A Follow Up After Josef G. Mitterer? Presenting Joseph Foster ...

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: A Follow Up After Josef G. Mitterer? Presenting Joseph Foster ... · Creation vs. Evolution: Do Historic Books Have Metaphors?

Q

What was the time span between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic?
https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-time-span-between-Proto-Indo-European-and-Proto-Germanic/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

23.III.2024

I’ll answer the question in BC dates.

According to mainstream near consensus:

3300 - 500 = 2800 years.

According to Alinei and apparently Renfrew:

8000 - 500 = 7500 years.

If we reduce the PIE starting points in archaeology to my Biblical recalibration:

1868 - 500 = 1368 years for Yamnaya
2511 - 500 = 2011 years or
2556 - 500 = 2056 years for Neolithic Anatolian Farmers / Anatolian Neolithic Farmers / ANF.

To get from PIE to Proto-Germanic is not a problem on the Biblical timescale and also not on conventional time scales.

To get from PIE to documented Mycenaean Greek and Hittite is another question. Conventional dates first.

3300 - 2000 = 1300 years Hittite from Yamnaya
3300 - 1600 = 1700 years Mycenaean Greek from Yamnaya

8000 - 2000 = 6000 years Hittite from ANF
8000 - 1600 = 6400 years Mycenaean Greek from ANF

Then my recalibrations.

1868 - 1610 = 258 years Hittite from Yamnaya
1868 - 1511 = 357 years Mycenaean Greek from Yamnaya

2511 - 1610 = 901 years or
2556 - 1610 = 941 years Hittite from ANF

2511 - 1511 = 1000 years or
2556 - 1511 = 1045 years Mycenaean Greek from ANF.

So, this is the part which makes me sceptic about Mycenaean Greek, Hittite and Germanic languages sharing a common origin in a single language spoken especially in the Yamnaya culture. The three “branches of Indo-European” do share common traits, and these have to be accounted for by either a common single language or a common ancestral area where languages neighboured each other. When it comes to an origin among Anatolian Neolithic Farmers, it’s less incredible, butu on the other hand the area would both Biblically for back after Babel, and archaeologically for times around Hittite and Hattic and other ones be one where different languages neighboured each other.

23.III.2024

Joseph Foster

I’m not sure I follow all this, nor of what you actually intend by “Biblical Recalibration”. But what you’ve written tends to reinforce my suspicions about Biblical dates and “calibrations”. Remember that those Old Testament / Jewish Scriptures “events” and stories were handed around orally before, some of them long before, they were written down so probably got time compressed and altered in other ways in the telling over the generations.

As to dating anything from the City and Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11, as far as the account of linguistic divergence is concerned, that simply did not happen. It was a “just so story” of those people to try to account for linguistic divergence, for why there are different languages. And they got cause and effect competely 180 degrees backasswards.

A

23.III.2024

Joseph Foster

I should have been clearer. I didn’t mean compressed into briefness. Indeed it’s more likely they got expanded. I meant compressed in time of actual events. You seem to want to compress “archaeological, linguistic, and geological time’ into Biblical time and then use Biblical time as evidence for something.

And Language divergence, that is the emergence of different dialects and languages out of one original ancestor language did not happen the way the story of the Tower and City of Babel in Genesis 11 says it did. Moreover, it’s not even at all clear that the story entails the different languages being related to the single language the builders spoke before the apparently rather sudden replacement with different languages.

And there was no general global flood, though the Biblical Noah story may have an origin in more local floods.

It’s not at all clear why you think the time lapses based on the Old Testament Genesis stories are even relevant.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“the emergence of different dialects and languages out of one original ancestor language did not happen the way the story of the Tower and City of Babel in Genesis 11 says it did.”

The Genesis 11 story does not state it is about normal language change in the first place.

You presume it is, because you presume it is a just so story, but if you were not presuming it, you could see it as a one time event. The 8 people on the Ark were certainly speaking the same language, and c. 500 years later, especially with the long life spans, you’d have perhaps a divergence like between Danish and Swedish, at most.

“And there was no general global flood,”

That proposition is:

• not true
• not Christian
• not taken from linguistic evidence, the one you are expert at.

“why you think the time lapses based on the Old Testament Genesis stories are even relevant.”

Precisely for the same reason that I think Eratosthenes’ time lapse between Trojan War and Alexander relevant.

Because I believe the history. I’m hard put to try to imagine believing it without believing the miracles in it and the Christianity they authentify, but I hold they are also believable as history, even prior to any question of whether they are the true religion. As I also believe the time line of Eratosthenes, even if I do NOT believe Homer’s Iliad shows the events in the light of the true religion, but rather misinterpreted by a false one.

Now, that proposition ALSO of yours is not the least based on your expertise as a linguist.

“You seem to want to compress “archaeological, linguistic, and geological time’ into Biblical time and then use Biblical time as evidence for something.”

Archaeological time and geological time do not exist. Unless they are calibrated by objects of known age or events of known age.

