Friday, April 28, 2017

Est-ce que Macron a qualifié la colonisation de l'Algérie de crime?


Laquelle? Celle par les Musulmans venus après Omar, après le deuxième calife, non? Ou celle par les Turks?

Quand a celle par la France, elle a contenu des crimes, elle n'en était pas un.

Il y a eu trois genres de crimes impliqués dedans, sinon quatre erreurs:

  • les enfumades par Bugeaud (quoique la faim comme arme de guerre a été, probablement, reconnu comme parfois licite), et ceci pas encore dès le début en 1829-30, mais 10 ans plus tard, brièvement;
  • la décision d'un gouverneur d'interdire aux prêtres catholiques de faire la mission en Kabylie;
  • la réforme des formes de propriété, refusant de reconnaître autres modalité de propriété que celle par individus;
  • l'acclimatisation à un peuple à administrer qui avait l'habitude de l'être par des pirates esclavagistes.


Quand j'ai quelque chose à écrire contre le psychiatrie, il y a deux genres de Puritain qui ne sont pas d'accord : les Musulmans y compris les Harkis, et les amis de ceux-ci, les Pieds-Noirs. Vous savez, c'est une communauté contre laquelle FN n'est pas en guéguerre, à savoir les:

"c'est nous les Africains qui venons de loin"

Et je soupçonne que ce genre d'attitude parmi eux vient du fait que leur sécurité tenait pendant 130 ans à la loyauté envers une administration qui, celle-ci, devait aussi administrer les gens qui avaient eu l'habitude d'être administrés par pirates.

Mais ce qui se passe en 1830, c'est à l'honneur de la France, et ce qui se passe le 26 mars 1962 à rue d'Isly est à l'honneur éternel de bien de fusillés, de tous qui ne se trouvaient pas en péché mortel pour d'autres raisons.

Hans Georg Lundahl
BU de Nanterre
St. Paul de la Croix
28.IV.2017

PS, si je pose le titre en question et non en affirmation, c'est qu'il semble y avoir une petite discrépance entre ces deux nouvelles:

1 Le Point : Macron et les harkis : la visite-surprise
Publié le 19/04/2017 à 16:02 | Le Point.fr
http://www.lepoint.fr/presidentielle/macron-et-les-harkis-la-visite-surprise-19-04-2017-2120897_3121.php


2 Le Point : "Crime contre l'humanité" : Emmanuel Macron a-t-il parlé trop vite ?
Publié le 16/02/2017 à 15:27 | Le Point.fr
http://www.lepoint.fr/presidentielle/crime-contre-l-humanite-emmanuel-macron-a-t-il-parle-trop-vite-16-02-2017-2105365_3121.php

If the Devil's Minion's Hate Latin - Maybe he Does so Himself?


When I was a small boy and read Dracula, I learned that:

"vampires fear three things : a crucifix, garlic and beans in Latin"

I asked what "beans in Latin" meant, beans being obviously sth you put into your mouth, and Latin seemed to be rather something which came out of it.

It seems the word "bönor" in Swedish resembled the word I was reading, "böner", especially as in my native pronunciation - since then somewhat poshed up - I had learned about "bönor" in a way which sounded more like "böner". Now, "bönor" is the plural of "böna" which means bean. While, "böner" is the plural of "bön" which means prayer. In other words, the sentence really meant:

"vampires fear three things : a crucifix, garlic and prayers in Latin"

And that was when I learned the word "prayer" - this first time as "bön", later as "Gebet", "prayer", "bønn", "Gebeed", "prière", and as you may guess, sooner or later "prex" and "oratio".

I also learned to note tiny differences in spelling, like between "böner" and "bönor".

Now, I don't really think the Devil hates all Latin. After all, one of the Greek names which add up to 666 is ΛΑΤΕΙΝΟΣ, and King Latinus, the father in law of Aeneas was son of Picus, son of Saturn - a man, but one who shares the name of the Satanic rebel in Greek myths about origins. Also, Cicero wrote some nonsense, as did Lucretius in that language, and some have also called Codex Iuris Civilis "the Devil's Bible" - at least its study in last few centuries of Middle Ages made things worse for some categories, women becoming more dependent on men, poor beggars becoming less likely to remain free (though the application was not half as bad as the original decree, "in incertum vagantes", where a man begging while able bodied, even if not a runaway slave, would be treated like one and made a slave, that of whoever denounced him - no, Western Late Middle Ages did not get as bad as all that, it was modified to mean he was obliged to take work as a journeyman in whatever trade he knew, and if he didn't know one was obliged to take up one or two trades until he had a living - he was even free to beg rather than take up a third one, if he didn't manage on either of the two), also, perhaps certain expressions about relations between State and Church got into fuelling secularisation, which by now amounts to a secularism which neither the Late Middle Ages nor Justinian could have foreseen, a world in which "secular values" are an idol, and state recognition of a university is its difference to a "diploma mill".

But the Devil does - like Dracula - hate Latin prayers. So, a certain title "The Devil Hates Latin", it possibly might be short for the Devil hating Latin prayers and some other holy things in Latin (lika Summa Theologica and Vulgate Bible and Canon Law too).

