#Alexander in Jewish literature

[jeannereames]

Dr. Reames, forgive me if this question has been answered before. Recently I read that Alexander the Great and his kingdom were mentioned in the Bible, more precisely in the Book of Daniel, depicting his victory against the Persians and the formation of the successor kingdoms.

From the King James Version:

3 Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns: and the two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last.

4 I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great.

5 And as I was considering, behold, an he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes.

6 And he came to the ram that had two horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran unto him in the fury of his power.

7 And I saw him come close unto the ram, and he was moved with choler against him, and smote the ram, and brake his two horns: and there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped upon him: and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand.

8 Therefore the he goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.

9 And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land.

10 And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them.

20 The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia.

21 And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.

22 Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power.

Considering that the Book of Daniel was written well after Alexander’s conquests, can we confirm that this verses are indeed about him? I couldn’t find any reliable source on this topic.

And also, considering the Seleucid Empire that succeeded Alexander in the region, Hellenism and the Maccabean revolt. Can this depiction, if it is indeed of Alexander, be considered faithful to how he and his deeds were perceived during his lifetime? Is this depiction of Alexander and the Diadochi usual, or does it depart from how they perceived and advertised themselves to their subjects? Or is this a particular viewpoint from Judea? And least, to the peoples outside of the Hellenistic sphere, or Greece, could this be considered the way Alexander’s legacy is seen?

Thank you so much in advance, and for going through this painfully long ask!

Yes, Alexander is, indeed, mentioned in the Book of Daniel. I am not an expert on the exegesis of this book, but it does refer to him and the Successor kingdoms, as well.

I don’t think it necessarily reflects how Alexander was viewed throughout the Mediterranean. It’s intended to fit the style of earlier Jewish prophetic literature, although the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) places it (correctly) among the Writings (Ketuvim), not the Prophets (Nevi’im), as it belongs to the Hellenistic period. So yes, it’s post-Alexander, even if, internally, it claims to belong to the Achaemenid Persian period.

One of the better commentary series on Biblical material (at least from a historian’s POV) is the Anchor Bible Series from Yale Univ. Press. Here's a link to the commentary on Daniel. 😊 It’s been out a while, so you can probably find a used copy pretty cheap, or check it out from your local library. (If they don’t have it, they should be able to get it for you via interlibrary loan.) That will give you a better analysis than anything I can do.

(I’m painfully aware of my limits, ha.)

[aeide-thea]

beautiful & also terrible to have the sort of brain where you find yrself at 4:30 AM looking up intersections between jewishness & arthuriana. like. fucking amazing rabbit hole but. why am i not asleep. my head hurts and my eyes are sandy.

however. some cool things (that probably some of you knew abt already, but i did not!):

King Artus – "a 'Hebrew Arthurian Romance of 1279… Judaized and transformed.' […] Although the story in 'King Artus' is fairly straightforwardly Arthur’s as we know it today, there are little touches that tie it to Jewish literature. When, for example, Arthur’s mother, the Duchess, learns that her husband is dead and she has been deceived by the shape-shifting Uther Pendragon, she tries to figure out how that could be possible. 'No sooner had he gone more than a bow-shot’s distance away from the castle than the messenger came straight to my chamber.' That bow-shot’s distance comes not from Arthurian legend but from the story of Hagar, who sits a bow-shot’s distance away from her son Ishmael when Abraham casts them out and she does not want to see her son die."

Bovo-Bukh – "a chivalric romance adapted in 1507 by Elye Bokher (Elijah Baḥur *Levita) into 650 ottava rima stanzas in Yiddish from a Tuscan version (Buovo d'Antona) of the early 14th-century Anglo-Norman original, Boeuve de Haumton. This tale of the heroic adventures of the noble Bovo, exiled from his homeland by the machinations of his murderous mother, his wanderings through the world (as far as Babylon), and the love story of Bovo and Druzyana, their separation, his triumphant return home, and the final reunion with Druzyana and their two sons, proved to be one of the most beloved tales in the Yiddish literary tradition over the course of more than two centuries."

Vidvilt – "anonymous 15th–16th-century Yiddish epic. This Arthurian romance of the chivalric adventures of Sir Vidvilt (and his father Gawain), based on Wirnt von Gravenberg's 13th-century Middle High German Wigalois, proved to be one of the most enduringly popular secular narratives in Yiddish literary history, with numerous manuscript recensions, printings (the first in an extensively expanded version by Joseph b. Alexander Witzenhausen, Amsterdam 1671), and reprintings, in rhymed couplets, ottava rima (Prague 1671–79), and prose, over the course of three and a half centuries. The anonymous poet of the earliest Yiddish version composed more than 2,100 rhymed couplets (probably in northern Italy), following Wirnt's plot rather closely through the first three-quarters of the narrative (abbreviating much and generally eliminating specific Christian reference), before offering quite a different conclusion."

Sir Gabein – "from 1788-89, a tale in which the Arthurian knight Gabein does not return to Camelot but – via Russia and Sardinia – reaches China and ultimately ascends to the Chinese imperial throne as the new emperor." slow blink.

also this is getting beyond arthuriana into just epic poetry generally but. literally all of this sounds fascinating.

anyway. literary scholar manqué.e hrs as always here at k dot tumblr dot edu obviously! however. my ear is open like a greedy shark, &c.

[radiofreederry]

Happy birthday, Alexander Berkman! (November 21, 1870)

An influential anarchist thinker and activist, Alexander Berkman was born in what is now Vilnius to a well-off Jewish family. From a young age, he found himself drawn to radical thoughts and ideas which were growing in the Russian Empire, and devoured revolutionary literature. At the age of 18, he moved to New York City, where he fell in with anarchist circles and formed a lifelong relationship with fellow anarchist Emma Goldman. In 1892, amidst the Homestead Strike, Berkman attempted to assassinate factory manager Henry Clay Frick, but failed, and spent 14 years in prison as a consequence. He wrote his memoirs while in prison, and continued to write after his release, until he and Goldman were deported to Russia for their opposition to American involvement in World War I. Initially supportive of the Bolshevik Revolution, their attitude soon soured, and they left Russia for France, where, in ill health, Berkman took his own life in 1936.

[johannestevans]

Come see me in Leeds this Friday!

Good morning, good morning!

Remember you can sign up to get this update directly as an email. Anything that I can't promote or post as per Patreon's more stringent guidelines will always still be in my regular email newsletters.

First things first, in the aftermath of the piece I submitted to Trans_Muted late last year, I'm going to be at an event at The Bookish Type, a queer bookshop, in Leeds this Friday evening! Tickets are sold out online, but there will be more tickets available on the door at the £0-£5 range depending on how much people can afford.

It's going to be a Q&A and discussion sort of night, with some readings as well - as well as me, there'll be Dalton Harrison, the founder of StandFast Productions, a collective for ex-offenders to share art and stories; there's Loren Lepton, who does all sorts of rocking art across different disciplines and has published poetry in Trans_Muted; and of course there's Dorian Rose, the founder of Trans_Muted!

Here's the piece I'll be discussing and potentially reading from:

Questions You Wish You Could Ask A Gay Transgender Man — A tongue-in-cheek take on cisgender people’s frequently asked questions.

Read here in Trans_Muted!

Also On Medium / / On Patreon.

There will be books and such forth available from us, as well as the fact that the Bookish Type is an excellent queer-run bookshop that will have all manner of wonders for you to peruse as ever.

Great news for those who enjoyed my Minotaur talk a while back - Romancing the Gothic have invited me back to do another talk as part of a charity event toward the end of March!

On March 16th 2024, Goths for Breakfast is going to centre a variety of talks about gothic literature to raise money for hungry kids, and mine is going to be a presentation and dive into Crimson Peak (2015, dir. Guillermo Del Toro) and its appeal as a modern gothic romance, with a bit of examination about people's hunger for ~problematic~ themes in the age of BookTok, book bans, and rising puritan values and opposition to nuance. Title is yet to drop, but in the meantime, go sign up for Romancing the Gothic and check out their other events!

My plan is to write more non-fiction in the next few months as honestly, I need the money - I'm settling well into the new place but I'm getting used to balancing all my bills against furnishing everything, and I'm currently in need of some dental care. I've talked about it at length here, and there's two polls here and here at the moment about particular essays or non-fiction people would be most eager to see and read, but please let me know if there's anything you'd really like me to write about!

I have a few media recs this week - I already mentioned that I've been playing Dragon Quest XI and I'm now replaying Final Fantasy XV again, but onto some movie recs! A few of these fucking rock, and I definitely plan to write a bit more about them at length.

The Holdovers (2023, dir. Alexander Payne) - This one was good, not a new favourite of mine or anything, but it's well-paced and has a lot of well-done slice-of-life and character study, which I know people who like my work will undoubtedly appreciate! It's a loving and sensitive film - I found it to be a bit bland for my taste, but for being this sort of film it's not at all too saccharine, and it definitely might be worth a watch if you like nasty old men or nasty young men! I'll be honest, though, none of the men in this are particularly to my taste - I did love Da'Vine Joy Randolph's performance though, she really makes the whole film.

Demon (2015, dir. Marcin Wrona) - This film has been criticised a lot by genre horror fans because they're upset that it doesn't meet genre horror conventions: it doesn't. This is a real fucking horror film delving into the reality of living on haunted, bloodied land, and it's a modern retelling of The Dybbuk - gentiles at a wedding become haunted by the ghost of a dead Jewish bride, and horrors unfold for them. This film is beautiful, and I don't think I've ever seen a film that depicts gentiles grappling so much with the violence that's been done by them and their community to Jewish people, and then making the decision to turn away from it. The haunting of the pogroms in this film is visceral, and it feels all the more salient at the moment given the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the historical-to-now experiences of Palestinians in the face of that colonial violence.

Minyan (2020, dir. Eric Steel) - This is a super gorgeous film as well - I've watched a lot of coming-of-age flicks about young queer men coming to terms with their sexuality, particularly set in the 80s, but I've never seen one that has such a loving depiction of a man's developing sexual identity at the same time as his developing religious one and the relationship he has with his Judaism and with worship and religion, and other queer men in his community and how many there are once he knows how to look for and find them. I really love the undercurrent of his relationship with James Baldwin's work, especially a contrast at one point of a fellow young Russian Jew saying he's going to join the IDF, and then immediately jump to work from Baldwin. I would recommend Baldwin's short open letter on Zionism, antisemitism, and Palestinian liberation from '79 in The Nation, which you can read here.

New Works Published

Serial Update: Powder and Feathers

Chapter Fifty-Four: Colm has a painful discussion with his granddaughter; Jean-Pierre bonds with his niece.

