MD Query

[Sojourner]

At 12:50 PM 6/6/97 -0700, Jim Caufield wrote:
>Having signed on to the list just last week after finishing Mason & Dixon,
>I'm very impressed with the tone of the intercourse, promiscuous as it is.
>I'm especially fascinated with the historical minutia that are generously
>provided, whether it's the provenience of the ampersand or the relative
>pockiness of Anglo-Indian relations. It's the same pleasure I got from the
>book itself.
>	One quick question, please, and if this was covered in postings  prior to
>my arrival, then I apologize. Did Dixon's insinuation, somewhere toward the
>end of book the second, that Mason intended illicit sexual relations with
>some one of a number of dead lambs in the hold of the ship, and was
>prevented only by the oleaginous impediment to firm footing, make oblique
>reference to the ancient Carpocratians' practice of heretical love feasts
>in which communion with the lamb, as theriomorphic figuration, was sought
>with devout abandon, or was this merely a reprise of the high-seas buggery
>motif found earlier in book the first? Cf. Irenaus, Adversus Haereses,
>XXV.iv. _They deem it necessary, therefore, that by means of transmigration
>from body to body, souls should have experience of every kind of life as
>well as every kind of action (unless, indeed, by a single incarnation, one
>may be able to prevent any need for others, by once for all, and with equal
>completeness........ etc. etc.


oh jeez... got 'nothah one dem big-brain types. 

heheh welcome aboard Jim, and no we haven't covered this, and we prefer the
term "goatees" rather than "devotees".

It has to do with a Biblical story from Matthew where Jesus transfers blame
to a old, white guy sitting in the corner of the house who is reading a
REALLY huge ass book with big words in it and smiling and mumbling
"Raketemensch... Raketemensch..." even though the German language wasn't
invented yet.