stephan huller

I went with my son's class to see a production of the Wizard of Oz at the Seattle Children's Theater (Canadian spelling 'Theatre') and a parallel struck me with the gospel as I was watching the show (I've had thoughts about the Bible doing virtually everything). My son told me that the teacher in school informed the class that the ruby slippers were originally silver. That got my memory jogging because I remember reading somewhere - a long time ago - that Frank Baum wrote the narrative as a statement about monetary policy:

The point here is that at one time the book must have been readily understood as an allegory for something that a large segment of the population readily understood as symbolic but then as time went on the story was shortened and altered to read like a straightforward narrative. This is critical in understanding the gospel especially when you have a large population in Alexandria which understood that the story was an allegory for something 'mystical' or 'symbolic.'

In time of course the Jesus story became a more or less straightforward narrative - basically one dimensional - about 'stuff' Jesus did. There is still some sense that we are going to be 'saved' through the gospel. But the details of the story have been lost or changed so as to make it possible to understand the original allegory. I think there are important parallels here worth considering.

When I would make reference to the actual context of the original story the parents there would be like 'yeah, that's interesting (not).' You know polite but not interested in taking the story in any other way than they were led to believe as naive little children. I guess my point is that those who claim that allegories only come after a two dimensional narrative is established (= the neo-Platonic model for understanding Homer) isn't always true. Sometimes the idiots bring a symbolic story down to the level of their own intellectual capabilities. In this case 'it's just about a little girl trying to get home to Kansas.' No it is not. No it is not. And neither is the gospel.

Maybe the lesson is that it is children who ruin everything. I mean you can't listen to Vince Guaraldi without thinking of a walking beagle. Nietzsche's Superman without imagining a man flying in a cape. Maybe sacred or important things should be kept away from kids. I am seriously considering that infant baptism destroyed or transformed Christianity. It was those ancients in the third century who had been been brought up as Christians who took the nonsensically two-dimensional stories told to them as lullabies as 'all there was' to the gospel. I think Celsus says this somewhere. But its true. When adults joined the faith generations earlier they were brought in by the allegory, much like the original readers of Frank Baum.

Sheshbazzar

Very perceptive observations Stephan, what I've been trying to get across for years, the Gospels are not simple mythology, nor are they the distorted HJ history that some think.
These texts were written as a form of political and religious commentary and propaganda and came complete with the miracles and fantastic elements from the beginning, and have not evolved significantly since.
The Jesus tale was far differently understood by the original audiences, than the childish literalism that came to be applied and be insisted upon latter.

The Gospel tale was no more literal or a historical accounting than is 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'. That fact does not make it worthless, as it will always be a unique cultural artifact. But certainly it should never have been employed as an excuse to dominate, oppress, extort, and murder ones fellow man over.

seyorni

It seems to me that an oral mythology would be very unlikely to maintain any factual consistency as it spread far and wide, especially among those with no tradition of meticulous journalism who understood the tales more as allegory.

The gospel tale of the empty tomb comes to mind. Didn't the story become more elaborate with succeeding gospels?

aa5874

The resurrection story get more elaborate with the succeeding Gospels and the Late Pauline writings.

There was NO post resurrection visits by Jesus in the short gMark but by the time we reach the Pauline writings OVER 500 people saw Jesus.

Not even in gJohn is it claimed OVER 500 people saw the resurrected Jesus.

The Jesus stories are really Myth Fables about the Son of a God who was raised from the dead and the Empty Tomb was believed to be fulfilled prophecy.

Chili

I think the 500 were at Pauls Cana event, but that is not important.

Plato would have it that all knowledge is ours by recollecting (in the Meno, I think), which is not simple memory but a re-arranging of our knowledge so it makes sense to us. The precondition here is that knowledge is prior to us, ie, the Word was with God from the beginning.

To begin with, if illumination can make us God it can make us omniscient too, and from here all we need in life is to have flashcards instilled to make them real as we go. It is called 'prior to us by indoctiration' to be the 'questionmark' we seek to find (as Rousseau's Emile did), and so is prior to us by nature already in us as we encounter the real thing, which then is how Paul could recollect the entire event and had to declare the 500 guests at his own Cana event where the 'new wine' so was exposed = is to end his own determinate cause in being and Freeman to be. Point here is to "to encounter" must mean that it is prior to us, and so recollection is right.

I can add that Plato called this the final cause or telic vision that is noetic itself when the cows are brought home in Pure reason (also Posterior Analytics), but that all gets too complicated and not my ambition either as that would take me too long.

