Given the basic plot of The Matrix, there are five essential biblical themes, one of which is a “Jonah theme,” that are essential to furthering the plot. The other four must first be briefly mentioned so that the Jonah theme can be seen within the context of the whole.
The Bondage of Sin
The first theme has been outlined in the story overview—humanity is in bondage, and the world that human beings know is in reality a prison. Human beings are born into bondage within a computer program called The Matrix, much like we are born into a fallen and sinful world. They are not only victims imprisoned within the Matrix, they are also a part of the Matrix and serve its purposes. As Morpheus says, “The Matrix is a system. That system is our enemy. Look around and what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. Everywhere you look, there are people. Somewhere else, somewhere in the future they may be human beings, but here these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. It is important to understand that if you are not one of us, you are one of them.” The [Matrix agents] can become anyone who is still a captive of the Matrix. “If the Matrix is a prison, then the agents are its wardens and if humankind is to survive they first must be stopped.”
The Idolatry of Babylon
The second theme is the “Babel/Babylon/idolatry theme.” As we can see in Morpheus’ speech, the human race at the end of the twentieth century was much in the same position as Nebuchadnezzar, when he glorified himself in Daniel 4:28-33, and the people of Babel in Genesis 11. What happens to the human race in The Matrix is something seen time and time again in the Bible. Human beings eventually become enslaved to the very things they create for their own majesty and pride. Nebuchadnezzar was brought low because he put himself on the level of God. The people of Babel, in their attempt to build a tower to heaven, in order to “make a name” for themselves, were scattered by God.
As seen all throughout the Old Testament, the idols that mankind makes end up being the cause of its destruction. In Agent Smith’s own description of human beings, after he states that every mammal develops a natural equilibrium with his environment, he says, “Yet you humans move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every resource is consumed. And then you spread to another area.” An organism that does this is a virus. “Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet. You are the plague, and we are the cure.” In case anyone doubts that the creators of the movie had this in mind, one only has to take into consideration the name of Morpheus’ ship to be convinced—The Nebuchadnezzar.
The City of Zion
The third biblical theme centers around the city of Zion, and the ancient Near Eastern creation myth that pits the Sea of Chaos against the primeval hill of the gods. As Othmar Keel states, “The abyss is a dimension of Chaos and of death, but the high place, the mountain, belongs to the temple. In the psalms, the location of the Temple is Jerusalem, or more precisely, Zion.” Although Morpheus and most of his crew are people who had been “grown” inside the Matrix, and who have been freed from it, there are still a handful of people, like two of the men on Morpheus’ crew, who still have been born “the old-fashioned way,” in the real world, in the last human city called Zion. Its location is near the earth’s core, where it is still warm.
If the machines can capture Morpheus and get the access codes to Zion from him, they would be able to find Zion and gain access to its computers that allow the free people to hack into the Matrix. Then Zion would fall, and the last hope for human freedom from the machines would be extinguished. Throughout the movie Morpheus’ ship is constantly fleeing from the sentinel machines in the real world that are searching to destroy the ship. They machines are called “squiddies,” and they resemble giant squids. Consequently, what we find in The Matrix is a battle for the fate of the world between the last human city, Zion, and the destructive forces of the A.I. machines that resemble the terrifying sea monsters of the primordial Sea of Chaos. The Ancient Near Eastern myth of creation finds its way into our modern culture once again.
The Son of Man/The Son of God
The fourth biblical theme in The Matrix involves the main character, Neo, and can also be seen on the plaque on Morpheus’ ship that gives us its name. Immediately under the ship’s name is “Mark III, No. 11.” When one looks up Mark 3:11, one finds this: “Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’” This is a clear reference to Jesus in Mark’s gospel, yet in the movie, the Christ figure is that of Thomas Anderson, who goes by the name “Neo.” He is the one who is able to destroy the matrix, and to free the human race. As Morpheus explains:
“When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit. It was he who freed the first of us, and taught us the truth. As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free. After he died, the oracle prophesied his return, and that his coming would hail the destruction of the Matrix and end the war, and bring freedom to our people.”
The movie at this point incorporates ideas of reincarnation, and of a Greek-like oracle, but the basic idea of a “prophesied one” to free the human race can easily be seen against the biblical backdrop of Acts 3:22, where Jesus is the prophesied “prophet like Moses.”
