The Whitness of the Bull

The hue of white...what to make of it. Jove manifests himself as a bull of the purest white, Ahab is obsessed with a whale who radiates with whiteness, Ahab, king of Israel, lives within a castle made of ivory, kings and queens and noble warriors ride upon white horses, white is the color of a dove, the bird to be sacrificed to the God of the Old Testament, angels are depicted as being shrouded in white...this could go on forever. White is purity. It is the return to innocence, the plundering of all darkness or evil.

Whiteness is also oblivion...when I think of death, I don't think of a black abyss, I think of endless white nothing. White everywhere; all color blotted out. Jove takes Europa into oblivion; he carries her into the endless expanse of sea, away from her family and country. It is almost as if she dies or is at least reborn. The whiteness of the bull seems to represent her passing from one state to another: from Europa, the daughter of Hesiod to Europa, queen of Crete. Her end may not have been terrible but the obliviated whiteness of the passage was undoubtedly petrifying.

Whiteness does not represent innocence in the story of Ahab, Naboth and Jezebel. In this Biblical tale, Ahab and Jezebel live within a castle made of ivory. Within those walls of unblemished whiteness, countless forms of corruption and evil reside. Jezebel, who later, in the book of Revelation, is considered the whore of Babylon, commits countless crimes of homicide. She slaughters 500 prophets and has Naboth put to death. She worships the false idol, Baal. These walls of ivory do not protect thier inhabitants from corruption just as a garment of white will not redeem the person beneath the folds.

Whiteness is not only innocence and redemption. The Bible is not only stories of good people performing good deeds. Things are not what they seem until you look into them further; don't judge a book by what others have taken it to be; don't consider something to be holy if you haven't questioned what lies beneath its cover of whiteness.