Anyway, here is a novel which according to preview and blurb promises to be a bit saner than the Dracula I was reading back then:

The Devil Hates Latin Paperback – December 29, 2016
by Katharine Galgano (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Hates-Latin-Katharine-Galgano/dp/0996647902/


Since the preview is available there, I don't copy the blurb even. Suffice it to say, demons don't always possess dead corpses turning them into vampires, or if that is really suspended animation and there is some real soul left along with the demon, they also have a thing or two about possessing living people, and the exorcists who try to help them are very much into Latin - there is also a love story, I suppose.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Paul of the Cross
28.IV.2017

Thursday, April 27, 2017

On not trusting automatic translations!


On the status of a friend of a friend on FB, I found this:

Efter uppståndelsen var Jesus kropp förvandlad.Han kunde gå genom reglade dörrar, och han kunde aldrig mer dö. Hans kropp kunde inte åldras eller skadas.

Jesus var osårbar, ändå bar han sår.


In a distracted moment I clicked sth visible under it, and found it was a translation to French (it was on the FB account which I have in French).

Après l'excitation, le corps de Jésus s'est transformé. Il pourrait traverser les portes fermées, et il ne pouvait jamais mourir. Son corps ne peut pas devenir vieux ou endommagé.

Jésus était invulnérable, mais il a été blessé.


Uppståndelse is a Swedish word with two fairly distinct meanings both related to standing up.

It means, in the context here, a standing up of someone who was dead, i e a resurrection.

It also means when a lot of seated people hurry to stand up, which is a social excitation (not a mental solitary one), and is in certain political terms related to insurrection, however, the Swedish word does not get that far, it is a synonym for tumult, where English prefer the term commotion.

The actual Swedish word is a calque midway between resurrection and insurrection. Resurrection literally means "to stand up again", i e after lying down as a corpse. Insurrection literally means "to stand up on something", i e on a barricade (or simply on the floor on occasions where being seated is expected). Uppståndelse literally means "to stand up", and therefore only translates the part "surrectio" in the Latin base word. Hence, it translates both words into Swedish.

Now, instead of translating "efter uppståndelsen" with "after the Resurrection", the autotranslate has translated as "after the commotion".

In a way there is a kind of prophecy there, since the Descent into Hell or into Sheol and the ensuing Resurrection did involve quite a lot of commotion, joy for the souls who had been captive due to original sin, terror for the demons who were clearly "losing the grip" when these souls could no longer be confined in darkness. But for someone who didn't know Swedish, the translation is not immediately informative. If we don't believe the mistranslation (i e : if we don't trust this autotranslate) those of us who don't know Swedish but only French would be somewhat led astray if they didn't know Christian theology at least as much as main outline of Gospel story beforehand.

Le bon mot c'est "la Résurrection", pas "l'excitation".

This is not all.

  • "... var Jesus kropp förvandlad," means "Jesus' body was transformed," (i e already from that moment of Resurrection, and so all the time after it)

    • "... le corps de Jésus s'est transformé" means "Jesus' body transformed itself/changed" (i e after that moment, with some delay and development)

    • better : "était transformé".


  • "Han kunde gå genom reglade dörrar," means "he was" [in fact] "able to walk through locked doors".

    • "Il pourrait traverser les portes fermées," means "he would be able to walk through locked doors" [if and additional condition had been fulfilled.]

    • better : "il pouvait" etc.


  • Skipping minor quibbles on tense useage.

  • "Hans kropp kunde inte åldras eller skadas," means "His body could not age or be hurt."

    • "Son corps ne peut pas devenir vieux ou endommagé," means "His body cannot become old or damaged" - tense change is better theology, less good narrative, but chronologically speaking the Body of Christ is in fact 2017 years old this year, my friend's friend is speaking of the aging process, which stopped, He is anatomically 33, and it is not a piece of furniture where we speak of "damage", it is a living body where, prior to the resurrection, we speak of getting "hurt" or "wounded".

    • better : "Son corps ne pouvait pas vieillir ou être blessé".


  • "Jesus var osårbar, ändå bar han sår," means "Jesus was invulnerable, yet he bore wounds". He was invulnerable from Resurrection on, and bore wounds from before it.

    • "Jésus était invulnérable, mais il a été blessé," means "Jesus was invulnerable, but he has been wounded" - as if it was a question of an invulnerability not quite working.

    • better : "Jésus était invulnérable, mais il portait ses blessures".


If a human translator had come up with this, I would have noted him "peut mieux faire". But a computer can't do any better. It has no understanding of meaning.

The words are translated by algorithms, and the more common use of "uppståndelsen" is "the commotion", so the computer translates, mechanically, the word with "l'excitation" even when "the commotion" was not not what the human writer meant. The computer cannot translate after probable meaning, since it has no idea at all about meaning.

One could program it to make an exception when Jesus is in the same sentence, but suppose a Swede were to say:

"När Jesus talade var uppståndelsen ofta stor bland fariseerna"

He would be, for Swedish, making a pun on the resurrection, but the accurate meaning of the words would be:

"When Jesus spoken the commotion was often great among the Pharisees".

