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In the epilogue, we see another Odin, the Odin of Finland, I believe, and he's quite different. Neil would've had to make about a hundred Jesus' (Jesii?) to make sense of it all.

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It was Iceland, not Finland. The relative isolation of Iceland has kept the Icelandic language very close to Old Norse. Iceland also "officially" recognizes the religion Ásatrú, which is the modern worship of Odin, Thor, etc.

Maybe Christ isn't mentioned in the book (except for that one part) because Shadow is the Christ figure. He was born to a woman, fathered by a God, died on the Ash tree (crucifixion symbolism) and was resurrected by Easter. Gaiman also mentioned the wound in his left side, which is what made the reference more apparent to me. He "walked on water" (at the end when he walked out to the truck), and was like the sacrifice that stopped the war. In a way. I think. Kind of.

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Originally posted by IamShake:
Maybe Christ isn't mentioned in the book (except for that one part) because Shadow is the Christ figure...

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Well, Gaiman has commented in his journal why Christ isn't in the book (I posted the quote earlier in the thread)...
But I thought I'd point you towards one of the Shadow's Real Name threads - he does appear to be more than Shadow, but Christ isn't the figure most people picked

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Originally posted by aria525:
Just a thought-- what about the saints? Alot of the Catholics where I'm from worship the saints as gods themselves praying to them instead of Jesus, lighting cadles for them and everything. But then they're not new or forgotten, just somewhere in the middle.

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Actually you've got it totally wrong, although that's not really a surprise as most non-Catholics have no clue about Catholic practices. You don't pray to saints as gods or for anything in particular at all. You pray to saints to petition God on your behalf for the thing you pray for as the saints would have God's ear in these matters. You pray for what is called "intercession". The saints intercede on your behalf. No catholic prays to a saint or thinks of one as a "god". That's just where you heathens get it wrong.

joe

Reading AG I've realized how little I actually know of various mythologies, so I have a highly ignorant question. Are any of the old gods directly based on actual, specific historical figures that we know of? It seems to me that Jesus, the saints, and for that matter, people like Mohammed and Buddah, do not appear (at least in America) because they are real. There is little or no dispute that they lived for a short period and now have passed on to other planes of existence (heaven, further incarnations, nirvana, whatever). However, none of their followers really think of them as chaps just walking around messing with their lives. Odin, Czernobog, (whose name, I was amused to recognize from Fantasia's "Night on Bald Mountain") and others are, as far as I can tell, figures who emerged from someone's imagination, took shape, and evolved from passing folk tales into figures of worship, complete with epic human flaws. No one's actually met them, but they just might show up on your door step all the same.

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Originally posted by GMZoe:
from Neil's blog:
Friday, June 22, 2001

Jesus actually did turn up in a scene which I cut, as it just didn`t work, but I figured a book about American Religion was not the book I wanted to write, which was about American Belief, so I let some things go...

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hi there!
I recently found a quote that can be helpfull.
It states the same about the deleted scene but gives some more insight on reasons and ideas.
These are Neil's exact words from a fan meeting he did in Cracow back in the summer 2003.

Reader: I was wondering why didn’t you include the Christian God in the American Gods? He was quite an important figure.
NG: I think you’ve put your finger on it in your question when you say he is an important figure. The point about American Gods, these are incredibly unimportant figures, nearly forgotten by the culture and hanging by their fingernails. I actually... I wrote one chapter while writting AG that I actually had Shadow meet Jesus. It was while he’s hanging on the tree and has this halucination and he goes and meets Jesus who in AG world looks a lot like Steven Spilberg, wears baseball caps and lives in this georgeous place in the mountains outside Beverly Hills. And then I took it out ‘cause at the end of the day I felt like Jesus Christ belonged in American Gods about as much as George Bush belongs in a novel about low-life thieves. You now he might well have been important to America, just not to that book. I mean... somebody complaining about the problems of being rich, famous and important not really belonged to a book where a lot of people complaining about being forgotten.

Regarding Elvis:
Elvis, although the object of worship, in some ways, was a man, not a supernatural being. I think that is what distinguishes him, partly. I mean, isn't that the whole Kobald/brownie thing, that you can't start out as a person and become a god, just a lesser-than-god?

Also, if he were to become a deity of some sort, Elvis would be a new god, and the new gods seem mostly to be abstract constructs rather than personages: wealth, technology, credit, etc. Don't they? Any opinions?

Well, (a) because it would piss a lot of people off if he wrote about Jesus, and pissing a lot of people off doesn't interest him; (b) because he's interested in myth and not religion, and though that's not a p.c. distinction he's a writer and he can distinguish all he likes; but I think also because (c) in the Neil Gaiman world, to the degree that there is one, the Creator exists above and beyond the day to day mythical world. Even Dream defers to the Creator. Jesus is an aspect of the Creator. I notice that Kali shows up, but Vishnu/Shiva/Brahma don't. Grand all encompassing creator gods aren't fun; local personalized deities are what you want at your dinner party.

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Originally posted by aria525:
Just a thought-- what about the saints? Alot of the Catholics where I'm from worship the saints as gods themselves praying to them instead of Jesus, lighting cadles for them and everything. But then they're not new or forgotten, just somewhere in the middle.

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Catholics don't worship saint, there's a pretty fine line between worship, adoration, veneration, etc. From what I understand, Catholics ask saints to pray for them, in much the same way that a person might ask a friend to pray for them. Since the saints are dead though, I suppose Catholics ask for their help by praying, and asking the saints to pray for them in return. I suppose one can go and ask God directly, but maybe it's good to have help by saints, who are supposedly favored by God.

