This is the kind of conversation my husband and I have over text messages:

Teo:

When was the King James Bible published?

Sean:

1600s

Teo:

And before that time, how did Christians come to know the Gospel?

Or even have a complete sense of what “The Bible” was?

Sean:

Oh, there were other, earlier versions of the Bible

King James commissioned a bible, some say, in repentance for his rather obvious homosexuality.

Teo:

Wow.

Sean:

Keep in mind, though, that even after King James, most people were illiterate and too poor to own books. So, most people knew the Gospel simply from attending church. Households did not have Bibles

Teo:

I just got to wonder how many thousands of people pre-King James knew the story of Jesus, and a vague sense of it’s place in the greater context of Jewish scripture, and how many didn’t, There was this long period of time when pre-Christian beliefs and practices (i.e. paganisms) existed side-by-side with a growing Christian faith.

And you make a good point.

Sean:

Yep. Home practice was much more pagan, I’d think. But people attended Church. In the Middle Ages, it wasn’t just monks and nuns who prayed 7 times a day, either. The Christian life was much more like Islamic practice. But prior to the Middle Ages, Christianity was a sort of magical tradition, and Jesus was sometimes seen as the greatest of the Pagan leaders, opening up a new path to wisdom and enlightenment.

The only way syncretism really works is if it looks enough like the original religion that people are convinced they don’t need to convert at all.

This is probably one of the reasons why Arthur become mythologized as a king who would return. And why his greatest quest — even though he was otherwise Pagan — was to retrieve the Holy Grail.

I’m speaking mostly from a European, early Middle Ages perspective. How people knew the Gospel in classical times — in Rome and Greece — before there was any sort of wide, paperbound dissemination of the book, I’ve no idea.

Something I do know, from my study of Classical culture and language, though, is that Hellenistic and Roman gods were not as central to those folks lives as reconstructionists like to pretend. The switch to Jesus was pretty easy, perhaps because he was seen as an active god, one who wasn’t just a story or just a metaphor. Most educated Greeks and Romans understood the Gods as metaphors.

 

Teo:

It’s interesting to me that there are SO MANY people in the past 2000 years who have had some close, personal connection to the story of Jesus, and yet their understandings of that story could be so radically different from mine.

Sean:

Yes. One of the brilliant (from the perspective of literary analysis) aspects of the Jesus story is its timelessness. It is adaptable for people of many cultures, across centuries.

He remains popular for some of the same reasons that Shakespeare’s plays remain popular.

His messages get at the very heart of the human dilemma.

Teo:

You know, there’s a big, heart-shaped part of me that thinks of Jesus as the gateway to understanding God. I really love the idea that he is both fully human and fully divine. It makes humanity and divinity seem both completely different and yet totally compatable.

Sean:

Yep.

This changes the meaning of “God” into something only possible to understand through reflection and consideration. And something that can forever be discussed, debated, deliberated. The word “God” then becomes so slippery. Immediate, distant; intimate, foreign. For linguists, that slippage in language is a form of the erotic. And thus God becomes erotic.

Teo:

Your brain is so hot.

Sean:

Thanks.

This is why any fundamentalist perspective on your return (carefully chosen word, that) to Christian thought is immediately wrong. Because that return is exactly informed by your work within Paganism. There’s a seat at your table for both, primarily because, at the bottom of it all, there aren’t conflicts between them.

Teo:

Yes.

The sin/redemption bit does seem to be a distinction, though. I was struck by how much of that language was off-putting to me during the Morning Prayer service yesterday, and yet how at the same time I find Nadia’s theology so attractive.

Sean:

For me, it’s always important to recognize that sin/redemption are not dependent on Jesus. He showed us a transactional metaphor. In every small way, we must die and be reborn whenever we repent, whenever we modify our behavior, apologize, change our thought patterns. There are very likely similar metaphors (actually, I can think of some from the Mabinogian right now) within Pagan traditions.

Jesus showed us we are already whole. We just need to go through some shit to recognize it.

Teo:

Again and again, often.

Sean:

Yep.

And the avoidance of that cycle, that effort… that’s sin. The only real one. To live in a deficit of existence (not my words… from Giorgio Agamben).

Jesus said: Crucifixion is a bitch, but look what it leads to!

Teo:

Jesus just became a drag queen.

Sean Morris:

“Oh, so now you’re Jesus.”

Teo Bishop:

HA!

Teo:

Would you mind if I published this little bit of conversation on my blog?

Sean:

Not at all.