Frédéric Chaberlot dans l'éthique

Série contre l'héliocentrisme du deuxième livre de Chaberlot: 1) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Les fameux (et pas toujours fumeux) paradigmes en science et philosophie, 2) Et le paradigme héliocentrique, est-il fumeux?, 3) Frédéric Chaberlot dans l'éthique, 4) Fr. Chaberlot sur le paradigme héliocentrique - avec mes critiques


Dans son livre La science est-elle un conte de fées? cet auteur - auquel je reviens (j'aurais ceci et encore un essai à écrire avant de lui transmettre mon petit dossier) - se veut distancé de l'éthique scientiste ou de la croyance dans le sciences et le progrès.

D'un côté on pourrait se demander, en ne pas croyant en Dieu, quoi est-ce précisément qu'il reconnait comme base ultime de l'éthique humaine, c'est-à-dire, pour quelle raison y a-t-il une éthique. Cette question n'est pas identique à l'autre, sur quelles considérations il fonde la sienne, mais une théorie incorrecte quand au pourquoi-y-a-t-il-l'éthique peut donner une confusion dans cet autre niveau aussi.

De l'autre côté, c'est de ça que je reviens maintenant: si son éthique n'est pas identique au "profit / croissance maximum physique en prestations fournies par les technologies fournies par les sciences, à quel que soit le prix, et par là la dominance des scientifiques sur les sentimentaux" on se demande s'il ne s'égare pas quand même.

Il y a un chapître sur les questions d'éthique, mais il y a des choses dans lesquelles il évite de répondre.

Récemment on a eu le Téléthon, et l'admission que partie des fonds cueillis par la générosité allaient à la recherche sur les embryons humains et à leur exploitation comme cellules souches. Frédéric Chaberlot, est-il conscient que l'éthique reliegieuse, ou plutôt plus précisément chrétienne et catholique, regarde ça comme relevant du meurtre et de profanation de cadavre? Que dit-il sur un prêtre qui observe, que les enfants portraités comme sains à cause du Téléthon, n'ont jamais été malades, qu'ils ne sont pas le résultat d'une guérison, mais d'une sélection qui a tué les autres?

Aujourd'hui je lis dans PRÉSENT que l'état n'oblige plus les institutions français de reconnaître les degrés académiques issus par des instituts qui relèvent du Vatican? Frédéric Charberlot, est-il prêt à défendre pas seulement cas par cas mais en principe l'égalité des universités tenues par le clergé?

Une fois toutes les universités étaient tenues par des pouvoirs publiques chrétiens et la Sorbonne très directement du clergé, c'est à dire de l'évêque de Paris. Que dit-il sur l'évêque Étienne Tempier qui s'est mêlé assez étroitement dans les choses académiques avec la condemnation de certains livres assez populaires mais aussi de 219 thèses assez répandues, le dimanche de laetare début mars en 1277 (date qu'on comptait à l'époque comme encore 1276)?

À côté de ça, ça devient un peu ringarde de parler sur des clercs comme Aringarosa ou le Camerlengo dans les deux romans de Dan Brown. Les clercs ou laïcs catholiques conservateurs ou intégristes qui se mêlent dans le débat ne le font pas sur la base d'un "non" à la science prise en bloc. Ils le font sur la base d'un non beaucoup plus spécifique que ça. Un non à l'avortement, à la contraception, à la récherche sur les embryons humains, à la recherche sur les cellules souchers issues des embryons humains, parfois aussi un non à l'évolution comme théorie et à l'héliocentrisme comme théorie, parfois aussi un non aux greffes d'organes vitaux issus de "cadavres" dont la circulation a cessé dans le cerveau mais dont le cœur bat encore.

J'aimerais savoir si Frédéric Chaberlot se montrerait aussi conciliant sur ces points là que sur le liste assez fantaisiste des conflits ou conciliations entre science et spiritualité qu'il offre dans son chapître Un Mythe Moderne.

Dans ce chapître, il cite un script par Carl Sagan et Ann Druyan et basés dessus un roman et un film de Robert Zemeckis (Zemecki?), à savoir Contact. Je viens de regarder sur un site créationniste un article pourquoi il est important pour un Chrétien de savoir d'où Caïn avait son épouse, un des raisons est que dans ce film Ellie Arroway est citée comme disant avoir perdu la foi quand elle s'est penchée sur ce problème. La réponse créationniste (que je modifie en point quatre pour tenir compte de la loi canonique catholique) est que:

• 1) La femme de Caïn était probablement sa sœur, à la limite sa nièce.
• 2) Ceci était un corrollaire nécessaire du fait que l'humanité commence avec un seul couple, en dernier analyse un homme, car Éve vient elle-même d'Adam.
• 3) Il n'y a pas d'inconvénient génétique, puisque ces premiers générations humaines n'avaient pas encore les défauts génétiques (ou mutations néfastes) qui, par réproduction entre des proches risquent d'être doublés et de faire surface avec comme résultat un individu gravement malade, ayant le gène maladif des deux parents.
• 4) Vues à la fois la nécessité de permettre frères et sœurs qui dans cette génération là étaient les proches les plus éloignés de se marier et la possibilité de le permettre en absence de mutations si proche à la source génétiquement oparfaite de l'humanité, Dieu n'a pas montré une quelconque incohérence en permettant à par exemple Seth et Caïn d'épouser des sœurs et en interdisant plus tard aux autres de le faire, par exemple dans la loi de Moïse ou la loi canonique qui tient compte des interdits d'inceste dedans, mais qui ajoute aussi, depuis Decretum Gratianum (interdit d'épouser cousins plus proches que sept, plus tard quatre degrés depuis l'ancêtre commun jusqu'aux contrahents ou jusqu'au contrahent les plus proche de l'ancêtre).

J'aimerais savoir si Frédéric Chaberlot trouve quoi que ce soit malhonnête dans cette réponse créationniste, et s'il soupçonne en quoi que ce soit Carl Sagan d'une malhonnêteté ou stupidité opiniâtre en posant le problème ainsi. Donc, qui est selon lui l'intellectuel honnête et qui est intellectuellement malhonnête (soit les deux parties honnêtes, soit la malhonnêteté chez Sagan, soit la malhonnêteté chez les créationnistes - car c'est difficile d'imaginer que les deux parties soient à la fois malhonnêtes à propos la lecture de la Genèse en regards à la génétique et à la morale dans cette question).

Ceci sont le genre de conditions que je pose avant de me permettre de trouver les scientifiques étiques et cohérents et honnêtes et bienfaisants - et le genre de raisons pourquoi je les trouve parfois immoraux, incohérents ou malhonnêtes, malfaisants. Pourrait être bien de poser son apologétique pour "le projet scientifique" (plus ou moins dans sa forme actuelle) sur un terrain qui tient compte des critiques vraiment là parmis les vraiment moins enthousiastes.

