Grain Stores of Joseph

“My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson said. “Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.”*

Here is some text**:

[41] And again Pharao said to Joseph: Behold, I have appointed thee over the whole land of Egypt. [42] And he took his ring from his own hand, and gave it into his hand: and he put upon him a robe of silk, and put a chain of gold about his neck. [43] And he made him go up into his second chariot, the crier proclaiming that all should bow their knee before him, and that they should know he was made governor over the whole land of Egypt. [44] And the king said to Joseph: I am Pharao; without thy commandment no man shall move hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. [45] And he turned his name, and called him in the Egyptian tongue, The saviour of the world. And he gave him to wife Aseneth the daughter of Putiphare priest of Heliopolis. Then Joseph went out to the land of Egypt:

[46] (Now he was thirty years old when he stood before king Pharao) and he went round all the countries of Egypt. [47] And the fruitfulness of the seven years came: and the corn being bound up into sheaves was gathered together into the barns of Egypt. [48] And all the abundance of grain was laid up in every city. [49] And there was so great abundance of wheat, that it was equal to the sand of the sea, and the plenty exceeded measure. [50] And before the famine came, Joseph had two sons born: whom Aseneth the daughter of Putiphare priest of Heliopolis bore unto him.

[51] And he called the name of the firstborn Manasses, saying: God hath made me to forget all my labours, and my father' s house. [52] And he named the second Ephraim, saying: God hath made me to grow in the land of my poverty. [53] Now when the seven years of the plenty that had been in Egypt were past: [54] The seven years of scarcity, which Joseph had foretold, began to come: and the famine prevailed in the whole world, but there was bread in all the land of Egypt. [55] And when there also they began to be famished, the people cried to Pharao for food. And he said to them: Go to Joseph: and do all that he shall say to you.

[56] And the famine increased daily in all the land: and Joseph opened all the barns, and sold to the Egyptians: for the famine had oppressed them also. [57] And all provinces came into Egypt, to buy food, and to seek some relief of their want.

Comments by Bishop Challoner:

[45] The saviour of the world: Zaphnah paaneah.

[51] Manasses: That is, oblivion, or forgetting.

[52] Ephraim: That is, fruitful, or growing.

Now, we are told barns were built. Many barns from 19th C. from Midwest are gone. They were of wood, and the text does not specify the barns were of stone.

Now, look how big a barn would be for a normal city, or how big its barns would be, for it would obviously have many silos. I think we have found many silos in the oldest layers of Jericho, but those were of stone.

A barn of wood would of course last for the seven years, and for that matter last so far into the next century that it was not torn down and used for other purposes. But would it not precisely have been torn down? If the barns were to store grain for seven years, they were about seven times greater than ordinary barns, either individually or by being seven times more numerous. But such a long starvation and bad harvest was very exceptional. After the period ended, would the extra barns not about a century later have been felt as useless?

If the barns had been still standing, supposing the pyramids had been these barns, would not forgetting about Joseph have been pretty difficult? Not impossible, one can reinterpret the past (which evolutionists are doing all the time), but forgetting would have been somewhat easier if the barns had simply been torn down and the wood reused as timber or as firewood, as like what has happened to so many barns from the 19th C. Midwest, especially where the countryside in the meanwhile has become an industrial city or a railway junction with commercial import.

Other indication, actually the first thing I noticed while looking at the text, namely these words:

and the corn being bound up into sheaves was gathered together into the barns of Egypt. [48] And all the abundance of grain was laid up in every city.

We see barns. We also see cities. Of course, the cities may not have contained the barns, since it may have been moved from barns to cities. But on the other hand, the cities may very well have contained the barns and therefore the barns be barns in cities. Obviously there are not pyramids in every ancient city of Egypt. There are not any pyramids in Assuan, as far as I recall. But if Assuan was an Egyptian city, obviously grain was even so stored in Assuan. So, grain was stored definitely elsewhere than in pyramids. At least in some cases. Therefore there must have been at least some other barns than the pyramids. And therefore, in turn, though pyramids may have been among the barns, they do not need to have been. The argument falls flat.

And there are then arguments for pyramids being tombs or near tombs for kings apart from this discussion. Therefore, even any pyramid being a barn is not on my top list of the likeliest theories.

My own theory is that the Gizeh pyramid was constructed so as to make electric power fields in order to stay the rotting of the corpse of Osiris, who may have been Nimrod. And that even so Osiris was never resurrected, technology waned on that point, and later pyramids were more simply tombs, or perhaps good luck charms near to tombs. This theory also is not my own, you go to Red Moon Rising, Gizah Discovery, Rob Skiba II for that stuff.

But if they are right or not, I think Carson is slightly off in calling them basically "barns of Egypt". There are two ways of storing seven times more grain than usual. Either build seven times bigger barns, but as many as usual. Or build seven times as many barns, but same size as usual. There is of course also a third way, namely to build seven times fewer barns, but each barn fortynine times more volumous than usual, and this seems to have been the way that occurred to Mr. Carson. Not impossible, per se, but not on my top list of most likely theories. Indeed, somewhat unlikely.

