On a Godless Planet:Volume3A Chapter 19
Chapter 19: Alien Storm[edit]
–A foreign storm.
That is, an impossible storm.
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Kuwajiri figured she should raise her hand.
“The spread of and acclimation to Christianity.”
Her own mythology had been affected by that a fair bit too. To explain further…
“When Christianity arrived in Ireland, its followers interfered with Irish mythology and history to grant their teachings legitimacy.”
“That is a drastic measure…”
“W-well, that was how things were done back then. …Anyway, they took the people considered to be the original Irish settlers and figures from Irish mythology and claimed they were the descendants of characters in the Bible. And…”
She hesitated a moment but came out and said it.
“They said people arrived in Ireland because the world was submerged by a great flood, and added that as the starting point of Irish mythology.”
A breath.
“They said Ireland was first discovered by Noah’s granddaughter Cessair. She searched for safe land in the west so she could escape the flood and arrived in Ireland, but the flood reached there too and she died. But one of her followers, a wise man by the name of Fintan mac Bochra, transformed into a salmon to survive the flood. Afterwards, he recorded the history of the rulers of the island that would go on to be known as Ireland. …So Irish mythology begins with a story from the Bible.”
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“That’s allll a lie. I should scold whoever diiiid that for causing soooo much trouble.”
“Imagine being thrown in hell after this much time has passed…”
“Now that’s some long throw divine punishment…”
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Kuwajiri was a little nervous. Both because of the earlier setup and because she was explaining a mythology other than Norse.
And she was speaking to some really major gods and her superior’s friends.
…This is going to take years off my life.
Not that she had a lifespan.
Still, she could feel it wearing her down. But despite feeling that way, she kept going.
“There are a few different versions for the flood part. Some versions say Fintan saved Cessair and others say the descendants of Cain arrived first.”
Also…
“A story from before the Cessair story says a woman named Banba arrived in Ireland before the flood. This Banba woman is one of the Tuatha De Danann just like Dan-san, making her a matron goddess of Ireland, so there is a theory saying her story was fleshed out to become the story of Cessair.”
And the point of all this was…
“They didn’t do a good job of keeping their story straight.”
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Everyone reacted to that with astonishment.
Among them, Senpai-san spoke up.
“…”
“I was wondering why there were so many different versions.”
“I would rather not pursue this too far, but my guess is the missionaries worked their imaginations separately.”
“Oh, so it’s just the differing interpretations that always crop up in fan works…”
“I bet if the missionaries had gathered together afterwards, they’d have started physically fighting over whose interpretation was correct and badmouthing each other on the church message board.”
“So is it like that thing you see in myths a lot where the same god has an entirely different personality or does contradictory things between stories? I guess the people who spread the stories didn’t agree on what the god was like.”
“Ah ha ha! What kind of useless mythology lets that happen to their gods!?”
“You’re like the prime example, so keep your mouth shut.”
“But I can make a guess how this happened.”
I should have known Temanko would take a stab at it, thought Kuwajiri.
She was a more daring knowledge god. And so she made her daring speculation.
“The initial missionaries took the story of the local matron goddess Banba and combined it with their own flood story, which was well received. So the second and third wave of missionaries had heard what the previous ones did, but they reworked the story into Cessair while bringing it more in line with the Bible.”
“Then would the thing about descendants Cain be a failure to coordinate, or something that came from the missionaries in between the Banba and Cessair stories?”
“I can only speculate, but given the long time scale this occurred on, it seems plausible.”
She really was daring.
…I’m too cautious for this.
Especially with an Irish god present and the connection to her own people. This had to be so much easier for Shinto which had so little connection.
But she decided she needed to be a little more daring, so she formed the words.
“Anyway, Irish mythology has six tribes arrive after the flood. Those tribes wage war and decline until they are destroyed and Ireland is ultimately handed over to its current people. I mentioned it before, but it was Dan-senpai there and the other gods who descended into the underground Tir na nOg at the end of it all.”
“Yes. That’s how…it happened. …It can be a bit of a problem..”
It wasn’t just “a problem”.
