Today, Za Zen Zack and I sat down at Wild Joe's Cafe for a couple of hours and deciphered Fry's genius. Boy is Sexson right, the amount of knowledge packed into a single paragraph of Fry is enough to make your head spin. But once you've tapped into Fry's wisdom its hard to turn back to Plotz and think of him as anything more than some Philistine idiot. So without further ado, here's the fruit of Zack and my loins.
Ch. 5 1st Variation; The Mountain
I. Claims to understanding the Bible
A. Demands imaginative response equivalent to that of mythologies and literature
B. Divergences from "Historical facts" will and must arise.
C. "Myths to Live by"- concentration on the existentialism
1. Speculative mythopoeia- explaining or rationalizing the book in mythical terms.
2. Ex. 1- Gnostic writers with their catalogue of Demons and Angels
a. The comparison is made between the new testament and Gnosticism because Gnostic's wish to change to the "speculative mythopoeia" whereas the Bible doesn't want to be held to the mode of thought.
3. Ex. 2- Similar is the Old testament compared to the "pseudegraphic" or false inscription writing.
D. Why the Gospels impressed themselves as above myth on the the Western World.
1. Christian attitude was principled as "no more myths" in concern of the biblical interpretation's of scripture.
2. Christian story cannot equal myth (Christian, not Hebrew)
a. We are still struggling with the verbal theory today
i. The verbal theory Fry is speaking of is the preconceived understanding that the GOSPELS cannot be interpreted mythically.
b. This pretentious truth leads to the violence involved in the transformation of stories into "fundamental life regulations".
i. Ex. 1 Myth turned into ascendant ideology
E. The Changing Influences and Relations of Classical Mythology and the Bible.
1. Begins with Biblical myths as True and Classical myths as False.
a. Result-claimed Classical myths were Demonic parodies of Biblical ones.
or
b. classical myths were confused memories after the fall (Adam and Eve, though perhaps The Tower of Babel)
2. Soon a liberal view establishes itself in spite; Classical myth as a supportive "proof" or "counterpoint" of the bible (yet not a full truth)(Perhaps comparative to the Hebrews view of the Talmud?)
a. For an example see 145 in Fry's Words with Power; Milton's poetic blend and Fry's analysis soon after.
b. "The final phrase is an example of the tradition[al] ingratitude of Christian poets who level such tribute on Classical writers while officially denouncing their story."
F. Avoiding the "dogmatic" barriers of Christianity through the classical myths.
1. (This is used purely literary or imaginatively)
2. Ex. 1 Dante's use in Paradiso of Marsayas (Marsayas being flayed alive by Apollo) as a christian view of the loss of flesh and Glaucos (eats seaweed and becomes a Sea-God) as a metaphor for a transubstantive procedure comparative to taking of the blood and the host in Christianity.
3. This imaginative comparison becomes regular procedure in comparing the two sets of "myths".
4. It helps to understand allusions between the two by simply looking them up.
G. Milton's Avenue: His Critical Attitude towards the use of Classical Myth in relation to the GOSPELS.
1. Fry explains Milton's vision of why we can use classical myth as a support for the bible by taking the evasive passage of Paradise Regained in which Jesus is tempted by Satan to become a Greek philosopher.
2. Jesus' refuses to have anything to do with any culture outside the Old Testament and through this, Milton in his faith assesses, that Jesus, by keeping himself in the purity of the Old Testament Culture, and excluding Greek philosophy, Christ is able to disassociate himself from Satan's illusory (or demonic parts of the world) and thus begin his redemption of everything that is not inseparably evil. Thus we are able to read Plato and Aristotle because they were withheld, but if they, in their demonic parts, had been allowed in Christ's mindset, Jesus would have suffered the temptation by the tainted culture and thus the redemption wound never have come about.
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