--

It seems to Aimé Deverell that there is very little point to life, except for what pleasures can be enjoyed before the grave. Life is short - thank God - but at least there's enough in the world to dull the senses in the meantime.

That philosophy shatters like glass when he meets Jean-Pierre, an angel.

Read on Medium / / Read on Ao3 / / Read on WorldAnvil

Erotic Short: Wine Barrel

The angel Jean-Pierre lets himself get caught by the all-too-friendly Dionysus.

Rated E, trans M/everyone at a party. Featuring object insertion, inflation with a womb filled up with wine, unsafe alcohol consumption, lactation, milking, public humiliation, voyeurism, transformation, very drunk sex, sadomasochism, free use, objectification, begging, multiple orgasms, overstimulation.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon / / Read on SubscribeStar / / Read on Ao3

Erotic Short: Window Trap

Jean-Pierre makes an unwise decision, and gets caught amongst the wrong crowd.

Rated E, 3.9k, trans M angel gangbanged by Greek gods, mostly by Hermes (Aetos Talaria). Doros is also here — Doros and Jean-Pierre both being characters in Powder and Feathers.

Dubious to non consent here after some pure hubris, with a gangbang, large insertions, come inflation, deepthroating, spitroasting, predicament bondage with Jean-Pierre stuck in a wall, humiliation, degradation, dirty talk, masochism, stomach bulges.

Read on Medium / / Read on SubscribeStar / / Read on Ao3

Non-Fiction: My Top 6 Films of 2023

2023 had a few knock-out hits as far as the cinema goes — obviously, people were very excited about the respective releases of Barbie and Oppenheimer, but my top films of the year were a bit different.

One  thing I do think unites a lot of these — and a trend I hope to see from  more films in the next few years — is a trend toward more earnestness  and sincerity in scripts and plot lines, and I’m hoping that trend  continues!

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon/ / Read on Tumblr

Woe, Boypussy Be Upon Ye: Transing Characters in Fanfic & Fanart

What’s the deal with envisioning your blorbos as transgender?

Read on Medium in Prism & Pen / / Read on Patreon/ / Read on Tumblr

Erotic TweetFic: Building Stamina

A new addition to a band of mercenaries struggles to keep pace with them - but no worries. They've another role in mind for him.

Read on Twitter

[girlactionfigure]

The Brave Headmaster: Dr. Erich Klibansky

He saved five entire classes.

Dr. Erich Klibansky was the headmaster of a Jewish high school in Germany who saved dozens of his students by teaching them English and arranging for them to join the Kindertransport to safety in Great Britain.

Born in Frankfurt to a religious family in 1900, Erich was an exceptional student who studied history, German literature and Romanian languages at university. He married Meta David and together they moved to Breslau, where they both taught at Jewish schools. Their son Hans-Rafael was born in 1928, and the next year the family moved to Cologne, where they had two more sons, Alexander and Michael. Erich became headmaster at the Yavne Jewish gymnasium (high school) in Cologne. It was the only Jewish high school in that part of Germany, the Rhineland. Yavne was a co-ed school teaching both Jewish and secular subjects. His wife Meta also worked at Yavne teaching English. The family found a spacious apartment in Volksgartenstrasse, a desirable part of town.

Erich – known to his students as Dr. Klibansky – was immediately popular with students and staff at the school. They appreciated his warm manner and personal interest in every student, as well as his strong leadership at a difficult time.

Germany was in a severe economic crisis, and as a private school Yavne didn’t get any subsidy from the state. Erich’s job as headmaster became focused on fundraising. Motivated to ensure that any Jewish student in Cologne could get a good education despite financial hardship, Erich successfully raised money to keep the school open. As his reputation grew, young Jews started coming to Yavneh from outside Cologne and soon the newcomers made up a quarter of the student body.

As the Nazis came to power in the 1930’s the situation grew grim for Jews in Germany. In 1937 the Klibansky family was forced out of their nice apartment in Volksgartenstrasse and relocated to a tiny flat in a squalid slum. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, it became clear there was no future for Jews in Germany. At this point, Erich’s mission as headmaster of Yavne changed. Previously, the school was focused on training the students for exams and university but now the only important thing was survival. He heard about the Kindertransport, an organized rescue effort bringing Jewish children from Nazi-controlled areas to safety in England. Erich determined to get his students on the Kindertransport, and in fact hoped to relocate the entire school to England.

He re-focused the school curriculum to provide intensive English-language instruction for all students in preparation for their escape. Erich reached out to prominent Jews in London and got support for his plan to move Yavne high school to England. The Central British Council for Refugees arranged for the students to stay in a college dormitory.

By summer 1939, Erich was able to send five entire classes of students – a total of 130 people – on the Kindertransport to England. His plan was to get all the students out and then join them in England with his family. However everything came to a halt when war broke out in 1939. The borders were sealed, as was the fate of the Klibansky family and those students who hadn’t left yet. Erich, his wife and three young sons managed to hide from the Nazis until July 1942, when they were arrested and transported to an unknown location. On July 25, the family of five was shot in a wooded area in Belarus and, dying, dumped in a prepared pit.

The brave headmaster’s story has been largely forgotten, but in 1990 a square in Cologne where Yavne high school used to be was dedicated to him and renamed the Erich Klibansky Platz.

For saving the lives of 130 Jewish students, we honor Erich Klibansky as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[westandwithpalestine]

Over one hundred Kundiman fellows and community members—including Ocean Vuong, Alexander Chee, and Solmaz Sharif—have signed an open letter calling for the resignation of the entire Board of Trustees of the prominent nonprofit organization for writers and readers of Asian American literature.

The letter goes on to detail a number of grievances and demands, all dating back to an October 11th incident in which the Kundiman co-founders and board “took to Kundiman’s social media accounts to delete a staff-posted statement of solidarity with Palestinians and replaced it with one that conflated Jewish lives with Israel while also erasing Gazans entirely.” A full timeline of what happened next can be read here.

[daughterofhecata]

Once again I aimed for complete blackouts on @batmanisagatewaydrug's and @macrolit's reading bingos and this time, I actually succeded! (Even if I took some liberties with the term 'novel' on the macrolit one, mostly focused on the 'classics' aspect.) Lowkey proud of myself ngl.

Titles for both under the cut, full reading list here.

batmanisagatewaydrug:

graphic novel: Christopher Tauber, Hanna Wenzel: Rocky Beach. Eine Interpretation. [no english title]

horror: Jáchym Topol: Die Teufelswerkstatt [org. title: Chladnou zemí/engl. title: The Devil’s Workshop]

author you’ve never read before: David Henry Hwang: M Butterfly

translation: Władysław Szlengel: Was ich den Toten las [org. title: Co czytałem umarłym/engl. title: What I Read to the Dead]

poetry collection: Richard Siken: Crush

a book recommended by a friend: James Oswald: Natural Causes. An Inspector McLean Novel.

verse novel: Alexander F. Spreng: Der Fluch [no english title]

novella: Thomas Mann: Der Tod in Venedig [engl. title: Death in Venice]

a book w/ vampires: Michael Scott: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2. The Magician.

book w/ a cover you think is cool: Cornelia Funke: Tintenwelt #4. Die Farbe der Rache. [engl. title: The Color of Revenge]

2023 release: Jonathan Kellerman: Unnatural History. An Alex Delaware Novel

book w/ an animal on the cover: Faye Kellerman: Der Zorn sei dein Ende [org. title: The Hunt]

book published before 1980: Josef Bor: Die verlassene Puppe [org. title: Opuštěná panenka/engl. title: The Abandoned Doll]

science fiction: Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed

romance: Akwaeke Emezi: You made a Fool of Death with your Beauty

historical fiction: Alena Mornštajnová: Hana [org. title: Hana/engl. title: Hannah]

450+ pages: James Ellroy: Die Schwarze Dahlie [org. title: The Black Dahlia]

memoir: Jeanette McCurdy: I‘m Glad My Mom Died

re-read a book from school: Frank Wedekind: Frühlings Erwachen [engl. title: Spring Awakening]

short story collection: John Barth: Lost in the Funhouse

non-fiction: Vera Schiff: The Theresienstadt Deception. The Concentration Camp the Nazis Created to Deceive the World.

book w/ a movie adaption: Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

book published in your birthday month: Jan T. Gross: Neighbors. The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland.

anthology: Alain Locke: The New Negro

macrolit:

Classic Author A/B/C: James Baldwin: Giovanni‘s Room

Published between 2000-2023: Kim Newman: Professor Moriarty. The Hound of the D‘Urbervilles

Philosophy or Literary Criticism: [various books and essays for three literature courses]

Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay: Harlem Shadows

Children’s Literature: [various Three Investigators books]

Fan Fiction: [various works]

Essays or Satire: Mark Thompson: Leatherfolk. Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice.

Book of Short Stories: John Barth: Lost in the Funhouse

Classic Author G/H/I: Lorraine Vivian Hansberry: A Raisin in the Sun

LGBTQ+ Author: Ocean Vuong: Time is a Mother

Published before 1940: Friedrich Schiller: Maria Stuart

Classic Author J/K/L: Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed

Detective, Horror, or Suspense: Maurice Leblanc: Arsène Lupin und der Schatz der Könige von Frankreich [org. title: L'Aiguille creuse/engl. title: The Hollow Needle]

Classic Author M/N/O: Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

Classic Author S/T/U: J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye

Poetry or Play: Arthur Schnitzler: Reigen [engl. title: La Ronde]

Biography or Non-Fiction: Peter Hallama: Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer. Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust. [no english title]

Classic Author P/Q/R: Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar

Graphic Novel: Christopher Tauber, Hanna Wenzel: Rocky Beach. Eine Interpretation. [no english title]

Published between 1940-1999: Hanna Krall: Dem Herrgott Zuvorkommen [org. title: Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem/engl. title: Shielding the Flame]

Classic Author D/E/F: Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho

Young Adult: Kathy Reichs: Virals #1. Tote können nicht mehr reden. [org. title: Virals]

Gothic Fiction: E.T.A. Hoffmann: Nussknacker und Mausekönig [engl. title: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King]

Classic Author V/W/X/Y/Z: Frank Wedekind: Frühlings Erwachen [engl. title: Spring Awakening]

[mariacallous]

my current Princeton University Press 50% sale purchases:

Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities by Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro

In Cents and Sensibility, an eminent literary critic and a leading economist make the case that the humanities—especially the study of literature—offer economists ways to make their models more realistic, their predictions more accurate, and their policies more effective and just. Arguing that Adam Smith’s heirs include Austen, Chekhov, and Tolstoy as much as Keynes and Friedman, Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro trace the connection between Adam Smith’s great classic, The Wealth of Nations, and his less celebrated book on ethics, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The authors contend that a few decades later, Jane Austen invented her groundbreaking method of novelistic narration in order to give life to the empathy that Smith believed essential to humanity. More than anyone, the great writers can offer economists something they need—a richer appreciation of behavior, ethics, culture, and narrative. Original, provocative, and inspiring, Cents and Sensibility demonstrates the benefits of a dialogue between economics and the humanities and also shows how looking at real-world problems can revitalize the study of literature itself. Featuring a new preface, this book brings economics back to its place in the human conversation.

