FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - no proof WAS: How to Become a Christian, Version 1.01

>From: "Bob (this one)"

>Julian9EHP wrote:

[ . . . ]

>> 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"?

In fact, it was hard for the people in one village might not be able to
understand the other in the next county. The languages were _more_ plentiful
and various than in our days -- no dictionaries, no pronouncing dictionaries --
and the dialects were so diverse. There was a reason why priests spoke in
Latin. Chaucer used a dialect that his contemporary Langland would not have
understood, and there were countless local words. We know things in English
like eyan for eggs, because there was someone scholarly there who could
preserve that word. There were doubtless others that did not.

Could there, in fact, have been ways to spread a lot of
>information? Like an entire culture with its history, language and
>culture?

In the Middle Ages, the village was its own culture. There were travelers --
religious pilgrims, and more rarely, merchants -- but most people stayed where
they were put. There are copied texts from antiquity, and copies of the Bible,
but mostly it was the Manor House or the Town. Roman culture was the same, and
all the way back to the first villiages.

> > 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.

There wasn't much travel.

Oral traditions captured the past completely, but always casting the unknown in
the role of the present. People look at ancient manuscripts for the fashions
worn by the people _where_the_manuscript_was_copied_, not in the world at
large.

Communications now exist independant of travel. If we can now presume a man
from Podunk who was born in Podunk, lives in Podunk and will never travel from
Podunk, we can presume the same man buys cups made in China. He can turn on a
TV and see his son fighting in Afganistan, or his daughter looking through a
window in New York City. That man couldn't have done this if he had lived in
Ancient Rome. Ancient Israel was the small exception -- people went a score of
miles to Jerusalem each year.

>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.

The copies of the Bible we have are the oldest extent manuscripts in the world.
We have medieval _copies_ of the classical works.

Some of the Old Testament was legend. Some seems to be factual -- for example,
the records of various kings of Israel.

In the same way, some of the writing about the Bible seems to be factual, and
some seems to be arbitrary assignment to one category or another.

>Obviously you haven't read about Genghis Khan, the Roman empire, the
>Persian Empire, Alexander...

Those become history precisely _because_ they are exceptions to the rule.
You have a story of Alexander kept by a town which did not change for another
fifteen hundred years. One town in a million is a capital, that is, a town
made by shifting armies. No, friend, I learn history. But you forget that
life goes on around and despite history, that Alexander and Genghis Khan were
not the rule.

Any political entity has to have
>communications and means of moving people and goods or it isn't a
>political entity.

Before the printing press, a town is a little entity in itself. Farm fields
surround it; water runs through it, with fish nets in it. Each town fends for
itself. Once in a rare while a very rich person might have gold (imperishable)
or a silk robe (kept assiduously, and worn only for best occasions). Trade was
the exception, not the rule.

Think tax collectors. In the ancient world, they
>moved from place to place to collect taxes.

The Roman tax collectors either lived in Rome, or moved to the province to
live.

Minstrels (by whatever
>name in the respective cultures) wandered and told and retold the
>stories of the culture.

As before, this was rare.

>Armies moved. Merchants moved.

Merchants moved with difficulty everywhere. Even along the Roman roads -- and
Rome was one empire, the exception testing the rule -- there were thieves and
wild animals. Along the seas there were also waves testing your little ship.
Merchants were quite rare.

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.

The vast majority of people died where they lived. That was ancient life.

E. P.