Mais bien-sûr, on apprécie que Chaberlot n'ait pas de parti pris si le rechauffement climatique existe, s'il soit lié aux effets de dioxyde de carbon et si les humains sur terre devraient en produire moins et si les gouvernements devraient mettre leurs efforts environnementalistes plutôt dans ce sens là. - Il y en a qui ne sont pas du tout environnementalistes, il y en a, comme moi, qui redoutent plutôt les déchêts nucléaires et de la pharmacopée.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Bx Urbain V, Pape
19-XII-2012

If Aquinas had had to present the theory of Dörpfeld: Ulisses' Ithaca was Leucada

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: If Aquinas had had to present the theory of Dörpfeld: Ulisses' Ithaca was Leucada · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Ithaka: Ithaki or Leukada?

First of all - why such an exercise? Do Dörpfeld's and Walter Leaf's arguments become more holy by being presented in the format used by a saint? Of course not. St Thomas Aquinas is not canonised for using the format of Quaestiones and Articuli and he is not using it in all his works. He is not canonised despite using the format either. He is canonied because he used it to defend truth.

Now, the format of an articulus in a quaestio (or, if there are no other articuli in a quaestio: the format of a one articulus quaestio) is good because it is short and gives an overview of arguments for and against, and because it separates explanations of problems used as arguments against the arguments against the thesis from the other arguments that are directly for it. And the theory of Dörpfeld and of Walter Leaf is a good one. I am thus not wasting a good format on a bad matter just for the sake of exercising it.

Utrum Ulixis Ithaca eadem insula fuerit quam nunc appellamus Leucada?
Whether Ulisses' Ithaca was the same island which now we call Leucada?

To this we proceed as follows:

Primo... /in the first place tradition says that Ithaca was what we call Thiaki. Tradition is a good guide and place names are not usually transferred from one place to another.

Secondo... /in the second place Strabo and Livy both say that Leucada was not always an island, but that a channel separating Leucada from the main land was dug out in post-Homeric times. If Ithaca was a paeninsula, why does Homer call it an island?

Sed contra est... /but on the other hand a cowherd and a heifer and three goats are ferried across to the Ithaca of Ulisses, as Homer states in xx.185ff.

Respondeo esse dicendum... /I answer that one ought to say that an island can be defined in more than one way, so that one cannot say that it is impossible for something to both already be an island and to become one. If by island you mean you cannot from there get to the mainland or walking on your feet and keeping them dry, that is one thing, but if by island you mean you must be able to sail around it in a ship, that is another thing. Already in Ulisses time, however, Leucada as we call it now must have been separated by shallow waters from the main land, since these would not have been the result from the later channel, that allowed a ship to sail or row between it and the main land. And if shallow waters do not call for transport in ships, they easily provoke transport in very shallow ferries, indeed rafts serving as ferries. So when we see a cowherd arriving in a ferry (or transported by ferrymen - πoρθμηεc, and the singular porthmeus is translated portitor, both words, the Greek and the Latin, are used of Charon in Latin) with an heifer and three goats, we know this is possible for Leucada but unbelievable for Thiaki. There are some other reasons for believing that Ithaca was what we call Leucada. When Ulisses describes his realm, in ix.21-26 it consists of Ithaca, Same, Doulichion and Zakynthos, and no one has doubted that Zakynthos is rightly identified as Zante but this description says about "Ithaca" what is truer about Leucada than about Thiaki: it is furthest North-West πανυπερτατη, πρoc ζoφoν and it is in some sense "low" χθαμαλη where Modern Greek uses χαμηλα for "low in the sea" = close to land. And from xxi.344-7 we learn that other islands of the four are from it πρoc Hλιδoc. In at least two places the question of coming by foot (including a short trip on cattle ferry or even wading) arises precisely on Ithaca. We have Telemachus' words to Mentes in i.156 ff and as for Telemachus and Eumaeus Walter Leaf asks us to confer xuj.57-9 with xiu 185-190. And between Leucada and Thiaki, but closest to Leucada we have an Arkudhi, which has a small natural port, such as we know that Asteris, between Ithaca and Same but closest to Ithaca must have had: iu.844 ff.

Ad primum... /answering the first objection we see that the modern traditional names give us three islands rather than the four we need. Unless you take for Doulichion the one identified by Strabo as Doliche, now Makri. Walter Leaf concedes this is likely for the Doulichion of Meges, but not for the Doulichion in Ulisses' realm. Therefore we can see there is some trouble in the human tradition about Thiaki being Ithaca. The solution proposed is that Ithaca's population fled from invaders to Same, whis population was in turn transferred to part of Doulichion, where we now have Samos as one of its promontories. The whole of Doulichion then became Kephallenia. Victor Brérard says that a similar thing happened about Pylos. When it comes to Taphos (which Walter Leaf considers - arguing from its naval and military importance blocking Achaeans from the West - as having been Corfu) we know that Taphians fled south as well, and two places in the four islands concerned remind us that Ulisses' realm was part of where they fled to.

Ad secundum... /answering the second objection we conceed that Strabo tells us how Leucada became more of an island than it was, but not that it was no island at all or in any sense before that artificial channel. As said in corpore/in the body of the article. But if you want to argue that Homer described Ithaca as totally an island, you must show where a ship commanded by a kybernetes rather than a ferry manned by a porthmeus goes anywhere between Ithaca and Main Land.

If I were to make a quaestio of several articuli, I would of course use as other articuli problems like what Doulichia there are, one Doulichion or two Doulichia, alternatively "whether Ulisses or Meges ruled Doulichion" arguing they had one each, whether Taphos was Corfu, et c. But since Walter Leaf mainly has answered these questions in his book, and since I only wanted to give a taste of his arguments, precisely where they are constested, i e identifying Iθακα with Leucada and Thiaki with Cαμη, I now leave you the task to read Walter Leaf's Homer and History in entirety or in the chapter The Realm of Odysseus. Only adding that previous and following chapters to my mind, as already stated, include a misunderstanding of what the commanders in the ship catalogue were.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi Georges Pompidou
Blessed Urban V, Pope
19-XII-2012

Challenged Again on Testimonium Flavianum

A What were the texts? 1) somewhere else : The Question of Contemporary Evidence, 2) No, true enough Acharya, Varro did not write about Jesus ..., 3) What a blooper, Dan Barker from Atheist League!, 4) 1st C Historians, Wikipedia Category, 5) HGL's F.B. writings : Critiques of Testimonium Flavianum, 6) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on "Contemporary Historians Not Mentioning Jesus" (Answering aekara1987), 7) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Challenged Again on Testimonium Flavianum,

B How were they transmitted? 1) somewhere else : Laci Green likes strawmen?, 2) Variation on the Scriptoria Game,


Before I touch on the subject, being Testimonium Flavianum and the conversation I had today about it, I will say a little about myself. I am a Christian. Assuming I would cease to be a Christian, I consider that possibility a great misfortune if it were to come to pass; and if Christianity were not the truth, it would still be unmanly to give in and admit it out of sheer cowardice or covetuousness. But even if out of rational argument I were to make such an admission - but I will not, nor will I forsake rationality for avoiding apostasy - the values it teaches are still what I consider the true values.