And a computer programmed to translate "uppståndelsen" with "la Résurrection" each time Jesus occurred in the same sentence would now be getting this sentence wrong instead. AI is a myth, a misunderstanding of what computers do. It is not around the corner, it is a metaphysical impossibility.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Peter Canisius, S.J.
27.IV.2017

Monday, April 24, 2017

Writing Advice, Quora


Q
How can I start writing a book, step-by-step?
https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-start-writing-a-book-step-by-step/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl


C on Q
Hi all,

I’d like to write a book. But I don’t know which point should I start. How can I make an outline to see which step should be done first, which step should be done next, and last? So that the book is not messy and cover all things that link to each other.

Feel free to recommend more tips!

Best.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Writing? I've been doing that for some time.
Written just now
Quoting from Brian Dean:

“I try to know maybe ten events in the story before I write. That is, I know ten stops or locations on the path of the story. This means that when I start at the beginning and get stuck, I jump forward to the next known point and start writing there. Usually it doesn’t take long until I know what should go in that gap between sections.”


While I was more active on writing Chronicle of Susan Pevensie, I started out knowing four events, and wrote four chapters.

I then proceeded, naturally, not to write at the beginning and forward, but systematically filling in between sections.

Only sometimes writing forwards.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

What Exactly did Job Realise?


According to Lita Cosner, God reminded Job of His prerogatives as Creator. And Job accepted this.

According to Peter Kreeft, at the end of the book, Job knew God, and he knew himself.

I will give a somewhat other perspective.

I will not look at the text, I will not look at the Church Fathers, I will just hope I am right. And, that if I am wrong, God will correct me gently enough.

There is a moment at which Job seems to say (as Peter Kreeft cited him), he had spoken as an empty headed man. What exactly had he said that was wrong?

I think it is this : he had not had a heartfelt and complete trust in God. Sure, he had said, when challenged, "of course God can be trusted" (I know my Redeemer liveth, in the text). But that was it. He wasn't brimfull of trust.

Let's get to a few situations in the New Testament. Martha says "if you had come earlier, Lazarus would have lived". Fine? Wonderful trust isn't it? She is admitting there was a time when Jesus could even have been of some assistance, right? As Peter Kreeft reminds us, Our Lord wanted more trust than that./HGL

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

A Work by Mark Twain I Think Tolkien did Read


We know (from Tree and Leaf, I think, On Fairy Stories), that Tolkien loved Fenimore Cooper. And that from a rather early age.

We also know that when writing The Lord of the Rings, he was keeping meticulously track of things especially related to the progress in much of the time wild nature (how many miles men can walk a day, which phase of the moon it was which date, seasons, latitudes changing the impact of the seasons, so that spring and summer is earlier in South Ithilian than in Rohan ...).

Is there a connection?

Perhaps, if we knew Fenimore Cooper had done a similar thing, we could conclude that he was imitating his favourite author (I used an Italy related weather report for 28th Dec 2011 to account for the weather when Susan was in Narni on that date, supposedly 1949, and you can imagine where I got that from).

Now, it seems there is another author who claims that Fenimore Cooper did not do these things. His name is Mark Twain. It seems, then, that Tolkien in fact had read Mark Twain: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences, which I am just now reading* - one which alerted him to what to avoid in order to not share Fenimore Cooper's mistakes.

However**, Mark Twain has his own inaccuracies.

Chicago is not a simplified spelling of Chingachgook:

The name "Chicago" is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir.[18] Henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called "chicagoua", grew abundantly in the area.[19] According to his diary of late September 1687:

when we arrived at the said place called Chicagou which, according to what we were able to learn of it, has taken this name because of the quantity of garlic which grows in the forests in this region.[19]


In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples.[20] The first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s.[21][22][23] He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago".


And while a cannon ball which doesn't burrow itself down into the ground will at first bounce, it is possible the last bounce will set it rolling in such a way as Mark Twain claims Fenimore Cooper was wrong to suppose in one of his romances. Also, Mark Twain is erroneously applying canons of novel writing to the romance genre.***

That said, the general gist of Mark Twain's words on these pages is such that it can have inspired Tolkien to greater caution in what is now often known as "world building".

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Wednesday in First Passion Week
5.IV.2017

* For page 1 of free online version:

http://ppt.li/3qu or http://www.literaturepage.com/read/twain-cooper-literary-offences-1.html

For buying a copy in paper and paid version:

Amazon: 11 results for Books : "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences Mark Twain"
https://www.amazon.com/s/135-1088987-8854548?ie=UTF8&index=books&keywords=Fenimore%20Cooper%27s%20Literary%20Offences%20Mark%20Twain&link_code=qs&tag=starlingtechnolo


** Someone is bound, sooner or later, to call me Hibbs! See Manalive, a book by Chesterton and a film I would wish for Mark Shea and others to release at least on youtube, if not in paid theatres. Maybe a bit like amateurs did with Born of Hope.

