Biblical Israel versus Middle-earth
 

As an epic fantasy author, I never cease to be startled by the following fact: if you take a map of Biblical Israel, erase all the names and replace them with ones you invent, then do the same with the shorelines, the mountain ranges, and so on; if you change everything except the way the ancient Israelites thought things worked, you find yourself with something very similar to Middle-earth: an alternate world where magic is possible, where divinity is palpable, and where good and evil prepare for an apocalyptic confrontation. You find yourself, in other words, with a fantasy world.

What could be going on here? Why this strange connection between scripture and fantasy?

Probably because both things are mutually interchangeable. :p

Of scriptures I have only read the Holy Quran, and I cannot really see any similarity there likely because it reads less like a story and more like a treatise [and a cryptic one at that].

The same could be said of a fragment of any map ancient or modern. Maps show what we know to be true. Old maps included not only what they knew to be true, but what faith/legend told them was true. Hence the "Here be dragons" or the "pillars of Hercules".

Man has always wanted to know everything, what he could not prove at a certain time he looked to faith/legends etc to fill in the gaps.

Strange thing is the more we have found out, the more we look to "other views" of the truth. Once the past, present and possible future was recorded and explained in stories, in a way the past present and possible future we would wish is now explained the very same way....

I don't think the same thing holds for modern maps, Holbrook. If you change the surface details of a map of a scientifically understood world, you would simply have an alternate world not a fantasy world.

This is the thing. As Beleg says, there is something interchangeable between fantasy worlds and scriptural worlds. I think things like the Harry Potter controversy are a clear demonstration of this. What this means, is that the structural features that define - for the majority of people - the truest of the true worlds (that described in scripture), are the same features that identify other worlds as fantastic, which is just to say the falsest of the false worlds.

Now that is one helluva contradiction for any culture to stomach. It says something profound, don't you think?

Belief = Tool: Reality = inaccessible without recourse to some sort of belief.

Belief comes in hierarchy, and fantasy and scripture do tend to clash within people who nowadays would be often referred to as narrow minded (see anti-Harry-Potter campaigns). Most believers, though, don't see Fantasy as competition.

I don't have a problem with that at all, as I don't want to be a believer (though, no doubt, I do believe stuff, but as long as I can ignore it, so what?). Or differently put, for me, belief works best as "makebelieve"; just as efficient as a tool, but none of the responsibility to abstracts such as god or justice.

I've been a child with a very vivid imagination, and all kinds of supernatural story stuff had pretty much the same effect on me. Which means that I've always believed in that kind of stuff more than a rational kid should have, and that I took the Bible less seriously than a devout kid's supposed to.

But then, I've always been strange...

What do you think it says about our culture, though, Dawnstorm?

Not quite. I can go five miles from here and stand in the middle of a raised earth embankment of an Iron Age fort. Same world, same place, but it once had a different name; people there had different beliefs, different dreams, myths and stories. The present world to them would be a fantasy world, their world, though we call it history, is as fantastical to us.

It is layers and the prospective of the observer.

I was lucky I was brought up in the last dying gasp of a traditional English village, before it became a dormitory for people who work as far away as London! (One and half hours by express train.) The past, both real and imaginary (that of legends, local traditions etc) was part of the way of life. Today you need to get a book from the local library to learn these. People here no longer pass on the oral tradition. I have tried with my daughters; to tell them about the world they live in, not just the world shown on the TV and in the papers. To show them the layers of the world they live in, both history; myth and legend. The fantasy all around them. The ghosts that are only a layer away.

Hell, none of the children know what a boggert is and there were supposed to be a few round here ;)

That we're living in a culture where scripture and fantasy can have similar structure and content, but different functions. Not only does this culture bring forth believers and fantasy readers, it also brings forth you and me.

The fact that you consider this an important point and that I see how (I think), also shows that we're living in a culure that puts special value on words. (Other than, say, Buddhist cultures which is more about ritual action, if I'm not mistaken - I'm not an expert.)

If you want a moral evaluation of this, I'm sorry, I don't have one. This plays out differntly in different situations, doesn't it?

