Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

How did ancient people learn foreign languages?

New blog on the kid : How do Esquimaux Learn Tlingit? · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: How did ancient people learn foreign languages?

How did ancient people learn foreign languages?
Metatron's Academy | 9 Sept. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se2dSupqsaw

haec domus - ho oikos
huius domus - tou oikou
huic domui - to oiko
hanc domum - ton oikon
o domus - o oike
ex hac domu - ek tou oikou
hac domu - to oiko

2:32 I just gave an example of formal class room instructions of Latin speakers in Greek and of Greek speakers in Latin.

Such school books have been found.

10:56 Do you know what a Liber Catonicus is?

A beginners' book in Latin, basically the Disticha Catonis and some similarily simple things.

Used both for speakers of Late Latin / Early Romance to acquire literary Latin, and for speakers of Germanic languages to acquire it too, the one as a register, the other as a language.

It has been in use from the time of St. Ambrose roughly to the time of Benjamin Franklin.

Friday, September 5, 2025

Revisiting Breivik

Q: How does speaking Norwegian give you a different lens on international news, especially regarding the Nordic region or energy?
https://www.quora.com/How-does-speaking-Norwegian-give-you-a-different-lens-on-international-news-especially-regarding-the-Nordic-region-or-energy/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2
Hans-Georg Lundahl: amateur linguist
5.IX.2025: I recall one item.

French media in 2011 reported that Norwegian Police had reported that the perpetrator was a “Fundamentalist Christian” …

I quickly found out he was anything but. The day after the killing, the Norwegian Freemasons, the “Johannislosjen” excluded Breivik because of his behaviour being at odds with Masonic values.

I linked to the pages on my blog, but they are taken down now. Meanwhile, it is very clear, Norwegian authorities are clueless about religion, and mistook “identitarian Christian” (someone who believes in Christian heritage being part of the National heritage, what Breivik clearly did believe) with “fundamentalist Christian” (someone who believes the doctrines and sacred scriptures of Christianity are literally true, which Breivik clearly did not believe).

Eva Vlaardingerbroek and I are Antivaxxers

Eva Vlaardingerbroek explique pourquoi les droits naturels sont « érodés » par les gouvernements ...
APT | 27 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR1g1YyhRdU

Back when I came out as a Trad, I was shocked when reading the Declaration of Human Rights by the European Council.

Article four:
....
3. For the purpose of this Article the term “forced or compulsory labour” shall not include:
...
(c) any service exacted in case of an emergency or calamity threatening the life or well-being of the community;
...

Article five
...
No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law:
...
e) the lawful detention of persons for the prevention of the spreading of infectious diseases, of persons of unsound mind, alcoholics or drug addicts or vagrants;
...

Article eight
...
2 There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except ...for the protectionof health or morals ....
...

Article nine
...
2 Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society .... for the protection of ... health or morals ...

Article ten
...
2 The exercise of these freedoms ... may be subject to such ... restrictions ... for the protection of health or morals ...

Article eleven
...
2 No restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than ... for the protection of health or morals ...

I'm against these declarations of human rights, because, a Christian and a Satanist enjoy equal religious freedom, and ... an actually free man and a mental patient, or by now an anti-vaxxer, don't.

I'm obviously for the human rights that are the inverse of the human duties of the Decalogue, as traditionally understood by the Catholic Church.

Sunday, August 31, 2025

Gaza and Prophecy

What Gaza has revealed: how Christians are wrong about Biblical Prophecy
Wholehearted Ness Podcast | 30 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p5pAonQKEc

Did you mention to your friend that Catholic commentary traces the fulfilment of those prophecies pretty much to the time of Alexander the Great, or for some even Nebuchadnezzar?

Sophonias 2:6

6 And the sea coast shall be the resting-place of shepherds, and folds for cattle:

Haydock comment:

Ver. 6. Shepherds. Merchants shall come no longer, the country being subdued by Nabuchodonosor, and by the Machabees, ver. 7. --- Alexander ruined Gaza. (Curt. iv.)

So, does Netanyahu believe he is a soldier of Alexander of Macedon? Or, does your Christian (?) friend believe he is?

