However, He (WS) Got Two Particles Severely Wrong

I could subscribe to all of this post, except two particles in the first sentence:

Pen and Pension : A Pair of Famous Quacks
Posted on November 30, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/11/30/a-pair-of-famous-quacks/

Here is the first sentence as written (minus the red font and the small caps replacing minuscules):

Despite The Enlightenment, the eighteenth century was still an age of credulity and superstition.

And here it is once again, underlining the two particles (a preposition and a temporal adverb) which he got wrong:

Despite The Enlightenment, the eighteenth century was still an age of credulity and superstition.

It is truer to say, as I think a German cardinal said just after WW-II, that when people cease to believe in God, they don't become incredulous, they become credulous about everything and anything.

Or perhaps it was Chesterton, in a Father Brown story.

Because of the Enlightenment, the 18th Century was increasingly an age of superstition.

Paradoxical? A bit. The Englightenment set out to weed out superstitions, didn't it? Yes, but in doing so, it set out looking for it in the wrong places.

In the name of religious and scientific freedom, more leeway was created which quacks could exploit. And while it was stamped as superstitious credulity to suggest that fasting as per the Catholic Church rules or praying the Rosary could be good for your health, people were swallowing the stuff, sorry snuff, of men no better than Cagliostro and Katterfelto.

And outside medicine, a curiosity about men like these was encouraged, like scientific curiosity.

I suggest William Savage gets a bit real about his historic credentials (mine are outside the strict subject and pre-graduate and aside the Academia studies).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Mairie du III
St Andrew Apostle
30.XI.2016

A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

1) Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class · 2) "If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!" · 3) Fridge Logic · 4) Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic. · 5) A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

Here is his post:

Pen and Pension : Eighteenth-century ‘Packet Soup’
Posted on November 23, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/11/23/eighteenth-century-packet-that-would-soup/

What strikes any modern reader, I imagine, is just what hard, long drawn-out labour was needed to produce even a simple dish. We’re used to taking something off the supermarket shelf, opening a tin or a package from the fridge or freezer, and there’s the food in a matter of perhaps 15–30 minutes at most. Not so in the eighteenth century.

Providing a stock of packet soup is less laborious if you have a supermarket than if you do it yourself.

USING it, then as now, was a matter of adding hot water and perhaps seasoning to the packet soup.

Nevertheless, howeverso oafish it may be of him not to get that, we should be thankful for his providing good recipes!

Even outside the circle of preppers, there are people like my late granny who did quite a lot of such do it yourself stuff, quite as laborious as making solid soup. That means I know firsthand that use occasion time and preparation time are rather inversely than directly proportional.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Clement I, Pope and Martyr
23.XI.2016

Natalis sancti Clementis Primi, Papae et Martyris, qui, tertius post beatum Petrum Apostolum, Pontificatum tenuit, et, in persecutione Trajani, apud Chersonesum relegatus, ibi, alligata ad ejus collum anchora, praecipitatus in mare, martyrio coronatur. Ipsius autem corpus, Hadriano Secundo Summo Pontifice, a sanctis Cyrillo et Methodio fratribus Romam translatum, in Ecclesia quae ejus nomine antea fuerat exstructa, honorifice reconditum est.

It Seems Some Jews Wonder Why They are Less Than Popular

I don't know how many know of the debate behind the legislation of France, against negationism.

There had been a debate between Faurisson and some others. In that debate, Faurisson had cross examined* Auschwitz survivors. After that cross examination, one had said that Faurisson did not respect old people.

And then the law which outlawed his research was passed, not least with that argument. He could himself not be tied to National Socialism and is even now not very close to National Socialists. They honour him, but it is not exactly mutual. So, the main argument was, he had been disrespectful to the elderly.

How respectful are Jews themselves to the elderly?

Just recently, I read news, a man who was doctor in the camps and denies genocidal guilt, and who is very old now, was going to be dragged before court in Germany. By request from Wiesenthal Center. And now this:

mail dot com : Few Nazi crimes suspects lost pensions, review reveals
November 22, 2016
https://www.mail.com/int/business/markets/4776680-nazi-crimes-suspects-lost-pensions-review-reveals.html

BERLIN (AP) — Tens of thousands of Nazi war crimes suspects may have been able to continue receiving disability pensions despite a law passed nearly two decades ago ordering them revoked, according to an official review quietly published Tuesday that revealed that only 99 people lost their payments. ... When the law was passed in 1998, the expectation was that it would result in up to 50,000 people losing their pensions, according to the report. But the review found that only 99 people suspected of "crimes against the principles of humanity" ever lost their pensions. The research covered the years 1998-2013 but no more have been removed to date.

We are here not speaking of condemned criminals losing disability pensions, but of suspects so losing them. A suspect by definition is innocent until proven guilty.

"The results are incredibly disappointing," said Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center . "I never thought in my worst nightmares that the number would be so low." The Labor Ministry would not comment on the phone and did not immediately respond to emailed questions.

So, 99 persons have been impoverished due to his or his colleagues' efforts. It is like a nightmare to him that they are not more.

The "law" was passed in 1998. Divide that number by three, and see what you get** (it was a bad year for me too).

Those who in France voted the Gayssot Act presumably were moved by pity for the elderly Camp Survivors who had felt humiliated by Faurisson - who is himself a bit old now.

But being respectful for German elderly somewhat loosely connected to the Camps, though not condemned for any crimes so far, is not exactly on their agenda.

As long as many Jews seem to cheer this on, I don't think Jews will be very popular.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Feast of St Cecily
22.XI.2016

* In debate, not as if he was holding a trial.

** And if you get a number reminding of Apocalypse 13:18, don't be surprised. 19:3=6, remain 1 ...

Does Bergoglio Know what Triumph and Superstition Mean?

Quoting:*

Finally, said Pope Francis there is the group of Christians who " in their hearts do not believe in the Risen Lord and want to make theirs a more majestic resurrection than that of the real one . These, he said are the “triumphalist” Christians.

" They do not know the meaning of the word ' triumph ' the Pope continued, so they just say “triumphalism”, because they have such an inferiority complex and want to do this ...

When we look at these Christians , with their many triumphalist attitudes , in their lives, in their speeches and in their pastoral theology, liturgy , so many things , it is because they do not believe deep down in the Risen One . He is the Winner, the Risen One. He won.

OK, a real and genuine triumph would provoke what? Non-triumphalist attitudes? Few triumphalist attitudes, but very emphatic ones? Or even few and very discreet triumphalist attitudes?

Have a look at Franco's triumph in 1939. Not his attitude, but those of the ones believing (for the following years it would seem rightly) that Franco had won:

Source British Pathé, Deutsche Monatsschau, Franco's Forces enter Madrid (pics 130, 133, 137) (click on pictures to view larger, if needed). [update : I belatedly noticed a copyright notice on pictures as given and have sent British Pathe a request.]
130, at 2:10 - Triumphalist salutes, not very discreet.
133 - a wall print from chablon, with triumphalist celebrating the face of the winner.
137 - soldiers of Franco entering on cars, with triumphalist gesture only matted by physical fatigue, it would seem.

And if you see pictures of his own attitude - chosen somewhat otherwise, with presentation by La Pasionaria ...

Francisco Franco triumphantly enters Madrid. Dolores Ibárruri ("La Pasionaria") ...HD Stock Footage
CriticalPast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4-RjHikqsg

I had heard video sound off and misunderstood the title. La pasionaria was fortunately not presenting it, she was on stage the last scene. Too bad most of the English presenter's voice is not heard.

... she seems [see above on misunderstanding] of course to have focussed on those losing a position, considering them identic to proletarian class, but that position being one of revolution and not a little of collaboration with the bullies of Paracuellos or Cárcel Modelo (who remind of what has been described as per death camps under Nazis, not only to ordinary privation stories as those of Jo Wajsblat or Maurice Kling), but she does also show, for instance 0:56, Franco in a triumphalist gesture.

A bit too severe to shadow completely the triumph of Christ over death, Franco was a bit more severe** - but perhaps Christ will be severe too when coming to judge people like the False Prophet or Antichrist and their fellows. But certainly triumphalist. And the one and the other are not perfectly same thing, so triumphalism is not out of place with Christ risen either.

If Bergoglio prefers, take the triumph of Che Guevara. Or of ... I was nearly going to give a triumphalist picture of Patton, but he overdid it. He urinated in the Rhine river in full sight and a photograph was taken just before - as a ceremony of humiliation on Germany. Bergoglio might agree this is overdoing triumphalism a bit too much.***

But saying these guys did not in the ordinary sense believe in their victory, well, that is a bit far fetched.

It reminds me of a superstition called "psychology". Reading your neighbour's mind, pretending that is not your sixth sense, but only normal expertise and experience, and yet coming up with backward results like this, which defy the NORMAL rules of limited empathetic mindreading knowing its limits.

