Civilization and Its Discontents

HUM 2051: Civilization IFall 2009

Dr. PerdigaoAugust 19, 2009

Origins

• 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—two sources—classical/pagan world of Greece and Rome and Judeo-Christian world of Europe

• How we think of history—as a progressive narrative—as Homer does with The Iliad (gold: silver: bronze: iron)

Timing• Paleolithic (“Old Stone”) Age: 200,000-100,000

B.C.E.• Neolithic (“New Stone”) Age: 10,000-4,000 B.C.E.• Climate change—Fertile Crescent, Neolithic

Revolution• Civilization: beginnings five thousand years ago in

Near East (Mesopotamia and Egypt) and then Far East (India and China) (Perry 8)

• 4000-1000 B.C.E.: Bronze Age

• 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

• All centers for Western Civilization

Contributors• Writing: 3500 BCE—Sumer, cuneiform (myths, polytheism);

Egypt—hieroglyphs (perhaps learned from Sumerians), Coptic alphabet

• Contributions in writing, mathematics, and astronomy in both civilizations

• Mesopotamian worldview represented as a “mood of uncertainty and anxiety, an awareness of the cosmos as unfathomable and mysterious, a feeling of dread about the fragility of human existence and the impermanence of human achievement” (Perry 13)—evidenced in The Epic of Gilgamesh

• Assyrian—commerce; Babylonian—law; Phoenicians (descendents of the Canaanites)—alphabet (centers to development of Western civilization)

• Canaanites—writing, phonetic alphabet; Hebrews—religion• Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE)—Babylon; “eye for an eye,”

code unearthed in 1901-1902 by French archaeologists (Perry 13)

• Neo-Babylonian Empire: Nebuchadnezzar builds, after his death, Chaldean empire falls apart, new power with Persians

• Aramaic emerges as uniform language, letters based on Phoenician alphabet (Perry 26)

Evolving Systems• Egypt—First Intermediate Period (2181-2040 BCE);

Middle Kingdom (2040-1786 BCE); Second Intermediate Period (1786-1570 BCE), with Hyksos invasion; New Kingdom (1570-1085 BCE) (Perry 15-16)

• Mythopoeic (mythmaking) view of the world, shared by Mesopotamians and Egyptians (Perry 26-27)

• 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

• Scientific method versus mythmaking: shared “rational forms of thought and behavior” (irrigation, calendar, mathematics) but not a “consistently and self-consciously rational method of inquiring into physical nature and human culture” (27)

• Contributions in observing nature, recording data, improving technology, but not advancing to “level of self-conscious philosophical and scientific thought” (“logically deduced abstractions, hypotheses, and generalizations” (Perry 28)

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 changes, 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)

Divergence• “The difference between the Greek and Hebrew hero,

between Achilles and Joseph, for example, is remarkable, but the difference between ‘the God of Abraham and of Isaac’ and the Olympians who interfere capriciously in the lives of Hector or Achilles or Helen is an unbridgeable chasm. The two conceptions of the power that governs the universe are irreconcilable; and in fact the struggle between them ended not in synthesis but in the complete victory of the one and the disappearance of the other.” (3)

• “The Hebrew conception of God emphasizes those aspects of the universe that imply a harmonious order. Just as clearly, the Greeks conceived their gods, in one of the aspects, as an expression of the disorder of the world in which they lived.” (4)

Design• Biblical stories—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

A Broken Covenant?: Three Days of Fay

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/usa/features/article_1425772.php/In_photos_USA_Tropical_Storm_Fay?page=4

http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Sidebar/2008/8/21/fay_viewer_photos_page_5.html

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

• Lessons learned? 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)

Patterns• Narrative of fall into sin, out of sin

• 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

Framing the Text• “sacred text” as revealed truth

• J: Yahwist (Jehovah) c. 1000 BCE “I AM”—Yahweh

• E: Elohist 8th c. BCE “Elohim” or El—“God”

• P: “priestly writer” 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