Freethought & Rationalism Archive

rob117 · 04-18-2007, 08:06 PM

I found this pretty interesting. He suggests that humans have a universal fascination with and respect for anything antiquarian, and that in most cultures recieved wisdom is held sacrosanct; modern post-Enlightenment historical scholarship is in fact a way to harness this reverence to arrive at new information:

http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=659

Larsguy47 · 04-18-2007, 09:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rob117

I found this pretty interesting. He suggests that humans have a universal fascination with and respect for anything antiquarian, and that in most cultures recieved wisdom is held sacrosanct; modern post-Enlightenment historical scholarship is in fact a way to harness this reverence to arrive at new information:

http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=659

Yes Prop is very interesting!

MANUSCRIPT--Prof. William Propp flips
trough his 1,000 page commentary on
Exodus--the first volume project, with his
editor, Prof. David Noel Freedman.

Quote:

It has been said that, if there is a universal human religion, it is ancestor worship. Like Odysseus consulting the shade of Tiresias, archaeologists dig trench after trench to learn all they can from the Ancients; textual scholars read the Bible over and over, hoping to find something new in its worn-out pages.

as others see us can be both illuminating and horrifying.
I believe that part of the malaise of Western Civilization reflects our conflicted attitude toward the past. We desperately fight our governing instinct to venerate our ancestors — like the adolescent who worships and abhors her parents, like the young ape about to make a move on the alpha male, like the scholar who takes the trouble to debunk his predecessors by careful dissection of their work. Isn't that partly what footnotes are for, to appease and exorcize their ghosts?

ANOTHER PROPP POST:
"Internal biblical chronology puts Moses in the 15th Century BCE," he said. "The problem is that we have minute descriptions of the Land of Canaan from the 14th century BCE and what these are, specifically, are over 300 letters written on clay tablets discovered in Egypt that constitute diplomatic correspondence between the kings of Egypt and their vassals who ruled Canaan.

Just the above reading would make some presume this as standard Mysteries/Illuminati stuff. Interesting it's also quite Jewish.

http://www.jewishsightseeing.com/usa...opp_exodus.htm

This would be yet another example of why some linke the Jews with the "Protocols of Zion". A recent movie that came out actually linked the Protocols with 911. Professor Propp's commentary doesn't help dissuade...

DVD-Protocols

The consistency of Jewish scholars bashing their own Bible is far to frequent to ignore, makes them exceptional and therefore ignorable.

Thanks for the heads-up on Propp.

Basically, the Jewish "illuminati" slant on Biblical commentary is that it is not taken seriously, seen only as Christian-bashing in disguise. This is a classic example of high-end disinformation, a sure trade mark of the Mysteries and the so-called "Iluminati". His dating the Exodus in the 15th century BCE rather than in the 1st of Akhenaten is a dead giveaway.

Doesn't it bother you that Manetho gives us the very year of Joseph's appointment as Vizier in the 17th of Apophis, which would point right to the 1st of Akhenaten as the king beginning his rule at the time of the Exodus, his obvious influence by the Ten Plagues resulting in his becoming a monotheist, and yet it's not one of the "options" being discussed. We have 15th century Exodus and 13th century during the time of Rameses II, which are unstanable, but why such a historical boycot of Akhenaten with a direct, extra-Biblical reference exists?

Furthermore, if Propp were so thorough, he'd know from his own Jewish history by comparing apocryphal "Esdras" with canonical Esdras (Ezra, Nehemiah) that there are serious chronology issues as Nehemiah is clearly placed before Esther, who is married to Artaxexes, the "son of Xerxes." You can't just ignore all that and claim to be both educated, a New and a prophessor of Biblical Studies. Give me a break!

I used to live in Los Angeles and have done research at the University of San Diego. I would have loved to have seen him in person and shared a few of my "insights" with him, which checking his office out for any cultic goddess artifacts.

Thanks for this reference. Appreciated. But not to worry.

LG47

mountainman · 04-18-2007, 09:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rob117

I found this pretty interesting. He suggests that humans have a universal fascination with and respect for anything antiquarian, and that in most cultures recieved wisdom is held sacrosanct; modern post-Enlightenment historical scholarship is in fact a way to harness this reverence to arrive at new information:

http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=659

You may be interested in some of Momigliano's articles.
For example ...

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 01.02.15

Quote:

Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography.
Sather Classical Lectures, 54 Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990.
Pp. 162. ISBN 0-520-06890-4.

Reviewed by T. Corey Brennan, Bryn Mawr College.

In Chapter One, we learn that the Hebrews of the Biblical age had an historiographical tradition, influenced in part by the Persian habit of record keeping, which reached its acme in the post-exilic period (the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles). M. is persuasive when he argues that, after the destruction of the Temple (A.D. 70), "the significance which the Jews came to attach to the Torah killed their interest in general historiography" (p. 23).

In Chapter Two, "The Herodotean and the Thucydidean Tradition", M. discusses the conflict between these two approaches to historiography. In the 1965 summary, Momigliano asserted that he studied "the two models provided by Herodotus and Thucydides, both centred on political and military history and mainly relying on oral evidence, but one placing political events against a vast background of ethnographical research, the other strictly confining himself to an analysis of contemporary political behavior." Here we may perceive some development in M.'s views over the years. In the revised version of this lecture found in the Classical Foundations volume, M. rightly drops the idea that Herodotus was "centred on political and military history". In fact, there is precious little political history in Herodotus; nor is there much military history for its own sake. Rather, M. stresses that Herodotus regarded the preservation of "the history of civilization" as crucial: it was a hedge against human mortality. Thucydides however did not consider the past interesting in itself. He was overwhelmingly concerned with the present, and felt that from contemporary political behavior permanent features of human nature could be disengaged. M. then sketches in outline the vicissitudes of these two competing models of historiography through the nineteenth century. It was Thucydides' influence which ensured that the proper province of history was long to be understood as "political and military history".

