A handful of fragments

I've written here before about the tragedy of lost books -- and that prior to the invention of the printing press, the great likelihood is that most of the books ever written no longer exist.

It's not the overall loss of information, per se, that bothers me.  We certainly have access now to far more extensive information about the universe in which we live than at any time in history.  It's two things that are the real source of grief for me; the loss of knowledge of our own history, and the loss of seeing how the universe looked as filtered through other minds.  Each book is not only a record, it's a glimpse into the soul of the author.

When all of an author's books are gone, in a very real way, (s)he has been erased completely.

The extent to which ancient literature has been lost was driven home to me by the discovery that there are a bunch of instances of writing -- books, letters, poetry, codes of law, and so forth -- that are referenced in the Bible, but for which the originals have been lost.  Despite having read the Bible rather carefully (more than once), I honestly didn't know this.  Perhaps the fact that the references are generally made in passing, and (obviously, now that I know all this) alluding to no-longer-extant works I'd never heard of, the passages slipped by without my noticing.

Don't you have to wonder what was in those works that were referenced by the writers of the canonical books of the Bible, but which seem to have vanished forever?

Here are a few of the more interesting examples:

The Book of Jasher (Sefer HaYashar) is referenced twice -- in Joshua 10:13 ("And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves on their enemies.  Is this not written in Sefer HaYashar?") and in in 2 Samuel 1:18 ("To teach the sons of Judah the use of the bow.  Behold, it is written in the Book of Jasher.").  It's even more mysterious than it might seem; the translation of קָ֑שֶׁת, qāšeṯ, here rendered as "bow," may not have meant a bow as in a bow and arrow, but a name for a stylized form of lamentation.  There have been a number of instances of people "finding" the Book of Jasher that have been quickly identified as forgeries; what the original said is anyone's guess.

The Book of Shemaiah the Prophet and Story of the Prophet Iddo are both mentioned in the Second Book of Chronicles -- but the only thing we know about them are their titles.

The Book of the Acts of Solomon comes up in 1 Kings 11:41 -- "And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in the Book of the Acts of Solomon?"  Well, it might well have been, but we'll never know, because the original is lost to history.

1 Chronicles 29:29 mentioned two lost books, and perhaps a third, in a single sentence: "Now the acts of David the king, first and last, behold, they are written in the Book of Samuel the Seer, and in the Book of Nathan the Prophet, and in the Book of Gad the Seer."  The first, the Book of Samuel the Seer, may refer to 1 and 2 Samuel, canonical books of the Old Testament; biblical scholars are divided on the point.  What's certain that the Book of Nathan and the Book of Gad are both lost.

Also mentioned in Chronicles -- 2 Chronicles 26:22, to be specific -- is the Book of the Acts of Uzziah.  All we know of it is its title.

There's even an example from the New Testament.  In Colossians 4:16, Paul writes, "And when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea."  There is no Epistle to the Laodiceans -- at least, there isn't now.

I bring this up to highlight how much of the written word we've lost over time.  If a work considered by many to be sacred, which has been carefully preserved and copied and treasured and hidden away when times were bad, still has pieces that have been lost forever, consider how much more of the world's literature is simply... gone.  Plays, stories, histories, scientific texts, maps, poems.  The majority of the creative output of the human race no longer exists.

Sorry to get all maudlin.  But it's why the end of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose gets me every damn time.

I know it's the way of all things; nothing lasts forever.  But the magnitude of the loss is just staggering.  Like Brother William and Brother Adso at the end of Eco's book, we are left with only a handful of fragments.  It's that sense that gives the book its name, and it seems a fitting way to end this rather elegiac piece: "Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus." 

"The rose of old remains only in its name; all we are left with in the end are naked names."

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The New Holy Writ

This morning, I'm pondering what it takes for a piece of writing to be accepted as Holy Writ.

Now, anything can be seen as divinely inspired, if you're willing to play fast-and-loose with the definition of fiction.  We've seen, for example, that there are people who think that The Lord of the Rings is describing actual history, and others who have decided that H. P. Lovecraft's pantheon of Elder Gods is real.  But I'm wondering what it would take for such an idea to spread beyond just a handful of wingnuts.

I'm talking the Bible, the Quran, the Book of Mormon, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Sutras, the Vedas.

Clearly, there's a religious answer to all of this, and I'm not trying to be disingenuous by ignoring it.  Of course adherents to a religion believe, to one extent or another, that their holy book was divinely inspired, if not the exact word of god, or gods, or whatever.  But if you look at it from the outside, it does pose an interesting question -- and not one that is as easily answered for most religions as it is for Christianity, for which the history of the documents in question, and how decisions were made about which texts to incorporate into the Bible and which to exclude, are somewhat better known.  (See this page for a good overview of how the biblical canon was put together.)

All of this comes up because yesterday I stumbled on a claim by a guy named Marshall Vian Summers to have a "New Message from God."  It showed up on Reddit, and in fact has its own subreddit that I saw because it got cross posted to r/Atheism.  This new message was, Summers says, received over a thirty-year period from god himself, and "is not based on any existing religious tradition or spiritual teaching."  (You can see a summary and excerpts on Summers' website here.)

On July 1 and 2 Summers is having an "event" in Boulder, Colorado to proclaim his new message (which apparently hinges on the idea that the Divine Deity wants to "end our isolation" and allow us to interact with our alien brothers and sisters on other planets).  His candidate for the next generation Holy Scripture runs to over 9,000 pages, and will be available for purchase on July 15.

Being a writer myself, I can tell you that to write 9,000 pages, no matter what the content, is no mean feat even if you are divinely inspired.  So whatever else you can say about the guy, you have to admire his dedication.

Anyhow, I read a bit of what's on his website, and most of it sounds like pretty ordinary stuff.  (One passage goes, "But who can recognize the Messenger?  He appears to be very average. He is not sensational looking.  He does not hold a great position in the world.  He will disappear into the masses of people.  He will walk amongst them.  No one will recognize him, except perhaps for those who have been struck by the Revelation.")  There certainly wasn't anything there that struck me as being of divine origin, but then, I suppose that's to be expected.  What I wonder, however, is what other folks -- people who are, perhaps, more receptive to persuasion on the topic of religion than I am -- will make of Summers' writing.  After all, all current holy writings started this way; with some person or group of people writing a bunch of stuff down, and then saying, "Look, I have this book I wrote, except it wasn't really me that thought it up, I was just taking dictation from god!  It's really great!" 

It's always been a matter of curiosity to me why people gravitate toward certain belief systems, beyond ones into which they were born (the vast majority of people, after all, belong to the same religion as their parents and community members -- making geography a far stronger driver of belief than any perception of the inherent truth of a religion).  But new ideas do come along, and (as I said) every religion was new at some point.  What happens in a person's mind that makes them read something, or hear someone speak, and think, "This is it?"

Anyhow, I must say, Summers isn't doing it for me, not that anyone would probably expect that he would.  It'll be interesting to see how people react to his "event" and book release in July -- if he is hailed as the latest prophet of The Truth, or if -- as happens to most self-proclaimed Mouthpieces of God -- he, and his 9,160 page Holy Scripture, will simply vanish back into obscurity.