Christ in power
In my previous post, I mentioned In the Belly of the Whale by Michael F. Flynn, probably the best generation ship SF novel in years for many reasons. (My review in Russian, for those who might find it interesting, is here.) Among these reasons is his careful design of the syncretic culture on board of the Whale, whence stem ethnoi brought snapshots of their respective civilizations to develop further, beyond Earth, and mix freely after this divergence point of Departure Day. Three main cultural reservoirs mentioned by Flynn are: Spanglish, corresponding to mutated USA (Granpublic Americano), Tantamizh (South Indian), and Beifangwongwa (Chinese). Descendants of Russians, and Slavic people in general, are almost nowhere to be seen or spoken about, maybe after a devastating war of sorts in this timeline, or because of him being somewhat sloppy, or lacking an interest. I don’t mind.
Proper mixing of religions is discussed, of course. An interesting question arises: who could be the prototype of a central figure in a specially designed syncretic cult, that would blend, say, Christianity and Confucianism? After all, our real contemporary Communist Party of China successfully betrothed Confucianism and Marxism… under the auspices of state capitalism.
An ardent subscriber asked me then, in a thread under the post, about Wang Mang, whom I labeled the “socialist emperor” of China.
I feel Wang could be a solid candidate. I hereby repost a core of my answer. My choice is inspired by a couple of curious, almost mystic parallels.
Wang Mang, the only Emperor of the short-lived Chinese Xin dynasty, is considered one of the most controversial social reformers in East Asian antiquity. By happenstance, his ill-fated reign and attempts at installing utopian social order almost coincided with traditional years of Jesus’ early life.
Jesus says, as per John 18:36:
My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight…
Spot on! Wang Mang provides an example of what may have followed the rise of Christ, and not a man claiming loyalty to His teachings, to royal power of this world.
Wang’s project in China has quite a few common features with teachings of early Christianity (or Christian Socialism) about common good, despite Wang being, of course, a reverent Confucian.
His reign was, from the onset, plagued by natural disasters, famines, river deluges, and harvest failures. Which, in aggravation, sparked the civil war of colossal scale: about 8/10 of the then-Han population had perished in several back-to-back peasant rebellions.
Interestingly, even some details of Wang’s fall, as Chinese sources tell it (see, e.g., in History of the Former Han Dynasty by Ban Gu), resemble the Biblical stories about Jesus’ sacrifice.
For example, Wang was slain late in the afternoon, after his three-day fast during siege of the palace sector he found his last refuge in, his head that wore the regalia severed, his body torn to pieces by soldiers who cast lots upon the most prized body parts as proofs of their victory over the Emperor.
Finally, as Ban Gu remarks dryly, Wang’s head was taken to the rival Han Emperor, Liu Gengshi, who ordered to hang it up in the temporary capital Wancheng,
in the market place to be spat on and pelted with stones and dung, and someone cut out the tongue, and ate it.
(Compare Mark 15:17, 15:19, 15:24:
And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about his head… And they smote him on the head with a reed, and did spit upon him, and bowing their knees worshipped him… And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take.)
But this was not the end of Xin interregnum; a couple of years later, new wave of the Red Eyebrows rebels engulfed the heartland of the Empire, and Liu Gengshi surrendered to them, only to have been executed soon after. Another descendant of the Imperial House Liu, Liu Xiu, had more luck in him, eventually expelling the Red Eyebrows and restoring the Han dynasty. He thus carved for his House additional 200 years of existence, until the eventual downfall and the start of the Three Kingdoms era.
Somehow, through all of this, Wang’s head had been preserved (almost miraculously) in a condition good enough that for three more centuries it could have been seen in a court vault, until, in 311, the great fire in the besieged capital destroyed the remains. Supposedly destroyed, that is.
One may add that in translations of Christian texts to Chinese languages the Christian conception of God is often linked to the word Shang-di, 上帝, which also, you got it right, designates the supreme ordainer of the events Under Heaven in many Chinese cults stemming from primordial folk religion.