The Invention of International Order: Remaking Europe after Napoleon by Glenda Sluga

In 1814, after decades of continental conflict, an alliance of European empires captured Paris and exiled Napoleon Bonaparte, defeating French military expansionism and establishing the Concert of Europe. This new coalition planted the seeds for today’s international order, wedding the idea of a durable peace to multilateralism, diplomacy, philanthropy, and rights, and making Europe its center. Glenda Sluga reveals how at the end of the Napoleonic wars, new conceptions of the politics between states were the work not only of European statesmen but also of politically ambitious aristocratic and bourgeois men and women who seized the moment at an extraordinary crossroads in history.

In this panoramic book, Sluga reinvents the study of international politics, its limitations, and its potential. She offers multifaceted portraits of the leading statesmen of the age, such as Tsar Alexander, Count Metternich, and Viscount Castlereagh, showing how they operated in the context of social networks often presided over by influential women, even as they entrenched politics as a masculine endeavor. In this history, figures such as Madame de Staël and Countess Dorothea Lieven insist on shaping the political transformations underway, while bankers influence economic developments and their families agitate for Jewish rights.

Monumental in scope, this groundbreaking book chronicles the European women and men who embraced the promise of a new kind of politics in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, and whose often paradoxical contributions to modern diplomacy and international politics still resonate today.

Democracy Erodes from the Top: Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge of Populism in Europe by Larry M. Bartels

A seeming explosion of support for right-wing populist parties has triggered widespread fears that liberal democracy is facing its worst crisis since the 1930s. Democracy Erodes from the Top reveals that the real crisis stems not from an increasingly populist public but from political leaders who exploit or mismanage the chronic vulnerabilities of democracy.

In this provocative book, Larry Bartels dismantles the pervasive myth of a populist wave in contemporary European public opinion. While there has always been a substantial reservoir of populist sentiment, Europeans are no less trusting of their politicians and parliaments than they were two decades ago, no less enthusiastic about European integration, and no less satisfied with the workings of democracy. Anti-immigrant sentiment has waned. Electoral support for right-wing populist parties has increased only modestly, reflecting the idiosyncratic successes of populist entrepreneurs, the failures of mainstream parties, and media hype. Europe’s most sobering examples of democratic backsliding—in Hungary and Poland—occurred not because voters wanted authoritarianism but because conventional conservative parties, once elected, seized opportunities to entrench themselves in power.

By demonstrating the inadequacy of conventional bottom-up interpretations of Europe’s political crisis, Democracy Erodes from the Top turns our understanding of democratic politics upside down.

Uncivil Mirth: Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain by Ross Carroll

The relaxing of censorship in Britain at the turn of the eighteenth century led to an explosion of satires, caricatures, and comic hoaxes. This new vogue for ridicule unleashed moral panic and prompted warnings that it would corrupt public debate. But ridicule also had vocal defenders who saw it as a means to expose hypocrisy, unsettle the arrogant, and deflate the powerful. Uncivil Mirth examines how leading thinkers of the period searched for a humane form of ridicule, one that served the causes of religious toleration, the abolition of the slave trade, and the dismantling of patriarchal power.

Ross Carroll brings to life a tumultuous age in which the place of ridicule in public life was subjected to unparalleled scrutiny. He shows how the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, far from accepting ridicule as an unfortunate byproduct of free public debate, refashioned it into a check on pretension and authority. Drawing on philosophical treatises, political pamphlets, and conduct manuals of the time, Carroll examines how David Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others who came after Shaftesbury debated the value of ridicule in the fight against intolerance, fanaticism, and hubris.

Casting Enlightenment Britain in an entirely new light, Uncivil Mirth demonstrates how the Age of Reason was also an Age of Ridicule, and speaks to our current anxieties about the lack of civility in public debate.

Enjoy 50% off nearly all published print, ebooks, and audiobooks. Start shopping here. Sale ends May 26th. 

[aboutanancientenquiry]

“Springs of Western Civilization is a comparative exploration of the Hebraic and classical traditions that form our heritage. In examining these traditions before they united, James Arieti locates the catalyst for their bonding in two related circumstances: adoption by the biblical world of an eclectic mélange of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism that, in the centuries on each side of the Common Era, produced consensus models both of God and of a warmhearted individual; and belief that the writings of Plato were literally true-a belief that arose from failing to understand his playful, metaphorical techniques of composition. Among the many effects of the mingling of biblical and philosophical values was a re-focusing of literature from the heroes of epic to the compassionate characters we recognize as Menschen.’

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lexington Books (15 July 2017)

Review

A prolific and versatile scholar, Arieti (classics, Hampden-Sydney College) here focuses his analytical lens on the parallel phenomena of the classical and biblical traditions that inform the basis of Western civilization. Using a binary comparative approach, Arieti anatomizes common themes in both biblical and classical literature, adducing a panoply of value-laden paradigms of experience--among them fratricide, talking animals, rainbows--characteristic of both the classical and Hebraic cultures to illustrate some fundamental differences between the two, for example rational calculation versus precipitate intuition. Addressing the literary and cultural evidence in the period from roughly 300 BCE to 300 CE, the author underscores the consistency of each tradition in asserting its basic value system and methodology and simultaneously generating and absorbing elements from the larger context of the Hellenistic philosophical and religious environment. Thus, rabbinical exegesis and commentary clearly reflect the influence of Hellenistic philosophical modalities. Citing differences as well as similarities, Arieti posits that a confluence of these traditions resulted in the emergence of a specific worldview incorporating the emergence of what is termed Mentshlekhkeyt--reflecting a humane kindness and a "heart aglow with love (to quote from chapter 6). Superbly documented and researched, this volume makes a significant contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates; graduate students.-- "Choice" Arieti's well-documented text is dense and challenging. . . By dwelling on the author's examples and passionately pondering his conclusions, those of us engaged in the pursuit and transmission of the humanities can help fulfill an ancient prophet's prayer that someday justice will well up as waters/ And righteousness as a mighty stream (Amos 5:24).-- "The Classical Journal" The author is well aware that his ideas will not find acceptance everywhere, but presents them in a manner that succeeds in being both stimulating and irenic, and should give rise to further debate.-- "Journal for the Study of the Old Testament" In this masterful work, which is the product of a lifetime of extensive learning, James Alexander Arieti attempts to illuminate for his readers the differences between the ancient Greek world and the world of the Hebrew Bible (and later Jewish commentary on the biblical texts). The profoundly pluralistic society in which the West now lives has at its source the great river of culture produced when the streams of Greek and Hebrew thought and art flowed together. Arieti examines Greek and Hebrew attitudes towards all those things in which human life is enmeshed, from nature to politics, from family life to religion. And he shows not only the great differences between the Greek and Hebrew worldviews but also their diverse advantages as sources for a good human life and a just human community. The result is a deep and moving reflection on the nature of our civilization and the strengths and weaknesses of the cultures out of which it arose.--Eleonore Stump, Saint Louis University James Arieti in his Springs of Western Civilization has given us all a precious gift in this interdisciplinary study comparing the Hebrew Bible and classical Greek literature, the two foundations of Western civilization. With great erudition and insight and an inviting balance of breadth and depth, Arieti brilliantly analyzes parallel stories and teachings on dozens of topics in order to derive their respective philosophical and humanist worldviews. Students of the Bible and those versed in Greek culture will both experience meeting a long lost twin brother who is struggling through so many of the same existential issues and reaching conclusions often similar, sometimes at odds, but always mutually illuminating.--Rabbi Dr. Richard Hidary, Yeshiva University

Source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Springs-Western-Culture-Comparative-Classical/dp/1498534791

James A. Arieti is Graves H. Thompson Professor of Classics at Hampden-Sydney College

Well, the project of this book seems fascinating and Pr. Arieti is for sure an excellent scholar. But of course I cannot say more specific things on this work before reading it.

[keengiverwerewolf]

