Julian9EHP wrote:
>>From: "Bob (this one)"
>
> [ . . . ]
>
>>It was already established that the world was spherical by a select
>>few educated folks. Later reinforced by calculations by pre-Christian
>>Greeks that came pretty close to the real figures. The Chinese also
>>had it doped out. It was the common folks who didn't know it.
>
> And nothing could be spread in the days before the printing press. (I'm
> following Elizabeth Eisenstein.)
Funny how large populations spoke the same language. How could that
happen if "nothing could be spread in the days before the printing
press"? Could there, in fact, have been ways to spread a lot of
information? Like an entire culture with its history, language and
culture?
> With no means of perpetuating and spreading
> knowledge other than a manual copy of a book -- no magazines, no radio or TV --
> a town could starve without its neighbors knowing.
You seem to think that there was no travel and no communications. And
that the oral traditions didn't work. That the Jewish legends that
later became the Old Testament were written from the beginning. Sorry.
Nope. That we don't have records back well before biblical writing. Do
some reading.
Obviously you haven't read about Genghis Khan, the Roman empire, the
Persian Empire, Alexander... Any political entity has to have
communications and means of moving people and goods or it isn't a
political entity. Think tax collectors. In the ancient world, they
moved from place to place to collect taxes. Minstrels (by whatever
name in the respective cultures) wandered and told and retold the
stories of the culture. Armies moved. Merchants moved. They may not
have had written records that were mass produced, but they had
storytellers who brought the old stories and the news with them. What
do you think that scribes did? Large populations were constantly in
motion.
> And yet the books of the Bible have consistant and wide-spread. There is a
> fragment of John from 115 A.D. In constrast, there are no such copies of
> Classical manuscripts.
Oh, bullshit. What do you think the Dead Sea Scrolls are? Do read a
bit of history before embarrassing yourself like this. There was no
bible before Constantine gathered it together. There were only
scrolls. And are you claiming that "a fragment of John from 115 A.D"
is "widespread?" That's one piece of paper or more likely, parchment.
Even with the invention of the printing press, bibles weren't
available to anyone but clergy and the very wealthy for centuries. And
even then, the form of the bible has been in flux until as recently as
1886 when the KJV was "officially" reduced to 66 books from the
original 80. Look here for some info:
<http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/#timeline>
(There's a statement in that timeline that is nonsensical for the time:
"500 AD: Scriptures have been Translated into Over 500 Languages.")
> With all the Roman scriptoria, all the parchments
> reused in wrappings and buried in tombs, the oldest copies of Caesar and Pliny
> and Aristotle and Plato are from Medieval copies. Yet no one doubts their
> authenticity.
"All..."
Parchment rots. Paper decays. Handmade copies were the major way for
things to come to us from back then. This is utterly irrelevant to the
discourse. Scholarship has always been a hallmark of human culture. So
has science and mathematics. ANd so has the legion of frauds who wore
funny clothes and shook rattles at the moon claiming special
supernatural powers or understanding. All of those categories still
remain. Some even have TV programs and collect money from people who
think that shaking rattles at the moon can affect them.
Bob