<div>b sharp wrote: <br></div><blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"><pre>I'm pretty convinced that there has never been a Jesus on Urth (and that is<br>
a major underlying theme of the series). Hence the Norse name "Urth" and<br>the many allusions to pre-Christian gods and monsters ruling Urth long after <br>the equivalent time period of Jesus on Earth. The occasional reference to roods<br>
or Bible verses can be attributed to souvenirs brought from a more spiritually <br>advanced univiverse (Yesod?) to Briah by people (mostly Father Inire) able to <br>make such travels.</pre></blockquote><div><br>On the other hand, every citizen in the Commonwealth is named for a saint, and the legend of the martyrdom of St. Catherine is essentially the same. I'm convinced it's a post-Catholic culture. Jesus may have been forgotten, but many elements of Christianity remain. (There are also altars, candles, shewbread, etc.).<br>
<br><blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"><pre>I lean against accepting the SevN concept because I think iterations of Severian <br>
are finite- tied to the 5 coffins in Sev's mausoleum. Two of them open means <br>two have been released, with three more to go, if needed. Was Sev1 Ymar? or <br>Severian in a different time-line or universe (Abaddon?). </pre>
</blockquote><div><br>In my way of counting, every use of knowledge from the future to change the past produces another rewrite of Sev's history, and there is evidence for many such interventions in his life. I'd never heard that interpretation of the multiple coffins. It's an interesting speculation.<br>
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