Subject: Belated thoughts RE: (urth) Shadowy reflections on an amazing

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 23:56:44 +0000

Nigel observed:

> Severian in some sense takes on the role of Christ when he resists
> Typhon's three-fold temptations, but as the author has insisted
> elsewhere, Severian is not Jesus...

and I insist that this is a case where the author either is -- I was
going to say "lying" but let me say instead "being deliberatly disingenuous"
-- or doesn't know what he's talking about. Or maybe some combination of
the two. And it doesn't start with the temptation in the desert.

I mean, come on: his career starts with baptism and ends with 
resurrection. Before he meets Typhon, he raises the dead, heals the
sick turns water into wine, tames wild beasts, and (I think a case
could be made) banishes demons. Not to mention coming back from the
dead repeatedly, telling parables (what _do_ you think the stories 
in the Book of Urth and Sky are?), etc., etc., etc.

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 15:04:41 +0000

> in the Book of Urth and Sky are?), etc., etc., etc.

Well, he isn't literally Jesus: he's not God, and his return isn't the
Second Coming of Christ (and I've never understood how the events of UotNS
are to be reconciled with the Christian eschatological scheme).  But I agree
that the similarities between Severian and Jesus go far beyond "he's a
Christian, and Christians are supposed to imitate Christ."

When I read UotNS, it seemed to me that the portions of the book where
Severian is the original Conciliator might have been Wolfe's attempt to
imagine why someone might behave as Jesus does in the Gospel of Mark
(reluctant to perform miracles, and telling those he's cured not to say
anything about it).

--Adam

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 19:20:00 +0000

On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, James Jordan wrote:

>          As for how all this fits with conventional Christian eschatology; 
> well, it does not have to. The events are in the midst of history, not at 
> its full end. But the Bible repeatedly uses Flood language to refer to 
> invading armies and other similar disasters, and also relates the Flood to 
> baptism. Thus, Wolfe can have a Flood-event in the midst of history, which 
> is a judgment on an old Ur-world and also a baptism of that world, ushering 
> in a new Ushas world.

Which raises the question again, are there no more rainbows on
Urth?  (Other than the one Severian pulls butterflies out of, that is.)

-Rostrum

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