Linguistic time … well, what time it takes for Germanic and Greek to be different and apparently (except to Grimm and Brugmann) even unrelated languages is obviously different depending on whether they started out as the exact same language or as languages in a Sprachbund.

Joseph Foster

I also have some expertise in Anthropology, as my profile which you apparently checked shows.

And I think your pretty literal interpretation of Genesis and taking it as “history” in anything like the modern sense is poppycock.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I consider Linguistics expertise.

I consider Anthropology mainly the kind of Colonial Prejudice, which to a linguist would jar so terribly when people tell how the “primitive” language of the Berbers got competition of the “superior” language of the French.

You are, fortunately, not saying such stupid things about their language, but you are saying the equivalent about non-Westerner’s and non-Contemporaries (pre-Enlightenment) way of recording their history.

As to your guess the stories in Genesis 2 to 11 got “expanded” in length, check the actual length of the pericopes. It’s modest. It’s for each easy enough to learn by heart.

i

Joseph Foster

You’re way out of date. Anthropologists haven’t thought of any languages as “primitive” certainly not since the days of Frans Boaz and really even Lewis Henry Morgan back deep in the 19th century did not think of Onondaga as “primitive”.

If you want to read something that pulls a lot of this together and is, excepting a detail here and there, pretty up to date, look at David Anthony’s

2007 The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

He’s written a few things since then but this volume is presumably easily accessible.

And forget about the damned Bible. It’s not a textbook of history, archaeology-anthropology, Linguistics, or Geology. There is some good ethnographic information in it but you have to know some Anthropology to know what you’re seeing when you come across it.

Palm Sunday

24.III.2024

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“Anthropologists haven’t thought of any languages as “primitive” certainly”

Thank you, I’m aware of that. That’s why I took “primitive languages” as apt to show the ridicule I feel for other aspects of anthropology, like for “pre-modern” historiography.

I didn’t say “since you are an anthropologist, you think of native languages in colonies as primitive” I said “since you are an anthropologist, you think of certain aspects of native cultures in as absurdly colonial a way, as those colonialists did, and by extension also of pre-modern ancestors of our culture” — or to put it short : about languages, you thankfully accept the update by Boaz, but about genealogies, there has been no significant update since Archibald Sayce, 19th C.

“look at David Anthony’s”

Already did:

Can a PIE Spread with Anatolian Farmers be Defended?
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2023/10/can-pie-spread-with-anatolian-farmers.html

Think I wrote an earlier article too, but it seems to have gone missing … at least what I could find. I had read it previously, though.

“And forget about the damned Bible. It’s not a textbook of history, archaeology-anthropology, Linguistics, or Geology.”

I consider it both theologically and historically as a higher authority than such textbooks.

At least you are upfront on your anti-Christian bias.

Joseph Foster

Re your last three paragraphs and especially your last sentence, if Melissa B. sees that she’ll probably chortle. Actually I’m a practicing Eastern Orthodox Christian, a member of an Orthodox Church in America parish. Used to sing regularly in the choir and still fill in if they need a bass-octavist, although I can no longer guarantee the hypolow Bb in Rachmaninoff’s Vespers. And like MacNamara’s band, I “sing at wakes and weddings” if they have trouble filling a choir for one of those. And we now have another bass-octavist who can deliver the Rachmaninoff low Bb. The rector’s and presvytera’s son, so he’s a generation and a third or so younger than me.

I’ve read the article, or commentary note, for which link thank you. It’s a little cryptic, possibly because of the venue, but I think I follow it. I too had problems with Renfrew when his book came out, not the least of which was that he’s a good archaeologist but his understanding of comparative-historical linguistics was at the time somewhat lacking, say, mangelhaft. He did not seem to understand that we can often identify loanwords as opposed to native inherited vocabulary. Not always, but often.

And Anthony of course has a later dispersal time. But of course neither Anthony, nor I, nor the vast majority of others doing research of this nature and in this field and region start with the Bible and its dates, even where those can be pinned down. That’s simply not the way Science is done. It doesn’t start with a priori “revealed Truth” and interpret everything else in such a way that it fits that “truth” or reject what does not or cannot be made to fit it.

Linguistics and also Archaeological investigation and retrodiction attract a fair number of people who do so start out. Or if not with religious “truth”, with political, social, or especially nationalistic and ethnicist agendas. There’s an interesting article about that the the following link will take you to.

Pseudoscientific language comparison - Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscientific_language_comparison

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“He did not seem to understand that we can often identify loanwords as opposed to native inherited vocabulary. Not always, but often.”

In fact, that’s most usually the case when they are recent. If mutual loans happen before both languages start sound laws, the identification can be way harder (unless you have access to much earlier stages of the language.

“nor the vast majority of others doing research of this nature and in this field and region start with the Bible and its dates, even where those can be pinned down. That’s simply not the way Science is done. It doesn’t start with a priori “revealed Truth””

In this context, the Bible would actually serve me even if I didn’t (yet) believe it to be revealed truth. Even as an Odinist or a Olympicist, God preserve me from becoming either, I think I might appreciate the Bible as a very uniquely well preserved traditional history. Key word not “revealed truth” but well preserved history.

