Pttolemy...

[Das Narren Schyff]

Yes, all very helpful, thanks and thanks Jill, the essay I
mentioned, is Kupsch, Kenneth, Finding V.. Vol. 44,
Twentieth Century Literature, 12-22-1998, pp 428(1). 

 Kupsch makes judicious use of Gibbon, Edward,  The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire. 7 vols. New York: Modern
Library, 


It is hardly necessary to rehearse the specific emphasis
that V. places on Roman Catholicism. What may not be so
obvious to all readers is how the early Roman Church came to
distinguish itself on a matter of important religions
doctrine. Briefly stated, the early Christians were
extremely fractious, and the chief theological question
dividing them concerned the nature of Christ. Specifically,
was Christ or was He not consubstantial with God the Father
and thus Himself a  deity? The powerful and growing faction
known as Arianism held essentially that He was not. The
first Council of Nicaea in 325, convened during the reign of
Constantine, helped formally stem the tide of this religious
heterodoxy. As Edward Gibbon put it: "The
Consubstantialists, who by their success have deserved and
obtained the title of Catholics, gloried in the simplicity
and steadiness of the their own creed,
and insulted the repeated variations of their adversaries,
who were destitute of any certain rule of faith" (1: 687).
Although this fundamental article of Christian faith would
receive the unanimous consent of the later Greek, Oriental,
and Protestant churches, it was the Latin church that, after
adoption of the Nicene Creed, became most powerfully
identified with establishing the doctrine that Christ was
Himself a deity. Moreover, it is the Latin church that,
through its nearly unbroken papal line, can be said to date
directly back to the life of
Christ. All of which brings us to the woman of the
historical episodes. However, before   entering upon that
discussion, I should like to say a few words more about V.'s
Roman
Catholic phase. Because Pynchon rejects the more obvious
choice of the Virgin Mary   in favor of Christ, and in
particular the story of Christ as advanced by the Roman
Catholic Church, it may at first be thought that the idea of
V. loses consistency
after its first three phases. But it does not, if properly
considered. I daresay
that much of the dispute concerning the rightful genders of
dieties has less
to do with our gender bias than with our bias for gender -
that is, with our human incapacity for imagining sentient
beings other than ourselves without imposing upon them some
notion of gender. Yet why should we do this? Again I cite
Gibbon:


The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing
Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native
purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian.
He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and
corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon
earth, among a weak and
degenerate race of beings. (1: 382-83)


    Whether or not Pynchon had actually read Gibbon, it
would be difficult to find a  passage more saliently attuned
to the novel he has
written. For not only is the idea of "Religion as she" one
that the novel
unquestionably seeks to invoke, but so too is the notion of
a deity in human form taking up residence among a race of
inferiors. In V. this happens at the transitional
moment between phases, and  readers are given a second
glimpse of the phenomenon in
the person of Victoria Wren.


If Pynchon hasn't read Gibbon, read all of Volume One, well
looked in the index and or concordance and... I'll eat my
hat, crunch, of course I thought he'd read Mumford, he does
say to "read Mumford", crunch...but it's OK to be wrong, the
correct answer is so over rated, it's a good way to learn,
get it wong, have a friend, a teacher, a student, help you
get it better, of course it's nice to have teacher-students
that understand this, Pointsman's an asshole we don't need
in the "classroom." 

And if Pynchon hasn't read Volume One of Gibbon, you all
that know him so well know what to get him for whatever
holiday(s) he's celebrating this season.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/arts/27WAGN.html