Sheshbazzar

THE Gospel was completed with the resurrection story. The 'Late Pauline writings' told a very different Gospel story. The Gospel of 'Saint Paul'.

What 'Paul wrote' did not and could not change a word in THE Gospel story that was already well known and long established before 'he' wrote.
Oh yeah, the Church wanted to be able to add a lot of 'stuff' to that old Gospel story, and attempted to do so via way of the forgeries of the 'Paulines' and Acts.
But it is like with sequels to 'The Wizard of Oz' that having no awareness of, and maintaining no conscious connection with the politics, motivations and allegories of the original, proceed to create something entirely different from the intent of the original.
The names remain the same but the fundamental underlying ideas have been exchanged for others, ones unknown to the original script writers..
The 'church' is virtually non-existent within THE Gospels. While Acts and the Paulines are the products of latter church power and Greek theological lunacy run amok.

.

Vorkosigan

The political allegory is one aspect of it, possibly, though that has been cogently criticized. It is moot because the real meaning of the Wizard of Oz is found in Theosophy. Baum was a theosophist.

Theosophical Wizard of Oz
http://www.theosophyforward.com/inde...ard-of-oz.html

steve_bnk

Aint myth and metaphor great for communiction and painting a picture.

For example were I to say 'Ignore that man behind the OP...' as part of a dialogue the meaning and inference would be clear without using a lot of words. A mental picture is worth a thousand words.

Or saying 'You're not in Kansas any more' to someone.

Myth going back to the Greeks and the others always served a useful purpose.

Biblical cliches...the patience of Job, as mad as Moses, a doubting Thomas, David and Goliath. It is why it is a mistake to dismiss the bible as imple false belief and fabrication withiot considering the literary and social value to the people in the times it was written.

As to Wizard Of Oz, from what I read his intent was as tory for kids. Sometines a cigar is just a cigar. Some claim The Hobbit was metaphor for the English commoner 'peasant' who were blisfully oblivious to the Hun acorss the water. Tolkien was in the trenches in WWI and got gassed, but he never voiced the connection.

The OP interpretation of Wizard Of Oz sounds erily like the biblical babble-prophesy of the Christian TV evangelicals.

sotto voce

The book was written for small children, illustrating the simple anomalies of life presented in a way that small children find comical and therefore mentally cathartic, helping them to painlessly come to terms with the world. It's the old, daft but nice recipe, the very stuff of children's literature, like Winnie the Pooh and the Pink Panther story lines. No monetary policy here; though maybe a lion seeking courage has spiritual significance.

So perhaps Hollywood did its habitual deformations and politicisations. Maybe there is allegory there, maybe from an anti-Marxist perspective, but it's way beyond the interest, let alone the comprehension, of small children.

Nobody ever thought that the gospel was allegory. People thought that the way to deity had been opened by a real event; and they had a choice before them, for that reason. They could take that way, or not. There was a 'cost' to taking it. That perceived cost was loss of autonomy; and there was real loss of popularity. A large minority gladly accepted those losses, seeing loss of autonomy as actual gain, and loss of popularity as confirmation of the rightness of their choice.

Most others just ignored this event, and got on with daily toil or hedonism, as appropriate. A minority became 'hardened' against it, and devised a thousand apparent ways around it, when simple opposition failed. And eventually forced everyone else to take account of it, to oppose it, knowingly or not.

Today, there is not that universal coercion, the Christian minority has shrunk, doubtless under the pressure of materialism, and the false Christianities have multiplied. But nothing has changed, in biblical terms. Today's generation is the same generation as the people who first heard the gospel or good news of the christ, due to a real event, l'actualité, as the French call it. No mere allegory could have made such an impression over two millennia.

Infant baptism 'immunised' against the gospel and Christianity, using the superstition that water and magic incantation were essential, if one's new-born was to escape hell. At the Reformation, the real fury of both Catholics and Reformers was at the reminder that there was that same choice to be made about the real event. Every evangelist is familiar with the retort, "I'm a Catholic," made as if this could excuse the speaker from making the choice. Surely, 'sacred' ideas like infant baptism should indeed be kept from children, and adults, too. And yet, so many tolerate it, and think it not inappropriate. Perhaps the thought of the 'cost' of the gospel overrides disdain of the superstitions that supplant it?

Bingo the Clown-O

Good point indeed. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Now tell us about the flying monkeys.

Keep in mind that your whole hypothesis fails if you cannot explain the flying monkeys.