Gallo-Romance language studies tend to take into account that Aquae Sextiae was founded by Sextius Calvinus in 122 BC, while Tours receives Latin from the legions of Caesar more like 58–50 BC, and that Sextius Calvinus and Caesar spoke a fairly identic Classical Latin, that of Calvinus maybe a bit archaic. Linguistics is not independent of history.

Now, is the Bible history?

As said, judging from my non-Christian, undecided small childhood, I’d probably assess it as such, even before becoming a Christian. To me as a Christian, it is indispensible to believe it is history.

I am a Catholic, we are since Trent Session IV under orders to receive the totality of the Church Father and the totality of the Church Fathers that speak on the subject do agree that the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 are correct. St. Augustine says so in City of God, St. Jerome makes a chronology of the world landing Christmas day in Anno Mundi 5199, which for Genesis 5 and 11 uses the work of Julius Africanus, who used a Vetus Latina, LXX based and without the second Cainan.

If you go to Syncellus, he’ll land the Birth of God in 5508 Anno Mundi or sth like that. YOUR view of the matter comes from Commies in the Seventies maltreating lots of Orthodox Churches, including those of Russia, Romania, Bulgaria and a few more. Or having done so in previous decades and these Churches caving in in the seventies.

Meaning, the dates of Flood and Babel are as relevant for possible placings of PIE Ursprache or Pre-IE Sprachbund as the dates of Romans Conquering Gaul are for Gallo-Romance.

Thank you for the article, I am pretty positive for Alinei’s support for Etruscan being old Hungarian. Less so about Toth’s (?) previous linking also Sumerian and Hattic to Fenno-Ugrian. And even that one is not on the list.

Trubetskoy is the founder of Balkan linguistics, the study of a Sprachbund admitted as such on all sides. He held to IE also being a Sprachbund. He is also not on the list.

ij

Melissa B

What anthropological theorists and theories are you familiar with?

I answered second

but here it is as intro to the later reply:

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Was the question to me? I didn’t see it.

I have mostly interacted with anthropologists online, so I get their theories from their attitudes.

I am definitely not an anthropologist myself.

By the way, a comment on your conversation with Joseph was posted as an answer to his reply to you.

Melissa B

Yes, the question was for you.

Examples of anthropological theories include structuralism, functionalism, historical-particularism, cultural ecology, cultural materialism, political economy, iterpretivenist, and symbolic interactionism, just to name a few.

Notable theorists inclide Malinowski, Levi-Strauss, Boas, Mead, Steward, Harris, Geertz, Wilhelm Schmidt, Durkheim, and Radcliffe-Brown.

Boas became increasingly aware of the racism and the colonialism mindset of the armchair anthropologists who preceeded him. You also alluded to colonialsm. Thus, my question for you.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I’m not sure how much Milman Parry counts, but I am aware of his work on oral transmission via aoidoi (researched on Serbian epic, relevant for Homeric ones, and obviously for transmission of at least early Genesis events to Moses).

Obviously heard of it while reading Menin aeide and Andra moi ennepe ….

Joseph had answer first

and it had led to a discussion with Melissa B, here:

Palm Sunday

24.III.2024

Joseph Foster

I notice you’ve gotten no answer. As you can guess from Lundahl’s and mine later exchanges, I began to get real suspicious so when I could make time for a little research to try to cut through his smoke and mirrors, I did. He may not be very familiar with any real anthropological work — his “Humanoria” at Lund University included Lithuanian “culture history” and the rest mostly languages. [There are BTW good Swedish anthropologists — I had one for Advanced Social Anthropology back when I was an undergraduate, a Dr. Birgir Lindskog, U of Uppsala., Visiting Professor at LSU.]

This guy’s a piece of work. He actually knows some linguistics, more than most of the kookoisie attracted to the field do. But he failed his Linguistics exam at Lund University, though passing several other more “Humaniora” exams.

It turns out he’s a geocentrist, a young creationist, a professional anti-modernist, and a very traditional Roman Catholic, I think a convert though am not certain. That all explains why he tries to compress everything into Biblical dates. And takes a lot of Biblical stuff literally. It’s not just bad science but also bad theology. He’s apparently a good example of Frederick the Great’s observation that experience is worth nothing unless the proper conclusions are drawn therefrom.

He’s unemployed, or “self-employed” and given his apparent attitude in a video interview with him I found, probably unemployable. He churns out a lot of blogs, which was probably what prompted the interview another blogger did. It’s in English BTW. He apparently survives in Libraries, homeless shelters and kitchens, thanks to the Swedish safety net, and from occasional donations/alms, or “informal voluntary royalties” for an occasional musical composition and “writing”.

Melissa B

That's some impressive research!

I knew about his literalist views, views that are held by few Catholics. It would make sense if he's a convert.

Given the other information you relayed, I feel badly for him now. He's in need of compassion…and some theological and anthropological education.