I answer that, As stated above (Article 1; Q92,94), superstition denotes undue divine worship. Now a thing pertains to the worship of God in two ways: in one way, it is something offered to God; as a sacrifice, an oblation, or something of the kind: in another way, it is something divine that is assumed, as stated above with regard to an oath (II-II:89:4 ad 2). Wherefore superstition includes not only idolatrous sacrifices offered to demons, but also recourse to the help of the demons for the purpose of doing or knowing something. But all divination results from the demons' operation, either because the demons are expressly invoked that the future may be made known, or because the demons thrust themselves into futile searchings of the future, in order to entangle men's minds with vain conceits. Of this kind of vanity it is written (Psalm 39:5): "Who hath not regard to vanities and lying follies." Now it is vain to seek knowledge of the future, when one tries to get it from a source whence it cannot be foreknown. Therefore it is manifest that divination is a species of superstition.

II-II Question 95. Superstition in divinations, Article 2 Is it a species of superstition? Corpus of article. And a little earlier:

Accordingly the species of superstition are differentiated, first on the part of the mode, secondly on the part of the object. For the divine worship may be given either to whom it ought to be given, namely, to the true God, but "in an undue mode," and this is the first species of superstition; or to whom it ought not to be given, namely, to any creature whatsoever, and this is another genus of superstition, divided into many species in respect of the various ends of divine worship. For the end of divine worship is in the first place to give reverence to God, and in this respect the first species of this genus is "idolatry," which unduly gives divine honor to a creature. The second end of religion is that man may be taught by God Whom he worships; and to this must be referred "divinatory" superstition, which consults the demons through compacts made with them, whether tacit or explicit. Thirdly, the end of divine worship is a certain direction of human acts according to the precepts of God the object of that worship: and to this must be referred the superstition of certain "observances."

Question 92. Superstition Article 2. Whether there are various species of superstition? Mid portion of corpus of article.

Now, the interior of your neighbour is sth which you can know naturally - by knowing men or by hearing them confess it - or by prophecy, taught by God, as Padre Pio was.

This kind of general qualification about people who are triumphalist, namely that they do not really believe Christ has risen, at the best, Bergoglio could be speaking of a triumphalism which really doesn't believe that Christ has won because they worship power, but that will not account for all triumphalism, and so he overgeneralises, at worst (and it will be taken badly, as a general principle, about triumphalism in general) he is enouncing a principle of understanding your fellow men which is a superstitious one.

To refute this, it is not necessary for you to agree with me that Franco's triumph was a good one. You might even take a look at Patton's if you prefer, all I ask is that you agree it was in the normal sense of the word a triumph. And that people in that hour, whether bitterly as some shown by La Pasionaria, or hopefully, as I hope it was the case with more, believed he had won. Therefore, if those believing that and finding (earthly) hope in that exhibited triumphalism, it is false to say that those who believe in a triumph are not triumphalist about it.

That kind of superstition, that kind of reverse psychology in understanding your neigbour, can have been taken over by Bergoglio from some left wing Anglicans.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Deidication of Basilicas
of Sts Peter and Paul in Rome
18.XI.2016

* Vatican Radio : Pope: No to triumphalism in the Church, proclaim Jesus without fear and embarrassment
10/09/2013
http://en.radiovaticana.va/storico/2013/09/10/pope_no_to_triumphalism_in_the_church%2C_proclaim_jesus_without_fear/en1-727225

H/T Rorate Caeli

** Somewhat too severe at times, but that was a fault some other qualities outweigh with me.

*** Theologians may debate whether he expressed distaste in advance for the Rhine league of bishops at Vatican II, or whether that thing was coming from his bad influence. The former would kind of make him a good guy anyway. Note, I am NOT the least triumphalist about either Patton's gesture at the Rhine or Vatican II with its outcome. So, if you take this as an example of a triumphalist not believing in victory, you are wrong. There I know I have part in defeat, since in the former case, Germany was too much beaten along the National Socialist régime. I am against that régime on quite a few issues, but not against Germany as such. I grew up there in part of my childhood.

Citando Sandro Magister
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/6893

"Jorge Mario Bergoglio è nato a Buenos Aires il 17 dicembre 1936."

[17 de diciembre: Guerra Civil Española: llegada de los primeros voluntarios fascistas italianos a España.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936#Diciembre ]

"Ha studiato da chimico, prima di farsi gesuita. È divenuto prete a 33 anni. Ha fatto studi di filosofia, letteratura, psicologia e teologia in diverse università dell´Argentina, del Cile, della Spagna e della Germania."

Di psicologia? Questo è la falta! Questo è il errore!

Did Norse Pagans Regard Odin's Kingship in Uppsala Region, and his Stepson Frey's as Historically Real?

CMI* made an excellent argument about the Flood account in Sumerian and Akkadian sources.

Did the Mesopotamians regard the Flood as historically real? This can be answered affirmatively. First, the Sumerian King List (SKL) attests this, when at the end of a list of eight antediluvian kings reigning for a total of 241,200 years (!) there comes a note: “The Flood then swept over the land. After the Flood had swept over (the land) and kingship had descended from heaven (a second time) Kish became (the seat) of kingship.”¹⁹ This occurs in what for the Sumerians and Akkadians was a sober list of historical kings. Indeed, many of the post-Diluvian kings are now known to be figures of history and not mere legend, including Gilgamesh of Uruk himself.²⁰

Then there is the Dynastic Chronicle, another Sumerian text, which, although fragmentary, is similar to the SKL, but which included an excursus describing the Flood. This excursus of at least eleven lines is unfortunately not preserved, but the first word or two began this description.²¹

Two King lists which parallel each other both say that Flood was real, therefore it is so?

Well, two king lists from Norse sources (Icelander Snorre and Dane Saxo) say that the reign of the Æsir in Upsala region was real too!

Note, I say "in Upsala region", for two reasons.

• Today's Upsala, which was a Catholic and is a Lutheran Cathedral (vs "Cathedral", same building though) is further West and was originally called Östra Aros.** The place where Æsir came is known as Gamla Upsala (Old Upsala or Elder Upsala).
• Odin didn't even come to Elder Upsala as a city already there, it was his stepson Frey who actually founded it.

Snorre tells the story of their coming twice. In the Prologue of the Edda, it is easy to overlook. The rest of the Edda (properly so called, since Poetic Edda didn't bear that name) deals with creation mythologies of divinites (including a Flood before creation of Earth and of mankind!) and of heroics legends which would have taken place at latest during Völkerwanderung, when Old Norse no more existed than Shakespear's English did in King Alfred's time***

But he tells of their story another time too. Here the context is NOT mythological. Odin, Thor and Frey are not cited as sources of Gylfi, like the nine Muses for Hesiod, but they are cited as starting a series of kings.

This series of kings is also cited as including the son of Frey, Fjölner, a man clearly human, since he drowned in a vat of hydromel. In other words, the first man of that family not to be divinised by Swedes°. This hydromel drowning episode was at the court of a Danish King, Frode°°, qualified both as Fred-Frode (Peace Froda) and as Frode Haddingson, and qualifed as contemporary of Caesar Augustus.

Saxo too in his Danish king list has two diverse Frode, namely Frode I who was Frode Haddingson, the host of Fjölner, and Frode II who was Fred-Frode, contempporary of Caesar Augustus.

Saxo does not agree the only king before Odin's arrival (a generation before Fjölner and Frode) known in Sweden was Gylfe. I think (but would have to check) he does not even agree the Yngling descendants of Odin remained in Upsala after Odin and Frey, or not unchallenged. He recounts a war with, I think a rival Swedish dynasty, in which Odin's son Balder is killed in battle - and the mourning of Balder is, on the other hand, of proportions like the mythological ones.

But, in both narrators, differing as they are otherwise, Odin and Frey start a series of Kings which includes Frey's son Fjölner, and, in both narrators, too, this is in the region of Upsala - which one of them, I think Saxo was the one I checked latest, considers to have been founded by Frey.

And in both narrators the Danish kings are NOT supposed to come from a line starting with Odin ruling in Denmark. Funny that Danish Pagans agreed on that one before becoming Christians, if that was just fiction? Sure, Odin is said to be father of Sköld, grandfather of Hadding (or was there a Halfdan in between?), and ancestor of Frode. But he is not said to have reigned there, and Frey is totally not said to be even directly connected in earthly terms with the Danish kings.

That is why I believe the Asar (Swedish version of Æsir) coming to that region is a historic event. The late Thor Heyerdahl, most famous for the Kon-Tiki expedition, alas a neo-Pagan after an apostasy in the teens, after what I read, thought so too. He looked for their ancestors or origin at the Black Sea.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Dedication of Sts Peter and Paul
Basilicas in Rome
18.XI.2016

Romae Dedicatio Basilicarum sanctorum Petri et Pauli Apostolorum. Earum primam, restitutam in ampliorem formam, Summus Pontifex Urbanus Octavus consecravit hac ipsa recurrente die; alteram vero, miserando incendio penitus consumptam, ac magnificentius reaedificatam, Pius, Nonus die decima Decembris solemni ritu consecravit, ejusque annuam commemorationem hodierna die agendam indixit.

