Why Luther Translated the Bible : Debate with McCabe on Quora

Q

Why did Martin Luther translate the Bible?
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Martin-Luther-translate-the-Bible

Richard McCabe

Professor (physiology, biology, pathophysiology) (1994-present)

Answered 21h ago

Martin Luther made the first German translation of the Bible so that it would be available for German speaking people to read. Prior to that time the Bible was in Hebrew/Greek (Original), Latin (Vulgate) or English (Tyndale’s and earlier versions but not the KJV, which came later) However, not all of these were available to the common German, even if they spoke other languages. Contrary to what other responses say, the Catholics prohibited translating the Bible in any language other than Latin or the Original. William Tyndale was burned at the stake by the Catholics in 1536 for translating the Bible into English.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

16m ago

As I found in Konvertitenkatechismus by Jesuits of Paderborn, printed 1950, this was not so.

They said there were already 14 translations available in High German and 4 in Low German.

And this is confirmed by what Luther himself wrote in his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen.

Which I have read (in a German literature anthology for secondary school).

He clearly referred to translations made by Papists, that is Catholics.

“Martin Luther made the first German translation of the Bible”

You should not believe everything they told you at Bible school. Specifically about the theology of grace and sacraments but also - this is where your answer proves it in a way you can easily check - about Church History.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

13m ago

“Contrary to what other responses say, the Catholics prohibited translating the Bible in any language other than Latin or the Original.”

There were local prohibitions at the time of the fight against Albigensians. These were not valid for 16th C. Germany.

The latest such prohibition, the only one valid in 16th C. was the English one against Lollards - which was very different from continental Inquisition (St. Joan of Arc was tried by English system under English law enforcement).

”William Tyndale was burned at the stake by the Catholics in 1536 for translating the Bible into English.”

Could have been if he had been tried and burnt in Coventry, but this is not the case for Flanders.

The Tyndale society themselves don’t agree with you.

I know about Iacobus Latomus and the Romans 3 dispute from their site, an archived page.

Own answer

and part of the debate under it is doubles to my comments above, since I wanted these also under his answer.

Q

Why did Martin Luther translate the Bible?
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Martin-Luther-translate-the-Bible/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered 23h ago

Read his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen.

It was not because Catholic translations were lacking, but because he didn’t like them, and he didn’t change to change the wording for the Holy Writers according to his own personal understanding of them.

Richard McCabe

21h ago

Catholic laity were prohibited from having the Bible by the Catholic church in the Council of Toulouse/Toledo in 1229. William Tyndale was burned at the stake in 1536 by the Catholics for translating the Bible into English. Martin Luther was excommunicated but the Catholics could not get to him because he was protected by German Princes.

References:

Melvyn Bragg on William Tyndale: his genius matched that of Shakespeare
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10096770/Melvyn-Bragg-on-William-Tyndale-his-genius-matched-that-of-Shakespeare.html

Council of Toulouse - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Toulouse

Martin Luther excommunicated
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/martin-luther-excommunicated

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Original Author

1h ago

“Catholic laity were prohibited from having the Bible by the Catholic church in the Council of Toulouse/Toledo in 1229.”

Correct probably (though it seems the Spanish confirmation was Tarragona, not Toledo)- at a time when vulgar languages were very ununified. Three centuries nearly before Luther.

Note that this was valid for a limited region, in/around the Pyrenees. It was not repeated by any general council for application everywhere in the Catholic Church.

“William Tyndale was burned at the stake in 1536 by the Catholics for translating the Bible into English.”

Incorrect. He fled England perhaps suspect for heresy for translating the Bible. B U T he was burned after debates with Flemish or Belgian Inquisitors including one with Jacques Latôme (Iacobus Latomus) about Romans 3.

Both supposed “works of the law” to mean any law of God, including simply the moral law to which Abraham was obliged even before Moses, and Latomus considered Abraham was given his first justification without a previous keeping of the law, but not without a deliberation to for the future believe in and obey God. Council of Trent later precised that St. Paul’s point was precisely that as the ceremonial law had not been given yet, Abraham was justified without circumcision or kashrut.

“Martin Luther was excommunicated”

Prior to undertaking the translation, for not retracting the 41 theses enumerated by Pope Leo X in the bull Exsurge Domine.

Melvyn Bragg is not a serious source about the fate of Tyndale, though he is a conaisseur of Tyndale’s English.

Citing your last link:

“In January 1521, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther. Three months later, Luther was called to defend his beliefs before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms, where he was famously defiant. For his refusal to recant his writings, the emperor declared him an outlaw and a heretic.”

These writings did not yet at that date incude his Bible translation, as you can see here:

“The Luther Bible (German: Lutherbibel) is a German language Bible translation from Hebrew and ancient Greek by Martin Luther. The New Testament was first published in 1522 and the complete Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments with Apocrypha, in 1534. “

Luther Bible - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Bible

Therefore, he was excommunicated for other things than Bible translations.

Richard McCabe

46m ago

The Catholics did not allow Laity to have Bibles at the time the other translations appeared. Contrary to what you said at first.

The Catholics burned Tyndale at the stake.

Luther was defended by the Princes of Germany (same like, read it all), The published year means when it was printed, not when it was translated.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Original Author

25m ago

“The Catholics did not allow Laity to have Bibles at the time the other translations appeared.”

We did not allow laity to have them without permission, that is a somewhat different statement.

16th C. Germany was not 13th C. Toulouse or Tarragona.

“The Catholics burned Tyndale at the stake.”

For his understanding of Romans 3, not for his translation of the Bible.

“Luther was defended by the Princes of Germany (same like, read it all),”

Yes, after Pope and Emperor had declared him a heretic.

And it was during this precise time when he could not appear in public that he was translating the Bible.

I’m a former Lutheran and I know his biography pretty well.

“The published year means when it was printed, not when it was translated.”

The excommunication was for things he had already published before the excommunication, not for a Bible he had not yet published.

Richard McCabe

17m ago

I’m a former Catholic and attended Catholic school, catechism and even a Catholic seminary, so I know the Catholics pretty well. In fact, when I once questioned why the Bible said something different from what the catechism book said the nun told me not to read the Bible because you had to be a priest to understand it. That’s a large part of the reason I went to the Seminary, but I didn’t find any answers there either.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Original Author

10m ago

Was this after Vatican II?

What was the catechism book saying?

Was it a pre- or post-Council Catechism?

Either way, you can be an educated Catholic without knowing relevant parts of Church history correctly. And you did not learn it then.

In principle, the nun would have been right, if the catechism had been a fully Catholic one, as I suppose it was not (perhaps you are older than I think …) - however, with the proviso that her formulation was wrong. You need to interpret it with the Church to understand it, and priests are likelier to be able to do so than laymen, due to more study, but the layman is not of a nature incapable of doing so.

The situation as such shows that you were not barred from reading the Bible as a precisely layman.

Continued

when previous was 15h ago

Richard McCabe

14h ago

It didn’t matter. I later sought God and he answered me. Then he directed the paths of my life. I don’t really care about the Catholic church. It is spiritually wrong on a number of things, still. Their claim of apostolic authority, for example. However, a lot of churches are wrong. What I don’t like about the Catholics is their false claim to be the ‘one true church’. The one true church is the one that Jesus, the Christ is head of. Like all human creeds, the Catholic creeds divide the church rather than unify it, as Jesus sought.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Original Author

Just now

“Their claim of apostolic authority, for example.”

But Christ gave his apostles authority lasting to Doomsday (Mt 28:18–20, adressed to the eleven, perhaps two more, like disciples from Emmaus).

Therefore, one Church has to have such.

“What I don’t like about the Catholics is their false claim to be the ‘one true church’. The one true church is the one that Jesus, the Christ is head of.”

Correct. It has a part in Heaven, a part in Purgatory and a part on Earth. That part is called the Catholic Church.

“Like all human creeds, the Catholic creeds divide the church rather than unify it, as Jesus sought.”

Except, there are maybe 40 bodies claiming today to be Roman Catholic, at a high maximum, and there are about 30 000 bodies of Protestants …

“It didn’t matter.”

Well, to me it does matter whether you detected a real contradiction between a sham Catholic catechism and the Bible or a sham contradiction between a real Catholic catechism and the Bible.

For instance, if it concerns a recent creation compared to millions or billions of years (moyboy) ago, all pre-Council catechisms are fairly explicitly Young Earth Creationist in their wording (even if some have been careful to construct some kind of leeway for squeezing in moyboy).

But the infamous “Catechism of the Catholic Church” by Ratzinger under Wojtyla (antipopes known as Cardinal Ratzinger later Benedict XVI and John Paul II) issued in the 90’s after I became a trad, fairly explicitly opens lots of doors to moyboy. Saying scientists know, saying the account in Genesis is symbolic and some more perhaps.

Brian Holdsworth on Evidence for God

3 Reasons Science Doesn't Disprove God
Brian Holdsworth | 25.X.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1R3Ul2IZiU

I

Thanks for mentioning Steubenville!

I'll need to send them my conclusion that if Vatican II is a real council, Young Earth Creationism is binding dogma as per Dei Verbum §3. Notwithstanding the 1909 decisions by the PBC.

Here is the essay with this conclusion for you too:

Creation vs. Evolution : For Those who Do Take Vatican II as a Valid Council
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2019/10/for-those-who-do-take-vatican-ii-as.html

It was sent them.

Update

a dialogue ensued, see VII.

II

3:18 Well, there actually are physical traces of God ... day and night, human language to name two of them.

Try to explain day and night by Earth turning instead of Geocentrism in which God turns the Universe around Earth (what else could effect that?) and you run into problems for stability of many body problem in Newtonian astrophysics of gravitation - at the very least.