Saturday, August 30, 2025

A Tolkien Fan Misrepresents Anne Catherine Emmerick and Pius XII

That is, he probably gives an accurate account of her life, but he misrepresents the content of her text, to, with her holiness, bolster his misreading of her as "real prophecy" ... it obviously isn't because he is missciting her.

Evolution and The Fall of Man — Analog Episode 7
Mabel Media | 7 May 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeND7hU5ZzA

I think you misrecall Anne Catherine Emmerick as much as you misconstrue Humani Generis.

You basically don't know what you are talking about.

Here is her text* about Cain's fear:

But when God replied that Abel’s blood cried to Him from the earth, Cain grew more troubled, and I saw that he disputed long with God. God told him that he should be cursed upon the earth, that it should bring forth no fruit for him, and that he should forthwith flee from the land in which he then dwelt. Cain responded that everywhere his fellow men would seek to kill him. There were already many people upon the earth. Cain was very old and had children. Abel also left children, and there were other brothers and sisters, the children of Adam. But God replied that it would not be so; that whoever should kill Cain should himself be punished sevenfold, and He placed a sign upon him that no one should slay him. Cain’s posterity gradually became colored. Cham’s children also were browner than those of Sem. The nobler races were always of a lighter color. They who were distinguished by a particular mark engendered children of the same stamp; and as corruption increased, the mark also increased until at last it covered the whole body, and people became darker and darker. But yet in the beginning there were no people perfectly black; they became so only by degrees.

There is one phrase which could at first seem to support you, namely "There were already many people upon the earth."

This is however an area of agreement between Fundies and yourself.

What doesn't support you is the explanation: "Cain was very old and had children. Abel also left children, and there were other brothers and sisters, the children of Adam."

After that a little hint at what could be considered as racism** ...

[The following disappeared, perhaps the videasts hate what St. Augustine was saying ... seeing the man was classifying it as blasphemy in the video]

And you misconstrue St. Augustine.

It is indeed possible he did utter in books 4 to 6 some kind of repudiation of literal days from the reason you gave, but painstakingly in book 1 he had precisely explained how a 24 h day was possible before the creation of the sun (in clearly Geocentric terms). But his alternative to 6 literal days was not millions or billions of years, but one single moment.

Furthermore, you accuse him of blasphemy, because he did defend sibling marriages in the generation after Adam and Eve.

For it is very reasonable and just that men, among whom concord is honorable and useful, should be bound together by various relationships; and one man should not himself sustain many relationships, but that the various relationships should be distributed among several, and should thus serve to bind together the greatest number in the same social interests. Father and father-in-law are the names of two relationships. When, therefore, a man has one person for his father, another for his father-in-law, friendship extends itself to a larger number. But Adam in his single person was obliged to hold both relations to his sons and daughters, for brothers and sisters were united in marriage. So too Eve his wife was both mother and mother-in-law to her children of both sexes; while, had there been two women, one the mother, the other the mother-in-law, the family affection would have had a wider field. Then the sister herself by becoming a wife sustained in her single person two relationships, which, had they been distributed among individuals, one being sister, and another being wife, the family tie would have embraced a greater number of persons. But there was then no material for effecting this, since there were no human beings but the brothers and sisters born of those two first parents. Therefore, when an abundant population made it possible, men ought to choose for wives women who were not already their sisters; for not only would there then be no necessity for marrying sisters, but, were it done, it would be most abominable. For if the grandchildren of the first pair, being now able to choose their cousins for wives, married their sisters, then it would no longer be only two but three relationships that were held by one man, while each of these relationships ought to have been held by a separate individual, so as to bind together by family affection a larger number. For one man would in that case be both father, and father-in-law, and uncle to his own children (brother and sister now man and wife); and his wife would be mother, aunt, and mother-in-law to them; and they themselves would be not only brother and sister, and man and wife, but cousins also, being the children of brother and sister. Now, all these relationships, which combined three men into one, would have embraced nine persons had each relationship been held by one individual, so that a man had one person for his sister, another his wife, another his cousin, another his father, another his uncle, another his father-in-law, another his mother, another his aunt, another his mother-in-law; and thus the social bond would not have been tightened to bind a few, but loosened to embrace a larger number of relations.