The Inevitable Two State solution - The Inevitable Two State Solution

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ISRAEL Israel's history and Jewish history are both intertwined inextricably. The primary source of their history can be obtained from ancient Hebrew texts like the Pentateuch, the Talmud, the biblical books of Kings and chronicles, the book of the Maccabees, and also the writings of Flavius Josephus. The writings of Flavius Josephus are somewhat akin to the historical accounts of Thucydides for the ancient Greeks, Livy and Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus account of imperial Rome, and Herodotus' account of ancient Egypt. Archaeological findings corroborate the biblical accounts of the Canaanites as the original inhabitants of the ancient land of Israel before the habiru, a nomadic people mentioned in Assyro-Babylonian literature from 2000BC, and often identified as the Hebrews of the Bible. The most recent of such archaeological finds was the discovery of a 3000 year old Canaanite temple, unearthed in Southern Israel by Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the year 2020.One of the discoveries was an idol of the Canaanite god Baal, which is mentioned frequently in many old testament texts of the Holy bible. According to Jewish tradition, the temple of Solomon, also known as "The first Temple," was built by the biblical King Solomon[990-931]. The first Temple went through different phases of destruction and desecration under the oppressive rule of the Babylonians before it was restored and reconstructed by the Medes and Persians between 520-515BC. The restoration led to the emergence of the "Second Temple." The second Temple was desecrated again by Antiochus IV[Epiphanes], the king of Syria of the Seleucid dynasty, and one of the successors of Alexander the Great. He desecrated the temple by offering the sacrifice of a pig on an altar to Zeus. This abominable act of his, deemed sacrilegious by the Jews, led to a rebellion by the Maccabees, under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus from 167-160 BCE. The successful rebellion is marked yearly in the festival of Hanukkah in honour of the recapturing of Jerusalem, cleansing of the second temple, and rededication of the altar. The Second temple was utterly destroyed by the Romans, under general Titus in the year 70AD, as a retributive measure against Jewish insurrection. The Sicarri were a splinter group of Jewish zealots who, in the decades preceding Jerusalem's destruction in AD 70, strongly opposed the Roman occupation of Judea, and the final destruction of the second temple. They found refuge in the fortress of Masada, from where they rebelled against the Romans. In 73AD, their rebellion ceased, when they all committed mass suicide at Masada.The Roman emperor Hadrian cursed the Jewish people and decreed that Judea should be henceforth called "Palestine" after the age-old traditional enemies of Israel, who had more or less vanished from the world stage about 600 years earlier. In 132AD, Simon Ben Koseba, a Jewish military leader led another rebellion against the imperialist Roman government to re-establish the Jewish state that had fallen in 70AD. The Bar Kokhbar revolt, as it was then called, turned out to be a fiasco, and Ben Koseba was killed by the Roman forces. At the very outset of the rebellion, he had been seen by many of his Jewish country men to be the long expected messiah. Jewish communities proliferated in Europe, the middle east, the far east and North Africa. The Hebrew word "Aliyah," which literally means "immigration to Israel, or ascent to Jerusalem," became synonymous with Jews in the diaspora. Their dream of moving back to Jerusalem, or the land of Israel or Judea, as it was then called, became a long expected dream for centuries. Pervasively, the Jews were persecuted by their host communities, especially in Europe. Examples abound with the Alhambra decree of 1492 by Queen Isabella I of Castille and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. This draconian decree expelled all the Jews resident in both medieval Kingdoms of present day Spain. Another was the coercive conversion of Jews to Catholicism, which was enforced by King Manuel I of Portugal in the year 1496. In some cases, large sums of money were extracted from Jews by their overlords in some European kingdoms. A very good example was that of the English king Henry III, who imposed heavy taxes and forced gifts on the Jewish population. His son, and successor king Edward I became the first English king to be out-rightly antisemitic, when he expelled Jews in 1290.The other historical accounts of persecutions against Jews were the pogroms of the Spanish inquisition in the middle ages, and the pogroms that happened in the Russian empire between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The exit of Jews from eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, recorded tremendous successes through the birth of companies like, Twentieth Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Warner Bros and Paramount Pictures in the United States.In the late nineteenth century, the Zionist movement was gathering momentum. Popular people attached to this movement began to champion and spearhead the cause of establishing a national home for the Jews in Palestine. Theodore Herzl was the founder of this movement. Before him, there had been a proposal to establish a national home for the Jews in the early nineteenth century by the French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. His proposal failed. Another proposal came from the British colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain in the form of the "Uganda Scheme" in 1903.It was presented as a temporary refuge for Jews who wanted to escape widespread antisemitism in Europe. The proposal faced opposition from the Zionist movement. The British mandate in Palestine, which had been created after World War 1, with the Sykes-Picot survey/plan, gave its support for the establishment of a "National home for the Jewish people." Antisemitism saw its climax in Europe during the holocaust. Between 1933-1945, the Nazis had embarked on ethnic cleansing programmes like; The night of the broken glass, The Madagascar plan, and the final solution. The final solution, orchestrated by Reinhard Heydrich, led to the holocaust, which decimated over six million Jewish lives.The May 15th, 1948 rebirth of the state of Israel, led by its first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, led to the foundational events of the "Nakba" in which dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted, and about 400 Arab-majority towns and villages were depopulated; with many of these being either completely destroyed or repopulated by Jewish residents and given new Hebrew names. This declaration of independence ignited the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Prior to this independence and devastating conflict, terrorists' Organizations like Irgun and Haganah had been created in Israel to spearhead the independence movement by employing acts of terror. Some of their nefarious activities were; the bombing of the king David Hotel in 1947, the hanging of two British soldiers that had been abducted by them, other acts of terror against the British for restricting Jewish immigration at some point, and the brutal assassination of United Nations chief negotiator, Folk Bernadotte. The second Arab-Israeli War/crisis came as the aftermath of the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. A French, British, and Israeli coalition attacked Egypt, but soon withdrew under international pressure. The third Arab-Israeli War was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, primarily Egypt, Syria and Jordan. At the end of the conflict, Israel had seized Syria's Golan heights, the Jordanian annexed West Bank and East Jerusalem, Egypt's Sinai Peninsular and the Egyptian occupied Gaza Strip. The Yom Kippur War was the fourth of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It happened during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, and the Islamic holiday of Ramadan. Egypt and Syria both attacked Israel simultaneously, with the intention of recapturing lost territories in the 1967 six day War. There were other minor and relatively prolonged conflicts like the War of Attrition in 1970, the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006, and other minor skirmishes with either Hamas or Hezbollah. The first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel was Egypt in1979. The peace treaty was brokered by US president Jimmy Carter in Washington D.C. The other signatories were Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel. This treaty with Egypt led to the ceding of the Sinai peninsular to Egypt, after eleven years of Israeli occupation. Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip in 2005, after nearly 38 years of occupation. The most recent conflict is the Israel-Gaza War, caused by the "operation Al Aqsa Flood of October 7th, 2023." It came a day after Israel marked the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Zionism has to a very large extent benefitted the Jews through the re-establishment of the state of Israel on May the 15th, 1948.Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion did achieve the elusive "Aliyah dream," but at a heavy cost to the Arab population. It is estimated that between 500,000 to 750,000 Palestinians were displaced by Israel's independence, and about 15,000 were massacred in 1948. In the ongoing conflict today, at least 25,000 Palestinians have been killed as reprisals for about 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, massacred by Hamas. Hundreds were taken hostage, a few of whom have been released in a prisoner swap with Israel during a truce. A Brief History of Gaza: The history of Gaza spans over 4,000 years. In ancient times, it was originally a Canaanite settlement, just like the ancient land of Israel. It had been under the control of different kingdoms, Empires, dynasties, and nations, notably; Egypt, Assyria, The Philistines, Babylon, and Greece, under Alexander the Great. In the early 16th century, it came under the control of the Ottoman empire. After World War 1, Gaza became administered by Great Britain, under the British Mandate of Palestine, largely due to the Sykes-Picot survey of the middle east. The Ottoman empire lost their control of it, as a result of the treaties of Sevres and Lausanne. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt administered the newly formed Gaza strip, whilst Jordan took charge of the West bank. The West Bank and Gaza were both captured by Israel in the six day war of 1967. Israel has maintained its control of the West Bank, ever since it was captured, and has officially absorbed East Jerusalem as its capital. Another area of land that was under Jordanian control until 1967. Israel officially withdrew from the Gaza strip in 2005, after 38 years of occupation. The Palestinian Liberation Organization[PLO] was founded in 1964. Yasser Arafat and his Fatah faction controlled the PLO until 2006 when Hamas, an organization considered a terrorist organization by the West, took charge of the reins of power. Hamas was founded in 1987 by Ahmad Yassin. It was founded after the first intifada. It had carried out acts of terror against Israel, the worst of them was the "Operation Al Aqsa Flood" on October the 7th, 2023, when about 1,200 Israelis were massacred, and hundreds were taken hostage. Conclusively, I would say that the flow of blood for nearly seventy-four long years has been to say the least, terribly costly for both Jews and Arabs. The best and the only solution to this protracted conflict that has bedeviled the region for many decades is "a two-state solution."

[genrecollector]

psst

tv show:

tinga tinga! tales from africa~

slides to you a library list that says books i read or reading:

i went with lover to a smaller bookstore but still on the bougie business block. a nook they had beanbag chairs setup. she had her heart set on sapphic literature, while i browsing for a memior, something social but not necessarily a sappy romance, and a writing style i found "digestible". the book seller passed it by. i took a gander, a look, "indigenous peoples history of the united states". though some may find this content too differing of their thoughts of the united states, my head did not spin. some of the worser truths i parsed carefully about while sipping myself a luke-warm coffee.

trevor noah's memior. i read in its entirety already.

articles of prydain. (lloyd alexander).

"stars beneath our feet" for young readers so theres fewer details. its a historical fiction about a young black boy living in memphis.

"inquisitors apprentice" book 1. library find. a detailed historical fiction about a teenage jewish kid navigating (various social systems of) new york city, unraveling mystery of witches and a nod to steampunky science fiction and watson's accounts of sherlock the detective.

the house on mango street. vinyettes. (sandra cisneros) i'd like to read the spanish version.

"bad kitty vs uncle murray" (nick bruel) comic book where murry learns how to babysit a scaredy cat and if you like repetition skit humor its funny. my mom ordered this one online.

(if only i understood people bodylanguage like i do a cat's!)

"peace, (kids book)"comprised by mary anderson. collection of quotes about peace. i read this in 5th grade.

[thepaisleyreview]

Lectures. Sorted.

Key: strikethrough means duplicate to be deleted ; bold means recommended ; I have not listened to everything.

New in 2024: 36 Books that changed the world - mb4

A

Abraham Lincoln - In His Own Words - m4b pdf A Brief History of the World - m4b Aeneid of Virgil - m4b pdf African Experience - From Lucy to Mandela - m4b pdf After the New Testament - m4b pdf Age of Henry VIII - m4b pdf Age of Pericles - m4b pdf Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age - m4b pdf American Civil War - m4b pdf American Dream - m4b pdf American History - m4b American Ideals - Founding a 'Republic of Virtue - m4b pdf American Identity - m4b pdf American Military Experience - m4b American Mind - m4b pdf Americas in the Revolutionary Era - m4b pdf America's Religious History - m4b pdf A Modern Look at Ancient Greek Civilization - m4b Ancient Empires Before Alexander - m4a pdf Ancient Greek Civilization - m4b pdf Ancient Greek Literature - m4b Ancient Near Eastern Mythology - m4b pdf An Introduction to Number Theory - m4b Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse Then - m4b Apostle Paul - m4b pdf Argumentation - The Study of Effective Reasoning - m4b pdf Augustine - m4b pdf

B

Bach and the High Baroque - m4b pdf Basics Of Genetics - mp3 pdf Beethoven's Piano Sonatas - m4b pdf Between Crescent and Cross - Jewish Civilization from Mohammed to Spinoza - m4b pdf Between the Rivers - The History of Ancient Mesopotamia - m4b pdf Bible and Western Culture - m4b pdf Big History_ The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity - m4b pdf Biological Anthropology - An Evolutionary Perspective - m4b pdf Biology and Human Behavior - The Neurological Origins of Individuality - m4b pdf Biology_ The Science of Life - m4b pdf Birth of the Modern Mind - m4b pdf Book of Genesis - m4b pdf Books That Have Made History - m4b pdf Brave New Words - The Creation Of Language - m4b Buddhism - m4b pdf Building Great Sentences - Exploring the Writer's Craft - m4b pdf Business Law - Contracts - m4b pdf Business Law - Negligence and Torts - m4b pdf Business Statistics - m4b pdf

