{"id":3927,"date":"2008-02-08T08:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-08T08:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2008\/02\/lost-in-speculation\/"},"modified":"2008-02-08T08:37:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-08T08:37:00","slug":"lost-in-speculation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2008\/02\/lost-in-speculation.html","title":{"rendered":"LOST in Speculation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This is a post that will give free reign to some probably ludicrous speculations about LOST. Feel free to read and to critique them.<\/p>\n

Who is Ben\u2019s man on the freighter? And why have they come here on a freighter rather than some other kind of ship? Michael, some have observed, could well be Ben\u2019s man on the freighter. Walt is another option, since Michael genuinely seemed doubtful when Ben told him to follow a particular course and he\u2019d \u201cfind rescue\u201d, whereas Walt had been with the Others, was already on the boat hiding, and seems to be inspiring Locke to protect Ben from the newcomers. Plus Locke mentioned that Walt was taller \u2013 does that mean that Walt is a bit older now, and is thus rightly called Ben\u2019s man<\/i> on the boat? Or is it a future<\/i> Walt that appeared to Locke? Perhaps neither of them is \u201cBen\u2019s man\u201d, since Ben would still need to have known where the freighter would be in order to send the boat in that direction. But Walt remains the most promising candidate: communications were being jammed, yet whoever was on the boat was able to pass information about the people on it to Ben, and so perhaps the method of communication was not a conventional electronic one.<\/p>\n

Why recruit a \u2018ghostbuster\u2019 or spirit-talker for this mission? Does that give us some insight?<\/p>\n

It was shown in the season premiere that Hurley saw Christian Shepherd in the cabin, where we would have expected Jacob. Are they one and the same? Let me offer another possibility. What if it was indeed Jacob, played by the actor who plays Christian Shepherd, but not because Jacob is<\/em> Christian Shepherd, but because he looks<\/em> like Christian Shepherd, his father? Jack is a nickname, and one obvious name for it to be a nickname for is Jacob<\/em>. Christian Shepherd, just as an aside, then becomes Jacob\u2019s father, and in the Bible, Jacob\u2019s father was Isaac, who is often regarded as a type of Jesus because of the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. (This is the speculation I feel has the least probability, since a figure dressed the same way as the \u2018Christian Shepherd\u2019 in the cabin was seen by Jack, and is the same one who refers to him as his son in \u201cSo It Begins\u201d. Unless the time travel thing means he is his own father, but I\u2019m not about to go there<\/i>).<\/p>\n

In the previous season we were given an easter egg in the phrase \u201cOnly fools are enslaved by time and space<\/a>\u201d on the brainwashing video when it is played backwards. Clearly there is a literal aspect to this \u2013 figures like Walt, Richard Alpert<\/a>, and apparently now the polar bear, are all able to move or age in ways that show this freedom vis-a-vis the space-time continuum. But is there more to it? The letters of this phrase can be rearranged to make \u201cBen fly Adam Eve corpses to island<\/a>\u201c. Is that intentional? If time and space are irrelevant, then perhaps Jack and either Kate or Juliet will be the \u201cAdam and Eve\u201d found in the cave in season 1.<\/p>\n

Finally, the gas masks. Someone involved in sending these four to the island knows about Ben, knows about the Purge, knows about the Dharma<\/a> Initiative. There have been hints that we\u2019ll see the scientist from the Dharma videos at some point, and so we should expect to learn of a connection between him and Matthew Abaddon.<\/p>\n

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This is a post that will give free reign to some probably ludicrous speculations about LOST. Feel free to read and to critique them. Who is Ben\u2019s man on the freighter? And why have they come here on a freighter rather than some other kind of ship? Michael, some have observed, could well be Ben\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nLOST in Speculation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This is a post that will give free reign to some probably ludicrous speculations about LOST. 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