* CMI : Gilgamesh and the biblical Flood—part 2
by Murray R. Adamthwaite
http://creation.com/gilgamesh-and-noahs-flood-part-2

With its footnotes for the paragraph:

¹⁹ Kramer, S.N., The Sumerians, University of Chicago, p. 328, 1963.

²⁰ See discussion in Kramer, ref. 19, pp. 45–49.

²¹ Grayson, A.K., Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, Eisenbrauns, pp. 41 and 139, 2000.

** If fans of George R. R. Martin thinks it rings a bell, Östra Aros is east of a lake and Westra Aros, now Westerås (but you could spell it Westeros!) is west of same lake.

*** A time falling about midway between Sigurd and Snorre writing of him, or, if Sigurd after all was a fiction, of his near contemporaries Gunnar (Gunthari) and Tjodrik (Theoderik) and Snorre writing of them.

° The Norwegian dynasty of which Snorre is writing, started with Odin in Sweden and ended with the halfbrother of Saint Olaf in Norway. Between that, the last of the direct line to rule in Sweden was Ingjald "Illråda" (the ill counselled, the ill-counselling, the deceitful), his son knew he couldn't stay there after what his father had done, so Olof "Trätelgja" (wood crafter) settled in Wermland (as yet not part of Sweden) and his descendants in Norway, up to Saint Olaf and his half brother.

°° ON Fróði, AS Froda, Lat Frotho, borrowed by Tolkien as Frodo for quite another person, and a fictive one at that ...

Is the Copyright Craze Medieval?

Is the modern desire to shut down digital libraries by lawsuit comparable to the Medieval one of protecting the copies you made or owned?

Read first what two articles by Sarah Laskow have to say, then I'll be back in a moment:

Protect Your Library the Medieval Way, With Horrifying Book Curses
Medieval scribes protected their work by threatening death, or worse.
by Sarah Laskow November 09, 2016
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/protect-your-library-the-medieval-way-with-horrifying-book-curses

Given the extreme effort that went into creating books, scribes and book owners had a real incentive to protect their work. They used the only power they had: words. At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses threatening thieves with pain and suffering if they were to steal or damage these treasures.

They did not hesitate to use the worst punishments they knew—excommunication from the church and horrible, painful death. Steal a book, and you might be cleft by a demon sword, forced to sacrifice your hands, have your eyes gouged out, or end in the “fires of hell and brimstone.”

The Rise of Pirate Libraries
Shadowy digital libraries want to hold all the world's knowledge and give it away for free.
by Sarah Laskow April 21, 2016
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-rise-of-illegal-pirate-libraries

All around the world, shadow libraries keep growing, filled with banned materials. But no actual papers trade hands: everything is digital, and the internet-accessible content is not banned for shocking content so much as that modern crime, copyright infringement.

The Medieval curses in books were not there to protect knowledge from being freely shared, but material books from being destroyed or stolen and therefore no longer consultable.

Anyone wanting access to the text, as meta-object, could ask for a copy or for the right of making one. If it cost, it was either for the sake if the effort of those producing an asked for copy, or for the sake of protecting a valuable copy from over exposure.

Knowledge as such was not secret. I have seen people comparing monasteries to secret societies, that is balderdash. Comparing Jesuit's to secret secieties is partly somewhat real, as Jesuits had to protect identities of people who could face, especially Protestant, persecution. But knowledge as such was for the asking.

Christendom thought of knowledge as collective property and of material copies as a perhaps clumsy and roundabout, but still way of protecting that.

That bishop in Germany whom Bergoglio deposed, he wanted a library of theology. If he wasn't very much into this modern craze of "you can't give away knowledge for free", he was going to share it somehow, albeit not in the form of a public library. He wasn't donating to a library already existing and run by librarians, which is fair enough, since such librarians don't really have the theological competence to realise you have to have, for instance, Controversies by St Robert Bellarmine in a Theological library. But probably he was in some fashion going to share it. That investment was certainly not Bling Bling.

But some people really seem to believe the catchword "you can't give away knowledge for free".

Wrong. Material objects can be sold, services like lessons or tutoring can be sold, but knowledge as such is for free.

A bookseller does not live by selling knowledge, he lives by selling material objects containing knowledge. Or, more properly, containing signs of a discourse expressing knowledge.

A bad bookseller does not live by selling pseudo-knowledge, he lives by selling material objects containing pseudo-knowledge. And so on.

The fact that someone can acquire same knowledge without paying and some will do so, is not an argument to sue those doing so or making it possible for "lost profits."

A material object like a book is more handy and trustworthy than any devise for reading digital texts. If a book is good, it will be bought even if content can be had online for free. Not bought as much, but the right to property does not mean a right to maximise profits at any cost.

The argument from "lost profits" is specious.

The argument objected to Elsevier is pretty good.

Comparing Elsevier to the monks is specious. Not that Sarah Laskow is doing so, but others are. Contrary to what is often claimed, learning Latin was not an esoteric privilege for clergy only.

When Latin became a literary language so Roman schoolchildren (all over the Empire, from Spain and Morocco to Syria) had sth more literary than Law of Twelve Tablets to learn Latin from, like Horace or especially Virgil, schools acquired a perfection of Latin teaching. This was kept up by city schools, later by schools run by monks in the country and by bishops in the cities. From Augustus to Charlemagne, school attendance was voluntary, a carreer option : a farmer or a farm serf was not likely to bother sending his children, unless they were going to be monks, but if he did and they behaved and he could give the monastery some for the service of lecturing (likelier with a farmer than with a farm serf) or if they were in a charitable mood (which happened), he was not sent away. And the lord who was served on many farms had either option too.

This means that Latin was not meant as an absolute barrier against outsiders. Especially as Latin, up to Charlemagne's reform of pronunciation, was basically pronoiunced in similar ways in Church and in society outside, while the ratio of "obsolete" words (which really became so in Romance languages) to "vulgar words" (not yet there in the older books, the Classics) would have varied exactly as they do vary now. There were recently critics who objected to Tolkien writing a sentence like "Helms, too, they chose", but that is how he nevertheless has been understood by hundreds and thousand of readers in English. Myself, not English, had some trouble with the word "fallow" - describing the colour of elf-cloaks - but that didn't strike me or stop me from reading, nor did I notice it up to seeing a paragraph detailing how the word is ambiguous. I imagined them as green, and if I had been able to read in Irish, I think the word "glas" would have given same impression, if as ambigious, nearly, as "fallow".

No, knowledge is not the privilege of the guys who earn lots of money. It is sometimes the privilege - due to other factors in acquisition, like dogged patience and absorbing interest - of people taking the time NOT to earn money, at least not in ways unrelated to their pursuit.

What Elsevier is really doing is shutting up a kind of competitor - if they succeed (or if they succeeded, the article being now a few months old).

And suing libraries can also shut up works that have been banned, but not by the Index congregation of the Catholic Church.

In other words, copyright is used as a way of censoring - often indirectly, when this or that government trying to censor has an interest coinciding with Elsevier, sometimes directly, if someone who has spoken in public were to try to censor a public criticism of his views by appeals to copyright, complaining about copyright infringement. This I think some of my opponents (yes, I have such*) have tried in so clumsy ways, that even extant copyright laws have not been applicable to my detriment, but have rather been my shield. But they can instead use their secrecy to detract me in private, over network after network and nothing said in public against me, so I can't sue for calumny.

I actually think abusing copyright for shutting down sites was predicted in the Bible.

Or not. I had confused the flying scroll in first verses of Zachariah 5 with the woman in the vessel in the second part. It is in the second part that you find "this is wickedness". About the vessel, not the scroll (in DR, volume). And forgotten that the scroll was destroying the houses of thieves on the order of God the Lord. Unless one is to say, that in working this, God makes use of human wickedness. Also, the measure mentioned in Zachariah, if converted from cubit to meters, is perhaps too big for a normal satellite and too small for its solar arrays : 4,572 m * 9,144 m. So, sorry, my memory deceived me.

Either way, it would be wickedness to "burn up" a home page or profile "from the inside" on internet just due to copyright infringement. Especially in the above context. But I was wrong to see this predicted in Zachariah 5.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Gregory of NeoCaesaraea
called the Thaumaturg
17.XI.2016

* Try to figure out how many opponents I get for just these two:

New blog on the kid : Less Down Syndrome, No Murder, No Maiming - Possible?
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2016/11/less-down-syndrome-no-murder-no-maiming.html

New blog on the kid : Is Homeschooling Legal under Zionist Legislation in Holy Land?
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2016/11/is-homeschooling-legal-under-zionist.html

Two Questions on Historic Debate on Law and Property (Quora)

Q

What is the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness? What are some examples?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-right-to-life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness-What-are-some-examples

A

The right to life is the right to be not unjustly killed.

The right to liberty is the right to be not unjustly held in captivity or servitude.

The right to the pursuit of happiness is the right to seek one’s happiness in ways that are legal.

Negative examples of what these rights not are:

The right to life is not a right not to be executed if condemned justly for first degree murder with no extenuating circumstances.

