[HN Gopher] Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been ...
___________________________________________________________________
Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered
Author : wglb
Score : 205 points
Date : 2025-07-04 04:16 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| wglb wrote:
| Source article in the journal Iraq:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S002108892...
| echelon wrote:
| This is great! Thank you.
| idoubtit wrote:
| Thank you. Without this source, it's hard to separate the facts
| from the bullshit in what was posted on phys.org.
|
| I'm not a scholar, just an amateur, but two sentences were
| strikingly ridiculous.
|
| "Legend has it that Noah hid them here from the floodwaters
| before boarding the ark." This article is supposed to be
| popular science about Babylonian archaeology, why mix it with a
| Hebrew myth derived from an older Mesopotamian myth? I guess
| it's just because Noah appeals to the ambient Christian
| culture. In other words, it's nonsense, but it sells.
|
| "The information about the women of Babylon, their role as
| priestesses and the associated tasks, has also astonished
| experts, as no texts describing these things were previously
| known." There are many many texts about women and Naditu
| (sacred women) in Mesopotamia and in Babylon. According to the
| scholar article : "The passage has great importance for
| understanding the roles played by the various classes of
| priestesses: ugbakkatu, nadatu, and qasdatu." Quite different.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| They did cite the source at the bottom of the phys.org page
| (The source article and the link)
|
| "More information: Anmar A. Fadhil et al, Literary Texts From
| The Sippar Library V: A Hymn In Praise Of Babylon And The
| Babylonians, Iraq (2025). DOI: 10.1017/irq.2024.23"
| treve wrote:
| Legend has a specific meaning:
|
| > A traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as
| historical but unauthenticated.
|
| Even though it's BS I think it's still interesting to read
| how people relate to the story.
| metalman wrote:
| the "Hymm's of Innana" are more than a bit interesting, as it
| shows(clearly) that Innana was the original riot girl goddess
| who gets whatever she wants...daddy made the universe and
| none of the "rules" apply to her, well except, that she does
| get pensive when her latest boy toy wanders. Not that
| suddenly catesrophic things dont then happen to said boy,
| previously praised for bieng "like a young bull". Especialy
| interesting are the number of occasions where she breaks into
| songs of praise for her "galla"......... quite clear that the
| tavern culture of the times was much like our own
| stevenwoo wrote:
| You might enjoy Emily Wilson's take on the Gilgamesh/Innana
| stories, though I went in blind and was mostly ignorant.
| sramsay wrote:
| > I'm not a scholar, just an amateur, but two sentences were
| strikingly ridiculous.
|
| Well, I am a scholar, and if you mean "Noah clearly did not
| hide these texts," then yes. Of course, that is ridiculous.
|
| But it's actually a crucial bit of information if you're a
| humanist scholar. The article doesn't say anything about it,
| but the question would be: Which tradition recorded _this
| legend_ about _these texts?_ Almost any answer is important,
| because one culture trying to legitimate its own literary
| traditions or those of another through its own myths or those
| of another is absolute gold. It helps us to understand the
| way literary and religious syncretism unfolded (or failed to
| unfold) in the ancient near east and in later epochs . . .
| dzdt wrote:
| I was wondering about the headline date "missing for a
| millennium", as this Babylon is much older than 1000 years.
| From the article it seems like "two millenia" is more accurate:
| "The text survives in 20 manuscripts, from the 7th to the
| 2nd/1st centuries BCE"
| mechanicum wrote:
| I don't think that necessarily follows. The age of the
| surviving fragments today isn't the whole story.
|
| We could presumably infer it still wasn't "missing" as
| recently as a thousand years ago from later sources referring
| to it, even if the specific text (or oral tradition) those
| authors knew of hasn't survived.
|
| Like how we know about some of now lost Greek plays,
| originally written in the 5th century BC, because they were
| still being performed in Imperial Rome and writers of that
| time described them, even the details of how they were
| staged.
| freilanzer wrote:
| Fascinating. I should have studied Assyriology, few areas are as
| impressive imo. Maybe I still can, even at LMU. Although I don't
| believe it's possible alongside a regular job.
| Isamu wrote:
| I found that the languages are hard to break into as an
| amateur, owning to the available literature. In contrast
| Egyptology has many popular treatments, you just have to watch
| out for the junk.
| cheese_van wrote:
| Speaking of junk, I was in Syria, many years ago, when it had
| about 250k tourists yearly, under Hafez al-Assad . I was in
| the company of an Assyriologist and in a shop of a vendor I
| knew (who sold artifacts under the table).
|
| The vendor proudly showed us a new acquisition, an ancient
| cylinder seal. The archeologist examined it and told him it
| was a fake, because he explained, "I can read this language,
| and it is gibberish."
|
| The UCLA archeologist, then excavating at Tel Mozan with
| Giorgio Buccellati, had 2 dead languages under his belt, a
| requirement for his Phd. I was rather in awe of the fellow -
| 2 dead languages!
|
| Pro-tip: never buy artifacts without an archeologist to
| advise you. It's likely ethically wrong anyway, and likewise
| stupid unless you're an expert.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Damn. I'm the opposite. When learning a language I'm
| careful to pick languages which are culturally influencial
| and have a prospect of continuing to be - it's not enough
| that they're alive. Ironically, last new language I learned
| was Russian, and then Putin goes and invades Ukraine. Fuck
| my life.
|
| All this to say I have infinite respect for someone who'd
| learn a dead language, let alone two. I'm glad someone is
| doing this work, and fortunately it's not me.
| octopoc wrote:
| The Fall of Civilizations podcast has an interesting episode
| about Assyria. The cities in Mesopotamia were polytheistic and
| each city has its own deity. Apparently the way they viewed their
| deities was similar to how we view sports teams. There was an
| expectation that if you traveled to another city, you should
| sacrifice to its god. They viewed inter city warfare as the gods
| competing in heaven.
| zppln wrote:
| I can recommend this episode as well. If I don't mix things up
| they gave some very good examples of how everyday life wasn't
| that much different from what it is now. Amazing how stuff like
| that can be communicated through identations on pieces of clay.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Polytheism seems to make a lot more sense that way. Cities (and
| personal trajectories as well) have ups and downs. If you
| understand it as a competition between various gods, it makes
| sense that they'd have a lot of back and forth going on. If
| there's only one god, it must have some preposterously
| convoluted plan, it just seems a bit silly.
