Rowling Admits Christian Theme

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 178122

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "allthecoolnamesgone"
<allthecoolnamesgone at ...> wrote:
>
> dying. But I can also see that they 'gave' Harry his resurrection 
> which also fits the mythic pattern. After all it goes back further 
> than Christianity but because our culture is 'Christian' that is the 
> theme that is most evoked. 
> 

Christianity being a Jewish sect it is hard to see how it is even
possible for this mythic pattern to go farther back than the roots of
Christianity. I've recently read several books about the Akkadian and
Sumerian culture of ancient Mesopotamia. The patriarch of my faith
came from this culture in about 1700 BC. A surprising number of the
elements of Judaism and Christianity were in place at the time writing
was invented. That pretty much makes it impossible to find conclusive
evidence for an earlier incarnation of some of the basic Christian
concepts. Christianity is hardly unique in this respect, a great deal
of our "western" culture finds its roots in Mesopotamia. The Bible
judges the Mesopotamians pretty harshly and I understand why. At the
same time these were a touchingly devout people. It is almost as if
Abraham was less the founder of a religion and more of a reformer like
Martin Luther who listened to the still, small voice of his very
Sumerian personal god and found not a minor deity scuttling about in
the shadows of the great city gods, but the creator of the universe. 

If you are about my age you did not learn much about this period in
school because a lot of it was still being deciphered and hadn't
diffused down to the high school level. If you need something to fill
a Potter sized void in your life after DH this is a fascinating
historical period to study. There's even a very recently released
novel set in the time period just before the invention of writing:
Slaves of the Shinar by Justin Allen.

In any event I don't think these themes in Harry Potter are called
Christian merely because western culture is so predominantly
Christian. It appears to me that these concepts were a part of what we
now call Christianity from the time when it was first possible to
express them in writing. It is likely that any other ancient
expressions of them you might find are likewise diffused from a
Mesopotamian source.

Ken