And computers, monkeys and birds do not master language.

3:34 You forget that things that are not physical phenomena can be causes of physical phenomena.

Even among Atheists you will hear people put this or that down to neutrons in the nuclei of certain atoms - but anything smaller than atoms with "electron shells" seen as a unified outer sphere of them is whether physical or not at least not a phenomenon.

What I thought about your words is not a physical phenomenon either, but it caused physical phenomena like the exact sequence of letters you see on the screen.

Ergo X is not a physical phenomenon;
Y is a physical phenomenon
DOES NOT MEAN
"X cannot be the cause of Y"

and X can even be the well known cause of Y.

The colour blue as such does not result in sound and mathematics as such have no taste until it's tasty things in your mouth you count (caution, some spices had better not be 2+2=4 in your mouth!).

But God not only has results in the physical world, and even nothing is there in the physical world unless God caused it directly or by permission (as anywhere else in the created world, like human minds). So, unlike sound for colour blue, physical world very truly is a result of God.

Especially if you take Geocentrism into account.

So, people who say "there is no [physical] evidence of God" are very much not making a category mistake, they are just wrong about what the physical evidence is evidence of.

And pointing a telescope somewhere to see if you see God would indeed be a category mistake, but it is definitely not the only way in which asking for physical evidence works (see for instance the evidence for subatomic particles - if really there - not being available by seeing them even in electronic microscopy).

III

4:22 St. Thomas Aquinas would very much not have agreed that philosophy is logical but not depending on physical evidence!

These are his very first words when going about proving the existence of God:

"The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion."

prima via, second paragraph of corpus of I Pars, Q2, A3.
http://newadvent.com/summa/1002.htm#article3

Zeno would have motion an illusion, and his philosophy would have indeed been not just independent of but contrary to physical evidence. St. Thomas was not an Eleatic.

IV

5:04 Newton's first law implies either rest or uniform motion is the result of non-interference.

Apart from the second part, I think the law is fairly well understandable by pre-schoolers.

As for the second part, I wonder if you can prove it? To anyone?

V

5:55 You have given a very great point on why God would have chosen to create a Geocentric universe, because it is one in which the physical action is apparently caused, so no angelic intelligence is needed to figure out that God is.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice: Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.

Geocentrism is also a description of the physical world which was understandable already in the time when St Paul wrote above, Romans 1:18-20. Cited from Douay Rheims.

That God is need not be higher than us, even if what He is is infinitely higher than any creature.

6:24 Understanding that God is, is not understanding God.

Some scientists have what at least they consider as valid reasons for understanding that subatomic particles exist. That for instance a neutron exists. For my part, I am content that isotopes are different, neutrons could exist, but radioactivity could be tied to some other substance (scholastic sense) than neutrons.

But if the latest ones of them are correct in what neutrons are, then the earlier ones of them knew neutrons existed even without knowing what they are. If they aren't, this is at best still our position.

It is this which is a "perfect" parallel to understanding that God is but not what God is.

VI

7:08 As I just mentioned to someone else, that computers don't think and brutes don't speak is scientifically very verifiable.

Both point to man being something special which cannot be explained as the sum of component atoms or molecules or even biological structures (mostly identic to those of brutes and largely parallel to parts of computering).

This would be part of "[t]he fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like." (I Q2 A3 again). It is the one thing C. S. Lewis used in Miracles.

While all truth need not be scientifically verifiable, all proven truth needs to be somehow verifiable.

And God existing is in the category of proven truth, not the category of truths we have no certain knowledge of.

As we mentioned five ways, the fifth way is very much underlined if we go from Ptolemaic to Tychonian Geocentrism.

It may be noted that Democritus, Epicure and Lucrece were Geocentrics, but the Geocentrism they envisaged would have been built on whirls, on vortices, and Tycho's observations make these unbelievable for an unguided movement of planets. It's much better suited for Aristotle's very simple Geocentrism even than for Ptolemy - who (Neil de Grasse Tyson noted it on a video footage) considered that Jupiter moving in regular retrogrades proved there was a will behind the movements.

Heliocentrism is not evidenced physically, unless you take "absence of God" and "absence of angels" as principles of physics.

VII

S asi58

Young earth creationism is only a protestant thing, right?

Sola scriptura is a poor way to understand the natural world.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@S asi58 "Young earth creationism is only a protestant thing, right?"

Not the least.

"Sola scriptura is a poor way to understand the natural world."

It's a poor way to understand Church discipline, but it's adequate for the natural world.

ironymatt

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Sorry, but the only thing sola scriptura is adequate for is as a perfect example of the logical fallacy of circular reasoning.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ironymatt In theology, sola scriptura is not so much a circular reasoning as a paradox, a contradiction in terms : in understanding the natural world, however, sola scriptura has no major snags.

Luther et al. were condemned for doing their version of "sola epistola ad hebraeos" about Holy Mass, not for believing in six day creationism.

Ussher was a fake bishop, but Haydock honoured his chronology by including it in margins of the Haydock commented Challoner / Douay Rheims Bible.

If you prefer Syncellus, you are doing same method on other text, namely standard LXX.

Random Ravenclaw

S asi58 there’s no official Catholic position on young/old earth or creationism/evolution, it’s whichever you choose to believe. I personally believe in Evolutionary Creationism (God created every living thing through evolution) and that the Biblical creation story is allegorical.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Random Ravenclaw "S asi58 there’s no official Catholic position on young/old earth or creationism/evolution,"

I think Council of Trent along with consensus of Fathers pretty well rules out old earth and evolutionism (defined as cats and dogs or even less similar evolving from common ancestor).

"it’s whichever you choose to believe."

There is no "pre-Conciliar" (pre-Vatican II) document that says so. In Humani Generis Pius XII gave permission to academically defend a position in which Adam's body evolved. It's an indefensible position, so even defending it academically is intrinsically, if not canonically, wrong, but at least he did not say one had a right to chose to actually believe it. In the very Council (if such) Dei Verbum actually excludes old earth or Adam's body evolving from non-human animals. Check paragraph 3.

"I personally believe in Evolutionary Creationism (God created every living thing through evolution)"

From how many common ancestors?

"and that the Biblical creation story is allegorical."

You do not have that option. The story is literal / historic, it is moral and it is allegoric, all three of them, if not also the fourth, anagogic as well. You cannot pick one out to exclude the other two or three.

For Biblical history, which is the majority of the Bible, there are at least three senses in the OT and at least three senses in NT.

OT : literal history, morality, allegory about the Saviour who was to come (and about His Church and about His Blessed Mother and about their relations to mankind and to their enemies).

NT : literal history, morality and anagogic sense about the glory we are awaiting after death and after resurrection and doomsday.

Check Summa Theologiae, I, Q1, A10 (prima pars, questio prima, articulus decimus / first part, first question, tenth article).
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm#article10

I'm quoting the relevant passage:

// I answer that, The author of Holy Writ is God, in whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only (as man also can do), but also by things themselves. So, whereas in every other science things are signified by words, this science has the property, that the things signified by the words have themselves also a signification. Therefore that first signification whereby words signify things belongs to the first sense, the historical or literal. That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual sense, which is based on the literal, and presupposes it. Now this spiritual sense has a threefold division. For as the Apostle says (Hebrews 10:1) the Old Law is a figure of the New Law, and Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. i) "the New Law itself is a figure of future glory." Again, in the New Law, whatever our Head has done is a type of what we ought to do. Therefore, so far as the things of the Old Law signify the things of the New Law, there is the allegorical sense; so far as the things done in Christ, or so far as the things which signify Christ, are types of what we ought to do, there is the moral sense. But so far as they signify what relates to eternal glory, there is the anagogical sense. Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the author of Holy Writ is God, Who by one act comprehends all things by His intellect, it is not unfitting, as Augustine says (Confess. xii), if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Writ should have several senses. //

Did you get it? It is not the text or words of Genesis 1 and 2 that are allegoric, it is the actual literal events described by the text that are a "live role play" version of an allegory.

Quora on Catholicism

Q I

What would be the difference between a Jesuit priest and a non Jesuit priest?
https://www.quora.com/What-would-be-the-difference-between-a-Jesuit-priest-and-a-non-Jesuit-priest/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Answer requested by

Marc Bloemers

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered 1h ago

As regards the priesthood, none. Both can celebrate the Eucharist, both can provide five of the seven sacraments (not Orders or Confirmation which only the bishop provides), both must say Mass daily and say the Hours.

Both can hear confession if they have faculties, neither can hear confession if they haven’t faculties and so on.

As regards other things, well, there are differences between different monastic or other religious orders (Jesuit is one of the orders) in mentality and to that end also in education, in preparation for priesthood.

A joke says a Benedictine, a Carmelite, a Dominican and a Jesuit were meeting in a hotel room to say hours, they were going to a Eucharistic congress next day.

The light went out. The Benedictine knew the hours by heart, so he continued reciting in Latin. The Carmelite switched to silent inner prayer. The Dominican took the Rosary from the belt. The Jesuit went and switched the light bulb.

On a less joke level, one becomes a Benedictine or a Carmelite to sanctify oneself (and Carmelite on a more personal level), one becomes a Dominican or a Jesuit because of some missionary zeal and Dominicans more to cater to Catholics who want to know the doctrine, Jesuit more to cater to hard targets, like hard core missionaries.

Update

explaining the edit from "monastic orders" to "monastic or other religious orders".

Tom Dolan

11h ago

I love your story about the four priests in the hotel room .

“ there are differences between different monastic orders “

Dominicans and Jesuits are not monastic orders .

Benedictine ( and, I think, Carmelites ) are.

