Irony of Meyer’s Kantianism

 

Berlin Chronologist

Dr. Eduard Meyer

Doubted Moses

 

Part Two:

Irony of Meyer’s Kantianism

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

“Meyer argued that the 'first fundamental task of the historian is to ascertain the

facts (‘Thatsachen '), which once existed in reality. …. He might - and this case does happen perpetually - create the nicest and most profoundest theories and combinations ... this all is of no worth whatsoever and leads the reader only astray into a world of fantasy, instead of into the real world'.”

 

André Reibig

 

Whilst this is good advice coming from Dr. Eduard Meyer, he himself apparently did not take it to heart as far as his chronology of ancient Egypt went, but ended up creating a mathematicised Sothic theory that achieved exactly what he was here warning against, ‘creat[ing] the nicest and most profoundest theories and combinations ... all … of no worth whatsoever and leads the reader only astray into a world of fantasy, instead of into the real world'. See my:

 

The Fall of the Sothic Theory: Egyptian Chronology Revisited

 

https://www.academia.edu/3665220/The_Fall_of_the_Sothic_Theory_Egyptian_Chronology_Revisited

 

which is a manageable version of my MA thesis:

 

Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian Calendar

 

https://www.academia.edu/2568413/Sothic_Star_Theory_of_the_Egyptian_Calendar

 

I have wondered if the German historian, Eduard Meyer (b. 1855) had, with his artificial approach to chronological reality, come under the influence of the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) and his a priori approach to extra-mental reality.

Though I myself am by no means a Kantian, far my favourite book on the subject of the philosophy of science is, by far, Dr. Gavin Ardley’s Aquinas and Kant, in which Ardley gives to Kant the credit for having uncovered the Procrustean nature of modern theoretical science.

 

Regarding the Procrusteanisation of history, here is what I previously wrote with heavy reference to Gavin Ardley:  

 

 “… It seemed to me as nearly certain as anything in the future could be, that historical thought … would increase in importance far more rapidly during the 20^th; and that we might very well be standing on the threshold of an age in which history would be as important for the world as natural science had been between 1600 and 1900”.

 

R. G. Collingwood, Autobiography

 

One may find rather illuminating - when considering Eduard Meyer’s artificially reconstructed (along Kantian lines) Egyptian dynastic ‘history’ in contrast to real objective Egyptian history - the Kantian-influenced professor R. G. Collingwood’s approach to history, as summarised by Gavin Ardley, in Aquinas and Kant: the foundations of the modern sciences (Chapter XIV: History as Science)?

 

Professor Collingwood

 

The modern progressive science of physics commenced when, in the words of Kant, we ceased to be like a pupil listening to everything the teacher chooses to say, but instead like a judge, compelled Nature to answer questions which we ourselves had formulated. It has been suggested in recent years that a progressive science of history might be started if a like Copernican revolution could be brought about in historical studies.

The late Professor R. G. Collingwood [d. 1943] was one of the leading exponents of this view. His thought is permeated through and through with Kant’s great idea about the Galilean epistemology, and he believed he could see a future for history as brilliant as the career of physics since Galileo.

He writes in his Autobiography [Ch. VIII].

 

Until the late 19^th an early 20^th centuries, historical studies had been in a condition analogous to that of natural science before Galileo. In Galileo’s time something happened to natural science (only a very ignorant or a very learned man would undertake to say briefly what it was) which suddenly and enormously increased the velocity of its progress and the width of its outlook. About the end of the 19^th century something of the same kind was happening, more gradually and less spectacularly perhaps, but not less certainly, to history.

… It seemed to me as nearly certain as anything in the future could be, that historical thought, whose constantly increasing importance had been one of the most striking features of the 19^th century, would increase in importance far more rapidly during the 20^th; and that we might very well be standing on the threshold of an age in which history would be as important for the world as natural science had been between 1600 and 1900.

 

History in the past was what Collingwood calls a ‘scissors and paste affair’. This was like physics before Galileo. Collingwood writes:

 

If historians could only repeat, with different arrangements and different styles of decoration, what others had said before them, the age-old hope of using it as a school of political wisdom was as vain as Hegel knew it to be when he made his famous remark that the only thing to be learnt from history is that nobody ever learns anything from history.

 

But what if history is not a scissors and paste affair? What if the historian resembles the natural scientist in asking his own questions, and insisting on an answer? Clearly, that altered the situation.

The past with which the historian deals is not a dead past, but a past which is living on in the present. With the Copernican revolution in our approach to this living past, history, so Collingwood hopes, will become a school of moral and political wisdom.

Collingwood peaks of political ‘wisdom’ being the Baconian fruits of this revolution. But on the analogy of the natural sciences ‘wisdom’ seems hardly the right term. Terms such as power, control, utility, prediction, would be more appropriate. This really is what Collingwood envisages in other passages. He writes: [Ch. IX].

 

It was a plain fact that the gigantic increase since about 1600 in his power to control Nature had not been accompanied by a corresponding increase, or anything like it, in his power to control human situations….

It was the widening of the scientific outlook and the acceleration of scientific progress in the days of Galileo that had led in the fullness of time from the water-wheels and windmills of the Middle Ages to the almost incredible power and delicacy of the modern machine. In dealing with their fellow men, I could see, men were still what they were in dealing with machines in the Middle Ages. Well meaning babblers talked about the necessity for a change of heart. But the trouble was obviously in the head. What was needed was not more good will and human affection, but more understanding of human affairs and more knowledge of how to handle them.

