‘Western Civilisation’ and Enlightenment

by Damien F. Mackey “When a reporter asked [Gandhi] what he thought of Western civilisation, he famously replied: ‘I think it would be a good idea’.” Western civilisation. What is it? Where is it? And do we really need it? Various politicians, journalists and teachers in Australia today are desperately trying to defend so-called ‘Western Civilisation’. Right at the forefront of these is senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, Dr. Kevin Donnelly: “Students are taught about the dark side of Western civilisation … [but] indigenous culture and history are always positive”. Some of these have been calling for - in the face of Islamic terrorism and left-wing subversion - a return to rationalism, to what they consider to be ‘the values of the Enlightenment’. The former Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, has been one of these: “All of those things that Islam has never had — a Reformation, an Enlightenment, a well-developed concept of the separation of church and state — that needs to happen,” he told Sky News. …. “All cultures are not equal and, frankly, a culture that believes in decency and tolerance is much to be preferred to one which thinks that you can kill in the name of God, and we’ve got to be prepared to say that”. No one is permitted to “kill in the name of God”, that is for sure. However, militant Islam is not the only culture that can perpetrate mass killings. What about the terrorism of the millions of abortions being performed in the West? “New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is under fire from faith leaders after he signed a bill into law that legalizes abortion up until birth in many cases. The Democratic governor directed the One World Trade Center and other landmarks to be lit in pink … to celebrate the passage of "Reproductive Health Act".” “Our governor and legislative leaders hail this new abortion law as progress. This is not progress”, the bishops wrote. “Progress will be achieved when our laws and our culture once again value and respect each unrepeatable gift of human life, from the first moment of creation to natural death”. Ours is not always “a culture that believes in decency and tolerance”? Pope Francis has also denounced gossip as ‘form of terrorism’: ‘The tongue kills like a knife,’ the pontiff told Catholic faithful at an audience in the Vatican. Gossip, too, can waste people, though it is obviously a more subtle form of killing than when one shouting “Allahu Akbar” (Arabic: الله أكبر), and wielding a serrated knife and the Koran, beheads an ‘infidel’ in our very streets. But even that is too subtle for the left-wing media that cannot detect any sort of motive in this. Another Enlightenment favouring, Western civilisation defender is Mark Latham, a former leader of the Australian Labor Party. Latham regards the Enlightenment as a deliverance from the “primitive superstitions” of previous centuries and the arrival at such knowledge as “could give mankind a comprehensive mastery over nature”: https://www.facebook.com/MarkLathamsOutsiders/posts/the-radical-left-wing-attack-on- THE RADICAL LEFT-WING ATTACK ON WESTERN CIVILISATION …. I worry that Australia is sleep walking its way to disaster. Political correctness, identity politics and cultural Marxism have run through our institutions at an astonishing rate. There’s not enough public awareness of where these changes have come from and what they mean for the future. Media headlines focus on each controversy in isolation. But we need to understand the overall pattern. The Left has launched a cultural invasion of Australia based on the concept of ‘fluidity’. Everything we thought was fixed in our understanding of the world – such as recorded history, science, national allegiance, gender, sexuality and even the words of everyday language – is now said to be open for reinterpretation and revision. Under the influence of post-modernism, the Left claims these basic forms of knowledge are actually ‘capitalist constructs’, the equivalent of brainwashing to make us support the existing social and political order. In pushing this line through our institutions, traditional Australian values are being lost. We are no longer a nation of free speech and meritocracy, the land of the fair go. Yes, our politics has changed, our culture is under siege and many Australians are thoroughly confused by what’s happening around them. But it’s even worse than that. The Leftist drive for ‘fluidity’ is actually an attack on our civilisation. It’s an attempt to wind back many of the gains of the 17th and 18th century Enlightenment. If you take one thing away from reading this article, hopefully this is it. My research and writing aims to alert as many Australians as possible to the political challenges facing Western civilisation: to see the overall, to understand the seriousness of the situation. A clear and present danger has emerged. We can no longer afford to take the advantages of our civilisation for granted. Coming out of the Middle Ages, a new era of reason and scientific progress propelled Western nations to unprecedented levels of economic development, consumer comfort and advanced health care and education. The primitive superstitions of earlier centuries were left behind, replaced by a conviction that knowledge drawn from experience and evidence could give mankind a comprehensive mastery over nature. These advances made important social goals possible. It was hoped that democratic government would sweep away feudal hierarchies and entrench the universal freedoms of political expression, association and participation. So too, the welfare state was designed to give people freedom from want, illness and ignorance. A new age of technology and creativity had the potential to uplift the quality of work, community and intellectual life – a genuine enlightenment. Everywhere we look in Australia today, these values and gains are under attack. Reason and rationality are being lost, replaced by the march of ‘fluidity’. …. [End of quote] Both Western Civilisation and the Enlightenment might prove somewhat hard to define, or to pinpoint. For example, when, precisely, did the Era of the Enlightenment begin? There is little consensus on the precise beginning of the Age of Enlightenment. And, again, is Australia a Western civilisation? Certainly not geographically speaking, at least, as we live in an Asian part of the world. Whatever be the case, Thomas Storck has attempted to determine “What is Western culture?”: http://www.ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/FR94102.htm Almost every time that we read the newspaper or listen to the news on TV or radio we see or hear the West mentioned. Until a few years ago its mention was apt to be in connection with some military initiative in opposition to the Soviet Union and her allies. Currently it is more likely to be about some economic problem or program. And although the news media seldom take the trouble to define the word West, it is not difficult to figure out what they mean by it. Unfortunately, for them the term signifies no more than a political or economic bloc, the United States, the European Community, some other European countries, such as Scandinavia or Austria, and a few countries in Asia or the Pacific such as Australia and New Zealand. And because the media's notion of the West is repeated so often, many of us begin to see the West chiefly in their terms: the West is nothing but a political or economic bloc committed to certain things, chiefly democracy and freedom, conceived principally as freedom for moneymaking and pleasure seeking, and, till recently, organized to defend itself against another bloc of nations that wished to destroy or inhibit that freedom. Of course there is occasionally some mention of "historical values" or such, that are seen to be at the bottom of the unity of the West, but in our media's conception these are so ethereal as to mean little besides an adherence to representative democracy and a minimum of restraints on conduct. With abortion legal in nearly every one of these countries, they surely do not include a respect for human dignity! Because the public and civic life of Western nations shows no deeper unity than a superficial political and economic likeness, most publicists and commentators assume that that is all there is to the West, at least today. It is merely a group of nations with some sort of common historical background, but sharing nothing important now but a commitment to preserving its freedom for materialistic and hedonistic pursuits. But is this all there is to the West? Is it only a grouping of nations seeking to preserve the material goods and worldly pleasures they possess? Although I think that many Catholics in the West know that our civilization is much more than this, yet we too are affected by the media's conceptions and for that reason are apt to forget just what Western culture really is and what gives it its unity. For example, many of us follow the common practice of classifying Latin America and such eastern European nations as Poland and Hungary as non-Western, clearly an historical absurdity. In this essay, then, I intend to set forth some of the basis for the West's historic unity, a unity that is still important for us today. How do we discover the ultimate basis of the unity of the West? Jacques Maritain captured the essence of the West in one sentence, when he wrote that the Greek people "may be truly termed the organ of the reason and word of man as the Jewish people was the organ of the revelation and word of God." [An Introduction to Philosophy, London: Sheed and Ward, 1947, p. 33]. The West then is nothing but a rich fusion of the word of God and the word of man, all that our culture has received from God by way of revelation and all that we have received by way of the exercise of reason. The former, the theological content of Western culture, comes from the revelation God made to the Chosen People—to Abraham, Moses and others under the Old Law, culminating in the coming of God himself as man. And though the final form of this theological content is in Catholic doctrine, its origins lie in the Old Testament covenant of God with the Hebrew people. …. [End of quote] Thomas Storck’s concise definition of “the theological content of Western culture”, originating in the Old Testament and reaching its fulfilment in the New Testament, makes a clear statement. Not so Dr. Kevin Donnelly’s uncharacteristic lapse when he, on one occasion, completely by-passes the Old Testament. His summation of the origins of Western democracy - after having noted that all cultures have their own religion - is this: “In Western liberal democracy, such as Australia, it is Christianity and the New Testament”. Yet how many Catholics would not bat an eyelid when reading or hearing such a statement? Might some of these be perfectly content with just a New Testament, not appreciating that the ‘Jesus Christ’ they purport to follow was utterly steeped in Old Testament culture? I intend to give examples of this Old Testament cultural influence in the course of this article. The Rich Young Man Pope John Paul II dedicated a whole chapter to this famous Gospel encounter (CHAPTER I - "TEACHER, WHAT GOOD MUST I DO...?" (Mt 19:16) - Christ and the answer to the question about morality) in his rousing encyclical (6th August, 1993), Veritatis Splendor (“The Splendour of Truth”), a chapter essentially metaphysical, about “the absolute Good”, and also “moral theology”: 7. "Then someone came to him...". In the young man, whom Matthew's Gospel does not name, we can recognize every person who, consciously or not, approaches Christ the Redeemer of man and questions him about morality. For the young man, the question is not so much about rules to be followed, but about the full meaning of life. This is in fact the aspiration at the heart of every human decision and action, the quiet searching and interior prompting which sets freedom in motion. This question is ultimately an appeal to the absolute Good which attracts us and beckons us; it is the echo of a call from God who is the origin and goal of man's life. Precisely in this perspective the Second Vatican Council called for a renewal of moral theology, so that its teaching would display the lofty vocation which the faithful have received in Christ,14 the only response fully capable of satisfying the desire of the human heart. The suggestion will be proposed here that the response by Jesus to the young man is only properly intelligible when considered in the context of the Old Testament and Mosaïc Law – Moses invariably being Jesus’s very starting-point for explaining “himself” (Luke 24:27): “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself”. This is not necessarily the typically Catholic approach. Quite recently a very good Dominican priest - one who often manages to explain in simple fashion the meaning of somewhat obscure Gospel passages - preached a sermon on this text in which he greatly lamented the young man’s turning away from Jesus as a sadly missed opportunity in the young man’s life journey with the virtual implication that this was when he stepped right away from the path of salvation. What that explanation misses, just to begin with, is that the young man was habitually a fervent