Vorkosigan

He has the latest (Arabic) invention, his Astrolabe, which he uses to great effect.

Tiny nit -- the astrolabe predates the Arabs. The oldest known description of one is from the Byzantine Ammonius c. 500. There is an extant treatise on its use by Joannes Philoponus c. 525. Its place of origin remains obscure, according to Needham.

Other than that, your post is wonderful and I greatly enjoyed reading your analysis.

Vorkosigan

[ June 08, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

Bede

Tharmas,

I'm not sure I fully subscribe to your views but they are interesting nonetheless. I think your take a shade to post-modernist for my liking as it seems to seriously question whether people can ever grasp an objective truth.

Mandeville does claim the uneducated worry that the antipodeans would fall off but does not (IIRC) suggest that the self same simple lot think the earth is flat. As a child I can't remember thinking the world flat but do remember asking how Australians stayed on board.

Also, I doubt he had actually read the ancient authors but instead would know works like John Sacrobosco's textbooks which were the standard ones used in the schools. A round earth was not 'just a theory' but an acknowledged scientific fact. However, 'time zone', as you rightly say, is anachronistic but John did understand that a consequence of a round earth was that night and day were different in different places which is all I meant to say.

Finally, I doubt John actually travelled very far at all! It's possible he got to the Holy Land but even that is disputed - he certainly didn't go further.

I also must disagree that the historicity of Jesus is irrelevant to traditional historians although it is a given, so perhaps the question is as irrelevant as 'is the earth flat?'

Thanks for your post.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

Vorkosigan

Tharmas,
I also must disagree that the historicity of Jesus is irrelevant to traditional historians although it is a given, so perhaps the question is as irrelevant as 'is the earth flat?'


Has to be a "given" since it can't be demonstrated with the evidence we have.

Vorkosigan

Tharmas

Bede, I agree that Sir John hadn’t himself traveled very far. I assumed the Holy Land, and he certainly seems familiar enough with Norway. I doubt, however, his stories of lands where he saw two-headed geese and the like!

I stand by my earlier statements. You talk of the “educated” classes as if they amounted to more than a small fraction of the population in the fourteenth century. You speak of “John Sacrobosco's textbooks” used in “schools” as if today’s English school system existed. Sacrobosco wrote well before printing existed, of course, and he lectured at the University of Paris. We’re talking about one of the advanced theoretical physicists of the age. If his was the standard text in the fourteenth century it was only at Oxford.

But let’s let Mandeville speak for himself. I think you’ll find that although he doesn’t explicitly mention the flat earth concept, he makes such a great production out of the fact that he has with his own eyes seen phenomena that can only be interpreted as indicating a round earth that any other interpretation is simply silly. He is speaking about the Pole star and talking about how it becomes less useful to navigation as you sail South, and he continues:

“...For which cause men may well perceive, that the land and the sea be of round shape and form; for the part of the firmament sheweth in one country that sheweth not in another country. And men may well prove by experience and subtle compassment of wit, that if a man found passages by ships that would go to search the world, men might go by ship all about the world and above and beneath.

The which thing I prove thus after that I have seen. For I have been toward the parts of Brabant, and beholden the Astrolabe that the star that is clept the Transmontane is fifty-three degrees high; and more further in Almayne and Bohemia it hath fifty-eight degrees; and ... “ On and on for two thousand words.

<a href="http://www.romanization.com/books/mandeville/chap20.html" target="_blank">Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Chap. XX</a> is one online source.

In other words, in the above passage he takes it upon himself to “prove” the roundness of the earth. It would absolutely not be necessary for him to do so, and to go on and on for 2000 words doing so, if that were the common opinion of his day, any more than it would be for a traveler today to do so!

Again, I’m not really disagreeing with you, Bede. I’m just finding a wonder in these words, as an idea is transformed from a theory discussed by professors to a reality “proved by experience.”

What else? “Post-modernism? Harrumph, sir! If you must label me, I would prefer to answer to “pragmatist.” But I suppose the choice is not mine.

[ June 10, 2002: Message edited by: Tharmas trying to get the link to work!]

[ June 10, 2002: Message edited by: Tharmas ]</p>

aikido7

The point is that Mark--most probably the earliest gospel written--is not historical but is, as you say, a "historical source."
The trace elements of historicity must be squared by a careful reading of the New Testament itself--something many believers do not know how to do.
For example, either Jesus' messiamic role was "a secret" as described by Mark, or it was something Jesus spoke about openly and often as John's gospel claims.

The "true history" of the gospels is expressed by the sometimes radically differing portraits of Jesus by radically different historical communities decades after his crucifixion.

Bede

Tharmas,

I hear what you are saying (although Sacrobosco's textbooks were the standard at nearly every European university and are really quite easy - he wrote them because Ptolemy is a bastard to understand).

However, I still disagree. We do not know what Og the peasant thought. But the fact that many Ogs in America are creationists does not mean we can say that evolution is not a scientific fact in 2002. In the Middle Ages the spherical earth was also a fact known to everyone who had the slightest education. Anyone who could actually read John's travels would have known this. His explanation is a case of 'look, you know this - but here's the proof'. All school kids know the universe started with the big bang (at least here in the UK) but they need someone to tell them about background microwave radition, the doppler effect and the other proofs of this. All those kids know the earth goes around the sun but how many know about the proof (like stellar parralax hell it took nineteen posts on the boards here!).

My (ongoing) masters is in Medieval intellectual history and I have come across not a single reference to the flat earth. We cannot assume that anyone believed it just because we have this idea that they 'should'. The idea this was controversial is a myth invented by nineteenth century polemicists anti-Christian polemicists.

Whether the antipodes are inhabited was an open question - John (IIRC) follows Ptolemy and says no because it is too hot. But there were those whom he addresses who said you'd fall off. This was not widely believed but at least we have evidence that someone believed it.

If I said 'no one in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat' then I was being too loose. But the idea that this was a 'live' issue is simply untrue. It was not.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

Toto

This has drifted way off topic. Bede has yet to acknowledge that there are serious scholars who doubt that Confucius existed, and he has yet to provide us with the methodology that HJ scholars use that allows them to be so sure that Jesus existed and something can be known about him.

Bede

Toto, there is a junior professor who doubts Confucius existed. Big deal. But I'm pleased you accept Charlotte Allen's word after she was written off here as a conservative Christian apologist.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

Toto

Bede, you must learn to read more carefully.

Allen cites "Lionel M. Jensen, an associate professor of history and the director of Chinese studies at the University of Colorado at Denver."

As for Allen, she is a Catholic intellectual, and they are always more interesting than simple fundies. Besides, apologists are often right about every religion but their own.

Toto

While we're waiting for Bede to come up with the historians' methodologies that will convince us that Jesus existed (day 13 of the watch. . .), here's another article on the putative Juan Diego from the Wire:

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/americas/06/10/religion.mexico.reut/index.html" target="_blank">Sainthood near for Mexican man who may not have lived</a>