Clivedurdle

Happy Christmas everyone!

BBC Radio 4 had a fascinating programme about the alphabet last week.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/...nourtime.shtml

To summarise badly and add my thoughts about this, which were not discussed in the programme.

First written languages were hieroglyphics and Babylonian cunieform. Hieroglyphics was for pharoahs, cuneiform for state bureaucrats.

About 1200 BCE a caananite or phoenician - they are the same thing - called Biblios INVENTED the alphabet - it is a human invention of equivalent importance to the wheel. It was a valuable trading and commerce tool.

It did not use vowels - as modern hebrew doesn't - so first point - YHWH is not shortened because it was too holy but because like text messaging it wasn't necessary to communicate!

When the Greeks got this idea - about 700 bce they added in vowels as their language uses them a lot. Alpha is a bulls head turned on its side.

My reaction to this was of a light going on - is Xianity like a cargo cult that instead of worshipping aircraft worships the alphabet?

There are so much evidence of this it is ridiculous! Jesus is the word, alpha and omega, every word written in the lambs book of life, the duty to spread the word, the British and Foreign Bible Society, Gideons et al, the word of god. Verily verily I say unto you. Do this as I say unto you.

Speaking in tongues is arguablythe peak experience because the believer is using the words of God.

The tower of Babel.

I am the way the truth and the life makes sense if you say the word is the way the truth and the life!

Am I mad or has a light gone on? Think about the history of the church as a cult worshipping words - liturgy, hymns, music, bible study, it all makes sense!

Umberto Eco almost said this in the Name of the Rose.

Clivedurdle

http://anth.ucalgary.ca/DHatt/Anth473/Cargo.htm

is a reasonable introduction to cargo cults. I'll declare an interest - i was taught by Peter Worsley.

Clivedurdle

http://www.tne.net.au/~abdaacts/rhyme.html

I wish to present this site as evidence for the prosecution case that Xianity worships the alphabet and the word.

Amlodhi

Hello Clivedurdle,

While "cargo cults" are indeed an interesting phemonemon, I don't follow how you are making the connection here.

Are you suggesting that the first followers of this "alphabet religion" received their writings from a source external to themselves and, failing to understand its nature and purpose, ritualized the physical formatting?

P.S. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Umberto Eco more concerned with the pious censorship of words?

Namaste'

Amlodhi

spin

One of the interesting things about Egyptian hieroglyphics is that it is half alphabetical. The name Tut-ankh-Amen is made up of the letters t-w-t, the symbol ankh and the letters '-m-n. As each letter was a symbol, the use of symbols for common words is economical.

Byblos is a Phoenician city north of Tyre, where the alphabet was used.

It is normally thought that this alphabet itself was derived from further south, for at quarries in the Sinai a style of Egyptian derived symbols were used in a strict alphabetical manner.

It is somewhat of a leap to go from alphabets to utterances.

According to Hebrew wisdom literature, wisdom is what comes from the mouth of God


spin

Doctor X

Hold still! There is a nit!

Sumerian is older than Babylonian.

--J.D.

P.S. Welcome to the Forums!

Clivedurdle

"To summarise badly"

OK Sumerians were first! I recommend listening to the programme - in our time - before BBC remove it.

I am arguing that a load of religiously minded folk made a religion out of this new invention of the alphabet - because it was having huge repercussions in their societies, in the same way as seeing aircraft led the cargo cultists to make air strips and worship the Red Cross!

The power of Xianity has puzzled me - as it is not from a God, it has to be from somewhere, and worshipping the "word of god" makes rational sense. As with the cargo cults, the mistake is not lack of rationality, but lack of information about how the world really works.

The Name of the Rose is about the conflict between a scientific and revealed world view. As the revealed view is strongly based on a monastery with a very important library, it is discussing the alphabet religion!

Amlodhi

Perhaps. It is fairly certain however that the Sumerian cuneiform symbols developed from earlier pictographs.

It seems rather intuitive that, say, the original (Sumerian, as far as we know) Enuma Elish was not simply a by-product of a pictographic or cuneiform writing system.

Do you mean for your argument to pertain only to Christianity?

IIRC, the "revealed view" was strongly protected by severely restricting access to a very important library. (To the point of poisoning the pages of a book that an elder abbot considered it impious to read.)

Namaste'

Amlodhi

spin

The Enuma Elish was originally written in Babylonian and may have a liturgical importance to ceremonies performed in Babylon.


spin

Clivedurdle

I do want my arguments to apply to Xianity. Yes Judaism had elements of making the word holy, but Jesus- if he existed - brought in the innovation of tying directly the "word" to God.

Many people assume this is an import from platonism - I think this is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The innovation of Xianity is to make the word into God.

John 1 In the beginning was the word..and the word was with God and the word was God.

Think about the use of "name". In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Go out into all the world in my name.

Christianity is an alphabet and a word cult! Poisoning the letters of a book is evidence for the prosecution!