The Severian Behind Curtain #3

Dave Tallman · 16 Jun 2008, 15:30 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:30:17 -0600
Subject: (urth) The Severian Behind Curtain #3
Message-ID: <1bf4dd40806160830l4c537036v812999669783c232 at mail.gmail.com>

b sharp wrote:

> I'm pretty convinced that there has never been a Jesus on Urth (and that is
> a major underlying theme of the series). Hence the Norse name "Urth" and
> the many allusions to pre-Christian gods and monsters ruling Urth long after
> the equivalent time period of Jesus on Earth.  The occasional reference to roods
> or Bible verses can be attributed to souvenirs brought from a more spiritually
> advanced univiverse (Yesod?) to Briah by people (mostly Father Inire) able to
> make such travels.
>
>
On the other hand,  every citizen in the  Commonwealth is  named for a
saint, and the legend of the martyrdom of St.  Catherine is essentially the
same.  I'm convinced it's a post-Catholic culture. Jesus may have been
forgotten, but many elements of Christianity remain. (There are also altars,
candles, shewbread, etc.).

I lean against accepting the SevN concept because I think iterations
of Severian
> are finite- tied to the 5 coffins in Sev's mausoleum. Two of them open means
> two have been released, with three more to go, if needed. Was Sev1 Ymar? or
> Severian in a different time-line or universe (Abaddon?).
>
>
In my way of counting, every use of knowledge from the future to change the
past produces another rewrite of Sev's history, and there is evidence for
many such interventions in his life. I'd never heard that interpretation of
the multiple coffins. It's an interesting speculation.
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