Hope the idea about seven times MORE barns might give Mr. Carson some good ideas if he should become president, or give someone else some good ideas if someone else should be president. Since Carson and Fiorina have gematria values 665 (for BENCARSON) and 667 (for CFIORINA or C. FIORINA, don't recall which), it is possible they will both in a sense be "neighbours of the beast" and in one of the cases, that might be by being elected. No doubt the US President, if NOT the Beast, will in some sense be "neighbour" with it.

Or he might prefer the spelling "neighbor", which does not change pronunciation. I am not a fan of that kind of spelling reform, but if he's an US Patriot, he has some kind of right to it, since the spelling reform of 1906 in US at least provided distinction from UK. Our own Swedish spelling reform same year did not even do that. Both Finland Swedes and Minnesota Swedes ignored it only for a while, and even when they did so, they were hardly laying the major claims to Swedishness that Sweden needed to mark itself off from. If convenience had been the issue, and "neighbor" saves a letter compared to "neighbour", why not "naber"? That kind of non-logic is a shared trait with the spelling reforms.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Leonhard of Limoges
6-XI-2015

* Cited from:

Ben Carson: Egyptian Pyramids Built For Grain Storage, Not By Aliens Or As Tombs
posted on Nov. 4, 2015, at 10:01 p.m.
by Nathan McDermott and Andrew Kaczynski
www.buzzfeed.com/natemcdermott/ben-carson-egyptian-pyramids-built-for-grain-storage-not-by

I highly endorse this however:

“…you know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you.”

Applicable, obviously, to the useful grain barns. Not sure God was with pyramid builders.

** Cited from: Douay-Rheims Bible + Challoner Notes
Book Of Genesis : Chapter 41
http://drbo.org/chapter/01041.htm

How do you pronounce Cetacean and Citation?

I pronounce them pretty differently.

The animal which is called a whale, I pronounce cee-tu-CEE-un or cit-tu-CEE-an.

The act which when lacking makes wikipedians wail, I pronounce cit-TAY-shun or cie-TAY-shun.

So, it took me a while to really spot the pun.

However, here is the guy who could appreciate the pun, and who showed it:

Why Evolution is True : Wikipedia makes a biological funny
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/wikipedia-makes-a-funny/

Nota optime, that the title of the blog, as opposed to the particular post, is false./HGL

Le PIE, a-t-il existé?

1) Logothètes à nos mesures, 2a) Le PIE, a-t-il existé?, 2b) Discussion de Proto-Langue Réelle ou Non, approfondie par référence à Ruhlen, 3) Mythologie Nordique - indo-européenne ou proche-orientale? Transmission par Odin?, 4) Corrigeant arte sur Apfel, Pomme, Mela

Terminologiquement, on parle de Sprachbund pour le cas des langues Balkaniques (qui ne sont pas le seul Sprachbund) et de Langue Mère et Langues Filles pour le cas du Latin et des langues néolatines (il y a d'autres cas que celui-ci aussi, et parfois juste une seule langue fille pour une langue mère). Je vais les expliquer tout alors.

La plupart des linguistes considèrent que les langues indo-européennes forment un réseau en deux niveaux avec une langue mère dont seraient issues une quinzaine de langues filles, elles-mêmes ayant chaqu'une plusieurs langues filles et fonctionnant comme leur langue mère. Et Troubetskoï (provoqué par la manie des Nazis d'identifier la langue mère indo-européenne avec la race nordique, dont les allemand seraient les héritiers presque aussi purs et sacrés que les suédois, mais ayant aussi des arguments) a très notablement favorisé la théorie du Sprachbund.

Moi, j'ai une autre provocation, et une autre raison supplémentaire. La provocation est que la langue PIE aurait été parlé chronologiquement avant le temps assigné en chronologie biblique au Déluge, donc, la théorie de diversification à partir d'une langue mère m'a paru suspecte comme favorisant le rejet de la Genèse, quoique d'autres créationnistes la partagent (sur CMI j'ai noté l'identification entre celle-ci et la langue de Madan, ancêtre des Mèdes, des Perses et probablement des Aryens d'Inde du Nord). Ma raison supplémentaire est que les parleurs des langues indo-européennes sont issus de divers petit-fils de Noé, donc doivent avoir commencé avec des langues différentes. Madan - en Perse et entre Mèdes - et Javan - en Grèce surtout Ionienne - ne commencent pas avec la même langue, ni entre eux, ni avec les descendants de Gomer, probable ancêtre des Gaulois.

Imaginons que cinq langues se cotoîent quelque part dans les Alpes (certains vont disparaître, certains aller vers le Sud ou le Sud-Est, d'autres vers l'Est et vers l'Ouest).

