Bewildering Stories introduces and welcomes...

Anthony David Vernon

Anthony is a Cuban-American writer and a graduate student in Philosophy at the University of New Mexico. He has several hobbies, including video editing and music production.

“The Book of Elijah” takes the numbered-verse form of an English-language Bible, which readers will want to open and read in parallel with Anthony’s story.

Anthony D. Vernon’s “Book of Elijah” centers on the meaning and use of “I am,” which is part of the name that Moses hears in reply to his apparently unaccountable query asking the deity what its name is. Why wouldn’t Moses already know? All the other Israelites seem to or simply don’t ask, for some reason.

And there’s another problem: what does the Biblical Hebrew really mean? “I am that I am” is like saying, “I exist in order to be.” That is the answer given in M. Maponi’s Interviewing the CEO," in issue 930. However, one may doubt that divine humor stoops to circular logic.

Or perhaps it means “I am who/what I am.” The one and only deity might understandably become a little irked with Moses’ pointless question: “How shall we distinguish you among the whole slew of gods we find on every street corner, here in Antiquity?” As a Bewildering Stories motto says, “One can never be too careful in choosing names.” When a name isn’t needed, a common noun may suffice. And a definite article can help a lot, too, if your language happens to have one: “I’m not a god; I am the God.”

As the previous example shows, fine points can become big ones at the basic level of grammar. For starters, what does the Biblical Hebrew equivalent of the English “to be” really mean? Is it a copulative verb, as in “sugar is sweet”? Or would Descartes have used it to denote the consequence of engaging in thought: Cogito, ergo sum?

In any event, “I am” is in the present tense in English, but Biblical Hebrew verbs have no tenses. Rather, they have aspects to indicate qualities like complete or incomplete actions or states of being, or whether something was well done or not. What can one conclude but that whole Bibles, let alone books, can be written to discuss the question.

Anthony David Vernon’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Anthony. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!