"Njal’s Saga takes place right on the fulcrum of these two world-views, the point where either the natural justice of vengeance or the artificial justice of courts seem like plausible options."
I read it in college for a class called "Hatred, vengeance, and the law," and this was pretty much the takeaway I remember, yes.
On the Christianity point: First, I'd keep in mind that the saga was written after the conversion, so how fast Njal converted in reality is beside the point. Second, I'd bring up that Christianity explicitly calls on us to consider all humans to be God' children, a universal brotherhood of man. Matthew 10:34-39. 1 Corinthians 1:10. Accepting this fictive kinship immediately turns the logic of familial feuds around: your hated enemy is your brother, just like the biological brother that got killed. So how can anyone who feuds ever be in the right?
Christianity as described in the Bible and in Catholic doctrine isn't against all war and all killing, but it does heavily proscribe who can kill whom, under what circumstances, and at whose orders and discretion. There's a big (doctrinal) difference between the Pope supporting a crusade, or the king/government going to war or condemning a criminal, vs. individuals/families wantonly slaughtering one another over various slights.
Under Icelandic law, individuals had the power to engage in what was effectively private war, and only they (and the heads of their families) were responsible for keeping themselves in line. If they broke the rules, others retaliated under those same rules.
Under Christianity, only God has the right to judge and punish us, and sometimes his human representatives on Earth. A group which, in the middle ages in Europe, included the church and secular leadership.
"Who has the right to use violence to support the rules?" is a question every society grapples with. Iceland's answer changed after the conversion to Christianity.
Also: Christians who break the rules of their faith (aka all of them, officially and in practice) are sinners, not liars.
Saying they are sinners only works if you accept the doctrine they claim to support. I suppose you could say hypocrites rather than liars. And I don't accept the Catholic church as the definition of Christian. Christian is supposed to mean a follower of Jesus Christ, and that doesn't describe the Paulists. The Catholics today are better then the Catholics of many times and periods (by my judgement), but that doesn't make them followers of Jesus. (OTOH, I do wonder about the accuracy of the reported words, and even whether he actually existed rather than being a fictional character. There was definitely a lot of tinkering with such records as exist.)
Oh for sure there was lots of tinkering and probably fabrication outright of all kinds of records.
But since you started by accusing me of denying history or calling most Christians liars, I responded accordingly. The Icelandic people who converted to Christianity converted to Catholicism as it existed in the year 1000. Those were the doctrines they were working under. And in general, when discussing other cultures very different from my own, I prefer to at least start by judging them according to their own standards, understanding, and jurisprudence. It's not like they would have known about any of the other early Christian sects with differing beliefs, let alone the later protestant movements or even then-extant moral philosophies from further afield.
You can't be a liar because you're unavoidably ignorant of facts that might have led you to a different conclusion, or because you start from background assumptions different from those that people who don't even exist yet will someday use as a lens for considering history. Otherwise, was Aristotle a liar for not knowing about momentum and Newton's laws of motion? Was Ptolemy a liar because his world model was geocentric? Was Descartes a liar for not considering the Buddhist perspective of enlightenment including a state of no thoughts?
I am curious though: precisely who do *you* consider to be Christian? Today and in the past?
If you prefer hypocrite to liar, I'm quite willing to accept that change.
A Christian would be someone who accepted the reported words of Jesus Christ as the doctrine, and attempted to live by it. And who didn't add additions that were in conflict with either the letter or the spirit of those words. I've known a couple, and they were good people, though they acknowledged that they couldn't actually live up to their beliefs.
"Reported" by whom, though? We're all, at minimum many reports in a long chain away from the original words themselves. Like it or not, we're all making our best guesses about what was actually said, and it isn't necessarily unreasonable for someone of limited time, means, education, and aptitude to decide that a person of institution is worthy of enough trust to accept or at least prefer their interpretation of often cryptic, metaphorical, multilayered, or past-culture-bound statements.
Alas, the words are often contradictory. E.g., compare Matthew chapter 5 (the sermon on the mount) with Matthew chapter 10 ("[34] Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. [35] For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law." KJV).
All Christianities have to "explain away" some things that Jesus is reported to have said. Which usually involves first deciding what the spirit of the words is and than saying you can't take them literally. Shockingly, the spirit is almost always what the author wants the words to mean.
This was an excellent review, thanks!