| atoav wrote:
| Well also in polytheism gods were displayed as incredibly
| flawed.
| bee_rider wrote:
| A common-sense and straightforward extrapolation of human
| behavior. And also an obvious solution to the "problem of
| evil."
| dragontamer wrote:
| Monotheism elevates godhood in many regards.
|
| In Polytheistic culture, gods fight and gods die. Zeus eats
| his (and thus kills) his father Chronos. Thor dies in
| Ragnarok.
|
| In Monotheistic culture, the one true God is above all else.
| As it turns out, different Monotheistic cultures can then
| cooperate as it's an argument over what this one true God
| believes (Catholics vs Muslims).
|
| Then we get into weird blends like Hindu and their many
| avatars of Vishnu (who'd argue that Jesus probably existed
| and could do those things because he probably was that time's
| Vishnu).
|
| ----------
|
| Polytheism is likely flawed as an organizational concept
| because it's clear that gods were creations of man.
| Monotheism flips it and makes God the master of the universe
| while man struggles to understand the nature of God.
|
| ---------
|
| But yes. As the sibling comment points out: the gods of most
| polytheistic cultures are NOT omnipotent or omniscient. They
| are more powerful or smarter than humans but they are still
| able to be killed or destroyed.
|
| Maybe back when cities and religions would get wiped out by
| warfare, it was more common to see religions die out (and
| thus those old gods die with those religions/cultures). It
| makes you wonder about the nature of human belief systems and
| how humans lived differently back then.
| octopoc wrote:
| Polytheistic religions have more room for multiple
| worldviews than monotheistic religions. Polytheists have
| internalized the fact that there can be different paths
| that are right for different people. That's why you get so
| much division in monotheistic religions.
|
| In polytheistic religions, you still get infighting, but it
| isn't considered virtuous.
|
| Put another way, monotheism is polytheism except with a
| single title, Lord of the Universe, that all the
| gods/theologies/denominations have to compete for in order
| to be legitimate. That competition of different
| gods/worldviews is the essential innovation that monotheism
| brings.
|
| That competition, that need to justify one's beliefs,
| provides a drive that monotheists have and polytheists
| lack. And that is why monotheism prevailed in so many
| areas.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > that need to justify one's beliefs, provides a drive
| that monotheists have and polytheists lack
|
| FYI, before the monotheists fully suppressed the
| polytheists in the Roman Empire, it was the polytheists
| who were suppressing the monotheists.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| Early Christians seemed weird to a lot of the people of
| the Roman Empire. Sort of how Christians now think of gay
| and trans people. It was deviant and socially upsetting.
| Modern Christians would probably not get along with early
| Christians.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| I don't know enough to argue the merits of your point, so
| instead I'll just point to Hindu nationalism in present
| day India.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| As far as I know the history, the Roman religion was
| pluralistic in the sense that you could worship whatever
| gods you wanted, but you also had to pay respects to the
| Empire's gods. The monotheists refused to do that for the
| obvious reason, and that was the primary cause of
| conflict
| bee_rider wrote:
| > Polytheism is likely flawed as an organizational concept
| because it's clear that gods were creations of man.
| Monotheism flips it and makes God the master of the
| universe while man struggles to understand the nature of
| God.
|
| I don't think that's true of polytheism at all. That the
| gods aren't everywhere or all-powerful doesn't mean they
| were invented by the local humans, just that they were
| discovered by them.
|
| They just look made-up by humans to us because we don't
| believe in them. I'm sure ancient people believed in their
| gods' stories just as much as some modern ones do, and most
| religions don't feature some "humans created the gods"
| story, right?
|
| I'm not sure what it means to be "flawed as an
| organizational concept." States that had polytheistic
| religions as the main one stuck around for a long time of
| course. It is hard to say what's predictive and what's a
| coincidence in history I guess.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I'm not sure what it means to be "flawed as an
| organizational concept." States that had polytheistic
| religions as the main one stuck around for a long time of
| course. It is hard to say what's predictive and what's a
| coincidence in history I guess.
|
| Romans would have had to integrate and work with many
| pantheons due to the reach of their empire. Obviously
| they were cool with the Greek gods for the most part, but
| what happened when the Romans encountered the Egyptian
| gods?
|
| Suddenly seeing gods in a new light would cast some doubt
| on whether or not Helios / Apollo was really pulling a
| chariot across the sky each morning, as it's the Sun God
| Ra who blessed Egypt.
|
| I'd imagine the Egyptian gods would be a novelty to
| Romans and I'm deeply curious how humans in antiquity
| would have tried to create a multi culture that works
| together.
|
| But in my eyes.... As different pantheons integrated with
| each other, it immediately becomes clear that the
| Pantheon consisting of THE God and one and only would win
| out.
|
| Not only does 'One God' solve the issue of the different
| creation myths (ex: you misunderstand but we both believe
| in the same One God), it also leads to the 'Ultimate,
| most powerful' concept of a God above all other gods.
|
| I presume that the simplest gods (ie: Sun God, Sky God,
| Sea God) would have lasted the longest as cultures met
| and integrated with each other, as almost everyone would
| worship the sun or sky or sea. But an ultimate God for
| everything is still a seemingly more elegant solution to
| the idea of worship.
|
| ----------
|
| But yes, this could be modern bias and could be seen as a
| silly idea 1000 years from now. But it is my opinion and
| understanding of how cultures would interact in my mental
| simulation of antiquity.
|
| ----------
|
| So that's where I mean with Hindus coming up with 'Jesus
| is an Avatar of Vishnu' thing. Different cultures need to
| adapt and integrate with other concepts of gods and
| religion to sustain in the long run. So it's not
| impossible for a modern polytheistic religion to exist
| today and feel consistent with the world or other
| cultures, Hinduism perfectly shows that off.
|
| But maybe I'm biased because Hinduism is the most
| prominent modern Polytheistic Pantheon and maybe the
| Pantheons 1000 or 3000 years ago made different
| arguments.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think they fully merged their pantheons as a
| logical exercise. I suspect the problem of why (from the
| Romans point of view) the Egyptians made different
| observations could be resolved in various ways; depending
| on how multiculturalist the Roman was, he could
| understand the Egyptians as being just, like, wrong about
| everything, or he could interpret their beliefs as
| observations of some other aspect of Apollo. If those
| multi-cultural beliefs about Apollo doing things in Egypt
| bounced around enough, they could be integrated into the
| conventional Roman belief system, but it could happen
| smoothly, so it needn't cause any cognitive stress.