A	B	C	D	E
pateer	atta	?
pateer	-	atta
pateer	:	ateer
-	(atta)	(pateer)
-	(atta)	(ateer)
pateer	:	ateer
supó	-	?
supó	:	suó
?	-	suern
supern	:	suern
supern ADJ	-	suern
supernos
supern ADV
super
supó:super	-	-	υπο:υπερ
-	-	_	υπερ	über/öfver/upper
supó	-	suó
súb(o)	-	fo
pateer	-	ateer
pater	-	atiir

La langue B pourrait être rhétique. Un dialecte étrusque ou apparenté, donc en fin de compte très vieux hongrois ou apparenté.

Elle n'est même pas nécessaire, pourvu que la langue C avait un atta au début (comme Hittite/Nesili, comme Gothique).

La langue A est du très vieil italique, j'étudie la variante latine. La langue C du très vieux celtique, "j'étudie" la langue irlandaise. La langue D est évidemment du Grec et la langue E du très vieux germanique. Ou même phrygien en train de devenir germanique.

Traditionellement les tenants d'une thèse sur le PIE arrangent les choses autrement. Exit langue B.

PIE	A	C	D	E
pateer	> pater	> atiir	= πατηρ	> faþer > fader
s-upó	> sub	> swo > fo	>/= υπο	-?
s-upér	> super	-	>/= υπερ	ufer > uber
+ -n +-os	= supernos > supernus

Ce qui à partir des résultats est parfaitement possible, mais comme processus un peu uniquement basé sur les "lois phonétiques".

On a des exemples pour les deux processus. Le Latin se diversifie vers les langues néolatines, pas uniquement, mais en grande partie, par des "lois phonétiques", c'est à dire par des modes (fashions!) de prononciation.

Et les langues Balkaniques s'unifient des origines auparavant plus diverses. Bulgare et Roumain partagent le goût du Turc pour ajouter des désinences surajoutés à des désinences. Comme, il me semble, avec l'Albanais, ces désinces surajotés sont des formes définies. Le Roumain et le Grec partagent la convergence des formes Génitif et Datif, absent du Grec Ancien, et atypique pour les langues néolatines (qui favorisent plutôt, soit convergence des cas obliques en un cas régime, soit convergence de tous les cas). Le Turc et le Roumain partagent une voyelle haute, postérieur à l'I, et quand même sans rondeur des lèvres. Le Roumain et le Grec semblent avoir les deux simplifiés leurs conjugaisons de temps en analogie avec Slave et Turc, tandis que les langues néolatines à l'Ouest compliquent plutôt leurs conjugaison temporelle. Encore pas mal de mots et des tournures de phrases partagés, dont je ne sais rien, sauf que nécessairement il doit être ainsi. Et que Grec et Turc partagent toufeki.

Donc, l'unité des langues Indo-Européennes appartenant à des familles diverses peut s'expliquer d'une manière comme de l'autre. Comme analogue, plus diversifiée encore, aux langues néolatines, ou comme analogue des langues balkaniques. Je ne sais pas si je devais dire "plus" ou "moins" unifiée. Plus unifiée que ce qui dans les langues balkaniques est attribué aux fait d'être langues balkaniques par les linguistes. Moins unifiée, pour certains des langues, que la totalité des similitudes des langues balkaniques (y compris ce qui est attribué à l'héritage commun du PIE, y compris ce qui est attribué au hazard, s'il y en a, et y compris ce qui est attribué au fait d'avoir emprunté au Turc, au Français, à l'Anglais).

Dans ce cas, les traits aujourd'hui communs à toutes ou à la plupart des langues indo-européennes peuvent avoir été originés à partir de diverses langues. Pater, mater, frater (père, mère, frère) en Latin, πατηρ μητηρ θυγατηρ (père, mère, fille) en Grec, les quatre mots en Germanique et dans les langues Slaves ommission du mot identique pour père, devraient être d'une langue racine, la même probablement qui a donné la désinence comparative -ter- comme en Latin al-ter ou en Grec ε-τερ-ος. Suesor (présent en Latin comme soror, en Gaélique comme -siur/-fiur, et en Germanique et Slavon contaminé par la désinence -ter- à moins que le T en sweosTor soit épenthétique à partir des cas obliques (sweostra, sweostrum, Génitif et Datif pluriel, par ex.), pourraient provenir d'une autre, ou de la même que celle avant, mais doit presque provenir de la même que le pronom réfléchi. Le mot pour fils présent en Grec, Slave, Balte, Germanique, mais absent en Celtique et Latin, pourrait être d'une autre langue encore. Pour les verbes, la conjugaison des temps semble avoir emprunté son modèle d'une langue sémitique, avec l'apophonie des racines, tantôt longueur, tantôt brièveté ou même absence, tantôt é, tantôt o comme qualité, selon les temps, et en parfait même selon le nombre d'un temps. La conjugaison personnelle, à part le fait qu'un parfait Grec ou un prétérit Germanique de conjugaison forte ont des vocalismes différentes, semble quasi presque calqué sur une conjugaison fenno-ugrienne. À moins que ce soit le cas inverse. Le pluriel au nominatif prende une forme à deux variantes qui semble provénir de deux langues différentes, celle qui a un -s (comparable, selon les nostratistes à un -t fenno-ugrien) et celle qui a un -i. Cest intéressant que pour la seconde personne du singulier, aussi on trouve parfois -i (Italien, mais aussi Lituanien) et parfois un -s comparé à un -t fenno-ugrien.

