Assalamualaikum and welcome back. Today we
continue speaking about the commonwealth and the
restoration. In terms of politics, this is an age,
an era that is so restless. that is so messed up
in so many ways, because for the first time in the
history of modern England, we see the king
executed. And for the first time, England is ruled
not by a king,
but by a ruler who does the job probably maybe he
was better than the king in many ways But again,
politically speaking, historically speaking, the
removal of the king, the execution, he wasn't only
removed, he was executed. Remember, we've seen
this in literature, we've seen this in
Shakespeare. And this is how interesting how
literature prepares people, fiction creates
reality in a way or another, prepares. But no
matter how many times you see the king dead,
killed, On stage, when it happened, people were
shocked in so many ways because the idea of the
king and the monarchy was deeply rooted in the
mentalities, in the mindsets, in the minds of the
English people. Cromwell rules for about 10 years.
He was successful, powerful. We've seen people
praise him. Marvel, and also John Milton, and many
other people wrote good poetry about him, praised
him in a way that, again, people praised the kings
and the queens before.
When he was old, when he passed away, when he
died, he was followed, again, ironically, by his
own son. That's funny. Remember I said in a way
it's ironic because you remove the king because of
corruption and sins and vices and deterioration
and breakdown of many things. But when a ruler
comes, this should help pave the way, prepare the
people to a democratic process of choosing their
own leaders and their own rulers. However, His son
came after him and he was so weak. I think no
matter how good he was, he wouldn't be good enough
because he can't be compared to his father. And
that's called the Commonwealth. Oliver Cromwell
and then his son about 11, 12 years. However, he
was followed with the death of Cromwell and the
rule of his son ended abruptly because the people
decided to bring the king back again. So Oliver's
son, I don't know his name, excuse me, just go. We
want the king. We can't live without the king
because the king gives us security and safety,
provides us with protection, and because the king
is part of our culture and tradition and
literature and society and life and mentality and
many things. We said in this era, literature has
become highly political. Remember there was
nationalism, the strong sense of the English
identity and nationalism in poetry before where
you love England, you love the Thames, you love
the Queen, you praise the Queen. We've seen
Spencer praising, you know, the fairy queen. But
now there's political division. Poetry is
political in the sense that there are two
political parties and you side with one against
the other. Now imagine this. Many people,
including poets and intellectuals, sided with the
Commonwealth,
with Oliver Cromwell. When he died and the king
was restored, they were in trouble. They were in
real trouble. Some of them were arrested, some of
them were punished in one way or another. We spoke
about Andrew Marvell before. Andrew Marvell became
a politician himself. He started as a poet, but
later on he ran for president. He was a member of
the parliament. And although he was a member of
the parliament, he was almost arrested. John
Milton, our friend here today, was arrested
because of his support to the Commonwealth. Some
say he could have been executed, or he could have
spent a lot of time in prison. But it was thanks
to his friend, Andrew Marvell, that helped release
him. And that's not all bad, because in prison he
wrote some really good literature. And Milton, by
the way, when he grew up, he started to lose his
sight and eventually he went blind. Still, he
wrote some of the best English poetry ever. Today,
we'll spend some time, a journey with John Milton.
A major 17th century poet. A poet who was in many
ways trying to have influence on the whole English
literature. He wanted to be as famous, as
influential as Chaucer himself. And interesting
how people always go back to Chaucer just to, if
they want to do great things. And he wanted
English literature to compete, to be independent
of Europe in many ways. So he wrote several texts.
We'll mention some of them. We'll study probably
in a way, in bits and pieces, two of them. The
first one is Paradise Lost. Paradise. You know
paradise? Heaven. Heaven, yeah. What does this
translate into Arabic? How does it translate into
Arabic? Yeah, Arabic.
It has a poetic translation in Arabic.
Because you're
not studying translation yet. When you do, you
will see how sometimes you change a little bit so
you give it the poetic sense. And later on, he
wrote another text called Paradise.
Regained. You know regained? It means restored.
The restoration. And then the third text is called
Samson Agonist.
Have you ever heard of Samson? Samson. Samson.
Samson. Samson. The text takes place in Gaza by
the way. So the guy is Gazan like us. Yeah,
Samsung. Samsung. Does it ring a bell? Samsung.