"Njal’s Saga takes place right on the fulcrum of these two world-views, the point where either the natural justice of vengeance or the artificial justice of courts seem like plausible options."
I read it in college for a class called "Hatred, vengeance, and the law," and this was pretty much the takeaway I remember, yes.
On the Christianity point: First, I'd keep in mind that the saga was written after the conversion, so how fast Njal converted in reality is beside the point. Second, I'd bring up that Christianity explicitly calls on us to consider all humans to be God' children, a universal brotherhood of man. Matthew 10:34-39. 1 Corinthians 1:10. Accepting this fictive kinship immediately turns the logic of familial feuds around: your hated enemy is your brother, just like the biological brother that got killed. So how can anyone who feuds ever be in the right?
Your comment seems to deny the historical actions of "Christendom"...unless you're asserting that most folks of claim to be Christians are lying.
Christianity as described in the Bible and in Catholic doctrine isn't against all war and all killing, but it does heavily proscribe who can kill whom, under what circumstances, and at whose orders and discretion. There's a big (doctrinal) difference between the Pope supporting a crusade, or the king/government going to war or condemning a criminal, vs. individuals/families wantonly slaughtering one another over various slights.
Under Icelandic law, individuals had the power to engage in what was effectively private war, and only they (and the heads of their families) were responsible for keeping themselves in line. If they broke the rules, others retaliated under those same rules.
Under Christianity, only God has the right to judge and punish us, and sometimes his human representatives on Earth. A group which, in the middle ages in Europe, included the church and secular leadership.
"Who has the right to use violence to support the rules?" is a question every society grapples with. Iceland's answer changed after the conversion to Christianity.
Also: Christians who break the rules of their faith (aka all of them, officially and in practice) are sinners, not liars.
Saying they are sinners only works if you accept the doctrine they claim to support. I suppose you could say hypocrites rather than liars. And I don't accept the Catholic church as the definition of Christian. Christian is supposed to mean a follower of Jesus Christ, and that doesn't describe the Paulists. The Catholics today are better then the Catholics of many times and periods (by my judgement), but that doesn't make them followers of Jesus. (OTOH, I do wonder about the accuracy of the reported words, and even whether he actually existed rather than being a fictional character. There was definitely a lot of tinkering with such records as exist.)
Oh for sure there was lots of tinkering and probably fabrication outright of all kinds of records.
But since you started by accusing me of denying history or calling most Christians liars, I responded accordingly. The Icelandic people who converted to Christianity converted to Catholicism as it existed in the year 1000. Those were the doctrines they were working under. And in general, when discussing other cultures very different from my own, I prefer to at least start by judging them according to their own standards, understanding, and jurisprudence. It's not like they would have known about any of the other early Christian sects with differing beliefs, let alone the later protestant movements or even then-extant moral philosophies from further afield.
You can't be a liar because you're unavoidably ignorant of facts that might have led you to a different conclusion, or because you start from background assumptions different from those that people who don't even exist yet will someday use as a lens for considering history. Otherwise, was Aristotle a liar for not knowing about momentum and Newton's laws of motion? Was Ptolemy a liar because his world model was geocentric? Was Descartes a liar for not considering the Buddhist perspective of enlightenment including a state of no thoughts?
I am curious though: precisely who do *you* consider to be Christian? Today and in the past?
If you prefer hypocrite to liar, I'm quite willing to accept that change.
A Christian would be someone who accepted the reported words of Jesus Christ as the doctrine, and attempted to live by it. And who didn't add additions that were in conflict with either the letter or the spirit of those words. I've known a couple, and they were good people, though they acknowledged that they couldn't actually live up to their beliefs.
"Reported" by whom, though? We're all, at minimum many reports in a long chain away from the original words themselves. Like it or not, we're all making our best guesses about what was actually said, and it isn't necessarily unreasonable for someone of limited time, means, education, and aptitude to decide that a person of institution is worthy of enough trust to accept or at least prefer their interpretation of often cryptic, metaphorical, multilayered, or past-culture-bound statements.
Alas, the words are often contradictory. E.g., compare Matthew chapter 5 (the sermon on the mount) with Matthew chapter 10 ("[34] Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. [35] For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law." KJV).
All Christianities have to "explain away" some things that Jesus is reported to have said. Which usually involves first deciding what the spirit of the words is and than saying you can't take them literally. Shockingly, the spirit is almost always what the author wants the words to mean.