 

This increase in our ability to handle human affairs, then, is to be brought about by the same revolution which transformed natural science in the 17^th century, the nature of which revolution was first recognised by Immanuel Kant.

As Collinwood sees it, history as a science of human affairs did not begin to emerge until the 20^th century. In the pre-scientific history age men perforce searched elsewhere for a science of human affairs. The 18th century looked for a ‘science of human nature’. The 19th century sought for it in the shape of psychology. These both turned out to be illusory. But since the revolution in history, history has revealed itself as the one true science of human affairs. [Ch. X].

 

The Two Histories

 

We might point out, however, something which Collingwood does not make clear, and about which he was probably not at all clear himself. This is the matter to which we drew attention when we doubted the appropriateness of the word ‘wisdom’ for the knowledge acquired through the new science of history, and suggested such epithets as control, power, utility, etc., in its place. For, as we have insisted throughout this book, the fact that we have a Procrustean science does not mean that we have in any way abolished the structure of Nature, or that we can no longer know Nature in the way in which the philosophia perennis knows it.

Collingwood’s proposed Kantian revolution in history will give us, of course, a Procrustean categorial science of history. But real objective history will carry on just as before. The relation between the two will be like the relation of modern so-called ‘physics’ to real physics, i.e. of nomos to physis. [cf. e.g. modern sociology on the one hand and ethics on the other (Ch. XIII), or Freudian therapeutic psychology and rational psychology (Ch. XV)]. The term ‘wisdom’ is more appropriate to knowledge of the physis than to the categorial structure devised by the ingenuity of man. The latter, in the case of history, is a practical instrument of manipulation for the prince, the former is the pursuit of the real nature of history.

 

The Character of Scientific History

 

Collingwood laid down the general principle which must be followed if history is to become a science, but he did not pursue the subject into specific terms.

We might develop a scheme of procedure in history by following the analogy of modern physics. This suggests the introduction into history of laws, fictions, artificial constructions, etc., as in physics. The concepts of ordinary life must be replaced by others more convenient for our purpose. For instance, in the exact physical sciences, the English term ‘hard’, which is a familiar and vague expression, is replaced by a number of artificial but exact terms, such as malleability, shear modulus, tensile strength, etc. This would lead to a monstrous jargon in history akin to the formidable technical terminology of the Procrustean natural sciences. The new Procrustean history would now be only for specialists and would soon become as unintelligible to the layman as is modern physics. But its justification, if indeed it could be constructed, would be the pragmatic sanction of practical utility. It would be a handy machine for princes. It should be remembered too that the new history would be potentially a dangerous weapon, just as dangerous, if not more so, than the control we now possess over inanimate Nature.

Whether such a Procrustean scheme will ever be born remains to be seen. For the inherent tractability or intractability of the raw material forming the primary subject matter of the Procrustean science must have some bearing on the ease with which such a science can be developed. The Procrustean method has had its greatest triumph in modern physics. In the biological sciences it has made much less progress, and in the human sciences and history has hardly started. Is this comparative failure outside physics due merely to dilatoriness and ineptitude, or is there a more underlying cause: that the subject matter in the animate and rational worlds is so much more intractable that it does not lend itself to Procrusteanisation?

If a Procrustean history does emerge, as Collingwood hopes, there may possibly be in consequence an initial reaction away from classical history, like the reaction away from Aristotelian science, and indeed all things Aristotelian, in the times of Galileo. But such a reaction in historical studies would be as ill-founded as was the 17th century reaction.

Let wiser counsels prevail, and the two pursuits may go on side by side. To prevent confusion of the two, which caused so much trouble with the old and new physical sciences, it would be better to find a new name for the new Procrustean history. To go on calling it ‘history’ would be a perpetual source of confusion with real history. We would suggest the term nomics except that we have already applied that term to post-Galilean ‘physics’. No doubt some new term appropriate to the situation could be found.

[End of quotes]

 

Now I believe that the same type of artificial process has been applied by chronologist Eduard Meyer to ancient Egyptian chronology, which then became the yardstick for the chronologies of other ancient nations. With disastrous effect! (See e.g., Peter James’s Centuries of Darkness, 1990).

Dr. Meyer, endeavouring to bring some type of mathematical (astronomically-based) order to the highly complex Egyptian chronology (30 dynasties), imposed his pre-conceived system which, unfortunately, has no compelling basis in reality.

And Kant himself, mistakingly thinking that this  ‘a priori’ approach is how the human mind actually works, went on to develop an epistemology, a pseudo ‘metaphysics’, that - whilst it may be neat and convenient - is actually no more real than is Meyer’s Sothic system.  

  

Well, according to the following article, Eduard Meyer did indeed come under some degree of Kantian influence: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4321/1/2001ReibigPhD.pdf

 

Reibig, André (2001) The Bücher-Meyer controversy: the nature of the

ancient economy in modern ideology (pp. 67-70).

 

….

