Plato and the Pentateuch

[Secret Alias]

Every mention of Philo of "Jerusalem" in Gaius:

He knew also that they were in the habit of contributing sacred sums of money from their first fruits and sending them to Jerusalem by the hands of those who were to conduct the sacrifices.

And I am, as you know, a Jew; and Jerusalem is my country, in which there is erected the holy temple of the most high God. And I have kings for my grandfathers and for my ancestors, the greater part of whom have been called high priests, looking upon their royal power as inferior to their office as priests; and thinking that the high priesthood is as much superior to the power of a king, as God is superior to man; for that the one is occupied in rendering service to God, and the other has only the care of governing them. (279) Accordingly I, being one of this nation, and being attached to this country and to such a temple, address to you this petition on behalf of them all; on behalf of the nation, that it may not be looked upon by you in a light contrary to the true one; since it is a most pious and holy nation, and one from the beginning most loyally disposed to your family.

It was at Jerusalem, O emperor! that your most desirable succession to the empire was first announced; and the news of your advancement spread from the holy city all over the continent on each side, and was received with great gladness. And on this account that city deserves to meet with favour at your hands; (289) for, as in families the eldest children receive the highest honours as their birthright, because they were the first to give the name of father and mother to their parents, so, in like manner, since this is first of all the cities in the east to salute you as emperor, it ought to receive greater benefit from you than any other; or if not greater, at all events as great as any other city.

"And though I might be able to establish this fact, and demonstrate to you the feelings of Augustus, your great grandfather, by an abundance of proofs, I will be content with two; for, in the first place, he sent commandments to all the governors of the different provinces throughout Asia, because he heard that the sacred first fruits were neglected, enjoining them to permit the Jews alone to assemble together in the synagogues, (312) for that these assemblies were not revels, which from drunkenness and intoxication proceeded to violence, so as to disturb the peaceful condition of the country, but were rather schools of temperance and justice, as the men who met in them were studiers of virtue, and contributed the first fruits every year, sending commissioners to convey the holy things to the temple in Jerusalem. (313) "And, in the next place, he commanded that no one should hinder the Jews, either on their way to the synagogues, or when bringing their contributions, or when proceeding in obedience to their national laws to Jerusalem, for these things were expressly enjoined, if not in so many words, at all events in effect; (314) and I subjoin one letter, in order to bring conviction to you who are our mater, what Gaius Norbanus Flaccus wrote, in which he details what had been written to him by Caesar, and the superscription of the letter is as follows: (315)-

"'Caesar has written word to me, that the Jews, wherever they are, are accustomed to assemble together, in compliance with a peculiar ancient custom of their nation, to contribute money which they send to Jerusalem; and he does not choose that they should have any hindrance offered to them, to prevent them from doing this; therefore I have written to you, that you may know that I command that they shall be allowed to do these things.'

[StephenGoranson]

As for Thomas S. Kuhn, I made a comment based on his The Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn: Incommensurability in Science (U. Chicago, 2022) at a blog, but it was blocked, censored.

On Galileo...really, you too?

In any case, though I am no expert on the following Brahmi script, here's another relevant publication:
Brāhmī script : an invention of the early Maurya period /
Author: Goyala, Śrīrāma.
Publication: Jodhpur : Kusumanjali Book World, 2006
Document: English : Book
I don't know if that thesis is correct, but I can say that early Maurya period started in 322 or 321, which is before 273.

I tried to find scholars who accept M. Lockwood's proposal about Alexandria.
But did not find anyone who qualified.
Like scholars not accepting the Alexandria proposal by Gmirkin.

[ABuddhist]

In any case, though I am no expert on the following Brahmi script, here's another relevant publication:
Brāhmī script : an invention of the early Maurya period /
Author: Goyala, Śrīrāma.
Publication: Jodhpur : Kusumanjali Book World, 2006
Document: English : Book
I don't know if that thesis is correct, but I can say that early Maurya period started in 322 or 321, which is before 273.

I tried to find scholars who accept M. Lockwood's proposal about Alexandria.
But did not find anyone who qualified.
Like scholars not accepting the Alexandria proposal by Gmirkin.

No person posting here has said that Brahmi was created around 273 BCE. Lockwood has suggested that it was created in Alexandria, a model which neither Gmirkin nor I have said that we agree with. Gmirkin merely discussed Lockwood incidentally as part of a broader point about how Alexandria's Library had many contacts with other languages and literary traditions - which you have been unable to refute.

I further note that you have abandoned your previous claim that Brahmi is pre-Maurya, and have avoided responding to the point that you selectively quoted from Saloman in order to support your abandoned claim that Brahmi is pre-Maurya.

[ABuddhist]

Is Gmirkin actually seriously suggesting this actually happened or is it just a appeal for notoriety?

