When you watch a movie, and a song is playing in the scene you’re watching, what effect does that have on you? Do you feel tension? Happiness? Sadness?

When you read a passage of Scripture, often there is another passage of Scripture “playing behind” it. For example, when Jesus went through the water of the Jordan River and then into the wilderness to be tempted for forty days, he “replayed” the story of Israel going through the water of the Red Sea and then into the wilderness to be tempted for forty years. You can even tell that because Jesus quoted three times from Deuteronomy while he was in the wilderness; his mind was on that part of the story. This has major implications for how we interpret what Jesus was doing.

Frederic Limon, The Big Mistake in the Second (and Third) Hobbit Movies (video, Oct 24, 2014) makes a great observation about how music works in film which explains how literary allusions work in literature, including Scripture

Screen Rant, Movies with Hidden Details in First and Final Scenes (youtube video, Aug 20, 2015) a helpful interpretive device

Vox, Rapping Deconstructed: The Best Rhymers of All Time (Vox, May 19, 2016) a great 12 minute video explaining beats, bar lines, rhymes, implied words, and story - similar to Hebrew word play, alliteration, implied meanings, conceptual rhyming

Michael Tucker, The Dark Knight — Creating the Ultimate Antagonist (Lessons from the Screenplay, Aug 23, 2016) the weakness in the protagonist drives the story; this is similar to the biblical story as a whole, and often particular biblical stories 

Michael Tucker, Rogue One vs. The Force Awakens — The Fault in Our Star Wars (Lessons from the Screenplay, Apr 30, 2017) about passive vs. active protagonists which also applies to characterization in the biblical narratives

Eric Voss, Wonder Woman Theme - Why It Evokes Intense Power (New Rockstars, Jun 9, 2017) how the soundtrack background influences the foreground action; similar to literary allusions in the background of biblical passages

Sam Adams and Forrest Wickman, A Guide to The Last Jedi’s References to Other (Non-Star Wars) Movies (Slate, Dec 19, 2017) on how movies use other movies as material for allusions

Barnaby Martin, The Lord of the Rings - How Howard Shore Uses Voices (Listening In, Mar 22, 2020) given how Tolkien’s mythology uses song to represent creational and spiritual warfare and theodicy, this is significant. Elven speech is natural, melodic, interweaving, and treble voices. The Nazgul are characterized by tense, brooding marches. The Ring is represented by a theme that develops over time, at first sounding seductively elven, but laced with the burden of Gollum’s story and the malignant tones of Sauron. In Scripture, when biblical authors allow a character to speak in the narrative are important, because of the way God created by speaking, and calls humans into partnership of speaking. Also, a similar phenomenon happens when later biblical authors use creedal material, with some variation. God’s self-disclosure (Ex.34) is often repeated in the OT. The Shema (Dt.6) is repeated by Paul in 1 Cor.10; etc.

Barnaby Martin, The Lord of the Rings - How Howard Shore Builds Tension (Listening In, Mar 29, 2020) considers how melodies and instruments can stack on top of each other, and be broken by other melodies and instruments. Martin points out how Rohan and Gondor are represented by musical themes and motifs, and then blended. This is similar to how, in Scripture, ancestral genealogies are established then interwoven, and how institutions once separated in Israel (e.g. king, priest, prophet), are merged in Jesus, and how garden and city are merged in the New Jerusalem in Revelation.

Barnaby Martin, The Lord of the Rings - How Howard Shore Makes Us Care (Listening In, Apr 5, 2020) the choice of melody, instrument, and associations (with particular focus on the Hobbits’ theme, creation theme, and Gray Havens theme) are very similar to how Scripture chooses words, images, and literary allusions.

Barnaby Martin, The Lord of the Rings - The Music of the Monsters (Listening In, Aug 9, 2021) each monster got a musical theme; studies the Watcher in the Water and Shelob and the balrog, which plays on dissonance, minor chords, handing them from one instrument to another to heighten the tension and power. Similarly, Genesis portrays every sin as a recapitulation and development of the original fall in the garden. But by the time John writes his Gospel, he portrays sin as circular — unique in some sense to every person, but generic and uncreative on another level.

How to Understand Scripture as Literature

How the Meaning of Words Are Determined by Their Context

How Movie Soundtracks Help Us Interpret Scripture

Hope Filled Full: How the New Testament Quotes from the Old Testament