Il y a aussi ceci, que, si J. R. R. Tolkien a pu donner des similitudes étant le simulacre d'un scénario de langue mère partagée entre les langues filles Sindarin et Quenya, le Bon Dieu a certainement pu avoir donner encore davantage de similitudes. Le Sindarin et le Quenya n'ont en réalité pas eu des parleurs de proto-Quenya, mais un seul Tolkien derrière elles-mêmes, et certains similitudes ont pu avoir été laissé par Dieu, sans qu'elles ne remontent à une langue mère identique parlée avant la Tour de Babel. Si l'origine de ces similitudes est de toute manière pas décélable avec certitude, un tel acte par Dieu ne constitue pas une déception jouant avec une telle certitude non plus.

Mais ma théorie favorie est que l'unité provient d'un côté du phénomène de Sprachbund, d'autre côté des emprunts mutuels, de grammaire notemment (les objets pouvant été désignés en pointant un doigt, de type général ou de l'individu), en une tentative de refaire une unité comme avant Babel, mais, cette tentative fut échoué. J'avais avant considéré cette tentative liée à une religion indo-européenne commune, ayant une forme de papauté païenne, comme plus tard on en trouve entre les Baltes ayant un même Krivé avant d'être christianisés. Mais je dois admettre que la réconsidération de la religion nordique ma fait remarquer quelle est plus Proche-Orientale que indo-européenne et que les communalités manquent de manière aussi flagrante sur le plan religieux que sur le plan linguistique. Jupiter-Zeus-Tinia manque de la plupart des panthéons, le dieu de la mer s'appelle en Grec très ancien Potei Daon (il s'agit de linéar B), comme "Seigneur Dagon", celui-ci adoré aussi par Philistiens et - Canaanéens. Choses communes entre religions greque et aryenne pourraient avoir des explications analogues à ceci de Sprachbund, vu que sur Crète, la langue de linéar A (qui a été parlé par les voisins des Grecs, donc, Caphthorim voisins des fils de Javan) a été analysée comme étant un dialecte aryen, comme védique et avestique pour les langues aryennes plus à l'Est. Ou encore plus archaïque que le védique, selon l'idée que les communalités indo-européennes proviennent du PIE. Donc, l'idée du Sprachbund gagne en importance pour ce chercheur amateur.

Hans Georg Lundahl
BU de Nanterre
Sts Zacharie et Élisabeth
parents de St Jean Baptiste
5-XI-2015

A Most Rare Thing : I Found Tolkien Wrong on Sth!

I was reading his valedictory adress. I fully share his love of sounds and sound changes, and did so since, well before knowing him, I studied the diverse forms of Johannes, including both Hans and John and wondering why Ivan has an I but not an O (and now I think that Jivan is simply the Kyiv and Lviv version of Jovan). But in his Valedictory Adress, I found him giving a justification. Note, he gave a much better one, in which he was entirely right : those who are misological in any way (including hatred of the sounds so dear to philology) ought not to take their limitations or lack of interest as the norm, or to present their limitation as a mark of a superior mind. But he also gave a short and snappy defence, which happened to be wrong.

"You must learn your letters before you can read."

Not true.

The sentence "Myggen flyger" contains only ...

M 1
Y 2
G 3
E 4
N 5
F 6
L 7
R 8

... only eight distinct letters among the Swedish total of 28/29 (v and w count as same*, "whisky" coming before "viking" in dictionaries, plus three extra beyond the English, Å, Ä, Ö), and thus I learned my first eight letters by reading my first sentence, not the other way round!

I will give a few remarks on Swedish pronunciation before going on with the story.

In German and French, you have a high, fronted and rounded vowel. Tongue like EE, lips like OO. You spell it U in French (which is the background for English U getting ee-OO as substitute for ee/oo/neither), and you spell it Ü in German (as a contraction of the Ui in for instance Duisburg = "Düsburg"). In Swedish, the short version of this sound is spelled Y. There are two long versions. What a German with a welltrained ear would consider as Ü^J and a Frenchman U^Y rather than as ÜH or Û, is in Swedish the long pronunciation of Y. What a German would consider as Ü^U (an Austrian I knew considered it as Ü!) and a Frenchman as U^OU is long "U" (as per Swedish spelling). Short Swedish U is pronounced in my dialect as short Ö before an R. "Tull" (customs or tolbooth) has the same vowel in my mouth as "mörk" (dark). Namely the vowel quality of schwa, or short version of vowel in "girl", or a vowel somewhat more open than Polish "Y". And short Ö before any other consonant, like any long Ö is like French eu/oeu or like German - Ö. In Malmö, "mördare" has same vowel as German "Mörderer", and in Stockholm and my mother's native Södertelge "mördare" (with lengthening before silent R, phonematically represented by turning the S into SH**) has more the vowel of English "murderer". And the main difference of quantity between MYGGEN and FLYGER is not a longer G, but a shorter Y in the former.

