Hello, can you explain what the biblical references in 'The Number of the Beast is 666' are supposed to mean (Hannibal: Lest we forget the Lamb....Hannibal: Then that makes you God, Jack. All gods demand sacrifices.)? Thank you!
In sum, Hannibal thinks that Will is going to exact vengeance on everyone, including himself and Jack, because he knows he’s reaching his breaking point.
They start talking about God and the Devil because The Red Dragon comes from the Apocalypse. So,
Red Dragon = The Devil = Hannibal
Will = Jesus/The Lamb/The Lion
It’s interesting that Jack sums up the battle in his view as between, “God, the devil, and the Great Red Dragon.” For him, Will isn’t even worth a mention. Hannibal has to remind him of Will. For Jack, it is himself against the Dragon and Hannibal. For Hannibal, it’s all about Will, “Lest we forget the Lamb”. Hannibal says all of them are in danger from Will, even himself.
Hannibal: Hide us from the Wrath of the Lamb.
Hannibal: You, me and the Great Red Dragon.
Jack is sacrificing Will to defeat the Dragon. Just like God sacrificed Jesus on the cross to defeat the Devil.
Hannibal starts off talking about Milton even though the topic at hand is the Blake painting, ‘The Great Red Dragon’, not Milton. Why? Because Blake was inspired by Milton’s poems, “Paradise Lost” being the key one here.
“Will’s thoughts are no more bound by fear or kindness than Milton’s were by physics.”
William Blake said: “Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other book. Is it not because they are addressed to the Imagination which is Spiritual Sensation & but mediately to the Understanding or Reason?”
“Decisions are made of kneaded feelings.” As Will says.
The imagination, or feeling, or spiritual sensation is what is important rather than rational understanding. This idea is what he was trying to capture with his paintings. Will’s imagination is exactly what Hannibal is talking about and what Jack “borrowed” to try to catch killers.
The scene starts off with the splitting of Will’s personality. But unlike other visuals of this it is represented by Hannibal. We see Will’s head with darkness around it and Hannibal comes out of that darkness, talking about Will’s imagination, and he is split.
Hannibal explains what this means when he talks about the Dragon.
“The othering of himself, the splitting of his personality all seem active and deliberate. He craves change.”
Change = Hannibal/violence.
Craving change is the reason he deliberately splits his personality. He’s craving Hannibal.
“I’ve changed. You changed me.”
“Don’t you crave change Will?”
Hannibal is representing Will’s mind and he’s saying that Will is going to deliver “wrath” as the “lamb/lion”. Essentially because his imagination is not bound by what his “reason” says is wrong. As Blake said, the imagination is a “spiritual sensation” not “understanding”. Will’s imagination is free, his reasoning is not, according to Hannibal. Thus the apparent contradictions of his character.
He contrasts himself with Jack when he talks about sacrifices.
We see this even more clearly when Hannibal says that instead of “sacrificing” Will he is going to lay his life down. And then takes the bullet for him.
I think the entire thing is asking who cares about Will? Who is really good or evil, righteous or not? Jack is God and then he says Hannibal is the devil, instead of the more obvious Red Dragon. Will would be Jesus in this scenario. The idea they’re playing with here is the theory of penal substitutionary atonement. This is the belief that what Jesus did on the cross was appeasing God’s wrath by being the perfect sacrificial victim that paid for all of our sins. This is the “righteousness” they’re talking about. In Hannibal’s and probably a lot of people’s minds, not righteous or good at all.
In the context of the show, Hannibal is basically saying that Jack is willing to sacrifice Will and he is not. That’s the point they’re making with all this. That while Jack is wanting to do good by catching killers, he is still just using Will, doesn’t care about him, and is fine with sacrificing him for the sake of others. Hannibal wants to do evil, kill people with Will, but he is not willing to sacrifice Will, will not use him, and he does care about him to the point of being willing to die for him.
In other words, the sacrifice, no matter how much good it does or how many people it saves is evil. This is the devil’s point of view. He wants everyone to be who they are, using their free will as they want, and he thinks God wants everyone to suffer and go against their own free will for the greater good. That’s the basic argument Hannibal and Jack have over Will the entire show. Will should work to catch killers, even if it’s not good for him, because he saves so many people’s lives. Is it a sacrifice worth making or not? Should Will’s life and well being come first or even be the only consideration?
I’ve been writing and answering questions lately about Will’s beliefs that he doesn’t have free will. And in this context it’s extremely interesting because, depending on what theology you ascribe to, Jesus did not have free will as we would think of it. He had a divine will and a human will, but His divine will always had control of His human will. This is why He would “choose” to die on the cross and be a sacrifice. Because He can’t choose anything else. This is why Will would “choose” to be a sacrifice for Jack, because he can’t choose anything else, or so he thinks. In this metaphor then, Will is a neutral agent. It’s a battle of who can win between God and the Devil, Jack and Hannibal. The angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other.
If Will really has no free will then yes, it’s really just a battle between Jack and Hannibal and Will isn’t really involved in any meaningful sense. Hannibal doesn’t believe that though. He thinks Will and what he chooses is the only important thing, even if Jack and Will himself don’t believe that. And he’s right in the end.
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