Chapter Three isolates and examines a genre which would not have existed, M. maintains, had Herodotus prevailed as the model historian: the phenomenon of antiquarian research. Antiquarianism -- the systematic, non-chronological study of customs, institutions, cults, laws and the like -- originated with the sophists. It is no accident, then, that at all times we find antiquarians, whose "systematic approach to institutions and beliefs allowed a critical evaluation of the principles underlying a system of law or religion" (p. 78), closely linked to philosophers. M. points out that philosophic criticism would be very difficult without antiquarian research. The relationship, however, between antiquarianism and ordinary history was not quite so comfortable. By the mid-nineteenth century many (but not all) of the best political historians had come to agree with the antiquarians that the investigation of non-literary evidence was indeed crucial. The "discipline" of antiquarianism soon became a dinosaur, doomed to extinction. There were however a few last majestic moments, most notably Mommsen's encyclopedic Staatsrecht. This essay, to my mind, is perhaps the most illuminating piece in this Sather volume. The main lines of development of this tradition stand out much more clearly here than in M.'s groundbreaking 1950 essay "Ancient History and the Antiquarian" (reprinted in Studies pp. 1-39).

In the original article above, the author makes this
interesting comments here ...

Quote:

Society supports scholars at their play for diverse reasons.

Indeed in recent more halcyon times, the author of the above
article covers agreat deal of ground for an archeologist. You
may find that the issues covered in this article above are
further explored to a very detailed depth in Arnaldo Momigliano.

Interestingly, like the famous academic of antiquity, Porphyry,
Momigliano was unfortunate to have been born in the time of
the rise of a malevolent despot. Momigliano was fortunate
enough to fall back to Oxford, whereas the fate of Porphyry
is entirely unknown to the planet, with the possible exception
that the words of Constantine betray a hidden knowledge, as
to the ultimate fate of Porphyry ...

"Porphyry found the reward which befitted him".

Best wishes.

Larsguy47 · 04-18-2007, 09:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

You may be interested in some of Momigliano's articles.
For example ...

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 01.02.15

Quote:

In Chapter Two, "The Herodotean and the Thucydidean Tradition", M. discusses the conflict between these two approaches to historiography.

What historians don't consider when looking at Herodotus is that he knew about the revisions by the Persians but rebelled secretly by inserting eclipses that only matched the original chronology. He also insinuated what really happened by a lot of seemingly irrelevant stories, like his story about a soldier at Marathon encountering a warrior with a huge beard that covered his entire shield. That might be ignored until you realize that other chronological data place Darius' death at Marathon, at which point you realize it might be a cryptic reference to that fact. So analyses of Herodotus in particular that doesn't include what he has carefully hidden in his history is just a superficial treatment at best.

LG47

spin · 04-18-2007, 10:54 PM

Do we ever get tired of ancient conspiracies? Flavians, Pisonians, Constantinians, and now Persians.

mountainman · 04-18-2007, 10:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Larsguy47

What historians don't consider when looking at Herodotus is that he knew about the revisions by the Persians but rebelled secretly by inserting eclipses that only matched the original chronology.

What makes you think his rebellion was secret and not overt, and
what was this rebellion all about?

Steven Avery · 04-18-2007, 11:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Larsguy47

This would be yet another example of why some link the Jews with the "Protocols of Zion". A recent movie that came out actually linked the Protocols with 911 .... DVD-Protocols

The Mark Levin movie is larging an examination of the phenomenon of the theories of Jewish conspiracy arising after 911 and where they come from and who holds them. As the review indicates Levin wanders a bit into his own background, like anti-war protests and Jewish socialistic upbringing and this and that. The film only linked the Protocols with 911 in that it looked at and interviewed folks who consider 911 as involving a Jewish conspiracy. And the Protocols is the prototype for many of those theories. I saw most of the movie, not all, had an appointment (Levin had to cancel his speaking appearance). As I remember Levin goes into the details of showing the history of the Protocols as an anti-semitic forgery, so his linkage is more of a non-linkage.

Shalom,
Steven

mountainman · 04-19-2007, 01:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Do we ever get tired of ancient conspiracies? Flavians, Pisonians, Constantinians, and now Persians.

Both yourself and Richard Carrier have articulated somewhat
concerning "conspiracy theories", and I have commented on
both your positions in a separate thread entitled:
Constantine's Bible: "conspiracy theories" vs "absolute political power"

mountainman · 04-19-2007, 10:15 PM

Quote:

He suggests that humans have a universal fascination with and respect for anything antiquarian.

Is this not just another way of saying ...

Unless we know our history,
we are doomed to repeat it.

04-18-2007, 08:06 PM	#1
rob117 Regular Member Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: New York State Posts: 440	Why we care in the first place-anthropologist/biblical archaeologist tries philosophy I found this pretty interesting. He suggests that humans have a universal fascination with and respect for anything antiquarian, and that in most cultures recieved wisdom is held sacrosanct; modern post-Enlightenment historical scholarship is in fact a way to harness this reverence to arrive at new information: http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=659

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04-18-2007, 10:54 PM	#5
spin Contributor Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: nowhere Posts: 15,747	Do we ever get tired of ancient conspiracies? Flavians, Pisonians, Constantinians, and now Persians.

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