On Jesus in Briah and other dead horses

Jordon Flato · 30 Dec 2010, 01:09 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: jordonflatourth at gmail.com (Jordon Flato)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:09:16 -0800
Subject: (urth) On Jesus in Briah and other dead horses
Message-ID: <AANLkTikiKzjb0d4jrtR3qXHEByMkGv7uEOnBQ=Boiw=x at mail.gmail.com>

So, not to pick a scab, but Witz and I were chowing down burgers today, and
talking about our favorite subject, BotNS.  We both are more amenable to the
idea of Severan being a 'Christ like' figure or 'instantation of the Logos'
than many on this board, to be sure, so we're apt to look at the books
through that lens.

With that in mind, for those who feel that these books indicate a world that
never knew Jesus, how do we get the myth of Saint Catherine that is so
important to the Order of the Seekers of Truth and Penitence?  Sure, the
name may have simply been a translation choice by the fictional Gene Wolfe,
but the ritual of elevation clearly lays out the actual story of Saint
Catherine, at least in some guise.  How do you have a Saint Catherine if
there is no Christianity?  What mental gymnastics do we need to put
ourselves through to posit a world where such an event could be orally
transmitted (or otherwise) down through the ages to end up as the rites of
the Guild of Torturers without that event having some basis in far far far
distant truth?

Certainly our world today is considered 'fallen' by some, and many
Christians.  Yet our world decidedly DID know Jesus.  So why is it
impossible to think that the influence of Jesus on Urth would be so far gone
and diluted as to be only extant in the most second hand of myth and
hearsay?  It seems possible to me, and in fact partially supported
textually.  Of course, it could be an earlier instantiation of Briah, in
which the life of Christ and Earth was slightly different, leading to the
Urth we see in New Sun, but it can't have been so different that Jesus
didn't spawn a movement which engendered saints the likes of Saint
Catherine, said saint's stories surviving the aeon's to end up as the
elevation rights of the guild of torturers.

Perhaps this has already been answered in the pages of this list.  Anyone
care to take a crack at that?
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