Joseph Foster

I agree. And lest my comment about the Swedish safety net be misinterpreted, I think it’s a good thing and that our country could do with something closer to it. Mr. Lundahl has I think a good mind and energy for research and could make good contributions were it not sidetracked into a dead end track spur.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

To Joseph:

"I think a convert though am not certain."

Can confirm. 1988.

"And takes a lot of Biblical stuff literally."

What exactly would I NOT take literally?

"It’s not just bad science but also bad theology"

An Anti-Christian putting on airs about what's good or bad theology, that's rich ....

"He’s apparently a good example of Frederick the Great’s observation that experience is worth nothing unless the proper conclusions are drawn therefrom."

Thanks for admitting your loyalty to anti-Christians like Frederick II. A guy willing to murder Germans for being Catholics and preferring Maria Theresa!

"He apparently survives in Libraries, homeless shelters and kitchens,"

Forget about homeless shelters and kitchens. Libraries are good work places, though.

"thanks to the Swedish safety net,"

Total opposite of the truth.

I get no money from Swedish welfare, and am harrassed to pay back my study loans, while calumniators like yourself make it hard for me to get my stuff into print!

"and from occasional donations/alms,"

Actually pretty recurrent. I put out card boards as a kind of busking, they hold my URL’s. You seem to be the damage control against what this could accomplish.

"or “informal voluntary royalties” for an occasional musical composition and “writing”."

The compositions may be very occasional, the writings not so.

The voluntary royalties would be a thing if I got printed, or got compositions performed. People like Your Crookedness had stopped this from happening.

While alms when holding out a cardboard with an URL are ALSO income from my writings, that’s very different from royalties, as such suppose someone had gained something (you are impoverishing young people, not just myself!) by selling my texts or performing my compositions for paying audience.

Linguistics exam:

“But he failed his Linguistics exam at Lund University,”

It was a five point exam, with studies I did brilliantly, and I failed because the essay question was answered in a way the examiner didn’t like. Five university points = 20 weeks quarter time or 5 weeks full time. The exams I didn’t fail add up to 201 points.

To Melissa:

"That's some impressive research!"

Would be if I hadn't put lots of it on my blogs and if he hadn't misrepresented half of what he had found.

"He's in need of compassion…and some theological and anthropological education."

Least of all. The very people who have impoverished me are the crooks who have thought me in need of education!

There are ways of oppressing people by "compassion" when oppressing them by outright outrage is out of the question, you examplify that.

To Joseph again:

"And lest my comment about the Swedish safety net be misinterpreted, I think it’s a good thing and that our country could do with something closer to it."

Thanks, but no thanks.

1. I have left Sweden to get away from that safety net and from its conditions
2. I am doing a huge job, and sometimes even a great job, but Swedes and people like you have detracted and made me socially unreachable for getting it into print and my finances to profit from voluntary (I did not say informal) royalties!

"were it not sidetracked into a dead end track spur."

Oh, my job and my goals is me being sidetracked, but your anthropological colonialism against a European is somehow "putting me back on track"? I am fifty-five, people like you are the least thing I need!

God curse you and similar Freemason Crooks!

Joseph Foster

I have no idea why your reference to Freemasonry. I am not nor have I ever been a Mason and never had any interest in that.

Re your leading question What exactly would I NOT take literally?, referring to the Bible:

Well, how about the verse where Jesus said “I am the vine…”, or the one where he said “I am the door….”.

Unless you think he was a shapeshifter and actually was a vine and a door, presumably not both at the same time, then you do not take those literally and in not so taking them, use good judgement. In that case, however, you then accept that some parts of the Bible are best taken metaphorically or figuratively, and the question becomes that of which ones and why those. Part of the reason there are a lot of Christian denominations is differences among various people as to what is to take literally and what figuratively. That’s an old issue and problem in Xianity; I believe Augustine the Hippo addressed it. He doesn’t carry as much weight in my Church as in yours, but maybe some earlier patristics did too.

In your comments to Melissa, you wrote: Would be if I hadn't put lots of it on my blogs and if he hadn't misrepresented half of what he had found.

I had no intention of misrepresenting you or your situation and if I inadvertently did so, I apologize. I read a number of your items in the extensive Henke correspondence, watched a few blogs, watched the interview on Youtube that somebody did with you, and got some information from a web site you yourself had put up — in connection with Lund University I think it was. I had to draw some inferences and that’s why I sometimes used “apparently” and “may” and / or “might”.

I don’t understand the Swedish point system so will let that pass. But as to your having trouble getting your work published, I shouldn’t wonder. You’re not doing linguistic science, nor prehistoric and eohistoric, i.e. very early historic investigations in a scientific way. You are a self-proclaimed “creationist”, a geocentrist apparently, and for the topic at hand: linguistic and archaeological-paleoecological investigation, inference, and reconstruction, you start with the Bible as you understand it and try to make everything fit, rejecting anything that does not. That’s not science — it’s religion. It wouldn’t surprise me if most of your submissions to referred journals got what we call a desk rejection — rejection by the screening editor as unsuitable or inappropriate, or of insufficient merit to be sent out to referees for peer review. Members of review editorial boards serve unpaid out of a sense of professional responsibility. An editor will not knowingly waste their time and good will unnecessarily.