There's a character in Spongebob. Samsung.
Samsung. Simpsons. No, not the Simpsons. Samsung.
Shamshoon. Yeah, Shamshoon, that's it. Shamshoon
Al Jabbar, we know this. Yeah, yes. But we'll talk
about it probably this class, if not the next
class. John Milton, again, wanted to do something
great, to write an epic poem. Oh, no, epic poem, a
very long poem about important issues, important
themes, important characters, important myths. At
the beginning, he thought of writing something
about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table. You know why he chose this particular text?
Because everything about it is pure English. I
don't know why, but he dropped that idea. But
again, notice how he's intentionally, consciously
planning something, because he wants to write.
This is not a sonnet. It's a poem. Paradise Lost
is about 10,000 lines.
10,000 lines, Paradise Lost. That's an epic poem.
What is it about? Do you have any idea? Paradise.
Who could be the main characters, the characters
in it? Religious? Who? The king. Bigger than them.
He's more ambitious. Adam and Eve. Who else? The
devil. Satan. Angels. Demons. Who else? More
significant. God. This is how ambitious he is. But
it's funny because these are not English people
and the events don't take place in England. But
still this is an English text, a major epic
English text poem, which shows his attempt to do
this. So the major characters in Paradise Lost are
God, Satan, Adam, Eve, you should know, you should
be familiar with these, you know, names. We have
Adam, you know Adam already. And Eve, this is Eve.
You know, Christmas Eve. Eve, God, Satan. And we
have God. And this takes place in heaven,
paradise. There is a garden of Eden. Garden of
Eden, Jannat Adan, right? And then we have the
original sin.
What's the original sin? This is a Christian term,
by the way. The original sin is when Adam and Eve
disobeyed God and ate from the tree of knowledge.
Tree of knowledge.
In Islam, we're not sure whether this is an apple
tree or what. In Christianity, it's mentioned that
this is an apple tree. In Islam, it's not stated
whether it was Eve who started, you know, munching
at the apple, the fruit. In Christianity, it's not
about that. It's also who you blame more. In
Christianity, it's clear that Eve starts munching
at the apple. Right? That's why there is this
thing that many religious people do this like they
accuse women in general of committing the first
sin and causing the fall of Adam, the fall of
humanity. The fall of humanity from heaven to
earth, from mercy to sin. Very interesting stuff.
The fall, you know, fall down because of the
original sin because Now, we know the biblical
story. It's similar to the story we have in Islam,
with tiny little differences. In Islam, again,
both of them, Adam and Eve, are to blame. And
sometimes Adam is blamed more. But here, in
Christianity, we have something different. In the
text, he takes the story, but he changes it a
little bit. When you read the story, I'm not sure
if you can read 10,000 lines now that you have
midterm exams, but who knows? Maybe you can watch
some extracts or a dramatization on YouTube. When
you read the text, you will find that, you will
feel that the author, John Milton, in a way
humanizes Satan. Presents sometimes, presents
Satan as the hero. sometimes equally blaming God,
Adam, Eve, and Satan equally for what happened.
And that's why the text is controversial. You know
the word controversial? Yes. Controversial,
debatable. Some people don't like it. Some people
like it. Some people disagree with many things. So
why does it create controversy here? This because?
Because he changes the thoughts and he blames as
well. He changes the Christian idea by one
presenting who as the hero. But the antagonist.
The antagonist, Satan. In Islam and in
Christianity and other religions, Satan is the
embodiment of evil, the pure evil. Yes. But here,
he's not. He's real. You feel sorry for him. So if
you're reading this and you feel sorry for Satan,
it doesn't mean you are evil. It means the author.
It means the author is smart, is genius. We do
this. We watch Hollywood movies. Did you watch The
Sniper? Yeah. Sniper is a horrible movie about an
American soldier, war criminal actually, who kills
over 100, around 150 Iraqis. Some of them women,
some of them kids, some of them innocent civilian
people. You watch the movie and you feel sorry for
him. Yeah, you feel sorry for him in a way. You
don't have to feel sorry for him, by the way,
because he's a murderer. But that is how
influential literature is and movie production is.
