The Traditions And Poul Anderson (i)
Science fiction is literature addressing the scientific tradition. It can also relocate Biblical ideas to technological or futuristic contexts, e.g., Anderson's "The Problem of Pain," The Game Of Empire and even a novel of the far future called Genesis. Anderson's fiction of different genres treats Christian and Buddhist characters with respect.
According to the mythologies, both Romans and Britons are descended from Trojans. Thus, Dardanus, great-grandfather of the founder of Troy, joins our list of mythical origin figures.
The Traditions And Poul Anderson (ii)
Anderson wrote historical novels set in the Roman period. His sf shows the tradition of the Roman Empire continuing in one future history but completely different scenarios in other future histories. In Genesis, human beings do not build interstellar empires. Instead, post-organic intelligences continue the scientific tradition by seeking knowledge.
There is also the Northern European tradition celebrated by Richard Wagner, William Morris, JRR Tolkien and Poul Anderson.
To be continued.
18 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm not sure I understand what you meant by this bit from your first paragraph: "Although a European monotheism was emerging, the Roman Empire, having conquered the Middle East, imported a Middle Eastern monotheism..." Was there a specifically EUROPEAN monotheism emerging in the last century BC? What was actually recorded were various kinds of polytheist pantheons. Unless you meant the philosophic monotheism of Plato and Aristotle (which could only appeal to a select few), religion in Europe was wholly pagan.
I understand your point about the fourth Gospel, but the Catholic in me insists on saying that Gospel has to be read in CONJUNCTION with the other three Gospels. In fact, I somewhat vaguely know of a tradition being recorded of how John, having read and approved of the Synoptic Gospels, wrote his own Gospel to complete and supplement them. The Gospels should not be read in isolation from each other or the rest of the NT.
And not only did some Britons like to fancy themselves descended from the Trojans, there were also "British Israelites"! People who insisted that what became Great Britain were colonized by the Ten Lost Tribes! We see Sir Malachi, Prince Rupert's captor in Anderson's A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST, expounding such beliefs in that book.
And the post-organic "intelligences" of GENESIS were not an unmixed blessing! Poul Anderson shows us some downsides to that kind of speculation as well.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Well, the philosophic monotheism of Plato and Aristotle will do for a start. I understand that pagan priests were also becoming monotheists. The Empire wanted One God so it adopted and adapted the Jewish one.
I should have remembered the British Israelites. I have read a book by one. Queen Victoria was a successor of David and Solomon just as the Archbishop of Canterbury, like all bishops, is a successor of the Apostles.
(Descendants of the Trojan Aeneas are also descendants of his mother, Aphrodite. We can enjoy these myths without believing any of them.)
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But the philosophic monotheism of Plato and Aristotle was too remote and distant to ever appeal to more than a few. Really, Plato and Aristotle could only argue for the possibility of there being one God. But it was too abstract for most.
But the Roman Empire, before Constantine's time, never formally rejected belief in Jupiter, Mars, Venus, or the other gods, which were assumed to be the same as the Olympians. As late as Diocletian's reign we see the Empire insisting on sacrifices being made to the "gods," plural. It was in the fourth century that we see belief in the pagan gods really fading away.
Well, the Catholic Church disagrees with the Anglican view of what bishops are. And believes they have lost the apostolic succession.
I think there are actually still some British Israelites!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The British Israelites thought that the British Empire fulfilled the promise to Abraham that his seed would be a great nation and that therefore the Empire would last forever so I don't know what they think now.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I do know British Israelitism has been thoroughly debunked on historical, linguistic, and archaeological grounds, etc. Unfortunately, instead of remaining a harmless, mildly interesting eccentric group, some strains of British Israelitism became racist.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
One of the groups that migrated into Ireland was called the Tuatha de Danaan so the British Israelites deduced that they were the tribe of Dan: ingenious fictional history.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Correct, a chance but trivially superficial resemblance to the name of the old Jewish tribes.
Poul Anderson's THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS was much more "convincing" as fictional history. Building a story around a character who came from an alternate world where the Carolingian legends were literally true. And ditto for the alternate history stories of S.M. Stirling.
Ad astra! Sean
The way Classical paganism was developing had strong similarities to the way Hinduism did -- that is, a philosophical monotheism at the highest level, combined with practical polytheism for the masses.
