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posted by martyb on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the is-there-an-app-for-that? dept.

Aramaic, a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic, was the common tongue of the entire Middle East when the Middle East was the crossroads of the world. People used it for commerce and government across territory stretching from Egypt and the Holy Land to India and China. Parts of the Bible and the Jewish Talmud were written in it; the original "writing on the wall," presaging the fall of the Babylonians, was composed in it. As Jesus died on the cross, he cried in Aramaic, "Elahi, Elahi, lema shabaqtani?" ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?")

But Aramaic is down now to its last generation or two of speakers, most of them scattered over the past century from homelands where their language once flourished. In their new lands, few children and even fewer grandchildren learn it. (My father, a Jew born in Kurdish Iraq, is a native speaker and scholar of Aramaic; I grew up in Los Angeles and know just a few words.) This generational rupture marks a language's last days. For field linguists like Khan, recording native speakers—"informants," in the lingo—is both an act of cultural preservation and an investigation into how ancient languages shift and splinter over time.

In a highly connected global age, languages are in die-off. Fifty to 90 percent of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken today are expected to go silent by century's end. We live under an oligarchy of English and Mandarin and Spanish, in which 94 percent of the world's population speaks 6 percent of its languages. Yet among threatened languages, Aramaic stands out. Arguably no other still-spoken language has fallen farther.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-to-save-a-dying-language-4143017/?all


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Wednesday July 31 2019, @09:13PM (11 children)

    by istartedi (123) on Wednesday July 31 2019, @09:13PM (#873728) Journal

    Do you have any proof for the hanging gardens of Babylon? Hamurabai? The Colossus of Rhodes? 2000 years from now: "There were 1000 foot towers in the city that stood for decades until terrorists flew planes into them". Yeah, tell us another fantasy story. "We had video, but it didn't survive the Great Restore from Backup in the 24th century".

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  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:18PM (10 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:18PM (#873753)

    Historians do not claim proof for the existance of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon at all, in fact they may have been a myth.

    There is proof of the existence of the Colossus of Rhodes, from the Wikipedia article:

    The statue stood for 54 years until Rhodes was hit by the 226 BC earthquake, when significant damage was also done to large portions of the city, including the harbour and commercial buildings, which were destroyed. The statue snapped at the knees and fell over onto the land. Ptolemy III offered to pay for the reconstruction of the statue, but the oracle of Delphi made the Rhodians afraid that they had offended Helios, and they declined to rebuild it.

    The remains lay on the ground as described by Strabo (xiv.2.5) for over 800 years, and even broken, they were so impressive that many travelled to see them. Pliny the Elder remarked that few people could wrap their arms around the fallen thumb and that each of its fingers was larger than most statues.

    As for Hamurabai, the evidence for his existence is pretty widely accepted, but even if he is just some sort of myth, no-one is claiming he "saved the world" or came back from the dead are they?

    If are going to make extraordinary claims, you need to produce extraordinary evidence, and as far as I can see, the evidence for the existence of an actual historical Jesus is pretty thin.

    • (Score: 1) by istartedi on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:45PM (6 children)

      by istartedi (123) on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:45PM (#873764) Journal

      As for Hamurabai, the evidence for his existence is pretty widely accepted, but even if he is just some sort of myth, no-one is claiming he "saved the world" or came back from the dead are they?

      Do we deify him? No, but apparently he has been in the past [wikipedia.org].

      He was a king so you'll have a much easier time finding evidence to support his existence since rulers would literally have things carved in stone that signified their reign. Proving that any agitator in ancient Palestine existed is, by comparison, a daunting task but because Jesus stands out in having started an enduring movement, there is actually some support [history.com]

      Aside from this, where do you stand on the existence of Buddha and Mohammad? Not their divinity, just their existence. Do you feel they are more or less likely to have existed than Jesus, and if so, why?

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      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:04AM (5 children)

        by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:04AM (#873789)

        As far as Buddha and Mohammad go, I have no idea about Buddha as I know almost nothing about Buddhism.

        Mohammad definitely existed, and we know that because of the many references to him from (and this is important to historians) different sources.

        Sources from almost every culture that existed in the Middle East refer to Mohammad and the Islamic culture that grew up.

        That is the difference with Jesus, there is almost no corroborating evidence that he actually existed, and the history.com article you linked does the usual thing:

        Among scholars of the New Testament of the Christian Bible, though, there is little disagreement that he actually lived.

        to which I reply, they would, wouldn't they?