*** When Mark Twain upbraids Fenimore Cooper for being unprecise when using "unsophisticated," for "primitive" he was not noting that this sense of "primitive" was a recent one, depending on Evolutionist assumptions. Next item, "preparation," for "expectancy", he does not note that expectancy is a kind of mental preparedness which may have been as much "preparation" in Cooper's day as "mental preparedness" in ours. And if Cooper did use "fact," for "conjecture", well, very many Evolutionists are doing so to this very day. But generally, don't trust Mark Twain on non-contemporary matters. A man who can complain of "mental imbecility," for "imbecility" without noting that an earlier generation than his own may have called it a corporeal imbecility to have a cold, is a man capable of the gross historic inaccuracies of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and I don't mean introducing the time traveller, I mean how King Arthur's Court is supposed to have been up to his arrival.

Cuvier's Analogy and Renaissance Humanism


Creation vs. Evolution : Protestant Roots of Old Age / Evolution · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Cuvier's Analogy and Renaissance Humanism

I just learned about Cuvier's Analogy in a CMI Article on this topic. In fact, with this title:

CMI : Cuvier’s analogy and its consequences: forensics vs testimony as historical evidence
John Reed
http://creation.com/cuviers-analogy


While it was posted on the site in 2012, it was previously published in Journal of Creation 22(3):115–120, December 2008.

Here is a salient little quote:

That shift did not just happen. It was sold to the public by a perceived necessity to investigate the prehuman world of deep time. Obviously, if no one was present to record those epochs, a forensic approach was the only possible key to the past. If that door was opened only by ‘scientific’ evidence, the Bible was irrelevant. This line of reasoning created a crack in the walls of the biblical worldview that opened a breach to the rampaging secular hordes that captured the Western intellectual tradition in the 19th century and destroyed it in the 20th.

In order to understand this methodological flaw, we must first see the logical link between prehistory and forensic evidence. That point was emphasized by the analogy made by Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) between fossils and human artifacts of antiquity. Cuvier argued that fossils opened the door to prehuman history just as ancient coins and pottery opened the door to older human history. This clever metaphor helped elevate forensic natural history at the expense of the Bible.


Actually, there is a precedent for Cuvier. One Lorenzo Valla started collecting ancient Roman and Greek artefacts to piece together as exact an image of Classic Antiquities as possible.

But the point is, this did not really open the door to older human history. Rather, it shut it.

In the Middle Ages, you had books about the War of Troy. They would include authorities like Dictys of Crete or Dares of Phrygia, poets in Homeric style on the Trojan side, which claim in the text to be contemporary but which are by Higher Criticism considered to be Alexandrian in origin.

In Valla's remold of Antiquity studies, this did not fit in. It was some four centuries between the Catholic priest and Heinrich Schliemann who dug out Troy. Whether or not Valla himself did or did not believe the War of Troy happened, some of his successors did not. Valla had initiated a scepsis which dispensed with witness account if it had been passed through sufficient number of intermediates in favour of material pieces of evidence.

This approach erroneously involved doubting Troy had even existed as early as the Iliad is supposed to speak about. In fact, you have to have a very steep rise in Carbon 14 very late for the ruins of Hissarlik not to include at least some layer which fits the time scale of the traditional War of Troy.

Creation vs. Evolution : What about Ussher and Kent Hovind? Checking with Troy
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.fr/2017/03/what-about-ussher-and-kent-hovind.html


A seventeen step Fibonacci curve adapted even to Ussher's timeline will allow Troy to have been at least inhabited at the time.

Creation vs. Evolution : Around Five Thousand Years Ago, There was a World Wide Flood?
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.fr/2017/03/around-five-thousand-years-ago-there.html


Adapting it to St Jerome's timeline puts real time timing of War of Troy into Troy V.

Creation vs. Evolution : About 5300 Years Ago There was a World Wide Flood? Iffy ...
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.fr/2017/03/about-5300-years-ago-there-was-world.html


And yes, Syncellus placing taking of Troy in 1172 will put it into a carbon rise table adapted to his overall timeline between the carbon dates (Cambridge half life) for 1500 BC and 1227 BC and closer to the first. In 1500 BC, Troy was already inhabited, carbon date wise.

So, we can accept Schliemann discovered the site where the War of Troy took place.

This means we can accept Iliad as a kind of testimony. However, it is not first hand eywitness testimony. It is testimony from tradition - precisely as the Genesis material was to Moses.

Some Protestants are reluctant to accept that Moses relied on Oral tradition, he must have found Written material books from back in the times of Adam or Noah or Abraham, and evidence is he credits the works. And how does he do it? By the "toledoth" type colophons.

However, this is eisegesis. The usual interpretation of the toledoth phrase is that they far from closing a book introduce sth shorter, namely a list of generations. That is why the words ... This is the book of the generation of Adam. In the day that God created man, he made him to the likeness of God. ... are Genesis 5:1 and not **Genesis 4:27 (non-extant verse). Note, I am not dismissing all eisegesis as bad or unfounded, just noting that this theory is both eisegesis and far newer than the time of Cuvier. And it could be wrong.

So, we can believe it is quite as possible that Adam and Eve redacted the second, third and beginning of fourth chapter of Genesis as oral performances, perhaps if writing was invented using initial letters as training aid, and handed these down to their descendants, and they arrived orally to Moses.

But this puts Moses as final redactor in a position analogous to Homer, whose distance from Trojan War was about as many centuries as Moses at Exodus from promise given to Abraham. In fact, between Adam's fall and Moses, the distance in time was greater (though that in generations was smaller) between Odin's arrival in Uppsala region (some say Uppsala itself was founded by his stepson Frey, so it couldn't have been there when he came if so) and Snorre.