In fact Benedictines take vows of obedience, continual reformation of their lives, and stability rather than the vows of evangelical perfection , that is, poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Monastic life arise out of the hermits of the early church in Egypt and elsewhere. Monks withdraw to a certain extent from normal everyday life .

Dominicans and Jesuits are in the everyday hub bub of ordinary life, by design. I apologize if I did not explain this well . I am no expert. I do know some Jesuits as friends.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Original Author

3m ago

I used “monastic” in the broader sense, but I would not have called Dominicans or Jesuits “monks” which I reserve for the narrower sense.

Actually I think Carmelites fall on the friar side of the distinction, but Carthusians are monks properly speaking.

You are correct, I will edit “monastic” to “religious”. I would have used religious if I hadn’t thought the formulation of the question showed very huge ignorance of Catholicism, so I needed a broad brush.

In fact “in the everyday hub hub” properly speaking, that’s secular priests. Religious orders that aren’t monastic are a compromise between the two.

Q II

What science-based evidence for Christianity is consistent with Christian historical claims?
https://www.quora.com/What-science-based-evidence-for-Christianity-is-consistent-with-Christian-historical-claims/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered 2h ago

Any that’s not inconsistent with it.

Computers don’t think, that’s science, animals don’t speak, that’s science, so speech and thought arguing there is a God and we are created in His image is for instance completely consistent with historical claims of Christianity, like Christ Resurrecting or founding the Roman Catholic Church.

Q III

Does the Bible really say that one won't go to heaven if you don't believe in God?
https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Bible-really-say-that-one-wont-go-to-heaven-if-you-dont-believe-in-God/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered 17h ago

To please God, one must first believe that He is (=exists) and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

Quoting [Hebrews 11:6] from memory.

Q IV

Can practicing Catholics celebrate Halloween? Why or why not?
https://www.quora.com/Can-practicing-Catholics-celebrate-Halloween-Why-or-why-not/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered 18h ago

Halloween being All Hallows Eve, one can ask whether Catholics are obliged to fast on the day …

However, this does not preclude souling, the Catholic primary version to “trick and treat”, namely going around asking for soul cakes and ale and then keeping your promise to pray for deceased family members where you get either, and it would also seem that the fasting is over at First Vespers of All Hallows, which means you can eat and drink the ale on that evening.

Q V

Is it possible that the Cathar movement survived the Albigensian Crusade as an underground movement in the Languedoc region of France or elsewhere in Europe, perhaps even into the present day?
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-that-the-Cathar-movement-survived-the-Albigensian-Crusade-as-an-underground-movement-in-the-Languedoc-region-of-France-or-elsewhere-in-Europe-perhaps-even-into-the-present-day/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Answer requested by

Jonathan Grimm

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered 18h ago

Possible?

Yes. Barely.

Likely?

No.

Relevant for Christians?

Christianity can in places be underground, but it cannot be underground everywhere, since that would be against the visibility of the Church God does not light a candle to put it under a bushel.

So, if Albigensian movement survived, but only survived underground, it is already for that reason not the Church Christ founded.

What is likelier?

That Inquisition so effectively vanquished Albigensians, that later heretics had no clue on what they were and unduly identified with them. At the same time, they would have left some kind of sensibilities to both unstable Catholics and later heretics, and this would explain some of the aberrations of the latter.

Medieval Quadrivium and Logarithms (quora)

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Medieval Quadrivium and Logarithms (quora) · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Expressing Logarithms in Points of Royal Feet · Previous Work on Logarithms · Yes, My Method Can Close In on Logarithms

Q

History of Science: You are transported back in time to the Middle Ages. You tell the people that you meet about the time you have come from, of our scientific discoveries and technological wonders. You are taken to a university, using only materials available at the time, what proofs would you show them?
https://www.quora.com/History-of-Science-You-are-transported-back-in-time-to-the-Middle-Ages-You-tell-the-people-that-you-meet-about-the-time-you-have-come-from-of-our-scientific-discoveries-and-technological-wonders-You-are-taken-to-a-university-using-only-materials-available-at-the-time-what-proofs-would-you-show-them/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered Thu

The one advance I would more or less master would be the logarithms. So, I improvise a logarithm table over a few weeks (or even better have one with me in the pocket or learn one by heart before going).

I then use the best ruler they can provide from a craftsman's shop to mark up two long pieces of parchment with alpha at the bottom, beta at 301 points (2 inches, 1 line, 1 point), gamma at 477 points (3 inches, 3 lines, 8 points), and so on and at 1000 points (6 inches, 11 lines, 4 points, I think) I mark iota, and kappa at 1301 and lambda at 1477 lines until the Greek numerals are finished.

I then show them that when the alpha of the one is laid on the gamma of the second, and you count the second until lambda, there you will find a qoppa on the first, that when the alpha of the one is laid on the delta of the second and you count the second to mu, you will on the first find yourself between rho and sigma so it is credible you are at somewhere like rho xi.

Wait, they say, you just have to add and it will multiply?
That is so, I answer.
Would you like to be promoted doctor of arts or at least adjunct of quadrivium?
Why not?

Quoran Medley

Are people reading too much novels with too little culture?

Some answers to Q I suggest that some think teen marriage is automatically forced marriage, because that is a current theme in novels from 19th C. on, and QQ II and III suggest some have taken novel fictional things like constructed languages and fictional bloodlines "from Jesus" as actually factual.

Umberto Eco never had to search for a manuscript by Adso from Melk, if kings had the privilege in France to marry nobility orphans, they usually (despite action of Quentin Durward) did so with regards for feelings of the orphan, not forcing her, Dan Brown never unearthed any secret society called Priory of Sion or found a secret posterity to Our Lord and St. Mary Magdalene, and Tolkien never had to decipher Sindarin, since he constructed it, as much as there is of it, with its grammar, sounds, diverse spellings in tengwar, and its ambiguity between "speak" and "say". Novels are novels. They are made up.

And Disney describing Middle Ages as either very dirty or very prone to see witches in every scientifically enlightened person does not make the Middle Ages so.

Q

How old was Mary (mother of Jesus) when she gave birth to Jesus?
https://www.quora.com/How-old-was-Mary-mother-of-Jesus-when-she-gave-birth-to-Jesus/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered just now

St. Joseph (stepfather of Jesus) was at least 18 (or he would not have been asked to get to census) and according to Proto-Gospel of St. James an older widower.

The Blessed Virgin was arguably a teen, especially according to Proto-Gospel which says she was fianceed to St. Joseph by the high priest after her first menstruation.

There are some people who have found fault with this, shame on them.

Citing Robert Gibbs: "Ask any father: … Would you want your daughter to get married when she is only 13, or 14, years old. Would you believe she was ready to have a child start taking care of a husband and a family at that age?"

Obviously yes, since God has made her body such that she can have children. My only problem would be, whether the authorities of the country would let her do so or if they would allow a sneaky arrangement or if they would outright destroy the household of the newlywed couple.

Citing Nicole Czarnecki twice:

1) "Biblically, Israelites/Jews weren’t even counted in a census until they were 20 years of age. God would never act in a way to contravene His own Word; so, there’s no way that Mary would’ve even become pregnant before the age of 20."

Census has exactly what to do with marriage?

Plus where is the Biblical term for a census? King David's? Moses? I think these were censuses counting men, and their wives may have been younger.

2) "There have been clearly evil people whom have used that justification to justify child marriage in, e.g., every society from the “Holy” Roman Empire to even as recent as 1900s Armenia—as, for instance, Sano Halo was forcibly married to her husband when she was 15 and he was 45."

I regret if anyone was forcibly married to her husband, but the age relation is such is not a problem. I also see no need to demonise either Holy Roman Empire, or 1900's Armenia or South Carolina in 1990's (when a girl married at 12 to quit school and Clinton promised or threatened to make this impossible for the future).

As to the infidels who find fault with Gospels as sources or who doubt Our Lord was not just Her first, but even Her only child, no need to adress such apostates.

EDIT : I checked King David's census, and in II Kings (II Samuel) it speaks of "valiant men" - not of men, women and children. Confer the numberings on the occasions when Our Lord multiplied breads.

EDIT 2 : the “18” figure for Roman taxation I got from a business owner who may not have been so knowledgeable.

Q II

Did Jesus marry Mary Magdalene? The novel Da Vinci Code says that Jesus still has a bloodline protected by some group of Christians.
https://www.quora.com/Did-Jesus-marry-Mary-Magdalene-The-novel-Da-Vinci-Code-says-that-Jesus-still-has-a-bloodline-protected-by-some-group-of-Christians/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered just now

Not while Our Lord was alive.

The novel Da Vinci Code actually doesn't say this is the case, it allows Teabing to say it is the case.

As to after Christ was crucified, check Deuteronomy 25:5-10. Our Lord had no actual widow but a widow could have been designated for the purpose, as I think was the case with Jeremiah who also died celibate.

If such a bloodline came into existence, it would arguably be better known to Judaism.

As to "desposynoi" it means "relatives of the Lord" and this means descendants of Our Lord's brothers and sisters, and among Christians none were singled out as being descended from someone engendered in levirate, since we Christians hold Our Lord is not dead, but rose from the dead and is ever alive, and does not need levirate to have His name preserved. Last time desposynoi were referred to as such was c. 400 AD. They had pleaded for Sabbath keeping or keeping Easter on 14th of Nisan and were asked to step back, being blood relatives of Our Lord's brethren and sisters does not make them bishops.

If there were any left or if there were even a levirate related blood line, there is no need for faithful Catholics to see any problem in it, they would have a certain honour (though inferior to canonised saints) but would not as such have power in the Church. Therefore, stepping forth with a claim to such a relation is no threat to Catholicism per se and no sane Catholic would have any reason to persecute such a blood line, and therefore there would be no need to protect it.