|
| The ACOUP guy did a nice series about polytheism [
| https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-
| polythei... ]. An observation that stuck with me is that
| polytheist people (at least where he studied) were less
| focused on Orthodoxy, and more on Orthopraxy. If you have
| a give-and-take relationship with the gods (instead of
| one where the God frequently checks what you are actually
| are thinking inside your head and nothing is truly
| transactional), I wonder if you are more willing to go
| along with Egyptian rituals while you are in Egypt.
| Apparently Apollo is fine with the Egyptian rituals. In
| Egypt at least.
|
| Well, you probably will be ok with doing an Egyptian
| farming ritual. I guess if you are a Roman, you probably
| are pretty confident that the gods are receptive to your
| pre-battle rituals, given their track record.
|
| Anyway, if your Roman ritual was just something that your
| ancestors discovered through trial and error, I guess you
| probably won't be too freaked out by the fact that the
| Egyptians' ancestors found a different ritual. The gods
| are mysterious and temperamental, after all.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Good link, I'll probably read that series over time.
|
| Yeah, I don't mean 'Merging of Pantheons' as much as how
| different religions interact. When I speak to Hindus
| about Jesus (and when they speak to me about Vishnu) we
| aren't really adopting each other's gods, but instead
| trying to find pleasantries and similarities between our
| ways of thought.
|
| I also have come to the opinion that Vishnu in Hinduism
| adds a weird case of Monotheism in an otherwise
| Polytheistic religion. (Same with Buddha in Buddhism).
|
| Shintoism might be the only religion that's classically
| polytheistic, and only because Japan was isolated for so
| long.
|
| The Monotheistic argument of an Ultimate God above all
| others (be it Vishnu, Buddha or Jesus) is something that
| virtually all mainstream religions have today. This
| cannot be a coincidence.
|
| -------
|
| But yes. Applying history to historical
| theologies/polythists is probably a better idea than me
| applying modern religious concepts and pretending that
| people a thousand years ago had similar conversations as
| me and my Hindi friend. Lol. But my knowledge of the
| Romans and Egyptions is not quite as deep as the blog you
| listed there.
|
| > Anyway, if your Roman ritual was just something that
| your ancestors discovered through trial and error, I
| guess you probably won't be too freaked out by the fact
| that the Egyptians' ancestors found a different ritual.
| The gods are mysterious and temperamental, after all.
|
| Well sure. That's an argument for how polytheists talk
| with other polytheists.
|
| The issue is when the Romans talks with the proto-
| Monotheists. The Hewbrews, Zoroastrianism, the Gnostics
| and the Catholics. At this point, the idea of 'God above
| all other Gods' is taking root.
|
| It may take centuries before the discussion plays out,
| but it's started. Maybe in another universe we'd all be
| Zoroastrianists instead of Catholic, but it feels like
| the inevitable march towards a God above all gods when
| you have so many monotheistic religions popping up.
|
| Besides, worship of just one god sounds a lot easier than
| trying to memorize the long lists of Helios / Apollo / Ra
| / Amaterasu (sun gods) and hoping your rituals are
| keeping them appeased.
|
| As a practical manner, if you were going to try out a new
| Religion, it only makes sense to try out the most
| powerful ones. Be it El, YHWH, Jesus, Vishnu, Buddha,
| Zoroaster, the Gnostics 'Supreme Being's or whatever.
| That's the benefit of Monotheism.
| jollyllama wrote:
| The Hebrew view may not have been so different [0] and in turn
| this view is congruent with Christian teaching, depending on
| the theology.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Council#Hebrew/Israelit...
| jschveibinz wrote:
| This is most likely correct. I'm not sure why you were
| downvoted. Many scholars trace the earliest worship of Yahweh
| to the southern Levant, possibly Edom, Midian, or Seir which
| were outside of traditional Canaanite (early Hebrews)
| centers. Inscriptions from 800 BC refer to "Yahweh of
| Samaria" and "Yahweh of Teman," implying a localized deity.
|
| So given that Assyria is in the same geographic region as the
| Levant, the comment makes sense in context.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Catholicism maintains it somehow by having "patron saints"
| and every city picking one up. Most cities in highly
| Catholic countries will have their own specific saint that
| they will have a special relationship with.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Can't have a power vacuum on the Divine Council, gotta
| put one of your guys in when you take over!
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| One difference is that saints are not deities, even if
| there may be a similar psychological need (for
| protection, help, etc) in play. Saints do not possess
| power of their own accord. They function as intercessors.
| They are still human beings, albeit in an elevated
| spiritual state or plane, so to speak (a saint is anyone
| who is saved from hell and in heaven; canonized saints
| are simply those who are known to be saints and thus
| formally acknowledged).
|
| Pagan gods are personifications of natural forces, hence
| Thales's famous remark that "the world is full of gods".
| They are beings like you and me, in some sense, with
| powers that we may not possess.
|
| God, on the other hand, is not a personification of a
| force of nature or one being among many. In that sense,
| the distinction between monotheism and polytheism can be
| misleading, because it's not a matter of how many gods
| you believe in, but a profound difference in
| understanding of what divinity even means. God here is
| the _Ipsum Esse Subsistens_ , or self-subsisting Being;
| the verb "to be". This makes God prior to any particular
| being and the cause of the be-ing of anything and
| everything at all times.
|
| Whatever the history of the development of theological
| ideas and beliefs, these must be distinguished from the
| philosophical substance of the beliefs.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| > Pagan gods are personifications of natural forces,
| hence Thales's famous remark that "the world is full of
| gods".
|
| There were all kinds of gods. The Christian conception of
| God is taken from "pagan" philosophers. There's also a
| difference between theologian's/philosopher's conception
| of the Divine and religion and how lay people actually
| understood their faith. Even early Christians were
| divided on how they understood God.
| timschmidt wrote:
| If I've learned anything from brief forays into different
| Gnostic groups it's that at some point in some place
| humans seem to have believed every possible variation of
| themes and interpretations.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| If you analyze these various conceptions according to
| their _basic_ metaphysical claims about the nature of the
| divine, that diversity collapses quickly.
