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   is often cited as a return to secular work (following a trio of albums heavily influenced by born-again Christianity), many of the songs recorded during the sessions are filled with Biblical references and strong religious imagery, although this is not terribly new ground for Dylan.The most explicit example of this can be found on the opening track, "Jokerman." Although as stated earlier, Dylan never publicly renounced his faith, from Infidels on he has not continued to preach a specific religion like on his earlier records and has revealed little about his religious state.

In 1997, after recovering from a serious heart condition Dylan said in an interview for Newsweek, "Here's the thing with me and the religious thing.This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music.I don't find it anywhere else...I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that.

I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity." A surreal epic, "Jokerman" contains a number of lines referencing the Bible (almost 30), many of which are listed here: http://web.utk.edu/~wparr/commlyrics1983.html A number of critics have also called "Jokerman" a sly political protest, addressed to a "manipulator of crowds...a dream twister." Underneath the obtuse Biblical references are words weary of populists who are all surface ("Michelangelo could've carved your features") and more about action than thinking through the complexities ("fools rush in where angels fear to tread").The second track, "Sweetheart Like You," is sung to a fictitious woman.One line ("...a woman like you should be at home/That's where you belong/Taking care of somebody nice/Who don't know how to do you wrong") is sometimes criticized as sexist, while others perceive it as a warning about ambition as the singer tells the listener not to succumb to their cruel surroundings.

The song can also be perceived as a song about the temptation of Christ.One line is sung, "They say in your father's house there's many mansions/ Each one of them got a fireproof floor" (see John 14:2).More than a few critics felt betrayed a strong, strange dislike for space travel, and it can be heard on the first few lines of "License To Kill." ("Oh, man has invented his doom/First step was touching the moon.") A harsh indictment accusing mankind of imperialism and a predilection for violence, the song deals specifically with mankind’s relationship to the environment, either on a political scale or a scientific one.

The song "Neighborhood Bully" is often regarded as a thinly-disguised song defending Israel's foreign policy.In the first nine stanzas, Dylan defends Israel by offering up several justifications, whereas in the last two stanzas, the accuser asks questions to an imaginary audience.In the fourth stanza, Dylan references a historical event that led to further quarrels between Israel and Iraq.

This event occurred on June 7, 1981, when Israel bombed a nuclear reactor near Baghdad.Most of the world condemned Israel's attack while Israel claimed that the plant was involved in the production of nuclear weapons that would have been used against them.Dylan commented extensively on the song in a 1984 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine.[1] In 2001, the described the song as "a favorite among Dylan-loving residents of the territories".

Another song, "Union Sundown," is another political protest against lowest bidding sweatshops overseas.The song indicates a vague sympathy with the working class while criticizing union bosses as well as American consumers who buy cheap, foreign-made goods.The fourth verse also makes another unusual reference against space travel, as well.

("They used to grow food in Kansas/Now they want to grow it on the moon and eat it raw.") Because Dylan never spoke clearly about his religious views during this period, it's difficult to explain his intentions in the recording of With a chorus based upon the dictum "Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of Light" (2 Corinthians 11:14), the religious content in "Man Of Peace" has been open to debate.The last verse, in which Dylan sings "Somewhere Mama's weeping for her blue-eyed boy/She's holding them little white shoes and that little broken toy," has been interpreted as a reference to one of the children slaughtered in Bethlehem by Herod, who was trying to find and kill the baby Jesus.The next lines ("And he's following a star/The same one them three men followed from the East./I hear that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.") have also been seen as another reference to Herod, who told the wise men that he wanted to come worship the child too (i.e., he was searching for the child for a peaceful reason) when in fact he was going to murder the child, all of which is told in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter Two.

Others interpret this stanza being about the Anti-Christ.Like "Jokerman," "Man Of Peace" continued Dylan's fascination with Revelation and the battle to separate false messiahs assuming Christ-like attributes from the one true Messiah."I And I," according to author/critic Tim Riley, "updates the Dylan mythos.

Even though it substitutes self-pity for the [pessimism found throughout ], you can't ignore it as a Dylan spyglass: 'Someone else is speakin' with my mouth, but I'm listening only to my heart/I've made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot.' "Dylan's relationship with himself has always been at the heart of his best work - the way the man who was born Robert Zimmerman communes with the songs, odyssey, and mystique of Bob Dylan.But 'I and I' is perhaps the only song to take this subject on as an artistic issue...without giving up very much of his true self, he conveys the distance he feels between his inner identity and the public face he wears." (from is often cited as a return to secular work (following a trio of albums heavily influenced by born-again Christianity), many of the songs recorded during the .

Main keywords: Rolling Stone Magazine, Neighborhood Bully, Robert Zimmerman, But I, Stone Magazine, Somewhere Mama, Because Dylan, Rolling Stone, Chapter Two, Anti Christ, Kansas Now, Bob Dylan, Tim Riley

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