Page - 67 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

mission her father is charged with and resents him for accepting it for a long time, even into adulthood. The prophet is then delivered from their reluctance by words of encouragement from God. “Certainly I will be with thee”, says God to Moses as he is being sanctified (Exodus 3:12). To Ezekiel, God says: “Behold, I have made thy face strong against their faces, and thy forehead strong against their foreheads. As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house” (Ezekiel 3:8–9). In the film, Cooper en- courages Murphy through the veil of time (02:30:30), and she does indeed manage to decipher the signs. There are also signs and tokens that herald the prophet’s as- cension into their role, such as God touching Jeremiah’s mouth: “Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth” (Jeremiah 1:9). Upon being sanctified, Moses is given special signs to convince his people of his prophetic status, such as turning his staff into a snake: “And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent” (Exodus 4:3). In the film, with Professor Brand’s death all the signs point to Murph being finally ready to assume her role as the chosen one, such as her understanding that Brand had made up Plan A as a cover story and that she alone can now save humanity. Finally, there is an emphasis placed on the significance of the prophet’s mission. Jeremiah describes his role according to the word of God: “See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant”( Jeremiah 1:10). Murph’s mis- sion is to become a scientist and to save the world and humanity. The sense of mission has to do with faith and the desire to influence the future, even though most of the time it involves a journey whose is outcome is unknown. This conception is expressed in God’s speech to Abraham when he charges him with his mission: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy fa- ther’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great” (Genesis 12:1–2). Similarly, Moses’s mission carries with it an expectation of future success. In a non-static world, it is possible to change the course of events and disrupt the existing human order. The twelve apostles, Jesus’s disciples, were charged after his death with the mission of spreading Jesus’s word far and wide. All of the apostles, with the exception of John son of Zebedee, died unnatural deaths in fulfilling their mission. The twelve are in fact directly chosen by Jesus from among all the disciples to carry out this mission, as described in the Gospel of Luke: “And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles” (6:13). The narrative of the chosen one is not found only in religious Judeo-Christian texts. Socrates too was charged with a mission by a God (Apollo), a mission communicated 66 | Bina Nir www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 53–69