Amaleq13

Assuming one's conclusion is a logical error necessarily reducing the reliability of that conclusion.

So the "only reason" except for the other(s)?

Your approach too blatantly flawed for your conclusion to have any value.

Jeffrey Gibson

Here's the ending of the film:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVK_OAc6J0s

Does it really "suggest" what Jay says it does -- that the Library of Alexandria contained any, let alone the only, copy of Ptolemy's history of Alexander.

My recollection of the film is that at the end Ptolemy himself (played by Anthony Hopkins) orders all that the film has presented him as him dictating to Cadmus vis a vis the history of Alexander to be thrown away before it goes anywhere, and therefore that there was nothing of what he's been dictating all through the film to be deposited in any library, let alone to be burned up in one.

Jeffrey

Didymus

Yep, I think the non-canonical works may hold clues to the motives of the canonical authors. Many of the stories in the "Christian apocrypha" must have seemed utterly preposterous even to their naive intended audience, just as they do to us. So they may have been meant as fables, not unlike Aesop's. (Perhaps we don't see the canonical literature as equally absurd because we are so familiar with the stories.)

Seems there's a good chance that authors of the Jesus stories, including those in the canon, thought of themselves as fabulists. The writing of Jesus fiction - gospels, epistles, correspondences, apocalypses - became a hugely popular literary genre that continued into the 5th and 6th centuries. Canonical or non-canonical, the authors may indeed have all been all working the same fabulist side of the street.

Jesus fiction would seem to have had the same appeal to the imagination as science fiction does today. Fantasy is fun.

The canonical gospels didn't go too far afield with talking birds and genuflecting palm trees, and they did adhere to a consistent narrative and theology rooted in messianic Judaism and the Hebrew bible - the sort things you could build a church on.

Ddms

gstafleu

No, but neither am I sure we need one. The question is: what attributes would normally go with "grass" in that region, at that time of year, in that era. E.g. if we had read in Tacitus about someone being in the forest in northern Germany in January, we do not need extra linguistic information in order to conclude that it likely was cold, snow covered and not easy to navigate. Similarly grass in Palestine in March in 30AD may usually have been, say, a foot tall. That is a biological question, not a literary one, hence my remark about growing seasons. Reasons for it being not tall might be that sheep or goats ate it, or that the field had been hayed. Assuming the grass was tall enough to obscure vision to some extent is not immediately unlikely. More evidence to the effect would be nice, but it would have to come from biologists and anthropologists.

Gerard Stafleu

Jeffrey Gibson

What field?

Jeffrey

PhilosopherJay

Note the final title of the film before the rolling of the credits ( at :41 seconds on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVK_OAc6J0s):

“Over time, the great library at Alexandria was destroyed by a series of fires.
Ptolemy’s memoirs of Alexander, along with many other great memories of the ancient world, vanished.”

There was no reason to mention the fires at the library at Alexandria, unless it was to suggest that this was the reason that Ptolemy's memoirs of Alexander vanished.

There were three versions of the film released on DVD. The Theatrical Version (2 hours and 55 minutes), the Director's Cut (2 hours and 47 minutes) and the Final Cut (3 hours and 34 minutes). My observations are based on the Final Cut version.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Toto

Doesn't this make Jay's point even stronger? The source for the film is lost to history, but the story teller wants you to know that it really truly happened (within the conventions of movies.)

gentleexit

Yes Homer was a mainstay of eastern education. Someone like Mark (very simple Greek) would have learned Homer but by rote, just sayings. Few of the ancients, even the most educated, ever saw a complete version of the iliad (such length of book was too expensive). Schoolbooks had sayings. Books for rhetoricians had a little more.

Virgil rewrote Homer for Rome and did the obvious - split his poem in two, one part for each of Homer's poems. Journey then war. Renamed, reformed heros, gods. His language expanded Latin to handle Greek nuance. Later Platonists described the universe by allegorizing Homer.

Now, this book makes Mark orders of magnitude more sophisticated than Virgil or the Platonists! He inverted, ladled irony and on top of it all, hid all this depth under a veneer of crude Greek?

Wow. wow. Now now ...

bacht

Right, we know that Greek theatre focused on Homer and the other "religious" stories. And Near Eastern epics like Enuma Elish (sp?) are considered to have been dramatic scripts, so why not part of the Hebrew bible or Christian texts?

bacht

Right, thus the early attribution to John Mark, a companion of Paul's, rather than to one of the legendary "Torah" apostles