The right to liberty is not a right to not be submitted to prison if you steal or certain types of (at least) community service if you vandalise.

The right to pursuing happiness is not the right to guarantee you are in fact happy, nor is it the right to murder your rich aunt because you would be happy with the heritage.

Positive examples, not doubted by anyone:

The right to life is or includes the right of your rich aunt not to be killed by you, or, if you kill her, for you to be punished for it, including by death penalty.

The right to liberty is or includes the right of an innocent man not to be drafted into unpaid servitude under a master rather than employer.

The right of pursuit of happiness includes your right to study at university (provided you can pay for it or it is paid for and your grades are good enough for entrance) if you think a doctors degree will make your pursuit of happiness well served or your right to be apprenticed with a baker if you think a bakery is where you would like to work and be happy working.

Then there are debatable and even dubious examples.

Later comment

I think the full quote from “Declaration of Independence” says sth like “life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness”.

What happened to “property”?

I’ll give a parallel treatment.

The right to property does NOT mean a right to be given someone else’s property just because you don’t have any.

It DOES mean that once you do acquire property, it is legally protected against damage and thefth.

And it means a right to such property as gives real independence, that is why it is placed right after “liberty” and before “pursuit of happiness”.

In other words, the fact that your property is productive and people are buying goods produced from it does not mean it has to be collective property.

The fact that your property is a house and you are sleeping in it without paying rent does not mean you have to collectivise it so you can pay rent like most other people.

You have a right to property which is legitimately and legally acquired and that right does not depend on it being goods for immediate consumption. It includes very certainly the right to acquire or keep property which you can live on without paying rent or produce goods or services on without doing so for someone employing you, and it does not include the “right” to take over such property from someone having more than he needs just because you have none.

Why was “right to property” left out of the question? Is questioner a Marxist?

Q

In 19 century Europe liberalism in the economic sphere stood for freedom of markets and free movement of goods and capital. Explain?
https://www.quora.com/In-19-century-Europe-liberalism-in-the-economic-sphere-stood-for-freedom-of-markets-and-free-movement-of-goods-and-capital-Explain

A

I will give an example which is of the less joyful kind.

1860’s was generally a triumph for liberalism in the economic sphere.

In Sweden this was implemented by abolishing two useful restrictions on sales of property.

For certain types of property you had a so called “återköpsrätt” - a right to buy back - during one year.

I think this was both so for country and for town.

For one type, then, some, for other type, others, also had a “förköpsrätt” - a legal option of being offered to buy before it was going to the general market.

For town property, that would be the colleagues, thus butchers for a butcher selling his slaughterhouse, for a baker selling his bakery, a baker. And the neighbours - or at least, only, the neighbours. [Or perhaps rather, neighbours in case of housing, colleagues in case of business property.]

For country side property, however, the “förköpsrätt” was that of your family.

Both of these rights, that of the seller and that of certain buyers, protected the seller and his community, insofar as making it either less easy to loose property by temporarily being in such a fix one has to sell or at least making sure the property goes (or might go) to people having some reason to mean well with the seller. Combined they meant a very good protection for fixed property rights.

These rights were however abolished in Sweden in two years during the 1860’s.

Obviously, other aspects of liberalism would be favourable treatment of moneylenders.

Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic.

1) Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class · 2) "If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!" · 3) Fridge Logic · 4) Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic. · 5) A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

Nevertheless, William Savage poses the question in those terms:

Pen and Pension : Did the Georgians have a Drink Problem?
Posted on November 16, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/11/16/did-the-georgians-have-a-drink-problem/

Compared with water, alcohol produced by fermentation contained fewer contaminants; the heating involved usually removed the main sources of infection.

Before you say that, how about proving water was generally infected?

Wine, also, was, unlike beer, not heated before the fermentation. However, both alcohol and polyphenols would likely eliminate most.

That said, drinking is not just for hydration. If you prefer lemonade, coffee or tea over water, it is because you need energy. Alcohol is a carbohydrate as good as sugar.

And getting your carbohydrates mainly through solids might clog the digestion apparatus.

Hogarth’s famous illustration ‘Gin Lane’ is often produced as evidence of disapproval of alcohol. Yet it needs to be remembered that gin was a ‘foreign’ drink, brought over by the Dutch soldiers in William of Orange’s army. If you compare the poverty and degradation shown in ‘Gin Lane’ to its companion piece, ‘Beer Street’ (a solid, English drink) Hogarth’s message isn’t so clear. It seems less about alcohol than a typical crusty English aversion towards foreign food and drink. Beer Street is clean and prosperous, everyone looks healthy and happy — and the pawnbroker has gone bankrupt!

If you drink beer, you hydrate yourself about the pace you get alcohol as energy drink, besides you get a lot of sugars in it too. Before you get VERY drunk, you will have to get a pee. And if you're in for it for the energy, without express intention of getting drunk, you are better placed to slow down before actually getting so.

And if you drink beer, you drink what your neighbour or yourself has brewed.

Obviously more so back then than now.

Do you know that besides grapes, they grow excellent barley in Reims?

But if you want a beer in Reims, from the barley of Reims, it has generally been brewed in Belgium somewhere. The drink that is produced from field to bottle in Reims is of course Champagne.

That has made beer in Reims less likely to keep you out of debt, compared to drinking stronger, though of course Champagne is not very strong either. However, it is expensive, since exported very widely. Local bar visitors do need to compete somewhat to foreigners buying Champagne as a luxury. And some politicians and some Muslim security guards want it that way.

Yep, Chesterton has a better part in Hogarth than teetotallers have.

Beer was good because it was a do it yourself drink. As mentioned, the kind of cook and household book which teaches you to make bacon (that is, to pickle porc) probably also teaches you to brew beer.

It’s fair to say that contemporary attitudes to heavy drinking were class-based — linked to the economic need to keep people productive, especially the ‘working classes’.

Chesterton mentioned the saying "drunk as a lord" - and sometimes alluded to the fact that building workers don't get that by using beer as an energy drink.

Waiters in restaurants don't get that if using wine as an energy drink either (see Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell), it is when they get laid off and drink as much as when they were working that they may (in fairly rare cases even so) become really drunk people.

However you explain it, it seems likely that a good part of the population of 18th-century Britain had, in modern terms, a significant drinking problem, greater the higher up you look on the social scale. Gout was everywhere amongst the rich and the gentry, especially in men, who were the heaviest drinkers. Men boasted of their ability to drink huge amounts and remain able to function.

Oh, certainly. Real drunkenness is as horrible as Teetotalism to a gentleman.

Not meaning just someone of the gentry. (I happen to be proud of a distiller grand pa.)

To qualify as a rake virtually required you to consume up to three bottles of port a day.

To qualify as a rake required you to consume so much you didn't function and still not go to bed, and be observed doing so.

An observation easier to make in lower classes, because they have fewer places to hide in either loneliness or the kind of company which is entirely understanding.

With lower class, some "observations" may be supplemented without adding alcohol by the person's mouth. Like sleep privations and steady offers of sugar-filled both drinks and foods. Like stinginess about the money he could use for washing in laundries (except on Sundays, when I don't wash, generally, holding the Sunday to be free from house chores as well as heavy work - unless emergencies force me).

Note, in Catholic parts of Europe, generally, even lords and gentry (or what corresponds roughly to these English titles) were, especially after the Counterreformation, expected to not get drunk, to drink with moderation, to set an example.

This has not been entirely lost on at least middle class, but actually also lower classes in cities like Vienna or Paris.

Excepting of course recent Muslim immigrants, who are stuck in the choice between Teetotalism or becoming rakes.

During his time as Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger was said to take up to six bottles daily.

I think Napoleon was more sober.

You have to wonder what effect this had on his decision-making during those years.

If he was used to that quantity without getting drunk (which is possible, if you keep in training), presumably none. Or perhaps as much as drinking six bottles (large ones) of Coke, what with the sugar involved.

It certainly shortened his life.

But on the other hand kept himstrong and healthy while he lived.

There is a thing called the Salerno diet. It was given as medical advise to English kings, by the physicians at the faculty of Salerno.

Since neither they nor the kings wanting their advise were Protestants, they presumably did not foresee six bottles a day, but it included more alcohol than bankers are supposed to drink these days.

It also included much meat.

Obviously, the pious Catholics would abstain from both on Wednesdays and Fridays. And lighten the work burden accordingly, especially in Lent when fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays was more compulsory.

Bad Catholics and after them Protestants would on the other hand not do so, so, if following Salerno diet (which remained popular in the time of Hogarth) they would probably have this health balance:

• on the one hand, no infections, or infections very soon cured, no or very few days off (more important if you are a king or a worker who can be laid off any day, than if you have an employment where a replacement is temporary)
• also, bright wits (but that effect is especially such if actually fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, otherwise Salerno diet would probably clog you down a bit)
• and on the other hand, accumulating a health problem which takes you off to the graveyard at about 60.

But if Savage thinks the six bottles of wine affected William Pitt's decision making? No, I think he was used to it.

