Their name is Legion

[Dutch Uncle]

Exactly. The history has always been recited, not written until the invention of written languages.

Agreed about campfire stories until written languages. That had been around for about 3000 years by the time of Jesus.

https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/where-did-writing-begin

From Mesopotamia to the Americas, discover how different regions around the world adopted writing at different times and for different reasons.
Full writing-systems appear to have been invented independently at least four times in human history: first in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) where cuneiform was used between 3400 and 3300 BC, and shortly afterwards in Egypt at around 3200 BC. By 1300 BC we have evidence of a fully operational writing system in late Shang-dynasty China. Sometime between 900 and 600 BC writing also appears in the cultures of Mesoamerica.

There are also several places such as the Indus River valley and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) where writing may have been invented but it remains undeciphered.

Although these dates suggest that writing could have spread out from one central point of origin, there is little evidence of any links between these systems, with each possessing unique qualities.

 

[Dutch Uncle]

Remember that the Library of Alexander was destroyed? No telling how much was lost.

A tragic loss. If someone had a time machine, robbing the Library at Alexandria before each fire would be a good target.

Not that Caesar's burning was accidental but the Christian burning and Muslim burning were the old religion vs. science conflict.

https://www.mymcpl.org/blogs/historical-libraries-library-alexandria

Despite all this, the library is most famous (or rather infamous) for its burning. Throughout its near 1,000-year history, the library was burned multiple times.

According to Plutarch, the first person to blame is Julius Caesar. On his pursuit of Pompey into Egypt in 48 BCE, Caesar was cut off by a large fleet of Egyptian boats in the harbor of Alexandria. He ordered the boats to be burned. The fleet was destroyed, but the flames spread to the city and the library. It’s not known how much of the library was destroyed.

When Caesar documented this attack in his account of the civil war, he left out the destruction of the library; however, this is not uncommon of Caesar, who often left out damaging facts about himself in his writing. However, despite this loss, the library lived on. According to reports, Mark Antony gave Cleopatra 200,000 scrolls for the library well after Caesar’s attack.

The second, more famous, burning of the library came at the hands of Theophilus who was Patriarch of Alexandria from 385 to 412 CE. He turned the Temple of Serapis into a Christian church. It is likely that the collection was destroyed by the Christians who moved in. Some sources say nearly 10 percent of the library’s collection was housed in the Temple of Serapis. In the following years, the Christian attack against the library escalated, and the last great pagan philosopher and librarian, Hypatia, was tortured and killed.

The final blow came in 640 CE when Alexandria came under Muslim rule. The Muslim ruler, Caliph Omar, asserted that the library’s contents would “either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous.” The contents of the library were then supposedly used as tinder for the city’s bathhouses. Even then, it is said that it took six months for all the materials to burn.

There's a decent movie about Hypatia vs the Christians on IMDB TV "Agora" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186830/

 

[AProudLefty]

A tragic loss. If someone had a time machine, robbing the Library at Alexandria before each fire would be a good target.

Not that Caesar's burning was accidental but the Christian burning and Muslim burning were the old religion vs. science conflict.

https://www.mymcpl.org/blogs/historical-libraries-library-alexandria


There's a decent movie about Hypatia vs the Christians on IMDB TV "Agora" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186830/

Why did i think of Trump when you mentioned Julius Caesar?

This is what Donald Caesar imagine himself to do to Biden.

 

[Dutch Uncle]

Why did i think of Trump when you mentioned Julius Caesar?

This is what Donald Caesar imagine himself to do to Biden.

Trump would, indeed, go full Caligula if he could.

 

[Jack]

Thanks for the points on their literacy. The sayings and stories from Jesus as spoken to the writers seems important enough to keep.

Agreed it's be extremely rare for parchment to survive that long. It appears the Dead Sea Scrolls are one of those rarities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Origin

I have no doubt Jesus existed and that many of the sayings in the Gospels, including Thomas, were his. Consider the technological differences in what would have happened had Jesus arrived a thousand years earlier or a thousand years later?

