Saint Catherine and the Nature of the Flood

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 14 Mar 2012, 21:37 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:37:30 -0700
Subject: (urth) Saint Catherine and the Nature of the Flood
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References: <CALvaXC9Bg7Wz90M9JNK9MEinpebXh1KF5mwbXgVG0XfY6RNkgQ at mail.gmail.com>
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Hi, Jordon. Good to "see" you.

Jordon Flato wrote:

> If the guild of torturers practices a rite central to their mythology and
> close to the very nature of their order, a rite which involves a character
> named Catherine who's story we can easily and readily track to the real and
> actual Saint Catherine of our world, doesn't that strongly indicate the
> presence, in the distant past of Urth, of a real Christianity? ?The very
> existence of saints, and of this one in with details so similar to the
> details of the story we know of Saint Catherine, seems to beg the question
> for me. ?How could you have her story without having first had Christ? ?What
> sorts of 'close but not identical' circumstances could have existed to give
> rise to this exceptionally similar story to our own?
>
> Is this simply a function and artifact of the translation gimmick?

I'm inclined to think so -- indeed, the translator seems to substitute
saints' names for whatever past/future terminology people of the
Commonwealth use to name themselves. (And it won't do to say that
those names are direct; look how much the names of well-known saints
have changed in common usage after just two thousand years: e.g.,
Cephas --> Petrus --> Peter.)

The concept of saints isn't intrinsically Christian, either; Buddhism
has something that we translate as "Buddhist saints."

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

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