"Myggen flyger" means "the mosquitos are flying", or, using a cognate which Tolkien readers will know, "the midge are flying".

This sentence was written under the picture that was an advertisement for mosquito repellent or midge repellent. It was the first sentence that I was reading. I asked my grandfather "what does it say?" and he used the occasion to teach me a few basics of reading. Before our conversation had ended, over and over again, I had read "myggen flyger" with more relish for acquiring the skill than distaste for the infestation of a place called Midgewater - or of quite many places in Sweden too, during summer.

Actually, the other day I had found Silmarillion wrong on a point of reconstruction too. As some may know, Tolkien, though a Catholic, was an Old-Earth believer and a Heliocentric. He gave in Silmarillion a scenario which is to the mind of at least this Young Earth Creationist much more intelligent than the usual Old Earth Scenario : it has forgotten human empires and kingdoms rather than for instance humanity scrambling up from an original status of very ignorant cavemen, for one, and in ages before man arrived, the elves and the ainur even had "male and female", thus accomodating the words of Our Lord in Mark 10:6 much better than the usual Old Age scenarios. But in a sense it is of course wrong in a very humdrum way, by giving too much time to prehistory in man (since Beleriand, Númenor and Eriador are after all prehistoric, in his conception, just as are Stygia, Valusia and Cimmeria in those of another fantasy writer), but on one precise point of detail, I just found out he was morally wrong. He attributed the ice age to the evil intent of Morgoth - the name or one name in his mythos for Satan (and I am not sure that name contains no subconscious slur on Goths***!)

When going through the carbon 14 levels in atmosphere needed to accomodate a Young Earth scenario to carbon 14 levels in old organic things, like certain coal deposits or diamonds, which presumably would be from 2957 BC (year of the Flood), I noted that the rise was very steep just after the Flood. And I was given attention to fact that the kind of rise in cosmic rays that could cause that had probably been instrumental in the "Little Ice Age" (Charles X Gustav marching over a frozen Belt when invading Denmark, with cavalry, could no longer be done now). So, presumably such a very steep rise in the carbon 14 levels corresponded to a very much higher intensity of the cosmic radiation than now, or than the mean for last 2500 years (during which C14 levels are checkably fairly stable) and probably to the Ice Age too. In that case, the Ice Age must have been an act of God. Like the Flood. Now, certainly man's evils, both before Flood and just after, when a Tower was built at Babel, were such as to warrant divine punishment. But if Mahabharata is correct history (not saying it were in any way totally correct as theology, any more than conference on Olympus is, but correct history like killings outside Troy and return of Ulysses) it would seem that the Kauravas and Pandavas were heirs to the sons of Lamech and fought wars using nuclear explosions and contamination. Flood then washed down very much of it into deep sea basins, and ice age covered much of what was left. Plus hid Canadian Uranium mines from curiosity of Nimrod and other Tower builders.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Hubert
3-XI-2015

But believe me, when I find John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was wrong about anything, I think it is sensational news, usually he is quite right. Especially if making allowances for his acceptance of Evolution and Heliocentrism. Finding him wrong BOTH on what spirit caused ice age and on a minor phrase like "learning one's letters before reading", in two days on a row, that is very much on finding him wrong. It is sensational. I don't expect it to happen any time again soon.

* Back when Swedish printing varied between black letters and antiqva, those using black letters would spell the v sound W, HW initially, F finally and FW medially, while those using antiqva would spell it V, HV, F, FV.

** My lack of sleep. In "mördare" you have a D, not an S, changing pronunciation. And in "börs" where the R is replaced by pronouncing S like SH, as I wrote, the vowel is not lengthened. But the D goes from a real dental, like French or Italian D, to a retroflex like D in British English or in India with heavy Hindi accent. I was also guilty of making Ü a "contraction" rather than ligature of UI. Mea culpa.

*** The first part "Mor-" for dark is less controversial, in a Cratylus sense it is supported by MOR having senses like Deep Sea in Slavonic, fool or folly in Greek, great, big, huge (but not necessarily good) in Gaelic, delay in Latin, not to mention that Swedish MÖRK could be analysed as MOR + I-Umlaut + K-Suffix. I hope the point on the second part being a subconscious slur against Goths (perhaps those not sharing his enthusiasm for them getting under his skin at some level, perhaps an echo from the attitude of St Ambrose who thought that Gothic hairstyles was a mortal sin, a treason against both faith and prince) be not considered like Randelling.