        It seems to me that a certain amount of faith is needed to believe in the existence of Jesus as an actual person who lived, and historians don't rely on faith.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:14AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:14AM (#873791)

          Mohammad was also a published writer. In the March 652 a.d. iss u e of Goat Fuckers Monthly, he wrote a letter to the editor complaining that his goat had bad breath but was still better looking than his wife.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:45PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:45PM (#873979)

            Well, to be fair his wife was probably 10 years old at that point so who knows maybe she would be prettier when she passed puberty. Give it another 5 or so years.

        • (Score: 1) by istartedi on Thursday August 01 2019, @03:23AM (2 children)

          by istartedi (123) on Thursday August 01 2019, @03:23AM (#873853) Journal

          to which I reply, they would, wouldn't they?

          This position seems very "heads I win, tails you lose". What, pray tell, would you say if the only people defending the existence of Jesus were *not* Biblical scholars?

          I didn't know much about Buddha either, so I googled it. It's a lot like Jesus--very little Buddhist writing until about 200 years after his life.

          The difference might be that Mohammad engaged in conquest. War and its leaders create a lot of press, which is what becomes history. Jesus and Buddha, OTOH, created turning points within spiritual traditions. That doesn't impact the people who ultimately write history in the same way that an invading army does.

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          • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 01 2019, @03:45AM (1 child)

            by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday August 01 2019, @03:45AM (#873861)

            What, pray tell, would you say if the only people defending the existence of Jesus were *not* Biblical scholars?

            I would say "What's the evidence?" and if they showed me those passages from Josephus that seem to be about the sum total of evidence outside bits of the New Testament, I would continue to fail to take them at face value.

            Jesus and Buddha, OTOH, created turning points within spiritual traditions. That doesn't impact the people who ultimately write history in the same way that an invading army does.

            If there was any justice, Christianity would be called Paulism, because it was Paul who started preaching to gentiles. Jesus was pretty much all about trying to get Jews to be good Jews.

            Christianity would have continued to be just one of many Middle Eastern religions practised in the Roman Empire if it hadn't become politically powerful during the 4th and 5th centuries, and then made the other religions illegal.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:24AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:24AM (#873927)

              If there was any justice, Christianity would be called Paulism, because it was Paul who started preaching to gentiles.

              If you look at the Josephus quotes about Jesus, one mentions he had both Jewish and Gentile/Greek followers.

              Now, admittedly, it's the passage most likely to have been fucked with by Christians to suit their ends, but, it might explain the degree of hostility recorded in the stories by the Jewish authorities to this Jewish sect, Judaism being an exclusive club and all that, but excluding thIs 'sky fairy's chosen people' guff and nonsense, at that time they were fighting foreign influences on their culture in the shape of occupying Roman forces and their Greek teachers..so anyone opening up their club to foreigners would be a bit of a 'political' liability.

              I'm quite happy to accept the possibility that there was a Judaic sect which might have had a leader of the name Jesus, I might also accept that for politically expedient reasons, the Jews and Romans, either/or/both executed this leader, the sect, however, carried on, and at the point of the leaders death probably became more of a cult as I don't think they'd be welcome at temple, and, just like cults today, they attracted every gonif on the make in sight (hello there 'Paul', 'Matthew', 'Mark' and the rest of the motley crew..and look at the antics of the Popes, Bishops and Cardinals of the Roman branch)..and over the next couple of millennia this fun bunch of cultists ended up becoming the the fractious Christianity we know and loathe today..

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:04AM (2 children)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:04AM (#873868) Journal

      If are going to make extraordinary claims, you need to produce extraordinary evidence, and as far as I can see, the evidence for the existence of an actual historical Jesus is pretty thin.

      And the extant evidence for most ancient people is "pretty thin" by today's standards. There simply are incredibly few documents from ancient times that have survived.

      Note that I'm not saying there is any credible evidence of some guy that performed miracles and rose from the dead. I'm saying that there appears to be a dude name something like "Jesus" a.k.a. "Christus/Chrestus" who wandered around ancient Palestine, got associated with a new religious cult branch of Judaism, and was likely executed by Pontius Pilate. There are a few tangential references to this figure by third-party sources who were not in this dude's cult and even outside of his immediate municipality, which is more than you can say of a lot of famous ancient people. There is little evidence that he was hugely famous in his lifetime (not moreso than other "messiah" claimants in this region at this time).