Not a moral evaluation, a socio-historical one. How does a society get to the point where the same features that identify the fantastic also characterize the sacred?

Ah, I'm not really qualified to comment on that without research. Would be interesting to look at the history of scepticism. I have a hunch there are a lot of hints to be found in that one.

Hi Scott - I think the answer to your question - the links between the fantastic and the sacred - is in essence quite simple: both are poetic. As a great Mexican poet and critic Octavio Paz points out, _all_ sacred texts, from the Bible to the Koran to the Mahabarata to Tantric texts - are poetic, especially the mystic texts. In Sufi Islam, the great prophets are, in fact, all poets! (The possible exception to this would be the Torah). There's a reason for this - spiritual experience is very difficult to put into language, and poetic language is the only kind that can stretch that far.

Fantastic writing is also inherently poetic. Epic fantasy goes all the way back to Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, the Kalavela, the Edda, the Niebelung - all poems. Many sacred texts, like the Mahabarata, are also epic poems. There's a very close relationship between these kinds of imaginings, no matter how different they are in effect. It might be interesting to speculate how much the rise in popularity of epic fantasy has to do with the splintering of organised religion.

So if the great texts are so poetic and the ideas therein can't be expressed without the openness of interpretation of the poetic, why is it so many people take things so very literally? Is it a problem that many people don't see the Bible as poetic but as cold, hard fact? I know people of many different religions, and the one group that I've only ever had discussions with who don't take their text as poetic and who get very aggressive about that is Christians. Is there something inherent to Christianity that causes Christians to take the bible as fact while other religions are not so steadfast about that?

Hi Erfael - dogma exists in all religions, I think. It's in Islam, Judaeism and Hinduism - the extreme fanatical wings of which, btw, are just as aggressive as fundamentalist Christianity, and as responsible for bloody conflict. And in fact many Christians don't take the Bible as fact (I was raised Anglican - there's a very good joke in the British comedy Yes, Minister, about the appointment of the Archbishop, in which the one person who believes in God is considered unqualified for the job).

It's always baffled me that some Christians can take the Bible literally. I figure that they must live very sheltered lives; scary that they seem to be so powerful at present. Though of course they're rather selective about which _bits_ they take as fact. (You've probably seen that passage from Leviticus which has been doing the rounds for years). It's pretty debateable, I think, how well any dogmatic reading actually understands any text. Anyone - not just religious nuts - who just believes they're right, beyond any admission of doubt, no matter what, is impossible to talk to (unless, of course, you agree with them). What they want is certainty.

Yeah, I realize it exists in all religions. Just in my limited experience, the Jews and Arabs that I know are very open about discussing things in different ways, which hasn't always been my experience with many of the Christians I've been exposed to, but that could be a location thing, being so close to unadulterated Bible Belt country.

That was my queue, wasn't it? That was my queue and I missed it. Sorry, but it took me awhile to realize why the fantasy section had gotten so dull.

Alison, I realize that my statis as a religious nut will probably make it impossible for you to talk to me, but I just wanted you to know why poetry exists in virtually every religious text. They weren't trying to wrap a mystery inside of an enigma inside of a whatever. During ancient times the primary method of story transmission was the oral tradition, not the written. Therefore, ancient texts were often partially if not totally written in a method that included a lyrical meter. It made it easier to remember.

Erfael, yes most Christians tend to think that they're right and I'm sorry you're having trouble pursuading more of them, but alison is correct, almost all religious types tend to think of themselves as being right, and since the most you'll ever get from the Christian set is "steadfast"ness* I think that their are a few people recently gone into hiding over in Holland who would tell you that, you know what? you could do a lot worse than steadfastness.

And Scott, I still say that you could get the same overall effect from an L.A. county MAPSCO, but since I've already said all that, I won't bore you with a tautology on the modern fantasy landscape. Oh, speaking of which, I saw an interesting book the other day called The Twilight of Atheism, which purports to explain why atheism has been declining on a percentage basis since the mid 19th century. Didn't buy it; no money; too many babies. Maybe I'll ask for it for Father's day. :)


* Unless of course you show up at a Southern Baptist pot luck dinner and call into question the effacy of caseroles, in which case, let's face it, you asked for it. ;)

Ironchef, I'm not even interested in pursuading anyone, just being able to discuss things. And by discuss things, I don't even mean the truth of their beliefs or any of that, but even just why it is they believe what they do. I've been told I'm going to hell by any number of people for just wanting to talk about it, not attack it or lay any sort of judgment on it at all.

