Julian9EHP wrote:
>> 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.
And yet, we have records that let us translate all the way back to
Phoenicia and even prior cultures. Ancient Egypt. Written records.
Cuneiform.
>> 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.
Why are you confining this to the middle ages and Europe? The rest of
the world was alive and well all the time that the folks who were the
original populations of the bible. We have vast stores of manuscripts
from China and India. Stone tablets that are older than the original
manuscripts of the bible.
> There were travelers -- religious pilgrims, and more rarely,
> merchants -- but most people stayed where they were put.
Right. No.
The silk road, spice trades, precious metals and gems,
imported luxuries all have long histories. You're trying to truncate
history to a short time span in only one place.
> 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.
The Romans built roads all over their empire. For travel. Persians,
too. Chinese. The Khans. Africa. There were vast armies moving all
over the world. When Alexander fought the Persians, there were more
than a half-million fighters with all their support people. Of course
there was 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.
This makes no sense to me.
> 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.
This is a "so what" passage. This is now and here. Everything else was
then and there.
>> 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.
The oldest manuscripts are Chinese. But why confine it to manuscripts.
What about carved stone. Clay. Ropes tied into quipus.
> 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.
They aren't exceptions, they're what was happening. They each caused
millions of people to move and look at life differently.
> 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.
How silly a thing to say. They reshaped all the cultures they came in
contact with. YOu're trying to relegate the major threads of European
history to some secondary position. They *are* human history. Along
with all the other movers and shakers who have jostled us along our
various cultural paths.
>> 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.
There were *cities* back then. They depended on trade and traffic from
afar to survive. Food, clothing, trade goods, luxuries, metals for
their arms and utensils, skilled craftspeople, construction materials.
Trade and travel goes as far back as the stone age when flint nappers
traded in spear and arrow points, knives, axes and other tools. There
was trade between clans and tribes that far back.
>> 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.
And what then? They stayed in their houses and waited for money to
come to them? They moved from place to place. There were thousands and
thousands of them. SAme with all imperial powers. People had jobs and
were shifted around just like IBM and Exxon and Microsoft do it today.
>> Minstrels (by whatever name in the respective cultures) wandered
>> and told and retold the stories of the culture.
>
> As before, this was rare.
Sorry. No it wasn't. Musicians and players and storytellers and poets
and dancers predate recorded history. When we talk of the Homeric
tradition, it is exactly this. Wandering newscasters.
>> Armies moved. Merchants moved.
>
> Merchants moved with difficulty everywhere. Even along the Roman
> roads -- and Rome was one empire, the exception testing the rule --
This "rule" is yours. No one else talks in these terms.
> there were thieves and wild animals. Along the seas there were
> also waves testing your little ship. Merchants were quite rare.
I don't know what your investment is in maintaining this posture, but
the salient facts are in clear dispute with your ideas here. The
Mediterranean was a major travel and trade route from before recorded
history and it certainly didn't ever stop. Vast navies plied the seas
and docked far from their home ports again and again.
Venice became fabulously wealthy because of trade. Spain. Portugal.
Genoa. Trade means travel. Marco Polo and the guys traded.
>> 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.
It depends on *whose* ancient life you're talking about.
The only people you've addressed in your notes have been Jews and
Christians, and only a few of them, and only in a small part of the
world. Then rest of the world far, far outnumbered these two groups
and still does. But even so, imported goods from all over the Roman
empire meant trade routes. Likewise every empire. Otherwise, there's
no reason for them. They were specifically designed to move value
(money in whatever form) to the centers. They gathered loot and they
gathered trade goods.
You have a somewhat stunted view of those people, thinking them dim
and inert. Not the case at all. And, most assuredly, not all villages.
Baghdad was a city before the bible.
Bob