Sushan wrote: ↑March 5th, 2021, 11:21 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: ↑March 5th, 2021, 4:28 pm
Sushan wrote: ↑March 5th, 2021, 11:52 am
Sculptor1 wrote: ↑March 5th, 2021, 7:03 am
I am a student of history.
All books of myth including The Iliad, the Aeneid, can be tapped for historical content, but only if you disregard the obviously fantastical claims such as talking horses, cyclopses and witches.
We can extend this to the Mahabarata, and many other ancient books.
But were we to claim that there was really a Blue Boy with magical powers, we would not be doing philosophy. As one does not accept the impregnability of Achilleus, we cannot also pretend that there was a monkey god who could shapeshift.
The works of Homer do relate that a war between Greek speakers and inhabitants of "Troy" took place. WHilst it is likley that such a conflict did happen, it is speculation that any of the characters involved were in any sense real people. What is useful to reflect upon is that later Greek speaking Poleis did consider it part of their history, few rational people would even than have accepted the god-like characteristics described of the heroes.
The book in question does not treat the bible in an appropriate way. It is not history, but it is simply Apologism.
I agree. Seemingly the author's intention has been giving some legitimacy for a mythical bbiblical story by comparing it with compelling scientific evidence. Yet, there are historical facts and figures that this author is showing. I am not a student of history, yet I believe that some of these things have actually happened in the history (like Trojan Horse). So, though this is not a history book, I think that some of its facts have some sort of a historical value
Their is no evidence for a Trojan horse.
I doubt this book has anything of historical value.
The author is not a historian. He qualified as in engineering physics, and this book is "delf published" - in other world no publisher was willing to take it on.
I see. Trojan horse was just a creation of Homer.
No. You are not speaking from knowledge.
The horse does not appear in Homer.
It comes to us through Virgil
But the attack on Troy was true. So maybe the biblical stories have that sort of a historical value.
The location is Troy is still a speculation.
Wars are a constant factor of humanity, and it is no surprise that Schleiman found a buned level at the site he took to be Troy but later archaeology (where the evidence had not been completely ruined by his digging) shows that the burned layer on the site was at least 700 years earlier.
As of today the many sites that are candidates may or may not refer to what is essentially a "story" and not an "account" of an actual event. Most scholars regard Homer as giving a consdensed view of a long oral history.
I can tell you more about this, if you are interested, since I studied this in detail.
As for the bible, there are many inconsistencies and downright falsehoods.
Even so mundane a fact as Jews in Egypt is a speculation for several reasons.
There is not one scrap of evidence fro Egypt of the Jews ever being there. And compared to all other places Egypt provides the richest source of ancient history.
So what the bible is useful for is to understand how religions seek to invent for themselves a deeper history. Judaism was a new religous movement that emerged as late as 700bc, and they basically invented the genesis and exodus story it seems, from a point of ignorance.
Tell me why they thought the name of the ruler of Egypt was "Pharoah"? They did not seem to know which one. If they had then it would have been possible to date the exodus.
But the clown who wrote and self-published this book is not interested in any of that. He want so understand the meaning of the universe from the accounts of some post dark age goat herders.
This is insane.
And, yes, this author was not a historian, but he claims of studying the various scriptures (and I understand that scriptures cannot be taken as historical evidence either). And the book is self-published, and we actually do not know why is that, because this book has got many positive reviews and some author should have agreed to publish it. Maybe the author just self-published it.
Anyway, I agree with your point on that this book or this author's area of interest is not of any value when it comes to studying history.