|
| This is why we can say that Jews, Christians, Muslims,
| etc. worship the same God, for example. Yes, they
| disagree _about_ God - and these are very important and
| even profound differences, to be sure, _pace_ the
| indifferentists - but the basic _object_ of belief can be
| said to be the same.
|
| OTOH, the basic nature of polytheistic gods is radically
| different. The pagan gods are fully immanent, because a
| truly pagan understanding of the divine lacks
| transcendence. You do not find a true distinction between
| creator and creation here. Where we do find purported
| "creator" gods, it is always something like mutation of
| some primordial chaos and not a genuine _creatio ex
| nihilo_. If you cannot draw a distinction between the
| creating cause and the created effect, then you do not
| have transcendent divinity. Divinity in such a scheme is
| just another part of the world.
| timschmidt wrote:
| > If you analyze these various conceptions according to
| their basic metaphysical claims about the nature of the
| divine, that diversity collapses quickly.
|
| The word "basic" is doing a lot of lifting in that claim.
| Borborites believed in and practiced the sexual
| sacrament. Ophites believed that Christ was the serpent
| in the garden of Eden. Some Cathars believed that Eve's
| daughters copulated with Satan's demons and bore giants.
| These stories have been told for a long time, and some
| versions are literally opposite to others - with opposite
| meaning derived. From my perspective, the nature of human
| cognition, especially over deep time, results in
| exploring every internally representable version of an
| idea or in this case a theology.
|
| It seems to me that conceptualization around the divine
| has evolved radically over time, and can only appear
| unified from the relatively limited perspective of the
| individual.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > There were all kinds of gods.
|
| And if you look at all those quintessentially pagan gods
| of the myths, you will find that they share this in
| common: that they are beings among many.
|
| > The Christian conception of God is taken from "pagan"
| philosophers.
|
| I'm not sure what you're implying, but traditional
| Christian theology draws from both biblical sources and
| philosophical analysis, and yes, that includes the
| philosophical works of pre-Christian, pagan philosophers
| (note the high esteem in which theologians like Augustine
| and Aquinas hold Plato and Aristotle, for example;
| Aquinas goes so far as to honor Aristotle with the title
| of "the Philosopher"). And not just the pagan
| philosophers: you can also include the work of Islamic
| philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes, if you like, who
| made contributions to the existence/essence distinction.
|
| Here, biblical sources most strongly correspond to
| revealed knowledge, which is to say, knowledge that
| cannot be inferred through unaided reason (like the
| Trinitarian nature of God), while the philosophical
| corresponds to what can be known through unaided reason
| (which is the proper object of what's called natural
| theology).
|
| This is completely consistent with Christian, certainly
| Catholic tradition and the concept of _logos spermatikos_
| (a term Justin Martyr borrows from the Stoics; note also
| the use of "Logos" [logos] in John 1:1, which has echoes
| in such concepts as Tao [Dao ], Rta [Rt], Ma`at [mt], and
| so on). If God is real and knowable at least partly by
| unaided reason, then you would expect at least some of
| that knowledge or some approximation to surface in a
| variety of cultures. In this respect, the Catholic Church
| claims to possess the _fullness_ of revealed knowledge.
|
| But the source of a truth is irrelevant.
|
| > There's also a difference between
| theologian's/philosopher's conception of the Divine and
| religion and how lay people actually understood their
| faith.
|
| What's your point? That we should treat the two as on
| par? Do you do that with any other field other than
| theology? The sciences spring from culture, but a good
| science deepens and refines and corrects our knowledge
| beyond what was given in our. We don't treat _doxa_ and
| _endoxa_ as having equal weight.
|
| > Even early Christians were divided on how they
| understood God.
|
| Again, I fail to see your point. People disagree about
| all sorts of things and fall into error all the time, and
| in this case, when they are working out things and their
| logical consequences.
|
| And I wouldn't overstate the plurality here. Even if
| there were disagreements among early Christians, and even
| if there are disagreements between Christians and Jews
| and Muslims, we can still legitimately claim that any
| genuine monotheism has as its object the very same God
| apart from those disagreements (which matter, of course,
| but not in agreeing about the basic object about which
| disagreement exists). And that is part of what I was
| claiming easier. If you view divinity through a shallow,
| polytheistic lens that merely classifies based on the
| _number_ of gods in the proverbial pantheon, then
| monotheism ends up being interpreted as merely a special
| or degenerate case of polytheism. But it isn 't, because
| a robust monotheism doesn't just claim there is only one
| God, but that there can only be one God.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Christianity is a really interesting case here since it
| is theoretically monotheistic, but the Trinity is
| basically a way to have 3 separate gods in a monotheistic
| religion. It's a fascinating bit of theology.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > note also the use of "Logos" [logos] in John 1:1, which
| has echoes in such concepts as Tao [Dao ]
|
| Well, Dao is used to translate the Biblical Word because
| (a) it is the native Chinese word for what is right, and
| also (b) it is, unrelatedly, also a verb meaning "say",
| but that's just a pun. The Dao of morality is not a word
| or anything related to a word. It's a path, the correct
| path through life.
| anthk wrote:
| Logos it's like eval/apply under Lisp.
| drowsspa wrote:
| I don't know how it is in Europe but down here in Brazil
| they're lesser gods in all but name. I see no functional
| difference between their cults and the ancient pagan
| cults.
|
| They're not gonna admit it because being monotheistic is
| kind of the whole point of Christianity. Just like
| they're gonna admit how the Trinity was just a cop-out to
| the obvious polytheism in the Bible and the traditions.
| hibikir wrote:
| And don't miss those that have wider use than one town.
| Sta Maria del Carmen, patron of mariners, is celebrated
| in the same day in July in many a coastal town that had a
| fishing industry. The statue leaves the church and is
| paraded around in people's shoulders, taken to the port,
| and often sent on a short trip on one of the boats. The
| locals prayed for plenty fish, and for the fishermen to
| avoid dying at sea. You can trace that kind of thing to a
| polytheistic world quite well.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I have vague memories from college about China having something
| similar during the dynasties.
