning of the text in its context—both in its historical time and within the whole of Scripture.’
This is what Dylan has done by returning to the ancient sources, ever new, breaking down the barriers between worlds and re-ordering our experience of time in holy non-order.
‘This task of serving the Word is exposition’ according to Keller, ‘which is to draw out the message of the passage with faithfulness and insight and with a view to the rest of biblical teaching, so as not to “expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another.” [165]
We serve the Word by transfiguring ‘secular’ language and taking our place within the pantheon of gods pointing to the one true God.
‘Ring them bells St. Peter
Where the four winds blow
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know
Oh it’s rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow.’ (Ring them Bells) [166]
Keller cautions against those same ‘sacred cows’ which twist time and place: ‘Cultural engagement in preaching must never be for the sake of appearing “relevant” but rather must be for the purpose of laying bare the listener’s life foundations.’
Dylan brings us back to ‘the cornerstone that the builder refused’ [167] and like St Paul, has been ringing the bell of good news for ‘the lost sheep’. [168]
Let’s see what Keller says about former Jew Paul, as this will help us see some key similarities in Dylan: ‘Paul says, “As I proclaimed to you the testimony about God . . . I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:1–2).’
Keller shows the power of Jewish Paul’s meeting with the Messiah, Yeshua. This casts a light on Dylan’s own version of the Damascus conversion to Christ:
‘At the time Paul was writing, the only Scripture to preach from was what we now call the Old Testament. Yet even when preaching from these texts Paul “knew nothing” but Jesus—who did not appear by name in any of those texts.
How could this be? Paul understood that all Scripture ultimately pointed to Jesus and his salvation; that every prophet, priest, and king was shedding light on the ultimate Prophet, Priest, and King.’ [169]
Like Paul with the Old Testament, Dylan sees all of creation in new light and its point in Yeshua. [170] He preaches now from the top of the mountain in the language of American folk music, ancient poetry and in his own unique voice to point us back to the centre of History as a good Priest, Prophet and King:
‘I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.’ (Every Grain of Sand) [171]
References and Notes:
1- Dylan, Bob (2020) Murder Most Foul, Available at: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/murdermostfoul.html (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
2-Goring, Rosemary (2020) Why Bob Dylan is still the voice of our generation, Available at: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18349217.rosemary-goring-bob-dylan-still-voice-generation/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
3- Dylan, Bob (2020) A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, Available at: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/ahardrainsagonnafall.html (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
4-Ibid.
5- Ibid.
6- Ibid.
7- Ibid.
8- Ibid.
9-Genius (2020) Blowin’ in the Wind, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-blowin-in-the-wind-lyrics (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
10- Kierkegaard, Soren (2019) The Present Age: On the Death of Rebellion, USA: Harper Perennial.
11- (2008) The Orthodox Study Bible, USA: Thomas Nelson.
12- Schmemann, Alexander (2012) O Death, Where Is Thy Sting, USA: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
13- Ibid.
14- Ibid.
15-Plen, Matt (2020) Rabbi Soloveitchik, Available at: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/rabbi-soloveitchik/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
16-Dylan, Bob (1965) Highway 61 Revisited , Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Highway-61-Revisited-Bob-Dylan/dp/B006IXSH8K/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2DCCZ5UHFRR2A&dchild=1&keywords=highway+61+revisited+bob+dylan&qid=1585959198&sprefix=highway+61+rev%2Caps%2C148&sr=8-1 (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
17-Dylan, Bob (2004) John Wesley Harding Remastered , Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Wesley-Harding-Bob-Dylan/dp/B0001M0KDE/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=john+wesley+harding&qid=1586016496&sr=8-1 (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
18-Netflix (2020) Rolling Thunder Revue, Available at: https://www.netflix.com/title/80221016 (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
19-Fleming, Colin (2016) Remembering Bob Dylan’s Infamous ‘Judas’ Show, Available at: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/remembering-bob-dylans-infamous-judas-show-203760/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
20-Ibid.
21-Piaget, Jean (1952) Play, Dreams and Imitation, Available at: http://web.media.mit.edu/~ascii/papers/piaget_1952.pdf (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
22-Fruchtenbaum, Dr. Arnold (2017) Yeshua: The Life of Messiah from a Messianic Jewish Perspective, USA: Ariel Ministries.
