Gawdzilla Sama
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eight bits
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Hans
I can see three possible purposes for telling a story about a supernatural being:
* To change the listener's confidence in the being,
* To change what the listener believes about the being,
* To use the already known stock features of the being to drive a plot forward
Zeus turning into a shower of gold during "once-upon-a" time uses the known features of Zeus, a randy guy who likes Earth women and isn't constrained by physics, to move the story along. The pay-off is social, psychological and entertainment value. There's no miracle here, it's Zeus being a stock character, doing what he likes to do. No belief change occurs, nor is any invited.
Now, Jupiter and Mercury come to town sometime in the mid First Century and cure some guy, as Paul and Barnabas are mistaken for the gods doing in Acts. That's a miracle, and this miracle makes Paul and Barnabas more credible when they say that long-dead Jesus continues to participate in time and space, 'cause Jesus did the healing, not them and not those gods.
Then there's Jesus' mother never had sex. Well, that's new, for a woman, and it's constraint-violating only for a woman. Its narrative purpose is to change what the listener believes about Jesus, cutting against the impression that he was religiously special only as a middle-aged (for the time) man. That's a common problem in charismatic religious leaders, of course.
Does this story enhance anyone's confidence in Jesus? Well, how could the person telling this story know any such thing? That a dead (or at least currently off-planet) woman never had sex? - and her having had a child doesn't count toward the answer?
It must be something revealed to the storyteller by God, or something he believes by some grace of discernment. In other words, telling the story reliably would be as much of a miracle as what the story tells. For the story to have any positive effect on belief at all, then, I'd need to be presold on God & Son as miracle workers. This story shapes the content of belief, not confidence that the belief is correct.
So, bottom line. There's no point telling a god story if there isn't going to be some supernatural goings on. But not all supernatural goings on violate natural constraints, because gods and Never-never Land have no natural constraints to violate. That's why I reserve term "miracles" for space and time, where natural constraints do bind. Violating them is what puts the "super" in the supernatural. Still, not at all miracle stories are directed toward changing confidence of belief. Some are directed toward changing content of belief, or both content and confidence.
Treating all stories which feature any would-be natural constraint violation indiscriminately as instances of a single-purpose "miracle" genre loses the power to make distinctions that are crucial for comparing religions. What kinds of story are told and for what reasons is something that distinguishes among religions.
Immaculate conception is an interesting example. Now that is something God is supposed to have done in Never-never Land. However, since the leading alternative view is that everybody is immaculately conceived (as is very emphatically taught by the Eastern Orthodox), for all the Roman bluster, the doctrine doesn't come down to much. A splash of water and a twenty-five word-or-less prayer renders anybody as "spotless" as Mary, as soon after birth as you could want. You don't even need to hire an ordained priest.
Anyway, a content shaper, not a confidence changer.
I can see three possible purposes for telling a story about a supernatural being:
* To change the listener's confidence in the being,
* To change what the listener believes about the being,
* To use the already known stock features of the being to drive a plot forward
Zeus turning into a shower of gold during "once-upon-a" time uses the known features of Zeus, a randy guy who likes Earth women and isn't constrained by physics, to move the story along. The pay-off is social, psychological and entertainment value. There's no miracle here, it's Zeus being a stock character, doing what he likes to do. No belief change occurs, nor is any invited.
Now, Jupiter and Mercury come to town sometime in the mid First Century and cure some guy, as Paul and Barnabas are mistaken for the gods doing in Acts. That's a miracle, and this miracle makes Paul and Barnabas more credible when they say that long-dead Jesus continues to participate in time and space, 'cause Jesus did the healing, not them and not those gods.
Then there's Jesus' mother never had sex. Well, that's new, for a woman, and it's constraint-violating only for a woman. Its narrative purpose is to change what the listener believes about Jesus, cutting against the impression that he was religiously special only as a middle-aged (for the time) man. That's a common problem in charismatic religious leaders, of course.
Does this story enhance anyone's confidence in Jesus? Well, how could the person telling this story know any such thing? That a dead (or at least currently off-planet) woman never had sex? - and her having had a child doesn't count toward the answer?
It must be something revealed to the storyteller by God, or something he believes by some grace of discernment. In other words, telling the story reliably would be as much of a miracle as what the story tells. For the story to have any positive effect on belief at all, then, I'd need to be presold on God & Son as miracle workers. This story shapes the content of belief, not confidence that the belief is correct.
So, bottom line. There's no point telling a god story if there isn't going to be some supernatural goings on. But not all supernatural goings on violate natural constraints, because gods and Never-never Land have no natural constraints to violate. That's why I reserve term "miracles" for space and time, where natural constraints do bind. Violating them is what puts the "super" in the supernatural. Still, not at all miracle stories are directed toward changing confidence of belief. Some are directed toward changing content of belief, or both content and confidence.
Treating all stories which feature any would-be natural constraint violation indiscriminately as instances of a single-purpose "miracle" genre loses the power to make distinctions that are crucial for comparing religions. What kinds of story are told and for what reasons is something that distinguishes among religions.
Immaculate conception is an interesting example. Now that is something God is supposed to have done in Never-never Land. However, since the leading alternative view is that everybody is immaculately conceived (as is very emphatically taught by the Eastern Orthodox), for all the Roman bluster, the doctrine doesn't come down to much. A splash of water and a twenty-five word-or-less prayer renders anybody as "spotless" as Mary, as soon after birth as you could want. You don't even need to hire an ordained priest.
Anyway, a content shaper, not a confidence changer.
There are many other reasons: Euhemerism, teach a lesson, reinforce, culture belief, explanations for why things are the way they are, etc.