Norse mythology had some issues too, but they didn’t have their origin replaced.
“We were far from Rome and our culture stuck around in Iceland, so we didn’t get much interference and our info managed to remain accurate.”
“Still, I think Irish mythology remains fairly strong. After all, the contradictory parts of the remaining myths mostly come from Christianity and the original myths themselves are generally consistent.”
“Myyyy people did a really baaaad job.”
“Yeah, but that bad job allowed some of Irish mythology to survive.”
“They really are nothing but trouble,…”
“FYI, the starting portion didn’t just boldly make the people of Ireland descendants of biblical figures. It also did so for the people in Europe. For example, they said the Scythians were descendants of Noah, their king was one of those who built the Tower of Babel, his son married the pharaoh’s daughter, and their descendants moved to Scythia before taking a long journey to Ireland.”
“Th-they have some nerve dragging us into this!”
“And they dragged us into it while also connecting us to the Scythians.”
“Sounds like everyone loves the Scythians.”
“Everyone’s in lovey-dovey-dove with the Scythians! I’m so glad my mom’s famous!”
Level up Revelation Boards appeared around Kido and Senpai-san. But…
“Eh? Y-your mom?”
Oh, a new reaction, thought Kuwajiri while Kido nodded deep.
“I am his mother. What of it?”
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“Eh!? But wait… this morning she was…huh?”
“Sh! Hold your tongue or she’ll scalp you!”
Some more new reactions, thought Kuwajiri. But…
“Do you see now? A mythology can have a flood without a creator god or creation story.”
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“That said,” said Kuwajiri via Revelation Board. “Raidou-senpai, Shifu-senpai. Do you think Irish mythology originally had a creation story?”
“It had a starting point with Fintan mac Bochra, right? Based on his name, he has to be from Ireland.”
“Ireland is a place you have to cross the ocean to reach. If their mythology is based on Celtic mythology, which had no creation story, then they probably had a story of the discovery of and migration to that new land.”
“If so, that original story could have been overwritten by the Christian flood story.”
“Fintan mac Bochra and Banba may have originally been the ones who discovered and migrated to the new land. I feel like that’s why their names were used and why the people accepted the stories.”
“Thank you for taking the final steps I wasn’t bold enough to take.”
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“In that case,” I said.
“If Irish mythology can cause a flood without a creation story or creator god, should we treat them as a suspect here?”
“I-I guess?” said Dan-san. “But the mythological flood would have to be caused by divine authority.”
So…
“That would mean I caused it as the Irish mother earth goddess?”
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“The time period doesn’t add up, does it?”
I agreed with Bilgamesh-san.
“Dan-san, you are from the fifth of the six migrations. The initial flood couldn’t have been your authority.”
“No, um, the order of…the story versions.”
“The order of the versions?”
“Oh.”
Kuwajiri-san raised her hand.
“Irish mythology has a flood without a creator god, but when viewed form the gods’ perspective, that was a later change added by the spread of Christianity and Dan-senpai was Ireland’s mother earth goddess before that.”
So…
“If the flood was added by the Christian changes, since they lack a creator god, the flood would have been caused by Dan-senpai, whether she wanted it or not. Because without Dan-senpai – that is, without Ireland – the flood never would have happened.”
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“Yeah… When viewed as a myth, the lack of a creator god means the flood story comes as a set with Dan-chan being the mother earth goddess who can be seen as Ireland itself.”
“It doesn’t function as a story otherwise.”
“That would mean it’s less an authority and more a disaster that comes with her very existence.”
“So this flooding could have been caused to secure a ‘new land’ like with Dan-san?”
“That would mean a mother earth goddess is one way of causing a flood without a creator god.”
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“Hey! Hold on! Enough nonsense about mother earth goddesses causing floods!”
“Oh, coming to Dan-san’s defense? That’s a surprise coming from you.”
“Of course I’m defending her! Because I’m a mother earth goddess too! You’re basically accusing me too here! So could you quit it?”
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Kido-san turned an expressionless look my way.
“I feel bad doing this to Dan-san, but I think a mother earth goddess could be responsible.”