You know? Change your attitudes and sympathize
with people usually you don't sympathize in real
life. So this created a huge controversy. Still
does. Many Christians, for example, don't like
this. Because they see that the author is equally
blaming not only Zeta, not only Adam and Eve, but
also God. Like, this shouldn't have happened. Some
people, by the way, some people read the whole
thing as an allegory. An allegory of the
commonwealth and the restoration. So the
commonwealth is, I don't know, heaven. And because
people don't do a good job after Cromwell, they
fell down. They fall. And then the king is
restored, where the king, the restoration here
represents earth and sin. Because after that,
after the commonwealth, the guy was not doing a
good job. Later on, in a way, Adam and Eve go down
to Earth to the unknown, to human knowledge. Later
on, he wrote another poem, just so you know.
Paradise Regained. Paradise Regained. In which,
how would you, in Christianity, how is Paradise
Regained? What do you expect? Maybe Adam and Eve
are God's... No, later on, after Adam and Eve.
How? Who leads humanity to regain paradise? No,
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ
suffers for humanity. and leads humanity from sin,
corruption, vices, to virtue, to salvation, back
to heaven. And that's why it's regained. At the
end, I'll tell you the story of Samson Agones. So
let's go through Milton's Paradise Lost again,
step by step. Unless someone has a question to
ask. Please. What is the difference between
allegory and symbolism? Generally, an allegory is
a longer story, a bigger story. Like the whole
story could be an allegory. But symbolism could be
part of a story. So this is the basic thing you
need to know. So if you're writing a story, and in
your story there is a dove. The dove symbolizes
peace, love, purity, right? Snow. Snow symbolizes
purity, whiteness, et cetera. But the whole story
could be an allegory. But also, you can describe
it as symbolic, like where, for example, you have
animal characters. But they don't have to be
animal characters. You have characters who refer
to something else. So this could be an allegory,
because everything here could mean something else,
like the Commonwealth and the Restoration. But in
the story, the apple, the apple or the tree, the
apple here is a symbol of what? Of the forbidden,
of sin maybe, because the moment Eve eats, bites
the apple, everything turns upside, upside down.
This is Milton again. In many ways, he links the
Renaissance, the age of Shakespeare, later on with
the Commonwealth and the Restoration. He lived in
all these turbulent times. He was very ambitious.
Why? Because he wanted to be one of the greatest
poets in English literature, mainly like Chaucer,
always Chaucer. Someone asked me, why not
Shakespeare? Shakespeare is the greatest literary
figure probably ever. But Shakespeare is a
dramatist, and you'll ask, but drama was written
in verse. So it's a little bit different. That's
yeah, verse, but still as a drama here, okay?
Of course, he was engaged in politics, writing
essays about religion and many other things. He
became the Latin secretary to Cromwell. This is
how close he was to Cromwell. And it's because of
this he later on was arrested.
When he was blind, started to be blind, eventually
he wrote Paradise Lost. I should add the inverted
commas. Don't forget this. He wrote Paradise Lost.
Yeah, I think it took him some time, but
eventually he went blind. And I know many people
who study, you know, in Arabic literature, we have
blind poets also.
Tahseen wasn't a poet. He was a northerner. Bashar
bin Bord, you know? I think. Abu Al-Alai Al-Ma
'ari, was he blind? No. Abu Al-Alai Al-Ma'ari? Are
you sure? Anyway, so some, maybe you study
comparative literature in the future, you compare
how blindness does something to literature and
how, because there are so many references to the
fact that he's blind. There is, I think, a poem he
wrote on his blindness. Okay, so Paradise Lost is
a major epic poem in English. by John Milton about
God, Adam, Eve, Satan, and the fall of mankind.
Now, the question is, why did Milton write this?
This is actually poetry from Paradise Lost. At the
beginning, in the opening, he addresses the
audience. He tells them why he is engaging in
writing a 10,000-line poem. What do you think?
He's saying to assert eternal providence.
Providence means, do you know what providence is?
Providence means basically that there is a God,
and that God is taking care of us all, and
eventually everything is going to be fine because
there is a merciful just God. So to assert, to
make sure, to convince people that, to assert
eternal providence and to justify the ways of God
to men. Whose job is it to do this generally in
life? Whose job is it to assert eternal providence
and to justify the ways, the means of God to men?
Prophets, yeah. It's usually a prophet. who does
this to assert eternal prophethood, to tell people
there is a God and God is merciful. Yes, God
sometimes tries us. In a way, we're punished
sometimes. We suffer sometimes. But this is for
our own good, to justify the ways of God to men.