As to the Priory of Sion, it is a fictional secret society, not a historically known one, though the fiction does some name drop into who (among known historical figures) would have been "grand masters" of it. Yolande of Bar was a fine person, but there was no "Priory of Sion" for her to be grandmaster of.

Q III

How do people decipher fictional languages with seemingly random and unfamiliar symbols?
https://www.quora.com/How-do-people-decipher-fictional-languages-with-seemingly-random-and-unfamiliar-symbols

Hans-Georg Lundahl

avid reader back when I had better sleep than now

Answered 44m ago

I presume that by "fictional" you mean things like Quenya and Syldavian.

I don't really know whether "seemingly random and unfamiliar symbols" refers to words and endings or to writing system.

I do know that in novels they are usually used in such a way that the reader doesn't need to.

Strange words are left strange or translated immediately or etc. The author did not need to "decipher" them, since he made them up.

Strange writing systems are sometimes used in comic books as shorthand for untranslated strange languages. Actually, Syldavian is a bit like that, it is nearly Brussels-Flemish with a few added quirks and written with a strange orhography.

When they are really meant as how a fictional language is written, they are usually transliterated, like the picture of the inscription on the Gates of Moria is given with transliteration beneath:

http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/File:J.R.R._Tolkien_-_Doors_of_Durin.jpg

And then Gandalf in the text of the book provides a translation "The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter. I, Narvi, made them. Celebrimbor of Hollin drew these signs." - and then it turns out instead of "Speak, friend, and enter," it should be "say 'friend' and enter".

The ambiguity of the sentence is one of the qualities Tolkien gave the fictional language Sindarin. This should lead to the question how one makes such a thing.

By the way, the technical term is not "fictional language" but "conlang" or "constructed language".

Three QQ on Comparative Linguistics (quora)

Two More QQ Specifically on Proto-Indo-European · Three QQ on Comparative Linguistics (quora)

Q I

Why did the Proto-Indo-European language go extinct but not other ancient classical languages? Was there no grammar, literature or inscriptions of that language?
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Proto-Indo-European-language-go-extinct-but-not-other-ancient-classical-languages-Was-there-no-grammar-literature-or-inscriptions-of-that-language/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Answered 4m ago

Proto-Indo-European is not a classical language.

A Classical language means a langage that is taught as second language for the sake of prestige literature and is no longer a native language.

Classical languages therefore by definition are written languages.

Proto-Indo-European, provided it existed and provided it was different from Hittite (Pyysalo is making a reconstruction so close to Hittite that written Hittite could be a stylised version of it), was not written.

Any language has a grammar, but non-written languages don’t preserve their grammars intact. The written ones that do, eventually do so only in the shape of Classic languages (see above) no longer spoken as native languages.

Many written languages also don’t preserve their grammars, because they don’t have a literature people like to return to, they just write sporadic inscriptions stylising whatever is spoken right then.

Lots of written languages known from inscriptions, and non-written ones known from proper names preserved in Latin or Greek texts (Gaulish and Etruscan for one, Isaurian and Dacian for other) have gone down in the Roman Empire.

Because Proto-Indo-European does not exist in writing, it is difficult to prove it existed as a unitary language. It is not difficult to prove that several “branches of IE” share such and such a word which therefore is older than its presence in all of the ones sharing it (usually for each word fewer than all nine or ten), but since any two “branches” in all documented forms are not mutually intelligible, one cannot prove any of them were genetically related, even though borrowed words obviously are so.

For instance, Italic and Celtic have not been shown at stages when they were mutually intelligible, as they were certainly not in documented times, and neither have Slavic and Baltic.

So, instead of going extinct Proto-Indo-European may have simply never existed as a unitary language.

But if it did, it considerably changed and split up. Either before any written records, or leaving Hittite hieroglyphs or cuneiform as the one record.

Q II

Is there a common root of all languages today, or did they develop individually?
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-common-root-of-all-languages-today-or-did-they-develop-individually/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Answer requested

by Daniel Reynolds

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Answered 20m ago

You neither have each “developing” individually with no common ancestries (definite one for Romance languages in Latin) nor one identifiable common ancestor language of all languages.

According to the Bible with ancient traditional commentary, this situation is fairly normal, since after Babel (Genesis 11) you had 72 (mostly) unrelated languages, including the one spoken before reduced to presence in Hebrew ancestral line.

I don’t know what you mean by “developing”, if you mean language change, I don’t see any real use in calling it “development” or “evolution” and if you mean “developing” from non-human communications like animal sounds or gestures, there is no evidence anywhere of that happening at all.

Q III

What are some languages that are not genetically related but have considerable mutual intelligibility due to excessive borrowing?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-languages-that-are-not-genetically-related-but-have-considerable-mutual-intelligibility-due-to-excessive-borrowing/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Answered 38m ago

I don’t know what you mean by “considerable” mutual intelligibility.

I don’t think English and French are mutually intelligible, but many words can be picked out. Since I know both, I can’t put myself for real in the position of one who only knows one and tries to follow a conversation in the other, except that when I started learning French, I had already a fairly good grasp of English, and French was certainly not intelligible to me without the study.

In other words, when two languages have actual mutual intelligibility, they are genetically related.

Note, languages can also be genetically related without having such mutual intelligibility.

For the words time, tide, cloathes, one can make paradigms for Swedish, German and English.

Sw: timma, Gm -, English: time
Sw: tid, Gm: Zeit, English: tide
Sw: kläder, Gm: Kleider, English: cloathes.

But note, “timma” means hour and for next item English is unique in using tide as abbreviation for the composite tidewater (water changing with the time). So, English has changed the words for hour and time into words for time and tidewater.

However, as you may notice, German lacks the gloss “timma” totally and instead uses “Stunde” and overall there are really too many words that are not the same for this to suffice for mutual intelligibility, though it is certainly a good help in learning the other languages.

Brian Holdsworth's take on HP

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Were the Inklings a Forbidden Society? No. · HGL'S F.B. WRITINGS : Craig Crawford's view on Harry Potter (feat. réprise of his view on Tolkien and CSL, feat. Dan Brown) · CSL Not Arian · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Commenting on Schnoebelen's at al:s comments on HP · Brian Holdsworth's take on HP · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : One Good Thing about Harry Potter : Honest about School

I would begin where he concludes and endorse the freedom he pleads for as to local parents, priests, teachers knowing their children and young adults under their care and therefore doing the decisions best for them.

My main concern is not putting Tolkien and Rowling in the same bag just because both are labelled "fantasy" or involve description of supernatural events.

Catholics and Harry Potter
Brian Holdsworth | 12.X.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqTL49cybZc

I

3:34 There was an argument from an Orthodox who is virulent against not just HP, but Rowling and also Tolkien / Jackson : if someone acted on stage as possessed by evil spirits, he would be dealt with a bit roughly like those normally needing exorcism.

Now, this would preclude acting the Oresteia, since Orestes was hunted by furies.

Why do we still have the text of the Oresteia? My hunch why we have 7 Greek tragedies is, the Church asked monks to copy these as mostly "the black book" of Apollo, Diana, Neptune, Venus, Hercules. By contrast, HP does not actually document the evil of "white" magic, rather it is fictitious and idealises white magic.

When I read Aeneid VI, the Latin "docent" was a man who was / is also a Catholic (Vatican II-sit) clergyman, part time my confessor. His reading of the sibyl was - this is exactly how Voodoo mediums look, and this is obviously what St. Paul had to deal with in Acts 16.

So, while the Pagan literature had some idealisation of demonic activity, it was at least documenting it correctly as to actual cases or typical situations so we could have another look at it.

This is not really the case with HP. If you want fantasy equivalent in closeness to real Paganism, take Earthsea - and while I am happy to have read Ged lost his magic later on, I haven't reread them (perhaps just once, but I don't think so, unless it was Tombs of Atuan) since converting to Catholicism. Taking a close look at the demon and then calling him your own name is precisely what an exorcist should NOT do, it's Freudian, not Christian advice. I reflected on the fact Ursula was an unbeliever and did not believe in real existence of demons, so it is arguably a logical advice from her viewpoint back then.

II

4:38 Plato is more comparable to reading essays by an unbelieving but more or less just person. I like Frans G. Bengtsson (a compatriote, close to Chester-Belloc in style, but non-Christian).

Plato was preserved because of the overarching themes of metaphysical and moral truth in him.

St. Thomas would typically consider such and such an error of Plato or Aristotle as "they didn't have the light of the faith, so they made a mistake here".

Can't find an example right now ... oh, wait, yes:

Reply to Objection 2. The reason alleged is according to the opinion of Aristotle who laid down (Metaph. xi, 8) that the heavenly bodies are moved by spiritual substances; the number of which he endeavored to assign according to the number of motions apparent in the heavenly bodies. But he did not say that there were any spiritual substances with immediate rule over the inferior bodies, except perhaps human souls; and this was because he did not consider that any operations were exercised in the inferior bodies except the natural ones for which the movement of the heavenly bodies sufficed. But because we assert that many things are done in the inferior bodies besides the natural corporeal actions, for which the movements of the heavenly bodies are not sufficient; therefore in our opinion we must assert that the angels possess an immediate presidency not only over the heavenly bodies, but also over the inferior bodies.