The Matrix essentially shows the process in which Neo eventually realizes that he is “the One.” Christians throughout Church history have debated and argued at what point Jesus actually became the Son of God. Was it as his resurrection? Was it at his baptism? Was it at his birth? Or was he pre-existent before time began? The Matrix takes the position that although Neo may be “the One,” he certainly is not aware of it at the beginning. In fact, he is “born” inside the Matrix, just like everyone else born into its bondage. His mind has to be freed by those people in the real world. And even after he has been freed, he does not believe he is the prophesied One at first. It is precisely because he does not believe he is anyone special that is the reason he risks, and ultimately sacrifices, his life to save Morpheus, who has been captured and is being interrogated within the agents’ stronghold in the Matrix. It is only after he is killed in the Matrix by the “agents” that he then is resurrected, and endowed with the power over the Matrix.
Jonah and the New Creation
The fifth biblical theme in The Matrix is arguably the over-arching theme to the entire plot: that of death and resurrection, and thus re-creation. As we have already seen, Jesus himself paralleled his upcoming death and resurrection with Jonah spending three days and night in the belly of the “sea monster.” The “great fish” in Jonah, already equated with Sheol in Jonah’s prayer, is called “the sea monster” in Matthew 12:40 and is equated with the grave.
Furthermore, the very act of baptism is a re-enactment of death (going down into the sea/Sheol/the grave), and resurrection. We have also seen that this imagery is not simply referring to Jesus coming back from the dead; but has as its over-arching theme that of God’s re-creation of his world. This death and resurrection theme can actually be seen twice in The Matrix. The obvious one is at the end of the movie, when Neo actually is shot and killed, and then resurrects with a transformed body, and thus begins to re-make the Matrix as he sees fit. The other one is earlier in the movie, where the “Jonah theme” can be subtlety seen—when Morpheus frees Neo’s mind, and he is thus “re-born” into the real world.
The event leading up to this scene is where Neo first meets Morpheus within the Matrix. Morpheus tells him, as seen in his previous speech, that no one can be told what the Matrix is; they have to see it for themselves. When Neo agrees to let Morpheus show him, Neo is hooked up to a computer-tracing system, and they essentially wake up his mind from its unconscious sleep. The scene in which Neo “wakes up” to the real world for the first time is, in fact, called, “The Rebirth.” What we see in the movie is the body of Neo, which has been “asleep” in a pod in the real world for his whole life, wake up. Neo, though a grown man, is naked as bald as a baby, and is hooked up with wires and tubes, much like a battery is hooked up to a machine, and much a baby hooked up to life support.
The script at this point specifically describes the scene as Neo’s body “floating in a womb-red amnion.” What he sees is his pod as one of millions, all hooked up in some sort of power plant. An A.I. machine that is maintaining the power plant sees that he is awake, and proceeds to unhook him, and flush him out into the sewer, similar to the “great fish” vomiting Jonah out onto dry land. It is at that point, naked and thrown away into a sewer in the real world, that Morpheus’ ship locates him, rescues him, and slowly begins to rehabilitate and rebuild his body that he has never actually used.
The way this “rebirth” scene is described in the script is extremely important to note. As Neo looks around at all the pods hooked up to the power plant, the scene is described in this way: “Tower of glowing petals spiral up to incomprehensible heights, disappearing down into dim murk, like an underwater abyss. His sight is blurred and warped, exaggerating the intensity of the vision. The sound of the plant is like the sound of the ocean heard from inside the belly of Leviathan.”
An allusion to Jonah cannot be more clearly stated. The death and resurrection/rebirth theme is played out once again with similar imagery. Genesis 1 has God creating the world out from the Sea of Chaos, which was ruled by the great Sea Serpent in ANE mythology. Noah’s flood is essentially a story of God destroying the old creation, and re-creating a new one. Jonah picks up on this “re-creation” theme from the Noah story, includes an allusion to the Sea Serpent/Leviathan of ANE, and of Job, and Isaiah, and the Psalms, and combines these in order to teach something about how God is “re-creating” his people after the death of the nation during the exile, and how this “re-creation” will involve Gentiles. Jesus and the Gospels take the next step and use the story of Jonah to allude not only to Jesus’ own transforming death and resurrection, but to also the beginning of God’s New Creation. The association of the Sea with Death has been around since ANE mythology and Genesis 1. The association of the great Sea Serpent of ANE with not only death, but also as a mode of rebirth, has been around since Jonah, and picked up in the Gospels. Here, the same imagery is found in The Matrix to describe essentially the same thing.