Diametrically opposed to Lamprecht's putative laws of 'mass-psychology', Meyer's own position is at first glance firmly rooted in the established tradition of German idealism àla Ranke and Kant. The Kantian influence on his philosophy came to light with the emphasis on the centrality of 'free will' (freier Wille) and 'accident' (Zufall) as a core notion of the historical enquiry. ….

Accident in history, for Meyer, is not to be understood as if a particular event did not have a cause. However, because of the fact that every action or event can be seen as being an effect and a potential cause at the same time, every human being faces the problem of reducing the occurrence of an event down to a finite number of causes. This is impossible for Meyer unless one reduces every event down to one ultimate and first cause: God, for instance. Yet this would only constitute a prima facie proof. Accident and free will undeniably have their place in human epistemology. As it was for Kant, Meyer also believed that man is capable of willing his own actions. The ability to will one's actions freely - the capacity of self-determination, is a proof of the epistemological existence of such a 'free will' . …. In this way, the historian is not interested in the causes of actions or events but in reasons, which are not reducible to a single overpowering force. Yet this is not to say that Meyer would deny the existence of physical or 'ideological' determination of an event. This causal analysis, besides its validity and scientific attractiveness, is however not the nature of the historical explanation proper. …. The historian's task is to give a teleological explanation; he seeks to grasp what a certain decision or event could have aimed at, and not primarily what caused it. Meyer's compatibalist view of the human will as both free and determined does not create a putative contradiction between accident and necessity, since they do not exist within the objects themselves. The latter are still subject to causality, but accident and necessity are properties of the categories, under which we subsume the particular phenomena ('Erschreinung '). ….

 

However, Meyer's analysis of the epistemological existence of 'free will' and 'accident' to which he devotes a good half of the THEORIE (pp. 5-34), appears elusive; in its quest to defend the fundamental importance of subjectivity and individuality in history it forms primarily a polemic against Lamprecht. …. For Meyer one of the many examples used in order to elucidate the possibility of 'accident' and 'free will' as predominant and an epistemological necessity in history, is the outbreak of the Second Punic War. According to Meyer, the historian should not consider primarily external causes, but rather treat them as results of a conscious decision (‘Willensentschluss '). …. Therefore, history deals with the analysis of the particular event; judging its importance by whether it had an impact on the world of human affairs, primarily politically but also culturally. Directed against his opponents Meyer argued that the 'first fundamental task of the historian is to ascertain the facts (‘Thatsachen '), which once existed in reality. If he does not follow this task ... if he does not know the particularities of the event...then his endeavour is nonrepresentational ... He might - and this case does happen perpetually - create the nicest and most profoundest theories and combinations ... this all is of no worth whatsoever and leads the reader only astray into a world of fantasy, instead of into the real world'. ….

 

Besides confining the primary task of the historian as basing his interpretation on the facts, Meyer lashes out once more against his opponents in the familiar guise of Karl Lamprecht and Karl Bücher. His accusations against them can be summarised under three points. First, to attempt to form generalisations about 'history life', which take a similar shape to the laws of natural sciences; laws can never be the object of history but only the precondition. Instead, 'the object of history is everywhere the enquiry and representation of the particular event' - 'the individual' ('das Individuelle '). …. Secondly, that they sought to deny the 'predominant influence of accident and the will of the individual personalities ... on the thoughts and views of the individual and the masses'. ….

Third, he complained that they aimed to 'postulate the dominant importance of mass phenomena, in particular economic 'laws', even though it is obvious that the whole economic development of wealth and the social shaping of a state or people (Volk) is dependent on political impulses' . …. For Meyer, the main error lies in the 'the idea of monism in the scientific world-view' and secondly in the geographical and mass-psychological approaches. …. Meyer highlights instead that the centrality of the event forms the basis of Ereignisgeschichte, ('event history'), which consists primarily in the documentation of facts. However, from generation to generation, history would put an ever-increasing burden of facts upon mankind, facing us with the problem of handling its sheer quantity. This Kantian consideration played an important part in Meyer's interpretation of antiquity. Friedrich Nietzsche, who became popular at the turn of the century, suggested that history should only be pursued for the sake of its usefulness to our present situation and not as an end in itself. This would mean that the historian's task does not exhaust itself in the occupation of the archivist or the heraldic story writer, but also in the critical investigation of the particular worth or value of an event or fact for our present. Such an analysis can only take place if the historian himself possesses the correct historical worldview. …. Meyer argued that the selection of what is historically important involves directly the present interests of the historian in 'what was effective and influential. …. He understood too that the interests and value judgements of the historian also come into play in his interpretation of historical events. …. Immediately, the question comes to mind as to what kind of criteria should the historian apply in order to distinguish between what has been influential and what has been trivial or worthless? At this point Meyer's methodology faces substantial difficulties. 'The answer can only be taken from the present; its selection lies within the historical interests, which have some kind of an effect onto the present'. …. Therefore, the starting point of the historical investigation has to be always the present, whereas the historical presentation starts with the earliest findings. …. Yet Meyer shows openness as to what this field of interest may be, which may catch the historian's attention. 'Sometimes it's this, sometimes it's that', he says, 'which appears in the foreground, politics, religion, economic history, literature and art and so forth. An absolute norm does not exist'. …. The only deterrent is therefore solely its effect on the particular present. At first glance it looks as if such a philosophy would create a scientific basis to allow any individual, state or nation to become the subject of historical investigation, however Meyer's whole endeavour runs into difficulties when he tries to assess which questions are important for the understanding of present. He wonders, since the future has not yet happened, how can we indeed assess which historical moments are able to enlighten us and which once may lead us on the wrong path? As for the historical personality, the historical event can be anything that the historian declares as important when determining the cause for a particular political decision made in the present. A historical tool such as this could be open to abuse and would not equip us with a standard to judge whether the historian has picked the 'right' events or not. However, Meyer does not allow for such an arbitrary and subjective selection, which would only lead into historical relativism. He argues that the 'more far reaching the circle of the effect of a particular historical event, the more important it is and the greater is the interest which we assign to it'. ….