Or, perhaps it did, making him adverse to adopting the Catholic religion, which would probably have cut even him down to five bottles per day (getting drunk being a mortal sin, getting tipsy a venial one).

To think of it, some have considered Chesterton and Belloc as drunks because they enjoyed at certain times three bottles a day - wonder what they would have said about William Pitt ...

I suspect such constant drinking produced some lessening of the immediate effects of alcohol on mind and body — or at least a greater ability to conceal them.

Here is what I learned in school. If you are a teen and you start drinking, you don't need much to get drunk. If you keep drinking, you heighten your tolerance. The danger is when the tolerance doesn't rise more, but breaks.

Obviously it lessens the immediate effect on your mind, if you have a liver reacting promptly.

Obviously it heightens the immediate effect on your mind, if you have a liver which has given up the task of keeping you sober.

But the same is in fact also true for sugar. Or so I ahve found.

I have encountered alcoholics who seemed able to function quite normally most of the time, despite the amount they drank. It caught up with them in the end, of course, but usually the social impact came before the physical one.

If so, perhaps the physical impact catching up with them is due to the social one? Like offering much sugar? Like adding more stress?

What first limited the Nation’s drinking was the spread of evangelical Christianity, especially in the middle class, who had always been more puritanical than those above them.

Er, no. Catholicism had limited the drinking before that. And in the 16th Century, Puritans were MORE liberal with wine and beer than Catholics. Especially as being opposed to taking Lent off.

It is not by chance that Cromwell was a brewer, nor did he in any way discourage anyone from drinking, as long as he didn't get positively drunk (as opposed to just tipsy or simply unaffected because used to it). Brewers may have enjoyed the Reformation, because the time between Christmas and Easter is better business than if you have a Catholic clientele.

Of course, Puritans do loose you a few extra days on the Twelve Days of Christmas or in Easter Octave. But the regular, non-festive fare would make up for that, if you are the kind of brewer and inn-keeper who wants to earn as much money as possible.

During the first 1700 years of the Church, there was not one denomination who thought every faithful should abstain from alcohol all days and not even drink a glass of wine at night. There were people who thought monks should abstain - and St Benedict laments they did not keep the upper hand. BUT he limits a monk's consummation of wine to 1 measure (a little greater than a pint*) of wine per day. Probably a little less of it at lunch (the days there was one) or divided in the working hours, and a little more of it at the refectorium after Vespers. ALONG with soup and beans and perhaps even meat.

Unless of course you count Mahomet as a Christian heretic rather than as a Pagan. His words are by now famous: "if a large amount intoxicates, even a little amount is prohibited", with the word for prohibited being in Arabic original probably "haram".

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Saint Gertrude
16.XI.2016

* If pint is 50 cl in France, and perhaps less in England, the measure given by St Benedict is supposed to have been 66 cl.

Update, 21.XI.2016:

Here is a dialogue in combox under William Savage's post:

noelleg44

Interesting post, William. I discovered that the Pilgrims drank beer pretty exclusively, although children might drink water, if not fouled. That was one of the reasons why they settled where they did – on a site with a brook with clean water. The children also drank small beer, especially on the Mayflower when the water became fouled.

I wonder that the death rate was from cirrhosis in Georgian England? The rich might have been able to handle their liquor with practice, but their livers wouldn’t!

William Savage

No answer to that, since medical science at the time wouldn’t have known what it was. I suppose people reckoned there were so many things around that would kill you, why worry about one more — especially if it was enjoyable while it did it!

noelleg44 is correct - taking liquor without getting drunk is not the same as taking liquor without charging, overcharging or really harming the liver. Hence the wisdom of the monks who were taking far less than William Pitt.

William Savage is incorrect about at least one thing, medical science back then. Or perhaps correct about English version of it, but if so English were behind the times.

English wiki has nothing, but German wiki says: Die erste makroskopische Beschreibung einer Leberzirrhose in der Medizingeschichte findet sich in den Anmerkungen zur Zeichnung del vecchio von Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Die Zeichnungen zur Gefäßanatomie der Leber basieren auf einer Autopsie, die Leonardo da Vinci 1508 in Florenz an einem über 100-Jährigen vornahm.

Georgian England is after all a few centuries after Leonardo, and if their doctors had no clue what cirrhosis was, they were severely behind the times, compared to the continent./HGL

Sungenis, this is weak.

New blog on the kid :Ultra-Brief Reply to David Palm on Observational Evidence for Strict Geocentrism · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica :Sungenis, this is weak.

OK, up to here, that is up to page 15 of a total 18 on this view of the pdf, it is good.

But this is weak:

Mr. Palm doesn’t like the fact that, if he relies on his “the Fathers were merely following Aristotle” argument, he must then explain why none of the Fathers chose to follow an equally prevalent philosopher in Greek times who believed in heliocentrism, such as Pythagoras (d. 495 BC), Philolaus (d. 385 BC), Hiketas (d. 450 BC), and Ekphantus (d. 450 BC) or Aristarchus (d. 230 BC). In fact, Pythagorus was the very individual who was condemned by name at Galileo’s confrontation with the Church in 1616 and 1633 as the originator of the heliocentric view.

The Pythagorean school did not survive to the times of the Christian Fathers.

They had the choice between Aristotle (Geocentric), Plato (less noted but probably Geocentric), Stoics (as per Seneca agnostic about Geocentrism vs Heliocentrism, quoted by Sungenis himself), and Epicureans (Geocentric). Or rather, Stoics and Epicureans were also lost schools, like ... see following:

The Pythagorean school was dead, though it had left real scientific traces everywhere in Music Theory (yes, Pythagoras, an octave is indeed 1:2 and a really pure Fifth is 2:3, no Aristotelian, no Platonic, no Stoic and even no Epicurean will dispute you that!) and real more or less superstitious traces of the Feng Shui type (saying that good, limited, masculine, odd number, light, light and four more belong together, saying that bad, feminine, even number, dark, heavy and four more belong together). But the school as such was no more.

The Ancients did not do history of philosophy in school in that way which would have made them equally familiar with Pythagoras in all respects and with Aristotle in all, or both in fewer ones. If Aristotle's view was a school in your time, you could be familiar with it at first hand. If Pythagoras' school was not a school in your time, you might know abut it from adversaries, from oblique allies, but not at first hand.

The Pythagorean school has a history which ended BC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism#History

According to historians like Thomas Gale (based on Archytas account), Thomas Taler (based on the work of Iamblichus), or Cantor, Archytas (428 BC) became the head of the school, about a century after the murder of Pythagoras.[5] According to August Böckh (1819), who cites Nicomachus, Philolaus was the successor of Pythagoras.[6] And according to Cicero (de Orat. III 34.139), Philolaus was teacher of Archytas of Tarentum.[1]

According to the historian's from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Philolaus and Eurytus are identified by Aristoxenus as teachers of the last generation of Pythagoreans" (D. L. VIII 46).[1]

A Echecrates is mentioned by Aristoxenus as a student of Philolaus and Eurytus. (p. 166)

notes

[1] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Philolaus". Retrieved 30 May 2015.

[5] Walter William Rouse Ball (2013). A Short Account of the History of Mathematics.

[6] August Böckh (1819). Philolaos des Pythagoreers Lehren nebst den Bruchstücken seines Werkes. p. 14.

[7] Sandra Peterson (2011). "Socrates and Philosophy in the Dialogues of Plato".

There was also a Neopythagorean school, "Neopythagoreanism was influenced by Middle Platonism and in turn influenced Neoplatonism. It originated in the 1st century BCE and flourished during the 1st and 2nd centuries CE."

And ended before Constantine and therefore before the post-Nicene Fathers, while the ante-Nicene ones seems to have been less interested in philosophy as such.

Its names do not seem to include Heliocentrics, unlike the original Pythagorean school:

"In the 1st century BCE Cicero's friend Nigidius Figulus made an attempt to revive Pythagorean doctrines, but the most important members of the school were Apollonius of Tyana and Moderatus of Gades in the 1st century CE. Other important Neopythagoreans include the mathematician Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl. 150 CE), who wrote about the mystical properties of numbers. In the 2nd century, Numenius of Apamea sought to fuse additional elements of Platonism into Neopythagoreanism, prefiguring the rise of Neoplatonism. (Iamblichus, in particular, was especially influenced by Neopythagoreanism)"

Publius Nigidius Figulus (c. 98 – 45[1] BC)

was a scholar of the Late Roman Republic and one of the praetors for 58 BC.[2] He was a friend of Cicero, to whom he gave his support at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy.[3][4] Nigidius sided with the Optimates in the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus.

Among his contemporaries, Nigidius's reputation for learning was second only to that of Varro. Even in his own time, his works were regarded as often abstruse, perhaps because of their esoteric Pythagoreanism, into which Nigidius incorporated Stoic elements. Jerome calls him Pythagoricus et magus,[3] a "Pythagorean and mage," and in the medieval and Renaissance tradition he is portrayed as a magician, diviner, or occultist. His vast works survive only in fragments preserved by other authors.

...