HansMustermann
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Plus, let's not forget one sub-category: claim to hereditary privileges and greatness. People, families, royal dynasties, even whole cities, etc, quite often made a big thing out of being descendants of some god by way of some ancestress.
E.g., sure, Danae and Zeus were for SOME people just characters to use in some plays. But actually by what we know, it seems that their descendant, Perseus, was generally taken as a real historical figure, and a founder of Mycenae. There was a whole dynasty of rulers of Mycenae who traced a part of their right to rule to being the descendants of Zeus and Danae.
Even when they were supplanted by the Heraclid dynasty -- or at least so the legend goes -- those too claimed to be descendants of Perseus, and thus of Zeus and Danae. PLUS they added an extra boning by Zeus down the line, essentially making themselves the line that had more Zeus blood in them.
That's not just a literary device to keep things interesting, but essentially a claim to have a divine right to rule. Which was also probably taken fairly literally, at least by those claiming such right to rule or just national identity. It's not much of a claim to demigod status, unless it's a literal claim to demigod status.
E.g., sure, Danae and Zeus were for SOME people just characters to use in some plays. But actually by what we know, it seems that their descendant, Perseus, was generally taken as a real historical figure, and a founder of Mycenae. There was a whole dynasty of rulers of Mycenae who traced a part of their right to rule to being the descendants of Zeus and Danae.
Even when they were supplanted by the Heraclid dynasty -- or at least so the legend goes -- those too claimed to be descendants of Perseus, and thus of Zeus and Danae. PLUS they added an extra boning by Zeus down the line, essentially making themselves the line that had more Zeus blood in them.
That's not just a literary device to keep things interesting, but essentially a claim to have a divine right to rule. Which was also probably taken fairly literally, at least by those claiming such right to rule or just national identity. It's not much of a claim to demigod status, unless it's a literal claim to demigod status.
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eight bits
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max
No doubt. In the worked example illustrating reason three, which you snipped, I mentioned that this third function furnished "social, psychological and entertainment value." That covers most of your proposal, I think.
The bulleted categories were chosen to be intentionally broad and to emphasize the possible roles of such stories in belief change, a focus of the conversation up to that point. A three-way cut at such a high level of generality doesn't exclude other, finer grained partitions.
For example, among the things that stories may change in what the listener believes about a supernatural being is:
Hans
Yes, it's good to have a god for an ancestor. Look what it did for Jesus.
No doubt. In the worked example illustrating reason three, which you snipped, I mentioned that this third function furnished "social, psychological and entertainment value." That covers most of your proposal, I think.
The bulleted categories were chosen to be intentionally broad and to emphasize the possible roles of such stories in belief change, a focus of the conversation up to that point. A three-way cut at such a high level of generality doesn't exclude other, finer grained partitions.
For example, among the things that stories may change in what the listener believes about a supernatural being is:
Hans
Yes, it's good to have a god for an ancestor. Look what it did for Jesus.
How did the DSS contribute to the developing Christian theology from ca 33 CE and the time of Constantine?
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Take a good look at what you said--
I can see three possible purposes for telling a story about a supernatural being:
* To change the listener's confidence in the being,
* To change what the listener believes about the being,
* To use the already known stock features of the being to drive a plot forward
They are not three general categories but rather three somewhat limited ones.
Compare those to the categories Bulfinch gives in the "Origin of Mythology" chapter of Bulfinch's Mythology (these are direct quotes BTW):
The Scriptural theory; according to which all mythological legends are derived from the narratives of Scriptures, though the real facts have been disguised and altered.
The Historical theory; according to which all the persons mentioned in mythology were once real human beings, and the legends and fabulous traditions relating to them are merely the additions and embellishments of later times.
The Allegorical theory supposes that all the myths of the ancients were allegorical and symbolical, and contained some moral, religious, or philosophical truth or historical fact, under the form of an allegory, but came in process of time to be understood literally.
The Physical theory; according to which the elements of air, fire, and water were originally the objects of religious adoration, and the principal deities were personifications of the powers of nature.
All the theories which have been mentioned are true to a certain extent. It would therefore be more correct to say that the mythology of a nation has sprung from all these sources combined than from any one in particular. We may add also that there are many myths which have arisen from the desire of man to account for those natural phenomena which he cannot understand; and not a few have had their rise from a similar desire of giving a reason for the names of places and persons.
Your point three is almost on par with Deus ex machina--generally regarded as the worse way to fix the corner the author has written themselves into.
Furthermore there is nothing really in your list that would include myths such as Robin Hood or King Arthur. In the first the supernatural (as opposed to super human) is nil and even in the most flamboyant versions of the second the supernatural is so down played that is doesn't even qualify as a plot device (the Grail is nothing more than a McGuffin)
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That's an interesting way of looking at it, max, and I thank you for sharing your perspective on it. Nevertheless, it is simply a fact that the partition I proposed doesn't exclude other partitions, either finer-grained or coarser-grained (for example, a dichotomy). In particular, my proposal says nothing at all about the partition you seem to prefer, neither for nor against. So, if you like your partition better, then by all means, embrace it with my blessing.
It was especially shrewd of you to notice that my partition doesn't cover tales of Robin Hood or King Arthur. That is because the scope of what I was partitioning was "possible purposes for telling a story about a supernatural being." Neither Robin nor Arthur are supernatural beings. If in some particular story or incident about one of them, a supernatural agent appeared, then we might inquire about what the storyteller's intention was in telling us about that agent.
Notice that that is a different question from why the storyteller is telling the larger story at all, or why the storyteller has chosen to include the kind of incident where a supernatural agent might serve. Those are great questions, but not the issues I was talking about with Hans.
