Sacred Scrolls

The Sacred Scrolls are a set of writings the form the basis of Colonial religion, a polytheistic faith resembling the legends of ancient Greece. The scrolls record much of the alleged history of humanity, including life on Kobol before the great exodus, and the legend of Earth. Portions of the scrolls are used in religious ceremonies, such as the Service of the Dead (Miniseries, Act of Contrition).

Most notable among the Sacred Scrolls is the Book of Pythia, also referred to as the Pythian Prophecy. Written 3,600 years ago by the oracle Pythia, they are believed by some to foretell the current exodus from the Twelve Colonies.

Boomer (continuing): "And the body of each tribe's leader was offered to the gods in the tomb of Athena." And the great ship was the galleon that departed from here, where we're standing. And it took the founders of the thirteen colonies to their destiny. And those that didn't board the galleon took the high road, a rocky ridge that lead to the tomb. (Home, Part I)

Elosha: The path is supposed to be marked by gravestones. (Home, Part I)

The Gates of Hera

Boomer: That's the spot where your god supposedly stood and watched Athena throw herself down onto the rocks below, out of despair over the Exodus of the thirteen tribes. Athena's tomb, whoever or whatever she really was, is probably up there. (Home, Part II)

The Arrow of Apollo

Roslin: "And the Arrow of Apollo will open the Tomb of Athena." (Home, Part II)

Elosha: The scriptures tell us that Kobol points the way to Earth. (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I)

Roslin: According to the scriptures, if we had the arrow of Apollo we could take it down to Kobol and we could use it to open the tomb of Athena and find our way to Earth. (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I)

Kobol and the Blood Price

Adama: "And Zeus warned the leaders of the twelve tribes that any return to Kobol would exact a price in blood." (Home, Part II)

History

Pre-Exodus

Elosha: This place is Kobol... birthplace of mankind, where the gods and men lived in paradise until the exodus of the thirteen tribes. (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I)

The Exodus

Elosha: How old are the ruins?
Billy: Well, we won't know for sure until we send a ground team, but the initial estimates have it on the order of approximately 2,000 years.
Elosha: That's around the time the thirteen tribes first left Kobol. (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I)

The Thirteenth Tribe on Earth

Starbuck: The scriptures say that when the thirteenth tribe landed on Earth, they looked up into the heavens and they saw their twelve brothers. (Home, Part II)

Sayings

Adama: "The gods shall lift those who lift each other." (Home, Part II)

Cavil: "The gods lift up those who lift each other." (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I)

These sayings are similar to the Algernon Sydney quote "God helps those who help themselves".

Notes

The Cycle of Time is apparently a key component of Colonial theology. The notion of a circular progression of time (also known as eternal return or eternal recurrence) is foreign to the ancient Greek religion of which Colonial religion are largely based, but it is a common theme in other religions. Some Hindus believe in an endless cycle of ages called Yugas. The ancient Maya people, as well as the Incas and Aztecs also believed in the circular nature of time. In philosophy, the Stoics, a movement originating in ancient Greece, held the doctrine. In the nineteenth century, the doctrine appears in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche as a method of life-affirmation.

The book of Pythia, which contains or is identical to the Pythian Prophecy, was written 1,600 years before the exodus of the thirteen tribes from Kobol, and yet it apparently contains a detailed narrative of the events of the Exodus, and continues to be interpreted as a source of prophecy 2,000 years after its prophecies have (apparently) already been fulfilled. We may thus interpret the entire text as a prophecy, since the events it describes can be firmly dated to a point well after its text was written.

Analysis

Correspondences

Assuming the events following the Fall of the Twelve Colonies are a repetition of the events predicted by Pythia, and which came to pass centuries later, we can make use of the prophecy by first constructing a coherent historical narrative from them and then looking for correspondences with the events of the series.

The Lower Demon is the Caprica copy of Sharon Valerii
The Dying Leader is President Laura Roslin
The "serpents numbering two and ten" are the Vipers of Strike Force Two in the Battle for the Tylium Asteroid.
The fleet defended by the Battlestar Galactica is the "Caravan of the Heavens".
The "price in blood" has been paid by various people including Crashdown and Elosha.