Lucan concludes Book 1 of his epic Bellum civile (also known as the Pharsalia) with a portrayal of Nigidius uttering dire prophecies, based in part on astrological readings. Johannes Kepler discusses the astronomical implications of the passage with Herwart von Hohenburg in their correspondence of 1597. An English translation of the relevant letters is available online.

Apollonius of Tyana

(Ancient Greek: Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ Τυανεύς; c. 15 – c. 100 AD),[2] sometimes also called Apollonios of Tyana, was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Anatolia. Being a 1st-century orator and philosopher around the time of Jesus, he was compared with Jesus of Nazareth by Christians in the 4th century[3] and by other writers in modern times.

Note 3

Eusebius of Caesarea, Contra Hieroclem discusses the claim.

Moderatus of Gades

was a Greek philosopher of the Neopythagorean school, who lived in the 1st century AD, (contemporary with Apollonius of Tyana). He wrote a great work on the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, and tried to show that the successors of Pythagoras had made no additions to the views of their founder, but had merely borrowed and altered the phraseology.

He has been given an exaggerated importance by some commentators, who have regarded him as the forerunner of the Alexandrian School of philosophy. Zeller has shown that the authority on which this view is based is unsound. Moderatus is thus left as an unimportant though interesting representative of a type of thought which had almost disappeared since the 5th century BC.

Stobaeus, in his Eclogae, preserves a fragment of his writings; further extracts survive in the form of quotations in Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras and Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's Physics.

Simplicius of Cilicia
[Not a Neopythagorean, but citing the
previous one while commenting on Aristotle]

(/sɪmˈplɪʃiəs/; Greek: Σιμπλίκιος; c. 490 – c. 560[2]) was a disciple of Ammonius Hermiae and Damascius, and was one of the last of the Neoplatonists. He was among the pagan philosophers persecuted by Justinian in the early 6th century, and was forced for a time to seek refuge in the Persian court, before being allowed back into the empire. He wrote extensively on the works of Aristotle. Although his writings are all commentaries on Aristotle and other authors, rather than original compositions, his intelligent and prodigious learning makes him the last great philosopher of pagan antiquity. His works have preserved much information about earlier philosophers which would have otherwise been lost.

List of Aristotle loci

which he commented on, limited to On the Heavens and Physics and to where an English translation is extant, simplified:

Simplicius: On Aristotle, On the Heavens 1.1-4, 1.3-4, 1.5-9, 1.10-12, 2.1-9, 2.10-14, 3.1-7, 3.7-4.6, translated by Robert J. Hankinson (2001) and by Ian Mueller (2011).

Simplicius: On Aristotle, Physics 1.3-4, 1.5-9, 2, 3, 4.1-5, 4.10-14, 5, 6, 7, 8.6-10, translated by Pamela M. Huby and C. C. W. Taylor (2011) and by Han Baltussen (2011), and by Barrie Fleet (1997) and by James O. Urmson (2002, 1992, 1997) and by David Konstan (1989) and by Charles Hagen (1994) and finally by Richard McKirahan (2001).

Publishers vary between only two, Cornell University Press and Duckworth London, some parts appearing in both.

Nicomachus,

or Nicomachus of Gerasa,[1] (Greek: Νικόμαχος; c. 60 – c. 120 CE) was an important ancient mathematician best known for his works Introduction to Arithmetic and Manual of Harmonics in Greek. He was born in Gerasa, in the Roman province of Syria (now Jerash, Jordan), and was strongly influenced by Aristotle. He was a Neopythagorean, who wrote about the mystical properties of numbers.

[an Arithmetician between Pythagoras and Boethius, truly a scientist, not a trace of Pythagorean astronomical aberrations like Heliocentrism]

Numenius of Apamea

(Ancient Greek: Νουμήνιος ὁ ἐξ Ἀπαμείας) was a Greek philosopher, who lived in Apamea in Syria and flourished during the latter half of the 2nd century AD. He was a Neopythagorean and forerunner of the Neoplatonists.

... Numenius was a Neopythagorean, but his object was to trace the doctrines of Plato up to Pythagoras, and at the same time to show that they were not at variance with the dogmas and mysteries of the Brahmins, Jews, Magi and Egyptians. ... His work on the apostasy of the Academy from Plato, to judge from its rather numerous fragments,[3] contained a minute and wearisome account of the outward circumstances of those men, and was full of fabulous tales about their lives, without entering into the nature of their skepticism.

His books On the Good (Peri Tagathou - Περὶ Τἀγαθοῦ) seem to have been of a better kind; in them he had minutely explained, mainly in opposition to the Stoics, that existence could neither be found in the elements because they were in a perpetual state of change and transition, nor in matter because it is vague, inconstant, lifeless, and in itself not an object of our knowledge; and that, on the contrary, existence, in order to resist the annihilation and decay of matter, must itself rather be incorporeal and removed from all mutability,[4] in eternal presence, without being subject to the variation of time, simple and imperturbable in its nature by its own will as well as by influence from without.[5] True existence is identical with the first god existing in and by itself, that is, with good, and is defined as spirit (nous).[6] But as the first (absolute) god existing in itself and being undisturbed in its motion, could not be creative (demiurgikos - δημιουργικός), he thought that we must assume a second god, who keeps matter together, directs its energy to it and to intelligible essences, and imparts its spirit to all creatures; its mind is directed to the first god, in whom it beholds the ideas according to which it arranges the world harmoniously, being seized with a desire to create the world. The first god communicates its ideas to the second, without losing them itself, just as we communicate knowledge to one another, without depriving ourselves of it.[7] In regard to the relation existing between the third and second god, and to the manner in which they also are to be conceived as one (probably in opposition to the vague duration of matter), no information can be derived from the fragments which have come down to us. ...

... His chief divergence from Plato is the distinction between the "first god" and the "demiurge." This is probably due to the influence of Jewish-Alexandrian philosophers (especially Philo and his theory of the Logos). According to Proclus,[12] Numenius held that there was a kind of trinity of gods, the members of which he designated as "father," "maker," and "that which is made," i.e. the world. The first is the supreme deity or pure intelligence, the second the creator of the world, the third the world. Numenius also claimed that the three gods, the "Father", the "Creator" and "Creation" were actually one.

[In other words, as much supernatural stuff as Giordano Bruno accepted after his apostasy from Orthodox Christianity - but he didn't add Heliocentrism to it or apostasising from baptism.]

Iamblichus,

also known as Iamblichus Chalcidensis, or Iamblichus of Apamea (Greek: Ἰάμβλιχος, probably from Syriac or Aramaic ya-mlku, "He is king"; c. 245 – c. 325 AD), was a Syrian[1][2] Neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy.

[Nothing about astronomical disputes.]

In other words, Neo-Pythagoreans have some in common with Christians and with New Agers, but they did not forcefully revive the Pythagorean tendency to Heliocentrism, for what we know.

This means, Palm has a point in Church Fathers following Aristotle. Pythagoras was no more around, except mainly in the sanitised version of mathematics and music theory.

The real answer is turning the point around and also follow Aristotle, except of course where he disagrees with Holy Bible and Fathers, or where he disagrees with more recent real discoveries.

This was the plan of today's Saint, Albert of Cologne, and of his famous disciple, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Both of whom were, like Aristotle, Heliocentric, both of whom were, like Aristotle, proving existence of God as first mover from Geocentrism.

Obviously, what you wrote about other things, Sungenis, on pages 1 to 14 and most of page 15, is a bit not my own subject but seems all right. On this one, I think you should trust a Classicist. A Medievalist. A - formally at University - Latinist and, a little less, no longer functional, Grecist.

Now I'll return to the last three pages of your work, hoping they are better than this weak paragraph, but will give a little hint about method.

None of these schools except Epicureans who up to Tycho Brahe had one, would have cared for Gravitational models for Geocentrism working out. And they were, as mentioned, as dead as a doornail by the time of the Church Fathers.

When Church Fathers all agree with Aristotle and Plato on Geocentrism and on ignoring gravitation as irrelevant, there are two options.

One can either say they were all misled by Aristotle, which is what Palm is saying. Or one can say that this happened by providence. Which is what I am saying.

You seem to shilly shally - ignoring their take on Angelic movers (yes, St Augustine mentioned such) because Fathers didn't know modern science yet (which Palm would agree on), while accepting their take on Geocentrism, which I do agree on. But, with above paragraph in mind, are you doing it for the right reason? Or are you simply wrong about what Church Fathers had access to?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Albert*
15.XI.2016

* Coloniae Agrippinae sancti Alberti Episcopi et Confessoris, ex Ordine Praedicatorum, cognomento Magni, sanctitate et doctrina celebris, quem Pius Papa Undecimus Doctorem universalis Ecclesiae declaravit, et Pius Duodecimus cultorum scientiarum naturalium caelestem apud Deum Patronum constituit.

PS, when starting to read on:

Following two paragraphs
on page 16

I

Mr. Palm doesn’t like the fact that when the Church was arguing against Galileo, it didn’t once make the argument that the Fathers’ view was either weak or irrelevant because some of them had the same geocentric view as Aristotle, and it never once made the argument that the Fathers were devoid of Scriptural evidence for their view.

