Skafloc reflects:
"Was Freda - was the White Christ of whom she had told a little - not right in saying that wrongs only led to more wrongs and thus at last to Ragnarok; that the time was overpast when pride and vengefulness give way to love and forgiveness, which were not unmanly but in truth the hardest things a man could undertake?" (p. 132)
The New Testament can be seen as fulfilling not only the Law and Prophets but also:
Virgil's Fourth Eclogue;
the transformation of the Furies into the Kindly Ones;
the mighty lord who comes on high, all power to hold, all lands to rule, in Voluspa 65.
A Christian missionary interviewed on British TV said that, in China, he learned of a mythological figure, the Old Grandfather, then identified this being with God the Father! You have to start somewhere.
Everything is the Old Testament if we see it that way.
"David's words with Sybil's blending..."
2 comments:
The problem with love and forgiveness is that they have to be mutual. Otherwise you're just delivering yourself to your enemies.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: That was certainly an interesting addition Anderson made to the revised version of THE BROKEN SWORD, the original text of which I finished rereading.
One way of understanding the ORESTEIA is that the plays show how the Greeks were trying to advance from handling crime/violence thru private vengeance and having the State take that over.
The ancient Jews went thru a similar process, many of the laws seen in Exodus and Deuteronomy, etc., makes sense as attempts to control crime/violence thru a system similar to that in Iceland before the Sturlung Age. But as Judges said with dry understating in 21.24: "...In those days there was no king in Israel, but everyone did that which seemed right to himself." The anarchy of the tribal confederacy ineluctably led to the rise of the monarchy under Saul and David.
Mr. Stirling: Absolutely! You can't show love and forgiveness to enemies implacably determined to kill you. Oft times we have no choice but to fight. Orthodox Christianity does not believe in suicide pacts.
Ad astra! Sean
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