Other parallels found in The Last Battle can be found with the following-

1. The deep friendship of King Tirian and Jewel is no doubt the deep friendship of David and Jonathan. They both loved one another like brothers and saved one another lives. 

2. The dwarfs demanded a sign that Aslan was real. The religious leaders demanded Jesus to show them a sign the way He did miracles, to prove that He really was God.

3. Poggin was the only the dwarf to come back to show gratitude for being rescued. Jesus healed ten lepers yet only one came back to show gratitude.

4. Emeth volunteers to go into the stable, though Rishda tries to talk him out of it. Rishda even says the same words as Pontius Pilate, "I am guiltless of this man's blood." They were both saying, Rishda speaking of Emeth and Pontius Pilate speaking of Jesus, "I didn't do it!"

5. Does it help that Tash flees when Peter says, "In the name of Aslan and His Father the Great Emperor over the sea" just that demons flee at the name of Jesus?

6. Emeth having sought Aslan can almost be seen as the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts.

7. Emeth even described Aslan in a similar way that John described Jesus in Revelation. 

"So I went over much grass and many flowers and among all kinds of wholesome and delectable trees till lo! in a narrow place between two rocks there came to meet me a great Lion. The speed of him was like the ostrich, and his size was an elephant's; his hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes, like gold that is liquid in the furnace. He was more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty he surpassed all that is in the world, even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert."

 It is even almost the same description.

I think another thing that Narnia is like the Bible is that in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Reepicheep has this longing to see Aslan's country. It is a picture of how a Christian has a longing for a home in Heaven. When you read the book, it's a like a journey towards Heaven.

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair, Aslan's country has been teased. Reepicheep goes to Aslan's country in a coracle, but we don't see him afterwards. Aslan resurrects Caspian in His country, and Caspian even says that now he's where he belongs. We actually don't read about Aslan's Country fully in depth until we get to The Last Battle, where all of those from Narnia's past (and there's a whole list of them) are reunited, welcoming the Friends of Narnia.

It's like we read about Heaven in the Bible. Two key figures, Enoch and Elijah, are taken by God to Heaven without having them died. Like Reepicheep in the coracle, Elijah was taken up to Heaven in a fiery chariot. It's not until Revelation we read about Heaven fully in depth, where John has a vision of what Heaven will be like.

We are on The Last Battle in our Sunday School class, and soon, we'll be discussing Aslan's country, a representation of Heaven.

The after life is a very difficult concept to grasp. You can imagine that when John had his vision of Heaven, he had a hard time to take it all in.

Interesting enough, in Heaven and Aslan's Country, there are no name tags. When Tirian meets with the Seven kings and queens of Narnia, he knew who Eustace and Jill were. They didn't have name tags on that said, "Hey everyone, my name's Eustace" or "Hey everyone, my name's Jill." He knew who they were. 

We'll also know who people are in Heaven.

Posted by: @jasmine_tarkheena

Interesting enough, in Heaven and Aslan's Country, there are no name tags. When Tirian meets with the Seven kings and queens of Narnia, he knew who Eustace and Jill were. They didn't have name tags on that said, "Hey everyone, my name's Eustace" or "Hey everyone, my name's Jill." He knew who they were. 

We'll also know who people are in Heaven.

Well... it sort of stands to reason that he knew who Eustace and Jill were when he saw them beyond the stable door, as he'd got to know them pretty well during the last few days of his worldly existence in Narnia, when they companioned with him and fought side by side with him in the Last Battle itself. The text makes clear that he recognises their faces, even though they — and he — have been transformed by being where they now are. It'd be very strange if he didn't, really.

He also recognises Peter the High King from his dream in those last days of (the mortal) Narnia, but he does apparently have to be introduced to all the other Kings and Queens by name. He can guess who they are, from knowing Narnia's history and through having heard what Eustace and Jill have told him, but I don't see any indication that this is something he knows innately.

Then further on in Aslan's Country when just about all the good characters from the past stories are reintroduced, it also doesn't seem that Tirian automatically knows them through some divine intuition rather than from having heard about them in stories of the past. He certainly doesn't realise who the Mouse that greets them at the gates is until Peter and Edmund and Lucy rush forward with cries of "Reepicheep!" (And Eustace, of all people, didn't?? I reckon Lewis forgot something there...)

As we're told in the book, the Talking Mouse was "the last thing he [Tirian] had expected" until he hears that name called out: "And Tirian breathed fast with the sheer wonder of it, for now he knew that he was looking at one of the great heroes of Narnia, Reepicheep the Mouse..." (pp. 159-160, emphasis added) If simply being in Aslan's country gave him instant knowledge of who everyone there is, Tirian would have realised "Oh, this is Reepicheep!" BEFORE his companions spoke the Mouse's name aloud.