So, is The Lady of the Lake supernatural? Yes, I think she is. Is she included to change the listener's confidence that such a being exists? I don't think so. Is she included to change what the listener believes about her? No, I don't the think the storyteller is addressing the listener's beliefs in either sense. Is she included to drive the plot forward, based on her being an instance of a stock character? Why yes, she is a threshold guardian and a keeper of a magical weapon, and she does show up at crucial junctures in the narrative to perform her guardian-keeper functions.
Obviously, that's not the only thing that anybody might ever want to say about her, but it does account for her presence, and does so within the kind of framework that Hans and I were talking about. No doubt, if I were discussing Arthur in general or The Lady of the Lake in particular with Bulfinch, then we might find ourselves mulling over other concerns. Rightly so.
HansMustermann
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Actually, I can't speak for Maximara, of course, but MY objection would be that your partition simply doesn't cover the whole domain, or not to any meaningful extent. At some point or another you have to -- and IMHO you already do -- lock onto secondary aspects instead of the main point, just to make it fit that classification.
E.g., sure, technically the lady of the lake, or Zeus, or even YHWH, are just driving the plot forward, but that's not really the main point of having them there.
Yes, the Lady Of The Lake episode is not there to boost confidence in the Lady Of The Lake. It's to bolster confidence in Arthur's greatness. Locking onto the entirely secondary aspect that it's also a plot element, is to miss the point.
The aspect that such supernatural elements are used to bolster a character, be it Arthur or Jesus, is the relevant thing in such a discussion. A partition where you have to ignore that and just have to go with its technically being part of some plot is at best irrelevant.
Plus, it's not even all that much of a partitioning, since there is too much overlap. Just about anything involved in any mythical story is a plot element, i.e., your category 3 is overlapping most of categories 1 and 2. It looks to me more like a nearly orthogonal set of coordinates than a partition.
But to illustrate the overlap:
- Revelation most definitely was used to boost confidence in Jesus, and change what some people thought about Jesus (see for example those threatening messages to those churches who apparently didn't do it right), but it also uses existing attributes and expectations about Jesus to create and drive a plot (lame as that plot may be.)
- And not just about Jesus. It clearly changes the Antichrist for example from just anyone who is against Christ or leaves the church, to a single supernatural being. It seems to me like it qualifies for your category 2, and arguably for category 1 too, yet the Antichrist and the expectation of somehow being, you know, anti-Christ, drive a plot forward too. I.e., it fits category 3 too.
- most of Jesus's miracles and parables in the gospels, are again very much qualifying for #2 in that they tell you how to think of Jesus, and they most definitely are still used in sermons and whatnot towards end #1, but they're also a #3 in that they set up plots and drive them forward. E.g., Jesus's driving out demons in Mark 3 sets the stage for his being confronted as possessed by the devil and having his sanity questioned by his family, which in turn paves the way for his proclaiming that the followers are his real family on the same page. Maybe it's not the most trilling of plots, but the sub-stories in Mark nevertheless flow into each other like that.
E.g., sure, technically the lady of the lake, or Zeus, or even YHWH, are just driving the plot forward, but that's not really the main point of having them there.
Yes, the Lady Of The Lake episode is not there to boost confidence in the Lady Of The Lake. It's to bolster confidence in Arthur's greatness. Locking onto the entirely secondary aspect that it's also a plot element, is to miss the point.
The aspect that such supernatural elements are used to bolster a character, be it Arthur or Jesus, is the relevant thing in such a discussion. A partition where you have to ignore that and just have to go with its technically being part of some plot is at best irrelevant.
Plus, it's not even all that much of a partitioning, since there is too much overlap. Just about anything involved in any mythical story is a plot element, i.e., your category 3 is overlapping most of categories 1 and 2. It looks to me more like a nearly orthogonal set of coordinates than a partition.
But to illustrate the overlap:
- Revelation most definitely was used to boost confidence in Jesus, and change what some people thought about Jesus (see for example those threatening messages to those churches who apparently didn't do it right), but it also uses existing attributes and expectations about Jesus to create and drive a plot (lame as that plot may be.)
- And not just about Jesus. It clearly changes the Antichrist for example from just anyone who is against Christ or leaves the church, to a single supernatural being. It seems to me like it qualifies for your category 2, and arguably for category 1 too, yet the Antichrist and the expectation of somehow being, you know, anti-Christ, drive a plot forward too. I.e., it fits category 3 too.
- most of Jesus's miracles and parables in the gospels, are again very much qualifying for #2 in that they tell you how to think of Jesus, and they most definitely are still used in sermons and whatnot towards end #1, but they're also a #3 in that they set up plots and drive them forward. E.g., Jesus's driving out demons in Mark 3 sets the stage for his being confronted as possessed by the devil and having his sanity questioned by his family, which in turn paves the way for his proclaiming that the followers are his real family on the same page. Maybe it's not the most trilling of plots, but the sub-stories in Mark nevertheless flow into each other like that.
Actually the Lady of the Lake varies depending on the version of the Arthurian myth you are dealing with. In one version there are two Lady of the Lake-Viviane an ordinary women Merlin falls for and who later captures and is taught magic by him and Ninianne is the keeper of Excalibur.
Also if you look at many pagan myths magic is very low key...almost on par with what we call Low Fantasy. In stories where the gods themselves are the main characters it is almost like someone threw a switch and turned their supernatural abilities off. The Search of Isis for the Body of Osiris, Cupid and Psyche, Thor Visits the Giants, and several others are in this vein.
In fact it can be argued that in the earliest part of the OT the Christian God doesn't come off as all knowing or all powerful ie as limited as his pagan counterparts. It is only with Jesus that the all the stop so to speak seem to be pulled out.
