Tonto Silerheels wrote:n7axw wrote:
Wait until the Adams and Eves are gone. The originals are in the Temple. Whenever there is a discrepancy between a copy and the original, rule automatically in favor of the original.
That's not enough. Someday, prior to the great switcharoonie, Fr. Zhai writes to Br. Kai, encouraging him to continue fighting the good fight. In so doing, he quotes the book of Sondheim 5:8--6:5. On the day of TGS, the archangels add ten verses to the end on Sondheim 5. The question that arises is why didn't Fr. Zhai quote Sondheim 5: 13-22? In fact, no sources prior to YOG 175 mention Sondheim 5: 13-22. It's extraordinarily strange because Sondheim 5: 13-22 adds such a major tenet to the belief structure of the CoGA. (If it hadn't, then Chihiro wouldn't have taken the trouble to add it.)
Not only that, but as his Academician Dissertation, Fr. Zhocka makes a statistical analysis of the number of verses in each chapter of Sondheim, but in YOG 205 someone notices that he got his math wrong. Instead of an average of 22.8 verses per chapter, Fr. Zhocka calculated that the average number of verses per chapter in Sondheim is 22.6. How very strange! Here's the problem! Fr. Zhocka lists Sondheim as having 12 verses instead of the correct 22.
Furthermore, Br. Zhamey writes a book titled, "The Complete Commentary on the Book of Hastings," but somehow fails to mention the last eight chapters of Hastings. In addition, Archbishop Zhorzh's homilies on that same book fail to cover the same chapters.
There are just too many chances for missing things for it to work. At least, not seamlessly.
~Tonto
The only alterations to the
Writ which were made following the destruction of the Alexandria Enclave were very
openly made. That is, they represented the inclusion of the official version of the War Against the Fallen and added the
Book of Schueler as a necessary expansion of the original
Whole Writ in light of Shan-wei's defiance of God and Langhorne and the resultant introduction of evil into the world. Bear in mind that the
Writ was still being written and added to right up to the moment of the Alexandria Strike. That is, the authors of the books were living, breathing "Archangels" right there on Safehold who were completely free to expand upon the books already attributed to them. The
Writ wasn't closed until after so many of the "Archangels" had been killed.
In addition, there never were any books by Shan-wei or any of the other members of the Alexandria Enclave, given how bitterly opposed to the entire Church of God Awaiting concept they were. Shan-wei was greatly reverenced prior to her fall — and it drove her crazy — but none of the books or instruction on how to "consecrate" (terraformed) forests or land or actually written by her. References to her (and/or to any other member of the Alexandria Enclave's staff) which had already been included in the
Writ were allowed to stand . . . but were amended and effectively "footnoted" by post-Fall commentary. Don't forget how important it was to put the full force of Mother Church and the faith of all Safeholdians behind the concept of Shan-wei's
Fall. To do that truly effectively, references to what she accomplished
before Falling were just as important as anathematizations of her for her subsequent evil deeds.
The
Book of Chihiro bears much the same relationship to the primary books of the
Holy Writ that the book of
Acts bears to the rest of the
New Testament, with the proviso that Chihiro was one of the original "Archangels." That is, his book was written specifically to tell the history of The Fall of Shan-Wei and the War Against the Fallen, not to describe the creation of the universe or to give instruction in specific areas like agronomy or psychology. It's almost as if Milton's
Paradise Lost had been written by St. Michael the day after Lucifer was cast down and then incorporated into the Old Testament. The
Book of Chihiro is, in effect, the primary source for
all Safeholdian history dealing with the Creation and/or the "Archangels," and not part of the operator's manual for terraforming the portions of Safehold which had not already been terraformed and settled.
The deletion of Saint Kohdy was a bit more ticklish, but it certainly wasn't impossible. When it was time to excise him from the historical record, it was mostly a case of keeping track of the people who had personally interacted with him and then using the technology available to the last of the "angels" to quietly abstract and alter their journals and to do the same with their surviving correspondence. Yes, they knew they would almost certainly miss at least some letters which might reference Kohdy approvingly and/or attest to his historical existence. However, the Church is also the primary librarian of Safehold. Until relatively recently (as in the last couple of hundred Safeholdian years), in fact, the Church was the
sole librarian of Safehold (and don't forget how rare the ability to read and write became before the reemergence of anything remotely like universal literacy), and it is still the repository for just about every historical collection.
The diaries, journals, and letters of the Adams and Eves were regarded as part of the
scriptural — not simply the historical — record. As each of them died, their original diaries, journals, and letter collections were "donated" to Mother Church to be collected and compiled as a part of that scriptural heritage of all mankind. It was the religious duty of their heirs to make that donation, which means that very few letters dating from the time of the War Against the Fallen exist
outside the Church's collections. After all, where could such critical documents be more safely consolidated than in the protecting hands of Mother Church? Surely the custodian of men's souls is the only possible custodian of the divinely inspired and witnessed record!
In addition, the existence of the legend of Saint Kohdy, the fact that the Church actually
embraced the "mythological" tales of Kohdy's doings as a form of accepted
fiction, provides a defense in depth against any unedited letter which might conceivably turn up outside one of the Church's collections. If there's a reference to him, then clearly it was a reference to the
fictitious Saint Kohdy, as will become manifestly clear when it is properly interpreted in context.
I never meant to imply that the church had done a 100% effective job of eliminating every reference to Kohdy. In fact, I thought it was self-evident that if they'd managed to do that, then there wouldn't have been any "legend of Saint Kohdy" in the first place. What they did manage to do was to eliminate specific, eyewitness testimony to his existence and achievements as one of the
seijins defending Mother Church against the Fallen in the hour of her greatest need, and that really wasn't difficult for them, given the technology available to them and the absolute authority of Mother Church at the time.
Hope this helps clarify.
