Transcript From Classical to Contemporary

Civilization and Its Discontents
HUM 2051: Civilization I
Fall 2009
Dr. Perdigao
August 19, 2009
Origins
• B.C./B.C.E.—“before the common era” or “before the
Christian era”
• A.D.=anno Domini (“in the year of the Lord”)
• Western culture—two sources—classical/pagan
world of Greece and Rome and Judeo-Christian
world of Europe
• How we think of history—as a progressive
narrative—as Homer does with The Iliad (gold: silver:
bronze: iron)
Timing
•
•
•
•
Paleolithic (“Old Stone”) Age: 200,000-100,000 B.C.E.
Neolithic (“New Stone”) Age: 10,000-4,000 B.C.E.
Climate change—Fertile Crescent, Neolithic Revolution
Civilization: beginnings five thousand years ago in Near
East (Mesopotamia and Egypt) and then Far East (India and
China) (Perry 8)
• 4000-1000 B.C.E.: Bronze Age
• Western Civilization: Sumer, Mesopotamia (4000-3000
B.C.E.), Egypt, northeastern Africa (3050 B.C.E.)
• Anatolia (Turkey) (2000-1900 B.C.E.), Crete, Greece
• All centers for Western Civilization
Contributors
• Writing: 3500 BCE—Sumer, cuneiform (myths, polytheism); Egypt—
hieroglyphs (perhaps learned from Sumerians), Coptic alphabet
• Contributions in writing, mathematics, and astronomy in both
civilizations
• Mesopotamian worldview represented as a “mood of uncertainty and
anxiety, an awareness of the cosmos as unfathomable and mysterious, a
feeling of dread about the fragility of human existence and the
impermanence of human achievement” (Perry 13)—evidenced in The
Epic of Gilgamesh
• Assyrian—commerce; Babylonian—law; Phoenicians (descendents of
the Canaanites)—alphabet (centers to development of Western
civilization)
• Canaanites—writing, phonetic alphabet; Hebrews—religion
• Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE)—Babylon; “eye for an eye,” code
unearthed in 1901-1902 by French archaeologists (Perry 13)
• Neo-Babylonian Empire: Nebuchadnezzar builds, after his death,
Chaldean empire falls apart, new power with Persians
• Aramaic emerges as uniform language, letters based on Phoenician
alphabet (Perry 26)
Evolving Systems
• Egypt—First Intermediate Period (2181-2040 BCE); Middle
Kingdom (2040-1786 BCE); Second Intermediate Period
(1786-1570 BCE), with Hyksos invasion; New Kingdom
(1570-1085 BCE) (Perry 15-16)
• Mythopoeic (mythmaking) view of the world, shared by
Mesopotamians and Egyptians (Perry 26-27)
• Egyptian Ma’at (justice, law, right, and truth); Re (sun god);
Isis (goddess of love and fertility); Thoth (god of wisdom
and inventor of writing); Nut (sky goddess); piety
• Scientific method versus mythmaking: shared “rational
forms of thought and behavior” (irrigation, calendar,
mathematics) but not a “consistently and self-consciously
rational method of inquiring into physical nature and
human culture” (27)
• Contributions in observing nature, recording data,
improving technology, but not advancing to “level of selfconscious philosophical and scientific thought” (“logically
deduced abstractions, hypotheses, and generalizations”
(Perry 28)
Schemata
• Ancient World—Hebrew, Greek, Roman (1), hinge
on Augustine as encompassing figure
• Fall to captivity to redemptive rise; after expansion
under kings David and Solomon (1005-925 BCE),
deportation to Babylon (586 BCE), exile until Cyrus
releases from bondage (539 BCE) (2)
• Diaspora (131-134 CE) (“scattering”): 1948 Israel
• OT written, organized, gathered 1100 BCE-100 CE
Structural Unity
• Hebrews—semi-nomadic pastoral people, left no work except
Bible itself
• Bible means “Little books”
• Shifts from prose: poetry
• Genesis—2 parts: first=etymological account; Chapter 11
changes, the story of Hebrew people as began with Abraham
and descendents; difference from Mesopotamian and Greek
stories is the focus on human beings (35)
• Good/evil here—Greeks=chaos/order, strife/peace (no moral
judgments)
Divergence
• “The difference between the Greek and Hebrew hero, between
Achilles and Joseph, for example, is remarkable, but the
difference between ‘the God of Abraham and of Isaac’ and the
Olympians who interfere capriciously in the lives of Hector or
Achilles or Helen is an unbridgeable chasm. The two
conceptions of the power that governs the universe are
irreconcilable; and in fact the struggle between them ended not
in synthesis but in the complete victory of the one and the
disappearance of the other.” (3)
• “The Hebrew conception of God emphasizes those aspects of
the universe that imply a harmonious order. Just as clearly,
the Greeks conceived their gods, in one of the aspects, as an
expression of the disorder of the world in which they lived.”