Why would you propose such a thing when:

1. Gmirkin, in his writings here and elsewhere, has treated his model as what he believes;

2. Gmirkin has published, with respectible academic presses (rather than, for example, humour publishers), his model in multiple books; and

3. The only person disgreeing with Gmirkin to suggest that he does not take his own proposal seriously is yoiu, who has repeatedly demonstrated unwillingness to deal with evidence, has dismissed effortsa to cite evidence supporting theories as wrong, and has demonstrated so little familiarity with Gmirkin's model that you both seriously questioned whether he had read Plato and revealed your complete ignoranceof the fact that for centuries people have drawn similarities between Plato and the Pentateuch?

[StephenGoranson]

Brahmi script, according to some scholars, was created before the Library of Alexandria was created. If so, then Lockwood's Alexandria Library proposal is wrong, and if wrong, of no help to the Gmirkin Alexandria Library proposal, even though Gmirkin cited it.

Kuhn rued that his book was used outside of the realm of history of science. One might say, parallelomania.

It is one thing to say Torah-writers had x, y, or z abilities, but quite another to claim that they uniquely somehow participated in offered self-delusion, plausible deniability, and such-like.

Though peer review understandably has many adherents, it also, as often practiced, has critics. Retraction Watch is a clearinghouse for publications retracted from even some of the finest journals, because the peer review failed.

[ABuddhist]

Brahmi script, according to some scholars, was created before the Library of Alexandria was created. If so, then Lockwood's Alexandria Library proposal is wrong, and if wrong, of no help to the Gmirkin Alexandria Library proposal, even though Gmirkin cited it.

"If" is the key word.

Gmirkin discussed Lockwood as obiter dicta to his broader point about Alexandria's library as a place where many languages were written and studied. As in, it was in function a perenthetical note which could have been removed without undermining his point.

[Secret Alias]

Why would you propose such a thing when:

1. Gmirkin, in his writings here and elsewhere, has treated his model as what he believes;

People get married and make vows and cheat on their wives. Why? Because at some point when our bodies start to degenerate and we feel the corruption of existence we realize everything is empty. Isn't that the start of mythmaking? That instead of allowing natural phenomena to determine what truth is (i.e. who/what wins/loses) we take the seductive words of the poets as the final word? I am just saying by about thirty we lack the ability to shape greatness with our bodies. Then it's all in the head, in the mind which is lies. Let's face it if we had boxing ring and two people were pitted against one another trying to punch each other out to determine things in the realm of history it would have more meaning, more determinism than just arguing ad nauseum and appealing to people's worst angels i.e. "what they want to be true" in history.

On some level the developer of new theories lives in a world of "as if." "If this is true" then this. "If this happened" than that. It's just a game. For everyone not just Gmirkin. It's not like Russell drank a special potion that let him commune with the hidden spirit world to establish truth. It's all just a game of "as if" which really convinces no one who knows the evidence. Not just him but the inventors of all new tables of values. It's just a game to fill up time until we die and fool ourselves into believing we are new Galileos, new Columbus's discovering and exploring new realms. It's all a fake world just in the head of the individual. Boxing ring is less arbitrary. Athletics more noble. Everything that exists only in the mind is subjective. Hence someone like Neil who literary disagrees with every fundamental position of Biblical scholarship (Jesus's existence, the date of the gospels, the date of the Pentateuch). Why? Because he's dying. We're all dying. Because he figured out life is a game. Because atheists are to a large extent liberated from the concept of Truth with a capital T. It's just words. Over and over again. Bullshit words.

[Secret Alias]

Does he really believe that the LXX is the original and not a translation? I can't believe that he believes that. It's ludicrous. Just a game. Surely the names in the LXX are translations of Hebrew names. Where did they come from? Where were they written down? It's just a game. Why did Philo and others have onomastica if the Greek text was original? Of course it's a translation and the Greek names were translations of Hebrew originals which existed in a text from before the Greek period. Just silly, silly. A silly mental game. A silly mental distraction ... from death and dying and real stuff, reality. These theories at this forum are just bullshit. No, I don't think he really believes it.

My son is going to Germany to play footballer leaving "soccer" behind. As a left winger one of his fundamental jobs is to summon the courage to take on the right back. Every time. To receive the ball. Bring it under control. Face the right back. Juke here. Fake there. Go down the line or cut in an shoot or pass. That's real. That takes balls. That's real stuff. This is just garbage. Pure nonsense with no referee no rules no reality. Just bullshit.

