River Monsters - Russian Killer

This episode of RM focused on the mighty of Amur river of "Mother Russia", and I have to confess that it was an interesting one.

Firstly, because of the fish. As JW tends to do, he cannot resist the lure of a good fish - make that catfish - tale: the first third or so of the episode centers about the Amur catfish and the Soldatov catfish - kin to the mighty wels catfish of the show's first season. The various flashbacks to the show's previous seasons and episodes didn't take much out of the episode, though they did take up time - maybe something that the show's producers intended to do.

Secondly, the Kaluga. I was impressed at the fish's alleged size and reputation and power: the sturgeons are an ancient breed of fish and to have some of the grow to impressive, almost mammoth-like proportions as they age isn't too improbable, in my opinion. But...

But despite the episode's title (see above), it was focused not on the fish - the Kaluga, the catfish, even the chum salmon that was so prominent in the episode - but on their environment, which is getting, frankly, polluted by the actions of humanity (the Russians in this case). They are destroying their world by destroying the natural resources (something that the Putin-Medvediev administration is notorious about), as well as overfishing, both the salmon fish (the red caviar) and the sturgeons (black). Having, in my youth, tasted both, I know why they cost such a high price even if poached - but poaching is wrong, and it leads to extinction of species - in Russia, USA, etc.

The destructive impact of the local fishing industry on its' surroundings is evident throughout the episode - the near absence of wildlife (other than the fish) in this particular episode contrasts sharply with most of other RM episodes, when there is some unplanned encounter with a local Land animal - for example, the grizzly bear in Alaska, when JW was fishing for the white sturgeon instead. The exceptions to this rule occur when JW was fishing for the wels catfish in Europe, for example, or for the alligator gar in the USA - both examples of the heavily urban, overfished countries. Russia, apparently, is another one of this countries...only, unlike Europe or USA, people too are dying-out, as shown by the now-struggingl and dying-out fishing communities shown in this ep - something to think about!

And so, unlike the previous, "American Killers" episode, the "Russian Killer" (no pun intended) revealed something new and interesting about our world in general and the world of fish and fishing in particular. I hope that the rest of S4 will be just as good.

River monsters - American killers

First, a bit of a prequel. This blog was initially designed by me to post my reviews and opinions of the lectures on my RLG 213 course. By now, of course, this course is over, and I mostly forgot about my blog - but now I remembered about it, and decided to use it, because, hey, it's my blog - why it should be wasted? For now, I'm going to post my opinions of the 4th season of "River Monsters" series (one of my favorite), but later... who knows?

Anyways, my point for now that if anyone was reading this blog, considered it to be a "ghost" or whatever, and is now surprised to see it return from the dead with a whole new subject - sorry. Please feel to follow or to disregard it however you see fit. Now on with the review!

...Yesterday I was capable of watching the premier episode of the 4th season of "River Monsters" - "American killers" on Discovery Channel. In this episode, Jeremy Wade abandoned his usual haunts of Africa and South America for the closer to home North American waterways in search of NA's own river monsters - the bull shark and the giant (i.e. oversized) catfish.

So, what's my take on the premiere? As usual, Jeremy Wade delivers what he has promised in style, but the fish of this episode were...something else, and not in a good way.

First, the bull shark. This is one of my favorite fish; the way it faces-off with the hippopotamus in AFO is classic, and it is a shark, so it naturally gets some thrill points, but at this point in series? It has become a permanent fixture of RM. Season 1 - bull shark. Season 2 - bull shark. Season 3 - bull shark (freshwater sawfish episode). Now, season 4 - bull shark. Yes, the bull shark is a shark that can live in freshwater rivers and lakes as well as in salty seas and oceans, and it is a potential maneater, but... that's that, basically. For a show that shows all sorts of river monsters, from the arapaima to tigerfish to Japanese salamander, this may no longer be enough. Being a shark may no longer cut it as the biggest bad of the show. Example - the goliath grouper. That fish was amazing - as big as a person and probably much heavier... really just a maneuverable mouth. With such a piscine heavyweight in the water no wonder that JW had problems catching bull sharks that night: if a juvenile bull shark and a golith grouper came to a face off, the question of who would eat/attack who could go either way - not the odds predators enjoy!