And this is how ambitious he is. So in a way, he's
claiming, assuming the role of the prophet.
Prophet. You know what a prophet is? Yes. Like a
messenger. So he knew he's doing something great.
He knew that. And indeed, he's one of the greatest
English poets ever. Okay? Why did... Can you
answer this question? Don't look here. Why did the
text... I could ask you this in the exam. Why did
Paradise Lost cause controversy?
Please. Very good. He contradicts the Christian
beliefs. How? Can you give examples? Yes?
Sometimes as the hero. How? Because he challenges
God. God tells Satan, kneel. And he says, I don't
want to kneel. Leave Adam and Eve alone. I don't
want to leave them alone. And he tempts Eve to eat
from the tree of knowledge. What else? There is
another reason here.
Some level of blame. They're all equally to blame,
equally responsible for this. Okay? But there is a
discussion here about freedom of choice and good
free will, free will and freedom of choice. Are we
destined to do something or can we choose our own
destiny? Here, yes, we can choose our own destiny.
At the end of the text, this happens. Someone
read, please. Yeah, please.
They hand in hand with wandering steps and walk
through Eden took their solitary way. Who's they
here and them? Who are they? Adam and Eve. This is
at the end, eventually, when everything goes as it
goes here in the poem. Adam and Eve walk hand in
hand, not to God's mercy, not back to heaven, to
providence. They go back to human knowledge, to
the unknown. In many ways, this symbolizes the
Renaissance, how the Renaissance was trying to
break the barriers, to break the rules, to push
the barriers, to go perfection, to seek
perfection. We've seen this in Dr. Faustus. He
wanted unlimited access to knowledge. But how did
the whole Renaissance end? It ended in
disillusionment. It ended in decline. It ended in
criticism. It ended in censorship. It ended with
the execution of the king and the closure of the
theater. Remember by the Puritans? So in a way,
they're going to the unknown. Disobeying God takes
you to the unknown. But in literature, this is
sometimes a good theme because you choose your own
future. So the world was all before them were to
choose. They could have, you know, chosen
differently. Their place of rest, you know, rest,
peace, heaven, and Providence, their guide, they,
however, they hand in hand still stick together
with wandering steps, slow wandering, slow steps,
through Eden. And this is really heartbreaking. So
this is like I imagine this way this is like if
this is heaven how they go back down to earth so
they have to cross all the way through heaven
where they see all beauty and the rest and the
providence and they still They determine, and they
go. That was because of the original scene we saw.
Through Eden, took their solitary way, the
unknown. And this is a theme here, of the theme of
the unknown. Where is humanity going? Where are we
going? We're going to the unknown. This is very
ambitious. And at the same time, very sad, very
heartbreaking, very risky.
I can't tell whether Milton is promoting this or
condemning this. What do you think from this? Do
you think Milton wants us to be this adventurous
and this risky? Or is he telling us, see, if you
disobey God, if you don't follow the rules, you're
going to end up with the unknown? Yeah, so?
He's blaming God, and I think he's saying that you
have to, I don't know. What do you think? You
don't have to know. What do you think, generally?
I think he's, the first place, he blamed God, but
I don't think that he wants us to obey God. He put
God as the antagonist. Okay, but not necessarily,
it doesn't mean, listen, in literature generally,
I said this before, Literature usually, or
sometimes, doesn't seek to give us answers, but to
raise questions. That's one. In literature, we
don't usually have pure evil or pure good
characters, because literature is usually focused
on the gray area. If the text, if the movie is
about a family that is too good, it's boring. Or
too evil, sometimes it's frightening. There's too
much evil there. It's about good people who do bad
things. No? Bad people who do good things. Oh,
interesting. You ask a question, would I do the
same if I were in their position? Would I do the
same? And it's interesting because we see how
people react, how good people sometimes react when
they want to do evil. It's very interesting.
There's a movie I watched. It's called Death
Sentence. You know what it means, death sentence?
sentence in this context what does sentence mean
when you say somebody was sentenced to 10 years in
prison sentence it's a time someone a criminal
spends in prison for life sentence death sentence
A movie called Death Sentence, really beautiful
movie. It starts with, again, a beautiful family,
the perfect family, the husband, the wife, and the
two kids. One of them is very promising, very
ambitious. He has a very good job. They're rich.