Why no Jesus?

Not to sound mean, but why would Loki/Odin want someone involved in a bloodbath who preaches turning the other cheek?
There would have been no use for Wednesday to be there then! Perhaps Odin and Low-Key intentionally kept him out of the loop ;-)

Sorry, meant Shadow, not wednesday btw :P

that cat's got enough press as it is.

I think that leaving Jesus out was a very wise thing to do.
The Gods at war are trying to scrape up what belief of them there is to stay alive.
It's probably the same reason why Neil left Christ out of Sandman.

-stevo

I haven't read the book since April, but am I the only one who remembers a conversation in the book, in which Wednesday is talking to...someone. And he brings up how the "big guys" (or something like that) aren't interested in the smaller god-factions, in the war in general?

Maybe I hallucinated that.

Oh, and IamShake... *squinches nose* A lot of the things you mention that make Shadow a "Christ figure"... are just the things that Christianity ripped off the older religions. The hanging on the tree is not a crucifixion metaphor. The Crucifixion was an "Odin's Sacrifice on the World Tree" metaphor... as well as many other god-sacrifices. Easter was the embodiment of dawn and new beginnings... so "resurrected by Easter" makes sense in the old way of things, not just the Christian way.

And it wasn't until years after Jesus' death that they decided he was fathered by a god. And the wound in the left side was a reflection, again, of Odin's (Shadow's own father's) sacrifice. Not Jesus'.

That's all.

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Originally posted by Rozinante:
Are any of the old gods directly based on actual, specific historical figures that we know of?

There is a theory that says Odin and Thor were based on historical figures. It says he was the leader of Aasene who immigrated to Scandinavia from the Asovsea. This was around the time when the Roman empire was expanding. Apparently he was such a mighty leader that the people started worshiping him like a god.

Keep in mind that this is quite a controversial theory here in Norway.

quote:

There is a theory that says Odin and Thor were based on historical figures. It says he was the leader of Aasene who immigrated to Scandinavia from the Asovsea. This was around the time when the Roman empire was expanding. Apparently he was such a mighty leader that the people started worshiping him like a god.

Keep in mind that this is quite a controversialtheory here in Norway.

Not only in Norway, but also in mainstream Anglophone archaeology in general. Mass migrations used to be used to explain everything between the spread of agriculture across Europe, and the Roman invasion. This is now discredited, partly due to the fact that radiocarbon dating suggests that these events (the spread of agriculture, bronze or iron technology) took place over far longer periods of time than previously believed.

Julius Caesar did use such a mass migration as justification for invading Gaul, but his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars is primarily regarded as self-promoting propaganda. That's not to say that it's a pack of lies, just that like any pronouncement by a political figure, it should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.

on the note of the human origins of the norse gods, the small amount of the prose edda that i've read definitely gave the impression that they (or odin at least) were mortals who migrated from the mediterranean/asiatic world somewhere or other.

so i was going to go somewhere else with this, but i thought of a new question on the topic. it makes sense for Jesus to not have played a part in AG because he is still strongly believed in in america and also because he is considered to live in heaven.
my question is on the first part of that. if being strongly believed in would mean not being a part of AG, then why would the technology gods (the fat kid, idunno its been almost a year since i read it) play a part considering that they're the forces that are sorta taking over america?

maybe im misremembering something about the way all this works.

lastly, i like Jesii as the plural of Jesus because it makes me think of Jedi.\

http://yesconsiderably.blogspot.com

There is a mention of Jesus. Somebody says his name in vain and one of the gods says something along the lines of "he could fall in a cesspit and come out smelling like roses. Then another god coments that " he does okay here (in america)"but I saw him hitchiking in afghanistan and nobody would stop to give him a lift." I think Neil was right to leave him out as a character. It would have been fun to have him talk to shadow on the tree, but I think it would have pulled away from the tone of the story at that point.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by brent:
so i was going to go somewhere else with this, but i thought of a new question on the topic. it makes sense for Jesus to not have played a part in AG because he is still strongly believed in in america and also because he is considered to live in heaven.
my question is on the first part of that. if being strongly believed in would mean not being a part of AG, then why would the technology gods (the fat kid, idunno its been almost a year since i read it) play a part considering that they're the forces that are sorta taking over america?

maybe im misremembering something about the way all this works.[QUOTE]

i think its becausethe new 'gods' are abstract concepts with no focus, wereas odin etc have a definite focus, a name, a system of beleifs and so on.

therefore they cant become as powerful as they would like while these old gods distract from them since there is only so much belief to go round.

maybe, its been a year since i read it

I believe that Jesus was left out, all except for the passing reference, because of the nature of Christian worship in America (which mirrors the worship of the other gods, in a way).

Back in Europe there would definitely be a Jesus, because to the Europeans Jesus was a god just like all the rest for nearly two thousand years. Here in America, though, the concept of "Jesus" is subsumed into anything Christians want it to be. Hatred, bigotry, greed, and the absolute worst parts of human nature are celebrated in the churches and gatherings all across this country, so the actual Jesus doesn't get any of the worship that is supposedly spent on him.

Instead that worship goes into a personality cult, which has its energy directed at the religious structures, both Catholic and Protestant. Christians in America, more than any other faith in any other land in any other time, are really worshipping themselves and their own power. So Jesus himself would be rather a footnote in the American Gods universe, kept substantial by the ragged core of people that actually worship him, but unable even to scrape by with any supernatural abilities.