Agent Monkeysee on 8/6/2006 at 15:06
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
Sure it ain't widely held
any more. People have smartened up since 400 BC. I'm talking about original intepretations and original intentions. We're talking about the very simple, uneducated, superstitious people that these early scriptures were first intended for.
You're going to have to go further back than 400 BC for original intent.
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
Well duh. They're not wandering desert tribes any more are they - would you still be traipsing through dusty wasteland if you hit upon a lucrative business model like that either?
Your lucrative business model wouldn't have any relevance to wandering desert tribes, which is the biggest problem with your "Genesis: The Truth Revealed" rant. Are you seriously arguing that the Israelite authors had the forsight to write a story that wouldn't be politically useful until at least 1000 years after the fact?
RyushiBlade on 8/6/2006 at 19:17
Raven's comment has so far gone relatively unnoticed. I think it's interesting that we could be missing a good 900 years. Interesting, but doubtful.
The Romans were notoriousy
bad at keeping dates. They adjusted their calendar pretty often. Even so, I find it hard that the Romans could misplace 900 years. Though it was a fairly strange setup, Roman years averaged out somewhat close to ours (between 365 and 367 days a year). Even if we had contined to use the Roman Calendar, we'd be off by only a few years at most.
The reason we may have confusion over the dates is because before the Julian calendar (c. 46bc) most everyone outside of Rome didn't know the date. During the Punic Wars, and most any other war, even the Senate could lose track of the date. When Caesar came about, the Roman Calendar effectively died when everyone forgot what day it was. Caesar then had the Julian Calendar made up to take its place.
The Gregorian Calendar, impemented in the 1582, took the place of the Julian calendar. The Western Empire collapsed around 400ad, and the Eastern Empire survived until around 1461.
Assuming the Romans were able to find their asses in the dark, even with both hands and a flashlight, and also assuming the Eastern Empire used the Julian Calendar, we've got as little as 100 years between the Julian and the Gregorian Calendar. It's pretty unlikely that anything the size of 900 years was added in to make things look pretty.
The Julian Calendar added one day every 134 years, or so says (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar) Wikipedia. Doing a quick calculation which is indubiously wrong, we get a total of 12 days which don't exist. Whether those 12 days were corrected when the Gregorian system was implented or not, I don't know.
So. In summary: From ~0bc to 46bc, we used the Roman Calendar, which may have potentially added as much as two or three years. No one really knew what was going on then. From 46bc to 1582 we used the Julian Calendar, which may have added as much as 12 days. From 1582 to present day, we use the more accurate Gregorian Calendar, which probably doesn't add very many days at all. You'd be hard pressed to say that from 0bc to present day, anything more than five years were added. But then, I'm no scientist.
Like anyone is going to read all THAT...
TheGreatGodPan on 8/6/2006 at 21:23
I don't think during the time Genesis was written you had to tell anybody to be ignorant. It's everyone's default setting and the literacy rate was approximately nil for any of the non-elite. The "Humanity is incapable of understanding the universe and makes up god and religion as a simple explanation"* premise goes a hell of a lot further for me than "It's all a conspiracy!".
*Not saying I believe it, I'm still a Christian, it just has some sense to it.
Agent Monkeysee on 8/6/2006 at 21:31
Quote Posted by RyushiBlade
Raven's comment has so far gone relatively unnoticed. I think it's interesting that we could be missing a good 900 years. Interesting, but doubtful.
Yeah I completely missed that. The idea that we're missing 900 years is laughable unless you assume that Western Europe was the only civilization that recorded anything ever. As you already pointed out the Eastern and later Byzantine Empire was going strong for those "missing" 900 years but outside of that we have plenty of records from Asia, Persia, India, the Islamic Empires, and Northern Africa.
The Dark Ages wasn't a global phenomenon you nudniks.
Raven on 8/6/2006 at 23:09
to be fair I believe the headline was making the most noise about the 900 odd years, the author listed possibilities along the lines of 35, 100, or even 900 in the extreme case. I still haven’t found the article though.
The main thrusts was that while we may have records from different assumed “periods” and even from different parts of the world, it is (apparently) possible that some of the periods were taking place at the same time or grossly overlapping. I wouldn’t even pretend to know anything about historical dating or research (beyond high school, you crazy manifest destiny Americans you) but if it came to a matter of trust on accuracy between an historian or a physicist I would easily choose the physicist.
What I find interesting is the idea of tying historical accounts of astronomical phenomena to actual predicted charts – if it was pulled off with significant correlation between multiple events then we could at least nail down a constant timeline between the earliest event and today… which could be a first step into the decimalisation or even the universalising of time… mawhahaha (stupid inaccurate planetary orbit, yet still in a fight between the solar system and an historian/archivist you know the solar system is going to win)
Agent Monkeysee on 9/6/2006 at 00:19
Quote Posted by Raven
...but if it came to a matter of trust on accuracy between an historian or a physicist I would easily choose the physicist.
I wouldn't in this case because the physicist is using the same incomplete and inscrutable historical records as the historian except without the academic background and in a much narrower context.
nolf23 on 17/6/2006 at 18:23
I was brought up to believe that 666 is how many pancakes it would take to fill a dog house!:wot:
trevor the sheep on 17/6/2006 at 21:40
:wot:
Para?noid on 17/6/2006 at 23:01
snroh htiw dog a
Trans Canada Highway was going to be released on 06.06.06, as well :D
