Terry, I enjoyed your perspective, but somehow you remind me of the father in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", he too thought all things come from the Greeks.
changeling
WHY THE LONG..................................SILENCE???
by Terry 21 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Flowerpetal
It was the Church (ironically) and Muslims who preserved knowledge and Greek science/philsophy!
Question: How do we know it was the Church and Muslims who preserved knowledge and Greek science/philosphy when the Crusades came along and probably destroyed never to be recovered valuable information?
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emptywords
I remember seeing a documentry on this very subject, and they went to Spain city called Fatima, the Muslims has a strong hold their, they showed this very old mosque and all the books they had and lots of carvings in wood about different subjects, mathematics and history. I guess you could go to youre local library and find information or even videos on this subject.
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Narkissos
emptywords,
Fátima is in Portugal. Perhaps you're thinking of Córdoba, Sevilla or Granada in Andalucia, Southern Spain (the former Islamic Al-Andalus). Averroes was born in Córdoba and served as a "cadi" in Sevilla, and his commentaries on Aristotle directly influenced Christian scholars from the 12th century onward.
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emptywords
thanks yes I probably was
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Terry
Where do you buy those broad brushes again?
Only from the perspective of Protestant fundamentalism on OT canon and datation is there such a "long silence". Actually literary production in all segments of Judaism was continuous, reflecting a diverse and gradual reception of Hellenistic influence from the 4th century BC to the 1st century AD.
Moreover, Jewish monotheism was not that old, and it had also built over against foreign influence -- especially Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Persian. As has often been pointed out, the earlier defeat of the old national Judean god Yhwh by Babylon was instrumental to his promotion as "the only God" in the first place.
Finally, as massive as Greek cultural superiority may seem, it remains to be explained why the Jewish-Christian version of "God" came to be so fascinating to the late Graeco-Roman world, rather than its popular philosophical versions in Middle- or Neo-Platonism...
I'm speaking from the singular view of mainstream Protestantism looking at the bible AS IS. The Old Testament has Malachi and then it has Matthew. Millions of bible readers know only that.
The virtual disappearnce of the Holiest Language on Earth among even the most reverent of Jews should indicate more than a "diverse and gradual reception of Hellenistic influence", else; why would a Septuigint become so necessary?
Jewish monotheism has to be viewed from THEIR perspective and not ours today. It was a Psychiatric relationship!! A man who is jealous of his wife assumes she is jealous of him, too.
The Jews had the kind of psychology that little men have around tall men. They were scrappy, had a chip-on-their-shoulder and a superior attitude that redounded to MY GOD IS BIGGER THAN YOUR GOD. The "only" and the "only true" portion of "Jehovah, the only true god" reflected the mentality of ONLY JEWS have this God and he is the BEST!
The Jews were obsessive AND compulsive aggressively and continuously as Judaism became more and more insular. Many rules/laws/rituals obsessing over details than an OCD patient would drool over and reflecting a deep inner FEAR with thirst for CONTROL. Jehovah is a CONTROL freak because the JEWS needed monomanical superiority of identity.
The Jewish-Christian ethos was so attractive because the time and place of its confluence was STRONGLY APPEALING to a citzenry that had suffered the ravages of war after war after war. It was the relative PASSIVISM which attracted women. The women were the movers and shakers of early Christianity. Then, the women influenced their husbands!
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Terry
St. Augustine used Aristotelian logic (badly) and so did Thomas Aquinas.
Augustine was a notorious neo-Platonist. Aristotle made its way into Christian theology (e.g. Thomas Aquinas) much later, through the mediation of Islamic thinkers such as Avicenna and Averroes. Earlier Christianity had "forgotten" almost everything about Aristotle.I worded that badly. Read it again. This way: St.Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were very bad at Aritotelian logic.
Meaning: The foundation of pronouncements carefully worded by Augustine and Acquinas smell of being strongly influenced by Greek presentations of arguments which place an argument as a premise to be proved. Yet, both lacked the exhaustively LOGICAL framework which Aristotle brought to science.
Clearly, there is something so "formal" about, say, Aquinas which is never present in Judaism in quite the same way.
If we take a look at what EUCLID had disseminated and how the power of its formal presentation permeated thinking worldwide; we can also see a ripple effect in how things AFTER Euclid imitate his style of presentation.
The Catholic Fathers have a formality and careful sequencing to their pronouncements which disguise the mystical nature of their origins in a camouflage of Greek specificity.
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Terry
Terry, I enjoyed your perspective, but somehow you remind me of the father in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", he too thought all things come from the Greeks.
changeling
The Greeks had a vocabulary word for EVERYTHING! Why? Because they had the tools (mental and verbal) to ask questions about everything and the societal structure which valued knowledge, wisdom and rhetoric.
I'd compare it to the way upper crust rich people have formal dining, manners, dress, customs and rituals which poor people have little use of.
The Greeks considered non Greek-speaking people to be uttering nonsense syllables "Bar bar bar bar bar" from which we derive the word "Barbarian" or, "one who speaks gibberish."
They were elite. But, they made a very strong impression!
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Terry
The loss of his works
Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold"), [29] the vast majority of his writings are now lost, while the literary character of those that remain is disputed. Aristotle's works were lost and rediscovered several times, and it is believed that about one fifth of his original works have survived.
One story of the original manuscripts of his treatises is described by Strabo in his Geography and Plutarch in his Parallel Lives. [30] The manuscripts were left from Aristotle to his successor Theophrastus, who in turn willed them to Neleus of Scepsis. Neleus supposedly took the writings from Athens to Scepsis, where his heirs let them languish in a cellar until the first century BC, when Apellicon of Teos discovered and purchased the manuscripts, bringing them back to Athens. According to the story, Apellicon tried to repair some of the damage that was done during the manuscripts' stay in the basement, introducing a number of errors into the text. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla occupied Athens in 86 BC, he carried off the library of Appellicon to Rome, where they were first published in 60 BC by the grammarian Tyrranion of Amisus and then by philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes.
Carnes Lord attributes the popular belief in this story to the fact that it provides "the most plausible explanation for the rapid eclipse of the Peripatetic school after the middle of the third century, and for the absence of widespread knowledge of the specialized treatises of Aristotle throughout the Hellenistic period, as well as for the sudden reappearance of a flourishing Aristotelianism during the first century B.C." [31] Lord voices a number of reservations concerning this story, however. First, the condition of the texts is far too good for them to have suffered considerable damage followed by Apellicon's inexpert attempt at repair. Second, there is "incontrovertible evidence," Lord says, that the treatises were in circulation during the time in which Strabo and Plutarch suggest they were confined the cellar in Scepsis. Third, the definitive edition of Aristotle's texts seems to have been made in Athens some fifty years before Andronicus supposedly compiled his. And fourth, ancient library catalogues predating Andronicus' intervention list an Aristotelean corpus quite similar to the one we currently possess. Lord sees a number of post-Aristotelean interpolations in the Politics, for example, but is generally confident that the work has come down to us relatively intact.
After the Roman period, Aristotle's works were by and large lost to the West for a second time. They were, however, preserved in the East by various Muslim scholars and philosophers, many of whom wrote extensive commentaries on his works. Aristotle lay at the foundation of the falsafa movement in Islamic philosophy, stimulating the thought of Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and others.
As the influence of the falsafa grew in the West, in part due to Gerard of Cremona's translations and the spread of Averroism, the demand for Aristotle's works grew. William of Moerbeke translated a number of them into Latin. When Thomas Aquinas wrote his theology, working from Moerbeke's translations, the demand for Aristotle's writings grew and the Greek manuscripts returned to the West, stimulating a revival of Aristotelianism in Europe.