Watching the new Vikings series displayed vikings who were clearly illiterate, while the christians were enveloped in literacy. The christian masses could not read but there was a progression to read and write in order to understand the bible. The christians saw it as a medium to understanding God. Many Scandinavian countries learned to read and write from the church’s push. The church’s involvement was likely agenda driven to replace heathens with good christians. It was not solely to standardise them but cease the pagan nonsense.
The textualised driven agenda sought to abolish the mythic wardrobe that prevented them from accepting christ. The textualisation was presented as liberating from nepotism. It was a spiritualised intellectual fulfilment It was also a way for gleaning the mythic “anti-christ” ideas. The legal codex and textualisation were wrought with absent mythological voice. This seems to be due to christian oversight. Yet it also may be the centralisation on codification of mundane matters moved away from the mythology they were so used to. Law was so tied with orality so too theology. The literacy movement came to mock the old as a metaphorical use. Even to see Christianity and its writing as the correct matter. The christianisation of Scandinavian citizenry was not from christian violence but education (though presumably polemical).
Viking orality was unique and powerful. It not only taught their origin but also their way of life. The medieval tease defines mythology as a fable. It laughs at the lunacy of lore. That being said the christian narratives aren’t so realistic either. Nevertheless this scam of polemical prioritisation overpowered the mythical realism. The celestial was replaced monotheistically with ever grace. Today, mythologies are supplied the same christianised pogrom. Myths were narratives akin to ancient science. The magnitude of literalism is debated but it was their understanding of the world. Coherently expressed and passionately internalised. The denial of these mythologies not only did away with their beliefs but their heritage. Mythology is not solely the celestial remarks but the historical transmission through the generations. A totality of the peoplehood.
Oral magnification presents the full blend of the story. It is transparent and covers the emotive aspect of the story and history. Preaching around a campfire combines the necessary hand gestures and interest to relay the story. The mythology is what defines them. Literacy cements the idea but it also brands it inadequate. It placed folklore in the written pretext. Placing it in the natural realm. Forging the bond between letter and narration undermines the telos of the oral nature. Folklore is oral narration of history and law. It is the order to the trans-generational tribal commitment. Mythologies is more than stories it is a social contract. There is a lore that binds everyone but it is the social bind that unifies that tribe.
The misnomer is so apparent. Even when law was canonised, folklore remained oral. Law may be cemented for order and continuity but the stories must stay pure of textualisation. It is dangerous. It steals the beauty and experiential power of the law. The physiological spark is in the encounter with oral destiny. There is a personal transformation that transcends the static literacy. Literacy delimits the oral fascination. One is not one with the law but subsumed to a finite piece of paper. Providing constitutional crystallisation is better but the written element diminishes the participant and the eternal law. The law particularly is a manner of behaviour. It is a way of life not an action to complete. A checklist to denote is an undermining falsified accusation. The law encoded not only alters the legal style but also displaces its internal mechanism. It is no longer organically enveloped in the overall mythos. It is an external criteria.
Jews did a good job of maintaining the law as an integral factor. Seeing and studying the great legal anthologies of Mishnah Tosefta and Talmud are just a start of recovering the internal prowess of law. The canonisation was crippling but salvaged with a legal based future. Justifying a revolutionary shift yet linked to old saved the heritage. Legal hermeneutics changed but the measure of authenticity endured. The law is the way of life and Jews did not move away from it. Infusing the new external code with direction and folklore prowess. The legal prioritisation as a manifestation of the true tradition was a start to brand law as Jewish. Its external accumulation was insufficiently separated.
A further example is the side-by-side folklore presentation. A visualisation of sages participating in the law but this was only the beginning. They re-mythologised the divine picture. If the law was going to be presented externally then a new internal metric was necessary. They presented God as obeying the law he commanded. One such example is God dawning phylacteries. The sages tied the codified law with the mythos. No matter how much the law seemed to leave their grasp they retied its strings to the divine commander. Folklore was expanded to include more lore to cover the external legal danger. The oral communication was under attack. Literacy needed an oral counterpart. The extended mythologisation played that role perfectly. The Talmud contains more extensive anthropomorphic detail than the bible does. A new salvational attempt.
The Jews unlike the vikings maintained a sort of oral communication. The continued resistance to canonisation by talmudic sages and geonim also aided in this paradigm. They also ascribed great force to custom. Custom is an oral mode of legal affiliation. It is not coded in any text . It is the common element pervading the society evolving with the times. Customs have been textualised but the legal centricity opens its heart to customs that have immense power. The oral fascination with custom is the autonomous or communal acceptance of a norm incorporated. Judicial discretion accepts this custom and it becomes ingrained in the traditional canon. Customs have grave force and are magnified by their allegiance. These roles are passed verbally from parent to child. The oral aspect never departed.
The orality and/or mythology could never be expunged as the system provided outlets to maintain oral credibility. Custom was that method of oral perpetuity. A legally binding verbal association. It was the sensus comminus. At times over powering the law. The law is a codified paper that does not always meet the socio-linguistic community. The oral factor keeps with the times and the sociological era of the peoplehood. It travels with them in time asserting its loyalty to the people’s ongoing commitment to their heritage. Even as the supernal aspects drew less appreciation, the law prevailed in its core value. Whether or not people were so observant there was a kernel of custom that kept them tied to their tradition. The law is divinely spiritualised and the custom further bolsters the internal mechanics of “Jewish mythology”. Orality persists in the Jewish mind’s vision of continuity.
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