Today we journey to Middle-Earth with Professor Michael Jahosky. Michael released his book, The Good News of The Return Of The King: The Gospel in Middle-Earth, at the end of last year in which looks at the use of language, allegory, and metaphor in Tolkien’s Legendarium.
S4E47: “After Hours” with Michael Jahosky (Download)
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Timestamps
00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:10 – Welcome
00:39 – Michael Jahosky
01:57 – Quote-of-the-week
02:24 – Drink-of-the-week
02:57 – Patreon Toast
03:09 – Discussion: Background
05:33 – Discussion: Mythic Mission
07:54 – Discussion: The Good News of Middle-Earth
14:38 – Discussion: Preface
19:09 – Discussion: Introduction
26:32 – Discussion: Chapter 1
33:43 – Discussion: Narnian Application
39:02 – Discussion: Chapter 2
43:22 – Discussion: Chapter 3
45:51 – Discussion: Chapter 4
46:18 – Discussion: Chapter 5
51:08 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
No Skype Session today!
Show Notes
Biographical Information
Professor Michael T. Jahosky, teaches Humanities at St. Petersburg College in Florida. As I was researching him, I saw that on RateMyProfessors.com he has a score of 4.2/5, which seems pretty good to me…
He has two Bachelor degrees (One in Humanities and one in History) from the University of Central Florida and a Masters degree in Humanities from the University of South Florida. Over the course of his academic career, he has specialized in Greek, Roman, and Biblical history, philosophy, theology, and the arts. In Graduate school in addition to the above areas of study, he also focused on the early Italian Renaissance.A few months ago he was on the Unbelieveable? Podcast with another former guest of the show, Dr. Holly Ordway.
Biographical information for Professor Michael Jahosky
He is the host of Mythic Mission, a podcast and YouTube channel and the author of the newly released book which we’ll be discussing today, “The Good News of the Return of the King: The Gospel in Middle Earth” which is endorsed by another former guest of this show, Dr. Louis Markos.
Quote-of-the-week
- For Christmas this year, my brother-in-law, Sam, gave me a copy of Tolkien’s collected letters. So, for the quote-of-the-week, I thought I’d share Tolkien’s own description of LOTR found in Letter #142…
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.
J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 142
Drink-of-the-week
- Since it was a cold, wet day in San Diego, I was drinking hot peppermint tea. Michael was drinking Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA from his Prancing Pony mug.
- Since we didn’t have a Patreon supporter to toast this week, we toasted Tolkien:
To The Professor!
Toast for Tolkien
Discussion
Background
- So Michael, I gave a brief biography earlier, but would you mind filling in the details, telling us more about yourself, including your interest in Myth and Middle Earth?
- How fluent is your Quenya and Sindarin?
Podcast
- We’ll get on to talking about your book shortly, but before we get to that, I want to make sure we talk a little bit about your podcast, MYTHIC (I wish I were a mystic…) Mission. What are you doing on that podcast and who are some of the guests you’ve had on?
The Book
- You’ve recently released a new book, The Good News of the Return of the King: The Gospel in Middle Earth”. How did you come to write this book?
- I really enjoyed your book, although I would definitely say that it’s a book which deserves to be read slowly – “red beef and strong beer”. I really appreciated having your video guide:
- Professor Jahosky summed up the message of his book:
“If everything in reality in some way points to Jesus Christ—the incarnation—then the best possible way to communicate that would be through a type of communication that is in form what it wants to say in content (incarnational).”
Jahosky, Michael T.. The Good News of the Return of the King: The Gospel in Middle-earth (p. 23)
Preface
- In the Preface, you talk about your “Road into Jerusalem” – what was this road?
Introduction
- You have quite a substantial introduction, a little shy of fifty pages. What are the key things we need to know before we delve into the body of the book?
Chapter 1
- After the Introduction, the book is broken up into five parts. The first is called “‘The Lord of the Rings’ as Parable”. Here you break down a bunch of terms related to allegory. What are they?
- How should this shape our understanding of LOTR?
- How would these terms apply to Narnia?
Chapter 2
- In the second section of your book you claim that “Parables Are Good News Stories”. Why?
- How does our understanding of parables help us understand the incarnation?
Chapters 3 & 4
- In the first part you said that The Lord of the Rings is a parable, you then in the second that Parables are Good News Stories, and in the third section of your book you complete the syllogism by saying that “The Lord of the Rings is Good News”. What do you unpack from this conclusion?
- In Chapter 3 you also look through all of Tolkien’s corpus – The New Shadow all the way back through the history of Middle Earth and in Chapter 4 you trace the story of Thorin. To what end?
Chapter 5
- Your fifth and final section is simply one word, “Estel”. I think this title weeds out the casual Tolkien fans from the die-hards, separating the elves from the orcs so-to-speak.