keeper of God’s commandments (Matthew 19:20). The following more biblically-based article, from Cristadelphianbooks, which even goes so far as to suggest an identification for the rich young man, seems to be a far more preferable interpretation of the encounter: http://www.christadelphianbooks.org/haw/sitg/sitgb52.html 148. Was the Rich Young Ruler Barnabas? When Jesus spoke of the difficulty for the rich to find a place in the kingdom of God, his disciples, utterly astonished, asked: "Who then can be saved?" As they saw it, if a man with all the advantages of ease and comfort could not prove himself worthy of everlasting life, what hope was there for those beset with all the cares of a life of toil and anxiety? And was not material prosperity the outward sign of God's blessing? So surely the scales were loaded in favour of the rich. Jesus answered: "With men it is impossible (that the rich should be saved), but not with God: for with God all things are possible"- which surely means that God has the power to save even the rich whose wealth is actually such a big spiritual handicap. Honesty But this rich man had chosen to go away from Jesus, and so this saying that God has the power to save even the rich was left hanging in mid-air, so to speak-unless He proceeded to do just that with this earnest young man who said: 'No, you are asking too much, Jesus. I cannot do what you require of me.' In this fact, then, there is surely good presumptive evidence that ultimately God did save this rich man, in vindication of Christ's assertion that God can save even a rich man in love with his riches. The ominous saying with which this incident concluded is also worth pondering here: "many that are first shall be last; and the last first." The first phrase was a palpable warning to the privileged twelve, the one of whom (Mk.14:10 RVm.) was to become last of all. But who was the last one who was to be given a place among the first? It is to be noted that, whatever else, this would-be disciple did not lack honesty. Unlike so many of Christ's more recent disciples, he did not somehow manage to persuade himself that "Sell all that thou hast and distribute to the poor" really meant something else less exacting and a great deal easier of achievement. When a man is frank and honest regarding the demands of Christ there is hope for him, even though his response be inadequate. But when he succeeds in throwing dust in his own eyes so as to persuade himself that he is fulfilling the Lord's commands, when really he is doing nothing of the sort, he is in dire spiritual danger. A Levite It makes an intriguing study in circumstantial evidence to bring together the various lines of argument which support, without completely proving the conclusion that this young man was Barnabas, who later became Paul's companion in travel. First, it is possible to go a long way towards establishing that this rich ruler was a Levite (as, of course, Barnabas was; Acts 4:36). Many readers of the gospels have mused over the fact that Jesus quoted to his enquirer the second half of the Decalogue-those commandments which have to do with duty to one's neighbour. Why did he not quote the others (more important, surely) which concern a man's duty to God? But if indeed this enquirer were a Levite, then by virtue of his calling, the first half of the Decalogue would find fulfilment almost as a matter of course. It is also worth noting perhaps - though not too much stress should be put on this - that apparently it was when Jesus was near to Jericho that the rich young ruler came to him; and at that time, as the parable of the Good Samaritan shows, Jericho was a Levitical city. Much more emphatic is the fact that apparently Jesus did not require of other disciples that they "sell all, and give to the poor, and come and follow him." Once again, if the man were a Levite, all is clear, for "Levi hath no portion nor inheritance with his brethren; the Lord is his inheritance " (Dt.10:9). Thus a Levite with a large estate was a contradiction in terms, and when Jesus bade him be rid of this wealth, he was merely calling him back to loyalty to other precepts in the Law of Moses. Barnabas, it is interesting to observe, was a Levite of Cyprus. So apparently the letter of the Law was observed by his owning no property in Israel. The "inheritance" Moses wrote about was, of course, in the land of Promise. So that estate in Cyprus was a neat circumvention of the spirit of the Mosaic covenant, and now Jesus bade him recognize it as such. Jesus went on to quote also from Moses' great prophecy concerning the tribe of Levi: "There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake and the gospel's, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time ..." In spirit, and also in detail, this is very much like Deuteronomy 33:8,9: "And of Levi he said, Let thy Thummim (' If thou wouldst be perfect. . .') and thy Urim be with thy holy one . . . who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children .. ." Even more impressive is the Lord's demand that this earnest seeker sell all and come and follow him, for this is exactly what the Law prescribed when a Levite wished to give himself to full-time service of the sanctuary (Dt. 18 :6-8). There must be first "the sale of his patrimony," and the devotion of the proceeds to the sanctuary. Instead of the temple Jesus substituted his own poor disciples, the new temple of God. But this was to be done only if the Levite came "with all the desire of his mind." Perhaps also there is special significance in the fact that when Jesus quoted the Commandments he put one of them in the form: "Defraud not" (Mk.10:19), as though with reference to the commandment forbidding the withholding of the wages due to a poor employee (Dt.24:14,15). But it could refer to the dutiful devotion of one's resources to the honour of God, a responsibility specially incumbent on a Levite who rejoiced in excessive wealth. …. [End of quote] This explanation really serves to make full biblical sense of the famous encounter. None of it, though, is likely to impress the sort of Catholics, as mentioned above, who are disdainful of the Old Testament. Or those who eschew Vatican II with its timely call for us to study all of the Scriptures (Dei Verbum), and to seek a closer relationship with the Jewish people (Nostra Aetate), who are much closer than we to the teachings of Moses. “Dei Verbum quotes one of the greatest Bible Scholars of the Early Church, St. Jerome to emphasize the need of all Christians to become intimately familiar with Scripture: “Ignorance of Scripture is Ignorance of Christ”.” “There is of course a tremendous amount of history, doctrine, and moral instruction in Scripture. But the deepest truth about Scripture is this – it is a privileged place where we encounter God and where He speaks a living, personal, life-changing word to us. “For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them.” (DV 21)”. https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/vaticaniiandthewordofgodpart4goalofcat Fr. Nadim Nassar describes it as “shocking”, when “the culture of God” comes into contact with the “culture of the people”. He, the Church of England’s only Syrian priest, urges a theme in his recent book, The Culture of God – the Syrian Jesus (Hodder and Stoughton, 2018), that has been a central theme in various article of mine. Nassar is “an outspoken advocate for Western Christians to recognise the Middle-Eastern roots of their faith”. Actually, this is nothing new. Eighty years before Fr. Nassar wrote his book, pope Pius XI, addressing a group of Belgian pilgrims (1938), asserted that: “Anti-Semitism is unacceptable. Spiritually, we are all Semites”. Again, this is right in line with Thomas Storck’s conclusion (refer back again to p. 5), based on the French philosopher Jacques Maritain, that “the theological content of Western culture” originates in the Old Testament and reaches its fulfilment in the New Testament. Judaeo-Christian thus sums up much of the early basis of our Western Civilisation. Maritain’s other side of the equation for the essence of the West, the supposed Greek influence: “the Greek people "may be truly termed the organ of the reason and word of man as the Jewish people was the organ of the revelation and word of God", may need to be seriously reconsidered, we think, in light of various Patristic statements that the Greeks owed their wisdom to the Hebrews. “What is Plato but Moses in Attic Greek?” St. Clement (Stromateis, I, 22) St. Clement believed that Sirach (c. 200 BC, conventional dating) had influenced the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c. 500 BC, conventional dating). Justin Martyr insisted that not only Moses but all the prophets are older than any poets, wise men, or philosophers the Greeks can put forward. “Moses is more ancient than all Greek writers; and anything that philosophers and poets said … they took as suggestions from the prophets and so were able to understand and expound them …” (Apol. I.44). St. Ambrose claimed that Plato (c. 400 BC, conventional dating) had learned from Jeremiah (c. 600 BC, conventional dating) in Egypt; a belief that was initially taken up by Augustine. We submit that the statement by Plato in The Republic (II.362a): “… our just man will be scourged, racked, fettered … and at last, after all manner of suffering, will be crucified”, could only have been written during the Christian era. “When the culture of God reaches us, the inevitable result is that it shakes our world; sometimes it is like a hurricane or an earthquake”. (Nassar, p. 180) Jesus Christ, who had come to set all things right, was wont to say (e.g. Matthew 5:21, 22): ‘You have heard that it was said to the people long ago …. But I tell you …’. The first part of this statement refers to the received cultural view of long-standing. Fr. Nassar describes this as follows (p. 180): “For all of us, we organise our world around ourselves according to what we have been taught, with ‘in’ and ‘out’, friends and enemies, right and wrong, values and vices and so on”. He then goes on to describe the second part of Jesus’s statement: “What a shock when God breaks into our lives and sweeps our ordering of the world aside like a house of cards, and says to us, ‘This is not what I want from you’.” Whilst there is a meek and mild side to Jesus, he can also be, according to Fr. Nassar’s description, “a volcanic Jesus” (p. 10): In Matthew 23 Jesus launches a series of fierce attacks on [the Pharisees and scribes]: ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.’ (23:13) Along with “volcanic” fury, Fr. Nassar also discerns a humour (“funny”) and irony (“ironic”) in this statement of Jesus that he thinks Levantine people at least would pick up. He continues (pp. 10-11): This saying of Jesus belongs to the essence of the culture of God; here, Jesus is being both ironic and funny, and his audience would have laughed when they heard this. Jesus wanted to speak the truth that touches the people’s hearts on the one hand, and on the other, to really strike the leaders. This is how Jesus handled his earthly culture and the culture of God. Nobody now listens to this sentence and smiles – but in the Levant, you would immediately laugh at Jesus’ irony. Jesus then attacks the religious leaders for their flawed understanding of what is sacred: ‘Woe, to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred?’ (23:16-17). Here, Jesus is not only using harsh words – this is also an exceptional way of speaking that Jesus used exclusively when he spoke to or about the religious leaders. He did it on purpose, to show without any doubt that the leadership they modelled does not belong in any way to the culture of God. Jesus is furious with the religious leaders because they place great weight on minor matters while ignoring what really counts; he calls them hypocrites, ‘For you tithe mint, dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith’ (23:23). Hypocrisy is especially loathed in the Levant, and an accusation of hypocrisy would stain someone’s character. …. [End of quote] On pp. 179-180, Fr. Nassar tells of the profound impact of the culture of God on his own life. “I feel that my experiences resonate strongly with Peter’s experience in Joppa”: From birth I was indoctrinated by the state to follow a certain ideology, with a view on who were friends and who were enemies ingrained in my heart. I could not see beyond what had been planted in me. When I went through the Civil War in Lebanon, I was forced to challenge my preconceptions and prejudices …. It took a fresh life in a new world to melt the barriers like snow inside me under the light of God. Seeking the culture of God helped me to liberate my soul from the bondage of the past and to shake off the chains. I feel that my experiences resonate strongly with Peter’s experience in Joppa. Peter was proud of his upbringing and his religion, and how he practised it, to the extent that he did not hesitate to boast about it even to God. Here Fr. Nassar is referring to Acts 10:9-16. He continues: We must remember that all the disciples had been raised as Jews, hating the Samaritans and looking down on all ‘outsiders’, and they found it hard to grasp the consequences of the work of the Spirit when this conflicted with a lifelong obedience to rules of ritual cleanliness. Despite all his experiences of the universality of the gospel, here is the old Peter, slow to respond to the full implications of Pentecost. In place of the culture of God, he is still proudly stuck in the old Law – dividing the world into those who are ‘in’ and those who are ‘out’. The response of the Lord in the visions reveals the full implications of his culture: ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane’. This encounter is a window into the culture of God, which challenges Peter when he was boasting about his observation of the Law and confronts him with the true nature of the culture of God, which is all-inclusive, celebrating diversity and excluding no one. We know the will of God only through a relationship with him, not through a set of written rules. [End of quotes] As in the Joppa incident with St. Peter, the culture of God has again impacted the Church “like a hurricane or an earthquake” in the era of Vatican II. To recall Fr. Nassar again: “What a shock when God breaks into our lives and sweeps our ordering of the world aside like a house of cards, and says to us, ‘This is not what I want from you’.” Pope Francis said in his trip to the Baltic states: “What needs to be done today is to accompany the church in a deep spiritual renewal. I believe the Lord wants a change in the church. I have said many times that a perversion of the church today is clericalism. But fifty years ago, the Second Vatican Council said this clearly: the church is the People of God. Read number 12 of Lumen gentium. I know that the Lord wants the council to make headway in the church. Historians tell us that it takes a hundred years for a council to be applied. We are halfway there. So, if you want to help me, do whatever it takes to move the council forward in the church. And help me with your prayer. I need so many prayers.” There are many Catholics who, like St. Peter at Joppa, resistant of change - “Peter was proud of his upbringing and his religion, and how he practised it, to the extent that he did not hesitate to boast about it even to God” - have not wholeheartedly (or not all) embraced Vatican II, finding “it hard to grasp the consequences of the work of the Spirit …”. The culture of man, when motivated by any poisonous agenda, can also be “shocking”. Fr. Nassar, fully grasping the significance of Simon the Pharisee’s treatment of Our Lord (that might be underestimated by someone from a Western culture without sufficient sensitivity towards Middle Eastern behaviour) writes on p. 123: The shocking thing about this story is that Simon invited Jesus to his home in order to show him that he thought he was Jesus’ superior; he meant to degrade and offend him. If we know anything about Levantine culture, we know that it could never be an accident for an invited guest to be treated so offensively with such a clear and ostentatious display of a lack of hospitality. On p. 183, Fr. Nassar even makes a statement about the West and the Enlightenment: The dilemma of the early Church is still in the Levant today. In the West, the secular world has also permeated Christian beliefs, especially the Enlightenment and its focus on reason, which pushed Christianity into becoming an intellectual exercise, losing the warmth of the heart. Spirituality is now left to those on the verges of faith. …. (Whittaker Chambers, in ‘COLD FRIDAY’, 1964, pp. 225, 226). "I am baffled by the way people still speak of the West as if it were at least a cultural unity against communism. But the West is divided, not only politically, but by an invisible cleavage. On one side are the voiceless masses with their own subdivisions and fractures. On the other side is the enlightened, articulate elite which to one degree or other has rejected the religious roots of the civilization the roots without which it is no longer Western civilization, but a new order of beliefs, attitudes and mandates. In short, this is the order of which communism is one logical expression. Not originating in Russia, but in the cultural capitals of the West, reaching Russia by clandestine delivery via the old underground centres in Cracow, Vienna, Berne, Zurich and Geneva. It is a Western body of beliefs that now threatens the West from-Russia. As a body of Western beliefs: secular, materialistic, and rationalistic, the intelligentsia of the West share it, and are therefore always committed to a secret, emotional complicity with communism, of which they dislike, not the communism, but only what, by chance of history, Russia has specially added to it: slave-labour camps, purges, MVD et alia. And that, not because the Western intellectuals find them unjustifiable, but because they are afraid of being caught in them. If they could have communism without the brutalities of overlording that the Russian experience bred, they have only marginal objections. Why should they object? What else is Socialism but Communism with the claws retracted? (Note retracted, not removed)." A Plato (Cave) – Aristotle (Light) Divide? American popular historian, Arthur Herman, a writer of boundless knowledge, has written an intriguing book, The Cave and the Light. Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization (Random House, 2014), according to which the last 2000 or more years are to be divided between the supremacy of the thought of Plato, or that of Aristotle. It is truly amazing how Herman is able to show how the thinking of Plato was uppermost in one era, whilst that of Aristotle prevailed in another. The trouble is, who was Plato? Who was Aristotle? If, as according to St. Ambrose, Plato really was in Egypt with the prophet Jeremiah - which, chronologically, the classical Plato could not possibly have been - then the likeliest candidate for ‘Plato’ so-called would have to be Jeremiah’s disciple in Egypt, the Jewish scribe, Baruch, a true proficient of wisdom (Baruch 3:9-4:4). What may strengthen this somewhat is that, according to tradition, Baruch was the religious (philosophical) founder, Zoroaster. Anyway, ‘not to let truth get in the way of a good story’, let us read a bit of what Arthur Herman has written, through a reviewer, Bill Frezza: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2014/01/14/book-review-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of- Like many an engineer who got nary a whiff of a liberal education, I’ve spent the last 35 years trying to make up for it through my own reading. Charting a course through history, economics, and literature has been relatively easy. But making sense of the conflicting schools of philosophy without a roadmap has been vexing—until the right book came along to finally help put all the pieces in place. That book, The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization by Arthur Herman, should be standard reading in every Philosophy 101 course, and on the short list of “must read” books for any educated adult. Herman lays out the competing dynamic between Plato’s mysticism and Aristotle’s empiricism, which has driven over 2,300 years of history. For the first of these 900 years, the Schools of Athens laid the foundation of Western thinking, with Plato’s Academy becoming the model for every monastery, university, and totalitarian regime. Meanwhile, Aristotle’s legacy bequeathed to us capitalism, the scientific method, and the American Revolution. As history has ebbed and flowed, we’ve seen the influence of each school wax and wane. Plato’s theory of decline and yearning for a vanished utopia informed the inward turning of European societies following the collapse of the Roman Empire —“the Cave”—while Aristotle’s faith in human potential and vision for continual progress fueled the Renaissance and Enlightenment—“the Light”. Along the way, Herman lays out the contributions of subsequent philosophers, who echoed one or the other of these themes, both through their teachings and through the deeds of the societies that embraced them. One of the book’s most important threads is the impact these two schools had on the evolution of Christianity, including the Catholic Church’s efforts to harmonize faith and reason and the relative importance of good works in this life vs. entry into the next. The balance tips back and forth from Augustine to Aquinas, culminating in the rupture of the Protestant Reformation, before we are carried through to Max Weber and the Protestant work ethic. But this is no dry pedantic tome! Herman makes the journey fun, as he weaves a captivating narrative of thought and action and puts the ethos of the key players in historical context. His treatment of Aristotle’ greatest student, the scientist-warrior Archimedes, comes to life in his account of the epic defense of Syracuse, complete with monstrous war machines plucking Roman ships into the air and tossing them about like toys. Might there be a Hollywood blockbuster waiting to be made here? But the heart and soul of the book, providing enough food for thought to last a lifetime, is the contrast of Platonic excess and Aristotelian hubris. The former gave us not just sublime art, but also tyrants from Robespierre to Adolf Hitler. The latter gave us not only Adam Smith and the industrial revolution, but also the atom bomb. Herman’s delineation of the difference between a subjective reality crafted by elites, vs. an objective reality informed by direct observation is punctuated by a brilliant quote from Benito Mussolini: “It is not necessary that men move mountains, only that other men believe they moved them.” Thus, Plato’s “noble lie” through which rulers control producers leads to Josef Goebbels’s “big lie.” While it’s clear that the author is a champion of Aristotle’s reason, liberty, and Athenian democracy against Plato’s call to faith, Spartan obedience, and rule by philosopher-kings, he sounds an important warning about the “fatal conceit,” to which Aristotle’s heirs often succumb, citing the work of F. A. Hayek, an important thinker though not normally included in the pantheon of philosophers. “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” And then at the end of the book, rather than indulge in a bout of Aristotelian triumphalism, Herman leaves the door open for Plato’s leavening influence. Perhaps Herman believes there really is something ineffable out there—or he has taken to heart the advice of Voltaire, who did not believe in God but hoped his valet did “so he won’t steal my spoons.” Read it yourself and be the judge.

Joseph of Egypt and Pythagoras

by Damien F. Mackey Having proposed a connection between the patriarch Joseph of Egypt and the non-historical Thales, ‘the first philosopher’, in articles such as: Re-Orienting to Zion the History of Ancient Philosophy (2) Re-Orienting to Zion the History of Ancient Philosophy | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu it is now a small step, I believe, to connect this sage also to the alleged ‘first user of the word philosophy’, Pythagoras – thought, however, to have been born at Samos in c. 570 BC. As in the first part of the name Tha-les, so here again in the case of the name Pyth-agoras, the Egyptian divine name “Ptah” has, I think, been Grecised. Also once again, as with Thales, we appear to have the problem of a lack of first-hand written evidence [W. Guthrie, “Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism”, Ency. of Phil., Vol. 7, (Collier Macmillan, London, 1972), p. 39]: “The obstacles to an appraisal of classical Pythagoreanism are formidable. There exists no Pythagorean literature before Plato, and it was said that little had been written, owing to a rule of secrecy”. Consistently though, Pythagoras, like Thales, was much influenced by Egypt. I have suggested that, in fact, the great ‘Pythagorean’ contribution to mathematics (numbers, geometry, triangles) may also have been bound up with Egypt and with pyramid measuring and other activities of the architects. Now consider the pattern of the life of Pythagoras and his descendants in relation to Joseph and the family of Israel (the Hebrews). Pythagoras, like Joseph, (a) left his home country and settled in a foreign land, founding a society with religious and political, as well as philosophical aims. Compare the Hebrews settling in the eastern Delta of Egypt (Genesis 46:33). (b) The society gained power there and considerably extended its influence. Compare this with the growth of Israel in Egypt, and its spreading all over the country (Exodus 1:9, 12). After Pythagoras’ death, (c) a serious persecution took place. Likewise, about 65 years after Joseph’s death, the “new king” of Exodus 1:8, became concerned about the amount of Hebrews in Egypt and resolved upon a cruel plan. Moses was born into this very era – the pyramid-building 4th dynasty era – at the approximate time that the founder-pharaoh Khufu (Greek Cheops)/ Amenemes I had resolved to do something about the increase of Asiatics (including Hebrews) in Egypt. The Prophecies of Neferti, “All good things have passed away, the land being cast away through trouble by means of that food of the Asiatics who pervade the land” (www.touregypt.net/propheciesofneferti.htm). The pharaoh thus ordered for all the male Hebrew babies to be slain (Exodus 1:10, 15-16). (d) The (Pythagorean) survivors of the persecution scattered. This may equate with the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 12).