City of God, Book 15, Chapter 16. Citing part of the first paragraph.***

In other words, it was not against the natural law for Cain, Abel and Seth to marry their sisters.

Let me get this straight.

A) You say some kind of people of Homo sapiens type preexisted Adam and Eve, but weren't created for a relation with God;
B) The Evolutionary Timeline holds, as per dating methods
C) Adam was in this Evolutionary timeline created 6000 years ago.

In this perspective, Americas and Oceania, peopled "before 6000 years ago" should, in pre-Columbian times, have been peopled by pre-Adamites.

A position held once by Isaac La Peyrère and condemned by the Catholic Church, his book was on the latest edition of the Index Librorum in 1948.

How would you get around that?

Universal Flood? Yeah, sure, Anzick 1 was a pre-Adamite, but his relatives were wiped out 4500 years ago, and replaced later on by descendants of Adam via Noah?

Won't work. If the Flood was in 2468 BC in the Evolutionary timeline, it had to be local or regional. Egyptians were Egyptian before and after that date, if we equate the real and Biblical date to carbon dates, Chinese were Chinese before and after, Japanese were Jomon before and after and so on. So, the Americas were American and Oceania was Pacific before and after.

You'd have a pretty good case for Isaac La Peyrère, and so against the Catholic Church.

Meanwhile, you'd be very hard pressed philosophically to motivate how a "very clever animal" could have developed language and all the things you pretend specimens of Homo sapiens were doing before 6000 years ago "without being the image of God" and you have no theological business to pretend "image of God" only means, the empirically not very directly verifiable "created for a relation with God" ...

* The complete visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich : The Old Testament – Part 2
http://annecatherineemmerich.com/complete_visions/volume_1_the_old_testament/the-old-testament-part-2/

** A lady who was a fervent believer in Anne Catherin Emmerick was also a very nice mother in law to a daughter in law who was black. "The curse is not on the individual" ...

*** The City of God (Book XV)
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120115.htm

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Heschmeyer and Myself on Why Not Orthodox?

Jesuit Inquisitors, or in an updated version, Franciscan Inquisitors, didn't condemn Peter the Aleut to death for refusing to commune in azymes. And it wasn't executed by their servants cutting small piece after small piece from his body, like Persians had done to St. John of Persia to whom incidentally Hermann of Alaska had a devotion, him being the missionary telling his Aleuts "if you go down to California, be very careful to not commune in azymes" ...
Speaking of azymes, Michael Caerularius was wrong in saying Jesus never celebrated the Seder, but some kind of pre-allusion to it. Prepare everything for the feast (that would include getting rid of leavened bread).
Paul (de Ballester-Convallier) of Nazianzus did not in a Catholic library find St. Robert Bellarmine saying "if the pope were to teach error or evil, the Church then is obliged", as claimed, but that could be a Protestant mistranslation (not featured in his story of leaving Catholicism, as he is supposed to have found Bellarmine in a Catholic library).
If Kallistos Ware honestly thought that "filioque was decided at Third Council of Toledo" when Catholic Visigoths could be overreacting to Arian Visigoths, he was wrong. It is verbatim found in the confession of faith against Priscillianists at the FIRST Council of Toledo, ending in 400, so, when Hosius of Cordoba was a likelier influence than St. Augustine of Hippo.
Hosius of Cordoba met St. Athanasius. I happen to favour Quicumque as really being by him. ONE argument against it is "it includes" (with a slightly different wording) "the filioque" which is circular. Another is "St. Athanasius wrote Greek" ... he spent two years or so in exile in Trier, which wasn't very Greek speaking, so if he didn't learn any Latin, he'd have been lazy as a missionary. There were already Jews in Trier and some parts of Quicumque read like a direct response to the argument from Shema.

They hate.

Modernist Orthodox hate Fundamentalism. Being against condoms isn't a hit with them, neither is being YEC or Geocentric. Ratzinger was uncharitable with his comments on Africa, if you ask them (that's when I knew I had to get back to Roman and solid ground)
Trad Orthodox hate Catholicism. How can you even imagine being Orthodox, when you neither abjured Papism nor got a Baptism by three Immersions from an Orthodox priest?
Middle of the road like Romanides and Metallinos hate both. Filioque breaks the god breathed therapeutic experience of hesychastic prayer and so does believing in the literal truth of Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. Either way, you are back into "religion", a psycho-physic disease.

