A re-telling of the true 12th century love story of Heloise and Abelard. Abelard is a great philosopher and theologian who has taken, like many academics of the time, a vow of celibacy. When he is hired as a tutor for the brilliant and beautiful Hel...
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I became only less and less trusting of translations - of those human approximations of the Divine - as time went on. From Aramaic to Greek to Latin, already so much of the core of language had been lost flipping between tongues. And this, of course, was assuming that those inscribing the texts had even recounted them right in the first place.
Here is the thing you must know. Christianity did not come to be at once. It came in pieces. At first, the Christians were a small sect of Jews who decided to follow Jesus' word. They did not call themselves Christians: still, they were Jews. Heretical ones, at that. They were persecuted. Jesus' apostles spread his word, gathering many differing branches of these early Christian beliefs wherever they went. Christianity was not a unified thing. It would take another couple centuries for Christianity to become a religion itself, and to be split off from Judaism.
Of the many texts describing the events of the New Testament, four were chosen as its official story: Mark, Matthew, John, Luke. There were other texts - many other texts - that are, largely, lost to time. There were other branches, too: there were the gnostics, the adoptionists... The forming of Christianity came in scattered pieces. The light of official doctrine shone on some pieces, and relegated others to the shadows.
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This light that shone on it was called the Roman Empire, with all its power and glory. In the 4th century, Christianity stopped being persecuted, becoming legal under Constantine. Soon after, it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, under Theodosius. The Council of Nicea in 325 gathered many to form an official creed, stating what Christianity would, officially, believe. This Nicene Creed, the statement of Christianity formed during this council, became official doctrine. The branches of Christianity that did not align with it were deemed heretic. Many, who up until that point had been considered Christians, were now killed for their straying beliefs. Just think! But for one differing angle of the spotlight shining on pieces, the religion we know today as Truth could have been entirely different.
Truth cannot be entire when it is composed of a such pieces - when it is a hurried collage patched up through time, forged with the eager hands of those looking to make sense of something they can never make sense of entirely. The Divine, I believe, cannot be known entirely.