More importantly, (at least for me), the goliath grouper stole the show from the bull shark: it appeared much more rarely than the bull shark on the show, and as such, it was a genuine surprise, while the bull shark... wasn't. In RM, where practically every episode features a new monster, for the bull shark to become a regular...may not be such a good idea. But that's just me, and even I was impressed to see JW catch yet another bull shark in with new fishing style.

Now, as for the catfish. JW loves catching catfish, starting from S1, with its giant Amazonian catfish and the equally massive Himalayan (Asian) goonch, so there's no surprise that he went after North America's flathead and blue catfishes. And yet... this part of the ep seemed to be something of a plug for another fishing show - Hillbilly Handfishing, and I'm just not sure how I feel about that: I'm generally not fond of plugs, but I may be wrong...

Oh, and one more thing. The original, Animal Planet release, apparently had an alligator gar segment as well. DC has cut it out - because it didn't fit into the alloted time frame, or because it's exclusive AP fragment, or something. Pity. Alligator gar (and its relatives) are amazing, though endangered, fish that could use as much good PR as they can get. But, on DC, they got passed over for the sake of more popular catfish - oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

And so, 4th season of RM on DC begins on a mixed note, with good intermixed with... less good. Let's wait and see what the next episodes will bring.

March 20

Lately, the texts for our lectures discuss the beginning of the Judeo-Christian split and the possible reasons behind it. From what I have read in the materials and heard during the lectures, I began to suspect that one of the reasons that this split has occurred is in the fact that Christians started to re-interpret the Jewish prophecies and scriptures.

This has started with Jesus himself, I believe. Though he claimed to be a savior (a messiah), he certainly did not behave as one according to the Jewish religious canon, but rather he reinterpreted it as and when he saw fit to do it. Incidentally, there is nothing particularly inherently wrong with it: at that time, the Jews themselves often interpreted and reinterpreted their canon as they saw fit: four official variation of the Jewish faith show this, to say nothing of the various sects, such as Dead Sea one. The Christians, in the beginning, were just one Jewish sect out of many, and only their elevation by the emperor Constantine gave them their new status as a global – or at least all-European – religion.

The Jews, for better or for worse, did not quite realize the change in the relationship between them and the Christians, and that resulted in a rather rocky relationship between the two groups. On one hand there was the harassment of Christians by the Jews and of Jews by the Christians; on the other...

Even with Constantine’s edict (let alone some time before it), the Christians were ‘new kids on the block’ both in terms of religious history and European history in general. Therefore, when they began to send missionaries to new countries and people, such as the German tribes in the north, they began to encounter such problems as proof – how could they prove to the Germans, the Franks, the Celts, etc that there really had been Jesus, he was crucified, he ascended, etc? The northerners were less sophisticated people than the people of the Mediterranean Sea basin were, they did not believe in myths and legends and logical speeches slash philosophies, they were more of a ‘doubting Tom’ sort of people, and they needed something concrete. The Jews, who were around for much longer than the Christians were at this point, served as this concrete proof – maybe unwillingly, possibly in a negative way regarding the Crucifixion, but serve as proof they were.

The Jewish faith has also served another purpose – to bulk up the Bible. As a recent lecture revealed, about three quarters of New Testament consists of letters, personal documentation (and of the remains one half are the Gospels) that are short, precise and to the point – and also lack even the scanty description and the hefty religious history of the Genesis. When preaching to initially sceptical people of northern Europe anything that could help sway them was considering important enough to be Christian, and that included the Torah, refurbished and eventually reinterpreted as Old Testament.

And so, as far as I can see, the relationship between Jews and Christians has started uneasily, and it continued uneasily, and it remains relatively uneasy even in modern times. Does anyone wants to disagree?