This means that the criterium which was, if not exactly Lorenzo Valla's at least the one he helped to bring about, through the remote disciples of his remote disciples by the time of Cuvier and well a generation or two before him at least, is a criterium which humanly speaking tends to destroy the authority of Moses. In such a position, some will take the position "Genesis is in the Bible, hence it is word of God, hence God's verbal inspiration will have taken care of any errors which would normally certainly have turned up". Some will take the opposite position "Genesis is the word of God because Moses was a man of God, so while we can rely on Moses' intentions as being God's, we can't rely on his information". And that was the position obviously of Cuvier.

Now, who of Protestants and Catholics would normally have been going the furthest along this road by the time of Cuvier? Obviously Protestants.

A Catholic, even if he had tended to side with Wolf in making existence of Homer doubtful, and had tended to deny the War of Troy (unlike St Augustine whose De Civitate basically opens with "look, the Pagan gods were not much use to the Trojans, as we know from the Aeneid"), would at least have agreed on St Augustine that there always was a Church or People of God, from Adam to Moses too, and that its transmission of early material was guaranteed by infallibility of the Church, like the Jewish Church had from Aaron to Kaiaphas, like the Catholic Church has had from Pentecost to the Present. So they could say Genesis 1 to 11, while transmitted in a naturally not too reliable matter, was protected, like the full doctrines of the Mass or of Mary have been protected in the Catholic Church, though not all details are directly attested in the Bible in its literal sense. Something which the transmission between Trojan War and Homer would have lacked.

But Protestants would not be believing in the special protection of that particular tradition or paradosis which belongs to the Church of God, therefore they would also tend to have less confidence in Genesis 1 to 11. Which Cuvier had.

Even more, there is a correlation between the Renaissance Humanism of Valla and Protestantism. When Calvin accused Catholics of worshipping "Venus and Bacchus" (honouring the Blessed Virgin, blessing grapes on day of Transfiguration, August 6th, I presume), he was bypassing factors like narrative what Pagan Romans said about Venus and Bacchus and what Catholics said about honouring the Blessed Virgin and blessing grapes on August 6th. He was looking at, as if all important, the general shape or procedure of statues and of ceremonies. Like he had been taught by successors of Lorenzo Valla.

While Luther had less of that kind of learning (his Humanism was more about accurate Greek and Latin, and even some Church Fathers like Sts Ausgustine and Jerome - Erasmus was using Terence and Jerome as models of Latin, in the sense that I have used C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, King James and Shakespear as models for my English, while learning it), his disciple Philip Melanchthon must have picked up some and his disciples must have picked up even more. By the time of Cuvier, this kind of thing would have been as commonplace among Lutherans of Montbéliard (theretofore Mömpelgard) as it was among Zwinglians in Zurich or Calvinists in Geneva or Edinburgh.

So, it is really not a big problem to reason out why Deep Time and the archaeological error about both history and ultimately even "pre-human earth history" should have come from Modernist Protestants rather than from Catholics.

And that is why, when I was defending a Young Earth Creationist understanding of both Genesis and Earth Sciences was getting more and more away from Protestantism and more and more into Catholicism - which I had never been strongly against anyway. Funny why John Reed never mentions that Cuvier was a Protestant in the article ... did I just miss it?

And for similar reasons of revived Ciceronianism and divorce from the Catholic dogma, Protestants were also more likely to be racist. In Antiquity, Egyptians had been anti-black racialists pretty much of the time (to the point that to one Monastic Father the devil appeared in the shape of a black boy - not meaning that black boys are diabolical, just that to his culture, the black boy was a sufficiently suspicious symbol so he could be detected, like God requires the devil to do when tempting His Saints). Egyptians had also been famous for being wise, profound, knowledgeable. Among the neo-Ciceronians of the 15th and 16th Centuries, this could spill over into accepting the Pagan Egyptians's assessment of black men - and looking for Biblical justifications, however flimsy, as long as the Bible at least was still an authority. And Protestantism took over much more of this Humanism and its divorce from the Christian tradition.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Wednesday in
First Passion Week
5.IV.2017

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

For Fans of Michael Ende and Old Photography


I was not just a fan of Michael Ende's The Neverending Storeeeeeeeeee (sorry, that is the film), I also saw the film The Neverending Story (well, that would be the book, actually).

So, naturally, on a site dedicated to film paraphernalia, I looked up what the stars from the film look like today.

Here is what I found. Bastian Balthasar Bux, a geek in the book and in the film, was played by a real life geek.

Barret Oliver - Bastian Balthazar Bux
http://www.looper.com/28077/cast-neverending-story-look-like-today/s/barret-oliver-bastian-balthazar-bux/


This man wrote a history of the Woodbury type - a process for reproducing photos, invented in the 19th Century.