If I were for one moment to consider atheism as such true, I would still feel ashamed of the company of people like the atheists who have blotted out decency after decency, with the help and sometimes leadership of semi-atheist non-devout half apostate Christians and Jews. Especially in the XX^th C. after WW-I and early XXI^st. I would still take pleasure in living as well as I could after Christian rules and shame in failing therein. I would still think marriage is between one man and one woman, and has for purpose to multiply and fill up the Earth. I would feel sorrow at no longer being able to use my Christian apologetics as part of my livelihood. Because I think I have been doing something good therein, enough good to make certain people angry at me for it.

Now, the conversation was about like this, first between a Greek and another man:

Gk: - You say that "God has said" but WHO has he said it to?
Other man: (I could not hear)
Gk: WHOM to?
Other man: (I could not hear)
Gk: If you say that God has said it, to WHOM did he say it?
Other man at other table: Oh shut up, you are sick if you discuss that.

When I entered the corridor with five shower cabins, I met the Greek, we had previously talked to each other.

I: God spoke TO Moses and AS Jesus Christ TO the Apostles. And proved it by the miracles wrought by both.
Gk: If you take an example I have to agree the example is factual before you can use it.
I: Quite so, but if you do not agree, you must state why.
Gk: There is no documentation.
I: The Exodus is documentation by and about Moses, the Gospels about Jesus.
Gk: That is not documentation.
I: Then on what grounds do you accept that WW-I happened?
Gk: It is documented.
I: Well, so is Moses and Jesus in Exodus and Gospels.
Gk: That is no documentation. It is a fairy tale.
I: How come you do not say so about the documentation of WW-I?
Gk: It is History.
I: So is Exodus, so are the Gospels.
Gk: No, they are not in History.
I: What do you mean by "in history"?

Eventually it became clear he was asking for independent evidence. I cited nothing about Moses, though I could have cited Amenemhet III as a possible identification of the Pharao who ordered the boy children of Israel slain in the cradles. But the independent evidence for Gospel is more interesting:

Gk: There were lots of historians who would have wanted to write about such an extraordinary thing if it had been happening then and there.
I: No, I have studied the question ... (I jotted down the blog url for somewhere else blog and asked him to search on it:

1st C. Historians (full title: "1st C. Historians, Wikipedia Category")
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2011/04/1st-c-historians-wikipedia-category.html <- click this link)

... and there were not right after Jesus Christ's death and Resurrection any Roman Historians except the Gospels Writers.
Gk: Oh, ok, the Gospel Writers were Historians, but so were others.
I: No, right then and there there were only those. (If he looked up my article I hope he knows I meant with the qualifications: a) interested in major contemporary events, b) whose writings have been preserved to our time: you had Historians who ceased writing about when Jesus started His public life, or who concentrated on ancient history or who concentrated on extraordinary curiosities but avoided anything important, or ... a shady but existing category: who wrote then, about important contemporary events, but whose writings are NOT PRESERVED).
Gk: Josèphe (Flavius Josephus, we were speaking French).
I: He is not contemporary. He is quite a bit later.

I am sorry I am not sure I haven't passed the occasion in which this was said:

Gk: Only the Christian writers say he made any miracles.
I: No. Talmudic writers say he was a sorcerer. Calling someone a magician is a kind of admission he made miracles.
Gk: But that is in the Gospels!
I: No, in the Talmud.

In any debate of whether Christ made the miracles or whether he existed, or whether Jews hate him, one will hear people deny the passages in the Talmud about for instance one "carpenter son of a carpenter" are about Jesus. But elsewhere secular historians of our times will very gladly use Talmudic material as a second look at Jesus. One exhibition in a museum in Sigtuna, about tattooing, includes a reference to Jesus according to Talmudic writers tattooed (in Egypt) with the Holy Name. Another Swedish Historian will make a reference to Judas Ischariot as, according to Talmud, a better magician than Jesus (I will spare you the details).

Back to Josephus. And first I admit I was probably wrong in saying Flavius* proves he has a LXX rather than a Masoretic text: the evidence I looked at is equal in both texts except for lifespans at the time of such and such's birth, and Flavius does not give that in the I book of Jewish Antiquities. Instead of trying to enumerate everything we said, I and the Greek about Josephus, I will try to enumerate correctly his points first:

• Josephus nowhere speaks about Jesus.
• We know he was a Jew and a Pharisee, so he cannot have spoken well or admiring about Jesus.
• Testimonium Flavianum (yes, here it comes) is an interpolation:
  • Because of what we know about Josephus.
  • Because it is linguistically discrepant from the rest of his work. I am sorry to say the Greek man said the Testimonium was so much better Greek than the rest of Josephus who wrote a very vulgar and boorish Greek. I answered that I did not believe that.

Now, let us get to the last point. Either he made the point up on the spot just to have some answer, or he used it as reverse psychology, to make me verify that Josephus usually wrote a very good Greek and Testimonium does not live up to it. It is at least certain that it does not suddenly change dialect. It is not as if the Rest of Antiquitates were in Koiné and Testimonium in Doric or Aeolic. It is not as if "and he showed himself to them on the third day having life again" had "autoisin" instead of "autois", or as if any clause with a possible "an" in it has Homeric "ke" instead. Nor is it that either surroundings or itself stick up against the other as Cockney against Oxford English. Anyone claiming a purely linguistic discrepancy has a very hard case to prove because he has his subjective feelings about Greek style to go from.

But IV book of Maccabees has also been attributed to Josephus, and modern scholarship has tried to identify a linguistic or stylistic discrepancy between IV Maccabees on the one hand and Antiquitates and Bellum Iudaeicum on the other hand. So, they are better in Greek than Eusebius and St Jerome? Not all that likely.

The argument about some writer always writing in one style and another work written in another style being necessarily from another author is very weak. If you know anything about Social Linguistics, you will know that each person has parallel standards to choose from and each context has parallel standards which could theoretically be applied to it. There are not exactly parallel standards about every letter. But English at least has two standards about R after vowels (pronounced or silent) and two about ending -ing/-in' (when not a noun, at least), and the conjugation "I, we, you, they know, he, she, it knows" along with "I, we, ye, they know, thou knowest, he, she, it knoweth" along with the substandard "I, he, she, it, we, you, they knows". Not to mention pronouncing "letter" as "letter" or "ledder" or "le' 'er". One combination of such alternating standards can be typical of a writer or speaker (none of above English examples would show in writing except the two written standards of conjugation), but it is not as if he had sworn an oath never to use more than one of these standards in each case. When populations change standards it is because they for sometime waver between them. And if populations are able to waver between linguistic standards, it is because individuals are able to waver between them.

I know linguists have for instance found Apocalypse much less Greek than Gospel and the Letters of St John at least somewhat more purely Greek than the Gospel. But St John may have wavered in his mastery of Greek, like learning Greek better after writing the Apocalypse (the Gospel being written later than it according to traditional hagiographies), and also it is possible that what struck such and such a linguist as not quite good Greek in Apocalypse would not have stricken any false note back in Greek ears (especially of Jewish origin, though separated from the Jewish sect by Jamnia) when it was written. So, no, even if the Greek man I was talking to has said the reverse, that Josephus wrote a good Greek but the Testimonium Flavianum is bad Greek, even if he had said that, I would not have believed it was possible to ascertain linguistically. Except of course if it was so obvious that anyone excepting it back in Eusebius' time would have been pretty idiotic. And in that case, how come it was not detected?