C

Can the Modern World Believe in God - m4b Chamber Music of Mozart - m4b pdf Change and Motion - Calculus Made Clear, 2nd Ed - m4b pdf Chaos - m4b jpg Christian Religions and Religious Fundamentalism - m4b Christmas Traditions in Victorian Britain and America - m4b Churchill - m4b pdf Civil Liberties and the Bill of Rights - m4b pdf Classical Archaeology of Ancient Greece and Rome - m4b pdf Classical Mythology - m4b pdf Classic Novels - Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature - m4b pdf Classics of American Literature - m4b pdf Classics of Russian Literature - m4b pdf Comedy Through the Ages - m4b pdf Concert Masterworks - m4b pdf Concerto - m4b pdf Conquest of the Americas - m4b pdf Consciousness and Its Implications - mp3 pdf Contemporary Economic Issues - m4b pdf

D

Dante's Divine Comedy - m4b pdf Detective Fiction - m4b Developing Adult - Biological and Psychosocial Perspectives - m4b pdf Discovering the Middle Ages - avi pdf Discovery of Ancient Civilizations - m4b Doctors - The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed Through Biography - m4b pdf Don't Know Much About the Civil War - Kenneth C. Davis (TTC) - mp3

E Early Christianity - The Experience of the Divine - m4b pdf Early History Of National Socialism - m4b Early Middle Ages - m4b pdf Ecological Planet; An Introduction to Earth’s Major Ecosystems - John Kricher (TMS) - mp3 Economics, 3rd Edition - m4b pdf Einstein_s 100th 'Anniversary' - m4b Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution_ Modern Physics for Non-Scientists - m4b pdf

Elements of Jazz; From Cakewalk to Fusion - m4b pdf Emerson, Thoreau, and the Transcendentalist Movement - m4b pdf Energy and Climate - Science for Citizens in the Age of Global Warming - m4b English Novel - m4b pdf Enlightenment - Invention of the Modern Self - m4b pdf Era of the Crusades - m4b pdf Espionage and Covert Operations - A Global History - m4b pdf Ethics, A History of Moral Thought (TMS) - m4b jpg Ethics and Public Policy - m4b pdf Ethics of Aristotle - m4b pdf Europe and the Wars of Religion (1500-1700) - m4b Europe and Western Civilization in the Modern Age - m4b pdf European History and European Lives - m4b pdf European Thought and Culture in the 19th Century - m4b pdf European Thought and Culture in the 20th Century - m4b pdf Explaining Social Deviance - m4b pdf

F

Famous Greeks - m4b pdf Famous Romans - m4b pdf Feminism and the Future of Woman - m4n pdf Finance and Accounting - m4b First Jewish Revolt Against Rome - m4b Foundations of Western Civilization II - m4b pdf Foundations of Western Civilization I - m4b pdf Francis of Assisi - m4b pdf Freedom - The Philosophy of Liberation - m4b pdf From Jesus to Constantine - A History of Early Christianity - m4b pdf From Monet to Van Gogh - A History of Impressionism - m4b pdf From Plato to Postmodernism - Understanding the Essence of Literature and the Role of the Author - m4b pdf From Yao to Mao - 5000 Years of Chinese History - m4b pdf Fundamentals Of Sustainable Living - m4a pdf

G

Games People Play - Game Theory In Life, Business and Beyond (TTC) - mp3 God and Mankind - Comparative Religions - m4b pdf Great American Music - Broadway Musicals - m4b pdf Great Artists of the Italian Renaissance - m4b pdf Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition - m4b pdf Great Battles of the Ancient World - m4b pdf Great Civilizations of Asia Minor - m4b Great Figures of the New Testament - m4b pdf Great Figures of the Old Testament - m4b Great Ideas of Classical Physics - m4b Great Ideas of Philosophy - m4b pdf Great Ideas of Psychology - m4b pdf Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Ed - m4b pdf Great Mythologies of the World - mp3 Great Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt - m4b pdf Great World Religions - Buddhism - m4b pdf Great World Religions - Christianity - m4b pdf Great World Religions - Hinduism - m4b pdf Great World Religions - Islam - m4b pdf Great World Religions - Judaism - m4b pdf Great World Religions - The Religions Of India - m4b Great Writers, Their Lives And Works - m4b Greek Tragedy - m4b

H

Heavens Above - Stars, Constellations, and the Sky (TMS) - mp3 Herodotus, The Father of History - m4b pdf Heroes Heroines, and The Wisdom of Myth - m4b pdf High Middle Ages - m4b pdf High School Level - Chemistry - m4b Historical Jesus - m4b pdf History of Ancient Egypt - m4b pdf History of Ancient Rome - m4b pdf History of Christianity in the Reformation Era - m4b pdf History of England from the Tudors to the Stewarts - m4b pdf History of Freedom - m4b pdf History of Russia - From Peter the Great to Gorbachev - m4b pdf History of Science from 1700 to 1900 - m4b pdf History of Science from Antiquity to 1700 - m4b pdf History of the Bible- The Making of the New Testament Canon - m4b pdf History of the Construction of St. Peter's Basillica - m4b History of the English Language - m4b pdf History of the Supreme Court - m4b pdf History of the United States, 2nd Ed - m4b pdf History of the US Economy in the 20th Century - m4b pdf History of World Literature - m4b pdf Holiday Music - m4b Holy Land Revealed - mp3 pdf How to Listen to and Understand Great Music - m4b pdf How to Listen to and Understand Opera - m4b pdf How to Read and Understand Poetry - m4b pdf Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations - m4b pdf

I

Ideas in Politics - m4b Ideas in Western Culture - The Medieval and Renaissance World - m4b Iliad of Homer - m4b pdf Interpreting the 20th Century - m4b pdf Introduction to Archaeology - m4b Introduction to Greek Philosophy - m4b pdf Introduction to Judaism - m4b pdf Is Anyone Really Normal - Perspectives On Abnormal Psychology - m4b Italian Renaissance - m4b pdf Italians Before Italy - Conflict and Competition in the Mediterranean - m4b pdf

J, K, L

Jesus and the Gospels - m4b pdf Jewish Intellectual History_ 16th to 20th Century - m4b pdf Jewish Mysticism - m4b pdf Joyce's Ulysses - m4b pdf Joy of Thinking - The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas - m4b pdf King Arthur and Chivalry - m4b Late Antiquity - Crisis and Transformation - m4b pdf Late Middle Ages - m4b pdf Legacies of Great Economists - 10 Lectures - m4b pdf Lewis and Clark - The Explorers - m4b Liberty And It's Price_ Understanding The French Revolution - m4b Life and Legacy of the Roman Empire - m4b pdf Life and Operas of Verdi - m4b pdf Life and Work of Mark Twain - m4b pdf Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis - m4b pdf Life and Writings of Geoffrey Chaucer - m4b pdf Life and Writings of John Milton - m4b pdf Literary Modernism- The Struggle for Modern History - m4b pdf Lives and Works of English Romantic Poets - m4b pdf Long 19th Century - European History from 1789 to 1917 - m4b pdf Long Shadow of the Ancient Greek World - mp3 pdf Love and Vengeance - A Course on Human Emotion (TTC) - mp3 pdf Luther_ Gospel, Law, and Reformation - m4b pdf

M, N, O

Machiavelli In Context - m4b pdf Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Literature - m4b pdf Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind - m4b pdf Masters of Greek Thought Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle (TTC) - mp3 pdf Masterworks of Early 20th Century Literature - m4b Medieval Europe Crisis and Renewal - m4b Medieval Heroines in History and Legend - m4b Mind of the Enlightenment - m4b Modern British Drama - m4b pdf Modern Intellectual Tradition - From Descartes to Derrida - Lawrence Cahoon (TTC) - mp3 pdf Mr. Lincoln - The Life of Abraham Lincoln - m4b pdf Must History Repeat the Great Conflict of this Century - m4b pdf My Favorite Universe - m4b Myths and Mysteries in Archaeology - mp3 pdf Natural Law and Human Nature - m4b pdf Neolithic Europe - m4b New Testament - m4b pdf No Excuses Existentialism and the Meaning of Life - m4b pdf Occupolitics - mp3 pdf Odyssey of Homer - m4b pdf Old Testament - m4b pdf Olympics From Ancient Greece to Athens 2004 - m4b Operas of Mozart - m4b pdf Origin of the Modern Mind - m4b Origins and Ideologies of the American Revolution - m4b pdf Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations - m4b pdf Origins of Life - m4b pdf Other 1492 - Ferdinand, Isabella, and the Making of an Empire - m4b pdf Ottoman Empire (TGC3160) - mp3

P

Palestine, Zionism, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict - m4b Papal Elections - m4b Particle Physics For Non Physicists - m4b pdf Passions - Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions - m4b pdf Peloponnesian War - m4b Peoples and Cultures of the World - m4b pdf Perspectives on Abnormal Psychology - m4b Philosopher's Toolkit - mp3 [note: there is a book with this] Philosophy and Human Values - m4b pdf Philosophy and Religion in the West - m4b pdf Philosophy as a Guide to Living - m4b pdf Philosophy of Mind - m4b pdf Philosophy of Religion - m4b pdf Philosophy of Science - m4b pdf Philosophy, Religion, And The Meaning Of Life - TTC Audio Lectures - mp3 pdf Physics in Your Life - avi pdf Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues - m4b pdf Plato's Republic - m4b pdf Poetry_ A Basic Course - m4b Popes and the Papacy - m4b pdf Power Over People - m4b pdf Practical Philosophy - m4b pdf Psychology of Human Behavior - m4b pdf

Q, R

Quest for Meaning - m4b pdf Questions of Value - m4b pdf Quest; The Historians’ Search for Jesus and Muhammad - mp3 pdf Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World - m4b pdf Religion, Myth And Magic - The Anthropology of Religion - mp3 pdf Religions of the Axial Age - m4b pdf Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Rise of Nations - m4b pdf Representing Justice_ Stories of Law and Literature - m4b pdf Rights of Man - m4b Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism - m4b pdf Robert E. Lee and His High Command - m4b pdf Rome and the Barbarians - m4b pdf Roots of Human Behavior - m4b pdf