The "One Exodus" Interpretation

This interpretation assumes that the timeline is recurring on a scale of 1,600 to 2,000 years, and the exodus from Kobol is directly parellel to the exodus from the Twelve Colonies. It also makes some correspondences in addition to those above:

The "Blaze" identified by Sharon Valerii is an earlier parallel to the cylon attack. The hostile force is the Cylon God.
The Home of the Gods is Kobol, and the people of Kobol are the Twelve Colonies, in a somewhat metaphorical sense.

The timeline would procede thus:

The people of Kobol lived in divine utopia with their gods.
A hostile force - of which "the blaze" and the "lower demon" were parts - moves against the people of Kobol.
The gods appoint a leader afflicted with a wasting disease to lead a "caravan of the heavens".
The leader, with the aid of twelve "serpents", wins a perilous battle.
The people make their way to the "home of the gods".
Athena despairs and commits suicide.
The leaders of the people are taken to the Tomb of Athena to be sacrificed to the remaining gods.
The body of the people depart in a "galleon" for the colonies.
Instructions are left to open the Tomb of Athena.
Zeus warns against a return to Kobol.
The twelve tribes settle on the Twelve Colonies. The thirteen tribe settles on Earth.

Questions and Predictions:

Can Earth be at once the "promised land" in this iteration and the last?
Can we expect the deaths of the leaders of the tribes (the Quorum of Twelve?) to propitiate the Gods?
Was the Galleon a part of the Caravan of the Heavens, or its destination?

This history is admittedly not especially coherent, but suggests the possibility of predicting at least some unfulfilled pieces of scripture. Another interpretation which deals with the repetition of historical events on a larger scale is offered below.

The "Three Exodi" Interpretation

This interpretation does not assume that the flight from the Twelve Colonies mirror the original exodus from Kobol. Instead, it assumes that these two exodi are part of the same event-continuum and posits a third, implied, exodus. Like the "One Exodus" interpretation, this one assumes that Pythia's prophecies have and will come true. Below is the proposed order of events for Pythia's prophecies:

The people of Kobol live in divine utopia with their Gods.
The "blaze" moves against the people of Kobol.
The body of the people depart in a "galleon" for the colonies (the four inset items are roughly concurrent).
- Athena despairs and commits suicide.
- The leaders of the people are taken to the Tomb of Athena to be sacrificed to the remaining gods.
- Instructions are left to open the Tomb of Athena.
- Zeus warns against a return to Kobol.
The twelve tribes settle on the Twelve Colonies. The thirteen tribe settles on Earth.
The Cylons decimate the Twelve Colonies (Whether this is prophesied is unknown, but this clearly happened).
The gods appoint a leader afflicted with a wasting disease to lead a "caravan of the heavens".
The leader, with the aid of twelve "serpents", wins a perilous battle.
The people make their way to the "home of the gods".
A "lower demon" helps the people of Kobol find the Tomb of Athena.

Note, too, that this is only a part of the story according to the "Three Exodi" interpretation. It assumes that passages not yet revealed in the series outline (however vaguely) the finding of Earth and some time spent there, and then an event that spurs a migration back to Kobol. In this interpretation, the people of Kobol are actually the remnants of the Twelve Colonies, both their descendants and their ancestors. From there, the cycle starts again. The cycle is much longer in this interpretation (roughly 4,000 years, as opposed to roughly 1,600-2,000 years)

It is helpful to think of no particular part as the beginning. This is how the pictures of the constellations (only visible from Earth) would be accessible to the people of Kobol "before" any of them had been to Earth. It also explains how the Scrolls can speak about the fate of the Thirteenth Colony and yet be in the possession of people from the Twelve Colonies. In fact, when Pythia was writing about the events in the show, she might have been recording fairly-recent history, rather that far-future prophesy. The vagueness would be mostly due to nearly 4,000 years of linguistic drift, rather than due to the mists of prophecy.