A History of the Woodburytype 1st Edition
by Barret Oliver (Author), Cathie Leavitt (Editor)
https://www.amazon.com/History-Woodburytype-Barret-Oliver/dp/1887694285/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1491318616&sr=1-1


Citing from a review of his book:

In 1864 Walter Bentley Woodbury introduced a process for mechanically reproducing photographs that changed forever the way the world looked at images. Aesthetically beautiful, permanent and infinitely reproducible, the Woodburytype was the first process used extensively to photographically illustrate books, journals, museum catalogs, magazines and even campaign materials. More than a century after its heyday the Woodburytype stands as a pinnacle of photographic achievement. This book traces the history of Woodbury's process from the early technology and experiments to its commercial success and domination of the illustration field, and further to attempts to adapt it to industrialized methods, and finally, to its eventual disuse. Also covered is the story of how Woodbury overcame daunting personal odds to bestow this beautiful photographic process upon the world.


Congratulations!/HGL

PS, I also learned he has made a film on how this was done:

In the Usual Manner
A short film featuring artist Barret Oliver
http://www.huntington.org/civilwar/making19thcenturyphotographs.htm


PPS, RIP, "Carl Conrad Coreander"! RIP, "Cairon". RIP, "Engywook". RIP, "Urgl". DEDRELELERIP.

What is lectio continua?


50 + 40 + 27 + 36 + 34 + 24 + 21 + 04 + 31 + 24 + 22 + 25 + 29 + 36 + 10 + 13 + 14 + 16 + 16 + 42 + 150 + 31 + 12 + 08 + 19 + 51 + 66 + 52 + 05 + 06 + 48 + 14 + 14 + 03 + 09 + 01 + 04 + 07 + 03 + 03 + 03 + 02 + 14 + 04 + 16 + 15 = 1074

28 + 16 + 24 + 21 + 28 + 16 + 16 + 13 + 06 + 06 + 04 + 04 + 05 + 03 + 06 + 04 + 03 + 01 + 13 + 05 + 05 + 03 + 05 + 01 + 01 + 01 + 22 = 260

(71)

1334 in toto - 3 years, after which, if without leap years in these remain 239 chapters, of which 29 are read in February

You start on January 1 one year, you go on for three years, and in the fourth you end up on August 26th./HGL

Monday, April 3, 2017

Link on History of Medicine


AncientBiotics - a medieval remedy for modern day superbugs?
University of Nottingham, 30 Mar 2015
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2015/march/ancientbiotics---a-medieval-remedy-for-modern-day-superbugs.aspx

I Failed J P Holding's Test - But Let's Look at his Criteria


Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : With jpholding/tektontv on Inerrancy · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : I Failed J P Holding's Test - But Let's Look at his Criteria · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Notification to Mike Licona (not answered)

The TektonTV Christian Religious Knowledge Test
tektontv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfuXk1HPgPA


I am here not commenting on intro, which is fairly basic.

TektonTV / JPHolding made an own test for religious knowledge, here I am taking the quiz.

  • 1) In rhetoric the portion of an argument in which a writer like Paul provides examples of what he wants to prove is called:

    • a) peroratio
    • b) probatio
    • c) refutatio
    • d) exordio


    There is no such thing as is "called an exordio", since "is called" requires nominative and nominative of the word is exordium. a and d are probably the least likely place to see a list of examples, unless very reduced to simple namecalling - or if the speech (or epistle or whatever) is not very example based, it just possibly couldn't be there at all, as normally. Exordium is beginning of a speech or epistle, peroratio is ending. In exordium (in Latin : in exordio!) you usually want to just catch the hearers' or readers' goodwill. And in peroratio (in peroratione in Latin) you mostly want to drive through the main point with some emotional colouring, possibly highstrung. I recall a speech by Lysias and how the Greek Lector raised his voice at the final words, of which I still recall the "dikazete!" - "get on judging". An exordium can be high strung too. "Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? (...?) quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?" - "Hey, what do you think you are up to, punk!" (translated to JPHolding's vocabulary).*

    So, omitting the option which was omitted here, namely narratio - a kind of story telling intro to the main point, as JPHolding did with a narrative, but which can take the form of an inductio (a list of examples), the second most likely place to find lists of examples (or first?) would be either probatio, in which after stating the main point the speaker gives supporting evidence to the point of positively proving it beyond reasonable doubt if possible, or, refutatio, where he is doing the inverse about the inverse point.

    Giving full weight to the words "of what he wants to prove" this would narrow the possibility away from refutatio and down to probatio.

  • 2) The Arian Heresy claims that Jesus:

    • a) had one rather than two natures
    • b) was a white man, not a Jew
    • c) was a created being
    • d) is the same person as the Father.


    Let's discuss each:

    • a) had one rather than two natures - nope : purely human would be ultra-arian, not arian. More Moslem than nearly Christian heresy. Purely divine would be either Docetist or Monophysite. A non-Arian couple of heresies.

    • b) was a white man, not a Jew - nope, you think of Aryan, with an y, an idea espoused by Deutsche Christen. In the form that Jews in His time were more "white" or "Aryan" than now, it is not even necessarily heretical.

    • c) was a created being - this would be the one.

      But misstated - it says He is a created being and therefore a created person. Christianity admits He is since about 2017 years ago a created being also - but remaining an uncreated person.

    • d) is the same person as the Father. Nope. This is an earlier and opposite heresy, called Patripassianism. Modalism. Also known - had to look it up for a reminder, in wiki - Sabellianism.


