No New God

"Star of the Sea," 11, A.D. 49.

Time Patrol ethnographer Jens Ulstrup to Unattached Agent Manse Everard and Specialist Janne Floris:

"'...Edh is not introducing the gospel of a whole new religion. That is outside the pagan mentality. In fact, I rather imagine her ideas are evolving as she goes along. She is not even adding a new deity. Her goddess is known through most of the Germanic range. The local name is Naerdha. She must be more or less identical with the Nerthus whose cult Tacitus describes.'" (p. 565)

Christianity began not as the gospel of a whole new religion but as the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. Moses, representing the Law, and Elijah, representing the Prophets, appeared at either side of Christ at the Transfiguration. (The Law was a revelation. The Prophets applied that revelation to historical contexts. History climaxed in the Messiah.) The new movement, not yet called Christianity, was a culmination of the Abrahamic tradition, not the initiation of a new tradition. There was not meant to be a new tradition. The earliest Christians, persuaded by Peter at Pentecost, were Jews who accepted that the historical process was now complete because the Messiah had come and who continued to worship in the Temple. Paul was arrested making an offering in the Temple. After that, the two communities had to split. Later, Muhammad claimed to fulfil the prophetic monotheist tradition but was not accepted as a prophet by either Jews or Christians. Result: three different world religions. We live with that.

Has anyone ever added a new deity? I think that both the Mosaic and the Koranic names for the one God were originally names of tribal gods. Veleda's Naerdha would have become the one Goddess. We wonder what her history would have been like.