Reply to Objection 3. Philosophers have held different opinions about immaterial substances. For Plato laid down that immaterial substances were types and species of sensible bodies; and that some were more universal than others; and so he held that immaterial substances preside immediately over all sensible bodies, and different ones over different bodies. But Aristotle held that immaterial substances are not the species of sensible bodies, but something higher and more universal; and so he did not attribute to them any immediate presiding over single bodies, but only over the universal agents, the heavenly bodies. Avicenna followed a middle course. For he agreed with Plato in supposing some spiritual substance to preside immediately in the sphere of active and passive elements; because, as Plato also said, he held that the forms of these sensible things are derived from immaterial substances. But he differed from Plato because he supposed only one immaterial substance to preside over all inferior bodies, which he called the "active intelligence."

The holy doctors held with the Platonists that different spiritual substances were placed over corporeal things. For Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 79): "Every visible thing in this world has an angelic power placed over it"; and Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 4): "The devil was one of the angelic powers who presided over the terrestrial order"; and Origen says on the text, "When the ass saw the angel" (Numbers 22:23), that "the world has need of angels who preside over beasts, and over the birth of animals, and trees, and plants, and over the increase of all other things" (Hom. xiv in Num.). The reason of this, however, is not that an angel is more fitted by his nature to preside over animals than over plants; because each angel, even the least, has a higher and more universal power than any kind of corporeal things: the reason is to be sought in the order of Divine wisdom, Who places different rulers over different things. Nor does it follow that there are more than nine orders of angels, because, as above expounded (I:108:2), the orders are distinguished by their general offices. Hence as according to Gregory all the angels whose proper office it is to preside over the demons are of the order of the "powers"; so to the order of the "virtues" do those angels seem to belong who preside over purely corporeal creatures; for by their ministration miracles are sometimes performed.

I : Question 110. How angels act on bodies
Article 1. Whether the corporeal creature is governed by the angels?
http://newadvent.com/summa/1110.htm#article1

III

5:20 Perhaps the texts extant in St. Basil's time were mostly documentaries and semi-documentaries like Iliad, Aeneid, tragedies ... written by men recalling true events as best as they could, with some patriotic fan fic extras in Virgil's case, and interpreting them as correctly as they could in the light of their religion - like I think God wanted Ulysses to get back to Ithaca and quit Calypso, but I don't think God means "Zeus and his daughter Athena" as the decision of divine providence is portrayed by Homer.

This is not really the case in Rowling.

IV

5:29 "epics, poetry, fiction"

What fiction?

I have some experience of Latin fiction, namely a) comedy, b) Satyricon (Cena Trimalchionis).

I have trouble seeing St. Basil extending this recommendation to Cena Trimalchionis, I think the one reason to read it is linguistics and as background to what Roman life looked like, when St Peter arrived, and that is not really sth young people should be doing too early, and as to comedy, they always treat the supernatural as a "matter of course" (see Pan in one of the comedies) they don't go into detail on how you make an invocation to ... Diana Trivia. Any magician is as much a side kick to protagonist as Prospero is.

In HP the very most basic situation of precisely protagonists is studying magic. Not just one or two chapters as in A Wizard of Earthsea, but the whole seven books except when applying what they learned.

Tragedy and epic were not seen as fiction by the Church fathers. That Perseus and Andromeda were taken up to heaven and became stars is a lie of Satan, but that they lived before that and Perseus saved Andromeda could as far as Justin Martyr is concerned be fact, and in City of God Athena's non-help to Trojans and her idol getting help from Aeneas is treated as a basic historic fact.

The reasons one can have for studying The Exorcist (based on a real story) do not apply to HP, therefore, neither do the reasons one can have for studying Aeneas.

(While Tolkien's work is also fiction, he was a very avid student of Virgil and some of his works can be seen as meditations on Matthew 24 and Apocalypse).

V

5:37 A very young audience reading Aeneid would in Christian schools not have dwelled long on Aeneas and Dido in the cave ... and the time they did spend with it would have been little actual reading of the story and much moral explanations about it, provided by Servius, not Virgil.

Confer how much Rowling spends on - I suppose - a love triangle between Ron, Hermione and Harry.

"Your parents were thieves?"
"Why do you say that?"
"They stole stars from the sky and put them in your eyes"

Meanwhile, Ron is pining for the girl impressed by Harry's rhetoric ... as far as I have heard. AND all three continue hanging around as friends for years while no one is marrying and no one is actually very chaste either.

I think the worst thing with Rowling, except to the few who actually do become witches or warlocks inspired by HP would be what she has to say about human love.

Confer how Tolkien treats love stories like Eowyn's lost love for Aragorn ....

VI

Hans-Georg Lundahl

6:12 Yes, indeed. I do recommend the literature actually left behind by Pagans.

No "expelliarmus" Latin for me, real Latin, real Greek, real Aeneid etc.

I have also made fairly friendly reviews of a French comic book retelling of some ancient stories (Luc Besson [edit: Luc Ferry] is less unchaste than Apollonius about Hercules' relation to Iolaus - and at that, St. Basil was arguably also recommending Argonautica, though with a young audience, I think some passages were omitted).

Medea actually descending from the Sun god is probably the one actual objection to the likelihood of Argonautica, and since Pagans knew no better, it's not a moral one.

Lexi Noel

Careful! Expelliarmus might be the real incantation..

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Lexi Noel I'm not looking for incantations.

Lexi Noel

Hans-Georg Lundahl it was just a joke. Lol people are saying that they are real..

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Lexi Noel Well, this is another difference to LotR.

I have so far not heard of anyone trying to use "mellon" instead of a door code or "lasto beth lammen" to get a door to magically open.

Lexi Noel

Hans-Georg Lundahl hahaha! Good one! I just don’t understand the problem. There have been fantasy stories like Harry Potter and lotr forever. What makes jk Rowling worse than like David Eddings?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Lexi Noel I haven't read David Eddings.

I think there are two schools. Dunsany, Rowling and a few more allow witches to be goodies. Tolkien and esp. Lewis do not.

I think the second approach is the correct one.

I also think, the first one is less harmful in proportion as it's just humorous and more if it's serious.

As I haven't read HP, I cannot comment on where HP comes in that scale.

But the thing I was commenting on was, the Pagan literature the Church kept actually is good. They were not confronting young students to Satyricon or to actual instruction books in magic (neither is HP such a thing, but it is about these being "useful" to study as a central part of the setting - which of course need not be the theme of the story : I think other themes are clear and bad, like love life of Ron).

[added link to full post here]

VII

6:36 I think St. Basil is even the inspiring force behind "expurgated versions" "ad usum delphini" etc.

In other words, if Iliad one place says a Trojan named Kyknos (meaning swan) was killed by a man pushing his shield violently to the root of his nose, I think that passage was in fact skipped for early readers.

The idea of learning all of the Iliad by heart was probably more prevalent when Greek (esp. Athenian) citizens were formed into machos. It also involved other things St. Basil would not have approved, like pederasty (with the sodomitic action not recommended or seen as fine, but tolerated).

In the Latin West, there were books to be read before the Eneid.

Starting point was Cato, Avianus, Ilias Latina (1070 verses, absolutely not same work as Homer's Iliad), Ecloga of Theodulus.

Source, p. 67 in Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-century England: Texts
By Tony Hunt
https://books.google.fr/books?id=gdfJ3FOT5yUC&dq=liber+catonianus&source=gbs_navlinks_s

VIII

7:13 I think his earliest drafts for Silmarillion are much more pagan than what was published after his death in Silmarillion and in Unfinished Tales, and what he published himself was even less pagan.

As to "myth" we need to distinguish.

The inspiration for Silmarillion from the start is seeing a pagan pantheon as the stories could have been before idolatry corrupted the stories of creation and so on - with angels starring as "gods" of a pantheon (like in Thor by Marvel Comics), but not being worshipped with latreia (dito for Marvel Comics Thor).

He discarded more and more as it could have been an actual invitation to the specifically idolatrous or pagan properly so called myths about gods.

As to myths about heros, they are not inherently pagan.

Hercules and Väinämöinen are told from pagan viewpoints (Homeric polytheism and Finnish Shamanism), but parts of the stories could have happened to real people (Church Fathers have held this about Hercules, Romulus and obviously the heros of the Trojan War) and the "pagan" background could be seen as how they were understood erroneously by their societies (no Christian would believe Zeus made a son called Hercules, some have said "Hercules was a strong man, not (a) g/God").

When a pagan is describing gods creating the world, he is inventing or being deceived by demons and deforming the memories people would have retained after Babel. When a pagan is describing his heros, he may be only deceived as to their invisible relation to the gods rather than to the one true God.

7:37 Gandalf is perhaps "part of a pantheon" but that pantheon can be seen as a heavenly court of the true God. He also does not accept idolatrous worship. Morgoth, Sauron and perhaps at times Saruman (from orcs and perhaps easterlings if not from free men) are expelled from it, i e fallen angels.

In literary style, you have as much a pantheon in Silmarillion (but not in LotR) as you have in Marvel's Thor. In theology, you have as little endorsement of idol worship as you have in Thor. Whether Stanley Lieberman, better known to most as Stan Lee actually believed the Torah or not, he would probably have been allergic to endorsing idol worship - including of Thor or Odin.

I do most certainly not treat everything Pagan as merely demonic for that reason alone. Idolatry is demonic, but pagans have more to say about their gods and heros than just worshipping them.

Can doctors swear by Apollo and Asclepius? Renaissance theologians argued "yes, if these were ethnic saints, not demons" = people divinised after they lived.

St. Luke had probably been part of their school for healers before he became a Christian. (I think Byzantine stories about his having been a Jew and one of the Seventy may be suspect of being Puritan "expurgation" of the real story).

Obviously, I would not share that approach when it comes to Apollo of Delphi, whom I take to be a real demon.