  • 3) - Wrote a hand book of rhetoric. None of the following if you really meant your spelling.

    Otherwise, Quintilian, one L, is perhaps what 3 b is meant to allude to. De .... oratorica, forgot the noun. De praeparatione oratorica? Hmmm ... could check it in wiki. Institutio Oratoria - honestly did not check before picking the answer.

    Actually, I am not sure of Lucanus and Lysanias, but if they did, their works are clearly inferior in impact to Quintilian's work, which Erasmus was looking back to when he wrote Opus de Conscribendis Epistolis.

  • 4) - I really and truly do not know enough Egyptian mythology to know which of the given gods is considered a hypostasis if any, but if so, it is in another than the Christian sense.

    Ma'at could be considered a personification, since she means a human quality.** I did not know there were people who said hypostasis instead of personification, if that is "who" you meant.

    And perhaps Osiris could be considered an Avatar of Ra, but also did not know avatars were called by some hypostaseis.

    So, beyond all guesswork, I don't know.

  • 5) Which of these is classically associated with the thesis that Peter and Paul represented an early split in Christianity?

    Ruling out a) David Strauss and d) David Hume and narrowing down to either b) Baur (best known for Leben Jesu, a "demythologised" version of the Gospels) or c) Bultmann, illfamed for his participation in Higher Criticism (and duly denounced for that by C. S. Lewis in Fernseed and Elephants).

  • 6)

    I Philo died AD 37 and II Josephus was born that year, while III (or IV?) Tacitus was born later. I don't know when Cassius Dio was born, but I think he was even later than Tacitus.

  • 7) Death penalty reserved to citizens : a&b - beheading by sword.

    Since St Paul was a Roman Citizen, he was beheaded on one June 29, under Nero, same day as St Peter was crucified upside down.

    [That is, St Peter was not a Roman Citizen.]

  • 8) Theodosius made Christianity the State religion, outlawing Paganism and confirming how Judaism got secondary status by Constantine.

    Constantine had not made Christianity the State religion in this sense, but made it legal religion, but also leaving pagan official cults legal. It was Theodosius who erased the Pagan temples and said "if you want to go on praying to Venus and Bachus and Mars and that rabble, do so at home".

  • 9) In my view the leading writers on Christian Pacifism are Chesterton and C. S. Lewis - they rejected Pacifism and rejected its title to being Christian.

    If you want to know who is the leading misleading writer on it, arguing for it, I really can't tell between the four, that is not my Christian culture!

  • 10) I knew beforehand book of Job WAS ANE dialogue literature, so guessed first that The Man Who Was Tired of His Life could be a modern novel. Nope, on wiki it seems it is a dialogue between a man and his ba, Egyptian religious sense, one of the souls.

    I don't know.

  • 11) I really don't know what the difference between orthodox and heterodox preterism is.

    COULD BE authority of Apocalypse (an orthodox preterist admitting its inerrancy despite the difficulties in reading), could be timing of the final resurrection (but that is rather the difference between millennialism and amillennialism), could be nature of the parousia ... could not be the person of Jesus, since even a heterodox preterist would be a Christian and therefore have Christian views on the matter.

  • 12) I don't know who authored the "premier study" on the word "soma", I know Bultmann was early, but not how early the other ones are.

    [Nor do I know if Bultmann made any kind of study on that word.]

  • 13) I presume Biblical codices were used before the codex iuris civilis and contributed to them, unless it was liturgic books that did so.

    A codex is a book you turn pages in, as opposed to a volumen which you scroll down and up while reading, rolling out from around one and in around another pin. (Torah scrolls however roll sideways).

  • 14) Sejanus [Was the benefactor of Pontius Pilate]. He was still in favour with Tiberius in AD 30, when Velleius Paterculus wrote book II of Roman History.

  • 15) I had no idea there were any Greek words in the book of Daniel.


Checking my score:

Test Answers
Tuesday, May 15, 2012, on Tekton Forge
http://tektonforge.blogspot.com/2012/05/test-answers.html


1) b) probatio - got it I
2) c) Jesus was a created being - got it II
3) b) Quintillian, - got it III
4) a) Ma’at - gave it a one of two
5) b) F. C. Baur - gave it a one of two
6) Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Cassius Dio - got it except being unsure of placing of Cassius Dio IV
7) b) beheading - which was by the sword, so got it V
8) d) Theodosius - got it VI
9) b) John Yoder - I had no idea
10) d) The Wise Man, the Artisan, and the Slave - did not know
11) b) the timing of the resurrection - ok, was not sure
12) a) Robert Gundry - I had no idea
13) c) codex - I got it VII
14) d) Sejanus - I got it VIII
15) b) musical instruments - I might have thought of it ....salpinx? kithara?

So, score 8 out of 15.

If generous, 10 of 15, if you add the one out of two.

If severe, 6 out of 15, if you take away the got it when it was twice qualified.

Certainly not 12 out of 15.

My turn.

Classic languages and literary devices would certainly be useful knowledge for assessing what anything in NT refers to, if unclear.

Church history also. Whether difference between diverse heresies or what Emperor made Christianity a state religion.

Dito for simple Classical history and literary history, as with Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Cassius Dio.