|
| The hierarchical government on earth, with the emperor on top
| down through layers of bureaucracy down to officials in
| villages was a mirror of the organization of the heavens.
| Villages would have their own deities and might go so far as to
| replace them after bad years of flooding or other weather. That
| was more of an outlier, though, as usually the emperor or
| government got the blame first.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Some of this is visible in the Bible.
|
| For example, Moses needing to keep his hands up to win a battle
| (Ex 17). Or his battles with the Egyptian gods.
|
| From what I've read, it's believed that the Hebrews emerged
| from multiple people's groups combining and unifying their
| beliefs. El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged
| into one as the people groups unified. That's why some of the
| biblical stories like the creation and the flood have earlier
| references from older people's groups.
|
| The evolution of monotheism was much more about keeping a large
| diverse people group united.
|
| You can see a historic parallel to how that played out with the
| formation of the Roman pantheon. Mostly stolen stories and
| ideas from the Greek pantheon tweeked to fit the empire.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I don't think this is quite true about either group but it's
| dangerously close if you know what I mean. How & why genesis
| specifically shares so much content with other stories from
| the region is an extremely interesting subject in itself and
| still under active developing scholarship but I'm not
| qualified represent it well.
|
| That's definitely a misunderstanding of the roman pantheon
| though. It was already a fully formed syncretic religion at
| the time of acculturation of the greek gods into it, having
| regularly adapted to & adopted nearby belief systems as it
| encountered them.
|
| Some of the greek gods were fully syncretized with similar-
| enough roman gods, some only partially, some greek gods were
| adopted more completely because there was no near enough
| equivalent, and then some roman gods continued in more or
| less their previous form, for example janus who the greeks
| had nothing comparable to. But even a lot of the pre-greek
| exposure "roman" gods were themselves adopted from other
| cultures, and/or already syncretized with indigenous ones. In
| any case it wasn't "mostly" stolen from any one place, it
| followed a pretty typical pattern for syncretic religions.
| The acceptance & merging of the greek gods was only one event
| in what was at the time already a venerable and dynamic
| religious system.
|
| You also need to be careful about timelines. The greek
| cultural influence here is at like 800bc, predating the roman
| _republic_ much less the empire. It arguably predates
| anything you could reasonably call rome at all, this is in
| the distant past that was already mythological to the roman
| republic. This was always part of their cultural essentially.
| tiahura wrote:
| Mark S Smith has written pretty persuasively about history
| of the Jews as El worshipers. See eg Abdeel, Abiel, Adbeel,
| Amiel, Ariel, Azarel, Azareel, Aziel, Asael, Ashbel, Adael,
| etc. Yet the paucity of yhwh names. Not to mention, the
| Bible flat out states as much "I am the LORD. I appeared to
| Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty (El
| Shaddai), but by my name the LORD (YHWH) I did not make
| myself known to them."
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > Yet the paucity of yhwh names.
|
| Many of the biblical names ending in "ah" are YHWH names.
| This includes many of the prophets. So Elijah, Zechariah,
| Jeremiah, Micaiah, Isaiah, for instance are all "ah"
| ending names that have a meaning related to YHWH in the
| same way that the "el" ending names are related to El.
| And then Joshua (and, hence, Jesus) is also a YHWH name.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| Some of the parallels between the Roman and Greek pantheons
| are also because they derive from the common Indo-European
| root. e.g. Jupiter, Zeus pater and Dyaus pitr being the sky
| father
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into
| one as the people groups unified.
|
| How does this theory account for the overt hostility to Baal
| et al. in the Bible?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Unification.
|
| The authors of the Torah are laying down what correct
| worship is supposed to look like. I believe (and I'm not a
| biblical scholar, just like learning) the theory is that
| the priests at the time were dealing with a mixed culture
| and differing beliefs. One way to handle that is "Look at
| these evil/dumb heathens worshiping their weak gods".
| Painting the gods which likely some of the population still
| believes in dumb is a way to undermine and discourage
| belief. Sort of a "We are no longer team Bears, we are team
| bulls. The bears are actually inferior and dumb".
|
| Part of forming the new religion was merging concepts and
| powers from commonly believed in gods. A little like the
| early christians rebranding pagan holidays while actively
| purging pagans.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Also similarly: The Orange Catholic Bible
| petesergeant wrote:
| Awww, I was hoping for more Orange Order and Catholicism
| trivia
| smithkl42 wrote:
| "Baal" was less a name than a title. In modern Hebrew, it
| just means "lord" or "husband". It was also apparently a
| title that could, at some stages of Israel's history, even
| be applied to YHWH, much like "Adonay" ("My lord"). For
| instance, the individuals named "Mephibosheth" and "Ish-
| bosheth" (two of the sons of Saul, a clear if imperfect
| Yahwist) were originally named "Meribaal" and "Ish-baal".
| Whoever put together 1 and 2 Samuel changed their names
| from "May Baal Contend" and "Man of Baal" to various plays
| on "shame" (bosheth). Their original names are preserved,
| oddly enough, in 1 Chronicles.
|
| If you could go back and ask, say, Samuel or David or Saul
| about how many gods existed and what their names were, I
| suspect all of them would have been clear that YHWH was the
| chief of the gods, and the only one that Israelites should
| worship, but beyond that you would have gotten some
| complicated and perhaps confused answers. Even some parts
| of the Bible take for granted that other gods besides YHWH
| exist - see, for instance, Psalm 82.
|
| https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2082&ver
| s...
|
| Over time, "Baal" began to denote a specific agricultural
| deity, and it became less appropriate to use as a title for
| YHWH. That seems to have kicked off (or was kicked off by)
| the well-known conflict between Yahwism and Baal worship -
| see, ad infra, 1 Kings 18.
|
| https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20kings%2018
| &...
| schuyler2d wrote:
| I don't want to completely refute this because I'm also
| an amateur and there are a lot of instabilities of
| consensus, but Baal was at least also the son of El in
| Canaanite religion which predated an Israeli kingdom.
|
| My understanding is more that Yahvists had more nomadic
| origins and populated (/conquered, possibly the
| Levites[1]) a Canaanite cultural context and then there
| was religious syncreticism and interest in merging them.
| Depending on the specific passage's history there's
| either a ret-coning of "all one god" or at least the
| interpretation that way (including how your links
| translate those passages).