I cannot say this covers the Patriarchate of Antioch, but that was not available to me or accessible to me in 2006.

Smaller comments

6:54 In top of that, there are EO where there are Copts.

Catholics both have Uniate Copts and Uniate Melkites. Non-Uniate Melkites are EO, more precisely GO, in Egypt.

8:37 I do not agree with your quasi-total rejection of self-shepherding.

It would follow that conversions to the Catholic Church were illicit as following neither from Catholic shepherding (which by definition the convert didn't have when deciding to convert) nor from the previous whatever shepherd (who usually isn't converting).

In a similar manner, the Catholic Church hasn't condemned individual interpretation of the Bible. The Church has said (Trent IV, Vatican I) the interpretations must never contradict the position which the Church hath held and holds, nor the consensus of the CCFF. And also that making individual interpretation the supreme norm is not a recipe for unity (Mortalium Animos).

People who can't get a father confessor they trust or find a mass they find licit are not supposed to quit Catholicism altogether and people who on a question have no immediate access to the Church's interpretation are not at fault for daring one, unless it contradicts what the Church hath held and holds or contradicts the consensus of the CCFF.

9:57 Twenty.

Sunday, August 24, 2025

Brian Holdsworth and Myself on Why Not Orthodox

HGL's F.B. writings: If the Church is Very Reduced, the Pope Is at Some Risk of Being Bamboozled by Bigger Actors · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Brian Holdsworth and Myself on Why Not Orthodox · Heschmeyer and Myself on Why Not Orthodox?

Reconsidering the Eastern Orthodox
Brian Holdsworth | 23 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4KyyoYFEBY

16:04 You are probably making too big a concession to the Orthodox by tracing the Western view to St. Augustine.

He wasn't a writer prior to being a bishop and in 395 he was made coadjutor.

However in 400, a council in Spain, Toledo I, mentioned the filioque basically "off topic" in a creed (off topic insofar as it's not apparent that Priscillian, whom the council was condemning, was denying it).

If the Church is Very Reduced, the Pope Is at Some Risk of Being Bamboozled by Bigger Actors
https://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2025/06/if-church-is-very-reduced-pope-is-at.html

Concilium Toletanum primum
https://www.benedictus.mgh.de/quellen/chga/chga_043t.htm

Spiritum quoque esse paraclitum, qui nec pater sit ipse, nec filius, sed a patre filioque procedens.

This is before St. Augustine could reasonably have been influential in Toledo.

21:20 I think you overdo the problem in their own ecclesiology.

I'm a revert from the Orthodox, and I can relate to:

old territories under old jurisdictions
new territories (like lands to be Christened) or new old territories (like RC and Protestant lands) under whatever old jurisdiction comes there first.

In my own case, Russian was out of question, I'm a Swede, and Russia and Sweden have been enemies over centuries, both Charles XII and Gustavus IV Adolfus were opposing Czars in wars. On the other hand, I had been in Romania a few months of vacations when I was small and that was as close as I was to any Orthodox country at all. Now, less good reasoning. I was Neo-Himerite (corresponds to Patriarchate of Moscow) because I wanted to hold a hand in each direction of both Catholic Trads and Palaeo-Himerites (corresponds to Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia).

In my experience, Orthodox may have a harsh attitude on Catholics or a harsh attitude on Trads/Fundies, or both. But it's not neither. Perhaps I could have had that with Antioch, but wasn't available.

So having some Orthos frown on me because I didn't totally renounce Catholicism (I didn't abjure, and also didn't abjure on my return), others would do so because I was too traddy or fundie.

[Above apparently disappeared, as I saw when I tried to add the first of the two following lines]

Palaeo-Himerites never accepted me, and a Neo-Himerite Pentecost sermon criticised Antipope Ratzinger for exactly the wrong reason, pretending his view on condoms was uncharitable to Africans.

That's when I returned.