Re-orienting to Zion the History of Ancient Philosophy

by Damien F. Mackey “Mount Zion, true pole of the earth …”. Psalm 48:2 “I will rouse your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece”. Zechariah 9:13 Tertullian: "… free Jerusalem from Athens and the church of Christ from the Academy of Plato." (Tertullian, De praescriptione, vii). This last comment, by Tertullian, will become a kind of mantra for this article, though not properly according to the context of Tertullian, but according to the context of my historical revisions. For, as one will read as the description of my site, Lost Cultural Foundations of Western Civilisation https://westerncivilisationamaic.blogspot.com/ “Much of Western culture, mythology and religion has been appropriated from the cultures of the Fertile Crescent region, especially from the Hebrews (Jews)”. This is a companion to my site, Lost Cultural Foundations of Eastern Civilisation https://easterncivilisationamaic.blogspot.com/ whose description is the same, but with reference to Eastern culture, etc. Now this description, as it applies to the west, basically encapsulates the phenomenon that is the history of ancient philosophy, that has been presented to us as being entirely Greco-Roman (Ionian-Italian), but which I intend to argue was actually Hebrew (Israelite/Jewish) and biblical. Certainly the Fathers of the Church appreciated at least the seminal impact that the Hebrews had had upon Greco-Roman thinking, though without their having taken the extra step that I intend to take in this article, of actually recognising the most famous early western (supposedly) philosophers as being originally Hebrew. To give just a few examples from the Fathers and the early eastern and western legends: “According to Clement [of Alexandria], Plato plagiarized revelation from the Hebrews; this gave the Athenian's highest ideas a flavor of divine authority in the estimation of Clement”. (http://www.gospeltruth.net/gkphilo.htm). “… Aristoxenus in his book the Life of Pythagoras, as well as Aristarchus and Theopompus say that [Pythagoras] came from Tyre, Neanthes from Syria or Tyre, so the majority agree that Pythagoras was of barbarian origin (Strom. I 62, 2-3). (http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Anci/AnciAfon.htm) Clement of Alexandria even believed that Sirach had influenced the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus (Strom. 2.5; Bright 1999:1064). (http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd) Tertullian: "… free Jerusalem from Athens and the church of Christ from the Academy of Plato." (De praescriptione, vii). Eusebius of Caesarea believed that Plato had been enlightened by God and was in agreement with Moses. (http://www.gospeltruth.net/gkphilo.htm) Aristobulus was among many philosophers of his day who argued that the essentials of Greek philosophy and metaphysics were derived from Jewish sources. Philosopher Numenius of Apamea echoes this position in his well known statement "What is Plato but Moses speaking Attic Greek?" (1.150.4) Aristobulus maintained, 150 years earlier than Philo, that not only the oldest Grecian poets, Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, etc., but also the most celebrated Greek thinkers, especially Plato, had acquired most of their wisdom from Jewish sages and ancient Hebrew texts (Gfrorer i. p. 308, also ii. 111-118) (Eusebius citing Aristobulus and Numenius Ev ix. 6, xi. 10). The Arabic-Christian legends identify [the biblical] Baruch with the eastern sage, Zoroaster, and give much information concerning him. (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2562-baruch) Saint Ambrose (Ep. 34) “suggested that Plato was educated in Hebraic letters in Egypt by Jeremiah”. Bahá'u'lláh states that the Greek philosopher Empedocles "was a contemporary" of King David, "while Pythagoras lived in the days of Solomon" (Cole, p. 31; Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh Revealed after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, 145). (http://www.holy-writings.com/?a=SHOWTEXT&d=%2F%2Fen%2FBahai+Faith) Some of these situations (e.g. Sirach influencing Heraclitus - thought to be centuries before Sirach - and Plato meeting Jeremiah, who presumably lived about a century and a half before Plato) are chronologically impossible, of course, in the present context of ancient history. However, in my revised scheme of historical philosophy, they may not be. In this article I am going to take four of the key early, supposedly “Ionian” Greek and Italian, philosophers of antiquity, THALES, HERACLITUS and PYTHAGORAS (Ionian), and EMPEDOCLES (Sicilian), all prior to Socrates (hence ‘pre-Socratics’), and reveal what I believe to be their biblical prototype - of whom I claim these four were merely ghostly replicas, chronologically, ethnically and geographically misplaced. THALES is most important as presumably having begun it all. According to Bertrand Russell, "Western philosophy begins with Thales."[2] And we read at: (http://www.philosophers.co.uk/thales-of-miletus.html): Thales of Miletus (c. 624 BCE – c. 546 BCE) was an ancient (pre-Socratic) Greek philosopher who is often considered the first philosopher and the father of Western philosophy. His approach to philosophical questions of course cannot compare to modern or even later Greek philosophers, however, he is the first known person to use natural explanations for natural phenomena rather than turning to supernatural world and his example was followed by other Greek thinkers who would give rise to philosophy both as a discipline and science. HERACLITUS is considered by some to have been the founder of metaphysics. Thus (http://philoctetes.free.fr/heraclitus.htm): Heraclitus is in a real sense the founder of metaphysics. Starting from the physical standpoint of the Ionian physicists, he accepted their general idea of the unity of nature, but entirely denied their theory of being. The fundamental uniform fact in nature is constant change (πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει); everything both is and is not at the same time. He thus arrives at the principle of Relativity; harmony and unity consist in diversity and multiplicity. The senses are "bad witnesses" (κακοὶ μάρτυρες); only the wise man can obtain knowledge. PYTHAGORAS was thought to be the one who coined the term ‘philosopher’. Thus (http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta15.htm): This most famous philosopher was born sometime between 600 and 590 B.C., and the length of his life has been estimated at nearly one hundred years. …. Pythagoras was said to have been the first man to call himself a philosopher; in fact, the world is indebted to him for the word philosopher. Before that time the wise men had called themselves sages, which was interpreted to mean those who know. Pythagoras was more modest. He coined the word philosopher, which he defined as one who is attempting to find out. EMPEDOCLES was said to have first named the four elements (earth, air, fire and water). Thus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empedocles): Empedocles … Greek: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς; Empedoklēs; Ancient Greek …c. 490–430 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for being the originator of the cosmogenic theory of the four Classical elements. Thus these were four very significant individuals in the received history of early philosophy! Yet historians admit to knowing so little about them. That is apparent from these quotes, respectively, (mainly) from the above sites: Thales: “Not much is known about the philosopher’s early life, not even his exact dates of birth and death”. Heraclitus: “Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom”. Pythagoras: “The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Pythagoras must have been one of the world’s greatest persons, but he wrote nothing, and it is hard to say how much of the doctrine we know as Pythagorean is due to the founder of the society and how much is later development. It is also hard to say how much of what we are told about the life of Pythagoras is trustworthy; for a mass of legend gathered around his name at an early date”. (Taken from: http://www.iep.utm.edu/pythagor/) Empedocles: “Very little is known about his life”. Given these stark admissions, it would not be surprising that the original version of each of these sages could have been lost in the mists of obscurity. My purpose in this article will be to try to restore the original in relation to THALES, HERACLITUS, PYTHAGORAS and EMPEDOCLES {leaving aside at this stage the more important Socratics, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, whose proper identities will really need to be established}, and thereby to uncover the original artisans of wisdom, giving the precedence to Hebrew Hochmah (Wisdom) over Greek Sophia (from whence we get our word philo-sophy). Why is it important to “free Jerusalem from Athens”, to borrow Tertullian’s phrase? Firstly, because (my belief) that the aforementioned great thinkers were Hebrews rather than Greeks. And, secondly, because genuine wisdom thinking and writings could not have been generated by a thing so corrupt and perverse as pagan Greco-Roman culture. To give just one strong example of its highly distorted nature (http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Sodomy/greek_homos.htm): …. Philosophy was another area where the acceptance of homosexuality was obvious, and seemed to be representative of the thoughts of many people (or at least male thought) of the time. Most of the early philosophers seemed to thoroughly understand and discuss the actions pederasty and homosexuality, and Socrates … even described himself as being “experienced in the pursuit of men.” According to the dialogues of Plato – a student of Socrates - pederasty and homosexuality were a part of everyday life, at least for aristocrats. Two of Plato’ s works, The Phaedrus and The Symposium, paint a brilliant picture of what the attitude toward pederasty was at the time. In the opening pages of The Phaedrus, Phaedrus and Socrates are discussing a speech that Lysias – a popular orator of the day - has written; a speech that was “…designed to win the favor of a handsome boy….” Socrates seems to understand why one would write a speech on this subject, and even states that man “cannot have a less desirable protector or companion than the man who is in love with him.” The Symposium goes into even greater detail about pederasty. The setting is a symposium – a type of dinner party that only included males as guests, and had entertainment, wine, and discussion of politics and philosophy – in which several men are gathered and all give speeches about why a love of boys is a good thing. Phaedrus - the first to give his speech - states, For I can’t say that there is a greater blessing right from boyhood than a good lover or a greater blessing for a lover than a darling [young boy]. What people who intend to lead their lives in a noble and beautiful manner need is not provided by family, public honors, wealth, or anything else, so well as by love. Pausanias - the second speaker - adds even more to this argument when he states Aphrodite only inspires love among men for young boys, and not women. Those inspired by Aphrodite are naturally drawn to the male because he is a stronger and more intelligent creature. Socrates also comments on the importance of pederasty in his own life. He says, “My love for this fellow [Agathon- another member of the party who is a beautiful young boy] is not an insignificant affair.” Yet another member of the party, Alcibiades, also loves Agathon and tries to discredit Socrates when he says, “…Socrates is lovingly fixated on beautiful young men, is always around them – in a daze….” …. [End of quote] Gross impurity kills wisdom stone dead! A genuine Christian perennial philosophy cannot properly be based upon corrupt pagan thinking and ethics, no matter how much the latter might have been enlightened by biblical wisdom. Hence, my purpose