Basically, this interpretation asserts a roughly 3,600-4,000 year cycle which can be illustrated by this crude flow-chart:<br\> Kobol > Colonies, Colonies > Earth, Earth > Kobol

This really ought to be a seperate theory, but I don't know how to do that. I'll just put it here.

The two exodus theory -

This is similar to other theories in that there is a cycle of time which is played out again and again. However in this theory there are two seperate occasions which call for an exodus. The details of each itteration are different, but the overall events are very similar.

The humans leave the Kobol

They settle the colonies

They create AI

The AI rebels and departs

The AI encounters GOD (see below)

The AI returns to destroy humanity

The remnants of humanity flee

The Cylons place humans in situations where they can interact and eventually procreate as GOD commands.

The offspring of Humans and Cylon are elevated above others and worshiped as "Lords of Kobol"

A conflict occurs on Kobol and humanity leaves.

Humanity settles the colonies.

The series has covered most of this so I will pick up at the place where this theory steps off. The AI's leave and they encounter a VAST consciesness created by countless generations of AI that have come before it. The Cylon GOD. An entity that knows everything every cylon-AI has known since the beggining of the cylce. It waits in the Cylon Home world untill the time when the AI's leave the humans, then approaches them and guides them towards their role in the cycle.

One of those roles is to have Cylon-Human babies. These babies are more than human and more than cylon. They are elevated above normal humans and eventually worshiped. They become the "gods" of the humans and the Lords of Kobol.

As has been mentioned in the show for a time humans and gods lived together in peace but eventually something goes wrong. Human nature re-asserts itself and some kind of split takes place. The gods are perhaps too compasionate and man to violent. Or the gods too controlling and man too independent. The gods have conflict among themselves and humans leave to avoid it. maybe the humans have conflict with their gods and kill them. See the jealous god commentary for another possible cause of the split. Either way something necessitates a split. The humans leave to colonize new planets. The gods die out, are dead, kill each other . . .

The cycle begins again.

the cylon GOD continues to watch the cycle replay itself over and over in the hopes that whatever flaw causes the catastrophe on Kobol can be avoided. (notice the skulls on Kobol, the theme of violence when Six talks to Baltar, her claim that what happens there is not God's Will) The violence that continues to cause this conflict is bad, but the Cylon God doesn't want to interfere because what makes humans "human" is their non-determined nature. Their free will. If he meddled in that then they would be no different than cylons.

Eventually the problem is the same one modern religions face - God could create a perfect world with no killing, but there would be no free will and we would not be human any more. This seems to be an over-ridding message of the show. Free will and the flawed nature of humanity. what it finally means to be human. We can also see that the Cylon's only grow to have free will when around humans, but at the same time, they also only grow violent towards one another around humans, then on top of that, they only feel remorse and understand good and bad through that same contact. They become more alive by being around humans.

In fact that was the first line of the mini - Are you alive? Prove it.

The question: "What does it mean to be alive?" is one of the key focuses of the show.

General Questions

Are the Lords of Kobol still an agentive force in this iteration of the cycle?
Who were the Lords of Kobol? The Caprica Valerii does not deny their existence, and the Tomb of Athena strongly attests to her life and death, but she does not believe they were gods. They were evidently distraught at the calamity which befell their people. Who was responsible for it, and why were the gods powerless to intervene?
Which god was the "jeaous god" that sought to be raised above the others?
Was Kobol the original home of the Lords of Kobol, or did they originate from some other place?
Did the people of the colonies leave Kobol with the assistance of the gods, or under their own power?
What was the nature of the "galleon"? Was it a large STL colony ship? Did it have an FTL drive?
If Roslin is now cured of cancer and not dying, can she be the leader of the Pythia Prophecy?

Sacred Scrolls

Contents

The Book of Pythia

The Cycle of Time

The Dying Leader

A Vision of Serpents

The Serpents Lead the People Into Battle?

A Confrontation at the Home of the Gods

The Lower Demon

The Blaze and the High Road