To be blunt, you’re simply not taken seriously. You know enough to be able to throw up smoke and mirrors and to deal with a number of details. But you’re basically not doing Science; you’re doing Religion. You might get published in some Biblical Archaeology Journal, but that field got such a bad reputation that I understand those journals have tried to clean up their act a bit.

And your apparent stance and mode of operation with respect to Religion is not even in step with the mainstream of science and scholarship of your own Church that you quite some time ago converted to. My Church, Eastern Orthodox, is in many respects though not all even more conservative than the Roman Catholic Church is, and you would be considered on a side current of it also.

That’s not necessarily bad. Scientific and scholarly advance often come from steering into a side current out of the mainstream. But many scientific failures and dead ends do also. What is the case is that if you make extraordinary claims, you have to present extraordinarily strong evidence in their favor. Scientific explanation does not begin nor end with “for the Bible tells me so”. Especially not when what the Bible “tells us” is sometimes open to interpretation, doubt, or conjecture. There are even parts of the Bible that make sense only when an anthropological understanding of tribal societies is brought to bear on them.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“Well, how about the verse where Jesus said “I am the vine…”, or the one where he said “I am the door….”.”

The verse is literally true about Jesus saying these things. A metaphor, either in description of the author or in the words of a character (God or other) is so to say baked in into a passage which as a whole is Literally true, before also having the Allegoric, Moral and Anagogic meanings.

The account in Genesis 1, 2, 3 uses a kind of extended meaning, in chapter 2 verse 17. Adam died spiritually same day as when he ate the fruit or he died physically same millennium as he ate the fruit. He did not die physically the same day. But this clear example of non-typic, even non-literal meaning, does not make the meaning of the event sequence not literally true.

You will admit that Cassian is a Church Father, so that his famous Quadriga is good enough in Exegesis? And before telling me he was just ONE of the Church Fathers, OK, I have heard that before, from Neohimerites. So, give me a CF who is certainly a Saint and who is certainly not in favour of a literal interpretation of Biblical history.

“I have no idea why your reference to Freemasonry. I am not nor have I ever been a Mason and never had any interest in that.”

As sth like a Neohimerite, you have a kind of Masonry lite on topics. In the French language Romanian Orthodox parish in Aix, I met a philosophy teacher who was taking his distance from me because I had exposed Bruno as an intellectual humbug. He probably shared a Masonic veneration for Giordano, burned in 1600.

I have no interest in being remade in the image of that kind of person, even if Daniil of Iași likes him.

“I don’t understand the Swedish point system so will let that pass.”

It changed after joining the EU. The old system in which I am used to counting has one week full time = two weeks half time = four weeks quarter time = one point. The linguistics exam I failed on the final essay was in fact this last model.

“But as to your having trouble getting your work published, I shouldn’t wonder. You’re not doing linguistic science, nor prehistoric and eohistoric, i.e. very early historic investigations in a scientific way.”

Would it be scientific to do Russian and Ukrainean history without referring to the Nestor Chronicle?

What you call “science” in this context is the “science” of the kind of Apostates who do not believe the Bible. Which is certainly not all the Christian has to believe, but a very important part corpus of credenda, including historic ones.

If we cannot rely on the history of the Fall, even supposing we rely on the history of the Redemption anyway, how would we be sure to get the theology of Redemption right without the theology of the Fall? Or to get the theology right if we got the history wrong?

“watched the interview on Youtube that somebody did with you”

It’s old and it was heavily edited, some things appearing in text are not what I said, while some things I said were left out. Neither there, nor elsewhere have I expressed myself as depending on the Swedish welfare system.

“You are a self-proclaimed “creationist”,”

OK, I proclaim myself a Young Earth Creationist, but I am really something else on this topic?

“rejecting anything that does not.”

I reject conclusions that do not fit. I have so far not had to reject any hard facts.

"That’s not science ... rejection by the screening editor as unsuitable or inappropriate, or of insufficient merit to be sent out to referees for peer review."

You are seriously confused about what kind of re-publication I seek. I know the biasses of people who reject view points that do not suit their Evolutionist and Uniformitarian religion.

I’d as soon send a Creationist article to Nature (except once I did send sth to Nature Genetics, exactly once) as I’d send a Catholic Apologetics article to get published by 7DA.

“To be blunt, you’re simply not taken seriously.”

From those people, I’m not surprised at all.

What I complain about is when people like YOU seem to think THEIR pov should be EVERYONE’S law about how to deal with me. In such contexts, overdoing the degree to which I sponge and underdoing the degree to which I work comes pretty handy.

“And your apparent stance and mode of operation with respect to Religion is not even in step with the mainstream of science and scholarship of your own Church that you quite some time ago converted to.”

