#1: Orientation
Welcome one and all to my first, official author blog. My name is Brian C. Russell, but most of my posts will likely be signed “bman.” I am a 24 year old male Christian author who lives in Florida.
Some of you may remember me from previous blogs. From The Underfold or White Board Artwork where I am primarily silly and occasionally non-sensical. While I will not discount the fact that there may still be some of that here, this blog is primarily for my novel-writing endeavours.
Hence the title of this blog is Angels and Myth. For those of you who don’t know me personally, which is hopefully a lot of people, I have always been fascinated with mythology. For a long time it was primarily Greek mythology, but over the years it has grown to include many more civilizations than I can remember.
I can still remember checking out the same book over and over again in the library at my elementary school. It was a simple encyclopedia of mythological creatures, and I loved it. The idea that there were creatures of the fantastic variety living around the world at one point in time. Minotaurs are still my favorite, especially after watching the new Chronicles of Narnia movies!
I can hear some of you questioning my reasoning back there about the creatures roaming around for real in the past. It’s true, I still believe in those creatures. But, let me explain…
When I was in college, I took a Mythology course and got my first real taste of what “mythology” was for more than just me. For me, myths were awesome stories of heroes and gods and goddesses and huge monsters that needed to be destroyed. For many people, they were just stories. And, the Bible was a myth too.
At first, I clearly remember having that shock of, “What do you mean the BIBLE is a myth? Its not possible!” I’d been raised to believe that the Bible was truth, and here was this teacher going over the story of Adam and Eve like it was just another story to go on the shelf with Prometheus and his fire of the gods or Zeus seducing the ladies as a cow (don’t ask). I couldn’t believe it.
But my interest had been piqued. I had this feeling that there was a kernel of truth in what she said. Not that the Bible was “just another story” but that the other stories still fit with it’s story.
Genesis 6:2, the first chapter of the Bible, speaks of angels coming down from Heaven to take human women as wives.
“…the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.” (ESV)
Sound familiar? Zeus, one of the Greek gods, often came to, well, be with human women.
Genesis 6:4 speaks of the Nephilim, or the children of angels and human women.
“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.” (ESV)
Mighty men? Men of renown? Like, Hercules? The son of Zeus and a human woman?
Interested? Join me throughout this blog. I will be crafting stories for your entertainment, posing questions for your thoughts, giving updates on my current book projects, and hopefully open your eyes to the spiritual world that’s constantly battling around you.
Since this is Orientation, are there questions? Suggestions? Let me know!
