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Pagan Christianity?
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Branwen
824 posts

Edited Oct 12, 2009, 03:00
Re: Pagan Christianity?
Oct 12, 2009, 02:57
That book I mentioned previously is also good, especially on the topic of predestination.

Pick pagan beliefs and then accentuate the way christianity fits those beliefs, almost as if the earlier pagans were prophets of the new faith.

Invent or Spin Doctor pagan prophecies, saying the new ways are coming and inevitable.

Replace pagan dragons with christian dragon slayers.

Put a christian custom on the pagan one with the same attributes, like samhuinn festival of the ancestors with all souls and all saints, also a festival of the dead.

Write hagiographies of people long dead, which meld or hijack pagan heroes and weave them into something christian. Like a Life of Saint Kentigern, where the monk that wrote it even puts in a preface apologising for changing the story so much, but says he did it cos it was vulgar as a pagan myth, full of pagan mythos, and such a great man had to be christian, and if god doesnt like it god can make the book disappear.

Write hagiographies in which christian magic is better than pagan magic.

Build on top of pagan sites, or sanctify their use to christianity, as in well worship. Replace sacred maidens (powerful unwed females) with sacred nuns (powerless virgin females).

Spin doctoring has been going on forever, the winners writing what they like. The church was a master of it. Celts were very insular and found ways to keep things alive too, accepting new ways for old customs as just a change in terminology.

I usually get a lot of flak for saying - if all those hagiographies can be shown to be "historicising" or "spin doctoring" why should I see the bible as anything more than just another hagiography?
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