Knowing Egyptian mythology might be useful if dealing with claims about Christianity borrowing from Egyptian religion (it is arguably easier to see ANE Paganism traced in Odinism than in Christianity, and I am, as most Swedes, knowledgeable on that topic).

But it is clearly less of a core issue.

Knowing exactly what academic high brow came up with exactly what kooky idea about early Church history is an asset, but I think it is sufficient to be able to state why they are wrong. No matter how much they may have contributed to studying a word like "soma".

Knowing what orthodox preterism is might be more interesting if you are very much into preterism. I am more into "through Church history" so that at the time of the final tribulation little is left to be fulfilled ... words of St Caesarius of Arles.

Knowing about Christian pacifism is perhaps more interesting if you are a Christian pacifism - as I said I am not and reject the concept. Avoiding wars if possible is a great thing - but not at any and every cost. Saying those who do war or self defense or executions of legally condemned criminals are sinners is another matter. As the doctrine is one I reject, its authors are less interesting to me.

And presence of Greek words in book of Daniel is supposed to prove exactly what? That book of Daniel was written after Persians had had their first contact with Greeks? Sure, but not sure how that could change anything unless you know from other sources when that was. Even if all other sources are later, which testify Greeks and Persians had contact, book of Daniel would simply be the earliest source testifying to such contact.

Or, perhaps that point is, it proves Daniel had been in Persia and not just Babylon?

Or, is Ma'at being a "hypostasis" relevant to Trinitarian and Christological quarrels of councils?

Let's check, if hypostasis was the Greek word for personificatio, and if council decisions had been only in Greek, perhaps so.

But in reality we have perhaps three meanings with two different words in each language of Latin and Greece.

  • υποςασις (if so?) - personificatio***
  • υποςασις - persona
  • προσωπον - persona


The use of υποςασιςin Greek rules out the meaning of persona=προσωπον and the use of persona in Latin rules out υποςασις=personificatio.

We are not dealing either with Trinitarian persons or Incarnation being allegories for human states of mind, as in personificatio and we are also not dealing with them being masks or roles that a single υποςασις takes on as προσωπα. We are dealing with υποςασις or persona as single instances of a thing which can think and chose, know and love. There are three instances of that thing, but unlike men, where three instances of man are three different men, in God its three instances of the very same God.

Introducing υποςασις as other meaning personificatio (if that was an Ancient Greek meaning) could only be a blunder a very minor side issue to the debates.

So, if we divide my score into what I think relevant or less so or not at all, where I know in advance J. P. Holding disagrees, here is my division of the test:

  • Relevant classical/ancient : 8 out of 9

    • 1) b) probatio - got it I, 1
    • 2) c) Jesus was a created being - got it II, 2
    • 3) b) Quintilian, - got it III, 3
    • 6) Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Cassius Dio - got it except being unsure of placing of Cassius Dio IV, 4
    • 7) b) beheading - which was by the sword, so got it V, 5
    • 8) d) Theodosius - got it VI, 6
    • 10) d) The Wise Man, the Artisan, and the Slave - did not know, 7
    • 13) c) codex - I got it VII, 8
    • 14) d) Sejanus - I got it VIII, 9


  • Less relevant ancient knowledge 1/2 out of 2

    • 4) a) Ma’at - gave it a one of two, 1
    • 15) b) musical instruments - I might have thought of it ....salpinx? kithara?, 2


  • Irrelevant modern knowledge 1/2 out of 4

    • 5) b) F. C. Baur - gave it a one of two, 1
    • 9) b) John Yoder - I had no idea, 2
    • 11) b) the timing of the resurrection - ok, was not sure, 3
    • 12) a) Robert Gundry - I had no idea, 4


You see, doing a real good job in relevant knowledge and doing a particular set of studies to acquire that relevant knowledge are two different things.

If J. P Holding means I have not done the same studies as he, he is right. And he has not done the same studies as I, either.° If from there he wants to conclude I am not qualified to discuss what I am discussing, that is an opinion which is fairly self serving with one who has been critical of him. Note, on very many issues he is even excellent. If I weren't sometimes obliged to recommend tektontv, as a fellow apologist, I would feel no relevance in criticising him either.

But even if he were to consider me as "not qualified", he could not call me an academic fraud°° : by discussing sth on internet you are not automatically claiming to have a certain background. Also, I don't like the general idea of dividing opponents into "incompetent"/"academic frauds" and "worthwhile". Someone who is real stoooopid as a ... well, I'm omitting comparisons ... will be worthwhile responding to if there are others sharing his stupidity.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Monday after
I:st Passion Sunday
3.IV.2017

* A more literal rendering is "whereunto, O Catilina, wilt thou yet abuse our patience, (...?) to what end will thy unleashed audacity vaunt itself" (not sure if the phrases are consecutive or I left sth out, check for yourselves in Cicero's III Speech against Catilina). ** A quality, which, though human, is not lacking in God! Measure! *** If hypostasis basically means persona, Greek terminology is terse enough for the word to be used for personificatio too - but I don't claim to know it is so used. ° "exordio" in nominative, "Quintillian" with double L = > NOT a Latinist. °° Actually, the test was made for atheists.