Then once we start meeting the whole host of other characters, Lewis switches from Tirian's point of view to "third-person omniscient" narrator — "Everyone you had ever heard of (if you knew the history of those countries) seemed to be there" — so we don't get any further indications of whether everyone instantly, innately knows everyone there or whether they have to be personally introduced when they meet. But going by Tirian's experiences so far, it sounds like it's the latter.

I don't mean to crush this idea of "We'll also know who people are in Heaven" — it's a beautiful thought. But seriously, it really pays to read the text very closely and check whether what Lewis actually wrote genuinely supports what you may wish to read into it — especially before treating a children's story (even an incredibly special one!) as "gospel", so to speak, in front of Sunday School kids.

I also find Lewis's descriptions of Aslan's country to be some of the most amazing and inspired concepts of heaven that I've ever read anywhere — I've always felt he gets it absolutely "right", somehow. But I do remind myself sometimes that he wasn't (yet) speaking of it from personal experience!!  

@courtenay 

Oh, no need to crush any ideas. I'm sure we all have a family member or a friend who had gone on before us.

In speaking of which, Tirian and Rishda going into the Stable can almost be seen as crossing over to the eternal horizon. Tash shows up to claim Rishda as "his lawful prey". Now that's not saying because he was a rich and powerful man.

You might recall a story that Jesus told about a rich man and a beggar who both died; the beggar went to Paradise or Heaven and the rich man went to Hell. Now I know that Hell is not a very comfortable topic; even some pastors leave it out in their sermons. But since the Bible teaches it, it should be taught.

The rich man didn't go to hell necessarily because he was a rich man. It could have been pride and selfishness and cruelty. Rishda being Tash's lawful prey not because he was a rich and powerful man could be the same idea as well. Could it have been pride and selfishness and cruelty as well?

While Tirian put both him and Rishda into the stable, they don't end up in the same place. You may also noticed that at the end of the world of Narnia, every creature in Narnia looked to Aslan then turned either left or right. The decision that each character in the series made determined where they've spent eternity. The decision we make in this life determines where we'll spend eternity.

On a much lighter note, Tirian found himself not in a stable, but in Paradise or Aslan's Country. He was free from the muscle soreness he had in the battle. As described in the book-

Tirian suddenly felt awkward about coming among these people with the blood and dust and sweat of a battle still on him. Next moment he realized that he was not in that state at all. He was fresh and cool and clean, and dressed in such clothes as he would have worn for a great feast at Cair Paravel.

Tirian wasn't worn out from the Battle of Stable Hill and there was no longer any blood and dust and sweat on him. He looked refresh at that moment. He saw that Eustace and Jill were refreshed as well.

Death is not the end of the story for Christians; it's a new beginning. The description of Aslan's Country is beyond comprehension as the description of Heaven is.

Narnia is made new; God says He will make a new Heaven and new Earth. As the Apostle Paul said-

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Romans 8:19-23

Sin ruined everything on Earth, but God says He will renewed it one day. In Aslan's Country, when they go further up and further in, they are not tired or weary.

When the Earth is renewed, there will be no more crying or pain or pollution sickness or disasters or weeds or thorns or even death.

One scene that always moves me in The Last Battle is where they are looking into the Real England and see the Professor's old house where all their adventures began. Edmund comments that the house had been destroyed, but Tumnus tells them that in the Real England, as in the Real Narnia, no good thing is ever destroyed.

This reminds me a bit of 1 Corinthians when Paul says that in the Lord your labour cannot be lost.

Oh yes.

In The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, the Stone Table broke in two when Aslan died. The Stone Table had been used for a sacrifice. The breaking of the stone table in two could be a symbolic moment, where sacrifice was no longer needed.

In our world, a curtain hung between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies or Most Holy Place. Once a year, only the High Priest was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies to make an atonement or sacrifice for sins. When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain in the Temple was torn down the middle, from top to bottom. Much like the Stone Table, the tearing of the curtain was symbolic, where sacrifice was no longer needed. Jesus was the final sacrifice; He did it once and for all. It also shows that we no longer have to go to the High Priest or our pastors for atonement for sins. We now have access to go to God.

The creation of Narnia in The Magicians Nephew is remarkably like Genesis, although Aslan makes the animals into talking beasts which did not happen in our world.  Still there is much care gone into how both worlds were created.  Narnia was like Earth in that it was created without any evil in it at first, but like our world it wasn’t long before sin came into it. How long can a perfect world exist with out something contaminating it?

I just thought of this, but in The Last Battle, the last king of Narnia, Tirian, was described as with having broad shoulders and limbs full of hard muscle. It would indicate that he was a very strong man (even strong enough to lift an ape by the scruff of the neck). The last judge of Israel was Samson, who was known as the strong man whose hair was never to be cut. Except that Tirian didn't have long hair (that we know of, that is) and he didn't pull down the pillars (though a strong man pulling down pillars in the Temple of Tash in Calormen might be an interesting story).

