As the good shepherd, God will feed his flock and will "seek the lost," "bring back the strayed," "bind up the crippled," and "strengthen the weak".
Like a shepherd God pastures God's flock, gathering the lamb in God's arms, carrying them in God's bosom, gently driving the mother sheep.
The central lovers derived from Inanna, goddess of sexuality and fertility, and her consort, the shepherd-god Tammu, here a young Jew.
Filled with nymphs and shepherds, gods and humans, hunters and lovers, the dance is beautiful, lavish and funny.
In songs suffused with myth, her first-person lyrics speak of archetypal fathers and mothers, sailors and shepherds, gods and goddesses.
I myself have never been better as Joseph, first shepherd and God, but Raymond's performance as Balthazar the chief wise man is frankly appalling.
They surely don't know that when he obtained his first slave he wanted to be "the kind of shepherd master God had intended," someone who would provide "good food for his slaves, no whippings, short and happy days in the fields".
Islamic satire reaches its heights in Rumi, where a shepherd conspires with God to pull a stunt on Moses; all three end up having a good laugh.
The reviled Wholly Moses, from the same year, has Dudley Moore as a shepherd who overhears God (the vocal talents of Walker Edmiston) speaking to Moses at the burning bush and thinks the Almighty is addressing him instead.
In the old Babylonian period, Hammurabi's famous law code was engraved on a tall diorite stela; at its top stands Hammurabi, who saw himself as the "good shepherd," facing the sun god Shamash.
The story of the ballet (the chaste nymph huntress Sylvia, who has scorned the young shepherd Aminta until the god Eros fires his arrow, is abducted by Orion to his island and then rescued by Eros and restored to Aminta) is lightly told by both composer and choreographer; it should not be allowed to drag.
