Transcript From Classical to Contemporary

Civilization and Its Discontents
HUM 2051: Civilization I
Fall 2010
Dr. Perdigao
August 18, 2010
Timing
• Paleolithic (“Old Stone”) Age: 200,000-100,000 B.C.E.
• Neolithic (“New Stone”) Age: 10,000-4,000 B.C.E.
• 4000-1000 B.C.E.: Bronze Age
• Civilization: beginnings five thousand years ago in Near East
(Mesopotamia and Egypt) and then Far East (India and China) (Perry
8)
• 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
Developing Civilizations
• Writing: 3500 BCE—Sumer: cuneiform; Egypt: hieroglyphs (perhaps
learned from Sumerians), Coptic alphabet
• Assyrian: commerce; Babylonian: law
• Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE)—Babylon; “eye for an eye,” code
unearthed in 1901-1902 by French archaeologists (Perry 13)
•
http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/Law508/CodeHammurabi-1.htm
• Phoenicians (descendents of the Canaanites): alphabet
• Canaanites: writing, phonetic alphabet; Hebrews: religion
• Mesopotamian kings—not gods but selected by gods, difference from
Egyptian pharaohs (both man and god, earthly embodiment of deity
Horus [Perry 15])
• Egyptian polytheism, belief in afterlife
• 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
• Mythopoeic (mythmaking) view of the world, shared by
Mesopotamians and Egyptians (Perry 26-27)
• Mesopotamians’ contributions in mathematics—multiplication and
division tables, cubes, cube routes, area of right-angle triangles and
rectangles, circle divided into 360 degrees, basis for Pythagorean
theorem and quadratic equations (Perry 14); Egyptian calendar,
medicine (19)
Globalization?
• International empires—Indo-Europeans: Hurrians; Kassites; Hittites
• Phoenicians (descendents of Canaanites), Armaaeans, Hebrews
• Assyria, 9th century BCE, empire building, but spread culture of past,
Mesopotamia’s literature, religion, art (Perry 23-24)
• Destruction of Assyrian power, rise of Chaldean, Neo-Babylonian
Empire; Nebuchadnezzar (ruled 604-562 BCE), rebuilt Babylon,
Hanging Gardens
• After his death, civil war, Persia gains power under Cyrus the Great and
his son Cambyses (Perry 25)
• Aramaic emerges as uniform language, letters based on Phoenician
alphabet (Perry 26)
Framing
• 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—classical/pagan world of Greece and Rome and JudeoChristian world of Europe
• How we think of history—as a progressive narrative—as Homer does with
The Iliad (gold: silver: bronze: iron)
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, 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)
Design
• Biblical stories—the 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
• 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
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
• 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)
To Brueghel’s Babel (1563)
http://www.ecfs.org/Projects/Fieldston272/ClassNotes/INDEX
ED%20SLIDES/Sumerian_Babylonian/ziggurat3.gif
http://www.slu.edu/x32907.xml
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