Months ago, I made a commitment to write some thoughts about the latest Rebel Moon movies from one of my personal heroes, who I consider a friend I have never met, Zack Snyder. While thinking about those movies, though, I also thought about other movies in his catalog, and before I write about the Rebel Moon movies, I’d like to devote attention to some of the ones that came before. I expect anything I write about all these movies will come out over a long period of time, and I expect any posts about them to be sprinkled with posts about other things. There seem to be things going on in the world and in my head of which I am only partially aware, but all this seems to be forming a kind of a pattern. I’m excited about this, and specifically, I am excited to be able to watch in wonder as things unfold.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith, Leader of the “A-Team”
Now I am not going to devote equal attention to the entirety of Zack’s filmography. I intend to talk at length about a few of his movies, but here I want to devote some cursory attention to the ones that came before and around the ones I hope to give a blog post to. But before that, though, I want to talk a little about Zack’s name. I once saw a documentary about a fairly profound concept, that is, it was about the idea of whether a man’s destiny can possibly be somehow related to his name. I once wrote about the meaning of my own name because of this idea that came from studying kabbalah and remembering that documentary. It was a documentary about Anthony Wiener.
With this in tow, I’d like to take a look at the Boss’ name. Music people understand “the Boss” to be a reference to Bruce Springsteen. I am indeed a music man. But for the Snyder fans, Zack is “the Boss.” I would be thrilled if Bruce’s fans would look at his music the same way I do Zack’s movies, but that’s their job. I’m going to tell you what I see in Zack’s movies, though I want to start with Zack’s name.
Written in Hebrew letters, Zack’s name is זבריה שניידר. That is, Zechariah Schneider. His first name is Hebrew. His last name is Yiddish. His first name is pretty straightforward. It means “God has remembered.” His last name deserves a considerable amount of scrutiny, however.
Schneider is a German word. Yiddish lacks any form of orthographic standardization in either Hebrew or Latin letters. I went with the German spelling for clarity, though as a Jew, I wanted to get the Yiddish slant. Yiddish is a form of Middle German with tons and tons of Hebrew and Aramaic terms and more than a few Slavic ones as well. In German, the Schneider means “the one who cuts.”
Now Zack’s spiritual influences are enormous. Like me, he was influenced by Carl Jung, but even more significantly by Joseph Campbell, a figure that I somewhat villainized in my last post. I’ll talk more about this later. His upbringing, though, was from a kind of an oddball Christian denomination called Christian Science. This was a sect of Christianity that espoused rationality and rigorous investigation in matters of faith rather than blind opinion, but with that mentality in tow ultimately adopted the understanding that anything is possible, miracle is possible, and that bodily disease is in fact an illusion. I’ve always been skeptical of the use of the term “illusion” to describe something that is in fact happening. But nobody is perfect. At least no human, anyway. Zack, though, comes from a very reasonable yet “outside the box” branch of Christianity that has drawn conclusions that are in fact true, even if I might be critical of some word choices.
This tradition is based on the Bible, including the New Testament in this case, and in that work one particular verse about cutting has always struck me:
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
Matthew 10:34
Zack’s movies have always been divisive. The concept of “one who divides” is a powerful one. The verse above has nothing to do with violence, actually. The context is actually dealing with the fact that some people are going to like the guy (Jesus is speaking here), and others aren’t. He is saying, “I am a divisive dude.” But there is a specific form of this concept that the Yiddish brings to the table. That is what I want to highlight. In Yiddish, the “Schneider” refers to a tailor. The cloth cutter.
Now that I have just told you we are going to talk about the Yiddish, I’m going to have to pull you in yet another direction. Sorry. I’m working on it, but at this moment, that’s just how I roll.
Jews have yet another language in their history. Greek. Flavius Josephus, Philo, the Septuagint, the New Testament, the Jewish apocrypha such as the Book of Enoch, Tobit, etc. have all come down to us in Greek. The Greek of these works is often called “Biblical Greek” or “Levantine Koine Greek,” and it bears a number of interesting and unique characteristics. Foremost, while the words used are Greek, they are very often renditions of Hebrew words and concepts. This has really, really, really tripped up the gentile Christian church, which took entirely too many cues from the Platonic academy at Athens when reading Jewish works in Greek. They completely butchered the Hebrew concept of “eternity” when formulating their doctrines. Try talking to people about absolutely horrifying notions such as “hell” when nobody seems to know what “eternity” even means.
In other cases, though, the strange mixture Hebraic and Hellenistic concepts brought to fore by contemplating this “Jewish Greek” gives us something uniquely beautiful. Let me show you.
Have you ever wondered why the words “cosmetics,” “cosmopolitan,” and “cosmos” all sound the same? You guessed it: they are all based on the Greek word κόσμος (kósmos). In Jewish Greek, this word is basically a direct translation of the Hebrew word עולם (olam). This is an important word to understand. It basically means something like “world” or “epoch” or “universe” or “space-time.” The Greek word kósmos has a very primitive root meaning, however: adornment. Cosmetics are indeed the adornment of our faces and skin. Likewise, however, the cosmos is a sort of adornment of God. It’s like God’s clothing, so to speak. However, when we look around, we see a world of spectacular beauty constantly besmirched. The world I see is like a silk shirt with a lot of blood on it. I see a cosmos in need of a tailor. Zack’s name means “God remembers the tailor,” or a little more figuratively, “God remembers the one who adorns.”
Now I had intended to write some short notes about some movies that I don’t intend to talk much about elsewhere, and I wanted to start with a bit of discussion about the name of the guy who made the movies. I’ve done it again, however. I’ve rambled and wandered and made this too long.
I’m therefore going to publish this post and then follow it up with a (hopefully) short post with some brief notes about some of the Zack Snyder movies that I am not going to give a lot of attention to.