They're comfortable. And after like 10 or 15
minutes, the son they loved the most was killed by
a gang member. How would a loving father, a
peaceful father, a father who has never touched a
gun would react in this? I'm not going to spoil
it. It's one of my top movies actually. Try to
watch it. Really interesting stuff. But again,
until this moment, I asked myself, God forbid, how
would a person who's not into revenge and fighting
and everything, movies and literature, give us
these scenarios? And that's why when you see the
conclusion, the ending, and how it ends, probably
you say, OK, I'll do the same. But it gives you a
whole story, a whole world in front of you, where
to choose. What should I do? Should I leave the
law to take its course? When you lose someone you
love the most, you wouldn't wait for Allah to take
your revenge. But is that good? If we do this, the
whole world is going to turn into a jungle. But
you wouldn't be OK if you didn't do this. We
should. Because yeah, there is this thing in our
hearts about revenge. But literature teaches us to
forgive. You might be the best person on Earth.
But still, it's your right to feel angry and to
want to take revenge. But if you want to kill
somebody because Toronto, like Shylock, if you
want to do, you know, we discussed this in another
class, I think. Would you do like Shylock? Would
you insist on taking a pound of flesh to take
revenge? It's his right, because he was attacked.
He was, you know, many times. But in this case,
the revenge wouldn't be killing. He might take
revenge by something else. By slapping him? No,
maybe by doing the same to him. Like what? He
killed someone, you killed someone? No, I don't
know. Nothing like that. At least like, but that's
where when we have like, if we have a good legal
system where criminals can be punished as they
should be, at least you don't have to go there.
Anyway, think of this, please. I think he's
promoting hearing to unknown. Because he said hand
in hand with wandering steps. He didn't mention
that there was any disagreement. And that's the
best thing about Adam and Eve, by the way. In
Islam and Christianity, I'm not sure we have this
in the text. I'll have to go back to it. Adam and
Eve were the perfect couple, in a way. They're not
the odd couples that are always fighting, like our
parents sometimes. They're always fighting over
trivial things. You don't see this, although this
is the most serious thing. Sometimes you do
something, and then the wife gets at you. The wife
does something, and the husband is angry and
everything. What a perfect couple they are. Hand
in hand, slowly wandering, despite the fact that
they lost the most important thing a human person,
humanity has ever lost. Paradise. Providence.
Being close to God. What a perfect, what a good
couple. But they were the only ones on the earth,
maybe because of that they wouldn't leave each
other for no reason. Yeah, so if I leave, but
still you fight a little bit because fighting
doesn't mean end in a war. Maybe they fought.
Maybe they did, but it's not in the Quran or the
Bible or in the text. And this is how literature
literature doesn't give us everything. It leaves
gaps for us to think. But yeah, interesting how
you think that at least when they take the
decision, they take it together, hand in hand.
Adam is not leading him, and she's not pushing
him. They're hand in hand. They are equal to the
other. OK. Now in Paradise Lost, we have a lot of
very memorable lines. So neither Adam nor Eve is
to blame because they are all equally to blame.
There are several memorable lines and
descriptions, descriptive passages, descriptive
stanzas and poetry in Paradise Lost. One of them
is a description of hell, hellfire. You know
dungeon? A dungeon is a dark place like a prison.
It's where sometimes you describe the prison as a
dungeon or a particular room. I don't like to sit
in this room. It's like a dungeon. Dungeon is a
dark place where you sit in. Could describe a
prison, but here it is used to describe hell
itself. And notice how horrible, how spooky this
is. This is very close to the Bible and the
description of the religious text here. So hell
is? Horrible on all sides around as one great
furnace. Do you know furnace? We took it before,
furnace. What is oven? What's an oven? You don't
know an oven? But furnace, where did we come
across furnace before? All the world's stage.
There was the furnace, the lever, the fighter, ah,
it's like a furnace. So you know what a furnace
is. There's fire all over the place. Flame, yit.
And again, see this paradox. There's a paradox
here. If there is fire, yes, there is heat. It's
negative in this sense. But fire means warmth. And
sometimes it means what do we have from fire other
than warmth? Light. Thank you very much. But this
is not an ordinary fire. This is hell fire. Yet
from these flames, from the fire, no light, but
rather darkness visible. It's funny that you say
darkness visible because darkness is darkness.
