Finding Jesus in Star Trek Into Darkness

***Spoiler Warning if you don't already know who's who and what's what in Star Trek Into Darkness***


I've been hearing speculation that Captain Kirk is meant to be a Christ figure in Star Trek Into Darkness (STID). The theories have some merit, since Kirk sacrifices himself to save his crew/followers and is then raised from the dead a little bit later, but they also ignore the STID character with even more direct Christological characteristics: Benedict Cumberbatch's John Harrison/Khan. 

Consider, first of all, Khan's motivation for his admittedly outlandish plot: He wants to his followers, whom he has secreted away in the special-edition photon torpedoes on the Enterprise. Right there, we have one of the same markers cited in defense of Kirk's alleged Christology. But the evidence with Khan goes further. Do you recall how many followers Khan had? 72. And where else have you seen that number? 

Luke 10:1
"After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go."

 That's right. Jesus sent out 72 followers, and Khan had 72 followers cryo-sleep-stored in the torpedoes. Coincidence?

It goes beyond that, though. This next piece of evidence is even more compelling. In fact, I can’t imagine anything that could be more convincing. 

At three different points in the movie—with the sick child near the beginning, a Tribble near the middle, and with the dead Kirk close to the end—Khan’s blood is used to bring dead things back to life. Strangely, STID chooses not to dwell on this point, but the evidence is nonetheless clear: Khan’s blood can cure death, thus granting whoever has it eternal life.

Does that sound like anyone else you know?

John 6:56
“Whoever…drinks my blood has eternal life…”

Now, I will admit that Khan does a few un-Jesus-like things, such as killing lots of people, lying, manipulating, being the villain of the story, and crushing skulls with his bare hands, but those are minor quibbles--Tribbles? :)--compared to the mountains of evidence showing Khan as Jesus. So, the next time you have trouble picturing what Jesus might have looked like, just think of Khan instead. 

Star Trek Into Harkness

I would be more excited for this, honestly.

Finding Inspiration on Twitter

A fun, Thanksgiving-themed hashtag showed up on Twitter tonight: #LiteraryTurducken. The concept is to take the titles of three different literary works and combine them into a single title. ("Turducken" is the turkey-chicken-duck combination that John Madden always talked about on Thanksgiving football games.) This leads to some bizarre, quite clever combinations: Charlie and the Chocolate War and Peace; The Unbearable Lightness of Being Gone with the Wind in the Willows; Tender is the Midsummer Night's Arabian Dream.

I came up with a few of my own that I'm fairly proud of: The Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Restaurant on the Edge of the Invisible Cities; The Book Thief's Guide to the Life of Pi; Harry Potter and the Giver of Mice and Men; etc.

After I had exhausted the novel combinations that I could think of, my mind ran, as it usually does, to Star Trek, which led me to combining three episode titles into this: The Savage Curtain on the Edge of All Our Yesterdays.

That's probably the best #LiteraryTurducken I can come up with, but it might be more than that. I have to say, that sounds like a line from a poem I would like to read, maybe even one I would like to write. Who knows if I'll make time to write it, but the potential is there. And the inspiration for it came from "wasting time" playing around on Twitter.