“B-based on what we just heard, I have to agree!”
“Eh? Oh…yes. D-don’t worry…about me.”
“Heyyyyyyyyyyy! Echidna! Did you even hear what I said!?”
“Aunt! Aunt! How can you even ask that!?”
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I felt like everything was falling into place.
And when I started to rewrite the previous list, I realized something.
“Oh, sorry, Mr. V. You still have your hand up. What did you want to say?”
“Well, um…”
“Yes?”
“Wasn’t I supposed to be running the meeting?”
“Oh.”
I felt kind of bad now.
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“Speaking of flood stories, we have one of those too. But what about Shinto and Norse?”
Tenma raised her hand a little.
“Simply put, Shinto has no flood story. Just like Egyptian mythology.”
“Does your country have excellent flood control?”
“I doubt it did in ancient times, but the terrain is steep and you are never all that far from the ocean, so even if there is flooding, it wouldn’t be large-scale enough to submerge an entire city and it wouldn’t last very long.”
“Huh? But Japan does have flooding from typhoons and excessive rain, right?”
<From a meteorological perspective, Japan’s flooding is relatively minor compared to the same in other parts of the world. The “flooding” in Japan is technically classified as flash floods and rivers overrunning their banks.>
<For example,> continued Balancer. <When Mesopotamia had history’s largest flood at around 4000 BCE, the average water level was 8m. It covered an area 500km long and 150km wide. Mud accumulated 3.5m thick and they even build new cities atop the mud afterwards.>
“500km long!?”
<From here in Tachikawa, that is the distance to Okayama Prefecture.>
“That means nothing to me.”
“The point is, that is what we mean by flooding.”
“Yeah, we definitely don’t have that…”
“On the other hand, Shinto does feature flood-causing artifacts. Senpai-san’s nephew Yamasachi-hiko was given two jewels, the Shiomichi-no-Tama and the Shiohiru-no-Tama, by a sea god. These jewels let Yamasachi-hiko summon floodwaters or make them recede, which he used to win a competition with his brother.”
“My sister’s kids really like to make things exciting…”
“Since the names of the jewels refer to the tides, they seem more related to tsunamis than flooding, so it isn’t really the same as the other flood myths around the world.”
“While it is a bit of stretch, you could say the story of Japan’s creation is a flood story. When creating the Japanese islands, Izanagi and Izanami stirred up the chaotic surface of the earth from heaven and then created the islands.”
The Norse knowledge god’s eyebrow rose at that.
“If anything, that’s more like the Great Flood and Procreation myth.”
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“The Great Flood and…what?”
<Great Flood and Procreation myth. It is a type of myth telling the origin of humanity that spread along the East Asian coastal region and into Southeast Asia. After a flood, a brother and sister perform a ritual to overcome the incest taboo, marry, and become the origin of humanity. Usually, they fail to have a child the first time around and then succeed using the ritual.>
“This format is only clearly seen in the myths of those regions, but the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible has a very similar structure. You could call it convergent evolution of myths, but it is also possible that a type of myth approving of incestual marriage spread along with the flood myth.”
“I-I wanted to say it isn’t the same, but it actually fits more than I thought it would…”
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“The flood story in Norse mythology has the blood of a slain giant flooding the world.”
“That’s certainly more violent than the others…”
“You could say it suits us and our love of fighting.”
“In that case, the flooding would be the powerful giant’s authority. But no one like that’s been manifested here yet, so we’ll just be observers here.”
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“Then we have our list of suspects.”
I listed out all the names.
- Sea Gods
- Poseidon: Olympus
- Me: Game Club (Shinto)
- Mr. V: Salacia’s Husband
- Creator Gods
- Monotheistic God: Game Club
- Touto: Manga Club
- Mother Earth Goddesses
- Demeter: Cameo Appearance
- Dan: Ireland
“Salacia might beat me up if I say it too much, but that is an affiliation I can understand.”
“Heyyyyyyyyyy! What do you mean ‘cameo appearance’!?”
“Will nothing satisfy you!? Anyway, it’s time we heard each suspect’s defense, okay?”
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