Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site 3comvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!3comvax!michaelm From: michaelm@3comvax.UUCP (Michael McNeil) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Re: The Rock of Ages and the Ages of Rocks (Big Lie, Part 2) Message-ID: <254@3comvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 28-Oct-85 16:04:44 EST Article-I.D.: 3comvax.254 Posted: Mon Oct 28 16:04:44 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 30-Oct-85 06:19:11 EST References: <430@imsvax.UUCP> Organization: 3Com Corp; Mountain View, CA Lines: 164 [posted -- no eating or drinking.] Part 2 in response to Ted Holden's recent outpouring: "The Big Lie." > 1. The big lie: Man has been on this planet for at least a > million years, but only learned to read and write within the > last few thousand years. > > The reality, as stated by an Egyptian priest, speaking to > the Greek sage, Solon, in Plato's dialogue, "The Timaeus": > > "Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be > provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized > life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like > a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of > you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you > have to begin all over again like chilodren, and know > nothing of what happened in ancient times, either amongst us > or amongst yourselves. As for those geneologies of yours > which you have just now recounted to us, Solon, they are no > better than the tales of children. In the first place, you > remember a single Deluge only, but there were many previous > ones;..." It is precisely because civilizations have fallen, and what has come down to us has been transformed by centuries of folk tale and myth, that science discounts it as history. Yes, the Greeks, among other ancient civilizations, *have* been literate more than once. That's precisely the problem. How do people who have been blasted back to illiteracy manage to remember their history perfectly, hum? Are you arguing, Ted, that the Egyptians alone managed to survive a world- wide flood (and all the other disasters, apparently) and keep their correct history? Were the Egyptians -- not the Israelites -- God's Chosen People to have pulled off such a trick? Or could it perhaps be that the flood didn't *quite* extend around the *entire* world? I quote further from Plato's "Timaeus," which Ted conveniently omits (also attributed by Plato to the Egyptian priest speaking to Solon): When ... the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither then nor at any other time, does the water come down from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below; for which reason the traditions preserved here are the most ancient. So much for the world-wide flood, as well as the forty days and forty nights! But, despite direct contradiction by ancients whose words he claims to revere, Ted continues to maintain his same old swan song: > 3. The big lie: Stories of global floods and disasters really > amount to some imaginative primative hyping a story about a > flood in his back yard, or the local river overflowing its > banks, as in the words to "Zorba the Greek", thus: "I gotta > bigga creek, a shee'sa runnina thrua my backa yard, awhat'll > I do?..... You takea bigga spongea, an you putta da bigga > spongea inna da backa yard, an it'll > abZORBA DA CREEK." *Tee, hee*. How amusing, Ted. For comments, I simply refer to Plato. I quote from your earlier quotation, with the Egyptian priest speaking: ... like a pestilence ... [it] leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves. As for those geneologies of yours which you have just now recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children. I'd say that Egyptian priest back in the sixth century B.C. is smarter than you are, Ted. You're pretty gullible to believe children's tales. > The Old Testament describes only one global catastrophe, the > flood of Noah's day, in any detail; it describes meteorite > storms and near misses by other celestial bodies in numerous > other places, mainly the books of Isaiah, and of Joshua, > although these descriptions are laconic. Ovid's > "Metamorphoses", however, provides lengthy descriptions of > the flood as well as another global disaster, the legend of > Phaeton, which goes on for several pages. This is the Greek > and Roman legend of the near destruction of the world by > fire, and Ovid specifically recites devastation wrought in > every corner of the Earth of which he had any possibility > of knowledge, other than China, Siberia, and the Americas. This says it all, if only Ted would listen to himself -- "other than China, Siberia, and the Americas," indeed! Romans and Greeks were highly traveled but, as Ted admits, had no knowledge of areas outside of Europe, northern Africa, and western and southern Asia. Therefore, they had no "possibility of knowledge" whether purported devastation was "wrought in every corner of the Earth." Naturally, the poems and stories of the Greeks took place in those areas they knew something about. But the people who were alive during the much earlier epoch when those stories supposedly took place were even more restricted in their movements. Remember Homer? His was an age when it was still a big deal to sail from Greece to Sicily! This was at least as true for the Hebrews of the Old Testament. During early times the Hebrews were nomadic herdsmen and women who had originated in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, and never wandered very far from that region. They weren't seafarers or caravan operators, they weren't really cosmopolitan at all. Foreigners were heathens who carried contaminating ideas. The Hebrews' concept of "foreign" was Phoenicia or Egypt. Legends and myths regarding supposed "world-wide" disasters can be trusted only as far as the limits to the travels of the people who invented them. Regarding Plato's "Timaeus," I might also mention that Solon's tale is written in the form of a dialogue between four persons -- none of whom was Plato -- with the actual tale being related to Socrates and others by historically a rather infamous person known as Critias. Critias states that he heard the story in Athens when he was some ten years of age from another man named Critias, who at the time was about ninety. How the elder Critias knew the story so well is unclear, since Solon lived some 200 years before either Critias, and apparently Plato was the first to write it down. The elder Critias mused, wrote Plato: Yes, ... if Solon had only, like other poets, made poetry the business of his life, and had completed the tale which he brought with him from Egypt, and had not been compelled, by reason of the factions and troubles which he found stirring in his own country when he came home, to attend to other matters, in my opinion he would have been as famous as Homer or Hesiod, or any poet. In other words, after an unknown amount of interpretation over many centuries in Egypt, the story arrived in Greece, spent some 200 years being told and retold in the streets of Athens, then was related by a very old man to a young boy, who many years later repeated it to a small group, one of whose pupils much later wrote it up. Sounds like just the sort of story on which Ted Holden would bet his life! Plato has the last word: Solon ... made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old. -- Reference [1] Plato, "Timaeus," *The Dialogues of Plato*, translated by Benjamin Jowett, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., reprinted by arrangement with Oxford University Press, 1952, pp. 444-445. -- Michael McNeil 3Com Corporation "All disclaimers including this one apply" (415) 960-9367 ..!ucbvax!hplabs!oliveb!3comvax!michaelm Who knows for certain? Who shall here declare it? Whence was it born, whence came creation? The gods are later than this world's formation; Who then can know the origins of the world? None knows whence creation arose; And whether he has or has not made it; He who surveys it from the lofty skies, Only he knows -- or perhaps he knows not. *The Rig Veda*, X. 129