"To get a grip on how profoundly The Arian Heresy gripped the western imagination, its helpful to understand that the deepest reason that Melville began Moby Dick with the words "call me ismael" is that Melville was not a trinitarian."
You don't happen to have a scintilla of proof to substantiate this claim do you?
I tried Googling this, to see if anybody else has come to this bizarre conclusion -- and no. All the hits lead straight back to you. This seems to be an obsession with you.
Funny none of the Melville scholars ever heard of it.
///////////////////////
Melville scholars are generally liberals.
This
history of the Unitarian Church says:
Before the inauguration of Lincoln, four U.S. Presidents identified themselves as Unitarians (later there would be a fifth, W. H. Taft), and in the arenas of literature and philosophy, Unitarians would remain prominant until WWII: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson before the Civil War; Mark Twain, John Dewey and e. e. cummings afterwards - - just to name a few in each era.
From wikipedia:
In Herman Melville's Religious Journey, Walter Donald Kring detailed his discovery of letters indicating that Melville had been a member of the Unitarian Church of All Souls. Until the advent of this revelation, little had been known of his religious affiliation.
From the
Harvard Square Library
Melville's masterpiece Moby Dick, a tale of his whaling expedition, initially received small praise and small sales. Years of rheumatic pain during his resort to writing short stories for magazines were relieved by his appointment as an inspector of customs in New York City, where he joined the All Souls Unitarian Church.
//////////////////////////////// The unitarians got their start in the early 1700's mainly at the behest of the Sir Issac Newton who was an avowed arian. Newton was held God like status in the anglo saxon world for two hundred years -- until the 20th century. They called themselves Unitarians because they believed in the Unity of the Godhead. They didn't believe that Jesus was fully God as well as fully Man. Nor did they believe in the holy trinity.
LOL!!!! That's it?!
From the (perhaps) fact that Melville was a Unitarian you say Moby Dick was a Arian Heresy tract?!
Hilarious.
There are at least a dozen more likely explanations for "Call me Ishmael." Not the least being that Ishmael was a bit of an outcast, as was the narrator of MD.
Sheesh.
"The unitarians got their start in the early 1700's mainly at the behest of the Sir Issac Newton who was an avowed arian."
Equally hilarious. You clearly know nothing of the Unitarian Church (such as it is).
Also, Newton was so "avowed" that his "Arian" writing was kept completely secret in his lifetime.
Sheesh again.
(I hope this book, which sounds pretty dodgey) isn't based on similar scholarship.