This is fire that gives darkness not light.
Isn't that the most horrifying thing ever? So when
someone tells you it's dark, OK, I can light some
fire. But fire there doesn't give light. It gives
more darkness. We have this. Usually religious
texts do this all the time. We all
hear about this, the food of the sinners, the
people in hell. In the Quran, there is a simile.
And usually, a simile, a metaphor, brings things
closer to our imagination. So someone tells you,
have you ever tasted or tried cheesecake? Yes. No.
What does it taste like? It's like ice cream, but
it's far, far, far bitter than ice cream.
Interesting. Delicious. So the tree of Zaqqum was
brought out as if it were a simile. We want to
know. So this A fruit in hell. The fruits there on
the trees look like the heads of devils. We don't
know what they look like originally, right? So
something spooky with something even more
terrifying. And this is religious text. And he's
doing this. So this hellfire is all darkness. It's
a furnace, flame. But do we have light? No.
There's no light here. Please. I think this stanza
supports the idea that the stanza before this one,
it supports the idea that he's advising us to obey
God and listen to him to make you follow his plan.
Because eventually, if you don't, you're going to
be there. So he's terrifying us in a way. You have
to obey God. Another extract I liked is when he
describes
Eve. Maybe someone wants to do a presentation on
this, how he describes Eve and how he describes
Adam. You know, you have to do a presentation for
the course assessment. This is Milton talking
about Eve. In a way, he's saying Eve is the most
beautiful woman. At that time, you said this,
there were no women, no men. So of course, she is
the most beautiful woman on earth. But he compares
her to even more beautiful creatures.
Soft, she withdrew. Unlike a wood nymph, light.
You know a wood nymph? What's a nymph? A wood?
Nymph? It's like a goddess. Goddesses. Yeah, like
goddesses. Like purely beautiful creatures living
in heaven. Those imaginary creatures, the
creatures we imagine all the time. Perfect
creatures. So she withdrew, she moves, she
behaves, she acts like a nymph. Light. We took her
to the groves, but Delia's self-engaged surpassed
and goddess-like deposed. She looks like? Goddess.
Goddess. She's a goddess. She's a nymph, she's
beautiful, she's perfect. So maybe you want to see
how the text talks about. But here, notice the
description is mainly physical description. Are
there any references to her mind? Or is this the
case? A woman has to be beautiful, and that's it.
More important than her mind and her intellect.
Look into the text. If someone is interested in
this, to do a presentation, you can look into
this. And maybe you can see how Adam is. So maybe
Adam is not described physically. Maybe he's more
into the mind.
The apple, we'll see, yeah. We'll have to go back
to this and see what exactly he said about her,
how she behaved, what she exactly thought. I'll
conclude this with more memorable lines. We have
one. Two and three. Three, again, beautiful, very
memorable. Some of these, by the way, have become
English proverbs. We use them all the time, and
sometimes we don't know that they are from Milton.
Sometimes we use so many things from Shakespeare
and Milton and John Donne and everything.
Especially this one. I like using this all the
time. So farewell hope and with hope farewell
fear. So, farewell. You know farewell? Goodbye.
Goodbye to hope. But if somebody loses hope, you
have nothing else to lose. So, you don't fear
anything. And usually they say, you need to fear
someone who has nothing to fear. Beware of a
person who has nothing to fear. Because if you
have no family, nobody to love, no home to live,
no country, nothing, everything is threatened,
everything is taken away by occupations or by
something, this person is very dangerous. Why?
Because sometimes we want to do stuff, but we are
afraid maybe we're going to go, we would go to
prison, we'd be arrested because, and then my wife
and my kids and my family and my job and my
students. But if you have nothing to lose, no one
to love, no family, no job, you would be fearless.
And it's good in a way and it's also bad in
another way. Number one, Long is the way. Notice
the word order here. The way is long, but that's
poetic. Long is the way. And hard. Some only long,
but also hard. That's life. Life is hard. Life is
so long.
that out of hell leads up to life. It's like the
way to heaven is not an easy way. It's long, it's
hard. It's very difficult. In a way, when you read
this, you think it's from the Bible, by the way,
because of the religious nature of the text,
because he assumes this role. Finally, someone
read the last quote, please. Just are the ways of
God unjustifiable to men unless they're beings who
think not God at all. Okay, someone else, please.