 

 

Correcting the common perception of “Achior”



 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

“Achior is not simply a foil for the other characters in the book,

but acts as a double or alter ego of the character of Judith”.

 

A. Roitman

 

 

 

 

P. M. Venter begins with the understandable – but I think, wrong – presumption that Achior is an Ammonite, titling his article:

https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/1101/1995

 

The function of the Ammonite Achior in the book of Judith

 

Whilst this is quite a reasonable conclusion to make, considering the fact that the text of the Book of Judith, as we currently have it, will refer to him as “Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites” (Judith 5:5) and ‘Achior, you Ammonite mercenary’ (words of Holofernes) (6:5).

Confusingly though, a mere 3 verses before this (6:2), Holofernes will differently describe him as ‘Achior and you mercenaries of Ephraim’.

And that, I believe, is the right designation for Achior, “Ephraim”, given my identification of Achior with Ahikar, the nephew of Tobit, who was indeed a northern Israelite (Tobit 1:22): “Ahikar was my nephew and one of my family”.

Is Ahikar not even called, in the Douay version of Tobit, Achior?

 

P. M. Venter writes:

 

The character of Achior is depicted in several places in the narrative of Judith. We meet him the first time when Holofernes, the ranking commander of Nebucadnezzar [sic], king of the Assyrian, prepares for war against the Israelites of Judah. He is advised by Achior, the leader of the Ammonites, that these people living in the hill country worship the God of Heaven¹¹. Achior suggests to Holofernes to abstain from attacking them (Jud 5:24) because their lord and god will defend them (Jud 5:1–21).

Holofernes interprets this advice as an insult and bans Achior to the Israelite town of Bethulia where he would finally be killed along with the inhabitants when Holofernes’ army ravage the city (Jud 6:1–10).

Achior is next tied up and left at the foot of the hill at Bethulia. Having been untied again and brought into the town, he reports on Holofernes’ offensive against the Israelites and his effort to discourage the Assyrians to fight against God’s people. He is then taken to the house of the magistrate Uzziah where a banquet is held and the inhabitants pray all through the night for God’s help (Jud 6:11–21).

The first time we hear of him again is after Judith decapitates Holofernes and returns to Bethulia with his head in a food sack. Judith summons Achior the Ammonite to see and recognise the one who despised Israel. Either identifying the face of Holofernes¹² or witnessing the result of his former warning to the deceased, Achior faints, is picked up and throws himself at Judith’s feet and does obeisance to her. He requests her to report on what she did at [Holofernes’] … camp. He understands these events as God’s beneficial deeds to Israel. It moves him to believe in God completely. He is then circumcised and admitted to the community of Israel (Jud 14:5–10).

The narrator depicts the character of Achior by setting him in relationship to the other characters of the story¹³. In the conflict with Holofernes he witnesses to the God of heaven and thereby provokes his ordeal to die along with the people whom he defends. The narrator uses his character here to introduce the plot of the story and to indicate his viewpoint that nobody, not even the mighty Assyrians, are able to withstand the God of Israel. In the incident where he informs the inhabitants of Bethulia of Holofernes’ offensive, Achior acts as agent not only to prepare them for the onslaught, but he also directs them to their God for help. Again he functions as an expression of the narrator’s theological viewpoint. He gives a leading role in the events to a former pagan character [sic].

Comparing the role of secondary male characters in the stories of Judith and Jael, White (1992:10) indicates that Achior ‘is loosely modelled on the character of Barak in Judges 4 and 5’. Achior’s function in the story is the same as that of Barak. He acts as a foil for the leading female character, Judith. In both cases the male ‘characters leave the stage, only to return after the heroine has completed her action’ (White 1992:10). This technique focuses on the women as the heroin [sic], confirming ‘Yahweh’s use of a weak, marginalised member of the society in order to save it’ (White 1992:10). Although being a foil Achior plays a similar role as Judith in the narrative, both indicate persona non grata who are the heroes of the story. White (1992:14) indeed remarks that the parallels between the Judith and the Jael stories (Barak and Achior) go beyond correspondence in structure, plot and character.

In his study of the role and significance of Achior in the book of Judith, Roitman (1992:32) indicates ‘an especially intriguing structural relationship and a subtle complementarity between Achior and Judith’¹⁴. Achior is not simply a foil for the other characters in the book, but acts as a double or alter ego of the character of Judith. Thematically as well as functionally he is used in the narrative as the mirror image of Judith (cf. Roitman 1992:38)¹⁵. To study Achior and Judith’s respective functions in the narrative, Roitman (1992:33–38) divides the story into five stages. Initially Achior the Ammonite is the pagan [sic] soldier whilst Judith is the timid Judaean widow living a secluded life. Undergoing a change in their respective fundamental traits, the story ends where Achior becomes a mere citizen (as opposed to a leader) in Bethulia. He is circumcised and accepted in the society as a co-believer in God, whilst Judith changes into a military hero and commander in Israel and is hailed for her piety and role as the saviour of her people. Although coming from different walks of life both belong to the same community of faith, in the end having both contributed to the solution of the intrigue in their different ways.

