The Gospel According to Popeye

"I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam..."

I'm Popeye the sailor man,
I'm Popeye the sailor man,
I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam
I'm Popeye the sailor man. [1]

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OK...if you look at the b&w cartoon above and wax nostolgic, you're probably old enough to remember when TV cartoons were b&w and only available Saturday mornings. (The rest of you, bear with me...I'm not making this up.)

What brings this image to mind is Popeye the Sailor man's famous line, "I yam what I yam..." (Do any of you cable-TV-color-cartoons-on-demand kids need that translated?) I confess a certain degree of divine snickering inside the closet of my soul when I hear some metaphysical teacher rapturize about The I AM, identifying It with the divine-within and tying the whole package together with strings leading from Mount Sinai to Jesus in the Upper Room. I know, I know. It's irreverent, probably sacreligious, but whenever someone invokes the I AM, I can't help hearing a gruff-voice cackling, "Arf-arf-arf--well, blow me down!"

So, what is this odd use of I am--first person singular of the verb to be--all about, anyway? Who got it right, Emmet Fox or Popeye the Sailor Man? If you have a few minutes to spare, we can briefly stroll through the biblical landscape and see if any new shrubbery bursts into light.

First, let's visit Moses at Mount Sinai. You know the story from the book of Exodus:

[God said from the burning bush] "I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt." But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" [Exodus 3:10-11]

God has told him to head back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to set the Hebrew people free. But Moses doesn't want the job, so he starts weaseling like a middle schooler with an essay to write over the weekend:

Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, "The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, "What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" [vs. 13]

This was more than weaseling. In the ancient world, to be able to call something by its name was often considered as having power over it. Hence, Adam names the animals in Genesis as a sign of his dominion over the beasts and birds. (Nowadays, the way humans are mis-managing the planet, one could argue that the beasts and birds should have named us.)

So, if this Sinai deity tells Moses his name, it's like giving Aladin the secret word to put the genie back in the bottle until it does his bidding. But the God of Israel is no air-headed desert jin. He gives Moses a cryptic reply:

God said to Moses, "I am who I am." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I am has sent me to you.' " [vs. 14]

One can imagine Moses shaking his head, muttering, "Right...sure you are. But what's your name!?" Actually, there are a number of things happening in that odd juxtaposition of inactive verbs. First, one of the ancient Semitic names of God involves variations on the sound Ya, sometimes Ja. Many scholars believe the actual name of this deity may have been Yahu. This God-name was identified by First Testament writers who have come to be called the J-Source. So, when you hear a biblical name or place with a strong Ja or Ya in the word, you've got a link to the ancient root word for one of the deities in pre-Israelite times. Some examples include: Elijah, halleleu-yah (praise Ya), and Joshua (also Yeshua, Jesus = Yahu is salvation). Another ancient Hebraic name for God is El, and I'll leave you to search your memory for the many, many biblical names and places which use this expression.

Now, what does this have to do with the goofy response Moses got from God when asked for His name? Because the most common word for God is the tetragrammaton, which are four Hebrew letters transliterated into the English alphabet as YHWH. Ancient Hebrew was written without vowels, but the best guess about how this was pronounced is Yahweh (YA-way). And that name sounds like--you guessed it--a form of the Hebrew verb to be. It was a play on words in the Hebrew; I AM = Yahweh = I let be what I let be = You don't get to say my name out loud, Buster!

The name of God is so sacred to Judaism that to this day Jews will not speak the word Yahweh when they encounter it in the text. And it appears over 6,800 times in the Hebrew! When the Dead Sea scrolls came to Kansas City, I learned something amazing--the hand-copied ancient manuscript had set off the tetragrammaton in distinctly different letters, slightly larger, italicized, and written in an unmistakably different script. No reader could accidentally stumble across that Name of God and say it out loud, which Jews would consider taking the Name of the Lord in vain. When Jews come to that word, they read it as Adonai, which means the Lord, instead of Yahweh.

In the summer of my middler year at seminary I went on active duty with the US Army to take the Chaplain Officer's Basic Course in preparation for my eventual career as a military chaplain. One vivid menmory I have is the diversity of the students-in-uniform. Catholic priests, all sorts of Protestants, Eastern Orthodox clergy, and a good contingent of Rabbis. When we held an evening prayer meeting with the whole student body, whoever was in charge of putting the program together chose a psalm for the biblical reading, figuring it would meet everyone's needs. Except the Catholic chaplain who selected the reading used the Jerusalem Bible, which frequently uses the word Yahweh for God. When the rabbi got up to do his part in the program, he began by lightly chiding us for saying the Divine Name in public, something which they simply never do. It was a learning experience for all, and it harkens back to the ancient reverence for this peculiar set of sounds which many English Bibles translate "the Lord" except on Mount Sinai, where it is "I am who I am" or sometimes, and perhaps better translated, "I let be what I let be."

The Second Testanment writers were aware of this connection between the Divine Name and the verb to be. John's gospel records the following:

[And Jesus said] "Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad." Then the Jews [Judeans] said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I AM." So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

And why did they pick up stones to hurl at him? Because the context suggests he probably said, "Before Abraham was, Yahweh." It was abomination. John's Jesus was claiming divinity, an unthinkable, outrageous, blasphemous assertion of oneness with the God of Sinai, something even Moses had never done.

Of course, Unity people today understand this divinity is not specific and exclusive to Jesus but is evenly distributed through all God's creation. As good panentheists, New Thought Christians blithely affirm that there is only One Presence and One Power, God the Good, in Whom we live and move and have our being, like a fish lives in the sea.

The I AM is a sound-alike for the unspeakably holy Hebrew name for God. It is the true nature of every sentient being, if we could we perceive it. And this indwelling divinity is so pervasive that I can even hear crackling traces of the old burning bush in the laughter of a black-and-white cartoon character who had a fondness for cooked greens in a can.

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[1] http://www.theneitherworld.com/popeye/lyrics.htm Accessed 03-25-08. (Full text published below.) For the true nostolgiacs, midi version of music for "Popeye" available at: http://www.hamienet.com/midi13102.html

I'm Popeye the sailor man!
I'm Popeye the sailor man!
I'm strong to the finich,'Cause I eats me spinach.
I'm Popeye the sailor man.

I'm one tough gazooka
Which hates all palookas
What ain't on the up and square.
I biffs and I boffs them
And always outroughs 'em
But none of 'em gets nowhere.

If anyone's dasses to risk me fisks
It's "Bop!" and it's "Wham", understand?
So keep good behav'or,
That's your one lifesaver
With Popeye the sailor man.

I'm Popeye the sailor man!
Popeye the sailor man!
I'm strong to the finich,
'Cause I eats my spinach
I'm Popeye the sailor man!