23-The Dynamics of Transformation (2013) Bob Dylan’s Transfiguration, Available at: https://rockandrollphilosopher.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/bob-dylans-transfiguration/#_edn5 (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
24-Jones, Rebecca (2011) Dylan tapes reveal heroin addiction , Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9492000/9492886.stm (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
25-Rolling Stone (2019) The 27 Club: A Brief History , Available at: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/the-27-club-a-brief-history-17853/robert-johnson-26971/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
26-Dylan, Bob (2020) No Time to Think, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-no-time-to-think-lyrics (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
27-Premier On Demand (2019) NT Wright sings Dylan’s ‘When The Ship Comes In’ // Ask NT Wright Anything, Available at:
(Accessed: 4th April 2020).
28-Dylan, Bob (2020) When the Ship Comes In, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-when-the-ship-comes-in-lyrics (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
29- Wright, NT (2020) History and Eschatology Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology , Available at: https://spckpublishing.co.uk/history-and-eschatology (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
30-Beale, G.K (2008) We Become What we Worship: A Biblical Theology Of Idolatry, USA: IVP.
31-Lasch, Christopher (1994) The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics, USA: W. W. Norton & Co..
32-Lewis, C.S. (2012) Mere Christianity, USA: HarperCollins Publishers Limited.
33-Middleton, J. Richard (2014) A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology, USA: Baker Academic.
34- Ibid.
35- Ibid.
36- Sacks Jonathan, Rabbi (2020) Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, Available at: http://rabbisacks.org/morality-restoring-the-common-good-in-divided-times/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
37-Boehlert, Eric (2000) Dylan’s “Hurricane”: A Look Back , Available at: https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/dylans-hurricane-a-look-back-248581/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
38- Ibid.
39- Ibid.
40-Pageau, Jonathan (2020) The Symbolic World, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/pageaujonathan (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
41-Dylan, Bob (2020) Forever Young, Available at: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/forever-young/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
42-Genius (2020) Jesus Christ (They Laid Jesus Christ in His Grave), Available at: https://genius.com/Woody-guthrie-jesus-christ-they-laid-jesus-christ-in-his-grave-lyrics (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
43-Jordan, James B. (2019) Symbolism and Worldview, Available at: https://theopolisinstitute.com/symbolism-and-worldview/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
44-Dylan, Bob (2020) My Back Pages, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-my-back-pages-lyrics (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
45- Dylan, Bob (2020) The Times They Are A-Changin’, Available at: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/times-they-are-changin/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
46-Dylan, Bob (2020) Mr. Tambourine Man, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-mr-tambourine-man-lyrics (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
47- Ibid.
48- Ibid.
49- Scruton, Roger (2020) The Cultural Significance of Pop, Available at: https://www.roger-scruton.com/about/music/understanding-music/175-the-cultural-significance-of-pop (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
50- Ibid.
51- Hart, Aidan (2012) Designing Icons (pt.1), Available at: https://orthodoxartsjournal.org/designing-icons-pt-1/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
52- Ibid.
53- Begbie, Jeremy (2009) Theology through the arts, Available at:
(Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
54-Petersen, Jonathan (2015) How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization: An Interview with Vishal Mangalwadi, Available at: https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2015/07/how-the-bible-created-the-soul-of-western-civilization-an-interview-with-vishal-mangalwadi/ (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
55-Dylan, Bob (2020) Only a Pawn in Their Game, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-only-a-pawn-in-their-game-lyrics (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
56-Ibid.
57-Ibid.
58-Ibid.
59- Nobel Prize (2017) Bob Dylan 2016 Nobel Lecture in Literature, Available at:
(Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
60-Lockerd, Benjamin (2010) The End of Literature, Available at: https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/07/end-of-literature.html (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
61- Embry, Charles R. (2009) Eric Voegelin as Literary Critic, Available at: https://voegelinview.com/eric-voegelin-as-literary-critic-pt-1/ (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
62- Ibid.
63- Ibid.
64-Heschel, Abraham Joshua (1997) Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion , Reissue edition edn., USA: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
65- Ibid.
