ATD: dynamite, Nicaea, Web Traverse and the holy hand grenade.

[Joseph Tracy]

On Mar 1, 2010, at 9:34 AM, David Morris wrote:

> I'm not an expert on early Christian history/theology, but I think
> Incarnation wasn't a widely-accepted belief for the earliest
> Christians.  The First Council of Nicaea was convened to "lay down the
> law" on the Incarnation in 325 AD.  How widespread belief in
> Incarnation was before that is a matter widely debated.
>
> On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Ray Easton <kraimie at kraimie.net>  
> wrote:
>> The Incarnation is impossible as a matter of logic.  If you can  
>> believe in The Incarnation, you can believe anything.  There are  
>> many negative adjectives that can be applied to fundamentalism,  
>> but it is no dumber than "mainstream" Christianity.

I just wanted to transfer my thoughts from this thread to an ATD- 
named thread because that is where my thoughts went. Also, the ATD  
discussion seems to be picking up steam. For those of you who have  
access to a good inter-library loan system and an ipod  I highly  
recommend Against the Day on digital audiobook, read by Dick Hill, a  
truly gifted reader whose character, accents and timing  do wonders  
to clarify this long book.

David's knowledge is quite accurate. In the decades leading up to the  
imperial political endorsement of those bishops favoring incarnation/  
Gospel of John as definitive theology, which occurred at Nicaea   
there were strongly divergent views and differing written gospels.  
According to John Crossan and several other scholars the theology of  
incarnation-messiah-sacrificial lamb-resurrection  came from  
converted Pharisees who used their scriptural expertise to shape the  
theological interpretation of this charismatic Jesus figure. The  
Pharisees already believed in a messianic deliverer and "that good  
bodliy resurrection" as Deuce called it, and they had a literacy  
which is likely to have been rare among Jesus's followers. So even  
though Jesus warned against the ideas of the Pharisees, historically  
it was converted  Pharisees like Paul who shaped the religion most  
and carried over certain theological ideas and values.

All this is far more relevant to Pynchon than it might seem. The  
life, death, and continued life through his children of Webb Traverse  
is a small scale american  version of this early new testament story,  
and on many levels ATD is about the interaction between spiritual or  
scientific revelation/experience and entropy/human frailty/ power  
politics.

Pynchon Uses Dynamite as a multivalent image that refers to: 1) 
scientific breakthrough, 2)the explosive technologies driving western  
technology,  3)warfare between left/right or underground/above ground  
or heaven(myth) and desire( subconscious),  4) a spiritual  
breakthrough akin to rebirth or death and resurrection. All this is  
amplified by the fact that dynamite's root greek word origin   
"dunamos "( power, force) is used dozens of times in the the New  
Testament in phrases like "You shall receive power from on high."  Or  
as a certain Knight said, "that rabbit's dynamite" ; and as it is  
further written in the book of Armaments "Lord , bless this thy holy  
hand grenade that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny  
bits, in thy mercy"

Cyclomite is the edible version,  and crunchy.