Scholar's Draft

...The document purports to be a perfect copy (translation?) of a manuscript first composed many generations ago, by the hand of an official whom we call Egderus Scriptor. Egderus is generally considered to be one of the first scribes (or the first to be so named) of the Goliadic Age, hence the epithet. We know of him because his name is found at the foot of what appears to be a list of slaves submitted annually, or at least at some regular interval, to the Golias (king or ruling strong man) of his area.

... In this new document, there is one term used by Egderus whose understanding is crucial. The word has been rendered 'Remnant'. In our usage, this means left over, waste, that which cannot be used, that which is discarded, forgotten, of no importance. In the wider world it designates people who, for whatever reason, no longer contribute to society, and who would be better off dead, or at least out of the way.

And in a sense this last usage is most apropos, because of the 'position' Egderus occupied in his own society. The 'slaves' on his list have long been considered just such people, but it would more accurate to designate them as 'patients', for the Mountain House seems to have been some kind of hospice for hopeless cases, of which Egderus was the director.

What is interesting is that Egderus does not apply the term to his patients. He always uses it thus: 'As the Remnant say', or 'According to the Remnant...' and what follows is usually an aphorism of the most sophisticated kind, as if the Remnant were a group of philosophers or sages who had garnered their wisdom over a long period of time. In fact it is possible to find in this Writing numerous antecedents to our own adages and saws in a slightly altered, but no less subtle and resonant form.

At first I assumed this was either an idiosyncrasy, a private or perhaps a code word appropriated by Egderus to refer to the deities, although I would be at a total loss to explain the association in his mind — it seems an extremely peculiar word for describing divinities. But as I read on I could not dismiss the growing conviction that the Remnant referred to an actual group of living people with whom Egderus himself may have had direct or at least second-hand contact.

If so, who were they, and whence did they come? More importantly, if the name is not a mere mannerism, and is a more or less accurate cognomen, of what were they the remnant?