I’m currently under obedience and under the Omophore of Pope Michael II. In 1988, there was no rule forbidding a Catholic who admitted “John Paul II” as Pope to be strictly YEC. I got talked out of it, and came back to it when reading St. Augustine. When Wojtyla died, I prayed for his soul, but I did not recognise him as having been Pope. With Ratzinger, I gave him two chances (before and after my venture to RomOC), and ended up with giving him up too. Pretty precisely over CCC § 283. Something which did not exist when I converted. I did not yet have that clue to avoid Wojtyla.

“What is the case is that if you make extraordinary claims, you have to present extraordinarily strong evidence in their favor.”

To some, “extraordinary” in this case means “outside mainstream science” — to me it means “the stronger claim” …

“Scientific explanation does not begin nor end with “for the Bible tells me so”.”

Historical knowledge as a default has, “the chronicle tells me so” … I reject Homer and the Tragedians on Theology, but not on History. My basic “strength of knowledge” is not science, but history. Even the knowledge that strictly speaking is scientific relies on “the history of the experiment is accurately transmitted” (if you couldn’t rely on that, 1000 repeats could not convince you rationally, unless you did it yourself).

“There are even parts of the Bible that make sense only when an anthropological understanding of tribal societies is brought to bear on them.”

If you bring in the assyriological views of Archibald Sayce, of unhappy memory, about ancient oriental genealogies, that is the kind of anthropology that is a counterpart to a colonial officer’s “linguistic” ranking of French and Berber, which we fortunately agree on.

“Especially not when what the Bible “tells us” is sometimes open to interpretation, doubt, or conjecture.”

I’ve even doubted things myself, and interpreted things myself, trying to make sure to not contradict an opinion held by all CCFF. Since St. Jerome put more than 480 years between Exodus and (50 years after anointing of King David) the Temple, I was in doubt about the accuracy of that. A perusal of Judges convinced me that the “300 years” of Jephtha mean “at least 300 years” and that probably the “480 years” at this point mean “300 years — at least — of Jephtha + 180 years since Jephtha” … so I accept St. Jerome again.

I have interpreted “a tower of which the top shall reach into heaven” as a three step rocket, and God’s act as a merciful way of putting the project on hold until when Armstrong and Gagarin could rely on teams with adequate know how, which Nimrod obviously hadn’t.

I have close read the verses before that to find that:

• yes, Göbekli Tepe is indeed West of any landing place in Armenia
• it’s right at the edge of a plain inside Shinar (if that means Mesopotamia — the LXX is from when “Babylonia” included this region!), whereas locations like Babylon or Woolley’s Ur would be in plains surrounding the two rivers
• and if burnt bricks are not found as building materials in GT, it is found as pathway plastering in contemporary Jericho. Which therefore goes back all the way to Babel, even if it’s not the location of Babel.

Assume two things:

• Biblical history is literal history (even humanly) with no details totally wacky (thanks to inspiration)
• anything written of that happens outside the culture of the hagiographers may involve simplified language which is better understood when compared to objects outside it.

Then I think my work will hold. I have tested it on several grounds.

If not, I’d like to hear why you assume we could these days calculate someone as the Beast in Greek gematria, when that’s a fixed spelling only for one small area, and when on top of that the values have been known for so long that parents could chose it in order to give their children that power (in the case of parents who don’t believe in Hell, probably).

Joseph Foster

I’m not going through this line by line nor even paragraph by paragraph. I’ve already spent too much time and effort on it.

But your first full paragraph: No. Jesus was not a vine and was not a door. In the absolute semantic value of |vine| and |door|, the verse is not true. It’s pretty certain he didn’t intend it to be taken that way but metaphorically. Without the extended metaphorical comparison meaning, the statements are not true. Not literally. Your smoke and mirrors turgid paragraph notwithstanding.

What in hell are “Neohimerites”?. Or a Neohimerite? As to Bruno and Giordano, I couldn’t care less. Except that burning people alive because they don’t believe what the Church thinks it believes at the time is a thoroughly shitty thing to have done. If that is what Christianity is about, I want no part of it. But I don’t hold the whole religion responsible for that.

I have no idea what a “Masonry lite” refers to.

Apostates would include people who had been believers but “stood away”, i.e. left it. Those who never believed to start with aren’t apostates. And what exactly does “believe the Bible mean?” If it claims Methuselah lived 969 years and that means Tropical Years, no, I don’t believe it. If it claims the Earth and universe were “created” in 6 days of 24 hours each, no I don’t believe that. I do believe “In the beginning, God…”. A Roman Catholic theologian sometime in the 1600s I think pointed out that Scripture gives us a guide on how to get to heaven; it does not tell us how the heavens work.

I don’t know what you mean by “re-publication”. I assumed you sought publication in professional journals, but perhaps that was an over assumption. Maybe you want publication in popular venues where it will have a non-critical and less knowledgeable audience.

BTW, there is no such thing as an “evolutionist” or “evolutionist religion”. Evolution of species is not a creed, a religion, or an ism at all.

