(urth) Pantocrator

[David Stockhoff]

I enjoy the ambiguity of "all-powerful." 

Doesn't it also suggest "all-doing," as in an active (male, Sun, bright/look-at-me) aspect vs a passive (female, moon, dark/look-away-mortal) aspect? Certainly, if the Increate thought it cricket to just make good things happen, s/he would have done so. But s/he uses sentient beings as pawns and miracleworkers.

And the conflation with pankratiast may be more fertile than I first thought. What if the Increate were literally willing to do anything to achieve his aims? Might s/he not: (1) drown everyone on Earth but for a single family? (2) give his only begotten son? (3) use aliens and torturers and oceandwelling giants at apparent cross-purposes?
(Maybe the Increate was pretty desperate by this time in Urth's history.)

Just thinking.


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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 13:25:48 -0500
From: "Mark Millman" <markjmillman at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Pantocrator
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
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	<c873c2920812041025l105524f3hc7c5c1c71c9003ed at mail.gmail.com>
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Dear Mr. Watkins and Son of Witz,

Actually, the _Lexicon Urthus_ definition of pantocrator is taken
almost verbatim from Wolfe's own glossary entry for it in _The Castle
of the Otter_ (page 28), so it shows what he was thinking when he used
it.

The etymology is as Son of Witz cites in his posts:  from _pant-_,
meaning all--it's a combining form of _pan_--and _-kratia_, rule or
ruler, as in "aristocrat", "kleptocracy", and "thalassocrat", deriving
from _kratos_, strength or power.  However, the _Encyclopedia of the
Middle Ages_ (page 1077) says of it:

"Etymologically, the Greek word "pantocrator" means "all-ruler".  It
was used regularly in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew
_Sabaoth_, an attribute of Jahweh.  When the Christian profession of
faith was formulated in Greek, the term _pantocrator_ was applied to
*G-d the Father, but translated into Latin as _omnipotens_.  Thus
pantocrator was taken to mean all-powerful rather than all-ruler.  In
spite of its etymology, this would also seem to be the word's meaning
in Byzantine Greek.  Omnipotence was also attributed to the *Holy
Spirit, but more particluarly to God the Son who, as it were, usurped
the attribute, so that by the 12th c. it was applied to *Christ almost
exclusively."

Wolfe's own definition, as Mr. Watkins points out, does seem to have
been influenced by a confusion with pankration or pankratiast,
possibly abetted by the Latin and Byzantine understandings of the
word.

Sometimes, Jupiter nods.

Best,

Mark Millman


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