Poul brings this out in "Delenda Est", where the religion of the post-Classical world of Deirdre is pagan but the educated believe in a Great Baal who made the lesser Gods or of whom they are all aspects.
I have speculated about a European equivalent of Hinduism if Christianity had not been imported: Homer and the poets instead of Moses and the prophets; philosophy instead of Wisdom literature; mystery religions instead of Christianity.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I should have remembered Anderson's speculations in "Delenda Est." I would only that my vague recollection of when the "philosophical monotheism" adhered to by the most sophisticated Hindus seemed to have occurred pretty late, perhaps around AD 1500 onwards. And perhaps as a response by those Hindus who were embarassed by the crude polytheism of most Hindus to the ideas being spread by Catholic missionaries.
Paul: and it would have been a disaster to the world if something like Hinduism had arisen in Europe. We might have seen everything from the cruelties and strangling stasis of a rigid, hereditarily based caste system (complete with despised and oppressed "untouchables") to civilization never advancing to achieve a true science. In fact, we see Anderson suggesting the latter is precisely what would have happened in the world of "Delenda Est" if Greek philosophy and Judaism/Christianity had disappeared. People might still have been building ziggurats and consulting the entrails of animals, as Anderson said.
Ad astra! Sean
Hindu philosophy started speculating along those lines early in the medieval period, building on earlier ideas dating back to the Vedas:
Indraṃ mitraṃ varuṇamaghnimāhuratho divyaḥ sa suparṇo gharutmān,
ekaṃ sad viprā bahudhā vadantyaghniṃ yamaṃ mātariśvānamāhuḥ
"They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, Agni, and he is heavenly nobly-winged Garutmān.
To what is One, sages give many a title — they call it Agni, Yama, Mātariśvan."
Something similar happened in Zoroastrian thought, which is a development of a religion extremely similar to Vedic Hinduism.
I wish we had been able to develop our own Euroism.
Sean,
But Greek philosophy would not have disappeared if Christianity had not been imported. In fact, Christianity was purely prophetic with no philosophical aspect and had to adapt Platonism and Aristotelianism.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I am not so sure of that. And if I can go by what I read in "Delenda Est," "The House of Sorrows," and at least one of the alternate worlds mentioned in "Eutopia," neither was Poul Anderson.
Yes, I have no objection to agreeing that as early as John's Gospel we begin to see how Christians began to make use of Classical philosophical concepts to help explain their faith.
Ad astra! Sean
The Western worldview is a sort of amalgam of elements of Christianity derived from Judaism and Classical philosophy. So is science, the quintessial Western invention.
The basic Christian contribution was the notion that the universe is obedient to a single, all-encompassing -system-, that it is lawful at a very fundamental level.
Classical philosophers approached this but never quite got there. Their religious background -- even when they'd stopped believing in it literally -- left reality as mutable and cyclical.
Classical philosophy contributed the view that you could understand this system of laws by observation and reasoning -- a view which is incorporated into our philosophical tradition fairly completely by Aquinas.
It helped that Christianity was a 'historical' religion -- that is, it grounded itself not merely in myth, but in what it claimed to be observable events occurring at a specific, real time and place rather than a 'time of legends'.
The balance, the creative tension, between these elements, was important; it was quite different in Eastern Christianity, and even more so in Islamic thought by the medieval period.
Note that our current cosmology agrees that the world has a beginning and an end, for example.
This universe has a beginning and an end. It is observed to expand. But how many universes are there?
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: Yes, I agree, our Western civilization sprang from an amalgam of Judaism/Christianity and Classical philosophy, esp. Aristotelianism/Scholasticism.
Which is what we see Poul Anderson arguing in "Delenda Est" and IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS?
If the Eastern Roman Empire had survived as a great vigorous power into modern times, instead of catastrophically declining after the Sack of Constantinople, it too might have shared in this creative tension with the West, instead of most of its territories outside the Balkans being absorbed into Islam.
And I do believe the universe is "...obedient to a single, all-encompassing system, that it is lawful at a very fundamental level." And I have no hesitation calling that "system" God.
Paul: I believe it is very likely there are many alternate or parallel universes. Recall how Frank Tipler discussed that in his book THE PHYSICS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Ad astra! Sean
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