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eight bits
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Hans
I didn't aspire to cover the whole domain of possible human expression in narrative form, so I think we're golden. You and I were discussing "miracle" stories, whether they ought to be viewed as a homogeneous genre, and especially what influence they might or might not all share on listeners' beliefs about supernatural personages.
It depends on the story. YHWH is supposed to be there in Moses' burning-but-unconsumed bush; that miracle is giving Moses proof of his existence, in order to influence Moses' beliefs, and so the reader's beliefs as well, both content and confidence. YHWH yammering on endlessly about the furniture and decorations of his someday temple? Not so much belief change, but the decor had to be somebody's bright idea, so YHWH obligingly covers the plot point, pettifogger that he is already well established to be.
But not confidence that he is a supernatural being, nor for that matter a historical person.
The Lady in the Lake hammers home the point that the magical weapon isn't his possession. Arthur becomes great because he does things that are hard for a man to do, even with a magical weapon. He turns tragic because he also does stupid things, and is ultimately redeemed by what he inspires other men to do.
In short, Arthur is a human being, no more and no less, and his story loses its force if he isn't a temporal man in full, warts and all.
As I pointed out to max, what was partitioned were "possible purposes for telling a story about a supernatural being." There is nothing whatsoever that limits how many purposes any one story might advance. If I were partitioning the stories, imputing some single purpose to each, then I'd be in trouble. But I wasn't.
Note also that category 3 isn't "advancing the plot," but doing so by using already established properties of the being. The storyteller doesn't have to use up bandwidth telling us why Zeus would think showering on his girlfriend was a good idea, or how come Zeus could do that, but the lady's husband couldn't become an umbrella. The story also "works" today just as well as ever, even though hardly anybody believes that Zeus exists.
Three, then, is a distinct purpose from the other two, the attempted belief-changing purposes. Advancement occurs because the reader already knows what to expect from the character, and the story advancement doesn't depend on the reader finding the backstory credible. However, if you like othogonality, then we could probably make a deal.
Agreed, but Revelation isn't a miracle story. It's a coded message about how an already held set of beliefs applies to then-current events. It is rebuttal to the idea that those current events, natural events, refute what the faithful have been taught about Jesus.
max
Hans and I were discussing the use of supernatural characters. That disambiguates the reference.
Yes, but I was the one suggesting differentiating between stories that take place outside of time, in order to confine "miracles" to violations of confidently held natural constraints. So, you're preaching to the choir here.
As to the last bit - maybe a thread will come along about how theology got abstracted from relatively concrete Biblical stories.
I didn't aspire to cover the whole domain of possible human expression in narrative form, so I think we're golden. You and I were discussing "miracle" stories, whether they ought to be viewed as a homogeneous genre, and especially what influence they might or might not all share on listeners' beliefs about supernatural personages.
It depends on the story. YHWH is supposed to be there in Moses' burning-but-unconsumed bush; that miracle is giving Moses proof of his existence, in order to influence Moses' beliefs, and so the reader's beliefs as well, both content and confidence. YHWH yammering on endlessly about the furniture and decorations of his someday temple? Not so much belief change, but the decor had to be somebody's bright idea, so YHWH obligingly covers the plot point, pettifogger that he is already well established to be.
But not confidence that he is a supernatural being, nor for that matter a historical person.
The Lady in the Lake hammers home the point that the magical weapon isn't his possession. Arthur becomes great because he does things that are hard for a man to do, even with a magical weapon. He turns tragic because he also does stupid things, and is ultimately redeemed by what he inspires other men to do.
In short, Arthur is a human being, no more and no less, and his story loses its force if he isn't a temporal man in full, warts and all.
As I pointed out to max, what was partitioned were "possible purposes for telling a story about a supernatural being." There is nothing whatsoever that limits how many purposes any one story might advance. If I were partitioning the stories, imputing some single purpose to each, then I'd be in trouble. But I wasn't.
Note also that category 3 isn't "advancing the plot," but doing so by using already established properties of the being. The storyteller doesn't have to use up bandwidth telling us why Zeus would think showering on his girlfriend was a good idea, or how come Zeus could do that, but the lady's husband couldn't become an umbrella. The story also "works" today just as well as ever, even though hardly anybody believes that Zeus exists.
Three, then, is a distinct purpose from the other two, the attempted belief-changing purposes. Advancement occurs because the reader already knows what to expect from the character, and the story advancement doesn't depend on the reader finding the backstory credible. However, if you like othogonality, then we could probably make a deal.
Agreed, but Revelation isn't a miracle story. It's a coded message about how an already held set of beliefs applies to then-current events. It is rebuttal to the idea that those current events, natural events, refute what the faithful have been taught about Jesus.
max
Hans and I were discussing the use of supernatural characters. That disambiguates the reference.
Yes, but I was the one suggesting differentiating between stories that take place outside of time, in order to confine "miracles" to violations of confidently held natural constraints. So, you're preaching to the choir here.
As to the last bit - maybe a thread will come along about how theology got abstracted from relatively concrete Biblical stories.
HansMustermann
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A. Well, you undoubtedly know better than I do that polytheists weren't really competing with each other for whose god is more true than the others' god. Even when the domains overlapped, they would rather assimilate, say, Thoth with Hermes, than argue whether Thoth is real and Hermes is fake or viceversa. Or further back in time, they'd rather assimilate Inanna with Ishtar than have an argument about it.
I would propose that that's half of the explanation why such a miracle arms race was not necessary for polytheists. They simply never had to out-miracle another deity.
