Clivedurdle

Apologies to John Lennon.

I have just posted the following in the lounge

Jesus Sutras (or via: amazon.co.uk)

I would like to take a few steps back from an alleged Jesus wandering around Galillee in the time of Pilate and discuss Christ.

We have above two vastly different outworkings of xianity and an argument that the cultures they were in were very significant for the forms of the religion we have now.

OK, what is it about the idea of Christ that is so powerful?

Similarly with King Arthur, the once and future king, what is the story of the Christ saying to us?

What is this god dying on a tree about?

(The Guardian has a series on fairy tales currently, and the V&A has an exhibition about modern artists reinterpreting fairy tales - the one I liked most is a large fluffy white cushion in the shape of a mushroom cloud...)

Clivedurdle

http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainme...-Elf-King.aspx

Clivedurdle

Is the Gospel of Mark a fairy story?

Kosh

Well, you know how hard it can be...

why is this already out of print?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Clivedurdle,

This confirms two concepts: cultural relativity and the idea that the reader/s makes meaning as much or more than the author/s. All ideology, including religious ideology changes as it spreads through different cultures. Cultures adapt parts of ideology they can use and suppress or ignore other parts. The pacifist preacher picks out and emphasizes the passages about peace and forgiveness, while the army chaplain highlights the passages about war and victory. Their is no authentic or original Christianity to be found. There is only a plethora of Christianities operating within a multitude of ideologies. Each Christianity exists within a certain culture at a certain point in history.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Clivedurdle

But what is it about the ideology or fairy tale of the Christ that is so powerful?

Clivedurdle

http://www.umass.edu/aesop/history.php

Has anyone looked at fables like these and the New Testament? Well, it is all Greek innit...

mountainman

The imperial publishing house. Strangely enough it was owned and operated by the same person who owned and operated all the mints in the Roman empire - and produced the emperor's gold solidus coins.

mountainman

Much closer to the period of the first and second and third centuries, Apollonius of Tyana on Aesop suggests Aesop is mythology. See also "The Acts of Paul and Thecla" and its incorporation of Aesop's "The Lion and the Mouse". Paul is well and truly embroiled in mythology (fiction).

From here

Apollonius began the discussion by asking his companions: "Is there such a thing as mythology?"

"Yes, by Zeus," answered Menippus, "and I mean by it that which furnishes poets with their themes."

"What then do you think of Aesop?"

"He is a mythologist and writer of fables and no more."

"And which set of myths show any wisdom?"

"Those of the poets," he answered, "because they are represented in the poems as having taken place."

"And what then do you think of the stories of Aesop?"

"Frogs," he answered, "and donkeys and nonsense only fit to be swallowed by old women and children."

"And yet for my own part," said Apollonius, "I find them more conducive to wisdom than the others. For those others, of which all poetry is so fond, and which deal with heroes, positively destroy the souls of their hearers, because the poet relates stories of outlandish passion and of incestuous marriages, and repeats calumnies against the gods, of how they ate their own children, and committed crimes of meanness, and quarreled with one another; and the affectation and pretense of reality leads passionate and jealous people and miserlike and ambitious persons to imitate the stories.

Aesop on the other hand had in the first place the wisdom never to identify himself with those who put such stories into verse, but took a line of his own; and in the second, like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths, and after serving up a story he adds to it the advice to do a thing or not to do it. Then, too, he was really more attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events.

And the poet, after telling his story, leaves a healthy-minded reader cudgeling his brains to know whether it really happened; whereas one who, like Aesop, tells a story which is false and does not pretend to be anything else, merely investing it with a good moral, shows that he has made use of the falsehood merely for its utility to his audience.

And there is another charm about him, namely, that he puts animals in a pleasing light and makes them interesting to mankind. For after being brought up from childhood with these stories, and after being as it were nursed by them from babyhood, we acquire certain opinions of the several animals and think of some of them as royal animals, of others as silly, of others as witty, and others as innocent.

And whereas the poet, after telling us that there are 'many forms of heavenly visitation' or something of the kind, dismisses his chorus and departs, Aesop adds an oracle to his story, and dismisses his hearers just as they reach the conclusion he wished to lead the up to.

[§15] And as for myself, O Menippus, my mother taught me a story about the wisdom of Aesop when I was a mere child, and told me that he was once a shepherd, and was tending his flocks hard by a temple of Hermes, and that he was a passionate lover of wisdom and prayed to Hermes that he might receive it. Many other people, she said, also resorted to the temple of Hermes asking for the same gift, and one of them would hang on the altar gold, another silver, another a herald's wand of ivory, and others other rich presents of the kind.

Now Aesop, she said, was not in a position to own any of these things; but he saved up what he had, and poured a libation of as much milk as a sheep would give at one milking in honor of Hermes, and brought a honeycomb and laid it on the altar, big enough to fill the hand, and he thought too of regaling the god with myrtle berries, or perhaps by laying just a few roses or violets at the altar. 'For,' said he, 'would you, O Hermes, have me weave crowns for you and neglect my sheep?'

Now when on the appointed day they arrived for the distribution of the gifts of wisdom, Hermes as the god of wisdom and eloquence and also of gain and profit, said to him who, as you may well suppose, had made the biggest offering: 'Here is philosophy for you'; and to him who had made the next handsomest present, he said: 'Do you take your place among the orators'; and to others he said: 'You shall have the gift of astronomy or you shall be a musician, or you shall be an epic poet and write in heroic metre, or you shall be a writer of iambics.'

Now although he was a most wise and accomplished god he exhausted, not meaning to do so, all the various departments of wisdom, and then found that he had quite forgotten Aesop. Thereupon he remembered the Hours, by whom he himself had been nurtured on the peaks of Olympus, and bethought him of how once, when he was still in swaddling clothes, they had told him a story about the cow, which had a conversation with the man about herself and about the earth, and so set him aflame for the cows of Apollo.[4] Accordingly he forthwith bestowed upon Aesop the art of fable called mythology, for that was all that was left in the house of wisdom, and said: "Do you keep what was the first thing I learnt myself."

Aesop then acquired the various forms of his art from that source, and the issue was such as we have seen in the matter of mythology.

Perhaps also Gandalf's resurrection out of the Pit where he descended in battle with the Balrog. No longer the Grey, but the White.

bacht

- promise of eternal life

- identification with the innocent victim archetype ("poor me")

- a social organization without traditional family or territorial ties

- promise of divine revenge on bad people

- satisfaction of witnessing the 'defeat' of temporal power (supercession of Roman empire by the Roman church) ie. acceptable channel for envy/resentment

- patina of ancient authority from funny archaic names