Posted by: @jasmine_tarkheena

I just thought of this, but in The Last Battle, the last king of Narnia, Tirian, was described as with having broad shoulders and limbs full of hard muscle. It would indicate that he was a very strong man (even strong enough to lift an ape by the scruff of the neck). The last judge of Israel was Samson, who was known as the strong man whose hair was never to be cut. Except that Tirian didn't have long hair (that we know of, that is) and he didn't pull down the pillars (though a strong man pulling down pillars in the Temple of Tash in Calormen might be an interesting story).

Without meaning to be rude, that kind of interpretation / parallel-drawing sounds to me like the way Lewis explicitly did NOT want the Narnia books to be read. Tirian and Samson have absolutely nothing in common except for being big, strong men. Just because a character in the Chronicles has a few traits similar to a character in the Bible, does NOT mean that Lewis was deliberately drawing a connection between them or wanting us to find one. He had a lot of negative things to say about the assumption that all the characters or events in his books stand for, or symbolise, someone or something in the Bible or in world history. As he explained more than once (and so many critics, even friendly ones, still get this wrong): he was not writing allegory!

Basically, comparing Tirian with Samson is not a very useful exercise, because that's not the way the books were written. The same goes for, say, comparing Jadis with Satan or Eve, Lucy with Mary Magdalene, Peter with the Apostle Peter, Edmund with Judas, or any of the other parallels we might attempt to draw. There are a few vague similarities between them, but far more significant differences in each case. They're not meant to be rewrites or counterparts of Biblical figures, and if we try to interpret them in that way, we're missing the point.

The ONLY character in the entire series who does have a direct counterpart in the Bible and in human history is, of course, Aslan — and even there, Lewis was careful to point out that Aslan isn't an allegory for Jesus as such, but a "supposal", an imaginary answer to the question of what might happen if the same Son of God who came to our world, came in a different form to another world that also needed saving. There is a direct quote from Lewis (probably more than one) where he explains that, but unfortunately I can't remember which book(s) it's in, or otherwise I'd use his words instead of paraphrasing! But that's essentially what he said, as far as I can remember.

@courtenay 

I'm sure you don't need to be rude. I wasn't doing an allegory, which CS Lewis never intended Narnia to be.

I was just picking up similarities between the two. Though CS Lewis never said where Tirian got his strength from. Samson had to keep promises to God: not to touch a dead thing or to eat and drink from the vine or cut his hair. (I know it sounds a bit out there, but there were some people in the Bible that kept those kind of promises to God). There's no indication that Tirian kept those promises. His strength may have been from hard labor or working out a lot or from when he was training how to wield a sword. It would certainly take a really strong person to lift an ape by the scruff the neck and hurling it into the stable. While not direct allegory, both Samson and Tirian were strong men, and both had problems with unrestrained anger. 

It's just like Shasta in The Horse And His Boy has similarities to Joseph and Moses, though not necessarily allegory. Both Joseph and Shasta go through a lot of hardship and suffering, yet they realized at the end, they were made for greater purpose to save a nation (for Joseph, a nation from famine and for Shasta, a nation from Calormene invasion). Both Moses and Shasta were floated in water as infants (Moses in a basket and Shasta in a small boat) and were princes that freed their people (Moses the Hebrews from Egypt and Shasta Archenland from Calormen). So while not necessarily direct allegory, Shasta saves a nation from something terrible, like Joseph and Moses did.

Posted by: @jasmine_tarkheena

I was just picking up similarities between the two. Though CS Lewis never said where Tirian got his strength from. It may have been from hard labor or maybe work out a lot. and would also have been useful to handle a sword. I think we can agree that it does take a lot of muscle to handle a sword. And what about lifting an ape by the scruff of the neck and hurling into the stable?

It's just like Shasta in The Horse And His Boy has similarities to Joseph and Moses, though not necessarily allegory. Both Joseph and Shasta go through a lot of hardship and suffering, yet they realized at the end, they were made for greater purpose to save a nation from death (for Joseph, a nation from famine and for Shasta, a nation from Calormene invasion). Both Moses and Shasta were floated in water as infants (Moses in a basket and Shasta in a small boat) and were princes that saved their people.

Yeah, but where is this going? Apart from being physically strong, Tirian and Samson have nothing else in common, except maybe being "the last" in their particular office. But the last judge of ancient Israel before it established a monarchy and the last king of Narnia before that world ended... are not really comparable roles.