What does Subcreator Mean?

1) Can a Christian Author be indebted to an Anti-Christian one? , 2) What does Subcreator Mean?, 3) Was God's Motive Ethic or Aesthetic When Creating?

I wonder how much heat Tolkien and Lewis have taken simply because of the term "subcreation" and "subcreator" about act of inventing or man who invents a tale of fiction.

I totally subscribe to this:

7. No creature can as principal or secondary-instrumental cause, from or by its own power, create anything from nothing or bring new beings into existence that transcend their own nature.

THIRTY THESES AGAINST THEISTIC EVOLUTION
By Paula Haigh
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/evolution/etheistic.htm

Now, if you paint, if you make scenery for a theatre, or if you write a story, you do not create from nothing. You create from something, even if that something is, in the case of writing a story, just words and ideas, originally never your own.

This is why, in very conscious polemics to a modern fad of calling writers and artists "creators", Tolkien and Lewis preferred the word "SUB-creators". When universities give classes in "Creative Writing" we know these two were not creating the university course, or it would have been called "SUB-creative Writing".

Now, certain people, totally unaware of context, but too much aware of their own associations, have wrongly concluded that T and L were claiming to, from or by their own power, as secondary instrumental causes, create from nothing or bring new being into existance.

No.

They are claiming to be secondary instrumental causes of a beauty which ultimately God creates, but only insofar as this beauty is what they create out of something, and only insofar as what is given it is, rather than being, which only God can confer, the artistic illusion of being, which art can confer.

The term "secondary worlds" has causes confusion here, though it was meant to be perfectly clear as to meaning "worlds which, unlike the primary world, exist only in art". And whether or not they thought it through like that, this is true of any novelist. Not just those whose scenery is unlikely to be realistically identified with such or such a portion of the space and the time of the world God put us in.

Tolkien is subcreative and Middle Earth is a secondary world, because it contains a country or larger region of countries called Eriador. And because the parallel of Rome (where Minas Tirith is set) is not yet set on a peninsula in a Mediterranean sea. But then again Hergé is subcreative and the world of Tintin is secondary, because it contains Syldavia and Borduria and because a pre-Stalin or very early Stalin Soviet Russia comes only a few years (Tintin is hardly aging even a decade) before Doctor Tournesol is kidnapped in a Cold War like setting and the flight to Sydney gets him in touch with aliens of a distinctly seventies taste. Of course, each album reflected the world in which Hergé wrote, but Tintin and Haddock did not age in time with Hergé. And the Sherlock Holmes stories are in a secondary world in which Austro-Hungarian regions are as unlikely to appear on real maps from Austria or Hungary (the Empire and the Kingdom, not just the two states that are left of them now) as Ruritania of the Prisoner of Zenda.

Was Tolkien elevating himself to the role of Creator, a role belonging to God alone, but "creating" (he would have insisted "subcreating") Eriador and its Elves speaking Sindarin and knowing Quenya? Well, in that case, so was Anthony Hope when he wrote The Prisoner of Zenda (a difference is that this work involves a love triangle, which is sth Tolkien avoided in his Legendarium, just as Hergé did avoid it in his Tintin). And Zamenhof was doing so by inventing Esperanto, even if the purpose was different, practical and idealistic rather than artistic. And even if Zamenhof's borrowings from "real languages" (as in languages spoken by real speach communities having it as mother tongue, there is a speach community of neo-Quenya, in the same sense as there is an esperanto community) are more open and more plentyful than those studied by Tolkien linguists.

C. S. Lewis was posing himself the question "if God the Son had created another world and redeemed another world, what would that have looked like" or rather what COULD that have looked like? And in that sense he was acting as subcreator for a secondary world really distinct as world (if it had been there) from the one we live in. Only part of that world in common with our world : the Heaven of both worlds is the same.

And, even if God in fact did not create that other world, He could have. Fiction studies the possible in combinations that authors hope to show their readers as probable. It does not study the real as real. And it is de fide (Tempier, laetare Sunday 1276, now dated 1277, since New Years are on Jan 1 rather than March 25, Paris diocese, conf. condemned proposition 34) that God can create worlds other than our own, not that He did, but that He can.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Vigil of Sts Simon and Jude
27-X-2015

PS, by JRRT and CSL "taking heat", I do not mean them personally, since this misunderstanding of what they meant very clearly seems to date from after their deaths or, if earlier, from behind their backs. If they had been confronted with it and thought it prevalent, they would have given the correction during their lifetime./HGL

Can a Christian Author be indebted to an Anti-Christian one?

1) Can a Christian Author be indebted to an Anti-Christian one? , 2) What does Subcreator Mean?, 3) Was God's Motive Ethic or Aesthetic When Creating?

