An Easter poem

I would actually like to do this. I do enjoy longer poems too, like The Hunting of the Snark, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and The Lay of Leithian (a book long poem Tolkien did of one of his Silmarilian stories). I'll try read it over the holidays.

Thanks Cinnabar Wing, I'm not usually a poetry fan, but there are a few I like, apart from the Anglo-Saxon ones, which interest me more from an historical perspective about how they thought about the world.

I'm also a big fan of The Emporors Babe, by Bernadine Evaristo and Sekhment by Margaret Attwood..

Back from walking the kids and being made to scramble up muddy banks in the wood, so a sit down with a cuppa and reading it was just right. 

I'm not religious, so I hope I don't offend anyone, but know it all from school. I found it really interesting that the poem centers around the tree, the cross and it's part in the crucifixion story. The melding of the differing views of it, from the gilded and jewel bedecked to the simple bloodied base wood of the tree. The idea and symbolism of the tree itself was an interesting take on a story people have heard many times and gives space for different ways of thinking about it I think.

As an outsider to pantheism, I had thought that the nature of pantheism would preclude thinking of Jesus as just another god but for you I can see how it could give you less bias when looking at religions from the outside, whereas I come with oodles of baggage. Striving to be an unbiased researcher of religion can involve jumping through hoops.

The similarities between the Odin’s tree hanging poem and the crucifixion of Jesus reflect shared human ideas of sacrifice, wounding and a hanging on a symbolic tree. These themes are also found in other non-Christian cultures around the world so that would suggest it wouldn’t be a stretch for the author/scribe of the Odin poem to include Jesus in the pantheon.

I think the poem has been handed down orally from pre-Christian times, so the scribe of the later written source may have encountered Christianity in Rome. Christian missionaries were infiltrating areas in Northern Europe, so I think it is equally likely an encounter could have occurred elsewhere in Europe. Because the sources for the poem are much later than the original idea, we shall never know. I know I’m always banging on about it, but this is why I need a personal philologist, yet even that mightn’t help me as the texts have already been scrutinised by philologists and they remain illusive.

There is a 7th century written source by Jonas of Bobbio which relates an account of St Columbanus encountering a beer offering to Odin in Swabia (southern Germany).

I love how pagan seasonal themes have embedded themselves in Christianity. They have not impacted the theology, including christology and soteriology (doctrine of salvation) for most Christians. Easter eggs are loosely associated with birth and renewal which relates to the resurrection of Jesus in a new form on earth and in heaven.

As an outsider to pantheism, I had thought that the nature of pantheism would preclude thinking of Jesus as just another god but for you I can see how it could give you less bias when looking at religions from the outside, whereas I come with oodles of baggage. Striving to be an unbiased researcher of religion can involve jumping through hoops.

The similarities between the Odin’s tree hanging poem and the crucifixion of Jesus reflect shared human ideas of sacrifice, wounding and a hanging on a symbolic tree. These themes are also found in other non-Christian cultures around the world so that would suggest it wouldn’t be a stretch for the author/scribe of the Odin poem to include Jesus in the pantheon.

I think the poem has been handed down orally from pre-Christian times, so the scribe of the later written source may have encountered Christianity in Rome. Christian missionaries were infiltrating areas in Northern Europe, so I think it is equally likely an encounter could have occurred elsewhere in Europe. Because the sources for the poem are much later than the original idea, we shall never know. I know I’m always banging on about it, but this is why I need a personal philologist, yet even that mightn’t help me as the texts have already been scrutinised by philologists and they remain illusive.

There is a 7th century written source by Jonas of Bobbio which relates an account of St Columbanus encountering a beer offering to Odin in Swabia (southern Germany).

I love how pagan seasonal themes have embedded themselves in Christianity. They have not impacted the theology, including christology and soteriology (doctrine of salvation) for most Christians. Easter eggs are loosely associated with birth and renewal which relates to the resurrection of Jesus in a new form on earth and in heaven.