In a fit of “I wish there were a book seductive enough for me to lose myself in it for a few days” I started browsing the web site of my favorite author in the world, Orson Scott Card, and came upon Sarah.
I’m already disappointed in some ways. Abram, the father of Monotheism as we know it in the West, is introduced as a young man whose theology already has a modern ring. God has title but no name, is the only true God, and in every way seems to deviate from the traditions of the day. In short, Abram’s God is already The God of Abraham, right from the get-go.
While such details are at best muddied as they are carried through vast stretches of time to our present day, Thomas Cahill, an historian whom I have come to regard as eminently credible, conjectures that Abram’s concept of God wasn’t a quantum leap from Mespotamian polytheism but an evolutionary increment. Abram probably grew up with the household gods of his Sumerian cultural heritage. His idea of monotheism was probably a preferential variation on the polytheistic theme of his environment. Abram likely subscribed to an image of God that more closely resembled an especially glorified Baal (or perhaps even Enlil) rather than the image of biblical Yaweh. The latter image, with which we are intimately familiar in this day and age, would not yet evolve for a matter of centuries to come from Abram’s point of view. Abram may even have included other, minor gods in his worship.
Such conjectures are blasphemous when considered in the context of one who is faithful in this day and age, looking back to Abram as one of the Fathers of his religion. But such conjectures are historically the most reasonable ones we can draw. Card, as a faithful Mormon, seems to have opted to write in the context of faith, spurning historical sensibilities.
Furthermore, Card seems to write all of his characters, particularly the women, from a very individualistic point of view. One of the women is even called a “dreamer,” employing the same touchy-feely, “golly gee, what if?” connotations that contemporaries would infer. Being a “dreamer” is all well and good, and a great way to contrast that female character against the young Sarai. But from everything I’ve read about ancient Mesopotamia, such personalities simply hadn’t evolved yet. Cahill argues this point so strongly that it is the very main idea of his book “The Gifts of the Jews”: the emergence of Jewish culture endowed Western Civilization and eventually the world with Individualism and progressive thinking, as opposed to the collective, fatalistic, cyclical thinking which dominated Abram’s time. For every character to have such strong, progressive, individual minds strikes me as much a cultural anachronism as if the Civil Rights movement had been transplanted to some time B.C. Ironically, Card’s compelling character writing, which vaults his Ender books to being my very favorites, only serves to bring this story down. It’s just the wrong place, the wrong time. Again, I get the impression that Card has spurned history.
And I find this so disappointing because I don’t think any of it was necessary. I believe history is like science: it need not preclude faith. And like science fiction, history need not preclude compelling fiction, either. And I believe that because, perhaps more than any other abstract notion, I believe that any rejection of Truth as we know it is harmful; only through embracing what we have come to learn through our best methods can we move on. Science tells us that there were dinosaurs living on Earth no more recently than sixty-five million years ago. If, as some would claim is religious truth, the earth was only created about six thousand years ago, then what the earth tells us about dinosaurs is all a big lie. Is it at all enlightening to embrace a pattern of faith in which God lies? I see this issue of historical truth in the same way. When is it ever enlightening to assume that the truth as we know it is a lie?