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Richard-Elliott-
| Friedman/dp/00...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Baal was at least also the son of El in Canaanite
| religion which predated an Israeli kingdom
|
| Where are you getting this from?
| ThalesX wrote:
| Have you tried googling "baal son of el"? I have no idea
| on who Baal is, or El, but the discussion sparked my
| curiosity and that's all I needed to do in order to
| answer for myself the question "where are you getting
| this from?".
| smithkl42 wrote:
| The Wikipedia article is a good place to start:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal
|
| Like all matters concerning the gods in the ancient near
| east, it's complex, and every answer has to be qualified.
| So apparently in some traditions, Baal was the son of
| Dagan (another fertility god), and in some the son of El
| (the head of the Canaanite pantheon, often identified
| with Yahweh even by orthodox Yahwists).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > often identified with Yahweh even by orthodox Yahwists
|
| This seems totally unsurprising, given that the Old
| Testament freely uses both terms while insisting there is
| only one god. What else are orthodox Yahwists supposed to
| think?
| griffzhowl wrote:
| There's also evidence that even the exclusive worship of
| YHWH is something that's written in to the history at a
| later date, e.g. the Elephantine papyri predate any known
| manuscript of the Hebrew bible, and seem to show a
| polytheistic community of Jews in Egypt in the fifth
| century BC. This community was in contact with the
| Jerusalem temple, and there's no suggestion in their
| correspondence that what they were doing was unorthodox
| at the time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephantine_papyri_and_ostr
| aca
| smithkl42 wrote:
| I don't know that I would draw that sharp of a
| distinction between archaeological and Biblical evidence.
| Pretty much every strata of the Bible that we have, from
| pretty much every age, assumes that even Yahweh's
| worshipers are aware of and frequently worshiping other
| gods. Rachel has her period on a pile of household idols
| (Gen. 31:26-35). Jacob gives up all his household's idols
| at God's request (Gen. 35:1-4). The Israelites in the
| desert worship first a golden calf (Ex. 32) and then the
| Baal of Peor (Numbers 25). David's wife Michal has an
| idol just sitting around, available to be used in a
| subterfuge (1 Sam. 19:11-17). And that's before we get to
| the prophets, whose message everywhere assumes that other
| gods are present in Israelite civil religion.
|
| The question isn't whether ancient Israelites worshiped
| other gods. Every single source we have, including the
| Bible, says that they did. The real question is how early
| and how consistently such behavior was objected to, and
| on what grounds. And there, the evidence shows that even
| the earliest traditions seem to expect loyalty to YHWH
| alone, even if they don't always explain why. Over time,
| those objections become sharper, more theological, and
| more absolute. But there is no point in the biblical
| tradition, early or late, where YHWH is not a jealous
| God; just as there is no point where he doesn't have
| cause to be.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| > The real question is how early and how consistently
| such behavior was objected to, and on what grounds.
|
| Yes, ok. I'm claiming that the Elephantine papyri show no
| direct evidence that it was objected to in the late fifth
| century BC.
|
| There might be more indirect evidence which is more a
| matter of interpretation, e.g. some claim the other gods'
| names are really names of aspect of YHW, and it's
| noteworthy that in the letter petitioning the Jerusalem
| temple for support in rebuilding the Elephantine temple,
| no god other than YHW is mentioned. But I think it's hard
| to make a definitive case either way. Probably the more
| you look into it the more complicated it becomes, like
| everything
| schuyler2d wrote:
| I'd answer a bit differently than replies so far. Later
| monotheist post "merging" of El and YHWH didn't really have
| space for El's son so they had to treat him as a lesser and
| then hostile God. Any worship for him was considered bad.
|
| Otoh, just like "Easter" is an echo of an earlier holiday,
| it just so happens Canaanites, as I understand it,
| celebrated the end of the storm god's season in spring ...
| Very similarly to how Passover is observed. With a
| sacrificed lamb shank bone and some other aspects.
| empath75 wrote:
| > Otoh, just like "Easter" is an echo of an earlier
| holiday
|
| (This is commonly repeated, but there is very little
| evidence for this)
| schuyler2d wrote:
| Well the evidence is circumstantial. A bunch of
| Canaanites celebrate a spring festival with unleavened
| bread. Later they adopt a different religion that has a
| spring festival and an Exodus story with a new god called
| YHWH is glommed onto El.
|
| I think it depends how "natural" one thinks the reason
| for unleavened bread is to Exodus. There's obviously
| plenty of mythical aspects to the story but the oldest
| are more focused on the river (Song of the Sea) and the
| battle. Why not combine rebirth/reinvention stories --
| one a feast and another the beginning of "freedom"
|
| But it's fair to say that most of Passover as a story and
| holiday is unrelated.
| deepsun wrote:
| Pretty much every culture had (has) social events for
| solstices and equinoxes. I'd rather find it harder to
| believe there was no such a holiday.
| empath75 wrote:
| "The Bible" is not a single coherent text, but rather a
| collection of hundreds or thousands of years of oral
| tradition that was created and passed on by various people
| at various times for various purposes, and then collected
| and edited again by different people for different
| purposes.
|
| There are layers of edits that you can tease out with
| careful reading, and they can be supported by archeological
| evidence from sites all around the near east.
|
| It is not remotely controversial that the
| Hebrews/Israelites/Canaanites/Judeans were originally
| polytheistic, with a pantheon built around Canaanite gods
| (El, Ashera, etc), just like all of their neighbors and
| then gradually became henotheistic (our god is the best
| god), and then finally monotheistic (there is only one
| god). Pure monotheism was a very late development, and a
| lot of the conflicts in the bible is straightforwardly
| interpreted as describing a conflict between Yahwist
| henotheism and traditional near-eastern polytheism. Even
| just reading the very first part of Genesis, there are two
| creation stories with very clear signs of a pantheon of
| gods.
|
| There are also completely retellings of polytheistic myths
| in the Bible which are basically a find-replace of Ba'al,
| etc, with either "El" or "Yahweh" or both.
| kace91 wrote:
| >Even just reading the very first part of Genesis, there
| are two creation stories with very clear signs of a
| pantheon of gods.
|
| What do you mean by this? I can think of signs of a
| pantheon in general but not particularly in the creation
| myths.
| verbify wrote:
| Presumably "and god said let us make man in our image".