March 13

When did the Judeo-Christian conflict start? The ‘canonical’ answer is to be found in the Gospels, I suppose, as shown in the conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees & the scribes (the Sadducees?), and later on between them and Jesus’ disciples. However...

The trick here that Judaism was initially both a religion and a national identity for the Jews, but after the Babylonian captivity this tandem became very convoluted, as at least 4 official (and possibly all sort of unofficial) Jewish sects/religious directions became evident. Jesus’ teachings, though destined to greatness, at that time were just another noisy sect, as pointed out in “Jesus Christ, Superstar” musical. What is more, Jesus and his apostles might have perceived themselves thusly too, or at least as still being Jewish, as Paul’s letter to Galatians indicates: Paul thinks of himself as a Jew in that instance.

This transforms the initial Judeo-Christian confrontation into something internal, at least to the eyes of the pagans such as the Romans. Certainly at the times of Nero, of Titus and Vespasian, the Roman government did not really distinguish between the two branches of monotheism at all. But then came Constantine (who, admittedly, was not discussed in this course) and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, giving it an edge over Judaism.

There is nothing as bitter as quarrels between close relatives, and I guess that the Judeo-Christian conflict is no exception. Even Paul’s Letter to Galatians, his Jewish claim notwithstanding, heralds the beginning of a split, as indicated by his use of Ishmael/Isaac parable. Ishmael, incidentally, is assumed to be the ancestor of the Arabs, so Paul’s use of him (and of Isaac) is rather apocryphal, as a matter of fact.

(Actually, Jesus himself may have initiated it when he not quite claimed to be the Messiah yet behaved clearly not as the ‘canonical’ Jewish Messiah. But then again, as indicated by the Dead Sea sect, various ‘apocryphal’ sects were not uncommon in Israel at that time, so Jesus did not invent anything new, not really.)

In any case, the split that began at the time of the Galatians continued to deepen, obviously. And, of course, it was only chance that had put Christians over their religious cousins, but that does not change the situation: i.e., as soon as Christians gained the upper hand they began to dominate their religious cousins including various unpleasant excesses.

Conversely, though, as the Gospels indicate, that while the Jews had the upper hand (and Israel was not destroyed), they did not behave any better either. Family quarrels, even when put on a higher level, are bitter.

However, what about our course? Well, apparently next week we will start to study the fledgling (and deteriorating) relations between the Jews and the Christians. Paul’s Letter to Galatians is merely a first swallow of things to come. In modern times, though, this rift shows signs of closing, so perhaps it is important not to dwell on the past too much, and that is something to think about as well.

March 6

When we began reading texts in this course, the first texts we had to read, among others, where the canon Genesis and the apocryphal Jubilees. While reading this, I noticed that they were very different: the canon text was dry and matter-of-fact, while the apocryphal one was much elaborate and descriptive. One may even say that it was a further development/literary evolution of the canon.

Then, the previous week we had to read 2 Ezra from Old Testament and Revelations from New Testament, and here the tone of the texts was very descriptive and elaborate – very different from the dry-cut tone of Genesis, much more similar to Jubilees.

Finally, this week we had to read Gospel of Mark, and here the tone was closer to Genesis instead. Considering that this text is the first in New Testament, this allows me to draw a conclusion that the gradual elaboration of the Biblical texts was a chronological process and may have been affected by the pagan influences as well.

More precisely, Genesis was written before the exile, when Israel was relatively isolated from more powerful pagan influences such as Babylonian or Greek, and as such it is one of the more ‘canonical’ texts, it is very matter-of-fact. 1 Maccabees, which we have also read, are something of a ‘missing link’: this book is factual on one hand, but written in a very fancy tone. 2 Ezra is written probably at the very end of the existence of the ancient Israel, and it is very evocative and metaphorical, like Revelations, but unlike Genesis. Apocryphal Jubilees, “Joseph and Asenath”, etc, were probably written around that time too.