I do know what an omophorion is. Our Orthodox bishops wear them, and I think those of the Eastern Rites subordinate to the Roman Papacy do also. And I know what the phrase “under the omophorion” means. It’s another metaphor. The OCA Bishop of Chicago and the Midwest couldn’t possibly literally get every Orthodox Christian in his Diocese under his omophorion. So it’s a figurative expression. —But as to your “Pope Mikey II”, Right. So you’re not only out of the mainstream of your own Church; you’re off down a sedevacante distributary that will probably lose itself in the swamp.

Extraordinary claim does not the way most people use it mean “the stronger claim”. It means the one that is the more apparently goofy, more apparently outrageous. Or at best the more unusual or more unlikely. I’m not a believer in forced standardization but if you want to get published, you’ll have to write with meanings that are generally understood unless you specify your peculiar meanings clearly beforehand. And others will tolerate that only for technical terms, and that only to a limited extent.

I have no interest in the Assyriological views of Archibald Sayce. You’re out of date and focused on historical chronology. I had in mind things like matrilateral cross cousin marriage (Jacob with Leah and Rachel), delayed patrilateral parallel cousin marriage (also Jacob = Leah and Rachel), patrilineal descent group endogamy, (the marriages of Jacob and later marriage of Esau codified as a principle in Numbers 36), the levirate (Ruth, among others), ultimogeniture inheritance (Abel, Ishmael, Jacob, Saul, David), the food tabus on things like swine and pork among pastoralist peoples — stuff like that. The anti-urbanism of much of the early Old Testament can be understood in the light of the Hebrew people’s primary cultural ecology of pastoralism. Pastoralists generally ‘hate” cities and city slickers for systemic anthropological-cultural reasons.

I don’t think you’re going to get your Tower of Babel as a three stage rocket published in a respectable journal! It sounds like that charlatan Eric von Danniken.

As to your last paragraph about some beast and calculating “the number of the Beast”, I am mystified why you think I would believe that numerology stuff at all. Or why I would want to “calculate it”. I suppose it’s mildly interesting in being a possible clue to what that passage in Revelation was referring to. I assume you are aware that that book almost didn’t get into the Canon. In hindsight, the Church and Christianity would probably have been better off had it not gotten in.

And now I’m pretty much done with all this.

Monday of Holy Week

25.III.2024 (Annunciation is, if I get it correct, transferred to April 8, first day after Holy Week and Easter Week)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"Your smoke and mirrors turgid paragraph notwithstanding."

You missed the point. You cherry picked a verse with metaphoric meaning, and obvious such, from an obviously literal passage.

"What in hell are “Neohimerites”?"

The guys in Greece, Bulgaria and Romania who celebrate Christmas on the same day as us Latins.

That is obviously against a certain Sigillicon (= Greek Patriarchal Bull) which condemned our change of calendar.

Now, Neohimerites have other sides than that one. Which are less kindly seen by traditionally minded Roman Catholics.

"what the Church thinks it believes at the time"

So, Basil the Physician could have been right to deny the corporality of Our Lord, and shouldn't have been burned for the Church "at the time" believing the Word really became flesh?

The first burning of a heretic which was not a lynching seems to have been that one, by Isaac Comnenus, already in schism from the Pope.

And Giordano Bruno could have been right to say each solar system (world in his parlance) while all were created by the same Father, each had its own The Son and its own The Holy Spirit, and shouldn't have been burned for the Church "at the time" believing there is ONE God the Son, there is ONE Holy Spirit? Just as there is ONE Father?

But I would agree, burning Avvakum over the Russian Patriarch at the time no longer believing the Immaculate conception was a shitty thing. Shame on the Skirzhal of 1666! Prior to it, Russians did believe the Immaculate Conception!

"I have no idea what a “Masonry lite” refers to."

• For one thing taking burning of heretics as a valid criticism of a Church.
• For another thinking Giordano Bruno was burned for being Heliocentric, mainly.
• For a third, thinking the support of Geocentrism is a temporary "what the Church thinks it believes" when all Church Fathers were Geostatic and most Round Earth.
• For a fourth, taking pity on someone for "being sidetracked" and hoping to mentor him, and taking his poverty and exhausted appearance in a video from a decade ago as proof he needs it.

"If it claims Methuselah lived 969 years and that means Tropical Years, no, I don’t believe it."

You just contradicted St. Augustine. You have so far shown no Church Father who would agree with you. As far as I am concerned, you have taken on ALL of the Church Fathers in Heaven.

Unless you meant, "well, it must have been Babylonian years of 360 days" or "it was very probably Luni-Solar Years alternating between 12 Lunar and 13 Lunar months" and that for purely calendaric reasons. But I guess you meant something very different from that, Apostate.

"A Roman Catholic theologian sometime in the 1600s I think pointed out that Scripture gives us a guide on how to get to heaven; it does not tell us how the heavens work."

I don't think Galileo Galilei had more credentials in theology than I have, if you mean the letter to Christina of Pisa.

"Maybe you want publication in popular venues where it will have a non-critical and less knowledgeable audience."

By RE-publication, I mean, texts for publishing commercially are not a promise for the future, there are already lots online, it's just that the online version is for free, so I can't get money from it.

By popular venues, bingo.

