Some of the foremost
men in the Church devoted themselves to buttressing it with new
texts and throwing about it new outworks of theological reasoning;
the great body of the faithful considered it a direct gift from the
Almighty. Even in the later centuries of the Middle Ages John of
San Geminiano made a desperate attempt to save it. Like Cosmas, he
takes the Jewish tabernacle as his starting-point, and shows how
all the newer ideas can be reconciled with the biblical accounts of
its shape, dimensions, and furniture.[95]
From this old conception of the universe as a sort of house, with
heaven as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor, flowed
important theological ideas into heathen, Jewish, and Christian
mythologies. Common to them all are legends regarding attempts of
mortals to invade the upper apartment from the lower. Of such are
the Greek legends of the Aloidae, who sought to reach heaven by
piling up mountains, and were cast down; the Chaldean and Hebrew
legends of the wicked who at Babel sought to build "a tower whose
top may reach heaven," which Jehovah went down from heaven to see,
and which he brought to naught by the "confusion of tongues"; the
Hindu legend of the tree which sought to grow into heaven and which
Brahma blasted; and the Mexican legend of the giants who sought to
reach heaven by building the Pyramid of Cholula, and who were
overthrown by fire from above.
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