Monotheism was basically what happened when one group stopped being nice about it. And if flows naturally into doing the schoolboy "my dad is stronger than your dad" argument instead. And sure enough that requires one to invent all sorts of stuff for why and in what way your dad is better than everyone else's.
B. The second half of it, IMHO, is the MCI (Minimally Counter-Intuitive) factor. Stories are more remembered if they're almost natural, but contain a minimal amount (usually just one) "counter-intuitive" element. Counter-intuitive meaning basically "unnatural" or "going against all that you know about that thing" in that context.
Basically, consider that I were to tell you the following stories:
1. A perfectly intuitive (i.e., natural) one would be for example, about seeing a normal cow grazing and mooing
2. An intuitive but bizarre story would be, for example, about a cow someone painted blue and wrote Milka on the side. It has nothing supernatural, you have no problem imagining how it happened, but it's not quite your average normal story either.
3. An MCI story would be, for example, about a cow that talks, like in Aesop's fables
4. A maximally counter-intuitive story is one which is seriously heavy on the unnatural stuff, for example, about a super-powered cow that talks, flies, teleports, can turn invisible, and shoots laser beams out its udders.
In studies repeatedly after 1 hour, the perfectly intuitive one is the most remembered. After a week, number 3, the MCI is the most remembered. The maximally counter-intuitive story gets distorted into something more manageable.
On the other hand, at any interval, the most believed is #1, followed by #2, then #3, and #4 generally is the least believed by far.
In fact, there is a conjecture and computational model to support it, that basically storing and filing X as an Y with the extra non-trivial property Z, may well be how the brain processes and files information. In fact, that it may well be the best way to do it.
Well, I would humbly submit that over-the-top monotheism tends to produce stories that cross into maximally counter-intuitive domain. And show all signs of distortion that come with that domain. E.g., while a god that is just one of omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent would be MCI, when you have all 3, you get distortions. E.g., people start to effectively imagine that god being in just one place at a time, or can do one thing at a time (even if very fast.) Think of all those rationalizations where God couldn't save a kid here because he had to save someone else over there. That's what I'm talking about. You end up with the story having to be broken up and distorted into MCI not just because of philosophical theodicy considerations, but basically as a fundamental problem of the human brain.
Basically if you don't have the necessity for your god to be more over-the-top than all other gods combined, and there is no enforcing a particular version of the story, the polytheists' stories naturally get to be MCI stories. That's the kind of stories that out-compete both mundane and maximally counter-intuitive ones. A story where Zeus (or Ra, or Odin, or whoever) is just a guy, plus one unnatural twist, are naturally more remembered AND more believed than stories where he has a dozen unnatural twists.
So, yes, the polytheists' stuff will not be half as over-the-top.
It's only when you go monotheist and HAVE to have a God that out-gods all others, that basically you have to go maximally counter-intuitive... and end up having to deal with the resulting proliferation of distortions.
Except as documented by Carrier's Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: A Look into the World of the Gospels (1997) there is a fundamental problem with that idea- the world at the time was "filled with 'cheats and deceivers claiming divine inspiration'" and "Miracles were also a dime a dozen in this era."
More over to explain Apollonius of Tyana (the "pagan Christ") Eusebius in the 4th century used trickery and demons seeming to ignore the fact that the same could be applied to Jesus himself.
Furthermore the Bible when you really get down to it doesn't reflect this God that out-gods all others idea even if you count Revelation. To paraphrase William Shatner here 'Why does God need an army?' (Revelation 19:14)
If anything you would expect an all powerful god to be like the "The Brown Hornet" segments in the The New Fat Albert Show where he escapes 'using his superpowers' (sometimes with no visual clues on how he does this).
Also you wind up with what I like to call the Superman Syndrome where thanks to the way his powers had grown during the Silver Age you had to ask why did his world (and himself) have so many problems?
HansMustermann
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Well, not sure where the "except" comes in, because I'm pretty sure I didn't deny all that.
1. The world has ALWAYS been full of quacks claiming some kind or another of superpower or divine help, so I most certainly will not tell you that the first centuries of the CE lacked them. But as you say yourself, most of the polytheist stories tend to be somewhat lower on a miracles scale.
Now that's not to say that exceptions didn't exist that went for the maximum counter-intuitive version, and Apollonius of Tyana is a good example. But... have you noticed how his cult imploded instead of spreading? Maximally counter-intuitive stories get distorted within weeks. I think you need someone, some kind of Paul to do all the firefighting to stomp the heresies and keep it coherent. Is all I'm saying.
And, of course, it doesn't mean Jesus was the real article either, also because...
2. I don't need any demons and tricks to explain either Apollonius of Tyana or Jesus or for that matter John Frum. Some people told stories about a Jesus or a John Frum, and other people believed them, because they were the kind of stories they wanted to hear.
You don't actually need some stage magician performance to convince person X, when person X wasn't there and has no way to check out if the performance actually existed. Person X as one of those ancient crazy cultists had no way and usually no inclination to check whether Jesus actually walked on water, or if Apollonius of Tyana actually teleported out of a court. So why bother staging such a trick, when you can just make up a story where it happened?
3. "The God that out-gods all other gods" was not intended in the sense of it all actually making any coherent sense as the behaviour of a God who is actually omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. Of course it doesn't add up to THAT. It was just supposed to mean, "the God whose followers claimed more miracles and miraculous attributes for him than the followers of any other God."
Sure, Kirk could ask "why does God need a starship?" but those religions were not made by or for people like Kirk. At least in Christianity's case, it was told to a lot of illiterate slaves and poor people, who just wanted more miracles to show that their God is the greatest.
