Monday, 25 October 2021

No Gods

 

Phrases resonate between timelines. I have found a beaut.

An unnamed Danellian says:

"'In a reality forever liable to chaos, the Patrol is the stabilizing element, holding time to a single course. Perhaps it is not the best course, but we are no gods to impose anything different when we know that it does at last take us beyond what our animal selves could have imagined.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART SIX, 1990 A. D., p. 435.
 
Rinndalir, a Lunarian and a Selenarch, says:
 
"'We are no gods, to guide history - if indeed the very gods have any foresight over chaos.'"
-Harvest Of Stars, 43, p. 401.
 
So, by their own avowal, neither Danellians nor Lunarians are gods. Neither seeks to change the course of history. Both refer to chaos but Danellians regard chaos as destructive whereas Rinndalir regards it as both destructive and creative, like the god Shiva.
 
We have it on good authority that human beings, the ancestors both of Danellians and of Lunarians, are gods:
 

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I reread Psalm 82 and the annotations attached to it. The first note says: "As in Ps 56, the pagan gods are seen as subordinate divine beings to whom Israel's God had delegated oversight of the foreign countries in the beginning (Dt 32.8-9 LXX). Now God arises in the heavenly assembly (1) to rebuke the unjust "gods" (2-4), who are stripped of divine status and reduced in rank to mortals (5-7). They are accused of misruling the earth by not upholding the poor. A short prayer for universal justice concludes the psalm (8)." So the entire psalm and its context needs to be considered before placing too much stress on verse 1.

This was probably one of the older psalms, composed at a time when Jews still thought the pagan "gods" were real beings, but lesser than the one God.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

But Jesus quotes this verse approvingly in John 10:34.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

But certainly not with a polytheistic intent.

Ad astra! Sean