Croaker
Member
I'm a couple weeks behind so I don't know if this has come up yet, but it was mentioned in passing a few episodes ago: Why can't the Nazgul cross water? The concept that spirits - or at least ghosts - can't cross water isn't just a medieval one, but goes back to ancient Greece.
I read a paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature about the walk on water scene in Mark, in which the disciples exclaim they saw a ghost. The idea to the original readers in the Roman world is an absurdity, because everyone knew ghosts couldn't walk on water: only deities could. (The passage in Mark then has all the hallmarks of a typical ghost story in the Greco-Roman world, but it's not a ghost. Thus Mark turns the genre on its head, amusingly - to the 1st Century reader- demonstrating the denseness of the disciples while surprisingly revealing the deity of Jesus).
The Greeks believed that water served as the place of destruction for the dead and also functioned as a boundary.
I attached the paper, which goes into Greek and Roman sources about these ideas, and maybe these sources informed the Medieval era and also Tolkien's ideas, and may be of interest during the flight to the ford, if I'm not too late!
I read a paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature about the walk on water scene in Mark, in which the disciples exclaim they saw a ghost. The idea to the original readers in the Roman world is an absurdity, because everyone knew ghosts couldn't walk on water: only deities could. (The passage in Mark then has all the hallmarks of a typical ghost story in the Greco-Roman world, but it's not a ghost. Thus Mark turns the genre on its head, amusingly - to the 1st Century reader- demonstrating the denseness of the disciples while surprisingly revealing the deity of Jesus).
The Greeks believed that water served as the place of destruction for the dead and also functioned as a boundary.
I attached the paper, which goes into Greek and Roman sources about these ideas, and maybe these sources informed the Medieval era and also Tolkien's ideas, and may be of interest during the flight to the ford, if I'm not too late!