Look, I'm glad that you brought up Superman, because it's exactly an illustration of what I'm trying to say about "the God that out-gods all other gods". Think of two fanboys of different superheroes arguing which superhero could beat up the other. E.g., could Superman beat up Thor? Or could The Punisher defeat Batman? Bear with me. What do such debates boil down to? Well, which one has the most superpowers. It doesn't matter whether they make sense, or whether the world they live in actually reflects that. (In fact, superhero worlds tend to be complete dystopias.) What matters is whose arsenal of superpowers is the biggest. And if one particular fanboy wants to maintain that one hero is tougher than everyone else, and is the only true hero... well, then that hero better be able to out-miracle all other heroes. That's what I'm saying happens to gods, when you go monotheistic.
That's not to say that any of those miracles are unique. (I don't think those crazy ancient cultists were that creative.) Just that while god X may have claimed miracles A, B and C, and god Y may have claimed miracles D, E and F, when you go monotheist you pretty much have to claim them all.
1. The world has ALWAYS been full of quacks claiming some kind or another of superpower or divine help, so I most certainly will not tell you that the first centuries of the CE lacked them. But as you say yourself, most of the polytheist stories tend to be somewhat lower on a miracles scale.
Now that's not to say that exceptions didn't exist that went for the maximum counter-intuitive version, and Apollonius of Tyana is a good example. But... have you noticed how his cult imploded instead of spreading? Maximally counter-intuitive stories get distorted within weeks. I think you need someone, some kind of Paul to do all the firefighting to stomp the heresies and keep it coherent. Is all I'm saying.
And, of course, it doesn't mean Jesus was the real article either, also because...
2. I don't need any demons and tricks to explain either Apollonius of Tyana or Jesus or for that matter John Frum. Some people told stories about a Jesus or a John Frum, and other people believed them, because they were the kind of stories they wanted to hear.
You don't actually need some stage magician performance to convince person X, when person X wasn't there and has no way to check out if the performance actually existed. Person X as one of those ancient crazy cultists had no way and usually no inclination to check whether Jesus actually walked on water, or if Apollonius of Tyana actually teleported out of a court. So why bother staging such a trick, when you can just make up a story where it happened?
3. "The God that out-gods all other gods" was not intended in the sense of it all actually making any coherent sense as the behaviour of a God who is actually omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. Of course it doesn't add up to THAT. It was just supposed to mean, "the God whose followers claimed more miracles and miraculous attributes for him than the followers of any other God."
Sure, Kirk could ask "why does God need a starship?" but those religions were not made by or for people like Kirk. At least in Christianity's case, it was told to a lot of illiterate slaves and poor people, who just wanted more miracles to show that their God is the greatest.
Look, I'm glad that you brought up Superman, because it's exactly an illustration of what I'm trying to say about "the God that out-gods all other gods". Think of two fanboys of different superheroes arguing which superhero could beat up the other. E.g., could Superman beat up Thor? Or could The Punisher defeat Batman? Bear with me. What do such debates boil down to? Well, which one has the most superpowers. It doesn't matter whether they make sense, or whether the world they live in actually reflects that. (In fact, superhero worlds tend to be complete dystopias.) What matters is whose arsenal of superpowers is the biggest. And if one particular fanboy wants to maintain that one hero is tougher than everyone else, and is the only true hero... well, then that hero better be able to out-miracle all other heroes. That's what I'm saying happens to gods, when you go monotheistic.
That's not to say that any of those miracles are unique. (I don't think those crazy ancient cultists were that creative.) Just that while god X may have claimed miracles A, B and C, and god Y may have claimed miracles D, E and F, when you go monotheist you pretty much have to claim them all.
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Actually the Apollonius of Tyana cult didn't implode...it was used by Hierocles c303 CE in the persecution of Christians saying that Jesus was an inferior copy of Apollonius of Tyana and about thirty years early a vision by Emperor Aurelian regarding Apollonius of Tyana supposedly saved a city.
The idea of Jesus being a living miracle machine being a problem might explain Irenaeus' attempt at claiming Jesus' ministry lasted for decades--making him seem more "human" and more approachable.
Also you can argue that technically speaking Christianity is not truly monotheistic (Satan is refereed to as the 'god' of this world and there hints in the OT of other gods being out and about).
I disagree that superhero worlds tend to be complete dystopias...that is a very recent situation. Over the 75 years since the superhero became a genre in of itself the worlds portrayed (especially in the Silver Age c1955-c1970) tended toward saccharine--effectively a Norman Rockwell world as told by Barney the Dinosaur.
Interestingly there is an battle between Jesus and some Pagan gods in a comic (The Godyssey #1). It turns out to be a dream but that doesn't make the What the...? effect any less.
HansMustermann
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1. And yet by the third century, Philostratus is one of the few that has any interest in him any more, and his main source, Damis, may well have been a forgery itself. The account of Apollonius's travels to India sure seems to conflict with just about everything we know about it for example. There just doesn't seem to be anything near the multitude of gospels and accounts that Jesus had, fictional as they may be.
Doesn't sound to me like much of a cult to me, even compared to the slow start of early Christianity.
2. The idea of Jesus being THAT big a miracle machine AND a complete Black Hole Sue AND basically trying to both have his cake and eat it (e.g., he warns not to judge, yet he judges others; he warns against calling your brother names, yet he foams at the mouth with invectives at the Pharisees; he condemns people denying their parents and the Pharisees for allowing that, yet he does just that to his, etc)... yeah, it's a problem from all sorts of angles. It really is.