There was even less writing in the region in 1000 BCE. There might not be anything in writing.

"The earliest writing systems evolved independently and at roughly the same time in Egypt and Mesopotamia, but current scholarship suggests that Mesopotamia’s writing appeared first. That writing system, invented by the Sumerians, emerged in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. "
https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-p...m-ancient-mesopotamia-emergence-and-evolution

 

[Dutch Uncle]

"The earliest writing systems evolved independently and at roughly the same time in Egypt and Mesopotamia, but current scholarship suggests that Mesopotamia’s writing appeared first. That writing system, invented by the Sumerians, emerged in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. "
https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-p...m-ancient-mesopotamia-emergence-and-evolution

Another link.

Agreed about campfire stories until written languages. That had been around for about 3000 years by the time of Jesus.

https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/where-did-writing-begin

From Mesopotamia to the Americas, discover how different regions around the world adopted writing at different times and for different reasons.
Full writing-systems appear to have been invented independently at least four times in human history: first in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) where cuneiform was used between 3400 and 3300 BC, and shortly afterwards in Egypt at around 3200 BC. By 1300 BC we have evidence of a fully operational writing system in late Shang-dynasty China. Sometime between 900 and 600 BC writing also appears in the cultures of Mesoamerica.

There are also several places such as the Indus River valley and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) where writing may have been invented but it remains undeciphered.

Although these dates suggest that writing could have spread out from one central point of origin, there is little evidence of any links between these systems, with each possessing unique qualities.

 

[Cypress]

Thanks for the points on their literacy. The sayings and stories from Jesus as spoken to the writers seems important enough to keep.

Agreed it's be extremely rare for parchment to survive that long. It appears the Dead Sea Scrolls are one of those rarities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Origin

I have no doubt Jesus existed and that many of the sayings in the Gospels, including Thomas, were his. Consider the technological differences in what would have happened had Jesus arrived a thousand years earlier or a thousand years later?

There was even less writing in the region in 1000 BCE. There might not be anything in writing.

The Mesopotamians and Egyptians were writing on clay tablets and stone, that is the only reason we know anything about them other than their monumental architecture. Stone and fire-hardened clay will last virtually forever.

If they had been writing on velum parchment or papyrus, written evidence of them would have disappeared two thousand years ago.

I don't think we even have anything but a scrap or two of first century AD Christian writing.

We have copies of copies of copies which were painstakingly hand-copied over the centuries for the sake of preservation and posterity.

We got extremely lucky with the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts, because they were preserved in carefully hidden buried jars or covertly tucked away into dry desert caves

 

[Tranquillus in Exile]

If writing hadn’t been invented, Donald Trump would have hired someone to invent it so he could hire other people to write his books.

Opinion is divided on why he didn’t hire someone to act as president for him.

 

[Dutch Uncle]

If writing hadn’t been invented, Donald Trump would have hired someone to invent it so he could hire other people to write his books.

Opinion is divided on why he didn’t hire someone to act as president for him.

He would have been better of in the long run to have dumped the whole mess in Pence's lap in 2017 and retired.

 

[Hawkeye10]

He would have been better of in the long run to have dumped the whole mess in Pence's lap in 2017 and retired.

Do you have an official insanity diagnosis?

 

[PostmodernProphet]

If writing hadn’t been invented, Donald Trump would have hired someone to invent it so he could hire other people to write his books.

Opinion is divided on why he didn’t hire someone to act as president for him.

just because Biden did it, doesn't mean Trump should have......

 

[Dutch Uncle]

Do you have an official insanity diagnosis?

No. Do you? Since you often medicate your depression with alcohol, you should consider following medical advice.

 

[Dutch Uncle]

The Mesopotamians and Egyptians were writing on clay tablets and stone, that is the only reason we know anything about them other than their monumental architecture. Stone and fire-hardened clay will last virtually forever.

If they had been writing on velum parchment or papyrus, written evidence of them would have disappeared two thousand years ago.

I don't think we even have anything but a scrap or two of first century AD Christian writing.

