Help finding a quote

[Teppic]

Sorry if a thread already exists for this kind of "help me find a quote" question, but I couldn't find one.

I'm trying to find the quote or paragraph about a long religious war being caused by - iirc - a fruit fly excreting on one of the religious books, adding an extra comma or full-stop. I can't remember the exact details, I assume it was an early Omnian schism, I've spent ages Googling it with no luck.

I'm sure you guys can tell me in an instant.

Thanks (and nice to be back here after a long hiatus)!

 

[Tonyblack]

Welcome back, Teppic! It's not ringing any bells with me at the moment though. :think:

 

[=Tamar]

All I've found so far is this quotation from Mort:

*The first pizza was created on the Disc by the Klatchian mystic Ronron “Revelation Joe” Shuwadhi, who claimed to have been given the recipe in a dream by the Creator of the Discworld Himself, Who had apparently added that it was what He had intended all along. Those desert travelers who had seen the original, which is reputedly miraculously preserved in the Forbidden City of Ee, say that what the Creator had in mind then was a fairly small cheese and pepperoni affair with a few black olives** and things like mountains and seas got added out of last-minute enthusiasm as so often happens.

**After the Schism of the Turnwise Ones and the deaths of some 25,000 people in the ensuing jihad the faithful were allowed to add one small bayleaf to the recipe.

 

[raisindot]

Sorry if a thread already exists for this kind of "help me find a quote" question, but I couldn't find one.

I'm trying to find the quote or paragraph about a long religious war being caused by - iirc - a fruit fly excreting on one of the religious books, adding an extra comma or full-stop. I can't remember the exact details, I assume it was an early Omnian schism, I've spent ages Googling it with no luck.

I'm sure you guys can tell me in an instant.

Thanks (and nice to be back here after a long hiatus)!

I know exactly what you're talking about...but hell if I can remember where it's from. I want to say Small Gods, but I don't think it was from there because the story takes place before the great schisms of Omniasm. The only other book I think it might come from is Carpe Jugulum, because in the exposition surrounding Mightily Oaks there's a lot of discussion about the many different schisms in the Omnian church in the years after Brutha. But it could be about an entirely different religion.

Does this help?

 

[RathDarkblade]

Sigh... I am pretty sure that this is referred to in Jingo as well. See Jingo Annotations on L-Space, and go down to page 160. If you're too lazy, here it is...

Corgi PB p160

Carrot is holding forth on the Klatchian script and its implications for ambiguous interpretation.

"(the war) is over a word in their holy book, sir. The Elharibians say it translates as "God" and the Smalies say it's "man"."
How can you mix them up?"
"Well, there's only one tiny dot difference... and some people reckon it's only a speck of fly dirt in any case."
"Centuries of war because a fly crapped in the wrong place?"
"It could have been worse, sir...if it had been slightly to the left the word would have been "liquorice" ".

This refers to the necessarily approximate nature of the Semitic scripts (Arabic and Hebrew), which have no written notations for vowel sounds and which use a bewildering system of super- and subscript- dots as letter modifiers.

It also parodies the essence of Salman Rushdie's controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, in which the Devil is allowed very limited access to Mohammed during the writing of the Koran to corrupt just one verse of his choice. In Middle Eastern culture, one manifestation of Satan is the fly - or rather, Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies. It would not have been impossible for a Lord of the Flies to give one of his creation an unfortunate bowel movement at just the right spot on the page...

It parodies much more exactly the centuries-old schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, where the word in question is either Homoiousis - of similar substance or Homoousis - of the same substance (as man)

I.e. God is similar to a Man or is the same (not just "made in God's image" but pretty much "made like God").

The difference is the letter iota, the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, and yes, there is some evidence that a speck of fly crap may have been responsible for a mistake in copying at some point...

I am pretty sure (though I may be mistaken) that there was also an actual religious war over something like this, although I can't recall the exact circumstances. However, I do know that in very early Christianity (between 330 and 450 AD), there were some Christians who believed that Jesus was not divine, but that he was a major mortal prophet. I'm pretty sure that this took place within the nascent Christian Byzantine empire.

Needless to say, the Byzantines were adamant that this was heresy, and proceeded to kill all the so-called 'heretics'. Thanks, Byzantium. You're real party guys.

 

[raisindot]

Good sleuthing, RathDarkblade!

I also always thought that quote was also an allusion to the interpretation of one word in one of the Jewish's prophets' scrolls that had huge ramifications for Christianity. The scroll, often cited as a prophecy of a messiah's birth, said that said child would be born of a _______. The Hebrew word there could either be interpreted as "maid" or "virgin." The early Christians chose the latter meaning, and hence the concept of the Virgin Mary.

 

[Teppic]

I knew one of you would find it, thanks RathDarkblade! It's a much more off the cuff comment than I remember. For some reason it stuck in my head though.

"Centuries of war because a fly crapped in the wrong place?"

What a quote! So much of the absurdity of fundamentalism summed up so pithily.