| Although the monotheists can claim it is the pluralis
| majestatis, that doesn't seem to be a feature elsewhere
| when god talks.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| compare Genesis chapter 1 with Genesis chapter 2. they
| are 2 pretty different creation myths. chapter 1:27 and
| chapter 2:21 certainly read like 2 separate creation
| stories for humans that have been jammed together without
| really fitting
| nkoren wrote:
| See my later reply to the parent comment, but basically,
| first there's the creation of the whole world and all the
| peoples in it, then there's the creation of the Garden of
| Eden and Adam and Even and so forth. The first is
| ascribed to "God", or "Elohim" in Hebrew -- a plural word
| which has recently been awkwardly recontextualized
| through a monotheistic lens, but probably originally
| meant "the gods" -- while the second is ascribed to the
| "LORD God", or "YHVH" in Hebrew -- a definitely specific
| God.
| nrclark wrote:
| It's also worth noting - the Bible isn't a single book,
| and it never was. It's 66 or 73 separate books (depending
| on the flavor of Christianity), bound together in a
| single binding. Much more of an anthology than a single
| book. The books were separated in time, authorship,
| culture, and even language. Never intended to be taken
| together as a single document.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Never intended to be taken together as a single
| document.
|
| Well, that's clearly untrue. People all over the world
| intend for you to do that right now.
| exceptione wrote:
| The original author/copier intends.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The original copier?
| graemep wrote:
| Obviously not the intent of the original authors or the
| people who decided to compile these documents into an
| authoritative anthology.
|
| Not convinced "all over the world" as a fair
| representation. Biblical literalists treat it as a single
| work, and they are mostly American or follow American
| leadership and tradition.
|
| They also usually pick a particular version of "the
| Bible". Martin Luther's version, which was the Catholic
| version with some bits taken out. They also usually
| regard the Catholics who compiled that particular version
| as heretics. They also usually prefer a particular 17th
| century translation (so missing a lot of more recent
| scholarship and discoveries), and sometimes even a
| particular late 19th century (I think?) edition of that
| translation.
|
| The preference for the KJV is quite amusing given it
| means social conservatives who presumably vote Republican
| are relying on the authority of a gay monarch.
| nkoren wrote:
| This is all absolutely correct. To amplify this point for
| people unfamiliar with it, the two creation stories are:
|
| 1. God separates the light from the darkness, the earth
| from the water, and creates all the plants and animals
| and peoples of the world.
|
| 2. The LORD God creates the garden of Eden, makes Adam
| from mud and Eve from his rib, plants a tree of knowledge
| and tree of life, etc.
|
| Already there's a divergence: Adam is supposedly the
| first man in the second story, but in the first story,
| all the peoples of the world have already been created.
| But the more interesting divergence is in the name of the
| responsible God. This often flies over the head of
| readers in English, but notice that the first story isn't
| the "LORD God", just "God". This is because in Hebrew,
| the name of God in the first story is "Elohim", while in
| the second, it's "YHVH" -- a name too holy for Jews to
| pronounce, so they just say "Hashem" ("the name"),
| although if you're naughty you can say "Yahweh" or
| "Jehovah" or whatever. Why the difference?
|
| A clue is that "Elohim" is a pluralised word in Hebrew.
| Once Judaism became fully monotheistic, this became
| interpreted as something like "The Wings of God" -- a
| sort of abstract all-encompassing Godly aura, rather than
| the pointed and personified manifestation of the divine,
| which is YHVH. But this is a bit of a tortured post-
| rationalisation, and isn't explicitly supported by the
| text. It's much more straightforward to read "Elohim" as
| simply "the gods", which is probably how it was read when
| the text was first assembled, with a henotheistic YHVH
| text being appended to an earlier polytheistic text.
|
| Even the first commandment -- "I am YHVH, your God, and
| you shall have no other Gods before me" -- reads better
| as a henotheistic rather than a monotheistic text. It
| doesn't say there are no other gods. It pretty strongly
| implies the opposite. It just says that the other gods
| aren't for you.
| schuyler2d wrote:
| There's definitely some relatable and transmitted stories
| like the flood, etc. However, the Levant and Egyptian gods
| "grew up" in different contexts than Mesopotamia. Egypt was
| pretty centralized from the beginning and their gods were not
| based on cities. "El" means mountain and Baal was a storm god
| -- neither of which has (to my understanding) any trace to
| specific cities.
|
| That said, I agree there was some idea of a god "living"
| someplace specific -- e g. YHWH living in the Arc so they
| could carry Him into battle.
| exceptione wrote:
| > YHWH living in the Arc so they could carry Him into
| battle.
|
| What story do you refer to?
| cogman10 wrote:
| https://biblehub.com/topical/ttt/a/ark_of_the_covenant_wa
| s_c...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Egypt was pretty centralized from the beginning and their
| gods were not based on cities.
|
| I don't think this is really accurate; you can often tell
| where an ancient Egyptian was from by the choice of god
| honored in his name. The gods very much are localized to
| particular places.
|
| > "El" means mountain
|
| "El" means "god"; this one couldn't be more clear-cut. If
| someone told you it means "mountain", you should dismiss
| anything else they might say.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >You can see a historic parallel to how that played out with
| the formation of the Roman pantheon. Mostly stolen stories
| and ideas from the Greek pantheon tweeked to fit the empire.
|
| You also have to think in the opposite direction, how did
| these gods all come about. Every person will have their own
| at list slightly different understanding and memory of the
| stories and rituals. Go to the next village over and
| everything will be almost but not quite the same, go 20, 100,
| or 1000 miles and differences will scale from mild
| recognition to completely different. If you meet a group of
| people from far away and they have a god of war, do you think
| it's the _same_ god of war as yours or not?
|
| Romans did this by having the same god have several names
| for, to simplify, several versions of the "same" god.
|
| Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Jupiter Ammon, Jupiter Dolichenus
| etc.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Iron Man (Earth-626), Iron Man (Earth-25519), Iron Man
| (Earth 42069 Prime)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into
| one as the people groups unified.
|
| Well, only one of those is the name of a god. _El_ is just
| the ordinary word "god".
|
| _Ba 'al_ is the ordinary word "lord". Unlike El, this could
| theoretically double as the name of a god in a couple of
| ways. In the typical case it didn't, and gods addressed as
| Ba'al had names beyond the title. Compare "Ba'al Hadad",
| where the god's name is "Hadad".