When I look on wikipedia on the article "Josephus on Jesus", I find another type of linguistic argument. Jesus is a "doer of wonders" and Josephus uses "poietes" for "doer." Elsewhere in Josephus "poietes" always means "poet."

Accepted as a fact. I have not done that research, I cannot pretend there are other places in Josephus where "poietes" means "doer", those who have done the research have been cited in the wiki as saying there are no such places. But that does not mean I have to accept this as an argument. How many other places in Josephus is there anything at all that can be translated as "doer"?

If it comes to "wrongdoer" or "doer of evils" (both of which are plausible to find elsewhere in Josephus) he might have used either something from a verb like "adikein" or with a separate word meaning doer might have chosen something meaning "perpetrator" - something which might not have been appropriate for a phrase with an objective genitive meaning something good.

Now, I looked the passage up in Jewish Antiquities, Book 18.iii.3 or 18:63-64 in the Loeb edition. Editor in footnotes refers to a few theories, one of which is that the passage was originally much more antichristian and was tampered with and another of which is that he tried to win favour with the "rising Christian sect" (rejected as not plausible) and he also gives four arguments "against" Josephan authorship. Number 4 is linguistic or stylistic, and as we shall see it is not quite against.

(4) There are several stylistic peculiarities (e.g., των πρωτων ανδρων παρ' 'ημιν is not the way that Josephus refers to the Jews), though Thackeray and Richards and Shutt have noted a number of Josephan idioms, such as 'ηδoνη δεχεcθαι and τριτην εχων ημεραν.

I have already suggested a solution as to παραδoξωv εργωv πoιητηc in the singularity of the concept. As to how Josephus referred to the Jews, he is not attributing the initiative of the crucifixion to the Jews in general but to their foremost men. The other linguistic or stylistic peculiarities I do not have here. I may look them up in another book later and add them in a footnote type comment.

Let us take a look at the other three arguments against the Testimonium:

• Josephus as a Pharisee could not have written that Jesus was the Messiah,
• Origen (Contra Celsum i. 47 and Comment. in Matt. xiii. 55) states that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as the Christ,
• The passage breaks the continuity of the narrative which tells of a series of riots.

Number 2 is no more than an argument for number 1 (which itself has Josephus' Pharisaism for other argument, I will call it 1bis), so let's first dispose of number 3 which is easy: although Josephus does not tell of the rioting scene before Pilate "We want Barabbas" and "Crucify" and "If you release him you are no friend of Caesar", he knew very well that the riot had taken place and therefore, despite his discretion about that part, he does not feel the passage stands out.

I am of course presupposing as an explanation what I am trying to prove among other things by the passage as a genuine one, namely that the Gospel is true. Some would consider this "circular reasoning", I do however distinguish "circular proof" from "circular explanation". A and B can presuppose each other if one presupposition is like explanation and the other like proof. It is only if A presupposes B as proof and B presupposes A as proof also, that nothing is proven. It is only if A presupposes B as explanation and B presupposes A as explanation also, that nothing is explained. But anyone wanting to use argument n°3 must either prove from other consideration that no rioting took place before the crucifixion, or prove that psychologically it is impossible to miss a discrepancy if one leaves out the rioting. To use this argument, you basically must prove that it is not just non factual but impossible that Josephus for instance a) wrote it with the rioting in it among other rioting records and then b) struck out the rioting part in order not to incriminate the mass of Jews in the crucifixion.

That leaves us with n° 1, testified acc. to n° 2 by Origen and acc. to n°1bis by his being a Pharisee.

I submit that both reasonings are inadequate. Origen may have been wrong. Pharisees may have wavered about Jesus Christ. Indeed, according to the Gospel, though they as a group are his enemies, saying he has "an unclean spirit" and "does not follow the traditions of the elders" there are individual exceptions, namely Nicodemus who comes to him in secret, Joseph of Arimathea who buries him, Gamaliel who asks for patience until God has given a sign about the endurancy of Christianity. And Josephus actually cites Christianity as still enduring:

"ειc ετι τε vυv τωv Xριcτιαvωv απo τoυδε ωvoμαcμεvov oυκ επελιπε τo φυλov"

"And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."

After Jamnia council (80-90 A.D.) it becomes ritually illegal for Jews or Pharisees at least to make such considerations. Can we know for certain he was loyal to it?

I cited in the conversation with the Greek the fact that Maccabees IV is attributed to him and accepted by Romanian Orthodox Church as presumptive proof he converted to Christianity before he died. But even if he did not, even if IV Maccabees was not by him or parts of Christianity accepted a book by an adversary, that does not mean he cannot have asked himself questions and at one time - when he was writing Antiquities - been considering Christianity in a favourable light. Now, what do we know about his life?

Unlike what the Greek said in the conversation we had, we do not know that he would have written about his conversion if he had converted to Christianity. None of his works is an autobiography as far as I know and even if one were, we can not be sure he continued such a thing after becoming Christian. C. S. Lewis among other resolutions when he converted to Christian faith took a farewell from his diary writing. What the French call "nombrilisme" - staring at one's own bellybutton, figuratively speaking - is not very much thought of among Christians, generally.

Here is what the book cover of the Loeb edition tells us:

Josephus, Flavius, soldier, statesman and writer in Greek, was a Jew born at Jerusalem about A.D.37. A man of high descent, he early made himself learned in Jewish law and Greek literature [editorial comment: guess why I took it as a bad joke when told his usual Greek is below the level of Testimonium Flavianum!] and became a Pharisee. After pleading in Rome the cause of some Jewish priests he returned to Jerusalem and in A.D.66 tried to prevent revolt against Rome, managing for the Jews the affairs of Galilee. ...

Now, if he was in Galilee, that can have given him another perspective on Christianity than what he learned among Pharisees. And we do not even know for a fact he learned his ways among the worst opponents of Christianity.

... In the troubles which followed he made his peace with Vespasian. Present at the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, he received favours from these two as emperors and from Domitian and assumed their family name Flavius. ...

Now, if Domitian is the persecutor who sent St John to Patmos, and if he also favoured Flavius Josephus, THAT might be a kind of argument that he "could not have written it". But before making it, try to verify that the favours received from Domitian were not before Domitian became a persecutor, or that the Testimonium as such (with possibly the rest of Antiquities) is not from that time. And the mere fact he was among the imperial set excludes the notion of his narrowmindedly clinging only to what "his Pharisaic surrounding" thought of Christianity. The Flavian dynasty are not quite a Pharisaic surrounding. It may even - depending on modes of socialising - have been a surrounding that excluded him by then from Pharisaic Judaism. Remember how they refuse to enter the house of Pilate? Remember how one of their reproaches against Jesus Christ is that he frequented Romans?

... He died after A.D.97. He was a man who lost faith in his country. ...