His analysis brings Roitman (1992:39) to the question why the author portrayed Achior as the soldier and Ammonite as the thematic and functional counterbalance of Judith? It could have been done for more than purely literary reasons. It is possible that the story is the result of an underlying ideology of proselytism in this nationalistic book. Presumably the author wanted:

to teach us through this very sophisticated technique that a righteous pagan [sic], even one who belongs to the hateful people of Ammon, is, essentially, the parallel and complement to a complete Jew by birth, and that he is able to perfect his condition by believing in God and joining the people of Israel through conversion. (Roitman 1992:39)

Roitman (1992:39) is of the opinion that this ‘subtle ideology of proselytism’ substantiates his thesis that the traditions about Abraham were used by the author to depict the characters of both Judith and Achior. Referring to the witness of Achior in Judith 5:6–9 as ‘the Abraham section’, Roitman (1992:45, n. 51) comes to the conclusion that the book of Judith advances the doctrine that ‘the righteous pagan who converts to Judaism would also have, as the native Jew has, Abraham as his model or “father”‘ (Roitman 1992:40).

Judith 5:6–9 refers to the Israelites as the descendants of the Chaldeans who did not want to worship the gods of their ancestors in Chaldea. Abandoning the way of their ancestors they worshiped the ‘God of Heaven’. They were driven out by the Chaldeans from the presence of their gods and fled to Mesopotamia where they settled for a long time before moving to the land of Canaan. This description agrees only with the second item of the patriarchs in the Gattung of ‘historical review’ as indicated earlier in the article. As Israel is presented as a collective unit in Judith 5:6–9, Roitman’s acceptance of Abraham can be questioned. Other possibilities for the modelling of Achior should also be considered.

Moore (1985:163–164) indicates that Achior was a wise man, also in the technical sense of the word. He is depicted as an Ammonite form of Ahikar. Ahikar was a:

famous pagan wise man who was an advisor to the Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Esarhaddon and the reputed author of a wisdom book containing a number of proverbs and fables. (Moore 1985:163)

 

Mackey’s comment: Achior was indeed the wise sage Ahikar, but he was not an Ammonite.

I think that “Elamite” ought perhaps to be substituted for “Ammonite” wherever the latter occurs in the text, considering that Elam (“Elymaïs”) was where Ahikar had ruled on behalf of the neo-Assyrian kings. Cf. Tobit 2:10: “Ahikar took care of me for two years until he went to Elymais” and Judith 1:6: “Arioch, king of the Elymeans” (read “Achior governor of the Elamites”).

Venter continues:

 

The profile of this Ahikar as a good and just pagan fits the Achior of Judith. In the contemporary book of Tobit the Assyrian Ahikar has been Judaised. Moore agrees with Cazelles’ argument that Achior is an ethnic transformation [sic] of Ahikar. Roitman (1992:42) refers to this ‘Ahikar theory’ proposed by Moore and Haag, but strongly rejected by Steinman. Otzen (2002:108) doubts the theory that Achior and Ahikar can be identified with each other. His argument is based on the difference in status between the two: Ahikar is a Jew by birth, whilst Achior is a ‘genuine pagan’. Roitman (1992:32) criticises the aforementioned scholars for failing to see Achior’s ‘overall complex function and to integrate it into the structural framework of the story’¹⁶. Although it is probable that the tradition of Ahikar served as model for characterising Achior, it is necessary to rather study the narrator’s transformation of this figure in his story.

Moore (1985:167) calls Achior an ‘Ammonite “Balaam,” a Gentile who must speak only good about Israel’. The Ammonite Achior¹⁷ may have been based upon the tradition of Balaam son of Be’or (Nm 22–24)¹⁸. In the Deir Allah inscriptions he played an important role in the Ammonite literary tradition from at least 700 BCE.

Moore (1985) explains:

[J]ust as Balaam of Deir Allah brought to his people a communication from the gods, so later on another Ammonite, Achior, tried to enlighten his people about the nature and will of Israel’s God. (Moore 1985:167)

Moore correctly identifies Achior as a messenger of the gods, but does not ask the question of the role Achior plays in the Judith narrative and how his message fits into a totally different situation.

This brings us back to the question of intertextuality. Not only the probable source of the Achior character, but also the ‘stance’ and ‘filter’ (Stahlberg) is to be studied to identify the ideological purpose of the author in using the character of Achior.

 

Mackey’s comment: Achior does not compare at all well with Balaam.

Balaam was an inveterate pagan prognosticator who receives a very bad press in both the Old and New Testaments, and who comes to a sticky end.

 

Deir 'Alla inscription and the historical Balaam son of Beor

 

https://www.academia.edu/36938889/Deir_Alla_inscription_and_the_historical_Balaam_son_of_Beor

 

Achior was a wise Israelite, an almsgiver, who admittedly had to undergo a conversion (who doesn’t?), but who was exonerated and came out into the light.