|
| (But in the general case, _Freyja_ is just the ordinary word
| "lady" and has no other name that survives to us, and
| _Adonis_ is the ordinary word "lord". Adonis is a special
| case in that his name is not the word "lord" _in Greek_ ; he
| is a borrowing of the Semitic deity Tammuz, and the Greeks
| copied his title, "lord", rather than his name.)
| cogman10 wrote:
| El was the great God and Father of all gods, YHWH was his
| son [1]. The meaning of the word "El" changed over time and
| by the time most of the Bible was written it did simply
| mean God.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_%28deity%29?wprov=sfla1
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The meaning of the word "El" changed over time and by
| the time most of the Bible was written it did simply mean
| God.
|
| That is not correct; the word simply meant "god" long,
| long before there is any attestation of a god that might
| use it as a name.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ilum#Akkadian
| detourdog wrote:
| Thought it was more an ancestral teams. Each city marveling at
| the founding families.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| > There was an expectation that if you traveled to another
| city, you should sacrifice to its god.
|
| This was pretty common in the polytheistic world I think. In
| the time of the Roman empire (pre-Christianity of course) there
| was a similar idea. And although Roman gods might be imported,
| they were often identified with the local gods, rather than
| replacing them.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That was a great episode; the ending was haunting.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpAphcaVJIs
| bentley wrote:
| > There was an expectation that if you traveled to another
| city, you should sacrifice to its god.
|
| The Bible even has the example of Naaman the Aramean, who after
| being convinced of the might of Israel's God, asked for a gift
| of two mule-loads of Israeli earth so he could worship Him
| after returning home. (2 Kings 5:17)
| MrGuts wrote:
| "Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered"
|
| Oh great, just in time for the passage of an interstellar object
| and the Dalai Lama's reincarnation day.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| If I recall, there are hundreds of thousands of untranslated
| cuneiform texts--and less than 10% have been translated.
|
| I wish there was a resource that tracked all the untranslated
| classical texts. For instance, only about 10% of Neo-Latin texts
| have been translated. It seems to me that the products of the
| renaissance ought to be a part of the training corpus of AGI.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| That would involve better funding for the humanities, which has
| been in notoriously short supply for the past century or so.
| Digitization efforts are underway in many institutions and have
| been for decades.
| smithkl42 wrote:
| "missing for a millennium" - according to both the article and
| the journal piece, the most recent of these fragments is nearly
| two millennia old.
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/iraq/article/literar...
| ajcp wrote:
| I think just because it's 2,000 years old doesn't mean it's
| been _missing_ for 2,000 years? There could be references to a
| fragment as recently as 1,000 years ago, even if the contents
| of it were not recorded at that time. Or bad copy-editing.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Somewhat related, since we're talking about cuneiform: Dr. Irving
| Finkel of the British Museum telling the surprisingly amusing
| story of how he discovered the oldest known version of the Noah's
| Ark story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_fkpZSnz2I
| Eupolemos wrote:
| Dr. Finkel is just plain amazing.
| yayitswei wrote:
| Interesting literacy regression: this newly discovered Babylonian
| hymn was routinely copied by schoolchildren 3,000 years ago,
| while yesterday's article about why English doesn't use accents
| showed that by 1100 AD European literacy had contracted so much
| that monks were essentially writing only for other monks.
|
| If I'm interpreting this correctly, ancient Babylon had
| institutionalized childhood education for complex literary works.
| Medieval Europe treated literacy as a specialized craft. So much
| for exponential growth.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| You're skipping a lot of context here. Ancient Babylonian
| scribal schools were for a small elite--hardly universal
| childhood education. Medieval Europe's "regression" had a bit
| to do with the collapse of the Roman state, plagues, and
| centuries of instability, not just a lack of ambition.
| Comparing literacy rates across millennia without mentioning
| population size, language complexity, or what "schoolchildren"
| even means is a stretch.
|
| History isn't exponential--it's bumpy.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| "Progress" and "enlightenment" are neither uniform, linear,
| upwards, or continuous. All it takes is one absurdly corrupt
| regime to burn down the "Library of Alexandria", and with it,
| thousands of years of history and accomplishment.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| It's known as the Dark Ages for a reason. Society regressed in
| most ways. Maybe because of the collapse of the Roman Empire?
| Europe only started finding their feet during the Reneissance.
| defrost wrote:
| _Why are the European "Dark Ages" considered a misnomer?_
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/235w3l/why_a.
| ..
| relevant_stats wrote:
| I wouldn't pay too much attention to answers from this
| respectable subreddit when they express more what is a
| historiographic opinion than a fact. And when at the same
| time they are fighting strawmen.
|
| The European Dark Ages narrative was indeed overblown and
| needed correction. But this correction went too far. It
| seems to be now at the stage of explicit and vigorous
| denial of any downfall of fortune in the Western ex-Roman
| provinces. I'd posit that such a denial is even more
| overblown than the initial myth it aimed to correct.
|
| I can offer you a link to an author arguing for this
| position: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/15/were-there-
| dark-ages/
| alecco wrote:
| Beware Hollywood and English literature propaganda: Catholics
| were morons; pirates are cool; French and Spaniards are dumb,
| evil, and cowards.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Yes, pirates were not cool. The rest of the list though...
| alecco wrote:
| > The rest of the list though...
|
| Please read some unbiased history books.
|
| Catholics: Copernicus, Mendel, Pascal, Ampere, Fermat,
| ... And The Renaissance is always skipped by them for
| some reason.
|
| Figures like Napoleon or The Catholic Monarchs were
| cowards and stupid?
|
| But I think I'm wasting my time answering you. You seem
| quite closed minded, blue team, read team.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I was being facetious. But the crusades and the
| inquisition are actually really dark stains on the
| history of spain and the church. As for the French i
| meant it in jest, but really their abysmal military
| record speaks for itself. Also the actions of Vichy
| France shouldn't be glossed over, even though the
| overwhelming majority of France were against the Nazis
| and the Free French fought with distinction and bravery.
|
| As to your last point, i view myself largely as an
| unaffected observer, who likes to poke holes in certain
| liberal narratives.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-08 23:02 UTC)