Latin Linguistics on Quora

Q I

When did Latin and Old French stop being mutually intelligible?
https://www.quora.com/When-did-Latin-and-Old-French-stop-being-mutually-intelligible

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered Apr 8, 2019

When Latin stopped being the written reference for the spoken language, which is before one can speak of actual Old French.

One needs a generation of speakers who had never been used to Latin in Church sounding like an oldfashioned version with many archaic words and forms of their own language, to whom Latin had all their life been a distinct language.

In the region of Tours, Latin became a distinct language between 800 and 813, due to Alcuin of York changing the pronunciation, but you cannot speak of Old French as long as those born after 813 are not the oldest generation yet, since the spoken language would still have a bit too many traces of diglossia to be properly non-Latin.

Q II

Why isn't Latin natively spoken anymore while Greek survived even though both were extremely common languages of the pivotal Roman Empire?
https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-Latin-natively-spoken-anymore-while-Greek-survived-even-though-both-were-extremely-common-languages-of-the-pivotal-Roman-Empire

Answer requested

by Ellie Williams

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered Sep 28, 2019

Modern Greek is about as close or far from Classic Greek as Italian or Romanian from Latin, except for two things:

• 1) Greek has mainly kept its spelling
• 2) Classic Greek has for long (up to 1970) been felt as standard while modern Greek has been seen as substandard alternative forms for Classic Greek, leading to a spectrum between fullblown Classic and fairly un-Classic Dhimotiki, with a whole ranger between.

By contrast:

• 1) Latin spelling has been reused after a while of phonetic drift for a restored Classicising pronunciation;
• 2) Italian has become its own standard without loosing contact with Latin;
• 3) Romanian has lately become its own standard, but only after having Bulgarian replace Latin as the standard or prestige language. While Bulgarian or Old Church Slavonic was the standard written language, Romanian could obviously not be felt as a substandard form of it, it was a substandard language.

Q III

Was the language of the city-state of Rome at the dawn of its creation Latin like their neighboring Latin tribes? Or did they have their own regional language before adopting Latin as their official one?
https://www.quora.com/Was-the-language-of-the-city-state-of-Rome-at-the-dawn-of-its-creation-Latin-like-their-neighboring-Latin-tribes-Or-did-they-have-their-own-regional-language-before-adopting-Latin-as-their-official-one

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered Sep 30, 2019

Latin was the language only of Lazio - about the area between Rome and Praeneste.

Other parts of Italy had other languages which have disappeared.

Q IV

How different is the ancient Latin language from the modern Latin language? Can any Latin-speaking people testify if they understand Classical Latin of Cicero’s Republic, et al.?
https://www.quora.com/How-different-is-the-ancient-Latin-language-from-the-modern-Latin-language-Can-any-Latin-speaking-people-testify-if-they-understand-Classical-Latin-of-Cicero-s-Republic-et-al

Answer requested

by Matthew Barry

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered Oct 16, 2019

I understand Cicero when reading, I am not sure I would understand him completely if hearing him.

However, there are Latinists better than I.

I have also concentrated on Medieval Latin, so I would understand St. Thomas Aquinas much better than I would understand Cicero. Many have opposite priority.

There are two ways of pronouncing Latin still used today (the other ones were either well before Cicero or between Cicero and St. Thomas, like in the days of St. Gregory of Tours, or the one Alcuin of York replaced with “Medieval” - standard Medieval - Latin in Tours). I use the Medieval one, though I have been taught both, so I would already by pronunciation be closer to St. Thomas. There too others have the opposite priority.

I would say most Latinists with Ancient / Classical as opposed to Medieval priority, if good, would passively understand all of Cicero even orally, but actively have a syntax somewhat “tainted” by modern languages (in Medieval Latin that is not a fault).

Both of us would know words and word uses for things invented or changed since the days of Cicero. I would call a blog “bloggus” and a Classicising Latinist would probably be more likely to call it an “ephemeridium electronicum”.

Commenting on Schnoebelen's at al:s comments on HP

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Were the Inklings a Forbidden Society? No. · HGL'S F.B. WRITINGS : Craig Crawford's view on Harry Potter (feat. réprise of his view on Tolkien and CSL, feat. Dan Brown) · CSL Not Arian · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Commenting on Schnoebelen's at al:s comments on HP · Brian Holdsworth's take on HP · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : One Good Thing about Harry Potter : Honest about School

Hidden Evil in Harry Potter - Bill Schnoebelen
BRMinistries | 21.I.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0k770S37Tk

I

Two questions:

• 1) Would you say the same things about Narnia or about LotR?
• 2) Do you think Rowling is a believing occultist planning this, or do you take her word for it, she doesn't believe it and that is why she thinks it is harmless, even if she is wrong?

One answer on my part: Ron Weasley in upper case in ASCII adds up to 777 - a number of perfection - and so much, of what I have heard about the books/films is about perfection being taken away from him, his being debased by sexual feelings misplaced due to coed teen school setting and some more bad stuff.

I think the "love triangle" in Harry, Hermione and Ron is somehow bad enough, even if there were no occultism or even if all occult was approached purely by ridicule (as in "magic school Abracadabra" which I think she used parts of, it's a comic book), and in ways which would not be instructive to the curious, that alone would be corrupting reading for the young.

The writer and book critic who warned me of Harry Potter back in the nineties, was a Catholic priest and a fan of both CSL and JRRT - he says Rowling is very different - learning "discretion" and keeping disobediences secret even by lying and so on was so much part of HP ethos.

I never read one, never borrowed one on the library.

Dan Brown, I read two, and I dislike his world view. Or the one voiced by Robert Langdon and masons. But it is arguably one he is himself promoting, especially as he is known to be an apostate. HP, not one. I read scraps on the internet or summaries, not one book.

As to HP, I think I was even allergic in advance after four years on a boarding school.

Before going to boarding school, I could read two novels from Austria about that kind of thing, after the four years, I have trouble rereading them.

19:56 HP being rebellious, liar and cheating is obviously one of the things the Catholic priest (it could have been Monsignor Williamson) brought up.

II

23:22 In this context, it is not just Harry Potter.

I saw one Pirates of the Caribbean and had enough. The solution to the curse was, a man holding a coin from cursed treasure was shot through the hand and his blood dripped over the gold, obviously first touching the coin he held.

And the beings that had cursed and then lifted the curse were - Aztek gods.

Greek gods make a certain point in the Psalms of David come home if you study them close enough ... when I was a child, I liked Poseidon or Apollo as imaginary figures. Then comes a day when I study their actions in Greek tragedy at University ... I came to conclude, Poseidon posing as father to Theseus and Apollo manipulating Laius, Oedipus, Iocasta into making that family a total misery of kinslaying and incest, yes, they were real and they were real demons, and that is how powerful demons were before Calvary and before the Catholic Church converted the nations.

HarmonicWave

The Greek gods were fictional characters based on true stories of Nephilim hybrids, part fallen angel, part human. The fallen angels who fathered them were punished (in part) by watching their children kill each other off (where the Clash of the Titans came from).

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@HarmonicWave Laius, Oedipus and Iocasta are not nephelim, they are just people.

Apollo of Delphi who plays a major role in their ill fate is arguably also not a nephelim, but simply Apollyon or at least a Pythonic spirit.

He never acts on stage, he is always represented by a seer or by the oracle of Delphi.

So, it could very well be the real story of a demon fooling gullible pagans. I think it is.

III

25:40 Now, one could argue there is a difference between fantasising of kissing a cheek and fantasising of a fullblown visual coitus.

Similarily, one could argue there is a difference between fantasising unrealistic and non serious magic and fantasising of sth very close to the "real thing".

Obviously, one should distinguish if the thing envisaged is really magic (if Gandalf is supposed to be a spiritual being having taken body, he has powers of spiritual beings without compact with bad ones, and the one thing which looks like a spell is in fact looking for a password to a door opening automatically to that kind of thing).

And also if the magic envisaged is portrayed as attractive (Frodo's being drawn to the ring is not an attractive thing, it's porttrayed as a danger to the soul).

I think these criteria would come down fairly hard on HP.

IV

26:28 "he loves Jesus - he did, I mean he's dead now"

If he's in either Heaven or Purgatory, he still loves Jesus.

Only if he's in Hell has he ceased doing so ...

As he was not a Catholic, I put him in a category comparable to Terence (who died a Montanist, also a heresy), that is, not everything he said or wrote is good.

V

27:52 Correction : runes are not inherently pagan.

In early centuries of Christianity in Sweden, clerks wrote Latin in the Latin alphabet, but peasants or large farmers wrote rune Swedish in runes - with often Christian content, like recently they found the oldest Hail Mary, or when such and such a stone asks for prayers for a deceased one, or when it says such and such one died as a pilgrim or crusader.

VI

30:34 Nicholas Flamel being an alchemist in the Medieval sense doesn't make him an occultist in the modern sense.

He may well have been Christian, certainly professed it.

His birthday being 666 years before 1996 is a simple fact of history and mathematics, which probably drew Rowling to the occult as a subject matter - treating him as less Christian than he was, for instance.

He is in Europe sufficiently well known to be on wiki both French and English (but wiki is after that book was written) and arguably quite a few encyclopedias too.

30:43 Some overdo the extent of channeling, by ignoring the extent of humanly available learning.

Rowling needed no channeling to know about Nicolas Flamel, for instance.

(Some may have pretended either my language skills or my historic knowledge or my capacity to write music could be channeled, they are not, they are all within learning that was humanly available to me).

And some might also overdo channeling as opposed to simple creativity.

VII

30:54 How she knows the Scriptural part?

She's part of formerly Church of England, later Church of Scotland.

These British "communions" have a very modernist attitude as to actually believing Scripture, but they do know them.

