I see that Zoe Williams, writing in The Guardian today, has jumped into the currently fashionable discussion about Narnia and Christianity. Actually, I tend to take Zoe’s position, which is essentially: who gives a toss? As she says, the Bible is a narrative blueprint for a lot of western culture. Mind you, there’s a lot in the Bible that borrows from older mythologies.
Joseph Campbell with his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces proposed the idea of a monomyth over fifty years ago. While he may have pushed the hypothesis to straining point, there’s more than a nugget of truth in there, I feel. There’s a basic number of plots and subplots that recur again and again throughout human history.
Zoe ends her piece by saying it is not the time of year to be unfair to Christians. We pinched their festival. We can hardly talk about "underhand". Er, excuse me, they pinched Christmas from Yule and the Saturnalia. Pot, kettle, black, I think.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
Leave a comment