See e.g. my article:

 

"Nadin" (Nadab) of Tobit is the "Holofernes" of Judith

 

https://www.academia.edu/36576110/_Nadin_Nadab_of_Tobit_is_the_Holofernes_of_Judith

Good heavens, Sir Arthur Evans!

 

 

 

“While he led the field in revealing Minoan art to the public, Evans allowed his literal reading of the Greek myths to distort his interpretation. ... Though extremely well versed in ancient Egyptian ritual ... Evans denied the influence of Egyptian religion on the Minoans”.

 

Susan Kokinda

 

 

 

According to Susan Kokinda: http://schillerinstitute.org/fid_97-01/fid_012_sjk_homer.html

 

Archaeology and the Truth
of Man's Prehistory

 

The study of man's most ancient past is more important to the success of his future, than most of us comprehend. Unfortunately, in recent centuries, this has been understood and acted upon, by the oligarchic forces in society who seek to reduce mankind to the condition of beasts, and have twisted the study of pre- and ancient history to prove their definition of man, the better to accomplish this end. Outside of the vast body of work by Lyndon LaRouche, which locates man as a creature of cognition who has understood and acted upon his world for hundreds of thousands of years, only a few determined individuals have succeeded in approaching any aspects of the study of ancient man and civilization from outside the dictates of that oligarchical elite.

 

One happy exception to that is the 1999 release of Homer's Secret Iliad: The Epic of the Night Sky Decoded, by Florence and Kenneth Wood. Written by the daughter and son-in-law of Edna Johnston Leigh (1916-91), this book presents and develops Leigh's hypothesis, that the Homeric epics fall within the oral tradition of other ancient epics which, through their sung recitation, transmitted to each succeeding generation profound scientific ideas concerning man's relationship to his universe.

 

Mackey’s comment: Previously I had made brief mention of the Wood’s extraordinary book:

 

This book makes real sense of The Iliad

From the flyleaf of Homer’s Secret Iliad, by Florence and Kenneth Wood, which was deservingly awarded Book of the Year when first released in 1999.

During the 1930s the young daughter of a Kansas farmer spent night after night watching the stars and planets wheel across the vast prairie sky. Later, as a teacher in England , she combined her devotion to astronomy with a passion for Homer. This led her to a discovery which would lie buried until her daughter, Florence Wood, inherited her papers in 1991.

 

Her years of study, it became clear, had revealed Homer’s great epic to be also the world’s oldest book of astronomy.

 

[My comment: The dating of the Iliad, and whether it really belonged to the presumed time of Homer, is actually a challenging issue of its own; one with which I hope to come to grips elsewhere].

 

The changing configuration of the stars, so important for navigation and the measurement of time, had a fascination for the ancient world that it has lost today. In the Iliad, battles between Greeks and Trojans mirror the movements of stars and constellations as they appear to fight for ascendancy in the sky. The timescale of Homeric astronomy is breathtaking; elements can be dated to the ninth millennium BC [sic], long before the recorded astronomy of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Geography is also represented, since the shapes of constellations were used as ‘skymaps’ to direct ancient travellers throughout Greece and Asia Minor.

 

[End of quote]

 

Related to this, one may read:

 

Taken from: http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1616697176973091291#editor/target=post;postID=5178291178604779880

....

 

Ever notice how hard it is to find a real nice cave man picture these days? Take it from me--it's not as easy as it used to be. Those classic artist renderings from a single tooth, from small bone fragments or from skull pieces -and on occasion, entire skulls permitted artists to let their imaginations run wild and silmultaneously to support the idea that our ancestors were primitive.

Click and drag photo to resize.

 

This of course supported evolutionary theory and caused many who believed in the Biblical view of creation to perplexedly wonder where cave men fit in.

As time goes by, the truth of what our ancestors actually looked like became more and more evident--like us, pretty much. That's why it's becoming more difficult to find those old cave man characterizations, even most "knowledgeable" evolutionists have to admit that "Cro-Magnon" and "Neanderthal man" are fully human. (Photo:top left; recent computer and/or forensic recreations of "Neanderthal", right and "Cro-Magnon", left who is scowling, of course. Far right: Cro-Magnon steps out.)

So while, in the past evolutionists have been drawing them as ape-like and brutish to drive home the notion that we have "evolved"--we now both (Christians & evolutionists) know that they look like what a Christian or Bible believer would expect--us. Not only that, when " "they" drew themselves from life, (15,000 years ago according to evolutionary time) they tended to look more like this (Photo: Below, left "caveman" self portrait) (more on these self portraits on page 2).

Obviously, this kind of look is more like what Christians might have expected. When's the last time you saw a representation of our supposed evolutionary ancestors with a Supercuts like trim and hat at a jaunty angle?

In Genesis, Adam and Eve are created without dragging knuckles--they raise children and carry on conversations just like "normal" people. They tilled the soil. They spoke to God. Evolutionists, however are tied to the idea of very primitive beginnings--where for long periods, our ancestors were not even fully men.

We've even come to accept the idea that larger brows or thicker bodies necessarily suggests less sophistication--less advancement. I laughed when I read this morning that this particular evolutionist had to admit that "Neanderthal" looked a lot like us but--probably was short and had sloping shoulders.

