Do you think that the shift away from Church’s being a house of a god to rather a communal center (as represented by the basilica design) represents man doing to Zeus what Zeus did to Chronos?
And who were our Giants? Who were our Cyclopes?
And what was the result of the challenge?
Xunzian,
hm. please humor me. i’m not sure i grasp your meaning. please clarify.
if you mean what i think might mean though, its an awesome idea!
Well . . .
Chronos killed his father Uranus and succeeded him.
At this point, it could be though that the Gods lived everywhere.
Then Zeus tricked Chronos and surpassed him.
At this point, Gods lived in the Temples of worship.
But then there was a shift, and now Temples of worship have transformed from a place where Gods live to a place where humans gather, where humans live.
That would suggest that we have done to Zeus what Zeus did to his Father, what his father did to his father . . .
01.17.07.1870
What an interesting concept indeed! If we take these questions into the context of an agnostic or atheist, we could surmise that the giants were the illusions and delusions of religion caused by the tricks our minds play on us. To go on further, it can be said that we have progressed, evolved in fact, in our considerations during the search for reality that we grow in understanding of not just how the world and the universe around us works, but also our very minds; which represent a mystery still yet to be completely understood. The result of this challenge; the overcoming of it, is the greater understanding through reason, and the outlook of further understanding (or the quest to defeat the next giant) that resolves our existence.
At this point, I’d really love to bring in a Prometheus metaphor, but it’s quite late and I have to finish homework. I’ll think about it tomorrow in class, I promiss.
The Israelites, no doubt because of their nomadic origins, worshipped God in a tent, then in a temple. In the New Testament “the church” always refers to the body of believers. The church as a physical building is an anachronism [not+Chronos].
And what does that tell you about the Isaelities according to the model I’ve presented?
I think the Israelites roughly paralleled what you said about the Greeks worshipping Zeus in a temple. The gods and heroes of their polytheistic neighbors became their fallen angels and demons. The fall of Satan is similar to the fall of Chronos/Uranus.
Treating Satan as Uranus/Cronos seems almost Manichaeistic to me. Is that really what you mean to say?
That didn’t occur to me when I typed it. I was thinking in terms of Satan being a deposed deity not the supreme deity. That’s a difference between the myths we’re looking at. But the Manichean idea is not that big of a stretch is it? After all Yaweh and Satan seem to be on cordial speaking terms in Job. Then in the NT, they’re at war. Jung talks about Satan as Yaweh’s Shadow. Yaweh seems to do a big change-up, particularly as depicted in the gospel and epistles of John.
I don’t think it is too much of a streatch at all.
I was originally thinking of this thread in terms of man’s psychological evolution, so this is a different angle, but I think that take is also rather interesting.
I see. Well our conception of God says a lot about our psychological evolution. In the Old Testament, God could be viewed as the source of evil as well as of good. But in the New Testament these two functions are split. Satan, the devil, is the source of evil and God the source of good. Their view of God had evolved from one of undifferentiated power to one of God as the source of justice. In the epsistles of John it says, “God is Love.” So God is all good. Jung looks at it as a form of denial. He sees a Trinity as an unbalanced archetype seeking its own quaternity. To do this, Satan, The Divine Evil One, could be re-integrated into the Godhead. This would be the theological equivalent of integrating the repressed Shadow into one’s self image. When the ego is threatened and in great conflict, denial and splitting are handy defences for facing the “enemy.” But they keep a person from self knowledge. Something like that may have happened in the history of Judeo-Christian religion.
Or it could be that it is not so much about the evolution of the people but the conquest of the people by Babylon and the synchretism that took place afterwards which married Zarathustra to Moses.
On the other hand, Israel had a form of henothism, and perhaps monotheism has been a latter imposition onto that initial position.
I don’t think that Catholics ever believed their Basilicas to NOT be Houses of God. I also think that the Basilica became a place for people because traditionally they were refuge from invaders and from lynching mobs and in Judea the temple was also house of state, because there was no sharp division of spiritual and secular needs of a people.
It might be as you say, that a sharp turn has occurred, but I think that it has all been quite gradual.
I don’t see it as being a sharp break at all.
I see it as being a natural evolution. As does the myth.