Whereafter the cover presentation adds that the two chief works were History of the Jewish War with its prequel Jewish Antiquities. And that some minor works are not genuine (that may be that editor's opinion of IV Maccabees, for instance). Now, if he "lost faith in his country" (which may also be the editor's opinion and not true) he may have gained faith in someone or something else. Roman Empire? Jesus Christ? Who knows. He may even have written Testimonium Flavianum in an ironic mood. But even so he would hardly have recorded things that noone was claiming.

What we do know is that Testimonium Flavianum is in all of the Greek copies of the work.

We also know that the codices do have χριcτoc in the passage.

Richard and Shutt - obviously arguing from the supposition that "Josephus cannot have written it as such" - "emend" it to χριcτoc λεγoμεvoc - their theory is that Josephus showed his irony with the one word λεγoμεvoc and that a Christian editor, far from adding anything simply removed the word λεγoμεvoc with its offensive connotation of "so called".

But if we stick to the codices, to the manuscripts, we find no such irony in Josephus to remove. In that case, we may be looking at someone who considered becoming a Christian - or who avoided it for practical reasons even while finding reasons to believe. If he knew Domitian well, we can either suppose he avoided becoming a Christian because his patron persecuted such - or that his becoming Christian provoked in part the persecution. In the latter case - how come he was not martyred?

One possibility is friendship from the Emperor's side. Goering spared a Jewish family that he knew and when challenged told his subordinate "here it is I who decide who is Jew". My grandfather met them when he visited the Holy Land. Domitian can well have done the same for Josephus. And the reflections in IV Maccabees about the heroism of Eleazar in face of his friendly persecutors (who offered him basically the same thing) can well have been made for his regrets about accepting to be reckoned as "not Christian".

That Eisler (1931) reconstructs an originally very antichristian Testimonium (totally in accord with the Talmudic view of Jesus, see above), can be attributed to an itch in German professors to reconstruct the opposite of what we to all appearances have. Copernicus was partly Prussian and Wilamowitz - more directly relevant for textual criticism - is cited by Bowra as saying that the original Iliad had to be a pure Achilleid and the original Achilleid had to have Achilles successfully brutalising Hector's remnants. Some are still trying to "reconstruct" what earlier and lost stages of the Gospel redaction had to say about Jesus from Nazareth. Let nutballs be nutballs if they like, but do not insist I take the conclusions of such for "learning". Even if that were true, it would only confirm that Pharisees too accepted as fact that Jesus made mircales and never or seldom or not very successfully tried to say something like "we saw no miracles".

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Gaël
17-XII-2012

*I might have been right about the rest though:

HGL's F.B. writings : Critiques of Testimonium Flavianum
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2010/11/critiques-of-testimonium-flavianum.html

Double update, 19-XII-2012:

After reading first chapters of first book of Antiquities, I know he followed LXX rather than a text close to Masoretic. He puts Flood at 2262 anno Mundi. Not at 1626 or whatever the Masoretic text has. I have also checked up his Vita, because he actually has one autobiography. Second to last paragraph tell of his peace with Vespasian. Last brings us up to Domitian, but does not tell any detail of these last years:

76. But when Titus had composed the troubles in Judea, and conjectured that the lands which I had in Judea would bring me no profit, because a garrison to guard the country was afterward to pitch there, he gave me another country in the plain. And when he was going away to Rome, he made choice of me to sail along with him, and paid me great respect: and when we were come to Rome, I had great care taken of me by Vespasian; for he gave me an apartment in his own house, which he lived in before he came to the empire. He also honored me with the privilege of a Roman citizen, and gave me an annual pension; and continued to respect me to the end of his life, without any abatement of his kindness to me; which very thing made me envied, and brought me into danger; for a certain Jew, whose name was Jonathan, who had raised a tumult in Cyrene, and had persuaded two thousand men of that country to join with him, was the occasion of their ruin. But when he was bound by the governor of that country, and sent to the emperor, he told him that I had sent him both weapons and money. However, he could not conceal his being a liar from Vespasian, who condemned him to die; according to which sentence he was put to death. Nay, after that, when those that envied my good fortune did frequently bring accusations against me, by God's providence I escaped them all. I also received from Vespasian no small quantity of land, as a free gift, in Judea; about which time I divorced my wife also, as not pleased with her behavior, though not till she had been the mother of three children, two of whom are dead, and one whom I named Hyrcanus, is alive. After this I married a wife who had lived at Crete, but a Jewess by birth: a woman she was of eminent parents, and such as were the most illustrious in all the country, and whose character was beyond that of most other women, as her future life did demonstrate. By her I had two sons; the elder's name was Justus, and the next Simonides, who was also named Agrippa. And these were the circumstances of my domestic affairs. However, the kindness of the emperor to me continued still the same; for when Vespasian was dead, Titus, who succeeded him in the government, kept up the same respect for me which I had from his father; and when I had frequent accusations laid against me, he would not believe them. And Domitian, who succeeded, still augmented his respects to me; for he punished those Jews that were my accusers, and gave command that a servant of mine, who was a eunuch, and my accuser, should be punished. He also made that country I had in Judea tax free, which is a mark of the greatest honor to him who hath it; nay, Domitia, the wife of Caesar, continued to do me kindnesses. And this is the account of the actions of my whole life; and let others judge of my character by them as they please. But to thee, O Epaphroditus, (27) thou most excellent of men! do I dedicate all this treatise of our Antiquities; and so, for the present, I here conclude the whole.

So, when he finished his autobiography, a) he has either completed Antiquities or an important part of it, b) Domitian may still have been alive, c) we do not therefore know from the Vita whether his possible Christian conversion occurred after writing the Vita, or whether he considered it but gave it up, or whether he had begun it but so far pushed it to the future. And we do not know with absolute certainty either whether the Antiquities he dedicated to Epaphoroditus with the Vita were all we have or only an early part of it. Book XVIII and following might have been taken on after this dedication./HGL

Was Tolkien Only Writing About Symbols, Divorced From Meaning?

Well, no.

There is no political symbolism or Freudian symbolism intended. There is no political or Freudian meaning behind the symbols. Nor is it a key novel - or a "novel with a key" - which at least Mr. Vajda thinks is how Pushkin and Gogol wrote their fantasy. As for the "Nose" by Gogol, I think he even makes a point. At least for main story of that book, how he retells it. So there is no individual events or situations meaning behind the symbolism either.

Then neither is that necessarily the case in all of Dostoëvski. The criminal with a revolutionary excuse - like Raskolnikov - is not a way of saying something against this or that Revolutionary in 19th C. Russia. It's a way of saying something about Revolution. As such. As one things humans can do in face of injustice and should not do. There is plenty of such symbolism in Tolkien's work.

Tolkien was certainly into the sign - but in Saussure sign means the unique combination of signifier and signified. And that is how Tolkien enjoyed language learning as well. He would not have enjoyed Welsh so much if "afon" had meant earth or fire rather than something about water (river, I think). Or if "glas" had meant white rather than green grey. Or if "cwm" had been birch rather than valley. It says so when he speaks of his pleasure of learning Welsh in that beautiful essay on Welsh and English.