(See Also the cosmetic surgery performed on Neanderthal,in Buried Alive, by Jack Cuozzo--See page 8 of this section)That's still supposed to suggest that he was less advanced than modern man--but when you really think about it, --even if it were true about the shortness and sloping shoulders--all that would really mean is that there was little chance he could make it as a runway model.

Shortness and sloping shoulders--even a prominent brow have nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence, survival or level of "advancement".

You yourself may be short, have sloping shoulders and/or a prominent forehead. Even so, the evidence is that our ancestors were smarter, faster, and larger--had better eyesight, better technology than we suppose and were as "handsome" as we are.

And by the way, a cave man is simply a man (or woman) who lives in a cave! If they stooped, it was because the roof was low. Why were they in there in the first place? Perhaps war, pestilence, Flood, tower of Babel or other hardships forced men into caves for protection in certain locales and from time to time.

One of the items we discuss here below is suppressed information (over 100 stone tablets) that "cave men" had an early written language--much, much earlier than science admits.

 

See also: Scientists: Neanderthal More Like "Modern Man" Than Previously Thought

 

 

Susan Kokinda continues:

 

Such a concept of man and civilization, which could transmit science, through art, since no later than the end of the last Ice Age, flies directly in the face of modern archaeology, which has been dominated by the British establishment for two centuries. How that British oligarchy has sought to destroy mankind's true history, is captured in another book published in 2000, Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth, by J. Alexander MacGillivray. This history is the first even remotely objective assessment of the career of Evans, the celebrated excavator of Knossos on the island Crete, and the "discoverer" of the glories of a Minoan civilization, which he supposed to have given birth alone to later classical, Greek civilization.

 

The Role of Crete

For the word "discoverer," however, substitute, "fabricator." Without drawing the obvious conclusion himself, MacGillivray provides overwhelming evidence that Evans was a degenerate racist, deployed by the British Foreign Office, Prime Minister Gladstone, and Oxford University, at a minimum, throughout his life. His assignment was to erase the real history of Bronze Age Crete. That MacGillivray tiptoes around these conclusions is the great flaw of his book.

Ironically, however, MacGillivray was much more forceful and conclusive in a short article in the November/December 2000 issue of Archeology magazine, where he wrote:

 

"While he led the field in revealing Minoan art to the public, Evans allowed his literal reading of the Greek myths to distort his interpretation. ... Though extremely well versed in ancient Egyptian ritual ... Evans denied the influence of Egyptian religion on the Minoans. ... More amazing is how Evans conceived of the well-known ancient Egyptian symbol for the horizon, the slope between two peaks, which adorns colonnades and buildings in Minoan art. He transformed the horizon symbol into what he called Horns of Consecration, ritual symbols that were shorthand for his supposed bull cult of Minos. ... Once the trappings of his mythical agenda are removed, we will have to re-evaluate a large body of artifacts." MacGillivray went on to propose that the famous "bull-jumping" fresco uncovered at Knossos, is not a depiction of an actual Cretan sport, but rather, is a metaphorical representation of the constellations: "Orion confronts Taurus, composed of the Hyades and Pleiades, while Perseus somersualts with both arms extended over the bull's back to rescue Andromeda ... ."

 

It was his reference to Egyptian astronomy in that article which caused this reviewer to pounce upon MacGillivray's book, having long been convinced that the Cretan civilization of 2200-1500 b.c. was a critical link between the advanced astronomical knowledge which shaped ancient Egyptian civilization, and its influence on the development of Myceanean and classical Greece.

Unfortunately, the book is a disappointment in terms of stating those conclusions, or providing a fuller elaboration of Crete's debt to Egypt. But, whatever constraints caused MacGillivray to pull his punches here, Minotaur is, nonetheless, a useful, if academic, resource for documenting the extent to which the British establishment deployed to suppress a truthful history of the origins of Western civilization.

Evans' fraudulent treatment of Minos parallels the much better-known fraud of British archaeology, that civilization was born in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, around 2700 b.c. In manufacturing this "discovery," the oligarchy certainly chose a civilization in its own image: Mesopotamia was a society dominated by an elite class of priests and administrators, who held their looted populations in cattle-like backwardness, subservient to an autocratic and irrational pantheon of gods, notably the mother-earth goddess Ishtar (or Isis, the "Whore of Babylon"). Central to their method of control, was the priesthood's cloaking of its knowledge of the physical world in superstition, magic, and myth.

According to the oligarchy's Disneyland of ancient history, such cult-ridden societies erupted, autochthonously, out of nowhere, ultimately leading to the development of modern civilization. …. 

Part Two: Was Arthur Evans an inveterate racist?

 

“Evans arrived in Crete in 1893 and spent the next four decades creating a "Minoan" civilization in the image dictated by his, and his controllers', perverted worldview”.

Susan Kokinda

 

Susan Kokinda continues: http://schillerinstitute.org/fid_97-01/fid_012_sjk_homer.html

British Racist Evans

 

Returning to Minotaur and the life of Sir Arthur Evans, we can see how the British oligarchy will stop at nothing to enforce that latter conception. If one approaches MacGillivray's thoroughness from such an overview of the intellectual battle afoot, then the book is a goldmine. Without that overview, the text becomes tediously academic.