As much as people are wont to anachronistically classify other traditions as being ‘humanist’ (indeed, I will do this occasionally for the sake of expediency . . . Tu Weiming’s commentary on what anthropocosmic and later critiques for cosmoanthropism stand as a testament to that), I think it is no coincidence that the only true forms of humanism I can see is a western tradition and is a modern one.
And for those who will harken back to the Greeks . . . Peisistratos. That’s all I’ve got to say. Even Herodotus giggled at that one, but Herodotus was clearly not a humanist as we understand the word.
The Greeks certainly helped provide a recipe whereby this could come to pass, but much of greek culture was borrowed from near-eastern civilizations (which, ironically, also would have had Christianity).
So then, we are also left with the distinction between a ship-design and a central-design. With the Ship-design leading towards what man could consider to be perfection and to strive towards, whereas the central-design had the community based around and feeding towards its moral/religious center. An extension of the temples where Gods lived, as opposed to something decidedly more Herculean.
Hello Xun:
— I see it as being a natural evolution. As does the myth.
O- The myth can be seen in so many perspectives that one could not just reserve it for “natural evolution” alone. It could be that Hesiod was trying to digest the older matriarchal religion into the developing patriarchal one. It could be that it served as a moral admonition to the practice of infanticide, or explaining the guilt one feels, when killing one’s parents, as dictated by immortal beings etc. Initially the children are unrecognized and thrown to their deaths because of their deformity (Uranus). Cronos deals with his children alike, he devours them, because of his lust for power. Gaea has set an oracle that applied to him and to most tyrants afterwards- one of his sons would eventually overpower him just as he overpowered his own father. Such is the cycle. The rebel will consume it’s own children and the child that overcomes him is the one that is most like him. In a way then, the myth denies evolution, and affirms the Mother Goddess oracle of a cycle to which all must return and that confirms that there is nothing new under the sun.
It is also interesting as to why Cronos ends up being deposed ends up being the same reason why Uranus was deposed. Uranus sends to their death the different, the cyclops and the hundred handed giants. This action against Life requires a reaction, which is the revenge of Gaea indirectly taken by Cronos. Then Cronos too performs an act against Life, against Gaea, fails to keep his promises and does what the Father did and leaves his brothers still in death. His action creates an inbalance that invites another reaction, another revenge. That is just from Gaea. From Rhea he receives indignation because of his consumption of the children she begets him. Again, this is reason imposing upon Life and life will have the last word.
Cronos is a ruler on borrowed timed, trying to defy his destiny and this might be the author eulogysing the ones who might instead embrace their destiny instead of cowardly running from it. The barbarity of Cronos is overcome by cleverness in the part of the women, and agains the cycle is maintained, Cronos has reaped what he sowed. The war’s resolution comes from the liberation of the freaks.
You said: “But then there was a shift, and now Temples of worship have transformed from a place where Gods live to a place where humans gather, where humans live.
That would suggest that we have done to Zeus what Zeus did to his Father, what his father did to his father.”
But:
1- Humans gather in Basilicas not to live but to gather in worship and they do this for the simple reason that they do believe that the place in which they worship God choses to manifest himself.
2- Catholicism, at least, reflects that which I am talking of. In Sicily procesions take place with the remains of their Santa Agata. As the elaborate carriage makes it’s way through the people they are often handed the children and one sees invalids trying to get close. This is a belief in magic that once was reserved for certain temples, relics and arcs.
3- If you see later protestant christians not as picky as to where they set up a house of worship or that some look like cooporation, stadiums, than temples dedicated to a God, that is because they follow the directive from Jesus that it is merely necessary that two or more gather in his name and there he shall be manifest.
4- Temples were focal points, just like statutes were focal points were deities with no form could repose if entretained to do so. The temple was, in the case of the Parthenon and in the case of the hebrew tent for the arc and later the temple of Solomon, excuses and add ons to what really mattered which was the object of worship inside imbued with the spirit of a God/godess. Almost 2,000 years after the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem, jews still concentrate around it’s remains, as one would go to the highest peak to be nearest to a God of the Sky, as in Moses’ case.
5- Basilicas remained true to this ideal. But let’s us look further in their history, because originally they were not meant to be houses of God but houses of men. The word is latin originally used to describe a roman public building, like a tribunal. I was not there to verify this, but that could very well explain your observation. Designed as tribunals, they were then to become churches with special ceremonial rights and basically adopted the same position in the church as it once did in the Roman city, as a center of authority.