Comment

Very correct.

II

Mr. Palm doesn’t like the fact that the Church, despite the competing views from the Greeks and Indians who were promoting heliocentrism from 600 BC to 900 AD, never deviated from its geocentric understanding of the universe.

Comment

Very incorrect.

As for Greeks, Pythagorean school was dead as a doornail and had been so for centuries, even among Pagans (Seneca allowing agnosticism between views was probably last death gasp of Heliocentrism in Antiquity), as shown above.

If Sungenis believes the opposite, he must have gotten it from some really bad source on Classics, like probably some Historian of Science.

As for Indians, apart from the Churches founed by St Thomas, these were pretty irrelevant for nearly all dioceses and the Church Fathers who usually were not living in or even visiting those Churches, and the promotion of Heliocentrism was also very probably limited to Brahmin caste, and irrelevant both to non-Hindoos and to Hindoos of other classes.

Also, if the number 900 AD is cited, we are getting close to Arabic precursors of Tycho Brahe - and yes, there were such.

PPS, And the final paragraph from St Basil is a good enough argument to consider any ivestigation into Newtonian or Einsteinian gravitational factors as possibly rather irrelevant - even if done for Geoecntrism. That was a good one!

9. You do not reflect that the idea of the earth suspended by itself throws your reason into a like but even greater difficulty, since from its nature it is heavier. But let us admit that the earth rests upon itself, or let us say that it rides the waters, we must still remain faithful to thought of true religion and recognize that all is sustained by the Creator’s power. Let us then reply to ourselves, and let us reply to those who ask us upon what support this enormous mass rests, “In His hands are the ends of the earth.” It is a doctrine as infallible for our own information as profitable for our hearers.

St. Basil : Nine Homilies of the Hexaemeron, Homily I.

He's got the whole world, in his hand ...

The leper

somewhere else : Was Lack of Autographs a Major Problem to Bart Ehrman? · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : The leper

I was listening to J. P. Holding on this one:

Bart Ehrman: Deceit and Cunning - J. P. Holding
Theology, Philosophy and Science
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe3ICj7U8P4

J. P. Holding (in his arguments with Bart Ehrman on the variant readings of presumably Mark 1:41) presumes (not quite as presumably) that there was:

• a possibility the old alternative reading about (presumably) Mark 1:41 "And Jesus being angry with him, stretched forth his hand; and touching him, saith to him: I will. Be thou made clean." Instead of And Jesus having compassion on him, stretched forth his hand; and touching him, saith to him: I will. Be thou made clean. Was correct.
  
  
• And motivates correctness thereof with saying the leper can't have been really suffering from Hanssen's disease and be in a bad shape if he was in a position to approach Jesus. If he did so anyway, it wasn't because he strictly needed the miracle, but because he wanted to plank Jesus, put him in a socially vulnerable spot.

Know what? I am not sure which of the Gospels JPH was speaking of. Not with these criteria put together.

Let's check the text.

Matthew 8:1 And when he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him . 2 *And behold a leper coming, adored him, saying: Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. 3 And Jesus stretching forth his hand, touched him, saying: I will. Be thou made clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 4 And Jesus said to him: See thou tell no man: but go, *shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift which Moses commanded for a testimony to them.

Here the meeting is in public. This corresponds to the description in video for publicity of meeting - but the situation is unusual, since after a mass meeting outside town, so that regulations concerning lepers were not quite as easy to enforce then and there.

However, it doesn't say the leper touched Jesus. It says that Our Lord touched the leper. And was still in a position to ask for discretion.

Here is Haydock comment:

Ver. 1. And when he was come down from the mountain. St. Matthew says, that Jesus Christ ascended the mountain, and sat down to teach the people; while St. Luke affirms, that he descended, and stood in a plain place. But there is no contradiction; for he first ascended to the top of the mountain, and then descended to an even plain, which formed part of the descent. Here he stood for a while, and cured the sick, as mentioned by St. Luke; but afterwards, according to the relation of St. Matthew, he sat down, which was the usual posture of the Jewish doctors. (St. Augustine)

Ver. 2. As the three evangelists relate the cure of the leper in nearly the same words, and with the same circumstances, we may conclude they speak of the same miracle. St. Matthew alone seems to have observed the time and order of this transaction, viz. after the sermon of the mount; the other two anticipate it. The Bible de Vence seems to infer, from the connection St. Matthew makes between the sermon of the mount and the cure of the leper, that it was not the same leper as that mentioned, Mark i. 40.; Luke v. 12. (Bible de Vence)

Adored him. In St. Mark it is said, kneeling down, chap. i. 40. In St. Luke, prostrating on his face. It is true, none of these expressions do always signify the adoration or worship which is due to God alone, as may appear by several examples in the Old and New Testament; yet this man, by divine inspiration, might know our blessed Saviour to be both God and man. (Witham)

"Make me clean;" literally, "purify me;" the law treated lepers as impure. (Bible de Vence)

The leper, by thus addressing our Saviour acknowledges his supreme power and authority, and shews his great faith and earnestness, falling on his knees, as St. Luke relates it. (St. Chrysostom, hom. xxvi.) Our prayer should be such with great faith and confidence, qualified with profound humility, and entire diffidence of self.

Ver. 3. Jesus, stretching forth his hand, touched him. By the law of Moses, whosoever touched a leper, contracted a legal uncleanness: but not by touching in order to heal him, says Theophylactus. Beside s, Christ would teach them that he was not subject to this law. (Witham)

"Touched him." To shew, says St. Cyprian, that his body being united to the Divinity, had the power of healing and giving life. Also to shew that the old law, which forbad the touching of lepers, had no power over him; and that so far from being defiled by touching him, he even cleansed him who was defiled with it. (St. Ambrose)

When the apostles healed the lame man, they did not attribute it to their own power, but said to the Jews: Why do you wonder at this? Or, why look you at us, as if by our power or strength we have made this man to walk? But when our Saviour heals the leper, stretching out his hand, to shew he was going to act of his own power, and independently of the law, he said: "I will. Be thou clean;" to evince that the cure was effected by the operation of his own divine will. (St. Chrysostom, hom. xxvi.)

Ver. 4. For a testimony to them. That is, when the priest finds thee truly c ured, make that offering which is ordained in the law. (Witham)

He did this to give us an example of humility, and that the priests, by approving of his miracle, and being made witnesses to it, might be inexcusable, if they would not believe him. (Menochius)

He thus shews his obedience to the law, and his respect for the diginity of priests. He makes them inexcusable, if they can still call him a transgressor of the law, and prevaricator. He moreover gives this public testimony to them of his divine origin. (St. Chrysostom, hom. xxvi.) St. Chrysostom, in his third book on the priesthood, says: "the priests of the old law had authority and privilege only to discern who were healed of leprosy, and to denounce the same to the people; but the priests of the new law have power to purify, in very deed, the filth of the soul. Therefore, whoever despiseth them, is more worthy to be punished than the rebel Dathan and his accomplices." Our Saviour willeth him to go and offer his gift or sacrifice, according as Moses prescribed in that case, because the other sacrifice, being the holiest of all holies, viz. his body, was not yet begun. (St. Augustine, lib. ii. & Evang. ii. 3. & cont. adver. leg. & Proph. lib. i. chap. 19, 20.)

Mark 1:40 *And there came a leper to him, beseeching him; and kneeling down, said to him: If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. 41 And Jesus having compassion on him, stretched forth his hand; and touching him, saith to him: I will. Be thou made clean. 42 And when he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was made clean. 43 And he strictly charged him, and forthwith sent him away. 44 And he saith to him: See thou tell no man: but go, shew thyself to the high priest, and offer for thy cleansing *the things that Moses commanded, for a testimony to them. 45 But he being gone out, began to publish and to blaze abroad the word: so that now he could not go openly into the city, but was without in desert places, and they flocked to him from all sides.

If Jesus could tell the guy to tell no one, obviously the meeting was not in public, or at least it wasn't shouted out everywhere it was a leper. Also, if the leper kneeled, it was Jesus' own choice to use touch to heal him.

Here is Haydock comment:

Ver. 44. It was not the intention of Christ, that he should not tell any body; had that been his wish, he would easily have realized it: he spoke thus purposely, to shew us that we ought not to seek the empty praises of men. He bade him also offer the sacrifices prescribed, because the law remained in full force till the passion of Christ, in which was offered a perfect sacrifice, that did away with all the legal sacrifices. (Nicholas of Lyra)

At the most, the considerations given by J. P. Holding might indicate that Nicholas of Lyra (not a cannised saint) was wrong to say "It was not the intention of Christ, that he should not tell any body".

Luke 5:12 *And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy, who seeing Jesus, and falling on his face, besought him, saying: Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. 13 And stretching fo rth his hand, he touched him, saying: I will: Be thou cleansed. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. 14 And he charged him to tell no man: but, Go, shew thyself to the priest, *and offer for thy cleansing according as Moses commanded, for a testimony to them. 15 But the fame of him went abroad the more: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed of their infirmities. 16 And he retired into the desert, and prayed.

