Chapter 17

Jonah Lynch – January 2023

Narrative

1 Narratives, both mythical and historical, describing the nature of the divine and its operations reveal the multiple perceptions of the absolute. These descriptions are a narrative framework that is present even where it is not explicit.

2 Unlike the Greek deductive system, Mesopotamian and Biblical reasoning lies in the integration of a dynamic event linked to a static statement of principles.

3 The link between narrative and exposition, data and event, is important because in Mesopotamian and Biblical thought, something is caused because it finds its origin in something anterior, not merely in a temporal sense. The nature of a thing is explained through a dynamic narrative about its origin.

Myths

4 In the great Mesopotamian myths, the creative events of a mythical past serve to explain how things are now. Order arises from conflict; zones of control and chaos are determined by the choices of the gods.

5 Mesopotamian myths do not presume to rest upon a historical reality, while Biblical narratives do, focusing on God as a coherent protagonist who actually intercedes in cosmic and human events.

Apocalypse

6 Apocalyptic writings refer to the projection of events into the future, generally in terms of great transformations or real revolutions affecting the current order. Mesopotamian examples involve the near future of the social and political order. Biblical examples depend on prophetic moments and are fully inserted in the relationship that the absolute develops with the community, in much more binding and direct ways than in Mesopotamia.

Canons

7 Public liturgical readings of mythical texts are known to have taken place in Mesopotamia and there are examples of public readings in the Bible. Therefore, narratives were part of an actual experienced social context and there were canonical versions of the myths.

8 In the Biblical context, the concept of the canon also developed because of the narrative integration that responds to a very particular way of developing a logical causal argument in a dynamic key, which involved a dialogue with the past carried on from generation to generation. The canon formed a super-narrative which showed the congruence of events.