As someone who was exposed to a pitiful pittance of religion in my youth, which where I'm from was invariably some form of Christianity, I appreciate that you approached the subject as mythology. Being surrounded by 70% Christians, I've always felt it incumbent upon me to know something about what they believed, even it involved thousands of years old stories.
My favorite line, which I have reread slowly to extract its meaning is:
"Evading the suffering of a mortal being longing for immortality amounts to denying the human condition itself." Beautiful. And I might add, longing for transcendence.
Considering the present zeitgeist, I got quite the toothy grin from "... Scorsese had to hire some bodyguards when the death threats from the love-thy-neighbor crowd became to credible."
I look forward to your interpretation and take on the early Canonical Gospels. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for this comment. I'm glad you got something out of it. This was one of the more powerful books I've read so far in this project. I find it quite moving in novels when someone, having chosen death, notices in detail how achingly beautiful the natural world is. --Although the cake is pretty tempting.
In Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad there are two instances of food being multiplied. In one, many men digging a trench around Medina in a defensive effort (the Meccans were coming on horses--the trench was to prevent them being able to cross into the city) are offered some dates to eat, but much fewer than what could satisfy them. However, they all eat to their satisfaction and baskets are leftover. Also, while digging the trench Muhammad spits on a boulder and it is immediately pulverized. All this while the official doctrine of Islam is that Muhammad did no miracles (though Jesus did, according to Islam). The Qur'an itself was the sole miracle--inimitable divine poetry coming from the mouth of an illiterate caravan manager. I thought of that as I read your account of Jesus saying that his coming itself was the miracle. By the way, the annunciation (Gabriel coming to Mary to announce the conception of Jesus) is recounted in the Qur'an twice, and the virgin birth is firmly affirmed in Islam. Also, the Qur'an is believed to be the very words of God, existing from eternity in God's mind, conveyed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel, who would repeat the words to help Muhammad memorize them (akin to the angel writing the words for Matthew in your recounting).
It's mostly in Islam itself. The great medieval Muslim philosophers are not so important in the development of Islamic theology. Al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, Al-Ashari are way more important than Avicenna, Averroes, and Al-Farabi. I think the latter were marginalized because their thought was not orthodox. Didn’t Al-Farabi and Averroes assert that the philosopher's knowledge trumps the Qur'an, the latter being a guidebook for the masses? At least one of them said something akin to that.
As someone who was exposed to a pitiful pittance of religion in my youth, which where I'm from was invariably some form of Christianity, I appreciate that you approached the subject as mythology. Being surrounded by 70% Christians, I've always felt it incumbent upon me to know something about what they believed, even it involved thousands of years old stories.
My favorite line, which I have reread slowly to extract its meaning is:
"Evading the suffering of a mortal being longing for immortality amounts to denying the human condition itself." Beautiful. And I might add, longing for transcendence.
Considering the present zeitgeist, I got quite the toothy grin from "... Scorsese had to hire some bodyguards when the death threats from the love-thy-neighbor crowd became to credible."
I look forward to your interpretation and take on the early Canonical Gospels. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for this comment. I'm glad you got something out of it. This was one of the more powerful books I've read so far in this project. I find it quite moving in novels when someone, having chosen death, notices in detail how achingly beautiful the natural world is. --Although the cake is pretty tempting.
In Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad there are two instances of food being multiplied. In one, many men digging a trench around Medina in a defensive effort (the Meccans were coming on horses--the trench was to prevent them being able to cross into the city) are offered some dates to eat, but much fewer than what could satisfy them. However, they all eat to their satisfaction and baskets are leftover. Also, while digging the trench Muhammad spits on a boulder and it is immediately pulverized. All this while the official doctrine of Islam is that Muhammad did no miracles (though Jesus did, according to Islam). The Qur'an itself was the sole miracle--inimitable divine poetry coming from the mouth of an illiterate caravan manager. I thought of that as I read your account of Jesus saying that his coming itself was the miracle. By the way, the annunciation (Gabriel coming to Mary to announce the conception of Jesus) is recounted in the Qur'an twice, and the virgin birth is firmly affirmed in Islam. Also, the Qur'an is believed to be the very words of God, existing from eternity in God's mind, conveyed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel, who would repeat the words to help Muhammad memorize them (akin to the angel writing the words for Matthew in your recounting).
That's very interesting. Have you gotten into Arabic philosophy, too, or is your recent interest mostly in Islam?
It's mostly in Islam itself. The great medieval Muslim philosophers are not so important in the development of Islamic theology. Al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, Al-Ashari are way more important than Avicenna, Averroes, and Al-Farabi. I think the latter were marginalized because their thought was not orthodox. Didn’t Al-Farabi and Averroes assert that the philosopher's knowledge trumps the Qur'an, the latter being a guidebook for the masses? At least one of them said something akin to that.
Bravo!
It's ironic that the life of the "real" Jesus has become the preferred way to run from our mortality and "deny the human condition itself."
Martyrdom is not all it's cracked up to be. Even worse if it's your archetype. Ask me how I know...
Thank you for reading and for writing!
It keeps me off the streets. While Jeri's out protesting, I'm home reading banned books. What a team!