It is very much implied when he is in anguish about whether a bird shall in Sindarin be "aew" or "oew". He listened to a thrush which he imagined as feeling insulted about "oew", so he took "aew". He was very much into the Cratylus side of language.

And if he took into account how word and meaning affect each other when taking words and sounds from real languages, we can be sure he meant to say something about crookishness as such whenever he protrayed a crook. Saruman and Gríma, Gollum and the Orcs discussing Elvish Tricks are as much real types of crookish behaviour as Pug and Gumpas.

And similarily about heroism.

One can even imagine him discussing after the lesson about Beowulf and someone saying to him "you know, if Beowulf is noble and Grendel is a monster, that is because Beowulf had a good upbringing and was welcomed and is son of a king, whereas Grendel is an outcast". And he wrote the difference between Gollum and Aragorn - who are both of nobility (hobbitish and human) and are both outcasts (remember how Aragorn is bullied about by the innkeeper Barliman Butterbur and nearly cannot make it to the hobbits). He is making a very valid point that character determines what choices we have as much as situation does.

And about Simplicity and Sophistication. Even a very sophisticated person like Gandalf (who can low smokering through smokering and another and a third ring through those already sent up to some twenty, how is that for sophisticated!) can be very ill at ease with over-sophistication, like that of "Saruman of many colours." And a very simple person like Sam (who is sophisticated enough about ropes and gardens and cooking) helps Frodo in a way that a very sophisticated person like Denethor does not.

Edward Vajda said that anyone can put any contemporary evil, religious or secular, whatever he considers evil himself, into the role of Sauron or Saruman.

Not quite.

People can (if they are dumb enough) consider antiabortionist young earth creationists as "stupid enough to amount to real evil", but they can hardly get very much support from Tolkien's descriptions of the Two Towers of evil. That is not stupidity going evil by a refusal to bow down to knowledge. That is knowledge going evil by a refusal to respect the rights of simpler folks and by a refusal to respect the rights of the Creator.

So, anyone reading so to speak "the Apocalypse according to Tolkien" (and both Lord of the Rings and Akallabeth are in a way a kind of fan fiction to the Apocalypse "at the end of the thousand years the devil was released" in Apocalypse 20 or for that matter its counterpart in Genesis 6:[11] "And the earth was corrupted before God, and was filled with iniquity. [12] And when God had seen that the earth was corrupted (for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth,)" ...) will hardly look at the apparently least sophisticated persons or systems for the role of Antichrist.

An ideology of knowledge, control, and if knowledge does not give enough control for the controllers, of redefinition, like redefinition of good and evil, redefinition of rights and slights fits very much closer with what Saruman stood for in LotR or Sauron in Akallebeth. Tolkien even makes anyone fighting on the right side but with that attitude (Denethor, Boromir) a real threat of committing treason against the right side.

And that is in a way what one can expect from a Christian author. Does the success even among non-Christians say sth about the "anima naturaliter christiana"?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Gaudete Sunday
2012-12-16



What I wrote against:

wwuniversity : J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginary languages - by Edward Vajda, WWU Linguistics Program
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NKlr0vRX34

Appendix A: I have elsewhere argued that the difference between Tolkien and Dostoëvski while studying good and evil is that Tolkien makes the painful struggle readable by adding Hobbitry and therefore comedy. In a way, it is what Homer did. The Iliad adds the Olympic gods as comedy - take away those and you end up with something like Bronze Age (the comic book), which is breathtaking (like Crime and Punishment), but if you do have to stop read, you do not like to get back soon because it was unpleasant. Homer and Tolkien avoid that. In Odyssey it is more like men standing for comedy - and gods for providence, and that comes closer to Tolkien's work.

Appendix B: Professor Edward Vajda made people snicker a lot when it came to believing that Tolkien though he used so much in traits of for instance Turkic languages as model for black speech, it has nothing to do with saying something about Turkic peoples. Of course, Tolkien would, if asked, have said that the Osman Empire was an evil thing, in as much as it was directed at agressing Christendom (or for that matter habist like slave hunt, yanitchar recruiting, suicide of unsuccessful commanders on order of dissatisfied sultan, harem of same sultan ...), but that does not imply anything about Turkmenistan, where also Turkic languages are spoken. Even in Celtic languages Tolkien finds harsh sounds. Ring is nasc in Irish and from there it was only a voiced cluster from Slavonic languages to make it nazg. He wrote that he found Irish people very nice (they are Catholics like he was) but its language unattractive to his language aesthetical taste. Balrog is in Quenya Valarauka - with Vala for power but rauka for demon. And rauka comes closer to German word for smoke "Rauch" and one English word for stench "reek" < "reac" <"*rauk-" than it does to Russian rog. I think he underestimates in general the capacity to stand back from immediate news and mundane actualities - maybe because he does not consider it a good quality as such. PS, Cirth as plural from Certh is not a Semitic Ablaut plural, it is a Welsh Umlaut plural. If it had been Cereth with two syllables and long first e, it would have been plural Ceirith - recognisably Sindarin, as the word indeed is. So, similarily, a short e makes an i in plural: Certh - Cirth.

Appendix C: Tolkien's point about an imaginary world is that fiction especially in the Romance tradition whether in Odyssey or in Huon de Bordeaux or Sindbad or Puss-in-Boots are not really in the world we live in ourselves. Tintin's world has a Syldavia and a Borduria in Europe. Zenda is in Ruritania. Sherlock Holmes' London includes an adress which has later been built as a Sherlock Holmes museum, as well as (thanks to Shakespear) a visiting Duke of Bohemia. Ariosto has a geography and chorography around Gerusalemme Liberata not quite identical to the then geography of the Holy Land. Tolkien did not invent this approach, he saw what it was good for and used it.

Appendix D, on Gollum: Yes, there for once Tolkien comes close to modern ideas about drinkers and cantankerous men. It may be partly due to psychiatrists finding the personality so powerful that they have got a habit of "smelling out Gollum" in people - and it may be in part due to the partially Methodist upbringing the Tolkien orphans had. Though a Welsh-Spanish Padre was their legal guardian, and they were Roman Catholics, they also stayed with relatives of this not-quite-Catholic religion.

Appendix E, Pushkin: His cat which is tied and symbolises and artist too tied to tradition may have inspired a certain cat that is way too free - even from itself - so as to disappear. Cf. Lewis Carroll. Modern Art makes Cheshire Cat Artists. From grinning cat to grin without even a cat around it.

St Thomas, dit-il qu'il faut faire confiance à l'expertise?

Il semble y avoir eu un adage parmi les scholastiques: "unicuique artifici in sua arte credendum est."

Il "faut/convient de faire confiance" à chaque "artifex" dans le cadre de son "ars."

Il y en a qui traduisent, allègrement:

"Il faut faire confiance à chaque expert dans le cadre son expertise."

Ceci est absurde déjà par le fait de prendre le gerondif comme indicant une obligation. Car, alors les experts dans chaque expertise seraient tous obligés à se faire confiance mutuellement, la critique entre pairs n'existerait plus, et par conséquent, si tel était la pensée de St Thomas, ça ruinerait l'objectivité de la science. Car ça reduirait l'objectivité ou la vérité objective de l'expertise par rapport à son sujet à une intersubjectivité un peu quand même arbitraire. Pour dire le moins.

