Questions about St. George

[German_Melkite]

This is the most complete and authoritative material I have ever found about St. George.

ucc.ie/milmart/George.html

 

[Nimzovik]

Many Thanks!

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Fine - pagan traditions were co -opted. A la Christmas tree. That still does not mean we are sure which is which and what is what when when was when. To be extreme, by extension. we could say Islam co - opted the (pagan to Muslims) Christian tradition. What we need is hard core evidence of what exactly happenend when. To simply point to similarities of pagan traditions is a bit too much license. Otherwise all is midrash.

The Christmas tree is not a good example, as it is of Christian rather than pagan origins. I think the idea that it was pagan in origin is primarily a result of thinking if it’s at all “naturey” it must be pagan in origin.

But would it matter if it had been taken from a pagan custom, as holly and mistletoe actually were? The idea that something is wrong just because it was once pagan is an example of what is called the genetic fallacy. Just because something originated in a bad context does not necessarily mean it is bad today. The whole reality of the thing has to be considered. Christianity can adopt something from paganism because it is actually a good and beautiful thing, or it can invent something similar but innocent in order to subvert a pagan custom.

Also a mere similarity between something Christian and something pagan does not even mean we took it from them. Aztecs pyramids look kind of like Mesopotamian ziggurats, but no one reasonable thinks the Aztecs copied the Mesopotamians. It’s just that human beings are pretty much the same everywhere on earth and across the centuries, and so our cultures tend to come up with much the same ideas again and again.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

To my eyes, that’s a guy on a horse with his dog killing a wild boar.

That’s what it looks like to me too. Not that I’d have any problem with if there were an artistic connection between the two. Or even a mythological connection, though an artistic influence is not any kind of reasonable evidence for a connection between the stories depicted in each image.