 

Arthur Evans was born in 1851, to a middle-class businessman father who had been picked up by British Royal Society circles, and groomed as a promising lackey in the relatively new field of archaeology. The young Evans was raised on a diet of Darwin, Huxley, and Aryan racial superiority. As MacGillivray reports, "Evans came to Oxford just as the Aryans marched from myth into history, and he was as proud as any other to proclaim his connection to them." Evans' racism was unabashed; he wrote in 1875 that, "I believe in the existence of inferior races and would like to see them exterminated."

He became the son-in-law of racist historian Edward Freeman, who once publicly expressed the wish that every Irishman would murder a Negro, and then be hanged, for the greater good of the Germanic race. (His marriage to Margaret Freeman, who shared the racist views of her father and new husband, was one of convenience, since Evans was a homosexual, whose sexual orientation became public toward the end of his life.)

 

Evans just barely graduated from Oxford, thanks to the intervention of his father and Freeman. His first assignment was as an intelligence agent deployed under the government of Prime Minister William Gladstone. Not yet 20 years old, Evans was arrested by the French as a spy in Paris in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war; then arrested by the Austrians in 1875 in Zagreb, during an insurrection against the Ottoman rulers; and finally arrested again in the Balkans in 1882.

 

Deployed vs. Schliemann

 

It was time to redeploy Evans, and his new assignment was to destroy the work of Heinrich Schliemann, and "replace" him as the preeminent archaeologist of Bronze Age Mediterranean cultures. Schliemann, a German businessman, was a lifelong lover of Homer's epics, who became convinced that Troy and Mycenae were not fictional locations, but grounded in history. He devoted his life to proving this--discovering, and excavating, first, Troy, and then, Mycenae.

 

Mackey’s comment: See my article:

 

Schemin' Heinrich Schliemann?

 

https://www.academia.edu/37036279/Schemin_Heinrich_Schliemann

 

Kokinda continues:

 

Evans was introduced to Schleimann in 1883 in Athens. In 1884, he was given the necessary credentials for his new career, and was appointed to head Oxford's Ashmolean Museum. During this period, the British, through Oxford, were running an "inside/ outside" operation against the influence of the Greek classics in education. Benjamin Jowett, representing the "pro-classical" side, was deployed to translate Plato's dialogues, so as to beat the ideas out of them, and render Plato an ancient Newtonian. Jowett's crime continues to this day, by the preponderance of his translations in modern editions.

 

Evans was groomed to cover the other side, attacking the "excess" reliance on the study of the Greek classics, and, then, sabotaging the study of the origin of Greek culture.

 

That Schliemann was diverted from travelling to Crete in 1883 and in 1885, in order to be honored by the British Royal Society and Queen Victoria herself, could not have been coincidental. Eventually travelling to Crete in 1886 and 1889, he was never able to obtain excavation rights, and died in Italy in 1890, on his way back to Greece and Crete. The possibility that his enemies orchestrated his demise should not be overlooked.

 

Evans arrived in Crete in 1893 and spent the next four decades creating a "Minoan" civilization in the image dictated by his, and his controllers', perverted worldview. Evans' assignment was to portray Crete as a mysterious, relatively advanced, autochthonous society, which gave rise to Mycenaean civilization, and from it, classical Greece. As MacGillivray demonstrated in the magazine article quoted above, Evans deliberately ignored, obscured, and even destroyed evidence that Crete and Mycenae were outposts of Egyptian colonization and science.

 

The ‘Minoan’ Myth

 

MacGillivray describes in detail how Evans simply rebuilt the palace at Knossos, and other structures, to conform to his preconceived fabrication of Minoan society. Even the term "Minoan" is Evans' creation; there is no evidence that the people of Crete ever called themselves "Minoan." (Prior to his trashing of Cretan history, Evans had performed a similar intellectual fraud on Stonehenge, describing it as a cult center of a prehistoric Aryan belief system, rather than the advanced astronomical observatory which it was in c.3000 b.c. [sic])

 

Along with this, MacGillivray provides extensive documentation of Evans' appropriation and manipulation of the work of some of his colleagues, and his outright destruction of the careers of others. Not only did Evans cripple the archaeological investigation of Cretan civilization, but he delayed for over fifty years a crucial breakthrough in the study of the early Greek language. Evans had discovered hundreds of baked clay tablets with a hitherto undiscovered form of writing on them, known as Linear B. In order to enforce the idea that Crete was an isolated, unknown culture, Evans insisted that the language could not be an early form of Greek. He refused to make the inscriptions available to others during his lifetime. It wasn't until the 1950's, a decade after Evans' death, that Michael Ventris, a young British architect and cryptographer, proved to the astonishment of the world's experts, that the language of the Linear B script was, indeed, an early form of Greek.

 

Evans' life and work exemplify the British oligarchy's method of holding back scientific advance. Through suppression of evidence--and, more importantly, through brutal imposition of his ideological assumptions--Evans reigned as the High Priest of a scientific inquisition for more than [fifty] … years.

 

Over recent decades, the discrediting of Evans, and of other elements of British-controlled archaeology, have broken that inquisitional control, and scientists and amateurs, such as Edna Leigh, are now making valuable contributions to the discovery of mankind's true pre-history. It is that history which the controllers of the Sir Arthur Evanses of this world fear the most.