Thought Experiment on Perspective

Human Perspective

    Bear with me as we embark on a little thought experiment. Look at the picture above of a region of space. Without seeing the accompanying picture below (don't look at it yet if you haven't already!), theoretically, the only thing that exists in that region of space is the cluster of blue lights shown. What's special about this picture is that it shows only the X-rays, as captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, being emitted from that region. As I have discussed in earlier blog posts, humans can only see electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths within the visible spectrum meaning that X-rays are far too high energy (have far too short of wavelengths) for our eyes to pick up. Our bodies can still interact with X-rays even though we can't see them. This is, after all, why doctors are able to take pictures of bone fractures or breaks when you injury yourself. In fact, expose yourself to too many x-rays, and you will die of radiation poisoning as those X-rays violently rip electrons away from atoms in your body, creating ions where there should not be any and altering your body chemistry in a VERY bad way. We have also discussed in earlier posts that because we can't see X-rays, they wouldn't actually 'look' blue as depicted above. They wouldn't really be any color because our brains are literally incapable of comprehending what X-rays 'look' like. Regardless, the above picture is very limited because not many things in the universe emit high amounts of X-ray radiation because it is simply too high energy for most processes.

Omniscient Perspective

    The limitations of the above X-ray picture become readily apparent when viewing the same region of space through different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. You will probably recognize Stephan's Quintet from last week's post, but this time it has been enhanced by X-rays captured by the Chandra Observatory. The huge leap in detail between the first and second images above was so baffling to me at first that I thought it appropriate to compare it to the differences in the omniscient perspective of the narrator and God and the limited perspective of the human characters within the Old Testament. While not perfect, I think such a comparison makes many of the points expressed in Meir Steinberg's "Ideology of Narration and Narration of Ideology" easier to understand. 

    Taking a slight detour from this thought experiment, I love Steinberg's comparison between the Bible and the Odyssey through which he outlines the very clear differences between the gods and narrator of the Odyssey and God and the narrator in the Bible. In the Odyssey, the only truly omniscient being is Homer acting as the narrator. The gods themselves are subject to an "illogical" mixture of "informational privilege in one context and restrictedness in another". The decision to allow such "incongruities" is intentional in Homer's case as the goal for his Odyssey is to tell a story first and foremost, so if it is convenient for his narrative to have gods with limited knowledge, then that is how his narrative will be in those situations, and if he needs all-knowing gods, then that is also how his narrative with be in those other situations. On the other hand, the constant omniscience of God within the Bible is of the utmost important to its story. Foremost, I think it is highly interesting that it is eating the fruit of "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" that causes Adam and Eve's fall from Eden. In fact, it is only this tree that God restricts Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of, so presumably, they could eat all the fruit of "the tree of life" that they like. Perhaps they were already immortal in Eden, so it did not matter if they ate of the fruit of "the tree of life", but I still find it fascinating that God puts so much importance on man not reaching his level of knowledge rather than reaching his level of immortality. As a result, it appears that it is God's knowledge that chiefly separates him from man, not how long He lives. This stands in chief contrast to the Greek gods in Homer's Odyssey whose most important characteristic by far is their immortality.

    As a result, it is important that the only two omniscient beings in the Bible are God and the narrator. To support this claim, consider how the Biblical narrative treats God's omniscience. It is common fact among all characters of the Bible that God's knowledge is infallible and the obvious and ultimate ideal. Without an omniscient narrator then, the Bible's characters could be assumed to falsely believe in God, and the narrator itself could be subject to the same scrutiny, leaving Biblical events and God himself shrouded in doubt. However, by taking it as fact that the narrator is omniscient in itself, we must also take as fact all the happenings of the Bible from the narrator's point of view. This interpretation is strengthened when you consider that to many Jewish and Christian readers, the Bible is God's own word, so the narrator's omniscience follows from God's. The fact that an outsider shares in the narrator's omniscience while reading lets us temporarily transcend the limitations of human perspective, allowing us to get a taste of divinity. This is where I find it helpful to consider the images by JWST and Chandra.

    Consider the story of Sarah's inner laughter when God promises Abraham that she will birth a son. When God calls her out for laughing, she immediately denies the accusation and becomes "afraid" because it is beyond her understanding how anyone could consciously know something she herself did automatically, privately, and was likely unconscious of. With this in mind, imagine that you are Sarah, and you are perceiving the events between God and Abraham as just the blue lights in the Chandra Observatory's image. Now, if someone told you that that same scene could be depicted as the combined image from JWST and Chandra, you would probably be in disbelief. After all, looking at the Chandra image, you would never guess that there was so much other stuff going on that you simply couldn't see. This, I believe, is the point of scenes like Sarah's inner laughter. The Bible gives us the perspective of the omniscient narrator, a perspective akin to the combined JWST and Chandra image, while also showing us the limited perspective of human characters in the Bible, perspectives akin to just the Chandra image, in order to demonstrate the scope of God's omniscience. It is hard to believe that any being could have so much knowledge from the point of view of Sarah (Chandra), but from the already elevated point of view of the narrator able to compare the two perspectives (Chandra and JWST), it becomes easier to accept such omniscience. 

    I recognize that this analogy is imperfect, but so is our ability to understand the true omniscience of the Biblical narrator and God. The omniscience of the Bible has to be dumbed down for humans to understand it just as we need a sort of dumbed down analogy (what scientists call a 'simplified model') in order to wrap our heads around such complex topics. Steinberg himself maintains that the reader is restricted from obtaining the full omniscience of the narrator as a way to enhance the storytelling. Then, I will continue to analyze the Bible with the analogy that the characters can see one set of electromagnetic wavelengths, I can see multiple, and God as well as the narrator are capable of the entire spectrum and then some.