(4)
Design
• Biblical stories—Flood, Cain and Abel, Tower of Babel—stem from
Mesopotamian antecedents (Perry 28); Hebrews and Greeks borrowing
themes
• Narrative shape of book as single document that begins in Genesis with
origins and ends with apocalypse in revelations—creation of this world,
replacement of this world with next
• Humanity created in perfect union with God, humanity sins, falls, God
with covenant, renews that union (climaxes with the story of Moses and
the Promised Land, Jesus), and stories written in the wake of the Bible
• With covenant, God takes care, no labor, no pain, no death; the demand
side is obedience to rule
A Broken Covenant?: Three Days of Fay
http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Sidebar/2008/8/21/fay
_viewer_photos_page_5.html
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/usa/features/article_1425772.p
hp/In_photos_USA_Tropical_Storm_Fay?page=4
Alligator, Catfish Walk Onto Airport Runway During TS Fay
MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Melbourne International Airport workers had to clear away two gopher tortoises, four walking catfish, an alligator and
a blue indigo snake that had washed onto the active runway during Tropical Storm Fay.
The menagerie was discovered on Wednesday.
Airport officials said the tortoises were moved to the airport's designated gopher tortoise relocation area and the walking catfish and snake were
tossed into a nearby pond. The gator walked into a drainage ditch.
Walking catfish use their pectoral fins to get around on land and can breathe out of water as long as they stay moist.
http://www.nbc6.net/newsnet/17252134/detail.html
From the Fall to Reunion
• Hebrew: Torah (“instruction” or “guidance,” “law”);
Pentateuch; Old Testament
• Lessons learned? Fortunate fall?
• Humans—one with God and nature, then with fall, expulsion
from garden, drought and storms
• At odds with one another—Cain kills Abel after expulsion
• Cover selves in shame—alienated, self-conscious yet
“fortunate fall” into knowledge
• Covenants are made, broken, and restored as in the flood
• Tower of Babel, “new beginning” (35)
Patterns
• Narrative of fall into sin, out of sin
• Redemptive rise—story of Moses’ people who fall
into captivity, led into captivity, rise into
independent nation
• Fall of Adam and Eve into sin, rise of Christianity,
resurrection, thereby defeating sin and death in NT
• Patterns of 6, 7; fall; mark; covenant
Framing the Text
• “sacred text” as revealed truth
• J:
• E:
• P:
Yahwist (Jehovah)
Elohist
“priestly writer”
c. 1000 BCE “I AM”—Yahweh
8th c. BCE “Elohim” or El—“God”
7th c. BCE (adds Genesis)
• 3 main strands of text—3 writers—influence the organization
of the text—J—oral tradition—brought together. Genesis
added late but makes sense of later pieces.
History of Translations
»
Jerome—Latin Vulgate (tongue known by most of
the people—later “vulgar”)
»
Wyclif—English; early Renaissance
»
Tyndale—16th c. printing press—Protestant
Reformation
»
King James—1611—assigned task to translator,
most influential form of literature