(urth) The Wizard

[Nick Lee]

>
>
>  Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
> I didn?t refer to the cross.  I referred to the *Sign* of the Cross.
>
> The original signing of the cross was done on the forehead, and
Christianity might have learned the practice from Mithraism. This is
sketchy stuff, honestly, but Wolfe is not known to follow the mainstream in
his presentation of history.



Prayer beads and knotted cords etc. existed before Christianity.  Silk?s
> beads, however, have a cross and the beads come in decades.  Do Mithraic
> beads have the same characteristics.
>

I'm sorry.  I did not mean to suggest that mithraists used rosaries. I was
referring to the Far East. Rosaries are adapted from malas. Yes, they are
organized in groups of ten in some faiths. As a side note, can you make out
how many beads are on Silk's rosary from the text? The figure I come up
with doesn't make any sense.


> Certainly.  But do you accept that Islam at least must have existed in
> Urth?s past?  If so, it is hard to imagine a history that would have
> produced Islam but not Christianity.
>

I see no evidence of Islam, per se. As was already pointed out, "Allah"
predates Islam. Something like Islam may have arisen as well, but I don't
see it as strictly necessary. There is no mention of most of human history
in the Sun books, and what we do get is sometimes different. There is no
mention any nations we would recognize, and the stories were receive of the
past are always patchworks.

This discussion is complicated partly because the Sun universe is a
developing one, and Wolfe may have had different ideas when he was writing
New Sun from when he wrote Long Sun. For example, while I hold that
Dionysus is important in later works, I don't see him explicitly referenced
in New Sun.


>
> Why should it be so?  Are we given any indications whatsoever Besides, if
> such visions can come from the future, clearly the Incarnation has some
> potency in Silk?s universe anyway.
>

I think I agree with what you're saying. As for why it should be so, it is
because I find this interpretation more interesting.


Furthermore, that is only one reference to Jesus Christ.  Consider the
> following (a pretty clear reference to the scourging of the moneylenders):
> ?Remind them that the Outsider was known to esteem them last among men
> already, that according to the Writings he had once (having possessed and
> enlightened a fortunate man) beaten them severely in person.?
>
> That doesn?t come from Silk?s enlightenment.  It comes straight from the
> Chrasmological Writings.  It comes, therefore, from Urth?s past.
>

And the Book of Nehemiah, which predates the NT.

I don't dispute that a religion like Christianity existed on Urth. Indeed,
many religions like Christianity exist and have existed on Earth.
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