6- So was there a shift? Apparently not.
5 and 1 do not agree.
2 proves my point
3 misses my point, but the kernel of what I suggest is contained within
4 is what happen when people mistake what is occuring for what must be.
Ergo . . .
I disagree with 6.
Why don’t you agree with 5 or 1? Not that I care, but I thought that you had something in your mind. 2 does not prove your point at all. It describes how the original idea, that of magic, still exists so that it cannot be said the there was a shift. 3 Might had miss your point, if written by it’s lonesome, but as part of the other 6, it is right on target and that is why you see that kernel. 4 is just a description nothing more of what makes us fallible and human. If you disagree with 6…well, I gues everyone feels entitled to an opinion…
Anyone in this discussion familiar with Plato’s Euthyphro? 
1- Humans gather in Basilicas not to live but to gather in worship and they do this for the simple reason that they do believe that the place in which they worship God choses to manifest himself.
5- Basilicas remained true to this ideal. But let’s us look further in their history, because originally they were not meant to be houses of God but houses of men. The word is latin originally used to describe a roman public building, like a tribunal. I was not there to verify this, but that could very well explain your observation. Designed as tribunals, they were then to become churches with special ceremonial rights and basically adopted the same position in the church as it once did in the Roman city, as a center of authority.
Do you not see how what you suggested in 1 (that humans gather in Basilicas to worship) disagrees with what 5 says, that Basilicas were originally designed as houses of man. It is precisely that shift, the shift in humans notion of God away from the more impersonal temples of the past to the Basilica-form ones. It was a concious architectural choice. While I agree that they were probably partially designed to cement church authority in the secular world. But I think the other aspect also is worth considering.
2- Catholicism, at least, reflects that which I am talking of. In Sicily procesions take place with the remains of their Santa Agata. As the elaborate carriage makes it’s way through the people they are often handed the children and one sees invalids trying to get close. This is a belief in magic that once was reserved for certain temples, relics and arcs.
Exatically! It is a very different concept of magic and religious authority, wouldn’t you agree?
3- If you see later protestant christians not as picky as to where they set up a house of worship or that some look like cooporation, stadiums, than temples dedicated to a God, that is because they follow the directive from Jesus that it is merely necessary that two or more gather in his name and there he shall be manifest.
Yes, and we see a collapse back inward in many protestant communities, don’t we? The idea of community, society, and one’s place in it isn’t as important as one’s ‘personal relationship’ with the divine. To me, that represents an internalization of the temples of old, rather than an exclamation of one’s humanity.
4- Temples were focal points, just like statutes were focal points were deities with no form could repose if entretained to do so. The temple was, in the case of the Parthenon and in the case of the hebrew tent for the arc and later the temple of Solomon, excuses and add ons to what really mattered which was the object of worship inside imbued with the spirit of a God/godess. Almost 2,000 years after the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem, jews still concentrate around it’s remains, as one would go to the highest peak to be nearest to a God of the Sky, as in Moses’ case.
Exatically! But what was the focal point within the temple? That is the notion of the Basilica and ship-based designs.
6- So was there a shift? Apparently not.
Yes, I would agree that there was a definate shift. A progression which is as natural as the myth suggests.
MRN,
Yes. But it has been a while since I read it – mind illuminating me with what you are thinking of?
Hi felix dakat,
If you look at God being Unity and Wholeness, and Satan being the personification of our dualistic outlook, the “fall of Satan†is an allegory for the removal of that dualism and a sign that Unity is possible through the reconciliation of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.
However, Xunzians question was:
When Zeus overthrew Chronos, his father, he did not want to kill him, but instead, he deprived him of power by castrating him and throwing his genitals into the sea-foam. So the question is whether the shift away from Church’s being a house of God has deprived God of power (as it were, “castrated†him)?
You may have a point, since the public basilica (a tribunal or forum) in Hellenistic cities, was a “royal†building provided for the people. The Christian basilica, on the other hand, was the cathedral basilica of the bishop and was modeled on the semi-public basilicas of the secular power elite. Therefore, you could say that the Church “overthrew†God when it gave power to the “royalty†of the Church.
Shalom