Another "mystery" that can be solved without either conspiracies (more secret than British Liberal Theologian Protestantism, that is) or channeling.

Scandinavian Liberal Lutheranism is much the same, there is a reason why I had to leave it, becoming Catholic.

VIII

35:04 If everyone was reading HP anyway back then ("fortunately" not the case) Jesus would perhaps have made parables about situations in the books - but without actually endorsing them as such.

I think, for instance, Woden had practised witchcraft and drawn men like Tewe with him into posing as idols - and even so, Jesus seems to reference how they were maimed (Woden had pulled his right eye out, Tewe had sacrificed his right arm as hostage in the mouth of a wolf monster, according to the myths, now, I don't think Tewe had actually made such a deal with a person actually in the body of a wolf, but he would have lacked his right arm).

Btw, if you are uncertain of whom I am talking about, I hesitate between them being Druids and them actually being the Yeshu of the earlier parts of the carreer of the Talmudic Yeshu ("who" is if so a conflation between that man and Our Lord being compared to him, at least in Toledoth Yeshu literature - as to the Talmudic passages, they could be referring to two different men, with the execution passages taking notes from Crucifixion and martyrdoms of Apostles, but without the Romans).

Bonus : Thunor may have repented, gone back to Holy Land, settled as a fisherman. Boanerges in the vocative does not mean "you are sons of thunder" it means "you make moans like mooing oxen" and what would that have to do with "because sons of thunder" unless they were moaning about being teased on family history of the less reputable type?

IX

37:26 If you ask me, the Devil will not by himself retain that much power over them.

He'll try to take some back with Abaddon and Antichrist, but he is losing the powers he had.

Why?

New blog on the kid : Fatima in Portugal was 102 years ago
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/10/fatima-in-portugal-was-102-years-ago.html

X

40:20 Why would someone want to go to a school of witchcraft?

Two possibilities?

• 1) To learn witchcraft.
• 2) Or because they are basically taught witchcraft (abortion, contraception, psychiatry, psychology) anyway in most "normal" schools.

Part of the attraction may be less (to many school age readers) the witchcraft as such and more the satire it provides on ordinary modern school life and boarding school life, which many young people are exposed to unvoluntarily and without the fun. These may have been the readers Rowling herself had in mind.

Abortion, contraception, psychiatric medication = potion mixing, potion lore.
Psychiatry, psychology, the kind of forecasts by which abortion and contraception are recommended = divination.

XI

41:21 Unmet needs - some of them come with certain sacraments, like marriage.

You know, today's society are holding young adults unproductive, infertile and celibate longer than they would naturally need to, and both higher legal marriage ages and longer school compulsion (legal and practical) are part of that.

Now HP does not only talk of witchcraft, it also talks of love and friendship in a setting were three people old enough to be in love are considered as too young to marry. Rowling is preaching what you preach : let friendship prime over love, as long as society bans marriage. Only, she is showing what it takes - her Ron Weasley has more humility over not just the Dumbledores but also the Harry Potters when it comes to not marrying Hermione.

In the end, he does marry her after all - but Rowling after publishing the book said it was a mistake.

As said, I have not read HP. I know such details from second hand sources.

Some of the things that are wrong with Hogwarts are also so wrong with today's society.

Here are three posts featuring what's wrong with these things - from a not purely Christian pov:

25 Things That Are Wrong With Harry Potter (That We All Choose To Ignore)
BY ZOOEY NORMAN – ON MAR 10, 2018 IN LISTS
https://www.thegamer.com/things-that-are-wrong-with-harry-potter-that-we-all-choose-to-ignore/

Things we realised about Harry Potter when we became older and wiser
https://www.wizardingworld.com/features/things-we-realised-about-harry-potter-when-we-became-older-and-wiser

20 Things Wrong With Hogwarts We All Choose To Ignore
BY JORDAN PHILLIPS – ON MAR 06, 2019 IN LISTS
https://screenrant.com/hogwarts-everything-wrong-trivia/

These reactions could have been just as much Rowling's intention as the clearly disclaimed one of getting young into witchcraft. I'm not saying this as publicity for HP, I'm saying it as a defense of the person of the writer.

And examplifying that "unmet needs" may be driving readers, because they are unmet in Hogwarts as much as in mundane life, just in a funnier way.

XII

42:25 [Galatians chapter 5] [19] Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, [20] Idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects, [21] Envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God.

Note St. Paul is talking of sexual immorality first.

And yet, so far, this Christian rant on HP has not mentioned how Ron, Hermione and Harry relate.

If Rowling takes it easy, perhaps that is because modern Protestant Christians do take it easy ... "they'll marry later and make it up with God then" - but what if they don't?

Cassie may have made up all her faults with God, when, famously, she said yes. I'm not sure all in her "Church" are going to Heaven - and the young people shot were more numerous than just a few Christian perhaps martyrs, that day when Klebold shot others and himself. How many of them are in Hell?

And how many ... well, there are arguably literature for young giving even worse advice in unhappy love than Rowling does. A certain Clinton was furious back in 1994 or 1995 because a 12 year old girl could legally quit school to marry an old man. What are you doing to reverse those policies?

43:35 As you mentioned hatred - how many young in schools are in situations when hatred is, barring very extreme heights of grace, impossible to avoid?

How many are, for instance, bullied? And not just a short while, but year after year?

Perhaps some parents who don't want their offspring to read HP should take a good look into the books to find out what they are already exposed to without HP. I am already aware of that, I don't really need HP to tell me that.

Modern education systems are damning young children by millions. Young adults (sorry) by millions.

XIII

46:58 I think this is the second time but it could be third or more this video Bill Schnoebelen uses the word "addicted".

It's a word based in a psychiatric world view, which is kind of ... divination.

The girl who had read the whole series in 12 months may need something even gorier and more witchcrafty next twelve months, but she may also have been studying the love triangle of Ron, Hermione and Harry, or how they defend themselves against the bullying of Malfoy, and she may also have been studying narrative structure ... it is obvious she loves the books, but we need not assume it is the witchcraft as such she is in love with.

If she then says she wants to be a witch and it's obvious she's serious, that is another matter, but just the twelve readings, not necessarily, no.

The power of magicians, once you imagine having or being able to easily gain it, may be very addictive. So is the power of psychiatrists, including addictologists. To my mind, that is divination way beyond the dabbling level.

XIV

47:40 When I was in preparatory year of IB, unless it was already ninth grade, I was around a cabbalist who definitely was into kabbalah and using hypnosis for séances, perhaps including Ouija boards.

I don't say I participated, but he and his pals made fun of me for not participating.

I was an outcast for other things (like one of the fattest and worst cases of pimples) and became an outcast for that refusal too. HP at least shows clearly, boarding schools can be schools of wizardry. Again, not saying young should read it, saying you should read it again from the angle "what if this is a way too realistic lampoon on what the young are going through anyway?"

XV

50:00 I notice, the video is from 2019, but the show was from back when HP was just four books, not all seven.

That makes it between 8 July 2000 and 21 June 2003.

No, I don't have this from channeling, I used wikipedia. And, as obviously mentioned, also not into Potter geekdom (beyond details that now or then catch my eye, like a post "16 things that are so wrong in Harry Potter" which I didn't find again, but was by a young lady).

50:11 When it comes to the modern school system, I think there is other light needing to come on too.

51:06 It seems HP like Daniel portrays "Voldemort" (alias Assyrian) as one armed (and one eyed).

As you mentioned.

So, she provides some literacy, roundabout way.

Patrick Coffin on James Martin "SJ"

Papal Support for Fr. James Martin, SJ
PatrickCoffin.media | 5.X.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwad37-9s2E

2:47 Where is there any "teaching that LGBT people must be celibate all their lives"?

NOT in tradition, and also NOT in Mgr Chaput. Hopefully.

He did mention people with that orientation can live married lives according to the ordinary norms of Christian marriage - obvously with someone of the opposite sex.

That Josh Weed recently divorced to grant his wife the "right" to a heterosexual capable of loving her better doesn't mean that they weren't lawfully married (either sacramentally or naturally, depending on validity or not of Mormon baptisms).

It means over expectations on what you have a right to in marriage are encroaching on Mormons' marital moral theology - at least Josh Weed's and his wife's.

Yes, a woman has a prior right to marry a heterosexual as well as marrying a homosexual (if she dares that, which she did), and she has the right to marry a tall guy or a shorty, an athlete or a geek and so on ... once a choice is made, some of these rights have been wavered in favour of fidelity.

Too bad they didn't get that, hope some married (lawfully) homosexuals do.

So, what is James Martin talking about? Perhaps an ambiguity in a statement by "Paul VI" antipope of ill memory.

3:04 Homosexual is not primarily a moral term about a behaviour (the behaviour is called "sodomy" about the act and "sodomite" about the perpetrator). It's a psychological term about a mental predisposition.

Robert Barron and his path

On the note of "born pre-1918" · Robert Barron and his path

Bishop Barron on His Theological Path
Bishop Barron / Bishop Robert Barron | 3.X.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB6w4miLEc8

I

Speaking of Lubac ... how could he write Medieval Exegesis, first chapter dedicated to the Four Senses, and miss that each of the four is obliging - the literal as well as the anagogic, moral and allegoric ones.

Bc, some seem to have this idea that it's obliging to believe any Scripture passage in at least one of them, but you needn't believe all of them. You do.

And he died on the day of St. Moses!