66- Dylan, Bob (2020) It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-its-alright-ma-im-only-bleeding-lyrics (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
67-Wax, Trevin (2009) Counterfeit Gods: Tim Keller Takes On Our Idols , Available at: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/counterfeit-gods-tim-keller-takes-on-our-idols/ (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
68-Dylan, Bob (2020) Series of Dreams, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-series-of-dreams-lyrics (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
69- Ibid.
70- Dylan, Bob (2020) I Shall Be Released, Available at: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/i-shall-be-released/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
71-Ibid.
72-Wax, Trevin (2013) Why the Form of Worship Matters: A Conversation with James K. A. Smith , Available at: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/why-the-form-of-worship-matters-a-conversation-with-james-k-a-smith/ (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
73-Dylan, Bob (2020) It Ain’t Me, Babe, Available at: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/it-aint-me-babe/ (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
74- Pearce, Joseph (2018) Who’s on the Right Side of History?, Available at: https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/06/whos-right-side-history-joseph-pearce.html (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
75-Dylan, Bob (2020) Bob Dylan’s Dream, Available at: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/bob-dylans-dream/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
76-Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr (2003) The Gulag Archipelago, 01 edition edn., USA: Harvill Press.
77- Dylan, Bob (2020) With God on Our Side, Available at: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/god-our-side/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
78-Wilentz, Sean (2011) Bob Dylan In America, USA: Vintage.
79- McLean, Don (2020) American Pie, Available at: https://genius.com/Don-mclean-american-pie-lyrics (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
80- Polyphonic (2018) American Pie Explained: Don McLean’s Cultural History of Rock n’ Roll, Available at:
(Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
81-Polyphonic (2018) American Pie Explained: Don McLean’s Cultural History of Rock n’ Roll, Available at:
(Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
82-Dylan, Bob (2004) Blood On The Tracks Remastered , Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Tracks-Bob-Dylan/dp/B0001M0KE8 (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
83- Storytellers (2016) The Big Lebowski: A Carnival of Society, Available at:
(Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
84-Markhorst, Jochen (2018) Jokerman by Bob Dylan. The one that got away., Available at: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/9193 (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
85- Ellul, Jacques (2014) Betrayal of the West, Available at: https://archive.org/details/BetrayalOfTheWest/mode/2up (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
86-Ramachandra, Vinoth (2005) The Scandal of Jesus: Christ in a Pluralist World , Available at: http://www.mhs.no/uploads/reichelt_lecture_2005.pdf (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
87- Thomas, Richard F. (2017) Why Dylan Matters, USA: William Collins.
88-Hampton-Reeves, Stuart (2016) Dylan and Shakespeare, Available at: http://bloggingshakespeare.com/dylan-and-shakespeare (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
89- Muir, Andrew (2019) Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It, USA: Red Planet.
90-Faena Aleph (2020) A brief introduction to Dylanology, Available at: https://www.faena.com/aleph/articles/a-brief-introduction-to-dylanology/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
91-Polyphonic (2019) Bob Dylan vs. The Press, Available at:
(Accessed: 4th April 2020).
92- Kreeft, Peter (1987) Socrates Meets Jesus, USA: Intervarsity Press.
93-Polyphonic (2019) Bob Dylan vs. The Press, Available at:
(Accessed: 4th April 2020).
94-Ehrett, John (2017) Technology and the Re-Enchanted World, Available at: https://ethikapolitika.org/2017/05/18/technology-re-enchanted-world/ (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
95-All Dylan – A Bob Dylan blog (2016) November 19: The classic Bob Dylan “60 Minutes” interview with Ed Bradley – 2004, Available at: https://alldylan.com/bob-dylan-the-classic-60-minutes-interview-with-ed-bradley-19-november-2004-video/ (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
96-Dylan, Bob (2020) Pay in Blood, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-pay-in-blood-lyrics (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
97-Schall, Fr. James V. (2018) What is Easter?, Available at: https://www.crisismagazine.com/2018/what-is-easter (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
98- Dylan, Bob (2020) Chimes of Freedom, Available at: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/chimes-freedom/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
99-Ibid
100-Sacks, Rabbi Jonathan (2011) Future Tense: A vision for Jews and Judaism in the global culture, UK: Hodder & Stoughton.
101- Ibid.
102-Lampert, Evgueny (1944) THE DIVINE REALM: TOWARDS A THEOLOGY OF THE SACRAMENTS, 1st edn edition edn., USA: Faber & Faber.