............................ You brought up the caserole thing, didn't you? :eek: If only I had gotten to you sooner!

Of course some people do get defensive over religion (almost as much as a with a dish that contains every leftover that was in the fridge). You find those on both sides of the fence, though. Do you remember how defensive some people got after I first refuted Archmage's All religions are evil diatribe. And I thought that was a pretty good natured post coming from someone who had just been called evil. Oh, that's right. He wasn't calling me evil. Just my belief system. ;)

That's okay. I understood where he was coming from when he said it and never took any of it personally. I try not to internalize things even when they seem mean spirited (which that certainly wasn't). But, Erf, I've come to realize that most people just don't have that same level of restraint. Even most of my Christian buddies. They're human. And besides, some of them are addled on caserole.... and fried chicken.... and now that I think of it, some sort of cold green bean dish that shows up at every one of those things. What the heck is that?!?

A cold bean dish? I hope it's not as dire as it sounds. I must hang out in the wrong circles; I almost never have those kinds of arguments unless a Jehovah's Witness turns up at the door and I'm not in the mood to tell them to politely take their Watch Towers and scram. Still, here in Australia, the evangelists are catching up with our easy-going secularism, which scares me.

Re the poetic, Iron Chef: yes, you're right that oral texts are written in memorable rhythms. But it does go deeper than that for many religious texts; poetry can encompass paradox in a way that other kinds of expression can't, and a lot of religious thought turns crucially on paradox (an obvious one: a fleshly man being the Son of God). I think fantasy writing extends itself into these metaphysical regions as well.

I'll buy that... to an extent. You have to realize that ancient writers would not have considered themselves poets. Not in the modern sense. In what we think of as poetry, style takes center stage. Meter combines with alliteration and countless other word plays, evocative language is shaped just so, all with the purpose of creating a sound, a mood, and a mental picture in the reader's mind. Most of the modern stuff goes more for flash than for substance.

Poetry back then was usually just an expedient. It was more memorable and sounded better when spoken (thus the tool of the oral tradition). And since it was so hard to write anything down, oral was just the way it was. Take your example of Jesus' divinity: Only one of the synoptic gospels -- and none of the prophetic books -- contains anything on that subject that even approaches modern poetic expression. The exception is called the Magnificat, Luke 1: 46-55, and it was almost certainly a song, an early church hymn. In that one, style is important. Everywhere else the subject is dealt with in straight narrative or a recitation (which has meter, but is more like our Pledge of Allegiance than anything from Tennyson or Pound).

As for your statement that fantasy writing is a modern, fictional (meaning that it doesn't claim divine revelation) equivalent in the poetic sense, I couldn't agree more. I think that fantasy writing is often equivalent to parable writing and has much to say on the metaphysical. And yes, Erf, my position stands that unless it also reads well I still won't buy it :D . As for your earlier mention of the effect on "splintering" modern religious sects... hmm.... I think I'd have a hard time buying into that one, since most of the fantasy that sells is still the more shallow variety and I think most fantasy readers still read more for fun than for epiphany. Modern information technology, ie: the fact that people are exposed to a much wider range of ideology than they were in the past, is probably a more likely culprit.

Permit me to differ, Ironchef, much as I like your name - I love that show -BUT - that's a little patronising to ancient poets, and just plain wrong. (How ancient?) For example: oral and written culture ran side by side in Classical Greek culture for around three or four hundred years, when it's generally agreed that it was most rich. Aristotle would not have written long treatises on Greek poetic prosody if poetry was simply an "expedient", and poets like Sappho, Homer and others were respected as _poets_. Same in Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Persian cultures. Style was indeed important, always has been; it doesn't matter whether you're talking about the Norse Skalds or the Anglo-Saxons or Welsh Bards or Irish Ollave, the phrasing and techniques of poetic style mattered and were studied deeply, those with excellent skills were highly admired, and these techniques very often had sacred significances as well. And for Christian reference, well, what about the Song of Songs, one of the most beautiful poems in the Bible? And hugely influential, and not only on Christian mystical experience - TS Eliot for example drew hugely on biblical rhythms for his own work.

