leejosepho posted: My literal-mindedness (or whatever else) makes allegories difficult for me to follow, but I have listened to a reading of "Pilgrim's Progress" more than once. I think it should be viewed as nothing other than a work of fiction written by a churchman with quite an imagination. --- leejosepho - Yes, Pilgrim's Progress is a work of fiction. The form which is used is called an allegory. To me it was most interesting that only two persons (simplified) had real names - Christian and Christiana - and everyone else had names like Obstinate, Pliable, Help, Worldly Wiseman, Goodwill, the Interpreter, Prudence, Faithful, Hopeful, and so on. In my view, it is very well-crafted fiction because it literally uses over 500 ideas from the Geneva Bible (~ KJV Bible). Personally I feel that the author, John Bunyan, had an enormous natural writing gift at the level of William Shakespeare. It really stands out in my mind as being quite different from any other religious science fiction book about the Bible I've read since its basic plot - a journey from the City of Destruction to Vanity Fair to Celestial City is so literally grounded in parts of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. In my view, Pilgrim's Progress tends to summarize the general message of the Bible in terms of good people meeting bad people along the journey including characters like Atheist, Ignorance, and the Flatterer. It also has to me a real sense of humor with characters like Hypocrisy and Formalist. Do I feel it can be challenging for a literalist to deal with Pilgrim's Progress? Yes, because most of the characters have imaginative, poetic names. So much of Pilgrim's Progress is symbolic - from the unnamed book Christian carries to the large burden on his back which disappears at the cross. The idea of Christian having to literally arm himself with a helmet, sword, and shield to fight with Apollyon - the idea of Christian having to walk through a narrow gate and avoid going off a straight and narrow path - this to me is good, fictional storytelling. The sad reality of the writing of the book is that the author was literally put in jail in England for years and years and years for not conforming to England's official religion at the time. That was around the time when the political churches literally burned people to death for things like translating the Bible into the English language. We are all very fortunate to live later - hundreds of years later - where that does not literally happen today - although many non-profit churches will publicly excommunicate members who do not blindly subscribe to their phony theologies (my view). Thank you for sharing your point-of-view. Appreciate it. By the way, I think part of the literal vs symbolic challenge for some persons is due to a lack of complete connection between the left hemisphere of the brain (perhaps more literal) vs the right hemisphere of the brain (perhaps more imaginative). - http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latera ... n_function - Also, I have central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) so I would not listen to Pilgrim's Progress. I did read a paperback, modern translation of it and have seen three different movie versions of it. - pgd
Last edited by pgd on 20 Jul 2010, 8:43 pm, edited 4 times in total.
19 Jul 2010, 9:14 am