Arguably the Prophet and Godseer either came to assist at his judgement to Hell, or told him "I have a few things to tell you which you might want to revise while you do Purgatory"

DeClue's Views

Have you read his Medieval Exegesis? The three spiritual senses are rooted in the literal sense, and de Lubac knows this. But the literal sense is sometimes not to be taken "literally" the way fundamentalism often does. By that, it is meant that, for example, a poem is to be read literally as poetry not as propositional prose. This is where biblical fundamentalism often gets it wrong. The literal sense of Genesis is not that God made the earth in 6 days, for instance. I'd be curious to hear exactly what you find offensive in de Lubac's Medieval Exegesis. I think the problem here, again, is that people erroneously lump in de Lubac with "some" who do X, Y, or Z that he had nothing to do with. It gets frustrating when someone like de Lubac is accused of errors committed by others. It's like people point to the problems in Catholic theology today and blame de Lubac indiscriminately, often without actually having read any of his work. I highly recommend to anyone that they read "The Splendor of the Church." It is an absolutely beautiful theology of the Church written by de Lubac and is totally Catholic in every legitimately sense of the word.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@DeClue's Views "Have you read his Medieval Exegesis?"

No, I have read I pars, Q 1, A 10.

"The three spiritual senses are rooted in the literal sense, and de Lubac knows this."

Fine with that. Do all of his admirers know it? I think if some think they can opt for "allegoric" (one of the spiritual ones) instead of literal, these would be ignoring that.

"But the literal sense is sometimes not to be taken "literally" the way fundamentalism often does. By that, it is meant that, for example, a poem is to be read literally as poetry not as propositional prose."

Where in the Middle Ages anywhere, Bible exegesis or elsewhere, do you find, "poetry is not propositional"?

Using figures of speech, one word or phrase translating to meaning literally another one, fine. Poems may be richer in this, but there is no real difference between poetry and prose in that respect.

Someone has argued "under the shadow of thy wings" in a psalm is not literal, but when a boy spreads out his arms in cruciform shape, he is usually playing at being a bird or airplane, that is sth which has wings, and therefore this literally refers to Adam and Eve in Sheol finding rest when Christ on the Cross (He's God, remember) spread out His arms on the Cross as a boy playing at birds.

"The literal sense of Genesis is not that God made the earth in 6 days, for instance."

Heaven, earth and all in it .... where does Lubac support that, if he does?

Because, to St. Thomas, it fairly arguably is the literal sense of Genesis 1 recapitulated in Exodus 20 on Sabbath commandment.

St. Augustine was respected, but his one moment creation was not followed except in ways accomodating literal six days. St. Thomas knew the other Church Fathers, except him and Origen, considered the creation days as literal.

"It gets frustrating when someone like de Lubac is accused of errors committed by others. It's like people point to the problems in Catholic theology today and blame de Lubac indiscriminately, often without actually having read any of his work."

How come his admirers are so keen on opposing Fundamentalist exegesis, which very well matches the first, literal, sense?

I don't claim to have read him, but I do claim to conclude from his admirers he didn't warn them against very shady moves with Genesis 1. He was far from first, Father Vigouroux proposed a compromise which could be characterised as "Day Age Theory", Mancenot who refuted that very soundly proposed what is referred to as Framework Theory, six days being a literary framework. But Lubac would have known there were neither a Vigouroux nor a Mancenot among orthodox Medieval exegetes.

II

2:58 Didn't one ex-Fascist also work on GaSp?

I mean some of the things in it read much better in a local and temporal context from back when Dom Helder Camara was a you Integralista. Some could have been penned - without absurdity, as long as it's about the then Brazil - by Plinio Salgado himself.

But they are rubbish if extended to all space and all time or even all time remaining since then and all space - like Church sharing all the concerns of everyone especially the poorest.

You can say that when many poor fathers are asking "will I be able to revise catechism with the children after Mass on Sunday", but hardly when they are asking "will he drop out from school, my boy?" You see, catechism is salvific, school isn't.

Or was Dom Helder Camara on another "document" of that "council"?

Note very well, Camara is one man I mostly respect in the Vatican II sect - and Salgado too.

III

4:59 Wait, you said Lubac was silenced "in the fifties"?

After Pius XII had made his arguably Honorius like move with Humani Generis not condemning outright the idea of non-human ancestors to Adam's body? Or, not fully human ones etc?

7:19 "rather a kind of Middle Path between the two"

Wouldn't he have rationally speaking preferred being more conservative than Pius XII?

And I think you answered the query on how he stood to literalism in Genesis (very clearly demanded by more than one of "his" heroes) by stating he was with Ratzinger on the review "communio". Ratzinger famously in 1990's full out helped Wojtyla betray this. CCC - first all Church Catechism from Rome which is NOT Young Earth Creationist and at least compatible (Pius X) with Geocentrism. Work of Ratzinger under Wojtyla.

IV

9:35 communio - comparable to Stalin : neither Czarist nor faithful to all of Leninism (not saying strict Leninism and concilium aren't worse than communio and Stalin).

V

10:15 Considering "communio" was nothing like YEC or Geocentric, it's wishful thinking to imagine it was not caving in to contemporary culture.

If you want a conversation without concession, don't look on Lubac, look on Chesterton, or to some extent Tolkien. But note, they were overtly scathing about aspects of it.

For that matter CSL, but making allowance for his errors as an Anglican (his at least initial rejection of YEC position is arguably due to "bishop" Gore). And for needing to reject them, as you reject the Montanism of Terence (not Hill, the early patristic era writer).

Bishop Robert Barron

Tell me precisely where you think Henri de Lubac "caved in" to the culture?! I would like specific books and citations.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Bishop Robert Barron I think diocese of Paris, Ratzinger, Wojtyla are three instances who are sufficiently loyal to his positions for "guilt by association" to somewhat work. Though the procedure is obviously normally very risky.

Take Ratzinger's involvement in a document on Bible exegesis, condemning Fundamentalism in the timespan 1992 - 1994, take the new Christmas proclamation ("unknown ages after" for "2957 after" Creation), take his and obviously Wojtyla's involvement in CCC, and both, like Lubac, "communio" men, and take the allergia Paris archdiocese with suffragan dioceses surrounding it has shown to my Young Earth Creationist work, on this basis I think one can safely presume Lubac was no YEC or Geocentric.

You tell me where he wrote and spoke about how to interpret Genesis now as opposed to how the Medievals did, I'll find a quotation if I can access the text.

If I am wrong, you tell me a text or quote, in which Lubac advocated Young Earth Creationism as a position that can be held now.

Obviously, as all this happened 92-94 after he died in 91, I could be wrong.

I do not quite think I am so. I do not think his friends waited till his death to betray his positions.

Plus, confer the comment of mine which starts:

// 2:58 Didn't one ex-Fascist also work on GaSp? //

Meaning Dom Helder Camara (who considered his erstwhile Integralismo a "péché de jeunesse" / "ungdomssynd" however you say that in English) having lived in Brazil, before the telenovelas, had excuses which Lubac did not have for claiming the Church shares the joy and sorrow, hopes and fears of people, especially the poorest.

While Latin doesn't have definite article for the title words, vernacular translations arguably have.

"Les joies et les espoirs, les tristesses et les angoisses des hommes de ce temps,"

Definite article. In Lubac's language.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_fr.html

Same text:

"57.5. Certes, le progrès actuel des sciences et des techniques qui, en vertu de leur méthode, ne sauraient parvenir jusqu’aux profondeurs de la réalité, peut avantager un certain phénoménisme et un certain agnosticisme, lorsque les méthodes de recherche propres à ces disciplines sont prises, à tort, comme règle suprême pour la découverte de toute vérité. Et même on peut craindre que l’homme se fiant trop aux découvertes actuelles, en vienne à penser qu’il se suffit à lui-même et qu’il n’a plus à chercher de valeurs plus hautes.

"6. Cependant ces conséquences fâcheuses ne découlent pas nécessairement de la culture moderne et de doivent pas nous exposer à la tentation de méconnaître ses valeurs positives. Parmi celles-ci, il convient de signaler : le goût des sciences et la fidélité sans défaillance à la vérité dans les recherches scientifiques, la nécessité de travailler en équipe dans des groupes spécialisés, le sens de la solidarité internationale, la conscience de plus en plus nette de la responsabilité que les savants ont d’aider et même de protéger les hommes, la volonté de procurer à tous des conditions de vie plus favorables, à ceux-là surtout qui sont privés de responsabilité ou qui souffrent d’indigence culturelle. Dans toutes ces valeurs, l’accueil du message évangélique pourra trouver une sorte de préparation, et la charité divine de celui qui est venu pour sauver le monde la fera aboutir."

So, the text is proning, basically "Rohan needs Orthanc" ... I suppose you are sufficiently aware of LotR to see what I am hinting at.

No, that is really and truly giving modern science to much credit, both as to its finding of factual truth and as to its beneficence in moral truth.

Example:

What if your child's school made a life altering decision for your child without your input?
Alliance Defending Freedom | 7.X.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQGDAhJoDkw

What's behind that? The progress of human sciences!

"31.1. Pour que chacun soit mieux armé pour faire face à ses responsabilités, tant envers lui-même qu’envers les différents groupes dont il fait partie, on aura soin d’assurer un plus large développement culturel, en utilisant les moyens considérables dont le genre humain dispose aujourd’hui. Avant tout, *l’éducation des jeunes, quelle que soit leur origine sociale, doit être ordonnée de telle façon qu’elle puisse susciter des hommes et des femmes qui ne soient pas seulement cultivés, mais qui aient aussi une forte personnalité,* car notre temps en a le plus grand besoin."

This education equality and the supposed needs to forge a personality among age peers (lots of them, like in a class room) is obviously one obstacle to parental liberties.

In other words, Lubac and Dom Helder don't seem too fond of parental liberties in education. This was more like what I was looking for.