Hugues Kéraly sait déjà d'où me vient ce genre d'observation. "Ars imitatur naturam" peut biensûr être traduit comme "les beaux-arts font trompe-l'oeil des objets de la nature humaine ou sauvage ou domesticée" mais il est plus sage de traduire comme "le procédé technique pour arriver à sa fin est intentionellement semblable au procédé naturel pour arriver à une fin semblable". Merci beaucoup!

Ce n'est pas même à propos la peinture que St Thomas prenait le peintre comme obligé de faire réalisme photographique (et en même temps prenait la peinture contemporaine pour ayant une telle), c'est que la peinture et la calligraphie pour arriver à partiellement colorer une surface utilise les mêmes procédés que lait ou sang ou boue qui colore une partie d'une surface ayant une couleur autre que blanc, rouge et brun/gris: mélange de liquide et quelque chose qui peut résider de manière solide, application à surface poreuse, siccation.

Ainsi, il est également absurde de prétendre à la traduction "il faut faire confiance à chaque expert dans le cadre son expertise."

Non seulement l'obligation n'est pas là de manière absolue, aussi l'objet même de cette confiance n'est pas chaque expert dans son expertise. Seulement les vrais experts dans le bien (car l'expertise de faire le mal ne donne pas savoir mais aveuglement selon déjà Aristote) dans sa vraie expertise.

S'il convient de manière générale sans obligation absolue de faire confiance à chaque vrai expert d'une expertise licite dans cette expertise, alors il doit d'abord y avoir des critères pour l'expertise licite - à différence d'une expertise dans la malfaisaince ou d'une expertise qui n'en est aucunement mais qui est prétendue.

Ars amandi d'Ovide est une expertise quelque part dans la malfaisance: car Ovide ne tient pas compte des mariages. Quand Étienne Tempier condamne 219 thèses en 1276/77 (encore 76 selon eux qui considérèrent l'année comme commençant 25 Mars ou Jour de Pâcques, car c'était un dimanche laetare au début de mars) il commence avec une lettre qui condamne certains auteurs, dont un Andrée le Chapelain pour le fait d'avoir écrit une Ars Amandi.

Mais également il y en a des expertises qui n'en sont pas. Si l'astrologue dit que quand le Soleil est en Vierge et Poissons il fait plus chaud que pendant l'hiver et plus frais que pendant l'été, d'accord. S'il prédit que les marées sont plus fortes pendant les pleine lunes et les nouvelles lunes que pendant les quarts de lune, d'accord. Mais s'il regarde l'heure de la naissance d'un-tel, en quel signe se trouvent soleil et lune et lequel monte sur l'horizon et comment est la lune et où se trouvent les autres planètes par les signes et s'il y a un lever de soleil ou de lune ou d'autre planète et s'il y a conjonction et si après ça il déclare "il est nécessaire que tel homme va être mou, commettre un meurtre et se tirer sans condemnation pénale" alors un bon thomiste dira bien-sûr "Halte-là!"

Bon, il y a parmi certains néothomistes - je ne dis pas tous - la mode de dire que:

• Il faut croire que la terre tourne autour d'elle-même chaque jour et autour du soleil chaque an (plutôt que le soleil chaque jour autour de la terre selon un itinéraire variable par l'an); car l'expertise le dit.
• Il faut croire que la terre est le soleil se soient produits à partir d'une rotation de nuage de gaz quel nuage était là éjecté par le Big Bang, ou que sur la terre les boeufs et les pondeurs d'oeufs descendent des mêmes poissons; car l'expertise le dit.
• Il fait croire que l'homme garde beaucoup d'une mentalité encore pas rationnelle car précivilisationnelle; car l'expertise le dit.

Ce que le géocentrique, le créationniste jeune terre et le psychologosceptique disent est essentiellement que là il n'y a pas expertise. Pas dans le sens qui soit credendum. Une position qui ne peut pas être confondue par une simple clin d'oeil au principe thomiste en question mais qui doit être bien examinée.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi Georges Pompidou
15-XII-2012

La Saison des Chants de Noël en Suède ...

... c'est entre la Sainte Lucie (aujourd'hui) et l'Épiphanie. Traditionnellement.

Je ne sais pas si en Angleterre la saison commence le jour du Noël ou plus tôt, là où les chants sont genre "we wish you a merry Christmas", mais en Suède le début entre le Moyen Age et les temps juste avant la modernité, c'était 13-déc - 6-janv. ou peut-être même jusqu'à 13-janv. Ce n'est pas exactement la saison ecclésiastique de Noël, 25-déc. - 13-janv. + 2-févr., mais c'est la saison pour la coûtume des jeunes et pauvres d'aller de porte à porte pour chanter et souhaiter déjà en avance Joyeux Noël.

On allait déguisés. St Étienne, Judas le Traitre, Ste Lucie, les Rois Mages sont des rôles des chanteurs traditionnels. Aujourd'hui on reprend, juste aujourd'hui, Ste (?) Lucie, St Étienne, les garçons-étoiles qui suivent St Étienne (c'est celui qui tient l'étoile qui chante les versets de la ballade de St Étienne), les filles qui suivent la Lucie.

C'est un peu sécularisé, mais déjà au Moyen Age ce n'était pas purement religieux, après tout c'étaient des chanteurs populaires en dehors de la liturgie. Et ils recoltaient des vivres et boissons de quoi se faire une bonne fête. D'où peut-être l'interêt de commencer avant Noël, pour avoir de quoi prendre quand la fête était là.

C'est comme garçon étoile, chanteur de la ballade de St Étienne, que j'ai en premier fait mes épreuves pour marcher et me tenir comme il faut aussi comme ministrant de messe. En plus, rares sont les suédois, y compris catholiques, qui boudent ce spectacle. Le bouder est plutôt genre les évangélicaux ou T d J, qui sont prêts à le bouder parce qu'ils considèrent que le culte d'une sainte et suffisant pour le rendre odieux dans les yeux de Dieu. Et même les évangélicaux de Suède ne sont plus aussi strictes que ça. Les T d J oui - mais ils boudent Noël aussi.

Ce soir, 6 h 30, la cour du l'institut suédois (le panneau "Si" = Svenska institutet), rue Payenne, on pourra le voir. Bien-sûr, c'est mieux si on comprend le suédois.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi Georges Pompidou
S^te Lucie, Vierge et Martyr
13-XII-2012

The Beowulf Poet Knew Homer

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: The Beowulf Poet Knew Homer · Other Characteristic of the Beowulf Poet: · The Monsters ARE The Critics · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: On Beowulf and Clergy · Was Tolkien Any Good as a Philologist?