Gospel of Mark, however, is like Genesis and unlike Revelations – or Gospel of John, for that matter. It is very concise, very matter-of-fact, and focused not on divine miracles, even the Resurrect and the Ascension, but on realism and on Christ’s parables. Therefore, if the Gospels are biographies of Christ, then the Gospel of Mark might be the most precise, especially since the popular opinion is that Matthew and Luke had used the Gospel of Mark as one of the literary sources for their gospels. This means that the Gospel of Mark is also older than their Gospels (and also the Gospel of John), but also that it is more ‘old-fashioned’ than the rest of them.

Finally, this means that the process of the Biblical texts, both Old Testament and New, from factual/‘canon’ to fancy/‘apocryphal’ may not have been completely continuous, in a single straight line. Rather, it was probably more convoluted, with the elements of both writing styles appearing at different times almost regardless of the time – almost. The factual, canon text was still the first one to be used in the Bible.

Then again, the dry, ‘old-fashioned’ writing style of Gospel of Mark may mean only that Mark, regardless of his conversion to Christianity, was a conservative, old-fashioned fellow, and wrote his book in a writing style that he was more comfortable – as opposed to more modern and liberal John, as evident by the Gospel of John. Either way, these revelations are part of the reason why I am enjoying this course so much and hope to enjoy it in the future.

February 28

For this week, we had to read 2 Esdra and Revelations. After reading them, I understood the initial split between modern Judaism and Christianity, even though the pair had shared origins.

It all really started, I reckon, around the time of sacking of the Temple and the overall destruction of Jerusalem, and the eventual dissolution of Israel. The anonymous author of 2 Esdra talks about that event in very raw, uncompromising tones: he talks about the land of Israel, the second coming of Jerusalem, and of the destruction of the Eagle of Rome (presumably, though he does not name names) by the Lion of David. He uses metaphors and allegories; the titular character has an active dialogue with an angel, Uriel, but 2 Esdra adheres to its point: why Israel, the Promised Land is suffering so, why the Jews are suffering so, and will the divine promise is executed?

That promise, incidentally, is not so much of Moses on Mount Sinai, even though the Mosaic Laws were kept in mind by the author too, but to Abraham in the desert – will the Jews be as sand underfoot or as stars in the sky? Whether rightly or wrongly, this question mattered heavily to the Jewish nation of old and may have influenced their political decisions, especially in the actions of the pre-exilic prophets.

By contrast, the author of Revelations was a Christian, albeit an early one. He has not quite severed all of his ties with Judaism, but is in the process of doing that all the same. Just like the author of 2 Esdra he uses metaphors and is anti-Rome (Rome at the time of Nero was quite anti-Christian), but his metaphors are more literary and elaborative, he is more emotionally detached than his 2 Esdra counterpart is.

For the Christians, Rome at the time of Nero and immediately after his demise was Babylon, or the Whore of Babylon, worthy of nothing else but destruction. In this the author of Revelations (the apostle John is the popular version) comes very close to the author of 2 Esdra, but throughout Revelations he is almost over the top with all the symbolisms and metaphors – what rider on what horse symbolizes what and etc. He can be carried away with that because he is more detached from Rome’s spiritual corruption – furthermore, to him that corruption is spiritual rather than corporeal: he does not care so much about the destruction of the Temple, Jerusalem and Israel, for he is a Christian, not a Jew.

Whether or not Jewish nationalism (especially of the times of yore) was good or bad for the country can be argued about. However, severing that nationalism from themselves, was the action that set the Christians apart from the Jews back in the antiquity. The Christians basically declared themselves to be cosmopolite – “neither Hellene nor Jew” – and that is why the orthodox Jews did not recognize them and had conflicts with them.

Ah well, God has judged the two faiths themselves. Nowadays, Jews have Israel and Jerusalem back to themselves (though they have to fight for it again, as they did in the days of the Maccabees), while Christianity is spread almost worldwide and shows no signs of abating.