      But I've had this debate a number of times on the internet, and I'm tired of it. It's not an "extraordinary claim" to say that some dude who wasn't very well-known during his lifetime didn't leave behind a lot of records that still exist 2000 years later. This is the same crap you see in the Shakespeare authorship debates, or sometimes even in debates around other people who are now very famous but weren't that well-known during their lifetimes (e.g., authorship questions or basic information about some works by J.S. Bach). The fact that we have ANY corroborating sources outside his immediate cult is actually already an extraordinary find, if you know anything about ancient historiography.

      Really, my perspective after researching this and seeing the opinions of a lot of ancient scholars is that most serious scholars treat the "historical Jesus never existed" argument as something bordering on conspiracy theory in terms of how ridiculous it is. I'm not talking about biblical scholars -- I'm talking about scholars who aren't in any way invested in Christianity but who understand how rare ancient documentation is. I mean, any serious historian will likely admit that its POSSIBLE he didn't exist, but it's also possible that Socrates never existed. Or any other number of historical figures for whom we mostly only have contemporary accounts from the immediate circle of that figure (with a couple tangential references elsewhere).

      The most convincing argument I've ever heard is a quite simple one: anyone who knows anything about the early church heresy debates know that there were a number of early Christian sects that sought to prove Jesus was not human or "never existed in the flesh" somehow. They desperately wanted to believe that -- because Jesus as a person conflicted with their idea of divinity -- but instead of just claiming it directly, they came up with all sorts of crazy theological justifications about how this dude was "not really" human or "completely" human or "was always God" or "not of the same essence" as the earthly world or whatever.

      People were around who supposedly met this dude. Some of their grandchildren were likely still around when these first serious debates within the Christian cult came about. If there were ANY hint even passed down vaguely that Jesus hadn't actually been a real person within this cult, many of these sects would have pounced on that notion. But we have no historical evidence of any of that type of argument happening in these early debates. Why not? The only likely possibilities are: (1) some dude named Jesus actually existed, leading to a very inconvenient fact for many early Christian sects who wished that a real human acting as a "god" wasn't something that posed a significant theological conundrum for them, or (2) the gospel writers pulled off perhaps the greatest conspiracy ever in the history of the world, dragging along some weird third-party references in other non-cultish sources with them, and nobody who lived in Palestine at that time ever hinted at the truth to the large group of early Christians who would find it incredibly useful if Jesus hadn't actually ever appeared in the flesh.

      Honestly, I'm more likely to buy a story of some dude rising from the dead than believing the latter conspiracy could have been successful given the historical context.

      • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:20AM (1 child)

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:20AM (#873869) Journal

        One final thing I'll just note is that my interest in this is primarily because I'm interested in the growth of conspiracy theories and fringe theories on the internet. The "Christ myth theory" is a theory like the Shakespeare authorship question that has always been "fringe" within actual scholarship and among people who actually understand a lot about how historical sources and historiography works. But such theories have grown a lot on the internet. I think the Jesus thing gets traction because there's a strong atheist contingent among folks on the internet who have been more aggressive than many atheists are in real life. (Note that I'm among these people who would claim to be atheist, though I've admitted this to very few people in real life.)

        But they're not content to just show that the Bible is steaming pile of inconsistent nonsense in places -- no, they want to latch on to the wackiest fringe theories and say, "See, Jesus didn't even exist!"

        As I said in my post, I'm not at all saying such an argument is impossible. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially when you're talking about non-famous, non-aristocratic people in a far-flung region off the main radar of the main record-keeping empires of ancient times. I truly wish the skeptics and atheists would devote their energies elsewhere rather than trying to promote fringe theories.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:02PM (#874250)

          Well, two things. First, of course the academia behind a historical Jesus says he is historical. For quite a long time, such thoughts could mean literal execution. Then, even when it was allowed, you then have the "this is fringe because no one ever talks about it; because no one talks about it, it is fringe." thing. In addition, in many ways, the repercussions of him being mythic goes straight to the core of their identity.

          But it is true, that many atheists also have a "show me the proof" attitude. In addition, most Christians hold the Jesus narrative to be literally true. So the combination idea of "show me the proof that the Jesus narrative is literally true" naturally falls out of such an idea.