of re-orientating the philosophia perennis back in line with Hebrew wisdom (hochmah). The question of who really were the original three sages who inspired the great philosophical triumvirate of SOCRATES, PLATO AND ARISTOTLE, is a most fascinating one. And it is one that I should hope to answer with conviction in due course. To achieve this should be made easier, at least chronologically, once I have secured the true identities of THALES, HERACLITUS, PYTHAGORAS and EMPEDOCLES, who apparently preceded the three ‘Socratics’ in time. Now, this is how I suspect our four pre-Socratics stand in relation to real history (for I have already done previous work on this very subject): THALES is, as I have argued in various articles now, the biblical Joseph of the Book of Genesis. See e.g. my article: First philosopher, Thales, likely a Greek borrowing from Joseph of Egypt (9) First philosopher, Thales, likely a Greek borrowing from Joseph of Egypt | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu His name ‘Thales” may derive from the semi-legendary sage Ptah-hotep in Egypt, who, like Joseph, lived to be 110 years of age, and who is thought to have inspired some of the biblical Proverbs. Traditions are completely unreliable and “conflicting” with regard to Greek versions of Thales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales Diogenes Laertius states that ("according to Herodotus and Douris and Democritus") Thales' parents were Examyes and Cleobuline, then traces the family line back to Cadmus, a prince of Tyre. Diogenes then delivers conflicting reports: one that Thales married and either fathered a son (Cybisthus or Cybisthon) or adopted his nephew of the same name; the second that he never married, telling his mother as a young man that it was too early to marry, and as an older man that it was too late. Plutarch had earlier told this version: Solon visited Thales and asked him why he remained single; Thales answered that he did not like the idea of having to worry about children. Nevertheless, several years later, anxious for family, he adopted his nephew Cybisthus.[7] Unfortunately there is a complete absence of primary evidence for Thales, for (http://www.scholardarity.com/?page_id=2318): “No writing of his has come down to us; we have no primary sources”. It is even considered likely that he did not write anything at all. And this is where the problem lies. The real existence of Thales as an Ionian Greek of the C6th BC is wide open to doubt. By the time of the Greeks, the original sage, the biblical Joseph - as I believe - had mythologically drifted from Palestine to Ionia, from being a Hebrew to an Ionian Greek, and had been slid down the centuries to the tune of more than a millennium. As I wrote (Joseph as Thales): …. To Thales is attributed a prediction in astronomy that was quite impossible for an Ionian Greek - or anyone else - to have estimated so precisely in the C6th BC. He is said to have predicted a solar eclipse that occurred on 28 May 585 BC during a battle between Cyaxares the Mede and Alyattes of Lydia [400]. This supposed incident has an especial appeal to the modern rationalist mind because it - thought to have been achieved by a Greek, and 'marking the birthday of western science' - was therefore a triumph of the rational over the religious. According to Glouberman, for instance, it was "… a Hellenic Götterdämerung, the demise of an earlier mode of thought" [450]. Oh really? Well, it never actually happened. O. Neugebauer [500], astronomer and orientalist, has completely knocked on the head any idea that Thales could possibly have foretold such an eclipse. HERACLITUS, who Saint Clement of Alexandria thought had been influenced by the biblical Sirach (i.e. Ecclesiasticus), may even originally have been this very Sirach. Thus I wrote: http://historyancientphilsophy.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/amaic-philosophy-areas-of-special-interest/ Here occurs that same sort of chronological ‘difficulty’ (in a textbook context) with a Father of the Church as also in the case of Saint Ambrose’s conjecture (in De philosophia) that Plato had met Jeremiah in Egypt. Whilst, chronologically, this is an extraordinary statement by Saint Clement, considering that Sirach would be located centuries after Heraclitus, the presumed chronological problem may actually be due to the ignorance of the real identity of the supposedly ‘Greek’ philosopher. What if Heraclitus, whose special element was fire, were in fact the same person as the Hebrew Sirach (also known as “Siracides”, hence Heraclitus?), who wrote of fire (Sirach 51:3, 4): “You liberated me … from the stifling heat which hemmed me in, from the heart of a fire which I had not kindled …”. The ancient concept of Divine Wisdom, as written of by Sirach, was supposedly absorbed by Heraclitus, who, I think, may have been but a pale Greek version of the biblical scribe. PYTHAGORAS, based on traditions of the great antiquity of his doctrines; the possibility that he may even have hailed from Syria (Tyre) and was hence a barbarian (that is, a non-Greek); his being circumcised; his concerns with dietary laws; his abstention from illicit sex; and the very Egyptian looking first syllable in his name, Pyth (= Ptah?); was probably once again the biblical Joseph. We have already considered the lack of sure knowledge about him. Here is another sample: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/ Pythagoras … spent his early years on the island of Samos, off the coast of modern Turkey. At the age of forty, however, he emigrated to the city of Croton in southern Italy and most of his philosophical activity occurred there. Pythagoras wrote nothing, nor were there any detailed accounts of his thought written by contemporaries. By the first centuries [BC], moreover, it became fashionable to present Pythagoras in a largely unhistorical fashion as a semi-divine figure, who originated all that was true in the Greek philosophical tradition, including many of Plato's and Aristotle's mature ideas. A number of treatises were forged in the name of Pythagoras and other Pythagoreans in order to support this view. There maya be some parallels here to the historically rather dubious genius Imhotep of Egypt, “a semi-divine figure”: http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ho-Jo/Imhotep.html Imhotep was an ancient Egyptian genius who achieved great success in a wide variety of fields. Inventor of the pyramid, author of ancient wisdom, architect, high priest, physician, astronomer, and writer, Imhotep's many talents and vast acquired knowledge had such an effect on the Egyptian people that he became one of only a handful of individuals of nonroyal birth to be deified, or promoted to the status of a god. Imhotep is sometimes referred to as “the Egyptian god of medicine and healing”. (http://www.landofpyramids.org/imhotep.htm). It is not surprising to find, then, that (http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/~johnt/1004ICT/lectures/lecture02/Sleepwalkers-pp26-42.html): “The Pythagoreans were, among other things, healers; we are told that 'they used medicine to purge the body, and music to purge the soul'.” Here are some relevant views of Pythagoras that might be reminiscent of the biblical Joseph: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Anci/AnciAfon.htm Clement of Alexandria … is not only a good source of the Pythagorean doctrines, which enhance our knowledge of the Pythagorean tradition. …. What did Clement know about Pythagoras and the Pythagorean Tradition? Pythagoras in Clement's eyes was an ancient sage and religious reformer, a God-inspired transmitter of the spiritual tradition, which itself ascends to the most antique times. … Pythagoras from Samos, - says Clement, - was a son of Mnesiarchus, as Hippobotus says. But Aristoxenus in his book the Life of Pythagoras, as well as Aristarchus and Theopompus say that he came from Tyre, Neanthes from Syria or Tyre, so the majority agree that Pythagoras was of barbarian origin (Strom. I 62, 2-3). He was a student of Pherecydes … and his floruit falls on the time of dictatorship of Polycrates, around the sixty-second Olympiad [ci. 532-529 BC]. …. But the real teacher of his was certain Sonchis, the highest prophet of the Egyptians. …. Pythagoras traveled a lot and even underwent circumcision in order to enter in the Egyptian shrines to learn their philosophy. …. Clement is inclined to think that Pythagoras composed some writings himself, but gave them out as if they contained ancient wisdom, revealed to him. …. Pythagoras in no means was a mere transmitter, he himself was a sage, prophet and the founder of a philosophic school: The great Pythagoras applied himself ceaselessly to acquiring knowledge of the future (Strom. I 133, 2). …. Imagine now, that we are students at Clement's Catechetical School and listen to his lectures. What shall we learn about Pythagoras (given that Clement is the only source of our knowledge)? Clement would tell us that Pythagoras was a perfect example of righteousness …. Pythagoras instructed to clean one's body and soul before entering the road by means of strictly drawn dietary regulations. …. One of the reasons for this is that the burden of food prevents soul from 'rising to higher levels of reality' …. Maintaining self-control and a right balance in everything is therefore absolutely necessary for everybody entering the path of knowledge: 'A false balance (zuga) do/lia) is an abomination in the Lord's eye, but a just weight is acceptable to him.' (Prov. 11.1) It is on the basis of this that Pythagoras warns people 'Step not over a balance (zugo)n mh) u(perbai/nein)'. …. It is said that the Pythagoreans abstain from sex. [Joseph and the wife of Potiphar?] My own view, on the contrary, is that they married to produce children, and kept sexual pleasure under control thereafter. …. This is why they place a mystic on eating beans, not because they lead to belching, indigestion, and bad dreams, or because a bean has the shape of a human head, as in the line To eat beans is like eating your parents' heads (Orphica, fr. 291 Kern), - but rather because eating beans produces sterility in women. …. Pythagoras advised us to take more pleasure in the Muses than in the Sirens, teaching the practice of all form of wisdom without pleasure. …. As I commented above: Gross impurity kills wisdom stone dead! The goal of the Pythagoreans consists therefor not in abstaining from doing certain important things, but rather in practicing of abstinentia from harmful and useless things in order to attain to a better performance in those which are really vital. As in the case with marriage (above), Clement generally disagrees with those who put too much force on self-restriction. He has a good reason for doing this, as we shall see later whilst analyzing Clement's critique of some Gnostic ideas that are closely connected with the Pythagorean problematic. Pythagorean abstinentia should be based on reason and judgment rather than tradition or a rite. Koinwni/a kai) sugge/neia unites not only all mankind, but also all living beings with the gods. …. This alone is a sufficient reason for abstinence from flesh meat. EMPEDOCLES, though considered to have lived in the C5th BC and to have nonetheless been the first to have named the four elements, was way behind the Book of Genesis in this supposed achievement of his. Thus we read at: http://revelationorbust.com/wordpress/?p=376#more-376 Genesis 1:10 …. וַיִּקְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים׀ לַיַּבָּשָׁה֙ אֶ֔רֶץ וּלְמִקְוֵ֥ה הַמַּ֖יִם קָרָ֣א יַמִּ֑ים וַיַּ֥רְא אֱלֹהִ֖ים כִּי־טֽוֹב׃ wayiqra – elohim – layyabbashah – erets ulemiqweh – hammayim – qara – yammim – wayyareh – elohim – ki+tov and (he) called – God – to the dry ground – earth and to collection – the waters – (he) called – seas – and (he) saw – God – for+good The construction of this verse is familiar. See in particular this post on Genesis 1:4 regarding “seeing.” Genesis 1:10 marks the last time in the creation narrative that God himself names things. Take a look at what he’s named: day and night (in 1:5), sky (in 1:8), earth and sea (here in 1:10). Are these meant to correspond to the four primal elements fire, air, earth, and water? Fire is perhaps a leap from day and night. But if the correspondence is intentional, God is shown to be the creator and fashioner of what was understood to be the substances from which everything else was formed until relatively recent history. This is a pretty nifty observation, but it presents a small challenge to the historical-grammatical interpretation of Genesis 1. The problem is that the four primal elements idea is normally attributed to a Greek philosopher by the name of Empedocles who lived in the 5th century B.C. – about 1,000 years after Moses and the traditional date for the recording of Genesis. The Wellhausen hypothesis posits later dates for Genesis but is still 400 years before Empedocles. We show our Western bias however when we focus on the Greeks. The Egyptians actually had a similar concept …. The Egyptian idea was embodied in a group of deities called the Ogdoad, and the four primordial substances were darkness, air, the waters, and infinity/eternity. All of this is to say that even from a purely secular standpoint it is not unreasonable to grant that the Greek primal elements concept existed in the Ancient Near East well before the Greeks. …. [End of quote] Though I am no great fan of Sigmund Freud’s, I think that he was well on the right track when he considered Empedocles to have been a ‘reincarnation of Moses’. See: http://moseseditor.