Is Dylan's "Murder Most Foul" a Red Herring? - by Kees de Graaf

When we heard Dylan’s latest monumental masterpiece ‘Murder Most Foul’ for the first time, we immediately associated the song with Tempest’s closing masterpiece “Roll on John”. Now it has been seven years since we first analysed “Roll on John” on this website. Now after seven years of contemplation we have come to the conclusion that “Roll on John” is actually not at all about John Lennon and the Beatles, no matter how obvious the references to Lennon and the Beatles in the song are. We found strong arguments to assume that the words about John Lennon and the Beatles function as some sort of a lightning-conductor or a red herring and that in reality the song focusses on John the Apostle, the apostle of light who wrote the Gospel according to John and of course Dylan’s favourite book The Revelations of St. John. See for yourself if my arguments are compelling and read my analysis of “Roll on John” on my Bob Dylan song analysis page, elsewhere on this website.

The question that now intrigues is: can the same thing be said of ‘Murder Most Foul”? Is ‘Murder Most Foul’ really all about the murder of JFK and its impact on the American society or is it a red herring, is there somebody else lurking in the background to whom the poet actually refers? In some sort of a way “Murder Most Foul” reminds us of Dylan’s album “Knocked Out Loaded”(1986) on which Dylan covered a song called “They Killed Him” written by Kris Kristofferson. The refrain of the song “ My God, they killed Him” draws a bizarre and stunning conclusion to the murder of Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ. If the murder of JFK is to be qualified as “Murder Most Foul”, then certainly the murder of holy men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King must be defined as “Murder Most Foul” but what about the murder, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ whom the song calls “The only Son of God Almighty, the holy one called Jesus Christ”, is this not “Murder Most Foul” in its most extremis? Below we will list 10 instances of possible Christ references in “Murder Most Foul” hidden underneath the surface of the song. But the list is not complete ,there are more.
1.“Tomorrow is Friday, we’ll see what it brings” Dylan says in “Early Roman Kings”. MMF hints at Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified: “A good day to be living and a good day to die”. “Good Friday” a good day to die indeed…. MMF goes on to say: “Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb”. It was John the Baptist wo in John 1:29 proclaimed Jesus to be the ”Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” and Jesus thereby fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy “he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter” (Isaiah 53:7 RSV).
2.“Say wait a minute boys, do you know who I am? Of course we do, we know who you are” reminds us of a man with an unclean spirit in the synagogue of Capernaum, the daemon of whom shouts out to Jesus: “I know who you are, the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24 RSV).
3.“It was a matter of timing and the timing was right” reflects Romans 5: 6 (NLT): “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners”.
4.“You got unpaid debts and we’ve come to collect” on the one hand represents all the hatred and vengeance from the Sanhedrin which led to Jesus ‘death sentence because of blasphemy but on the other hand- and at the same time- it shows God’s providential hand so that the debts – the sins- of the whole world were laid upon Jesus and could be reconciled.
5.“We’re gon’ kill you with hatred and without any respect, we’ll mock you and shock you, we’ll grin in your face, we’ve already got someone here to take your place, the day that they blew out the brains of the king”. Although they did not blow out the brain of Jesus like they did to JFK, this scene strikingly resembles to what happened to Jesus Christ when he was crucified. We read of this in Matthew 27:28-32 (BSB): “They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. And they twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on His head. They put a staff in His right hand and knelt down before Him to mock Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!”. Then they spat on Him and took the staff and struck Him on the head repeatedly. After they had mocked Him, they removed the robe and put His own clothes back on Him. Then they led Him away to crucify Him. Along the way they found a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross of Jesus”.
6. “We’ve already got someone here to take your place” represents Simon of Cyrene who was requisitioned by the Romans soldiers to take the place of Jesus and carry the cross, not as a token of compassion for Jesus but with the intention to add insult to injury to Jesus as if they said: “Look at this king, this King of the Jews, he has only one subject, one servant to carry his belongings”. It all happened the day when they blew out the life of the king of the Jews. The plot to kill Jesus was in a bizarre way “perfectly executed, skilfully done”. 
7. In verse 3 we find: “But his soul was not there where it was supposed to be at, for the last fifty years they’ve been searching for that. Freedom, oh freedom, freedom over me, hate to tell you, Mister, but only dead men are free”. Jesus says in Matthew 10: 28 that people can only kill your body but not your soul: “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (NLT). God the Father allowed people to kill the body of Jesus but they could not touch His soul. Psalm 16:10 is fulfilled in Jesus “For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave” NLT). When it says: “Freedom, oh freedom, freedom over me, hate to tell you, Mister, but only dead men are free” this not only a general statement saying that death relieves a man of his earthly duties and bondage like in the case of JFK but when we take a look at the death and resurrection of Christ, there may be more to it. Romans 6:8-10 says: “And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus”. The message is that all those who identify with the death and resurrection of Christ are set free in the true sense of the word and death loses its grip on people.
8. Then there is Zapruder’s 8mm film eye witness account: ”Zapruder’s film, I’ve seen that before, seen it thirty three times, maybe more, it’s vile and deceitful - it’s cruel and it’s mean, ugliest thing that you ever have seen”. Why does the poet say that he watched this film “thirty three times, maybe more”?. Nowadays there seems to be consensus among historians and theologians that Jesus Christ was 33 years old when he died on the Cross, but there is a margin of uncertainty, it may be a few years more. It may be the reason why it says here, “maybe more”. The poet takes one year of the life of Christ for each time he watched the film as if alluding to the 33 years of suffering of Jesus Christ and he specifically alludes to the end of Jesus’ life, which was ‘deceitful’ (Judas’s betrayal) and his trial and crucifixion which was “cruel and mean, the uglies thing that you have ever seen”.
9. They “killed him like a human sacrifice” echoes John 11:49-51 (NLT) “Caiaphas, who was high priest at that time, said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t realize that it’s better for you that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed. He did not say this on his own; as high priest at that time he was led to prophesy that Jesus would die for the entire nation”. To hold on to the power of the Sanhedrin, Caiaphas offered Jesus as ‘a human sacrifice’.
10. “The day that they killed him, someone said to me, “Son, the age of the anti-Christ has just only begun.” takes us back all the way to Revelation chapter 12:5-9 (NLT). After the victory of Christ, his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension into heaven, poetically summarized as “the day they killed him” Rev. 12:5 depicts the Ascension of Jesus into heaven: ”Her child (the child by which is meant Jesus) was snatched away from the dragon and was caught up to God and to his throne” . This caused the defeat of the dragon and he was forced out of heaven (Rev. 12:8) and when that happened this might be called the day when “the age of the anti-Christ had only just begun”. Peter says that the anti-Christ (the devil), in the shape of a roaring lion, is still raging on earth: “ Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8 NLT).”Stay alert” which are basically the same words Dylan used introducing MMF on his website: “Stay observant”. Paul makes it clear in his second letter to the Thessalonians Chapter 2 that as Judgement Day approaches the activity of the anti-Christ will come to a head (2 Thes.2:1-12) in a scorched earth policy.

We know that there are a lot of Dylan fans out there who will not be amused by this kind of interpretation. If so, please do not hesitate to comment on this article.