In a hypnopompic state this morning before fully waking up, I was thinking about Jay Leno and how odd that he of all people -- someone in whom I had no interest and about whom I knew virtually nothing -- should have appeared in my dreams. In my hypnopompic reverie, I latched onto the fact (discovered in my post-dream research) that Leno always dresses in blue denim when he's not on TV, and that this must shed some light on the meaning of the blue clothing worn by Tim in my dream, by Tim and Patrick in the Alizio story, and by the two wizards in the Joseph story. I started thinking about various terms for blue denim clothing. Denim itself ultimately means "of the sanctuary," while Levis comes from the tribe of Levi, the priestly lineage -- Aaron! Didn't Aaron, the high priest, wear a blue robe?
At this point I was fully awake. A quick word search on a Bible app confirmed that, yes, the only "blue robe" mentioned in the Bible is the one worn by Aaron (Ex. 28:31, 39:22). But Aaron is just one person, and the Blue Wizards are a pair. I had a hunch that I should look up the etymology of jeans. I already knew it -- it comes from Genoa, and Genoa means "knee" -- but I looked it up anyway, and saw something that I probably wouldn't have noticed had I not just been thinking about Aaron:
Did you notice it, too? Jeans comes from the Old French name for Genoa, which was Jannes. Jannes and Jambres are the names given by tradition and in the New Testament (2 Tim. 3:8) to the "wise men" or "magicians of Egypt" (Ex. 7:11) against whom Moses and Aaron faced off in the court of Pharaoh. I had previously mentioned that in the Joseph story and Mushroom Planet we have two Wise Men, in contrast to the traditional three, but in Jannes and Jambres we have a biblical set of two Wise Men. One Midrash has it that they left the Pharaoh and followed Moses out of Egypt.
Yesterday, thinking about Jay Leno and his blue denim outfits led me to "Blue Jays," the album by Justin Hayward and John Lodge. I assume that the album title has no reference to birds except as a pun but refers to Blue J's -- Justin and John, the two Moody Blues members whose names begin with that letter. Jannes and Jambres would be another such pair of J's.