103-Cayley, David (2015) The Myth of the Secular, Available at: http://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts/2015/3/21/the-myth-of-the-secular (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
104- Gilmour, Michael J (2011) The Gospel According to Bob Dylan: The Old, Old Story of Modern Times , USA: Westminster John Knox Press.
105-Gilmore, Mikal (2001) Bob Dylan, at 60, Unearths New Revelations, Available at: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bob-dylan-at-60-unearths-new-revelations-86631/ (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
106- Gilmour, Michael J (2011) The Gospel According to Bob Dylan: The Old, Old Story of Modern Times , USA: Westminster John Knox Press. See also Tangled Up in the Bible: Gilmour, Michael J. (2004) Tangled Up in the Bible: Bob Dylan and Scripture, USA: Continuum
107- Ibid.
108-Zoppas, Marco (2019) Why Bob Dylan Matters: An Interview with Richard F. Thomas, Available at: https://medium.com/mitologie-a-confronto/why-bob-dylan-matters-514e659980b0 (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
109-Miller, Matt (2020) Logos Made Flesh, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/youthnation1 (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
110- Ibid.
111- Maxwell, Grant (2014) How Does It Feel?: Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Philosophy of Rock and Roll , USA: Persistent Press.
112- Gatta, John (2016) The Transfiguration of Christ and Creation , USA: Wipf & Stock.
113-Diocese of Little Rock (2014) God speaks to us on tops of mountains, Available at: https://www.dolr.org/article/god-speaks-us-tops-mountains (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
114- Ibid.
115- Ibid.
116-CSLewisDoodle (2016) After Priggery – What? (On Wicked Journalists) by C.S. Lewis Doodle, Available at:
(Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
117- Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2018) What do I mean by Skin in the Game? My Own Version, Available at: https://medium.com/incerto/what-do-i-mean-by-skin-in-the-game-my-own-version-cc858dc73260 (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
118-Girard, René (2015) The Scapegoat: René Girard’s Anthropology of Violence and Religion, Available at: http://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts/2015/3/8/the-scapegoat-ren-girards-anthropology-of-violence-and-religion-2 (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
119- Rutledge, Fleming (2015) The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, Reprint edition edn., USA: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
120- Dylan, Bob (2020) Gotta Serve Somebody, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-gotta-serve-somebody-lyrics (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
121-Dylan, Bob (2020) Changing of the Guards, Available at: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/changing-guards/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
122- Sowell, Thomas (2007) A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles , USA: Basic Books.
123-White, Rev. Brent L. (2009) Dylan: “Well, I am a true believer.”, Available at: https://revbrentwhite.com/2009/11/27/dylan-well-i-am-a-true-believer/ (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
124- Ricks, Christopher (2016) Dylan’s Visions of Sin, UK: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l. .
125- Ibid.
126-Ibid.
127- Dylan, Bob (2020) All Along the Watchtower, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-all-along-the-watchtower-lyrics (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
128-Peterson, Eugene H. (2019) A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, Commemorative edition edn., USA: IVP Books.
129-Willard, Dallas (2009) The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship, Reprint edition edn., USA: HarperOne.
130-Beckwith, Francis (2017) This Is Why Bob Dylan’s Genius Is Biblical, Available at: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/guest-blogger/this-is-why-bob-dylans-genius-is-biblical (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
131- Ibid.
132- Moore, Robert L. (1992) King Warrior Magician Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, New edition edn., USA: Bravo Ltd.
133-NanchatteDesu (2014) Ring Them Bells – Bob Dylan Live Concert in Japan (HD), Available at:
(Accessed: 4th April 2020).
134- Dylan, Bob (2020) Ring Them Bells, Available at: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/ring-them-bells/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
135- Ibid.
136-Bible Project (2020) How to Read the Parables of Jesus Are the Parables of Jesus Confusing on Purpose?, Available at: https://bibleproject.com/blog/are-the-parables-of-jesus-confusing-on-purpose/ (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
137- McCarron, Andrew (2017) Light Come Shining: The Transformations of Bob Dylan, USA: Wetware Media.
