Silk corrupted?

David Stockhoff · 22 Jan 2009, 22:40 · from 2009-January.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:40:14 -0500
Subject: (urth) Silk corrupted?
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Actually, part of my point is that it's NOT a matter of opinion. The two things---narrative construction of Christ and reality of Christ---are two different things, in the same way that evolution is a fact regardless of religious belief, or even belief in evolution. The history of the Catholic orthodoxy is a matter of fact, and it shows that the orthodoxy that resulted, while not necessarily the result of chance, could well have turned out differently. 

(Naturally, TBotNS would then have been conceived differently, but if it hadn't---if, say, a copy from our universe landed in an alternative universe with an Arian orthodoxy---our discussion of Severian would be quite different. Readers would be saying, Why is this Wolfe guy calling Jesus Severian?)

The thing is, both works, TBotNS and the Bible, are analyzed the same way. You may not know that literary criticism actually began with biblical scholarship. So I'm not resorting to hyperbole when I say they are literally the same process. And given that, I would argue that they should be set more or less on the same plane like any two literary works. That is, not with a fixed, static idea of Christ looming over the proceedings, but with an understanding that we are dealing with an interpretation only, which can be responded to with other interpretations.

I concede, of course, that the Bible takes precedence as a literary work in both stature and history, so Severian and Jesus can never really be coequals. But please let's dispense with the notion---the assumption---that there can only be a single Christ in all of human literature. It's an indefensible position.

John---Thanks for your long response. I don't have time to respond fully right now, but please accept the above in partial response for now.

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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:02:48 +0000
From: "Son of Witz" <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Subject: Re: (urth) Silk corrupted?
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <W614481574578411232661768 at webmail49>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I thought about that Nicene creed last night too.
It's purely Exegesis to insist that he was divine.

I take a bit of issue with your comment about fictional things, though of course it's a matter of opinion, or faith.
I've been trying to speak of triangulating from two fictions to a real thing.
or rather, from many fictions to a real thing.
Personally, I'm confident there is a God and the Logos is our path to him, and God's healing light into our Whorl.  I feel all of these stories are fictions pointing at this very real entity.  I have no confidence in the fiction of Jesus, or Mithras as historical fact, but I think the stories are talking about something real via plot metaphor.  It's from that perspective that I've tried to discus Severian and Christ.

/My two cents,
keep the change, Stu.

~witz

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