Just are the ways of God unjustifiable to men
unless they're beings who think not God at all.
I think he's talking about prophets, how they give
us the message of God. The ways of God.
You suffer, but this suffering is good for you,
because eventually God is going to reward you for
this. So generally, remember to assert eternal
providence and justify the means or the ways of
God to men. It's too difficult. And again, notice
the word order here. There's emphasis on
But it's interesting also because if you follow
the path, you will finally go to God. It's the end
of the sentence. If you follow the long and hard
way to heaven, and you know it is just, you trust
God, you beg God, eventually you will love Him.
Just are the ways of God. Unjustifiable to men.
It's easy to see that God loves us, even if we
suffer. However,
People who originally don't believe in God. So if
you don't believe in God, you will not see
justice. You will not see that even if you suffer
eventually you will be rewarded, whether here or
there, hereafter. OK? So this is, in a way,
basically in brief. I know because this is an
introduction to English literature. We take like
little things about it. But I hope my lectures or
the lectures or the stuff in the book also helps
you to see something in literature, to love to do
something more on literature.
time especially these days with the exams coming
up please contribute you to watch some videos
about these or go google famous quotes from
paradises you will love what you see you can do
this for your extra portfolio so after this we
have paradise
I have probably two or three minutes to speak
about Samson Agnes. I'll be very brief. Maybe we
can continue this after the class. Samson Agnes
tells the story of an Israelite, Jewish person.
Israelite, not Israeli. Israelite. God sent him to
help the Israelites, because they were sinners, to
protect them against the Philistines. You know
Philistines? It's people who were living in
Palestine at that time. Palestine, the dictionary
is a negative word. It means a certain person who
doesn't appreciate the heart. And we can hopefully
talk about this later on. The Philistines were the
enemies of the Jews, the Jewish people. So Samson
was a fearless, powerful person, so strong that he
could sometimes kill 1,000 Philistines with only
something like, I don't know, a rubber. In one
story, he kills all about, I'm not sure how many,
but hundreds of Philistines only with a donkey's
jaw. You know what a jaw is? Jaw. This area is
called the Jaw. So a dead donkey's jaw, he killed
hundreds of people, armored with swords and with
arrows and everything. One time, he was attacked
by a lion, and with his bare hands, he rips the
lion into pieces. So powerful. And now, one
Palestinian woman from Gaza named Delilah. I know
people all over
There is a book, someone named, called in the book
Iris in Gaza, taken from this reference and it's
from the Bible in a way or another. So Delilah, he
shouldn't fall in love with any Palestinian woman,
he shouldn't deal with them. What he does, this is
a sin in a way. And she was like, Samson,
Samson, she keeps nagging and nagging and nagging
and nagging and nagging. He doesn't want to tell
anyone, but eventually he does. He tells her it's
because of my hair. This is Samson and he has this
long curly hair.
He cut him. The Philistines caught him. He was
asleep, and they cut his hair. He's now hairless.
They chain him. He tries to break the chains, but
he's powerless now. He loses his power. They
arrest him. They put him in a temple, and they
gold his eyes. He's now blind. Interesting. A
blind Samson, blind Meltem also. But because the
Philistines are backward and stupid, presented
this way, they forget about him, and his hair
grows white out.
and killing all the Palestinians. And that's the
story of Samson Adams. It's in the Bible, it's
typical, but it's part myth, part fiction in a
way. Unless you believe that there are people, we
see sometimes people with supernatural powers,
they can drag, you know, lorries and trucks with
their teeth. Yes, with their ears. They're
trained, they were not born. Okay, so this is the
story of Samson Adams. If you are interested in
doing a presentation about this, maybe you can
think of how the line that's Or how the
Philistines as the others, as the enemies were
represented. Because in a way, they were the
natives here in Gaza, like us here in Gaza. Maybe
someone wants to do more history research and find
out where this took place in Gaza. I was kidding
with the other class. I thought that Samson was
from Syria. Some people say, no, maybe he's from
there and back or somewhere. So look into this.
Thank you very much. Good luck.