(urth) Aside on Christ figures in TBotNS

[Son of Witz]

Yeah, I see the correspondence.
In that view Yaweh must be an archangel or something. not exactly. he's the aborted offspring of Sophia, if I remember right.  But either way, he's in a category far above humanity, which from our perspective is very hard to differentiate the levels of ontology.


Parody has come up in this discussion of Christ in BoTNS, and I don't think it's unfair, but I don't think it deflates the lofty things either.  I find UotNS practically hilarious. it is parody, and slapstick. More and more I seem to be of the opinion that UoTNS is truly a sequel to, and not a part of BoTNS.  BoTNS is very much "Is he the messiah"  UoTNS is more "he's the "Messiah" but what does that mean? who's Messiah? and to what ends?"  That Severian ends up as a "petty god", as (I believe it was) Roy put it, is both funny, and well deserved. dude's been through the wringer, been manipulated to the ends of time, and now he gets to rest and live it up a bit in the fruits of his labor.





>From: Jordon Flato [mailto:jordonflato at gmail.com]

>Sure, I'll grant there is a correspondance there.   Hell, I've been arguing
>for the Christ correspondences while saying it's not a precise fit, so I
>can't really buck this one!
>
>Somehow, though, I've always felt that Tzadkiel and the rest were more the
>higher angelic heirarchy.  Especially with the biblical notion that Man is
>higher than the Angels, and the BotNS idea that The Hierogrammates lift up
>man so they will resemble the Hierogrammates creators (who were, thus,
>higher than them).
>
>On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 7:56 AM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:
>
>> Jordon & Witz---
>>
>> It doesn't work perfectly for exactly those reasons. However, the pattern
>> is so clear I don't think it can be denied.
>>
>> Also, for me there is little difference between Yahweh saying he is the
>> Utmost and humans thinking he is, not realizing he is simply a sun god and
>> that a bigger God lies above and behind him. This is partly because humans
>> lie and make things up about their gods, and partly because the universe of
>> TBotNS is, in a way. a Catholic universe with all the flesh stripped away to
>> reveal the bones, like a postmodern building. It is generally rational and
>> rationalized, relatively speaking. It has to "make sense" regardless of our
>> existing religious beliefs, which will never perfectly apply.
>>
>> If Tzadkiel had been an evil or foolish Demiurge (Abaia and his brothers
>> seem to want to fill that slot), it would have been a very different story.
>>
>