In below, I thought the marks of affection in Ausonius' letters to St. Paulinus were of a homosexual motivation, but Ausonius was in fact his grandfather. Sorry, my bad, did cross out the mistake. For "Ausonius, who was not just Pagan, but even homosexual." read instead "Ausonius, who was Pagan."

It is possible that José Antonio Primo de Rivera was in some way indebted to Marx. Once he called him "a talented Jew, who saw the problem with Capitalism, but not the solution to Capitalism."

St Paulinus of Nola was mentored by Ausonius, who was not just Pagan, but even homosexual.

And, of course, C. S. Lewis had some debts in literary and mental make up to Anti-Christians.

Edith Nesbit was both Fabian Society and, possibly (on a list of known or alleged members!) Golden Dawn. This did of course not bother C. S. Lewis in his childhood, he was just happy to read her books.

James George Frazer in The Golden Bough was in a Darwinian fashion tracing the thought of mankind in the stages magic, religion and science, much as the Positivist Comte traced it in mythology, metaphysics and positive science. Obviously he was Anti-Christian. And as obviously C. S. Lewis enjoyed him while he was an Atheist.

William Morris, who was a great author of fantasy and a great exponent of Medievalism was also a revolutionary socialist. Hardly a strict if at all Christian. He was enjoyed by both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.

So, if C. S. Lewis was reading these before becoming a Christian, was it his duty to renounce them at conversion? In all of their works, in all of their thoughts, in all of their novels and nostalgia for Middle Ages as well as for Paganism?

No.

Morris is not on the Index. Nesbit is not on the Index. Even Frazer is not on the index. If it had been either C. S. Lewis' duty when converting to Christianity or Tolkien's when taking his Catholicism seriously, to renounce these authors, the Church should have said so.

Is there a reason why these are not on the index?

Let's start with Frazer. The details of paganism are the main content of his work. His ideology - which is indeed antichristian - is absent from its pages, meant to be gathered between the lines, perhaps alluded to in a foreword, but it does not determine any content to be included which is factually erroneous. And facts about Paganism are not Anti-Christian errors. Even if presented by one Anti-Christian.

Then Morris may have hated Capitalism in a somewhat wrong way, if he thought Marxist Socialism a solution. But it is a wrong thing and Medieval Guilds were partly there to prevent it. As for the rest, the Middle Ages, which he did not quite admire in all respects in the right way, were admireable, since they were the product of Christianity. Which Chesterton (notably in Return of Don Quijote) and Tolkien fully appreciated, even if Morris did not. However, he did realise the falling away from them, Industrial Capitalism, was a product of esp. Calvinist Protestantism, which he duly found unattractive.

Of course, if he once said "love is enough", he was, if speaking of human loves, wrong. He needed to be contradicted. He was - by his admirer C. S. Lewis. The intro to his The Four Loves, or the post script, whichever, says the novel so entitled (actually the title was somewhat longer: Love is Enough, or The Freeing of Pharamond: A Morality, 1872) got its briefest review in the few words "it isn't" - and the book by CSL agreed largely with that assessment. Only adding that preventing human loves is not the recipe for curing their mistakes.

Note, this book (by CSL, I haven't read the one by Morris) is not limiting the mistakes to those of Eros, his third love. There is a kind of paternal or parental possessiveness which is about Affection, his first love. There are kinds of intellectual pride, which are about Friendship, his second love. And Eros can be hallowed in marriage, while the other two loves here mentioned are not usually so.

And Nesbit ... like Morris, also Nesbit wrote for the large public. They adapted to its tastes, which were very much more Christian than when Rowling wrote Harry Potter. Also, like Morris, Nesbit did have sensible things to say, about cooperation among siblings or about preference for less competitive and more wellproductive but not overproductive economies, like pre-Industrial Revolution.

Nevertheless, some errors were expressed but on the other hand their readers C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien actively strove to take the good and avoid or correct the bad from Nesbit (CSL) or Morris (CSL & JRRT). If one has read an author with delight who does express some bad things, either avoiding the author or this method of sifting and correcting are the correct ones, when you realise this fact.

And this was, by temperament, the path they chose, but also because the authors in question were not so heavily and overtly anti-Christian in their writings as to have merited for instance inclusion on the index of forbidden books. Which is a thing Tolkien would have known and a thing which was sufficiently apparent from the texts for C. S. Lewis to sense it even if he did not know this fact about the Index.

So, yes, despite being indebted to Anti-Christian authors, they are themselves Christian authors. Not flawless, but not so bad as to merit the comparison I have heard over the web or orally here, namely with the Apocrypha on which St Jerome had a few things to say in the previously quoted letter:

Let her avoid all apocryphal writings, and if she is led to read such not by the truth of the doctrines which they contain but out of respect for the miracles contained in them; let her understand that they are not really written by those to whom they are ascribed, that many faulty elements have been introduced into them, and that it requires infinite discretion to look for gold in the midst of dirt.

C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien saw to it that their readers did not have to use infinite discretion, simply by using what discretion they had themselves. This was especially so in Tolkien, who was a Catholic.