The one I was getting at, though, is that it's IMHO too over the top for basic human psychology. It's the kind of story that, in its whole, you can't really file anywhere. Everyone creates their own distortion, cherrypicking what to keep and what to discard, even just to fit any of it in their head. And sure enough, once people stopped burning each other at the stake over exactly what they believe, we got thousands of sects and probably very few members of any sect even know or agree with everything their sect believes.
3. Well, the superhero thing is really a detour, but... I dunno, I'd hardly call worlds where villains roam free and innocents get caught in the crossfire all the time an utopia or saccharine. If I'm to pick a trope that describes it, I'd more like go with Crapsaccharine World. That is something which looks shiny-happy on the surface, but is rotten and dysfunctional underneath, and to say the least you wouldn't really want to live there if you think about it deeply enough. If you're a civilian, chances are you'll be caught in whatever incident happens each week, and even if you're a hero, chances are you'll have your gf/bf or family members or friends hunted down and you yourself will be attacked with all sorts of stuff tuned specifically to bypass YOUR defenses.
But, as I was saying, that was just an aside. If you like those worlds, more power to you
Doesn't sound to me like much of a cult to me, even compared to the slow start of early Christianity.
2. The idea of Jesus being THAT big a miracle machine AND a complete Black Hole Sue AND basically trying to both have his cake and eat it (e.g., he warns not to judge, yet he judges others; he warns against calling your brother names, yet he foams at the mouth with invectives at the Pharisees; he condemns people denying their parents and the Pharisees for allowing that, yet he does just that to his, etc)... yeah, it's a problem from all sorts of angles. It really is.
The one I was getting at, though, is that it's IMHO too over the top for basic human psychology. It's the kind of story that, in its whole, you can't really file anywhere. Everyone creates their own distortion, cherrypicking what to keep and what to discard, even just to fit any of it in their head. And sure enough, once people stopped burning each other at the stake over exactly what they believe, we got thousands of sects and probably very few members of any sect even know or agree with everything their sect believes.
3. Well, the superhero thing is really a detour, but... I dunno, I'd hardly call worlds where villains roam free and innocents get caught in the crossfire all the time an utopia or saccharine. If I'm to pick a trope that describes it, I'd more like go with Crapsaccharine World. That is something which looks shiny-happy on the surface, but is rotten and dysfunctional underneath, and to say the least you wouldn't really want to live there if you think about it deeply enough. If you're a civilian, chances are you'll be caught in whatever incident happens each week, and even if you're a hero, chances are you'll have your gf/bf or family members or friends hunted down and you yourself will be attacked with all sorts of stuff tuned specifically to bypass YOUR defenses.
But, as I was saying, that was just an aside. If you like those worlds, more power to you
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(Apollonius cult stuff snipped for space)
2. The idea of Jesus being THAT big a miracle machine AND a complete Black Hole Sue AND basically trying to both have his cake and eat it (e.g., he warns not to judge, yet he judges others; he warns against calling your brother names, yet he foams at the mouth with invectives at the Pharisees; he condemns people denying their parents and the Pharisees for allowing that, yet he does just that to his, etc)... yeah, it's a problem from all sorts of angles. It really is.
The one I was getting at, though, is that it's IMHO too over the top for basic human psychology. It's the kind of story that, in its whole, you can't really file anywhere. Everyone creates their own distortion, cherrypicking what to keep and what to discard, even just to fit any of it in their head. And sure enough, once people stopped burning each other at the stake over exactly what they believe, we got thousands of sects and probably very few members of any sect even know or agree with everything their sect believes.
3. Well, the superhero thing is really a detour, but... I dunno, I'd hardly call worlds where villains roam free and innocents get caught in the crossfire all the time an utopia or saccharine. If I'm to pick a trope that describes it, I'd more like go with Crapsaccharine World. That is something which looks shiny-happy on the surface, but is rotten and dysfunctional underneath, and to say the least you wouldn't really want to live there if you think about it deeply enough. If you're a civilian, chances are you'll be caught in whatever incident happens each week, and even if you're a hero, chances are you'll have your gf/bf or family members or friends hunted down and you yourself will be attacked with all sorts of stuff tuned specifically to bypass YOUR defenses.
But, as I was saying, that was just an aside. If you like those worlds, more power to you
2. Interesting once Eastern Rome fell apart that type of active persecution against Heresy didn't really kick into high gear until the Renaissance. Until then Heresy was mostly a local matter resulting in a wild patchwork quilt of beliefs.
3. I like the term "Crapsaccharine World" as it best describes not only the comic book world of the Silver Age but the concept of Christianity as a whole. As for liking those kind of worlds...I don't. They are as you pointed out rotten and dysfunctional to say the least and not just in the problems civilians faced.
Confessions of a Superman Fan goes into some of those issues and ipoints out the underlying subtext the writers put into those stories. Take The Three Wives of Superman and Lois Lane...Dead...Yet Alive for example--talk about a messed up moral compass. Those two stories are nearly as messed up as Gospels who seems to have Jesus contradict himself all over the place.
HansMustermann
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Well, the Cathars were before the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, and it seems to me like they got persecuted all right
But yeah, that patchwork quilt of different people distorting it differently is IMHO just confirming that Christianity is indeed a maximally counter-intuitive story.
But really, look even at the modern day. How many people know what's in their frikken bible? Yes, they're not putting much study into it, but still... an MCI is the kind of story that the brain naturally finds the easiest to remember. You'd think it would be easier to remember exactly WTH one is supposed to believe in, if it weren't in fact a thoroughly unnatural and counter-intuitive brains-screw.
But yeah, that patchwork quilt of different people distorting it differently is IMHO just confirming that Christianity is indeed a maximally counter-intuitive story.