Joseph and Shasta each saved a nation after many hardships, but there's no other similarity between their stories. Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, falsely accused of adultery, imprisoned, freed after interpreting Pharaoh's dreams, and promoted to second in charge of Egypt, where he was able to save the nation from the coming famine. Nothing even roughly like that happened to Shasta. And while Joseph saved the nation he'd been taken to as a slave, and saved it through his prophetic insight, Shasta saved the nation he truly belonged to by birth, but he had no idea about that at the time — and he saved it simply by getting through in time to deliver the message that the Calormene army was coming. There's no way these stories can be read as counterparts of each other, honestly.

Moses and Shasta were each found as a baby in a vessel floating on water, but who they were and how they got there and where their lives went from there — again, no similarity. Even being "princes who saved their people" is hardly a fair comparison. Moses was a prince of Egypt only by adoption, a role he threw away when he murdered an Egyptian and went into hiding until he was called by God to lead his true people, the Israelites, out of slavery. Shasta was also adopted, but by a lowly fisherman, and only later discovered that he was in fact born a prince. In the meantime, he saved his people (the Archenlanders) — not from slavery, but from an enemy invasion — again, without even knowing at the time that they were truly his own people and that he would one day be their king!

You see what I'm getting at? The differences between these Narnian characters and these Biblical figures are much greater than the very vague similarities. And the problem with drawing those comparisons is that it implies that Lewis himself, as he wrote, was sitting there thinking "Hmmm. How can I work a 'Moses' figure into this story? Or a 'Joseph' sort of character? And I need to make sure I have someone or something representing X and Y and Z from the Bible, but of course not too obviously, because I don't want young readers to suspect I'm actually preaching Christianity at them..."

... That seriously is not how Lewis was thinking when he wrote the Chronicles, not how he put the stories together, and not how he intended them to be read. We know, because he said that himself so many times in articles and letters and responses to critics. That's why I keep saying: these kinds of flimsy comparisons between Narnia and the Bible are really not helpful in gaining a deeper understanding of either of those works, and they don't do justice to either of them — the most special fantasy series ever written (in my opinion at least) OR the Book of Books!

Anyone reading this forum, please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I know we're all learning something new. It's part of being human.

If Narnia characters and Bible characters have anything in common, it's that they demonstrate they're only human. It shows we all fall short somewhere. Also, while we appreciate Bible movies and Narnia movies, we dread that they make unnecessary changes.

On a much lighter note, The Horse And His Boy actually has my favorite overall message in the series: how suffering can be turned into a greater purpose. It's a message that's actually fitting for what we've been going through during the covid-19. God is able to take suffering and turn it into a greater purpose. I think He is able to take what we've been going through with the covid-19 and turn into something better or greater.

Posted by: @jasmine_tarkheena

I was just picking up similarities between the two. Though CS Lewis never said where Tirian got his strength from. Samson had to keep promises to God: not to touch a dead thing or to eat and drink from the vine or cut his hair...There's no indication that Tirian kept those promises. His strength may have been from hard labor or working out a lot or from when he was training how to wield a sword.

I feel like you're making Courtenay's point for her, Jasmine. Except for being strong and in positions of authority, there are no meaningful parallels between Tirian and Samson. There's no reason to believe C. S. Lewis more influenced by the book of Judges any more than he was influenced by any other book with that generic detail.

But I understand from your other posts that you like comparing Narnia stories to other random stories. (Shakespeare plays, Disney movies, etc.) You're not thinking of the kind of serious literary analysis that other Narniawebbers are trying to do with this topic. It's more like a game. (I think I've even heard of the game. It's called Suspiciously Similar Stories, isn't it?) No reason why you shouldn't enjoy that, (though I personally feel like directly telling people what the stories are instead of having them guess ruins the game.) It just doesn't really serve to illuminate either Narnia or the Bible. (Or Shakespeare plays or Disney movies for that matter.) 

@col-klink 

True. Given that CS Lewis was a literary scholar, obviously he would have been familiar with classic stories, including Shakespeare. But that is besides the point.

Now back on topic.. well, in a way Narnia each had a cycle. Remember when Tirian remembers what has happened in Narnia’s past or when Jewel tells Jill of how children would show up from our world whenever Narnia was stirred up?

Here's what Christin Ditchfield, author of A Family Guide To Narnia: Biblical Truths in CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia says in the introduction to Prince Caspian:

Reading Prince Caspian, one can’t help but be reminded of the cycle of oppression and deliverance that God’s people experienced repeatedly throughout the Old Testament.

God's chosen people, the Israelites had a pattern of oppression from the enemy nations or being under ungodly kings then God raised up judges or godly kings to help deliver them. Narnia had a pattern of being under oppression (the Eternal winter, the Telmarine conquest, the False Aslan Affair) and Aslan, along with children from our world, would come and help restore Narnia (Narnia wasn't restored in The Last Battle, but there was a new Narnia).