mountainman

In antiquity, exponents of the Greek intellectual tradition could laugh at themselves, and at the pantheon of their gods, and indulge freely in political satire via the medium of the theatres. Political satire and parody was the speciality of the Alexandrian Greek community, and their theatres, and this may have been the first thing suppressed by the Christians.

Centuries afterwards, one of the first actions undertaken by Muhammad, after winning military supremacy, was to order for the execution of key satirists against his monotheistic empire-wide religious regime.

Hence the insistence about taking seriously the possibility that these odd-ball non canonical acts and gospels are Greek satires and parodies against the appearance of orthodox Christianity and the Bible at Nicaea.

sotto voce

What exquisite imperfection. Of course the Greeks laughed at themselves— being as Britain later was to be! Even the stolid, grim Romans managed a slight grin or two, when no-one was looking. But the dead and utterly humourless hand of Rome, that for some very strange reason, some describe as Christian, fell upon millions; and a few centuries later, Mohammed's mad moroseness fell on millions more. It had to wait centuries more for a warmer wind and a fuller belly for someone to tell the world that their 'pope' was a buffoon. And things went on from there, and laughter returned, as history books tell us; if we dare to open them.

But today, America is still the land of that grouty buffoon, in spirit, if not literally.