By "non-critical and less knowledgable" you presumably mean those who don't agree with your academic protocol fit that description PLUS you mean that it would be most honest of my part to reserve readership to very academically savvy readers, leaving all popular venues to those who agree with you and present five year olds with claims like "the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago" ... I do not admire your sense of honesty, and if it's shared by your priest, by your bishop, my charge about "Masonry lite" stands.

"BTW, there is no such thing as an “evolutionist” or “evolutionist religion”."

So there is no such thing as "young earth creationism"? Or "creationist sectarian extremism" either? When two pov oppose, they are named opposing isms.

"distributary that will probably lose itself in the swamp"

Pope Michael I was elected in 1990. He got ordination and episcopal consecration in 2011. Before I accepted him. His successor has episcopal lineage from Eastern Orthodox. His rivals "Linus II" and "Pius XIII" are gone. No, I don't hold up your prophecy as anything like probable.

"It means the one that is the more apparently goofy, more apparently outrageous."

Or, in other words, unless the usage is flawed by bias for "conventional wisdom" the stronger claim. For instance, if you didn't have your baggage of socially endorsed Heliocentrism, how would you motivate preferring "the Earth turns about itself and about the Sun, and we see that as the Sun turning around Earth and around the Zodiac, and all this takes is graviation and inertia moving on masses" over "we see the Sun moving around us, because it moves with the universe and because God moves the universe around us" (see Romans 1 and St. John of Damascus!) "and the Sun moves around the Zodiac because an angel is appointed for so moving it" ... unless you start out with materialism, your claim is the goofier one.

Meaning, you are a syncretist with materialism, and syncretism is also a sign of Masonry, including "Masonry lite" ...

"I have no interest in the Assyriological views of Archibald Sayce."

You seem totally to share them about genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11, though.

"Pastoralists generally ‘hate” cities and city slickers for systemic anthropological-cultural reasons."

Thank you for clarifying, such things seem somewhat more legitimate than the Archibald Saycean view on Genesis 5 and 11!

"I don’t think you’re going to get your Tower of Babel as a three stage rocket published in a respectable journal!"

Why would I limit myself to "respectable journals"? Why would I take academic establishment as a kind of scientific parallel to the college of bishops? God never promised those guys that kind of authority!

"It sounds like that charlatan Eric von Danniken."

X sounds like Y, Y is a charlatan, therefore X is a charlatan ... does not seem a very stringent line of reasoning. It's a bit like "Resurrection sounds like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is Fantasy, therefore John 20 is Fantasy" ... if you are a Christian, you should have a problem with that kind of reasoning.

"I am mystified why you think I would believe that numerology stuff at all."

Well, because the Church Fathers did, and as a Catholic, unlike a Neohimerite "Orthodox" I actually take the Church Fathers seriously. Hippolytus of Rome, Irenaeus, a few more. Plus, because ASCII provides a system which certainly was not abused to manipulate the prophecy about some people who are still alive.

"In hindsight, the Church and Christianity would probably have been better off had it not gotten in."

Ah, you prefer the canon of Laodicaea, with a Protestant OT? Or near Protestant OT?

You do not respect the decisions of the Church?

If your omophorion allows the communion and other sacraments to people of your convictions, it's a rag in scarlet ... read Apocalypse 18.

Tue, 26.III.2024

Joseph Foster

I trust you feel better now.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I was not venting bad feelings in the first place.

Your theology affects me like a bad smell, but I was totally able to answer coherently.

B

Hans-Georg Lundahl

// I’m not sure I follow all this, nor of what you actually intend by “Biblical Recalibration”. //

The standard calibration for Carbon 14 follows mainly tree rings. I consider it more or less reliable for c. 3000 years back, before which I think this lignine based method of establishing a chronology, much like the other one (contemporary documents in originals or very early copies), becomes too fragmentary and too scarce.

Now, at the Fall of Troy, which is c. 3200 years ago, I consider historic (Biblical and extra-Biblical) events, known by tradition, already coincide with standard calibrations for carbon 14.

But up to the fall of Troy, I think this very alternative and newer attempt at calibrating carbon 14 from Biblical events holds better, first the more complete version but one from 2020:

New Tables
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-tables.html

Then an update on why I no longer hold to the end or “table VIII — IX” on that one:

480 Years From Exodus to Temple?
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2023/01/480-years-from-exodus-to-temple.html

Then an update on the earlier parts of New Tables, namely tables I—II, II—III and III—IV, here:

The Revision of I-II, II-III, III-IV May be Unnecessary, BUT Illustrates What I Did When Doing the First Version of New Tables
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-revision-of-i-ii-ii-iii-iii-iv-may.html

A standard carbon date of 8000 BC is affected by this revision, if it holds, and a standard carbon date of 3300 BC isn’t. Nor are the recalibrations of 2000 — 1868 or 1610 — 1511. 500 BC being after the Fall of Troy, it was never part of my recalibrations, except when I thought the level below the one matching the Iliad, when 500 BC instead of Fall of Troy became my “recalibration=normal calibration” point. But that I abandoned years ago.