S

Science and Religion - m4b pdf Science Fiction - The Literature Of Technological Imagination - m4b pdf Science in the Twentieth Century A Social-Intellectual Survey - m4b pdf Science Wars_ What Scientists Know and How They Know It - m4b pdf Search for a Meaningful Past - Philosophies, Theories and Interpretations of Human History - m4b Search for Intelligent Life in Space - m4b Self Under Siege - Philosophy in the 20th Century - m4b Self Under Siege (Rick Roderick) - avi pdf [ note: video] Sensation, Perception, and the Aging Process - m4b pdf Shakespeare - Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies - m4b pdf Shakespeare - Word and Action - m4b pdf Soul and the City - Art, Literature and Urban Living - m4b pdf St. Augustines Confessions - m4b pdf Story of Human Language - avi pdf [video] Story of Human Language - John McWhorter (TTC) - mp3 St. Patrick- The Patron Saint of Ireland - m4b Superstring Theory, The DNA of Reality VIDEO - avi pdf Swift_ Gulliver's Travels - m4b Symphonies of Beethoven - m4b pdf Symphony - m4b pdf

T-Z

Terror of History - Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition - m4b pdf Theories Of Human Development - m4b pdf Theory of Evolution - A History of Controversy - m4b pdf Thinking about Capitalism - m4b pdf Thomas Aquinas - The Angelic Doctor - m4b Thomas Jefferson - Visionary American - m4b pdf Tocqueville and the American Experiment - m4b pdf Tools of Thinking - m4b pdf Twentieth Century American Fiction - m4b pdf Understanding Genetics - DNA, Genes, and Their Real-World Applications - m4b Understanding Linguistics - The Science of Language - m4b jpg Understanding Literature and Life- Drama, Poetry and Narrative - m4b pdf Understanding the Fundamentals of Music - mp3 pdf Understanding the Human Body - avi pdf Understanding the Universe - Introduction to Astronomy - m4b Understanding the Universe What's New in Astronomy, 2003 - m4b United States And The Middle East 1914- 9-11 - m4b pdf Using Literature to Understand the Human Side of Medicine - m4b Utopia and Terror in the Twentieth Century - m4b pdf Victorian Britain - m4b pdf Vikings - m4b pdf Voltaire and the Triumph of Enlightenment - m4b pdf War and World History - m4b pdf War, Peace, and Power - Diplomatic History of Europe, 1500–2000 - m4b pdf Will to Power - The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche - m4b pdf Wisdom of History - m4b World History - m4b pdf World of Byzantium - m4b pdf World Philosophy - m4b pdf World War II - A Military and Social History - m4b pdf World War I_ The ''Great War'' - m4b pdf Zero to infinity. A history of numbers - mp3

[drew-mga2022mi5019]

Research | Insects and Beauty in Terror

"And so it goes. In Africa, a mosquito bites a man and kills him. In India, an evil person beats a child and is reincarnated as an insect. In Siberia, one dies and the soul may leave the body as a wasp. Alexander the Great is preserved in golden honey and his body is shown to luminaries for centuries. Conversely, in Medieval Europe the body of St. Clare is devoured by insects while being admired by the faithful as an incorruptible or miraculous preservation. In Russia, the mortician in charge of preserving Lenin’s body in Red Square has a recurring nightmare of a fly buzzing inside Lenin’s sarcophagus. Clearly, insects abound in both the physical reality and the mythology of death in cultures around the world." (1)

In the same vein as the previous topic, I will be using the Six Thinking Hats model of thinking postulated by Dr. de Bono when approaching this topic. The inspiration for this topic stems from a song I discovered a couple of months ago; The Bug Collector by Haley Heynderickx, which deals with the fear of insects as a metaphor for psychosis. Personally, as I mentioned before, I am deathly afraid of insects, however I find them incredibly fascinating. When I think of insects, I think of Terror in Beauty. But why? Why have humans collectively associated insects, an incredibly broad group as creepy crawlies? To understand this, I dove into the symbolism of insects in art.

Arguably the most well known piece of art or literature to make mention of an insect is Little Miss Muffet. Why is it that a nursery rhyme makes mention of a spider and immediately ties it to the idea of fear? The spider, in this instance has done nothing. Its mere existence is what scares Miss Muffet. Why is that? Is it to do with the inherently alien stature of insects? Throughout pop culture, the common basis for extraterrestrial or otherworldly designs has always been an arthropod. Or does it go deeper than this? To find out, we must look at insects from an evolutionary perspective, and the impact of insects on the human psyche.

The fear of insects is known as Entomophobia, and appears to have persisted since the dawn of mankind. It is one of the most common fears in the world. One common belief of why this is so, sans their unsightly appearance their intrinsic link to death. "Insects cause death. Especially as disease vectors, insects have killed humans from time immemorial and have even influenced the fate of nations. Insects eat the dead. The role of various insects as decomposers of animal corpses, including man, is well known. The biology of these insects is used in crime fighting as forensic entomology to determine such factors as the time of death or the location of a murder (Erzinclioglu 2000). The preceding are physical realities of insects in relation to death in the real world." (1) This passage from a study conducted by Ron Cherry posits that this is a reason for entomophobia.

This could explain the relationship between arthropods and death in mythology. In many cultures and religions around the world, misfortune, sickness and death have been linked back to insects. The Bible states that of the Seven Plagues sent by God to the Egyptians during the time of Jewish slavery, one was a plague of locusts to ravish their crops and livelihood. Similarly, the locust is also regarded as the bringer of death in the mythology of the Wiyot of California. In South Africa, the praying mantis is known as the God of the Hottentots and is blamed for humanity's loss of immortality in their mythos.

These mythological references even persist in modern times. A genus of booklice was aptly given the family name Atropidae, named after one of the Three Fates in Greek mythology, Atropos. Allegedly, Atropos was the Fate that determined the course of human destiny, and her role was to cut the Thread of Life. The genus Atropidae was given this name because it was thought that members of this genus made a tapping noise on wood at the moment of death of humans.

Cherry also makes note of how insects are also a symbol of life after death, or rebirth. "Guralnik (1970) defines a symbol as something that stands for or represents another thing, especially an object used to represent something abstract. The use of an insect image to suggest or denote something other than itself—an abstract idea or quality—is to be recognized as true symbolism and distinguished from purely linguistic, artistic, or pragmatic representation or venerations of the insect (Hogue 1975)." (1) Notable symbols of rebirth consist of butterflies for their ability to metamorphosise, cicadas as a symbol of immortality due to their desiccated appearances and place in Chinese funeral rites, and infamously the scarab beetle regarded as a sacred symbol by the Ancient Egyptian civilisation.

Further driving the notion of insects as symbols of death and rebirth, the Warao of Venezuela have a rich insect mythology that includes powerful insect spirits. They are Black Bee, Blue Bee, Termite, and Wasp. It is said that these insects gather around a board on which the insects play a game that determines the fate of life on earth. Also, one Warao god is Warowaro, the Butterfly god (Calligo sp.). If a shaman had served the Butterfly god, he would go to the god upon his death to live a blissful afterlife (Cherry 2007).

An observation that becomes immediately apparent is the role of death and the fear of insects is not simply reserved for the ugliest of the brood, but even those as beautiful as bejeweled scarab and the delicate butterfly. This belief may tie into why children are taught to respect even the smallest of life forms at a young age, out of not just respect for all life but the fear that had been instilled into humanity since the dawn of civilisation. However, with fear also comes an oddly perverse fascination. This is especially noted in children. A study conducted by Haefner in 2006 noted that presenting children with insects elicit a wide range of reactions from fear to excitement, to be expected. Despite this, the insect handler receives a steady stream of questions from children on all parts of that fear-excitement spectrum and a great sense of curiosity. (2)

It does not stop at study, as previously mentioned insects have remained prevalent throughout art and literature for centuries as seen by the works of creatives like Ulisse Aldrovandi, Joris Hoefnagel, Johannes Goedart, and Franz Kafka, and this persists even in the modern day seen through popular tales such as Alice in Wonderland, and even permeating Japanese media such as Tokyo Ghoul. This could be attributed to humanity's daily exposure to some form of insect or another. What is it that gives humanity this urge of morbid curiosity?

According to a study conducted by C.W Scrivner of the University of Chicago, they posit that morbid curiosity derives from an evolved cognitive architecture for predator management, is powered by curiosity, and, in humans, is amplified by the capacity for imagination. Their basis for these claims rely on the study of predator detection and avoidance and predator inspection, as well as William James and Daniel Berlyne's models of curiosity. Their definition of curiosity is divided into two parts; perceptual curiosity and epistemic curiosity, the latter of which is largely exclusive to humans. (3) They go on to say that if curiosity refers to internal motivation for information gathering, and organisms are sometimes internally motivated to learn about threats, then it follows that organisms are sometimes curious about threats. This would go on to explain why morbid curiosity occurs. In the modern day, humanity does not see insects as threats, however due to our shared history with insects and what we know about them through mythology and knowledge passed down from our predecessors, I hypothesize that subconsciously, humans still view insects as threats, albeit on more of a psychological level (an extreme case of this is seen in individuals with psychosis). However, as I mentioned in the beginning of the analysis of this topic, there is beauty in terror. A butterfly, the symbol of death and rebirth, is simultaneously beautiful and terrifying to those who revere it.

Already a few positives on this topic present themselves; due to the saturation of insects being used as a means to communicate the otherworldly, eldritch or horror type themes, we begin to learn and understand more about them through media. Further, this idea of insects being tied to death allows for storytellers to tap into the core of human nature and bring out interesting and meaningful narratives. This also could strive to inform on some real world dangers of insects, such as the spread of disease and rot.

In terms of negatives, the point of insects constantly being represented this way in media is a double edged sword, causing irrational fear among the public. Furthermore, this could also discourage interaction with these fascinating creatures as well, and due to superstitions and cultural beliefs could even lead to an active hatred towards insects, due to generalization of bugs as a group. There is also the very real problem of rampant misinformation being spread this way.

A solution to the problem of entomophobia has already been provided in this study; education. As mentioned before, morbid curiosity could stem from a desire to understand "threats". Already, some schools in Canada have begun to use a new model of education which exposes children to outdoor, hands on learning. This allows them to explore curiosity and learn more effectively about the natural world around them. I intend to take this further, by using this concept of exposure in my final animation through multisensory art, the film itself being my design solution and part of a campaign to represent the ethereal beauty and positive representation of insects through the research of preexisting mythology. As mentioned in a previous post, this topic offers limitless potential for experimentation and this in particular is an avenue I feel I can use as an opportunity to tap into the human psyche.

(1) Cherry, R., 2011. Insects and death. American Entomologist, 57(2), pp.82-85.

(2) Ernst, C., Vinke, K., Giberson, D. and Buddle, C.M., 2013. Insects in Education: Creating tolerance for some of the world’s smallest citizens. The management of insects in recreation and tourism, pp.289-305.