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/taken-from-httpbooks.html I think Empedocles’ archetypal personage was indeed Moses. For instance: (http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/moses-magician.html): “… there arose in antiquity an interpretation of Moses as a scholar/magician in the classical mould of Pythagoras … and Empedocles”. (http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cmt/gill/deu033.htm): Deuteronomy 33:25: “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass”. …. Either they should have such an abundance of these metals, that they could if they would have made their shoes of them; but that is not usual; though it is said of Empedocles (g) the philosopher, that he wore shoes of brass”. …. Moses had to remove his sandals on the fiery mountain (Exodus 3:5): “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” From the following quote we learn about Empedocles’ sandal on the fiery mountain. (http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2013/06/who-were-the-first-recreational-mountain-climbers.html) Moses climbed Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments and ascended Mount Nebo (Jordan) to gaze on the land he would never reach. …. Empedocles, the ancient Greek philosopher, climbed the active volcano Mount Etna on Sicily and leaped into the flaming crater in 430 BC. According to legend, he intended to become an immortal god; the volcano ejected one of his sandals turned to bronze by the heat. (http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4m3nb2jk&chunk.id=d0e5110) “The character of Empedocles [Hölderlin’s The Death of Empedocles] is in some ways a synthesis of Moses and Aaron: his wisdom and mystical powers of leadership both separate him from the people and lead them to offer him the title of King. The contradiction in this dilemma, however, leads him to spurn the people for their lack of comprehension and ultimately to his own destruction—the plunge into the volcano rather than life in exile”. How did all of this happen? We well know that when a story is related to someone else and then passed on from one to another that it soon becomes quite changed and different even amongst those living in close time and proximity. How much more (a fortiori) would change occur when incidents and teachings pertaining to ancient peoples were passed down the centuries and across the continents! As I wrote in (http://brightmorningstar.blog.com/2011/09/14/jesus-as-a-jewish-philosopher/): …. The Hebrew wisdom would have filtered through to the Greeks last, only after having passed through pagan Canaanite-Phoenicia (entrepôts such as Ugarit, Byblos and Tyre) in the west, or Babylon in the east, then on to the Ionian Greeks in the north, or south, to Alexandria, and lastly to the mainland Greeks. It later evolved into the more systematised form of philosophy that we know today, though not necessarily even then at the hands of Greeks. For example, the Maccabean Jewish priest, Aristobulus (2 Maccabees 1:10), was supposed to have written a book on philosophy, arguing, for the benefit of the Macedonian ‘Greeks’ – most notably king Ptolemy himself – “that the essentials of Greek philosophy and metaphysics were derived from Jewish sources. Aristobulus maintained that not only the oldest [supposedly] Grecian poets, Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, etc., but also the most celebrated Greek thinkers, especially Plato … had acquired most of their wisdom from Jewish sages and ancient Hebrew texts”. …. For multiple examples of how the Greeks appropriated Hebrew and other Near Eastern and Mesopotamian culture, visit my Lost Cultural Foundations of Western Civilisation site.

Age-old temptation to make oneself God

“Every human life, beginning with that of the unborn child in its mother’s womb, cannot be suppressed, nor become an object of commodity”. Dignitas infinita Vatican calls gender fluidity and surrogacy threats to human dignity Story by Angela Giuffrida in Rome The Vatican has described the belief in gender fluidity as “a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God”, as it released an updated declaration of what the Catholic church regards as threats to human dignity. The new Dignitas infinita (Infinite Dignity) declaration released by the Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday after five years in the making reiterates Pope Francis’s previous criticism of what he has called an “ugly ideology of our time”. “Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the gospel,” the 20-page document says. Reiterating opposition to gender reassignment surgery, it adds: “It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” The Holy See distinguished between these sorts of surgeries and procedures to resolve “genital abnormalities” that are present at birth or develop later. It said those abnormalities could be treated with the help of healthcare professionals. The Vatican said Pope Francis had approved the document, which also reaffirms its condemnation of surrogacy, saying the practice represents “a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child”. “A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” the document says. “Every human life, beginning with that of the unborn child in its mother’s womb, cannot be suppressed, nor become an object of commodity.” The chief cardinal, Victor Manuel Fernández, said on Monday that the pope had asked for the Vatican’s doctrinal office (DDF) to include “poverty, the situation of migrants, violence against women, human trafficking, war and other themes” in its updated assessment of threats to human dignity. The document says gay people should be respected and denounces the fact that “in some places not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation”. Fernández, a liberal theologian who was appointed to the DDF role – one of the Vatican’s most powerful positions – by Francis last year, said punishing homosexuality was “a big problem” and that it was “painful” to see some Catholics support anti-homosexuality laws. The declaration also reaffirms the church’s position on abortion and euthanasia while strongly condemning femicide. “Violence against women is a global scandal, which is increasingly being recognised,” it says. Vatican calls gender fluidity and surrogacy threats to human dignity (msn.com)

Divine Mercy Sunday

“On that day are opened all the divine floodgates through which graces flow. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet. My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity”. Jesus Divine Mercy https://www.thedivinemercy.org/celebrate/greatgrace/dms What is Divine Mercy Sunday? Find out the basics. In a series of revelations to St. Maria Faustina Kowalska in the 1930s, our Lord called for a special feast day to be celebrated on the Sunday after Easter. Today, we know that feast as Divine Mercy Sunday, named by Pope St. John Paul II at the canonization of St. Faustina on April 30, 2000. The Lord expressed His will with regard to this feast in His very first revelation to St. Faustina. The most comprehensive revelation can be found in her Diary entry 699: My daughter, tell the whole world about My inconceivable mercy. I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and a shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day are opened all the divine floodgates through which graces flow. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet. My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity. Everything that exists has come from the very depths of My most tender mercy. Every soul in its relation to Me will contemplate My love and mercy throughout eternity. The Feast of Mercy emerged from My very depths of tenderness. It is My desire that it be solemnly celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. Mankind will not have peace until it turns to the Fount of My mercy. In all, St. Faustina recorded 14 revelations from Jesus concerning His desire for this feast. Nevertheless, Divine Mercy Sunday is NOT a feast based solely on St. Faustina's revelations. Indeed, it is not primarily about St. Faustina — nor is it altogether a new feast. The Second Sunday of Easter was already a solemnity as the Octave Day of Easter[1]. The title "Divine Mercy Sunday" does, however, highlight the meaning of the day. …. ________________________________________

Oh my, the Umayyads! Deconstructing the Caliphate

by Damien F. Mackey “… Haaretz reported that during a dig in Tiberias, archaeologist Moshe Hartal “noticed a mysterious phenomenon: Alongside a layer of earth from the time of the Umayyad era (638-750), and at the same depth, the archaeologists found a layer of earth from the Ancient Roman era (37 B.C.E.-132). ‘I encountered a situation for which I had no explanation — two layers of earth from hundreds of years apart lying side by side,’ says Hartal. ‘I was simply dumbfounded”.” Gunnar Heinsohn The major Caliphates of Islam are listed as these five (1-5): • 1 Rashidun Caliphate (632–661) • 2 Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) • 3 Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) • 4 Mamluk Abbasid dynasty (1261–1517) • 5 Ottoman Caliphate (1517–1924) It will be my purpose here - abstracting from the immense problems already associated with the Qur’an (Koran) itself (e.g.): Dr Günter Lüling: Christian hymns underlie Koranic poetry (2) Dr Günter Lüling: Christian hymns underlie Koranic poetry | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Islam according to Jay Smith (6) Islam according to Jay Smith | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Durie’s verdict on Prophet Mohammed (DOC) Durie's verdict on Prophet Mohammed | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Sven Kalisch out to expose true nature of Islam (6) Sven Kalisch out to expose true nature of Islam | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu - to show that virtually none (if any at all) of this presumed history of the successive Caliphates is properly historical, and, hence, underpinned by a reliable archaeology. Abbasid Caliphate Aiming right at the centre, the middle one (No. 3 above), the famed Abbasid Caliphate: “The Abbasid caliphs established the city of Baghdad in 762 CE. It became a center of learning and the hub of what is known as the Golden Age of Islam”: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/medieval-times/cross-cultural-diffusion-of-knowledge/a/the-golden-age-of-islam I have already disposed of this supposedly the most glorious age of Islam by arguing that early Baghdad (not the modern city of that name), known as Madinat-al-Salam, “City of Peace”, was actually Jerusalem, meaning just that, “City of Peace”: Original Baghdad was Jerusalem (6) Original Baghdad was Jerusalem | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu In the same article I noted that the imagined early Baghdad had, unsurprisingly, left no discernible archaeological trace. There I wrote: The first thing to notice about ancient Baghdad is that it has left “no tangible traces”: “Built of the baked brick, the city’s walls have long since crumbled, leaving no trace of Madinat-al-Salam today”. “While no tangible traces have yet been discovered of the eighth-century Madinat-al-Salam, and as it is currently impossible to conduct excavations in Baghdad, one can only hope that one day material evidence may be discovered”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Baghdad “The Round City was partially ruined during the siege of 812–813, when Caliph al-Amin was killed by his brother,[a] who then became the new caliph. It never recovered;[b] its walls were destroyed by 912,[c] nothing of them remains,[d][6] there is no agreement as to where it was located.