We have copies of copies of copies which were painstakingly hand-copied over the centuries for the sake of preservation and posterity.

We got extremely lucky with the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts, because they were preserved in carefully hidden buried jars or covertly tucked away into dry desert caves

Agreed on luck. Consider that if our civilization died today from an impact event or plague, how much would be left behind 2000 years from now? Books are disappearing and everything is in the Cloud.

 

[Cypress]

Agreed on luck. Consider that if our civilization died today from an impact event or plague, how much would be left behind 2000 years from now? Books are disappearing and everything is in the Cloud.

Whenever I travel by plane, I notice I am one of the increasingly few who are still reading real books, aka binding and paper pages

 

[Jack]

The Mesopotamians and Egyptians were writing on clay tablets and stone, that is the only reason we know anything about them other than their monumental architecture. Stone and fire-hardened clay will last virtually forever.

If they had been writing on velum parchment or papyrus, written evidence of them would have disappeared two thousand years ago.

I don't think we even have anything but a scrap or two of first century AD Christian writing.

We have copies of copies of copies which were painstakingly hand-copied over the centuries for the sake of preservation and posterity.

We got extremely lucky with the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts, because they were preserved in carefully hidden buried jars or covertly tucked away into dry desert caves

Seems like if a Man-God walked the Earth, somebody might have jotted that down on a clay tablet somewhere.

 

[Cypress]

Seems like if a Man-God walked the Earth, somebody might have jotted that down on a clay tablet somewhere.

Nobody in the Eastern Mediterranean was using clay tablets for writing in the first century AD. I believe clay tablet writing went out of Vouge sometime during the Babylonian empire.

The earliest Christian writings, aka Paul and Mark do not claim Jesus was God. He was obviously an obscure Jewish teacher from the backwater province of Galilee, but highly revered by the disciples of his small ministry.

There was no tangible reason for the Roman Empire to take notice of him during his life.

Jesus only became to be understood as God in later christian tradition, aka Gospel of John 95 AD, and most specifically at the Council of Nicea, 4th century AD.

 

[Jack]

Nobody in the Eastern Mediterranean was using clay tablets for writing in the first century AD. I believe clay tablet writing went out of Vouge sometime during the Babylonian empire.

The earliest Christian writings, aka Paul and Mark do not claim Jesus was God. He was obviously an obscure Jewish teacher from the backwater province of Galilee, but highly revered by the disciples of his small ministry.

There was no tangible reason for the Roman Empire to take notice of him during his life.

Jesus only became to be understood as God in later christian tradition, aka Gospel of John 95 AD, and most specifically at the Council of Nicea, 4th century AD.

I thought he ran around claiming to be 'Son of God'? Isn't that what got him strung up?

 

[Cypress]

I thought he ran around claiming to be 'Son of God'? Isn't that what got him strung up?

Nope, not in the earliest Christian writings.

He was executed by Pontius Pilate under the suspicion he had been calling himself King of the Jews, a political crime in the eyes of the Romans and a threat to their hegemony over Judea.

The Romans would not have given a flying fuck about Jewish religious debates.

 

[Jack]

Nope, not in the earliest Christian writings.

He was executed by Pontius Pilate under the suspicion he had been calling himself King of the Jews, a political crime in the eyes of the Romans and a threat to their hegemony over Judea.

The Romans would not have given a flying fuck about Jewish religious debates.

So ... who came up with the 'Son of God' tag line?

 

[Dutch Uncle]

Whenever I travel by plane, I notice I am one of the increasingly few who are still reading real books, aka binding and paper pages

Even magazines were becoming rare. Newspapers almost nonexistent by the time I retired. After flights, the crew would scour the cabin for reading material on the way back.

Most common were USA Today, WSJ and tabloid magazines. Occasionally there was an Economist, Time or some other magazine worth reading.

In those days pilots carried about 40 pounds of paper in their flight bags. Then, about 10 years ago, we were issued iPads. Huuuuge fucking difference when walking around between flights or between Airport-Hotel.