I don't know what modern poets you're referring to as being more "flash than substance" but I have to say it's not my experience of reading contemporary poems.

There's a saying from a old German poet that goes something like "He was a poet, which was to say that he hated the imprecise." I think the basic gist was that poetry was actually a truer, more complete means of defining a thing than simple narration. That's not to counter your argument over the nature of ancient poetry, just to preface the hairs I'm about to split.

No, I was speaking in generalities when I called ancient poetry an expedient. There are scores of ancient writings that were 'deeply poetic', not simply measured for 'expedients' sake (such as the example I gave with the Magnificat). Yes, Song of songs is, so is the entire book of Psalms, the first part of Genesis and a smattering of others found throughout the Biblical text. Still, on a percentage basis the deeply poetic stuff runs somewhere less than 10 percent. Yes, most religious texts contain at least of a little of the true poetic stuff (including, by the way, the Torah). And, for some, that may back to the first paragraph and the belief that true poetry could define more sharply than anything else. My point was that most of what you're calling poetry is not, in the modern sense. Most.

I don't know what modern poets you're referring to as being more "flash than substance" but I have to say it's not my experience of reading contemporary poems.

And if you felt this way about poetry from the beginning, I have to ask, why did you make it sound earlier as though the presence of poetry in a religious text would be cause for open interpretation of the ideology? When I say 'substance', I'm referring to that very thing, fully fleshed out ideas, sharp definition. I thought from your comments on Erfael's post that you were agreeing with him, that poetry meant a murky presentation of thought, and therefore, open to any differing opinion on reading. I may have read too much into that however.

And, yes, I guess I'll have to allow you to differ, since you live on a different continent and are well out of cold-bean-chucking range. ;)

Aha! Now I see what you're getting at, Ironchef. And yes, of course being a poet in the past 100 years is very different to being a poet in 500BC (and varies, I must say, from culture to culture, so it's very hard to generalise; and this is, ahem, a rather complicated subject). But something of what I am getting at might be seen in some of the modernists, many of whom lamented that the decline of organised religion and of the religious status of poetry created difficult problems for their work - ie, that poetry once had a sacred status that it had now lost. (Robert Graves is one example, David Jones another). Poet comes from the Greek word "to make" and used to refer to all kinds of writings, so there's that problem as well.

Again a misunderstanding. But I think here we have to distinguish between "murky" (ie without sharp definition) and ambiguous and/or paradoxical. Poetry is language in which every word is (ideally) opened to all its possible meanings. This doesn't mean that it's not precise, but it does mean that it is peculiarly open to interpretation. Spiritual texts very often use this kind of language because it's the only way to express certain kinds of spiritual experience. Is the Song of Songs an erotic love poem, or is it a metaphor about the love of God? Does it speak about fleshly or spiritual delight? If it is both, what does that mean? If only one of those possible interpretations, what does _that_ mean? People have been arguing about that one for centuries. And it's quite clear that the text bears all those interpretations.

See I entirely disagree. Did the original audiences of those epics think they were listening to something 'fantastic,' or to something scriptural? 'Fantasy' has a powerful cognitive connotation, which is why many people get offended when you include the Bible in lists like yours. It wasn't until the rise of the scientific worldview that things like magic, divinity, cosmic purposiveness could be identified as impossible or 'fantastic.' And this, Holbrook and Texmex is precisely the thing you're overlooking in your dismissals of the map example. Fantastic worlds and scriptural worlds overlap in very significant ways - prescientific, divine, magic, apocalyptic - not found in the scientific worldview. Are you telling me this is simply a coincidence?

