<div dir="ltr">That section quotes Mt. Nebo and the Bible quite explicitly. Jonas quotes Lewis Caroll and knows the origin source of The Tale of the Student and his Son and as the labyrinth of Crete and the toll from Athens. Is everything going to happen exactly the same in these cycles save one thing? </div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 6:37 AM, Marc Aramini <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:marcaramini@gmail.com" target="_blank">marcaramini@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">What do you think of Robert and Marie and their Bible missionary work in the Jungle Hut? Cross-cyclic hijinks in the Botanic Gardens? No Christ in their bible? A trick of the mirrors? Meschia is a symbol of renewal and genesis but I suppose I don't take it literally - just a repopulating kind of new man (if he is a man) brought for Ushas - he is a symbol of new life transplanted. Urth also I think is a nice name for a world so ancient and old it is cloaked in antiquity and decrepit - nothing new has come yet. The autarch doubles as God in the play, too. The roles are kind of all meshed together. So while some parts are literally true, I don't think Meschia is actually an ancestor of that particular Autarch at all, he is just the first of the new wave.<div><div class="h5"><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 5:22 AM, Lee <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:severiansola@hotmail.com" target="_blank">severiansola@hotmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid">>Jeff Wilson: If he's in the correct cycle but in a much latter era,<br>
<br>
>then the son of Meschia not being born yet seems like a contradiction.<br>
<br>
>Cain needs to be born before the autarch, doesn't he, esp if he's the<br>
<br>
>firstborn of humanity?<br>
<br>
<br>
I agree. I find much in the text of BotNS to support the idea that Urth/<br>
<br>
Briah was originally intended as a previous iteration of our Earth. The<br>
<br>
very name "Urth" implies the past. If Severian's world were a future<br>
<br>
version of Earth, wouldn't Wolfe have chosen to name it "Skuld", for the<br>
<br>
Norn of the future. I am loathe to think Wolfe chose the name "Urth"<br>
<br>
soley for the funky spelling, ignoring the meaning.<br>
<br>
<br>
Moreover, everything about Urth says to me "pre-Christian" society. The<br>
<br>
giant pagan "gods" running about, the barbarism, the witchcraft, the<br>
<br>
absence of a salvation route, etc. There is a Jesus-like figure mentioned<br>
<br>
in Short Sun but why is he associated with a Dionysian God rather than a<br>
<br>
Jehovian God?<br>
<br>
<br>
Then there is Severian. Wolfe has said he is a "Christ-like" figure. Is he<br>
<br>
the Second Coming? The Third or Fourth? That just doesn't seem right to me.<br>
<br>
Severian seems more like an imperfect proto-Christ than a later version of<br>
<br>
him . Plus, like the pre-Christian gods, Severian ends up in a mini-pantheon<br>
<br>
of other (false?) gods like Odilo and Thais.<br>
<br>
<br>
To me, Urth is a socially, historically and technologically advanced version<br>
<br>
of Earth. But it is a spiritually stunted version which has only advanced to<br>
<br>
Earth's Noah level at the time of Severian. It makes more sense to me that<br>
<br>
Urth is a previous iteration of Earth than Urth having spiritually degenerated<br>
<br>
and all the progress which Jesus brought having been lost.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
>Marc Aramini: I think the insistence Urth is a previous iteration is a retcon<br>
<br>
>of the Jordan interview to avoid Prostestant wrath - he isn't going to meet<br>
>Cain in the next iteration.<br>
<br>
<br>
We must agree to disagree, Marc. In the same interview, Wolfe flatly states his<br>
<br>
belief that the pagan gods were real and the ancients were in fact building<br>
<br>
temples and worshipping beings that did truly exist. If Wolfe is going to commit<br>
<br>
such blasphemy in one part of the interview, why would he tiptoe around<br>
<br>
fundamentalist Protestantism to the point of retconning his own work in another<br>
<br>
part of the interview. Surely the reality of pagan gods is more heretical and<br>
<br>
offensive than the fictional depiction of God breaking his Covenant.<br>
<br>
<br>
(also, I don't think the concept of time, in years, has any meaning in regard to<br>
<br>
universal iterations. I think the idea is that time, as we know it, is reset to<br>
<br>
zero at the creation of a new universe.)<br>
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