Bowra teaches us more through his insights on Homer than through his insights on Beowulf, not only when it comes to Homer (of course), but even when it comes to Beowulf. Let's forget about the blunder that made Hygelac and Beowulf, or as Old Norse would have them Hugleik and Bjoulf, Danish Kings rather than Geatish ones. Of course they ruled in Westrogothia, around Gothenburg, probably including areas that in early historic times (history begins with Latin alphabet and Christianity being introduced 800-1000 in Scandinavia) belonged to Norway and Denmark north and south of Gothenburg. The poem after all begins with the genealogy of Hrothgar (Hroar) who is quite properly speaking a Danish King.

But let anyone having read J. R. R. Tolkien's short but masterly essays about the Anglo-Saxon poem recall it very minutely before reading farther. You did? Fine.

Bowra says of the structure of the Iliad:

The poem is built on a plan at once simple and majestic. The crescendo of the opening is paralleled by the diminuendo of the closing books.

O. K. - for my part I think I read that in either of Tolkien's essays when he wrote about the Beowulf poet too.

But Tolkien had said that the Beowulf poet was in Theology more akin to Virgil than to Homer?

Yes, well that is Theology. Let us add that Virgil's frequent use of allitteration has become in Anglo-Saxon poetry a regularised one, just as Ovid's frequent rhyming became Medieval Latin and French poetry regular rhyming. Or as the metre of St Ambrose's Hymns has become the accentual metre of much Medieval Poetry.

That does not stop the Beowulf poet from following in the aesthetic plan of Homer. A crescendo followed by a diminuendo.

Actually Virgil too had used Homer to get a plan: 6 books to parallel loosely the 24 books of the Odyssey and 6 more books to parallel loosely the 24 books of the Iliad.

And the Beowulf poem too uses the Odyssey + Iliad scheme: the parts concerned with Grendel include Odyssean element sea voyage and Odyssean element hero telling of exploits. Plus the Odyssean element killing of a humanoid monster - Grendel paralleling Polypheme and Grendel's mother paralleling Poseidon.

If you remember Tolkien's first essay, he is deeply unsatisfied with the Odyssey for allowing Polypheme to be mourned by a god after he had been behaving like a devil. For implying that the gods cannot be relied on as standing for humanity against monstrosity. And Tolkien adds that the Beowulf poem does that better. That could have been precisely the poet's intention.

Elvis Presley wrote a song with the line "are you lonesome tonight" used as a pick-up line and I wrote one in which it is a reconciliation line spoken by a husband to his wife (via cell phone misnamed "mobile phone" at the time and answering machine - rightly named before I looked it up). Shakespear wrote about a forest walking but in reality only branches used as camouflage "walked" along with the human soldiers. Tolkien and C S Lewis both wrote books in which tree spirits did the walking. Homer wrote about a maimed monster mourned and avenged by a god. The Beowulf poet wrote about a maimed monster mourned and avenged by - a monster. Maybe he too had generally enjoyed one book but felt a need to correct one of its perspectives.

But this is not all.

εccεται ημαρ oτ' αv πoτ' oλωληι Iλιoc ιρη
και Πριαμoc και λαoc ευμμελιωι Πριαμoιo

We can note that Bowra supposes the hexameter was originally a double verse, first four dactyls the last of which always remains so and does not go spondee, then dactyl and spondee, the dactyl of which seldom becomes a spondee either. These two verses are impossible to recite in such a more primitive metre, because there is no word ending after eÿmmeli- and because -ole is a spondee. So, if such a simpler metre existed, it may have been for these two lines that the earlier metre was remoulded to hexameter.

More seriously, the impending doom of Troy and its destruction are prefigured in the pyre of Hector who had said this:

When he dies, the city bewails him as if it had already fallen and were weeping for its own doom (X 411).

That is about how Tolkien resumes the pyre of Beowulf, King of Geats but without an heir. After Beowulf Nordic legend knows of no more Geatish kings. In clearly historic times - that is better documented than the legendary ones, though these may be sufficiently documented - their territory is the Western outskirt of Sweden, which in their times was ruled by the rival, Odinian, Yngling dynasty.

To get a time scale, Hrothgar's son Hrothulf (Hrolf) once is captive with his Swedish stepfather Eadgils (Adils), but escapes him (Gesta Danorum). At the time Sweden tried to be overlord over the Nordic lands. Adils himself starts the Swedish colony in the S E corner of Finland and is killed by a Finnish wife he captured there (Ynglinga Saga).

In the second part Beowulf faces someone behaving somewhat like Achilles - a dragon. Unlike Achilles, Beowulf's tragic fault is not anger, but ofermod. A generous but vaunting form of pride. He took an unnecessary risk, and not just for himself, but also the people he ruled. He and Wiglaf both represent Hector - but Wiglaf in the capacity of a soldier simply doing his duty.

Otherwise everyone human behaves much better than in the Iliad or Odyssey. On stage that is.

Beowulf's pious behaviour with Hrothgar and with his uncle Hygelac is supposed to contrast favourably with Achilles' impious quarrelling with Agamemnon. If Beowulf once does use words reminding of the "eyes of a dog, but heart of a hart" it is towards Unferth, a person reminding of Thersites in his pessimism which amounts to defeatism. Unless, indeed, he comes closer to Odysseus vs Thersites or Agamemnon vs - precisely - Achilles, when adressing Unferth. The name is clearly a translation of oυλoμεvoc or rather oυλoμεvια.

I think I have proven that the Beowulf poet knew both Homer and Virgil, at least the epics. We can therefore conclude that he was a man who had learned Classical Greek, either in the monasteries of England or before coming to England in the first place.

If you want any farther proof, just look at the way his minstrels in Hrothgar's hall parallel Demodocus and Phemius. Or how the brutality of Grendel in Hrothgar's hall parallels the brutality of Odysseus to the suitors (a monk would not find fit that a man should do so to men) and at same time how Beowulf delivering the hall parallels Odysseus delivering his faithful wife, slaves son etc.

The only thing that could prove me wrong in my own eyes now, would be to be contradicted in this theory after actually myself reading the complete epics. Which I confess I have not done with Beowulf yet, nor the last decades of years with the Iliad.

One consequence of this is of course that Beowulf cannot due to scale be used as an example of "primitive poetry" just because it is shorter than Layamon's Brut. After all, the epyllion was an Alexandrine thing in historic certainty quite as much as it was possibly a pre-epic thing. And a monk would possibly not have wanted too long recitals of profane literature.

If someone knows of some Byzantine cleric who disappeared from history before he died, I am not sure the Beowulf poet in England can be excluded from being that person later in life.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Mairie du III, Paris
St Lucy Virgin and Martyr
13-XII-2012

PS: Look at this here:

ευτ' αcτηρ 'υπερεcχε φααvτατoc 'oc τε μαλιcτα
ερχεται αγγελλωv φαoc Hoυc ηριγεvειηc
τημoc δη vηcωι πρocεπιλvατo πovτoπoρoc vηυc

"Just when appeared the brightest star which foremost comes with tiding of dawn's light, the ship of the sea came to the height of the island."

It is about the morning star, it is called brightest and bringing tiding (αγγελλωv), that is it is nearly called an angel. What would brightest bearer of tidings or brightest angel by in English?

"Eala Earendil, engla beorhtast"

Yes, that line too must be by one who knew Homer in Greek./HGL