(3) Scrivner, C.W., 2022. The psychology of morbid curiosity (Doctoral dissertation, The University of Chicago), pp.9-24.

[isaiahbie]

How Historically Reliable Are The New Testament Documents?

When we approach the topic of New Testament reliability, we are immediately confronted with the very crucial question of the burden of proof. Should we assume that the Gospels are reliable unless they are proven to be unreliable? Or should we assume that the Gospels are unreliable unless they are proven to be reliable? Are they innocent until proven guilty or guilty until proven innocent? Skeptical scholars almost always assume that the Gospels are guilty until proven innocent, that is, they assume that the Gospels are unreliable unless and until they are proven to be correct concerning some particular fact.¹ But in this article, I want to sketch at least five reasons why I think we ought to assume that the Gospels are reliable until proven wrong.

1. There was insufficient time for legendary influences to expunge the historical facts. The interval of time between the events themselves and recording of them in the Gospels is too short to have allowed the memory of what had or had not actually happened to be erased.

No modern scholar thinks of the Gospels as bald-faced lies, the result of a massive conspiracy. The only place you find such conspiracy theories of history is in sensationalist, popular literature or former propaganda from behind the Iron Curtain. When you read the pages of the New Testament, there’s no doubt that these people sincerely believed in the truth of what they proclaimed. Rather, ever since the time of D. F. Strauss, skeptical scholars have explained away the Gospels as legends. Like the child’s game of telephone, as the stories about Jesus were passed on over the decades, they got muddled and exaggerated and mythologized until the original facts were all but lost. The Jewish peasant sage was transformed into the divine Son of God.

One of the major problems with this legend hypothesis, however, which is almost never addressed by skeptical critics, is that the time between Jesus’ death and the writing of the Gospels is just too short for this to happen. This point has been well-explained by A. N. Sherwin-White in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament.² Professor Sherwin-White is not a theologian; he is a professional historian of times prior to and contemporaneous with Jesus. According to Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman and Greek history are usually biased and removed one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence the course of Roman and Greek history.

For example, the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander’s death, and yet classical historians still consider them to be trustworthy. The fabulous legends about Alexander the Great did not develop until during the centuries after these two writers. According to Sherwin-White, the writings of Herodotus enable us to determine the rate at which legend accumulates, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the Gospels, he states that for the Gospels to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be “unbelievable.” More generations would be needed.

In fact, adding a time gap of two generations to Jesus’ death lands you in the second century, just when the apocryphal gospels begin to appear. These do contain all sorts of fabulous stories about Jesus, trying to fill in the years between his boyhood and his starting his ministry, for example. These are the obvious legends sought by the critics, not the biblical Gospels.

This point becomes even more devastating for skepticism when we recall that the Gospels themselves use sources that go back even closer to the events of Jesus’ life. For example, the story of Jesus’ suffering and death, commonly called the Passion Story, was probably not originally written by Mark. Rather, Mark used a source for this narrative. Since Mark is the earliest Gospel, his source must be even earlier. In fact, Rudolf Pesch, a German expert on Mark, says the Passion source must go back to at least A.D. 37, just seven years after Jesus’ death.³

Or again, Paul, in his letters, hands on information concerning Jesus about his teaching, his Last Supper, his betrayal, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection appearances. Paul’s letters were written even before the Gospels, and some of his information, for example, what he passes on in his first letter to the Corinthian church about the resurrection appearances, has been dated to within five years after Jesus’ death. It just becomes irresponsible to speak of legends in such cases.

2. The Gospels are not comparable to folk tales or contemporary urban legends.

Tales like Ibong Adarna or Biag ni Lam-ang or contemporary urban legends like the “ghost of Balete Drive” rarely concern actual historical individuals and are thus not like the Gospel narratives, which are about real people who actually lived, real events that actually occurred, and real places that actually existed. You can read about people like John the Baptist, Pontius Pilate, and Joseph Caiaphas in sources outside the New Testament. Numerous places and events in the Gospels have been corroborated by archaeological finds, such as the following:

Bethlehem, the place of Jesus’ birth

a coin of Caesar Augustus, during whose time Jesus was born

an inscription on the tomb of King Herod, the one who tried to kill baby Jesus

the River Jordan, where Jesus was baptized

Nazareth, the city where Jesus was reared

the synagogue in Capernaum, where Jesus ministered

Bethany, where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead

the pool of Siloam, where Jesus healed a man

the steps of the temple up which Jesus walked

the Sea of Galilee, on which Jesus walked and stilled the storm

an inscription of Pilate, who sentenced Jesus to death

an inscription of Caiaphas, the high priest who tried Jesus

Jerusalem, the city in which Jesus ministered and outside of which he died

the fallen temple stones, which Jesus predicted

Johanan, a crucifixion victim who died the way Jesus did

an empty tomb like the one Jesus was laid in and from which he arose

the Arch of Titus, built in honor of the one who destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70 as Jesus had predicted, with the temple menorah on it

Archaeologist Nelson Glueck wrote, “As a matter of fact, however, it may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible.”⁴

3. In an oral culture like that of first-century Palestine, the ability to memorize and retain large tracts of oral tradition was a highly prized and highly developed skill. The disciples would have exercised similar care with the teachings of Jesus.

Ancient Jews honed the art of memorization to an amazing extent. Some rabbis had the entire Hebrew Scriptures committed to memory. A few had quite a bit of the oral Torah (the oral law) under command as well.⁵ A scribe who had recently completed a new copy of the Torah would often have the most gifted or venerated local rabbi proofread his manuscript by checking it against that rabbi’s memory! Nor were these feats limited to Jews in the ancient Mediterranean world. Greek schoolboys sometimes committed either the Iliad or the Odyssey—Homer’s epic poems that functioned much like Scripture in Greek circles—to memory, with each containing roughly 100,000 words.

How was such memorization possible? First, it was an oral culture not dependent on all the print media that dominate our modern world. Second, the main educational technique employed in schools was rote memorization. Jews even had a tradition that until one had memorized a passage of Torah, one was not qualified to discuss it lest one perhaps misrepresent it. Third, in Jewish circles, “Bible” was the only subject students studied during the fairly compulsory elementary education that spanned ages five to twelve or thirteen, and that took place at least wherever there were large enough Jewish communities to have a synagogue. Fourth, memorization thus began at the early ages when it is the easiest period of one’s life to master large amounts of content. Fifth, texts were often sung or chanted; the tunes helped one remember the words as they do with contemporary music, too. Finally, a variety of other mnemonic devices dotted the texts that were studied so intensely. Especially crucial in the Jewish Scriptures were numerous forms of parallelism between lines, couplets, and even larger units of thought.⁶ In this kind of milieu, accurately remembering and transmitting the amount of material found in one Gospel would have been comparatively easy.

4. There were significant restraints on the embellishment of traditions about Jesus, such as the presence of eyewitnesses and the apostles’ supervision. Since those who had seen and heard Jesus continued to live and the tradition about Jesus remained under the supervision of the apostles, these factors would act as a natural check on tendencies to elaborate the facts in a direction contrary to that preserved by those who had known Jesus. In fact, in the case of of the Gospels, it would be more accurate to speak of “oral history” rather than “oral tradition,” since the living eyewitnesses and apostles were still about.

5. The Gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability.

To give just one example, consider Luke. Luke was the author of a two-part work: the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. These are really one work and are separated in our Bibles only because the church grouped the Gospels together in the New Testament. Luke is the Gospel writer who writes most self-consciously as an historian. In the preface to this work he writes:

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.” (Luke 1:1-4)

This preface is written in classical Greek terminology such as was used by Greek historians; after this Luke switches to a more common Greek. But he has put his reader on alert that he can write, should he wish to, like the learned historian. He speaks of his lengthy investigation of the story he’s about to tell and assures us that it is based on eyewitness information and is accordingly the truth.

Now who was this author we call Luke? He was clearly not an eyewitness to Jesus’ life. But we discover an important fact about him from the book of Acts. Beginning in the sixteenth chapter of Acts, when Paul reaches Troas in modern-day Turkey, the author suddenly starts using the first-person plural: “we set sail from Troas to Samothrace,” “we remained in Philippi some days,” “as we were going to the place of prayer,” etc. The most obvious explanation is that the author had joined Paul on his evangelistic tour of the Mediterranean cities. In chapter 21 he accompanies Paul back to Palestine and finally to Jerusalem. What this means is that the author of Luke-Acts was in fact in first hand contact with the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life and ministry in Jerusalem.

Skeptical critics have done back-flips to try to avoid this conclusion. They say that the use of the first-person plural in Acts should not be taken literally; it’s just a literary device which is common in ancient sea voyage stories. Never mind that many of the passages in Acts are not about Paul’s sea voyage, but take place on land! The more important point is that this theory, when you check it out, turns out to be sheer fantasy.⁷ There just was no literary device of sea voyages in the first person plural—the whole thing has been shown to be a scholarly fiction! There is no avoiding the conclusion that Luke-Acts was written by a traveling companion of Paul who had the opportunity to interview eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life while in Jerusalem.

Who were some of these eyewitnesses? Perhaps we can get some clue by subtracting from the Gospel of Luke everything found in the other Gospels and seeing what is peculiar to Luke. What you discover is that many of Luke’s peculiar narratives are connected to women who followed Jesus: people like Joanna and Susanna, and significantly, Mary, Jesus’ mother.

Was the author reliable in getting the facts straight? The book of Acts enables us to answer that question decisively. The book of Acts overlaps significantly with secular history of the ancient world, and the historical accuracy of Acts is indisputable. This has been demonstrated by Colin Hemer, a classical scholar who turned to New Testament studies, in his book The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History.⁸ Hemer goes through the book of Acts with a fine-toothed comb, pulling out a wealth of historical knowledge, ranging from what would have been common knowledge down to details which only a local person would know. Again and again Luke’s accuracy is demonstrated: from the sailings of the Alexandrian corn fleet to the coastal terrain of the Mediterranean islands to the peculiar titles of local officials, Luke gets it right. According to Professor Sherwin-White, “For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. Any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd.”⁹ The judgement of Sir William Ramsay, the world-famous archaeologist, still stands: “Luke is a historian of the first rank . . . This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”¹⁰ Given Luke’s care and demonstrated reliability as well as his contact with eyewitnesses within the first generation after the events, this author is trustworthy.

On the basis of these five reasons, therefore, we are justified in accepting the historical reliability of what the Gospels say about Jesus unless they are proven to be wrong. At the very least, we cannot assume they are wrong until proven right. The person who denies the Gospels’ reliability must bear the burden of proof.