138- Dylan, Bob (2020) Every Grain of Sand, Available at: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/every-grain-sand/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
139-Like Stories of Old Like Stories of Old (2020) Praying Through Cinema – Understanding Andrei Tarkovsky, Available at:
(Accessed: 4th April 2020) and Edwards, Cliff (1989) Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest , USA: Loyola University Press.
140-Zizioulas, John (2004) Being as Communion, New edition edition edn., USA: Darton,Longman & Todd Ltd.
141- Mason, Phil (2018) A Voice From On High: The Prophetic Oracles Of Bob Dylan, USA: Independently published.
142- Netflix (2019) ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads, Available at: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80191049 (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
143- Ibid.
144-The Staple Singers (2017) Low Is the Way , Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Low-Is-the-Way/dp/B06XHKH127 (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
145-Shestov, Lev (1977) PENULTIMATE WORDS AND OTHER ESSAYS [Beginnings and Endings], Available at: http://shestov.phonoarchive.org/all/all_0.html (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
146-Ibid.
147- Ibid.
148-Raboteau, Albert J. (2004) Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South, Updated edition edn., U.S.A: Oxford University Press.
149-Turner, Steve (2010) An Illustrated History of Gospel, New edition edition edn., UK: Lion Hudson Plc.
150- Dylan, Bob (2020) In The Garden, Available at: https://www.metrolyrics.com/in-the-garden-lyrics-bob-dylan.html (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
151-Matthew 13:1-23 New Living Translation (NLT) (2020) Parable of the Farmer Scattering Seed, Available at: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+13%3A1-23&version=NLT (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
152-Dylan, Bob (2020) Boots of Spanish Leather, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-boots-of-spanish-leather-lyrics (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
153- Ibid.
154- Ibid.
155- Ibid.
156- Ibid.
157- Ibid.
158- Barron, Bishop Robert (2009) Bishop Robert Barron on Bob Dylan, Available at:
159-Barron, Bishop Robert (2014) Priest, Prophet and King, Available at: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column/priest-prophet-and-king-2818 (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
160-Chesterton, G.K. (2017) Orthodoxy, USA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
161- Ibid.
162- Dylan, Bob (2020) Pressing On, Available at: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/pressing/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
163- Ibid.
164-Dylan, Bob (2020) Saved, Available at: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/saved/ (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
165- Keller, Timothy (2015) Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Scepticism, USA: Hodder & Stoughton.
166- Ibid.
167-Knowing Jesus (2020) 11 Bible Verses about Cornerstone, Available at: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Cornerstone (Accessed: 4th April 2020).
168- Ibid.
169- Ibid.
170- Ibid.
171- Dylan, Bob (2020) Every Grain of Sand, Available at: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/every-grain-sand/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
Further Recommended Reading:
Begbie, Jeremy (2000) Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine), UK: Cambridge University Press.
Barron, Bishop Robert (2020) Centered: The Spirituality of Word on Fire, Available at: https://wordonfire.institute/centered (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
Schwartz, Debora B. (2005) Shakespeare’s Plays:Tragedy, Available at: http://cola.calpoly.edu/~dschwart/engl339/tragedy.html (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).Jazz
Guinness, Os (2003) The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, USA: Thomas Nelson.
Milosz, Czeslaw (2012) The Witness of Poetry: Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, USA: University Press Audiobooks.
Twilightdawning (2018) Bob Dylan, sloppy analysis and hearing what we want to hear, Available at: https://twilightdawning.com/2018/07/26/bob-dylan-sloppy-analysis-and-hearing-what-we-want-to-hear/ (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).
Warnock, Daniel (2017) Is Bob Dylan a Modern-Day Prophet? A New Theological Book Explores the Likelihood, Available at: https://www.lightworkers.com/a-voice-from-on-high-the-prophetic-oracles-of-bob-dylan/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).
Notes:
-Dylan plays with time, in a playful non-order which is intentional and layered. This is not the same thing as disorder. Disorder equals chaos. Non-order equals improvisation.
-Dylan learned how to paint many years ago so he could think in images where many different impressions are being made at once. This is a feature of his work, which moves between past, present and future to draw the listener into another world not held captive by one-dimensional, and linear, thinking and acting. I have tried to paint a sketch of his work by following the master’s technique.
-I use Man to represent humankind where possible as I think the points made should speak to women and men (Or intersex) in equal measure.