It seems clear to me that this is why Ashok Banker's Vedic India is a natural fit on the fantasy shelves, or why certain fundamentalist Christians have so much difficulty with Harry Potter, and why Rowling's secular readers have so much trouble fathoming how this could be.

The overlap is obvious. The question is, what does it mean?

Er, no...I was saying the common ground is the poetic, the imaginative expression which exists in all of them. Besides scriptural texts and fantastic texts, there are the stories that constitute cultural memory - Gilgamesh and the Odyssey are of those kind, also the Aboriginal oral epics. Some of these texts are sacred, others not. There are no clear-cut divisions, and much overlap. But re the similarities in maps, it's probably not irrelevant that Tolkien was seriously Catholic.

(And the divide between magic and science is not so clearcut either - it's worth remembering that Newton, the founder of modern physics, had many magical formulae in his notebooks - and is the search for the Theory of Everything so different from the search for the Philosopher's Stone?)

Actually, Newton notwithstanding, the divide between scientific understanding and 'magical' understanding is as clear-cut as the divide between any two types of understanding can be. The differences are drastic, even though they're not commonly recognized, even by many scientists. And it's that very difference that makes Newton the scientist the founder of modern physics, and Newton the mysticist, a mercury-deranged crackpot! :D

Otherwise, insofar as all writing goes back to the founding verse epics, the question becomes one of how this common ground you refer to bears on fantasy in particular.

I have a theory on this... :eek:

You may have noticed the lack of Beowulf-type epic poems in the past century or so. Literature has evolved in stunningly various ways all over the world; in the West, modernity has made people question the structure of these over-arching myths and legends that once structured a communal sense of a culture and common ethic, and consequently these kind of epic stories fell out of favour. I have this idea that people have a deep need for these stories, which are, in the end, all dramatisations of general problems of existence (choice v destiny, self v other, life v death); they answer some profound desire of the human psyche. Story or narrative is how human beings make sense of the world, and this kind seems particularly durable - I'd go so far as to say it's part of the way our consciousness is structured. And my feeling is that the popularity of fantasy is to do with this gap; it's rushing in and filling the vacuum.

Oops. You left off a few. Here, let me help -- Yes, Newton, plus Einstien, plus Heisenberg, plus Schroedinger, plus De Broglie, plus Jeans, plus, Plank, Plus Paulie, plus Eddington *pant pant*

And that's just the ones who wrote books and/or articles stating that they believed physics could never be used to dismiss metaphysics. That doesn't even start to mention the ones who thought science could prove metaphysics (Pascal) and the current fad of trying to use string theory to prove eastern mysticism (The Tao of Physics, et.al.). Heck, even Darwin was an agnostic, not an atheist. I agree that there is a "clear cut divide", what I don't see is how science can cross that divide and disprove anything metaphysical. I don't think many others can either, which might explain why you and Anthony Flew are the last two atheists in the... oh, wait, sorry, he's not one anymore either. :D

Sorry, I couldn't resist. :D :D

I swear Scott, if I continue to read much more of this, I'll be forced to finish that paper idea I mentioned last summer. Sheesh! Isn't school and work enough for me? ;)

But after I sleep and attend classes, maybe I'll answer this in a day or two. In part. Maybe.

You might find this interesting, Alison,

http://www.sffworld.com/authors/b/ba...andwhynow.html

It's not exactly what I would argue now (it's about 6 years old, I think), but it gives the basic outline of my position.

The million dollar question, of course, is why any metaphysical claim should warrant exclusive commitment. Track records don't get much more embarrassing, and that's just in philosophy. If you add the 100 000 or so odd different religions we humans have cooked up in the past 10 000 years, the list of incompatible yet irresolvable claims gets long indeed. We humans are very good at coming up with claims that can command no consensus whatsoever. Which is what makes science all the more remarkable, and suspending judgement all the more rational.

And, Larry... *cracking whip*

Sorry Scott, but that's not a good idea right now. Saturday night, suffered a broken left orbital bone fracture from a headbutt from a resident. Not feeling up to that task, although I certainly felt up to throwing that kid (who is bigger than me) around a few times while bleeding all over him ;)

But I'll try in the near future, provided I don't lose my eyesight or anything... :P