Notes:

¹ This skeptical assumption is problematic for several reasons. First, this approach leads to historical skepticism across the board; such agnosticism would require removing huge chunks of history from our textbooks. Why trust any historical work—ancient or modern? Historical study can’t even gain a foothold following this strategy. Second, other works of antiquity aren’t handled in this way. Why pick on the New Testament? If we want to take history seriously, we should carefully—not gullibly—assume truth telling and honesty unless some good reason renders them inherently suspicious. Being a book of supernatural events isn’t a good reason. Third, as Immanuel Kant showed long ago, a general presumption of lying is self-refuting, since if such a presumption is universalized (one always assumes someone is lying), lying becomes pointless (lying is impossible without a general presumption of truth telling). For a general theory of evidence based on a prima facie burden of proof for skepticism, see Roderick Chisholm, “A Version of Foundationalism,” Studies in Epistemology, ed. Peter A. French et al., Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 5 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), pp. 543-564. For an excellent treatment of the legal aspects of testing the trustworthiness of witnesses and the application of this testing to the New Testament, see John Warwick Montgomery, Human Rights and Human Dignity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), pp. 139-150. ² A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 188-191. ³ Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium, 2 vols., Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament 2 (Freiburg: Herder, 1976-77), 2: 519-520, cited in William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2008), p. 362. ⁴ Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert (New York: Farrar, Strous and Cudahy, 1959), p. 31. ⁵ For those who find these claims hard to believe, the popular twentieth-century Jewish writer, Chaim Potok, liked to tell of similar, verified feats of learning among orthodox Jewish students in the yeshivas of New York City. ⁶ For all these and related practices, see esp. Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity (1961, 1964; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, repr. 1998); idem, The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2001). ⁷ See discussion in Colin J. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, ed. Conrad H. Gempf, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 49 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1989), chap. 8. ⁸ Ibid., chaps. 4-5. ⁹ Sherwin-White, Roman Society, p. 189. ¹⁰ William M. Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915), p. 222.

[literaturoved]

Europe's surprise that so unusual an idea as universal peace should come out of "semi-barbaric” Russia betrayed its lack of awareness of the richly creative culture which was flourishing there. The early years of Nicholas's reign were a period of such glittering intellectual and cultural achievement that they are known as the “Russian Renaissance” or the “Silver Age.” The ferment of activity and new ideas included not only politics but philosophy and science, music and art. In literature, Anton Chekov was writing the plays and short stories which would become world classics. In 1898, Constantine Stanislavsky first opened the doors of the famous Moscow Art Theatre, and its second play, Chekov's The Sea Gull, written in 1896, determined its success. Thereafter the appearance of Uncle Vanya (1899) and The Cherry Orchard (1904) confirmed the arrival of a new concept of naturalistic acting and a new era in the history of the theatre. In 1902, Stanislavsky directed The Lower Depths, a grimly realistic play by Maxim Gorky, hitherto known primarily for his massive novels. In Kiev, from 1900 to 1905, Sholom Aleichem, who had already lost a fortune trading on the grain and stock exchanges, was devoting himself entirely to writing in Yiddish the scores of short stories which have made him known as the “Jewish Mark Twain.” In philosophy, Vladimir Solov'ev, the preeminent religious philosopher and poet, had begun publishing his works in 1894. In 1904, the poems of Solov'ev's famous disciple Alexander Blok began to appear. At the Institute of Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg, Ivan Pavlov, one of a group of Russian scientists making significant advances in chemistry and medicine, was conducting the experiments in physiology which won him a Nobel Prize in 1904. Russian painting was in transition. Ilya Repin, then a professor of historical painting at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, was crowning a career of painting the great historical scenes of Russia's past. Victor Vasnetsov and Michael Nesterov had gone back even further and were attempting to re-create medieval religious art. Meanwhile, a rank of younger artists was responding excitedly to exhibitions in Russia of Cézanne, Gauguin and Picasso. Serov, influenced by the French Impressionists, painted evocative portraits of many contemporary Russians including, in 1900, the Tsar. In 1896, Vassily Kandinsky, a lawyer in Moscow, gave up his career and left Russia to begin painting in Munich. In 1907, Marc Chagall arrived in St. Petersburg to study with the famous contemporary painter Lev Bakst. At the Imperial Ballet, Marius Petipa was in the midst of a halfcentury reign as choreographer which would last until he resigned in 1903. In richly magnificent succession, he staged sixty major ballets, among them Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty. It was Petipa who thrust onto the stage the glittering parade of Russian dancers which included Mathilde Kschessinska, Tamara Karsavina, Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky. Even today, the great ballet companies of the world are measured for excellence against the standards set by Petipa. In 1899, Serge Diaghilev founded the influential journal The World of Art and editorially began to criticize Petipa's conservative style. In 1909, Diaghilev, with a daring new choreographer, Michael Fokine, founded the Ballet Russe in Paris and took the world by storm.  

At the Imperial Ballet, Marius Petipa was in the midst of a halfcentury reign as choreographer which would last until he resigned in 1903. In richly magnificent succession, he staged sixty major ballets, among them Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty. It was Petipa who thrust onto the stage the glittering parade of Russian dancers which included Mathilde Kschessinska, Tamara Karsavina, Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky. Even today, the great ballet companies of the world are measured for excellence against the standards set by Petipa. In 1899, Serge Diaghilev founded the influential journal The World of Art and editorially began to criticize Petipa's conservative style. In 1909, Diaghilev, with a daring new choreographer, Michael Fokine, founded the Ballet Russe in Paris and took the world by storm. In the superlative music conservatories of St. Petersburg and Moscow, an unbroken succession of famous teachers passed their art to talented pupils. Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov was the conductor of the St. Petersburg Symphony. While writing his own magnificent Golden Cockerel, he was instructing a youthful Igor Stravinsky, whose brilliantly original ballet scores written for Diaghilev, Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and Rite of Spring (1913), were to have gigantic influence on all twentieth-century music. Later, in 1914, another of Rimsky-Korsakov's pupils, Serge Prokoviev, was to graduate from the conservatory. Among the violinists and pianists trained in Imperial Russia were Serge Rachmaninov, Vladimir Horowitz, Efrem Zimbalist, Mischa Elman and Jascha Heifetz. Serge Koussevitsky conducted his own symphony orchestra in Moscow. In 1899, the matchless basso Fedor Chaliapin made his debut and thereafter dominated the opera stage. Across Russia, people flocked to hear music and opera. Kiev, Odessa, Warsaw and Tiflis each had its own opera company with a season of eight to nine months. St. Petersburg alone had four opera houses. In 1901, Tsar Nicholas built one of these, the Narodny Dom or People's Palace. Believing that ordinary Russians should have an opportunity to savor the best in national music and drama, Nicholas had constructed a vast building which included theatres, concert halls and restaurants, with admission fees of only twenty kopecks. In time, the best orchestras and the leading actors and musicians appeared there. St. Petersburg society, enjoying the flavor of something new, trooped to follow.

- Nicholas and Alexandra, Robert K. Massie.

[summertravelsbg]

Greece accomplished

Yet, though this creation of his genius, like so much else that Greece accomplished, was, indeed, in appearance a disastrous failure, still it had not been in vain. The Greek mind was diffused over the East like the rays of the rising sun when it revives and awakens slumbering nature. The Greek language, the most wonderful instrument of thought ever composed by man, became common to the whole civilised world; it bound together all educated men from the Danube to the Indus.

The Greek literature, poetry, history, science, philosophy, and art were at once the common property of the empire. The brilliance, the audacity, the strength of the Greek reasoning awoke the dormant powers of thought. The idea of laws, the idea of states, the idea of citizenship, came like a revelation upon the degenerate slaves of the Eastern tyrannies. Nor was the result less important to the Greek mind itself. Now, at last, the world was open without obstacle. The philosophers poured over the new empire ; they ransacked the records of primeval times; they studied the hoarded lore of the Egyptian and Chaldean priests. Old astronomical observations, old geometric problems, long concealed, were thrown open to them ephesus sightseeing.

They travelled over the whole continent of Asia, studying its wonders of the past, collecting its natural curiosities, examining its surface, its climates, its production, its plants, its animals, and its human races, customs, and ideas. Lastly, they gathered up and pondered over the half- remembered traditions and the half-comprehended mysteries of Asian belief: the conceptions which had risen up before the intense abstraction of Indian and Babylonian mystics, Jewish and Egyptian prophets and priests; the notion of some great principle or thought, or Being, utterly unseen and unknown, above all gods, and without material form. Thus arose the earliest germ of that spirit which, by uniting Greek logic with Chaldean or Jewish imagination, prepared the way for the religious systems of Mussulman and Christian.

Christian and Mahometan religion

Such was the result of the great conquest of Alexander. Not by its utter failure as an empire are we to judge it; not by the vices and follies of its founder, nor the profligate orgies of its dissolution, must we condemn it. We must value it as the means whereby the effete world of the East was renewed by the life of European thought, by which arose the first ideas of nature as a whole and of mankind as a whole, by which the ground was first prepared for the Roman empire, and for Christian and Mahometan religion.

As a nation the Greeks had established little that was lasting. They had changed much ; they had organised hardly anything. As the great Asian system had sacri¬ficed all to permanence, so the Greek sacrificed all to movement. The Greeks had created no system of law, no political order, no social system. If civilisation had stopped there, it would have ended in ceaseless agitation, discord, and dissolution. Their character was wanting in self-command and tenacity, and their genius was too often wasted in intellectual licence.

Yet if politically they were unstable, intellectually they were great. The lives of their great heroes are their rich legacy to all future ages ; Solon, Themistocles, Pericles, Epaminondas, and Demosthenes stand forth as the types of bold and creative leaders of men. The story of their best days has scarcely its equal in history. In art they gave us the works of Phidias, the noblest image of the human form ever created by man. In poetry, the models of all time — Homer, the greatest and the earliest of poets ; Aischylus, the greatest master of the tragic art; Plato, the most eloquent of moral teachers ; Pindar, the first of all in lyric art. In philosophy and in science the Greek mind laid the foundations of all knowledge, beyond which, until the last three centuries, very partial advance had been made.

Building on the ground prepared by the Egyptians, they did much to perfect arithmetic, raised geometry to a science by itself, and invented that system of astronomy which served the world for fifteen centuries. In knowledge of animal life and the art of healing they constructed a body of accurate observations and sound analysis; in physics, or the knowledge of the material earth, they advanced to the point at which little was added till the time of Bacon himself.