[7]” [End of quotes] And just as I have shown, time and time again, that the Prophet Mohammed was a fictitious, largely biblical, composite, so, too, basically, I believe, were the luminaries of the so-called Abbasid Golden Age. Thus, for instance, the fairytale (Arabian Nights), Hārūn al-Rashīd, who is said to have built the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, is an appropriation of the great king, Hiram, ally of Solomon, who helped the wise king of Israel build the Temple of Yahweh and Solomon’s Palace in Jerusalem, “City of Peace”. And in the names of a handful of presumed Islamic scholars of the Golden Age, the polymathic Al-Kindi (c. 800); Al-Farabi (c. 900); Avicenna (c. 1000); and Averroes (c. 1150), I found what I would consider to be elements of Ahikar’s (Tobit’s nephew) Assyro-Babylonian names: respectively, Aba-enlil-dari and Esagil-kinni-ubba. Thus: AL-KINDI – ESAGIL-KINNI; AL-FARABI – ENLIL-DAR-AB(I); AVICENNA – UBB-KINNI(A); AVERROES – ABA-(D)AR(I) In these famous names is largely encompassed Islamic philosophy, science, astronomy, cosmology, history, demography, medicine and music for the Golden Age. Melting down the fake Golden Age of Islamic intellectualism (8) Melting down the fake Golden Age of Islamic intellectualism | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu If the glorious and lengthy Abbasid Caliphate can be thus expunged from history, and the very originator of Islam, Mohammed, found to have been an artificial construct - not to mention Loqmân and Abu Lahab (see below) - then we appear to have no firm archaeological foundations upon which to erect a plausible history of the Caliphate. And things, apparently, do not get much better. Rashidun Caliphate Let us go back for a moment to Mohammed and his presumed era, more than a century before the so-called Abbasids. Not only has Mohammed been shown to have been a non-historical entity, a fictitious composite based upon real historical (biblical) characters: Mohammed, a composite of Old Testament figures, also based upon Jesus Christ (3) Mohammed, a composite of Old Testament figures, also based upon Jesus Christ | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu but the historicity of some of Mohammed’s supposed contemporaries, too, is highly suspect. Mohammed’s very uncle, Abu Lahab, for instance, has been found to have had suspiciously (biblical) Ahab-like traits, as, correspondingly, does Abu-Lahab’s unbelieving wife, Umm Jamīl, somewhat resemble Queen Jezebel: Abu Lahab, Lab'ayu, Ahab (8) Abu Lahab, Lab'ayu, Ahab | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And Mohammed’s supposed contemporary, Nehemiah ben Hushiel, would seem to be a direct pinch from the biblical Nehemiah: Two Supposed Nehemiahs: BC time and AD time (3) Two Supposed Nehemiahs: BC time and AD time | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And their (Mohammed and Nehemiah’s) contemporary, the Byzantine emperor, Heraclius, is a most bizarre character, somewhat like a frog in a blender, whom I have described as being “a composite of all composites”: Heraclius and the Battle of Nineveh (3) Heraclius and the Battle of Nineveh | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Again, there is the Islamic sage Loqmân (Luqman) of the Qur’an (31st sura), who quotes from the wisdom of Ahikar, an Israelite nephew of the biblical Tobit: Ahiqar, Aesop and Loqmân (2) Ahiqar, Aesop and Loqmân | Damien Mackey – Academia.edu Ahikar’s influence, as we read above, also permeates the Abbasids. But Loqmân has been compared as well with the venal biblical seer, Balaam, more than half a millennium before Ahikar: Islam’s Loqmân based on biblical Balaam (3) Islam’s Loqmân based on biblical Balaam | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Oh yes, of course, the story of Mohammed also has (like Balaam) a talking donkey: A funny thing happened on the way to Mecca (2) A funny thing happened on the way to Mecca | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu With so insecure an archaeologico-historical base, beginning with Mohammed himself, the entire Caliphate period, from, say, 650-1250 AD (Rashidun to Abbasid), must needs be looking very shaky indeed. At this stage I have not analysed the four caliphs closely associated with Mohammed (the Rashidun Caliphate), Abū Bakr (reigned 632–634), ʿUmar (reigned 634–644), ʿUthmān (reigned 644–656), and ʿAlī (reigned 656–661). But, based on the cases of Mohammed and Abu Lahab, I would strongly suspect that these four, too, can be identifiable with one or more biblical characters ranging from, say, Moses to Tobit (possibly also embracing the New Testament). Let us switch now to the Umayyads (661-750 AD). Umayyad Caliphate As with the 1 Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), so, too, in the case of the 2 Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), I have not yet analysed the various caliphs with an eye to biblical comparisons. But the great shock about the Umayyads came at the very beginning of this article, with archaeologist Moshe Hartal’s observation that the Umayyads existed on the same stratigraphical level as the Romans of the period approximating to Jesus Christ. How shattering! According to professor Gunnar Heinsohn’s interpretation of the Umayyads, these were none other than the Nabataeans (era of Maccabees and Jesus Christ): https://heinsohn-gunnar.eu/mt-content/uploads/2021/08/arab-coinage-hiatus-between-nabataean-1st-c-and-jewish-style-of-umayyad-8th-c-heinsohn-21-august-2021.pdf Professor Heinsohn is followed in this by The First Millennium Revisionist (2021) https://stolenhistory.net/threads/revision-in-islamic-chronology-and-geography-unz-review.5581/ I do not necessarily agree with every detail (e.g. date) of the following. …. “Archeologists have no way of distinguishing Roman and Byzantium buildings from Umayyad buildings, because “8th-10th Cent. Umayyads built in 2nd Cent. technology” and followed Roman models”. The First Millennium Revisionist In Heinsohn’s SC chronology, the rise of Christianity in the first three centuries AD and the rise of Islam from the 7th to the 10th century are roughly contemporary. Their six-century chasm is a fiction resulting from the fact that the rise of Christianity is dated in Imperial Antiquity while the rise of Islam is dated in the Early Middle Ages, two time-blocks that are in reality contemporary. The resynchronizing of Imperial Antiquity and Early Middle Ages provides a solution to some troublesome archeological anomalies. One of them concerns the Nabataeans. During Imperial Antiquity, the Nabataean Arabs dominated long distance trade. Their city of Petra was a major center of trade for silk, spice and other goods on the caravan routes that linked China, India and southern Arabia with Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome. In 106 AD, the Nabataean Kingdom was officially annexed to the Roman Empire by Trajan (whose father had been governor of Syria) and became the province of Arabia Petraea. Hadrian visited Petra around 130 AD and gave it the name of Hadriane Petra Metropolis, imprinted on his coins. Petra reached its urban flowering in the Severan period (190s-230s AD).[18] Mackey’s comment: I actually date the Trajan-Hadrian period to the Maccabean age, not c. 106 AD: Hadrianus Traianus Caesar - Trajan transmutes to Hadrian (5) Hadrianus Traianus Caesar - Trajan transmutes to Hadrian | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And yet, incredibly, these Arab long-distance merchants “are supposed to have forgotten the issuing of coins and the art of writing (Aramaic) after the 1st century AD and only learned it again in the 7th/8th century AD (Umayyad Muslims). ” …. It is assumed that Arabs fell out of civilization after Hadrian, and only emerged back into it under Islam, with an incomprehensible scientific advancement. The extreme primitivism in which pre-Islamic Arabs are supposed to have wallowed, with no writing and no money of they own, “stands in stark contrast to the Islamic Arabs who thrive from the 8th century, [whose] coins are not only found in Poland but from Norway all the way to India and beyond at a time when the rest of the known world was trying to crawl out of the darkness of the Early Middle Ages.”…. Moreover, Arab coins dated to the 8th and 9th centuries are found in the same layers as imperial Roman coins. “The coin finds of Raqqa, for example, which stratigraphically belong to the Early Middle Ages (8th-10th century), also contain imperial Roman coins from Imperial Antiquity (1st-3rd century) and Late Antiquity (4th-7th century).” …. “Thus, we have an impressive trove of post-7th c. Arab coins lumped together with pre-7th c. Roman coins of pre-7th c. Roman times. But we have no pre-7th c. Arab coins from the centuries of their close alliance with Rome in the pre-7th c. periods.” …. The first Islamic Umayyad coins, issued in Jerusalem, “continue supposedly 700 years earlier Nabataean coins.” …. Often displaying Jewish menorahs with Arabic lettering, they differ very little from Jewish coins dated seven centuries earlier; we are dealing here with an evolution “requiring only years or decades, but not seven centuries.” …. Architecture raises similar problems. Archeologists have no way of distinguishing Roman and Byzantium buildings from Umayyad buildings, because “8th-10th Cent. Umayyads built in 2nd Cent. technology” and followed Roman models. …. “How could the Umayyads in the 8th c. AD perfectly imitate late Hellenistic styles,” Heinsohn asks, “when there were no specialists left to teach them such sophisticated skills?” …. Moreover, “Umayyad structures were built right on top of Late-Hellenistic structures of the 1st c. BCE/CE.” …. One example is “the second most famous Umayyad building, their mosque in Damascus. The octagonal structure of the so-called Dome of the Treasury stands on perfect Roman columns of the 1st/2nd century. They are supposed to be spolia, but . . . there are no known razed buildings from which they could have been taken. Even more puzzling are the enormous monolithic columns inside the building from the 8th/9th c. AD, which also belong to the 1st/2nd century. No one knows the massive structure that would have had to be demolished to obtain them.” …. Far from rejecting the Umayyads’ servile “imitation” of Roman Antiquity, their Abbasid enemies resumed it: “8th-10th c. Abbasids bewilder historians for copying, right down to the chemical fingerprint, Roman glass.” Heinsohn quotes from The David Collection: Islamic Art / Glass, 2014: The millefiori technique, which takes its name from the Italian word meaning “thousand flowers”, reached a culmination in the Roman period. . . . The technique seems to have been rediscovered by Islamic glassmakers in the 9th century, since examples of millefiori glass, including tiles, have been excavated in the Abbasid capital of Samarra. …. I included in “How Long Was the First Millennium?” one of Heinsohn’s illustrations of identical millefiori glass bowls ascribed respectively to the 1st-2nd century Romans and to the 8th-9th century Abbasids. Here is another puzzling comparison: …. Heinsohn concludes that, “the culture of the Umayyads is as Roman as the culture of early medieval Franks. Their 9th/10th century architecture is a direct continuation of the 2nd c. AD. The 700 years in between do not exist in reality.” …. “The Arabs did not walk in ignorance without coinage and writing for some 700 years. Those 700 years represent phantom centuries. Thus, it is not true that Arabs were backward in comparison with their immediate Roman and Greek neighbours who, interestingly enough, are not on record for having ever claimed any Arab backwardness. . . . the caliphs now dated from the 690s to the 930s are actually the caliphs of the period from Augustus to the 230s.” …. This explains why archeologists often find themselves puzzled by the stratigraphy. For example, Haaretz reported that during a dig in Tiberias, archaeologist Moshe Hartal “noticed a mysterious phenomenon: Alongside a layer of earth from the time of the Umayyad era (638-750), and at the same depth, the archaeologists found a layer of earth from the Ancient Roman era (37 B.C.E.