pynchon-l-digest V2 #2253

[Doug Millison]

Good stuff on Eliade; he's hardly the final authority in interpreting
religion, but well worth reading all the same.  (An interesting tangent:
It's not widely known, but before his death Eliade is reported to have
changed his earlier negative opinion expressed with regard to the use of
psychedelic substances in shamanism, as more and better information became
available about the positive role psychedelics can play in spiritual
development.)  An interesting, recent book to read is _God:  A Biography_,
by Jack Miles (I haven't read it yet, but Miles has a new book out that
gives Jesus the same sort of treatment as a character in a work of
literature); it won the Pulitzer Prize not too long ago (not that literary
prizes necessarily mean anything, but this one was well-deserved in my
opinion).  Miles treats the God of the Old Testament as a literary
character, beginning at the beginning with the gentle God who creates the
world and blesses the creation, then the vengeful creator of Genesis'
second creation story, the God who punishes Adam and Eve for doing what
comes naturally. This second, punishing God is also the one who puts
Abraham to the test with Isaac, in a story that seems to be pretty
important to Mr. Pynchon and which is always a good one to consider for old
men in a rush to sacrifice young men on the bloody altar of war (what if
that's just a voice in your head and not God after all? what if your
information was bad?), which just might be one of the reasons why Pynchon
makes so much of Abraham's willingness to slaughter his son, as he sits and
writes GR while the US sends many tens of thousands of soldiers to their
death in Vietnam and kills countless Vietnamese soldiers and innocent
civilians in the process. (Some of us here are old enough to remember the
shame that was heaped upon the old men in this country when it later became
obvious, as more information became available than was reported at the time
that US involvement escalated out of control, what a criminal enterprise
that war actually was in so many ways -- another point to keep in mind
before any of us leap to any irrevocable conclusions about the rightness
and inevitability of the current war:  we just don't have enough
information yet to judge.) Miles' primary points -- which is not original,
but he tells the story very well -- is that the character of God evolves
from the gentle, blessing creator to a punishing god of fire and brimstone
as a result of integrating more qualities of the various religions of the
region, and that God grows more and more distant and less and less faithful
to God's promises , until man calls God on his bs in the book of Job.
Miles doesn't mention it in his book, which treats only the Old Testament,
but in the early Christian era, the Gnostics will take it even further,
removing God from creation altogether, and look for spiritual technologies
that will let them leave this imperfect creation and rejoin with God
somewhere over the rainbow -- the way Blicero dreams of doing in GR, with
high-tech tools replacing the spiritual tools that were available to the
Gnostics.



Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com