(urth) (no subject)

[Gerry Quinn]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Stockhoff" <dstockhoff at verizon.net>

>I thought you wanted to argue from the text. You're arguing from Gerry's 
>gut now.
>
> Christ is plainly NOT in the story. And this makes sense if we accept, as 
> we have been told, that Urth is in a previous iteration, and Severian 
> lives in the far future of that iteration (from our perspective).
>
> Christ will come in a future iteration, and these are all signs of his 
> coming, just as the light from Apollo's face presaged it in our own part 
> of the cycle.

What you seem to be saying here is that this iteration features a Jesus who 
is not Christ, although he acts and spoke as Christ did.  And since we have 
heard of Allah, presumably there is there is a Mohammed, and he has pointed 
to the Increate. Mohammed may have been functionally identical to that of 
our iteration, just like the Apollo astronauts.  In fact most things seem to 
have been identical.  The Increate is present, and rules over all 
iterations.

The fundamental difference is that Jesus was not Christ, and therefore the 
inhabitants of this universe, stuck with a dud Jesus, must make do with 
Dionysus, who somehow prefigures Christ better than other deities - is that 
a valid summary of what you are saying?

Here are some reasons that spring to mind for doubting it:

(1) Why should there not be an Incarnation in more than one iteration of the 
universe?

(2) Who is Jesus in this universe - and what happens him in ours?

(3) What's the big deal about Dionysus?  He has a few symbols in common with 
Christ, but not much else. He doesn't really seem to be any kind of 
proto-Christ.

(4) It's a SF seriese, not the foundational text of a new religion.

- Gerry Quinn


> On 12/16/2010 2:05 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>>
>> Wolfe has himself called Severian "a Christian figure".  But it was Jesus 
>> I said was in the story, which quite clearly *is* the case.  That is 
>> beside the point; it is always a leap to assume that absence of evidence 
>> constitutes evidence of absence.
>>
>> But certainly, let us assess these ideas in terms of what the text says.
>>
>> - Gerry Quinn