-132). ‘I encountered a situation for which I had no explanation — two layers of earth from hundreds of years apart lying side by side,’ says Hartal. ‘I was simply dumbfounded.’” …. Heinsohn argues that the Umayyads of the Early Middle Ages are not only identical with the Nabataeans of Imperial Antiquity, but are also documented in the intermediate time-block of Late Antiquity under the name of the Ghassanids. “Nabataeans and Umayyads not only shared the same art, the same metropolis Damascus, and the same stratigraphy, but also a common territory that was home to yet another famous Arab ethnicity that also held Damascus: the Ghassanids. They served as Christian allies of the Byzantines during Late Antiquity (3rd/4th to 6th c. AD). Yet, they were already active during Imperial Antiquity (1st to 3rd c. AD). Diodorus Siculus (90-30 BC) knew them as Gasandoi, Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) as Casani, and Claudius Ptolemy (100-170 AD) as Kassanitai.” …. In the Byzantine period, the Ghassanid caliphs had “the same reputation for anti-trinitarian monotheism as the Abbasid Caliphs now dated to 8th /9th centuries.” …. They also, like the Islamic Arabs, preserved some Bedouin customs such as polygamy. …. [End of quotes] In a most interesting twist, Taycan Sapmaz identifies: THE NABATAEANS AND LYCIANS (6) THE NABATAEANS AND LYCIANS | taycan sapmaz - Academia.edu Who could argue against the Nabataeans and Lycians at least sharing commonalities? Ottoman Caliphate For further apparent anachronisms, this time with the early (only) Ottoman Caliphate, I simply refer the reader to my article: King Solomon and Suleiman (6) King Solomon and Suleiman | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu with more, hopefully, to be written on this subject in the future. Conclusions The Prophet Mohammed is clearly a non-historical, composite entity based on a bunch of real historical figures from a vast range of eras. Mohammed’s relatives, contemporaries, likewise are biblico-historically-based, e.g. uncle Lahab as Ahab; Nehemiah ben Hushiel as the biblical Nehemiah; emperor Heraclius as possibly literature’s most composite of composites. This necessitates that the closely associated Rashidun Caliphate could have no real historical reality in AD time. This view being totally reinforced by the next Caliphate, The Umayyad as belonging archaeologically to a Roman period, some six centuries prior to the supposed era of Mohammed. This being totally reinforced by the next Caliphate, The Abbasid, as having no archaeological trace for its epicentre, ancient Baghdad, Madinat al-Salam, which is really ancient Jerusalem.

Jesus Christ alone opens up before us the doors of life

“How much suffering we see in the eyes of the children: the children in those lands at war have forgotten how to smile! With those eyes, they ask us: Why? Why all this death? Why all this destruction? War is always an absurdity, war is always a defeat!” Pope Francis URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS EASTER 2024 Central loggia of the Vatican Basilica Sunday, 31 March 2024 ________________________________________ Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Easter! Today throughout the world there resounds the message proclaimed two thousand years ago from Jerusalem: “Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, has been raised!” (Mk 16:6). The Church relives the amazement of the women who went to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week. The tomb of Jesus had been sealed with a great stone. Today too, great stones, heavy stones, block the hopes of humanity: the stone of war, the stone of humanitarian crises, the stone of human rights violations, the stone of human trafficking, and other stones as well. Like the women disciples of Jesus, we ask one another: “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” (cf. Mk 16:3). This is the amazing discovery of that Easter morning: the stone, the immense stone, was rolled away. The astonishment of the women is our astonishment as well: the tomb of Jesus is open and it is empty! From this, everything begins anew! A new path leads through that empty tomb: the path that none of us, but God alone, could open: the path of life in the midst of death, the path of peace in the midst of war, the path of reconciliation in the midst of hatred, the path of fraternity in the midst of hostility. Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is risen! He alone has the power to roll away the stones that block the path to life. He, the living One, is himself that path. He is the Way: the way that leads to life, the way of peace, reconciliation and fraternity. He opens that path, humanly impossible, because he alone takes away the sin of the world and forgives us our sins. For without God’s forgiveness, that stone cannot be removed. Without the forgiveness of sins, there is no overcoming the barriers of prejudice, mutual recrimination, the presumption that we are always right and others wrong. Only the risen Christ, by granting us the forgiveness of our sins, opens the way for a renewed world. Jesus alone opens up before us the doors of life, those doors that continually we shut with the wars spreading throughout the world. Today we want, first and foremost, to turn our eyes to the Holy City of Jerusalem, that witnessed the mystery of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, and to all the Christian communities of the Holy Land. My thoughts go especially to the victims of the many conflicts worldwide, beginning with those in Israel and Palestine, and in Ukraine. May the risen Christ open a path of peace for the war-torn peoples of those regions. In calling for respect for the principles of international law, I express my hope for a general exchange of all prisoners between Russia and Ukraine: all for the sake of all! I appeal once again that access to humanitarian aid be ensured to Gaza, and call once more for the prompt release of the hostages seized on 7 October last and for an immediate cease-fire in the Strip. Let us not allow the current hostilities to continue to have grave repercussions on the civil population, by now at the limit of its endurance, and above all on the children. How much suffering we see in the eyes of the children: the children in those lands at war have forgotten how to smile! With those eyes, they ask us: Why? Why all this death? Why all this destruction? War is always an absurdity, war is always a defeat! Let us not allow the strengthening winds of war to blow on Europe and the Mediterranean. Let us not yield to the logic of weapons and rearming. Peace is never made with arms, but with outstretched hands and open hearts. Brothers and sisters, let us not forget Syria, which for thirteen years has suffered from the effects of a long and devastating war. So many deaths and disappearances, so much poverty and destruction, call for a response on the part of everyone, and of the international community. My thoughts turn today in a special way to Lebanon, which has for some time experienced institutional impasse and a deepening economic and social crisis, now aggravated by the hostilities on its border with Israel. May the Risen Lord console the beloved Lebanese people and sustain the entire country in its vocation to be a land of encounter, coexistence and pluralism. I also think in particular of the region of the Western Balkans, where significant steps are being taken towards integration in the European project. May ethnic, cultural and confessional differences not be a cause of division, but rather a source of enrichment for all of Europe and for the world as a whole. I likewise encourage the discussions taking place between Armenia and Azerbaijan, so that, with the support of the international community, they can pursue dialogue, assist the displaced, respect the places of worship of the various religious confessions, and arrive as soon as possible at a definitive peace agreement. May the risen Christ open a path of hope to all those who in other parts of the world are suffering from violence, conflict, food insecurity and the effects of climate change. May the Lord grant consolation to the victims of terrorism in all its forms. Let us pray for all those who have lost their lives and implore the repentance and conversion of the perpetrators of those crimes. May the risen Lord assist the Haitian people, so that there can soon can be an end to the acts of violence, devastation and bloodshed in that country, and that it can advance on the path to democracy and fraternity. May Christ grant consolation and strength to the Rohingya, beset by a grave humanitarian crisis, and open a path to reconciliation in Myanmar, torn for years now by internal conflicts, so that every logic of violence may be definitively abandoned. May the Lord open paths of peace on the African continent, especially for the suffering peoples in Sudan and in the entire region of the Sahel, in the Horn of Africa, in the region of Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in the province of Capo Delgado in Mozambique, and bring an end to the prolonged situation of drought which affects vast areas and provokes famine and hunger. May the Risen One make the light of his face shine upon migrants and on all those who are passing through a period of economic difficulty, and offer them consolation and hope in their moment of need. May Christ guide all persons of good will to unite themselves in solidarity, in order to address together the many challenges which loom over the poorest families in their search for a better life and happiness. On this day when we celebrate the life given us in the resurrection of the Son, let us remember the infinite love of God for each of us: a love that overcomes every limit and every weakness. And yet how much the precious gift of life is despised! How many children cannot even be born? How many die of hunger and are deprived of essential care or are victims of abuse and violence? How many lives are made objects of trafficking for the increasing commerce in human beings? Brothers and sisters, on the day when Christ has set us free from the slavery of death, I appeal to all who have political responsibilities to spare no efforts in combatting the scourge of human trafficking, by working tirelessly to dismantle the networks of exploitation and to bring freedom to those who are their victims. May the Lord comfort their families, above all those who anxiously await news of their loved ones, and ensure them comfort and hope. May the light of the resurrection illumine our minds and convert our hearts, and make us aware of the value of every human life, which must be welcomed, protected and loved. A happy Easter to all!