[Jan_Sobieski]

Great song and Bob was used by God. But this is yet another PROOF that people can “fall away”...(2 Thes 2)

[don-o]

The album that is not like "Slow Train Coming" does open with a train song that touches heavily on the theme of the second coming. That song is "Duquesne Whistle" and like most of the songs on the album it is loaded with biblical language and biblical pictures and the imagery of the New Testament. It is significant that it is the New Testament that Dylan draws upon most heavily. In the Rolling Stone interview he talks of the book of the Acts of the Apostles and the book of Revelation. For followers and estimators of Dylan's current spiritual beliefs and practices the argument must now have changed. If there is quandary about Dylan's beliefs it is not whether he is an orthodox follower of Judaism and the Torah or a believer in both Testaments and the coming of the Christ and his second coming – he clearly belongs in the second category. The question is now whether in his belief in the New Testament and the Old, he can be seen as an orthodox Jewish Christian or whether he has come to a set of beliefs that are distinct to Mr Dylan in his solitary lifestyle and ways – a kind of modern gnostic pursuing a belief that is hidden to those of us who are not playing 150 concerts a year at 71 years of age.

[don-o]

The argument went something like this: Dylan's original name is Zimmerman, he was raised in a Jewish home and he simply has no business touching anything that smells of the Christian faith. This wasn't quite as fiery a reaction as greeted 'Slow Train Coming' or 'Saved' but 30 years later to have this reaction from both Jewish and Gentile commentators was simply amazing and rather misplaced. More than a generation may have passed since those early "Jesus" albums of Dylan's but since that time he has recorded hardly a single album that hasn't spoken of his spiritual journey in implicitly Christian terms. This new generation of critics were just shooting at the obvious target and missing completely a man's right to choose his own faith and to express it as he so chooses. They didn't even wait to hear the offending disc!