Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 96.
Malcolm Lockridge considers three possibilities:
that the Triple Goddess was an early intuition of Mary who is the actual Queen of Heaven;
that both are shadows of an ultimate reality;
that both are myths.
He adds that:
"What mattered in history was not what men thought but what they felt." (p. 96)
Thinking and feeling are intertwined and should not be dichotomized.
Lockridge reflects that, although the Indo-Europeans impose a patriarchal pantheon, the old ones endure:
Dyaush Pitar becomes Thor who becomes St Olaf;
Odin becomes a troll;
Frey becomes St Erik;
She becomes the Virgin;
sprites, hobgoblins, leprechauns and mermaids, too much in the world to be called gods, are signs of the mystery of life.
A mermaid became a children's story, then a statue in a modern setting.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The cover for this edition of THE CORRIDORS OF TIME might be justified if we remember Brann's approving comments of how some men strove to reach beyond the Moon.
Another possibility, which I believe is the truth, is this: the triple goddess is non-existent and the BVM was not yet born and then asked by God to become the mother of the Incarnate Logos.
Sean
Sean,
Of the 4 canonical Gospels, only 2 have birth and infancy stories. Matthew has the family fleeing south into Egypt to prevent the child from being killed on orders from the king in Jerusalem whereas Luke has his parents taking the child up to Jerusalem for a ceremony in the Temple.
Surely the Annunciation in Luke and the visit of the wise men in Matthew are the kind of legendary stories told about great men, heroes and demigods in antiquity? As is the story of the child being threatened and having to be hidden. See Cyrus, Moses etc. We cannot possibly accept the Annunciation, a conversation with an angel, as a historical event merely because the story was written down in a single document.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I'm sorry, but I disagree in many ways with these comments of yours. We DO know from other sources, such as Flavius Josephus, of how cruel Herod the Great could be. From his massacres to having two of his own sons killed. So I don't think it's impossible for a paranoid Herod to order the killing of the Innocents at Bethlehem. Considering his other, more "gaudy" crimes, the killing of a fairly small number of infants could be easily overlooked by other writers.
And I do accept the Annunciation, even if the circumstances it happened in might not be exactly as recorded by St. Luke. If God is real, then you have to accept it's possible He created angels as well as the cosmos. It is defined Catholic doctrine that the angels, good or bad, are real beings. Therefore, it also follows a messenger was sent by God to ask for the BVM's consent to becoming the mother of the Incarnate Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity.
All this and many other points were discussed in massive detail by Fr. Raymond Brown in THE BIRTH OF THE MESSIAH and Fr. John Meier in his four volume MARGINAL JEW series. To say nothing of how other scholars, such as William Farmer, defended Matthean Priority and the early dating of the Synoptic Gospels in THE GOSPEL OF JESUS. Yes, they came to conclusions many don't like. So be it!
Sean
Sean,
The vast majority of scholars, including Catholic, accept the priority of Mark.
"...it follows that a messenger was sent by God..." But you deduced this from a possibility and a Catholic doctrine so the argument is in danger of becoming circular. I find in discussion with Christians (Evangelicals are impossible) that it is very difficult to find an agreed starting point.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And it's my belief that the arguments in favor of Markan Priority are themselves circular and based on flawed premises, premises which I don't believe all advocates of Mark's priority are aware of. It was David L. Dungan's book A HISTORY OF THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM (Anchor: 1999) which converted me from Markan Priority to Matthean Priority using arguments and evidence I found more convincing than those for Mark being the earliest Gospel. Dungan challenged the dominant Holtzmann/Streeter on both the evidence and the ideological/theological biases of its major proponents.
It was Dungan who made me aware of how the older view of Matthean Priority has arguments in its favor at least as solid as those arguing for Markan priority. He made aware of the works of Chapman, Butler, Farmer, etc. And I have since read William Farmer's THE GOSPEL OF JESUS (1994), where he outlines in a more "popular" way the neo-Griesbachian hypothesis. I even once sent you a discussion I had of the Dungan book with another online friend not long after I first read it, along with some relevant quotes from the book.
Most advocates of Markan priority also argue for a late, post AD 70 dating for the Synoptic Gospels and Acts. I no longer believe that and one point I have pointed out to some is that Luke wrote and pub. Acts after AD 70, why does he end that work at such an early time as St. Paul's first Roman captivity in AD 61-62? If Acts was written/pub. after 70, it would have been natural to have included an account of the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, the Jewish War, the fall of Jerusalem, etc. But, no, that is not the case, Acts ending around AD 62. The natural conclusion is the book was written and pub. around that date (meaning Luke's gospel was composed around that time).
I regret the difficulty you have in having discussions with convinced Christians who are not "evangelical" Protestants. I suggest that the reason for that is because many "Modernists" deny God can and has ACTED in history. Everything Christians believe is only a "myth", at best, to such people. Others come right out and denounce Christianity as simply false. Without an agreed on base, at least for the purposes of discussion, such a conversation is almost impossible.
Sean
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