Film Comment: Sinners (2025)

 

Sinners is a movie which is intended to be about racism, cultural oppression, colonialism, black culture, anti-religion, and anti-Christianity. As usual, I can make Christian observations about the film which are probably unintended by the director.

“Son, you keep dancin’ with the Devil, one day, he’s gonna follow you home,” from a pastor father to Sammie, nicknamed Preacherboy, who is aching to become famous for his outstanding blues guitar and singing talent. Sammie hooks up with two morally fluid brothers who are opening a juke joint. This sets up a conflict when two white men and a woman show up that night wanting to join in the fun. The problem is that they are vampires.

One man about to be killed/turned into a vampire begins to loudly quote the Lord’s Prayer. All the vampires join in and help complete the quotation. This seems to be intended to show that Christianity has no power against evil.

A Christian response: the frightened man’s words were just that, words, and they did have no power. There is a difference between knowing and believing. The power is not in the words. They are not a Magick spell. God is not our genie in a bottle. The words have power only as they are used by the Holy Spirit.

Satan can quote scripture. He quoted Psalms 91:11-12 while tempting Jesus to misuse his authority (Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13). Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44).

The Lord's Prayer in Greek

Here is The Lord's Prayer, read in modern Greek pronunciation with a literal English translation below the Greek text.  The Koine (Common) Greek pronunciation would, of course, not be exactly the same as modern Greek.

Dr. James Blanton at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky (USA) demonstrated that the Koine was pronounced more similarly to modern Greek than to the Erasmian pronunciation which many academics use.  Dr. Blanton based this demonstration on misspellings in hand-copied Greek texts from the first few Christian centuries.

Since the texts were copied by men transcribing what was being read aloud from a master text, misspellings of words showed how many of the vowels had similar sounds and could be mistaken for one another by inexperienced scribes.  Since the pronunciation of some words was known for certain, the pronunciations of other words could be deduced.

The Lord's Prayer in Arabic

أبانا

أَبَانَا الذِي فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ، لِيُقَدَّسَ اسْمُكَ. لِيَأْتِ مَلَكُوتُكَ، لِتَكُنْ مَشِيئَتُكَ فِي الأَرْضِ كَمَا السَّمَاءِ. ارْزُقْنَا خُبْزَنَا كَفَافَ يَوْمِنَا، وَ اعْفُ عَنْ خَطَايَانَا، فَإِنَّنَا نَعْفُو عَمَّنْ يُخْطِئُونَ بِحَقِّنَا. لاَ تُعَرِّضْنَا لِلغِوَايَةِ، بَلْ نَجِّنَا مِنَ الشِّرِيرِ. فَ

The Lord's Prayer in Classical Chinese

This image is in the public domain due to its age (first published in 1889).

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