But really, look even at the modern day. How many people know what's in their frikken bible? Yes, they're not putting much study into it, but still... an MCI is the kind of story that the brain naturally finds the easiest to remember. You'd think it would be easier to remember exactly WTH one is supposed to believe in, if it weren't in fact a thoroughly unnatural and counter-intuitive brains-screw.
Well, the Cathars were before the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, and it seems to me like they got persecuted all right
But yeah, that patchwork quilt of different people distorting it differently is IMHO just confirming that Christianity is indeed a maximally counter-intuitive story.
But really, look even at the modern day. How many people know what's in their frikken bible? Yes, they're not putting much study into it, but still... an MCI is the kind of story that the brain naturally finds the easiest to remember. You'd think it would be easier to remember exactly WTH one is supposed to believe in, if it weren't in fact a thoroughly unnatural and counter-intuitive brains-screw.
IMHO this is more a product of the length of time involved then the counter intuitiveness of the narrative. Remember the contrary to popular belief the Bible is not one book but a collection of other books spanning hundred of years. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman stories are as much a continuity mind migraine.
Similarly characters firmly grounded in the real world have as many variations. Sherlock Holmes immediately come to mind...even Conan Doyle's view of what his creation was like changed. Then you have all the other authors doing their own take on Holmes and you can see how the contradictions form.
HansMustermann
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Well, you are right about the continuity problems and retcons, of course. I agree that I wouldn't expect perfect continuity from a collection of stories from different authors that spanned about a millennium.
What I'm getting at though is that it's IMHO a myth that's remarkably hard to keep in one's head. I mean, people remember quite easily for example the stories about Hercules, although frankly they have no reason to. It's not like their afterlife depends on Hercules. Yet for Christianity even the people adamantly maintaining that Jesus was the perfect role model, and said the smartest things ever... seem to have trouble remembering what he actually said, and fill in their own gaps.
Or let's put it like this, because it's even more... fascinating for me. Imagine you exposed people to pieces of a story every bloody weekend, and they actually have some level interest in it, even a minimal one. Well, it's not an unreasonable prediction that they were remember it.
And sure enough, when you look at, say, Star Trek, you see people remembering what happened in this or that episode. I have people at work who aren't even big trekkies, and they still remember stuff like what Picard or Kirk said to this or that guy, or what Q did on one occasion, and so on.
Yet in the case of the Jesus fanfic we call the gospels, church-going people have been exposed repeatedly to the yet another rerun of, say, the sermon on the mountain, and still don't remember what was said in it. Oh, they think they do, but it's almost invariably a cherrypicked distortion. There are just too many contradictions and counter-intuitive elements for it to stick in. IMHO.
Or the Revelation is read a LOT to fundies hoping and expecting that their rapture will come any day now. And yet most people don't seem to remember even the most basic plot of it. I mean, I'm not even asking them to remember exactly which was the third church threatened by Jesus in it. But a lot of people seem to have trouble even remembering who is starting the attack on Earth.
I mean, if you exposed someone repeatedly to Star Wars episode 4, they'd probably remember if it was Alderaan who shot first at the Death Star or viceversa. You don't even need to be a fanboy to remember that kind of stuff if you've been made to sit through it enough times. But in Jesus's case, they have trouble remembering exactly that. Even self-professed Jesus fanboys have trouble remembering it. And that's kinda odd.
I'm guessing there is something about the story itself that makes it hard to remember right.
Anyway, that's not very relevant, I guess. And of course doesn't make Jesus real or anything. It was just my hypothesis for why polytheist stories tended to be the kind that's easier to remember. But, of course, I could be wrong.
What I'm getting at though is that it's IMHO a myth that's remarkably hard to keep in one's head. I mean, people remember quite easily for example the stories about Hercules, although frankly they have no reason to. It's not like their afterlife depends on Hercules. Yet for Christianity even the people adamantly maintaining that Jesus was the perfect role model, and said the smartest things ever... seem to have trouble remembering what he actually said, and fill in their own gaps.
Or let's put it like this, because it's even more... fascinating for me. Imagine you exposed people to pieces of a story every bloody weekend, and they actually have some level interest in it, even a minimal one. Well, it's not an unreasonable prediction that they were remember it.
And sure enough, when you look at, say, Star Trek, you see people remembering what happened in this or that episode. I have people at work who aren't even big trekkies, and they still remember stuff like what Picard or Kirk said to this or that guy, or what Q did on one occasion, and so on.
Yet in the case of the Jesus fanfic we call the gospels, church-going people have been exposed repeatedly to the yet another rerun of, say, the sermon on the mountain, and still don't remember what was said in it. Oh, they think they do, but it's almost invariably a cherrypicked distortion. There are just too many contradictions and counter-intuitive elements for it to stick in. IMHO.
Or the Revelation is read a LOT to fundies hoping and expecting that their rapture will come any day now. And yet most people don't seem to remember even the most basic plot of it. I mean, I'm not even asking them to remember exactly which was the third church threatened by Jesus in it. But a lot of people seem to have trouble even remembering who is starting the attack on Earth.
I mean, if you exposed someone repeatedly to Star Wars episode 4, they'd probably remember if it was Alderaan who shot first at the Death Star or viceversa. You don't even need to be a fanboy to remember that kind of stuff if you've been made to sit through it enough times. But in Jesus's case, they have trouble remembering exactly that. Even self-professed Jesus fanboys have trouble remembering it. And that's kinda odd.
I'm guessing there is something about the story itself that makes it hard to remember right.
Anyway, that's not very relevant, I guess. And of course doesn't make Jesus real or anything. It was just my hypothesis for why polytheist stories tended to be the kind that's easier to remember. But, of course, I could be wrong.
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