[Secret Alias]

Just think of the fundament bullshit concepts. Did everyday Jews, Samaritans "Hebrews" speak Hebrew? I don't think so. They probably spoke Aramaic. So if you cut out Hebrew as a priestly language (because the Pentateuch was only invented in 270 BCE) you have the invention of Hebrew coinciding with the invention of the Pentateuch in the Hellenistic period BUT HEBREW NONETHELESS HAVING NO OVERT SIGNS OF BEING INFLUENCED BY GREEK. How is that possible? And if the argument is Hebrew was pre-existent, who was speaking it, establishing the rules of grammar to such a degree that when this "bilingual text" called the Torah came along that everyone understood how to function in Hebrew? You'd think Hebrew would have been like Esperanto, an invented language which never gets off the ground because people were busy using functional languages like Aramaic and Greek. Why would the priesthood in Samaria let's say which had no other possible Hebrew texts suddenly use a bilingual Torah IN HEBREW? Surely Greek would have been functional. They were part of a Hellenistic world. My son and I are going to have the same problem if we go to a big German city. There's going to be always the opportunity to speak English. So why learn German? It's just so silly. The priesthood had to have a Hebrew text to keep it's functionality in Hebrew alive and "prepared" for the "arrival" of the Pentateuch. What were the priests doing for almost three hundred years with their Hebrew language? Hebrew was just a spoken language? Where are all the Hebrew texts from the period before 270 BCE? It's still the same problem raised about the lack of religious texts? Surely there was "some Hebrew" books, writing. Surely it was the Torah. It's obvious. If not the Torah what text is preferable? Unless of course, as I have said many times you have NO interest in the Jews, Samaritans, Hebrews and are only interested in "fumigating" the history of the West from Jewish, Semitic "parasites"? What other reason is there for preferring this theory which doesn't help explain the origins of the Jews, the Hebrew language as much as it segregates them from contact with "white" people.

[andrewcriddle]

<<Nothing worth quoting>>

Stephen Goranson’s approach to my research is highly reminiscent, in my opinion, of contemporary responses to Galileo’s research in the early 1600s. You will recall, Galileo was a scientific innovator, a mathematicus who wrote a number of books regarding discoveries he made by means of telescopic observations: the mountains of the moon, the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus (which proved the orbit of Venus around the sun), and several others. He was an advocate of the heliocentric model of the solar system, a paradigm that ran counter to the Ptolemaic geocentric paradigm of the Catholic Church and contemporary university scholarship that held the earth to be the center of the universe. He famously had debates with his fellow scholars and with the Church, and was tried more than once by the Inquisition, who finally forced him in 1633 to renounce on pain of death his heretical scientific discoveries that ran counter to biblical teachings and Catholic doctrine, and to abstain from teaching his heliocentric views. He remained under house arrest from 1633 until his death in 1642.

His views quite obviously did not change the majority views of his contemporaries, but are now universally accepted. Why? Because they were right, and he had the evidence to prove it.

But who accepted the evidence during his lifetime? Basically, one could divide up his contemporary into two opposing camps: those who looked at his evidence, and those who did not. Kepler and other astronomers, of course, agreed with his conclusions. Jesuit astronomers, though initially skeptical and quite hostile to his scientific viewpoint, which ran counter to Church teachings, were won over, for a very simple reason: they obtained quality telescopes, they checked his observations, and confirmed that he was in fact correct.

The other group included prominent theologians, philosophers (that is, natural philosophers) and other scholars. These educated elites (or shall we say elitists) rejected his views because of their adherence to Aristotelian philosophy, Ptolemaic astronomy and Catholic doctrine. Quite famously, and not coincidentally, they adamantly refused to look through Galileo’s telescope to see for themselves the evidence he put forward in his books, despite given the opportunity. Galileo wrote about them as follows in a famous letter to Kepler:

My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable stupidity of the common herd. What do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth.

One of Galileo’s contemporaries, the Aristotelian philosopher Cesare Cremonini of the University of Padua, after hearing of Galileo’s claim to have seen mountains on the moon, refused to look at the moon through a telescope. Later sources quoted him as saying:

I do not wish to approve of claims about which I do not have any knowledge, and about things which I have not seen … and then to observe through those glasses gives me a headache. Enough! I do not want to hear anything more about this.

One can thus trace exactly how Galileo’s opponents, including prominent academics of his day, were able to maintain their opposition to his paradigm-changing views: by refusing to view the evidence. And rejecting his dangerous theories on that basis.

Although Stephen Goranson is nowhere remotely in the same league as the scholastics and intellectuals of Galileo’s day, he resorts to the same stratagem, staunchly refusing to read the books he arrogantly claims to refute. Evidently reading a book gives him the same headache Cremonini claimed he got from looking through a telescope. I suspect tracing an academic argument from evidence to conclusion (such as I carefully present in all my books and articles) would give him a splitting migraine.

He sees himself as a defender of scholastic orthodoxy and believes that truth is measured, not by evidence and argument, but by a show of hands.

Tell me, Stephen, exactly how that model applies to the time of Galileo.

Or do you believe the sun circles the earth, based on the majority opinion of those of Galileo’s day?

Recommended reading:
Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

FWIW part of the problem with Galileo is that although he was right, he claimed to have much stronger evidence for his (correct) position than in fact he had.

Andrew Criddle