This is why I think a Christian need not blush to read them.

As for the charge that they were secretly Illuminati, I think it is totally erroneous. It was made by John Todd while CSL had already been dead and JRRT was close to death, therefore neither had an opportunity to respond. Also, it may be informative if one author is very erroneous anyway - like Marx and Engels are - to know he was secretly of such and such an occultist obedience or even a diabolist (see further Wurmbrandt's study Was Karl Marx a Satanist? which he concludes in the affirmative), but supposing someone were so does not prove his writings to be erroneous.*

Other charges have come by supposing it was CSL's fault if Narnia Chronicles are required reading for Wiccans (in fact, CSL is very anti-witchcraft), or by playing on double meanings of the word "magic" where CSL and JRRT use the word loosely, as in any supernatural facts or acts, whereas critics use it about the mortal sin by which human beings seek to procure such powers by an implicit or explicit contract with demons. This thing was of course not anything these authors recommended, indeed a thing they warned very heavily against (confer Angmar's obtaining certain powers by a ring given by Sauron - essentially Abaddon - to mortals, and the horrible effect this has on his being and will, when it comes to Tolkien).

So, whether the authors CSL and JRRT were indebted to were anti-Christian or merely un-Christian, in the cases here mentioned and very well known, they were themselves Christians.

As to Yeats, CSL confesses his earlier infatuation with him as a sin and a weakness, and his writing of certain warnings can be seen as a kind of penance for it.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Ursula and 11 thousand Virgins
21-X-2015

* Writers are not politicians. If one such is a quockerwodger (explanation, see this link: here, English Historical Fiction Authors : Old Words – London Street Slang from the 1600s to the 1800s, don't vote for him, or he'll betray you. These writers are already dead and can no longer give the general readership any bad surprise. Perhaps it is not surprising that the charge should be made in France where, as Fr. Bryan Houghton said, everything turns on politics. French, even if Catholics, apply the categories of politics to things like ... well, authors.

Conversion of the Roman World, according to St Jerome

I was just looking up the age of Conan when I came to Mithra on the wickipeejuh, or on la wikipédie. Here I found a reference to St Jerome of Stridon as to what the grades of initiation were to Roman Mithraism. Letter CVII, ad Laetam.

More than one thing are worth quoting, but mainly two:

And to pass over such old stories which to unbelievers may well seem incredible, did not your own kinsman Gracchus whose name betokens his patrician origin, when a few years back he held the prefecture of the City, overthrow, break in pieces, and shake to pieces the grotto of Mithras and all the dreadful images therein? Those I mean by which the worshippers were initiated as Raven, Bridegroom, Soldier, Lion, Perseus, Sun, Crab, and Father? Did he not, I repeat, destroy these and then, sending them before him as hostages, obtain for himself Christian baptism?

God grant this might one day happen to Masonic lodges closer to the present!

Now, the other thing is about HOW certain not through and through intellectual converts were usually made. St Jerome is here speaking of a man not yet converted.

The apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians and instructing in sacred discipline a church still untaught in Christ has among other commandments laid down also this: "The woman which has an husband that believes not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband; else were your children unclean but now are they holy." Should any person have supposed hitherto that the bonds of discipline are too far relaxed and that too great indulgence is conceded by the teacher, let him look at the house of your father, a man of the highest distinction and learning, but one still walking in darkness; and he will perceive as the result of the apostle's counsel sweet fruit growing from a bitter stock and precious balsams exhaled from common canes. You yourself are the offspring of a mixed marriage; but the parents of Paula— you and my friend Toxotius— are both Christians. Who could have believed that to the heathen pontiff Albinus should be born— in answer to a mother's vows— a Christian granddaughter; that a delighted grandfather should hear from the little one's faltering lips Christ's Alleluia, and that in his old age he should nurse in his bosom one of God's own virgins? Our expectations have been fully gratified. The one unbeliever is sanctified by his holy and believing family. For, when a man is surrounded by a believing crowd of children and grandchildren, he is as good as a candidate for the faith. I for my part think that, had he possessed so many Christian kinsfolk when he was a young man, he might then have been brought to believe in Christ. For though he may spit upon my letter and laugh at it, and though he may call me a fool or a madman, his son-in-law did the same before he came to believe. Christians are not born but made. For all its gilding the Capitol is beginning to look dingy. Every temple in Rome is covered with soot and cobwebs. The city is stirred to its depths and the people pour past their half-ruined shrines to visit the tombs of the martyrs. The belief which has not been accorded to conviction may come to be extorted by very shame.

The letter is of course much longer, and I have not read all of it. But I think this point deserves to be made, because some people tend to imagine Christianity after Constantine came with lots of violence. In the Roman World this was not quite so.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
St Bruno, founder of Carthusians
6-X-2015

Link to quoted letter:

NewAdvent / Fathers / St Jerome : Letters : 107 to LAETA
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001107.htm