Here it was clearly or nearly so in town (it could also have been the same leper as above, if so it was close to town, but in the city perimeter of countryside). But here the conjecture that the guy can't have been so bad off is contradicted by the text. Not just a leper, but a man full of leprosy.

Here is the Haydock comment:

Ver. 12. By falling on his face, he shewed his humility and modesty, that all men might learn to be ashamed of the stains of their lives; but this, his bashfulness, did not prevent him from confes sing his misery; he exposed his wound, he solicits a cure: Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. He did not doubt the goodness of the Lord, but in consideration of his own unworthiness, he durst not presume. That confession is full of religion and faith, which places its trust in the will of God. (St. Ambrose)

Ver. 13. The law forbade lepers to be touched; but he, who is the Lord of the law, dispenses with it. He touches the leper, not because he could not cleanse him without it, but in order to shew that he was not subject to the law, nor to fear of any infection. At the touch of Christ leprosy is dispelled, which before communicated contagion to all that touched it. (St. Ambrose)

Ver. 14. Because men in sickness generally turn their thoughts towards God, but when they recover, forget him, the leper is commanded to think of God, and return him thanks. Therefore is he sent to the priest, to make his offering, (Leviticus xiv. 4.) that, committing himself to the examination of the priest, he might be accounted among the clean. (St. Chrysostom, hom. xxvi. in Matt.)

By this our Saviour would testify to the priest, that this man was healed not by the ordination of the law, but by the power of grace, which is above the law. He likewise shews that he did not come to destroy, but to fulfil the law. (St. Ambrose)

Jesus Christ seems here to approve of the legal sacrifices, which the Church does not receive; and this he did, because he had not yet established that most holy of all holy sacrifices, the sacrifice of his own body. The figurative sacrifices were not to be abrogated, before that, which they prefigured, was established by the preaching of the apostles, and the faith of Christian believers. (St. Augustine, quest. ii. b. 3. de quæst. evang.)

By this leper is represented the whole human race, which was covered with a spiritual leprosy, and languishing in the corruption of sin; for all have sinned, and need the glory of God; (Romans iii.) therefore he stretched forth his hand, i.e. he clothed himself with our human nature, that we might be cleansed from our former errors, and might offer in return for this favour our bodies, a living sacrifice to God. (Ven. Bede)

Ver. 16. Christ did not stand in need of this retirement, since, being God, he was free from every stain, and likewise present in every place. But, by this his conduct, he wished to teach us the time most proper, both for our active employments, and for the more sublime duties of prayer and contemplation. (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. xxviii.)

en upochoron, he withdrew after his great prodigies, to avoid the praise of the multitude, and to pray assiduously, and with fresh instance, for the salvation of man.

I would say, the variant which has "anger" instead of "compassion" might be a faulty reading. At least if the anger is supposed to have been directed at the leper.

If instead it was a very curable "leprosy" not Hansens disease (say, if scabies would have counted as leprosy), Christ would have had reason to be angry with people stopping the man from using natural cures. They might have even taunted him for being already a part believer and stopped each application of say, nettles or cloves (I am sure nettles is a cure, since they include a sulphuric substance, like synthetic ascabiol [the standard prescription drug], and like tea tree oil, which wasn't available, since they grow elsewhere, and like therebinths, with same substance as tea tree oil, basically therpentine - though that would need more dilution than tea tree oil before application) and telling him "if you are right about that guy, he can cure you". That kind of behaviour against someone might have given Him a real reason for anger.

But the hypothesis of J. P. Holding can't explain the issue.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Albert the Great
Dominican, Bishop of Cologne
15.XI.2016

Fridge Logic

1) Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class · 2) "If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!" · 3) Fridge Logic · 4) Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic. · 5) A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

More from William Savage, same post as my previous one:

Although some grand families had ice houses from quite early in the eighteenth century, it took a surprisingly long time for people to realise the preserving power of freezing food. It was never common, even well into the twentieth century, probably because the volume of ice needed was too great and there were few containers of suitable size that could be made sufficiently insulated to stop everything melting in a few days. So far as I have been able to discover, the first attempts to preserve meat by the use of cold happened in the nineteenth century. In some cases, the carcasses of hunted animals, like deer, would be hung above the ice in the ice house. Cold then, but not frozen; the equivalent of a modern fridge rather than a freezer.

The historic sequence is entirely possible - if only because it is entirely possible that people go on neglecting sth which would be useful.

However, this is not a case of pre-industrial technical possibilities.

Having, not indeed a freezer, for long preservation, but a fridge, so you can at least open a can of bacon (see previous), desalt it (partially), fry it and mix it in some stew (like Irish stew, but with bacon instead of mutton) in a cooking which will last a few days, like perhaps earlier or later or mid part of the Twelve Days of Christmas - that was entirely possible, technically speaking.

In the early part of 20:th C Sweden, before fridges and freezer part of fridge became standard, it was done like this.

An ice cupboard was first of all procured. Manufactured at home or bought. It had an inner large compartment, surrounded by metal, like iron or steel. It had an upper compartment (smaller in height, same horizontal extension, or even wider) for the ice. It had very narrow side compartments for the melting ice water to drip down to a lower compartment, which was regularly emptied, much like the ash compartment of an oven is emptied when too much ashes fall down.

When using it, you needed to buy a block of ice to lay in the upper compartment - and it would last a few days.

Whom did you buy that from? Well, an ice merchant would in a larger city like Malmö or Stockholm, perhaps even a smaller one like Södertelge, procure large quantities of ice blocks, sawed out of frozen lakes, stapled together in ice houses with straw as insulator, and he would sell it off an ice block at a time - I think even ordinary folks had a chance to buy such, at least when it came to cooking rationally for Christmas tide.

However, South Sweden is further North (55°36′21″N 13°02′09″E = Malmö, our South tip) and less exposed to the Atlantic warmth than North Norfolk (52°56′N 1°18′E).

And of course, the whole scheme depends on there being a town big enough for an ice merchant to stock his ice over winter and sell it piecemeal to those using above kind of fridge.

This is some logic about existence of fridges in pre-industrial cultures. But TV Tropes defines Fridge Logic as sth else, so as to title, I've been off topic so far. Off to TV Tropes and read what is on topic!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris XI
St. Martin of Tours
11.XI.2016

Turonis, in Gallia, natalis beati Martini, Episcopi et Confessoris; cujus vita tantis exstitit miraculis gloriosa, ut trium mortuorum suscitator esse meruerit.

"If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!"

1) Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class · 2) "If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!" · 3) Fridge Logic · 4) Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic. · 5) A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

Here is another piece by William Savage.

Making Georgian Bacon
Posted on November 2, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/11/02/making-bacon/

Nearly every family who could afford it kept a pig or two. When the pig was slaughtered, some of the meat would be shared with neighbours and friends, who would repay the compliment when their own pig met its appointed end. Even so, there would be far too much left to eat before it became rancid. The solution was to preserve it by turning it into ham or bacon.

Almost no one does this today. Bacon is too easily available at any butcher’s shop or supermarket. Back in Georgian times, of course, if you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!

...

After all that work by the servants, one wonders how much of the resulting bacon they would ever have tasted themselves. Rather little, I imagine.

...

This recipe comes from Katherine Windham’s Boke of Cookery and Housekeeping, compiled in the early years of the eighteenth century, and transcribed by my friends Bonnie Lovelock and Roger Sykes.

You are talking of people living either as landlords or their servants. I presume, at least.

First of all, bacon was a rather cheap food, I think some of it would go to servants.

Second, you seem totally to neglect towns.

If you lived as a cobbler in a town, did you produce your bacon yourself?

Pretty certainly not.

The fact that doing bacon yourself was very much done comes in with people having some kind of country connexion.

Does this mean a cobbler in town never ate bacon?

Pretty certainly not that either.

Pretty certainly, some innkeeper was following that recipe who had pigs, and who sold bacon to those who hadn't.

You see, having recipes for bacon in cookbooks doesn't mean no one ever bought bacon readymade.

In a Swedish cookbook I once possessed, there was an extensive instruction about how to brew beer, generalities and diverse variaties, ranging from small beer to probably rather strong things.

Does that mean every Swede in 19th C. (when the cookbook and householdbook was from) brewed his own beer?

Or could there have existed a kind of service for townsfolk who couldn't brew beer, namely ... once again : inns?

I think that would be the solution to buying bacon in 18th C. England too, if you were no pig keeper.

That said, making bacon yourself is as of recently a neglected art, and some farmers in US who are also preppers (even if prepping might be less anxious these days, now that Obama seems to be going) would certainly appreciate not just this recipe, but all of that householdbook by Katherine Windham. Put it on internet for free and do prepping mankind a service. So much of what preppers seem to want to learn is only available (or so it seems) if a some businessman is selling them a course. You have an income from your novels.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Dedicace of Our Saviour's Basilica
9.XI.2016