Persian Influence on Greek Thought



 

 

[AMAIC: Or is it rather exilic Jewish Wisdom (appropriated by the Greeks) influencing Persian thought?]


 

Taken from: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/greece-iii

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The idea of Iranian origins of Greek philosophy had a legendary aura, either by declaring that Pythagoras had been Zoroaster’s pupil in Babylon, or by writing, as did Clement of Alexandria, that Heraclitus had drawn on “the barbarian philosophy.”

GREECE

iii. PERSIAN INFLUENCE ON GREEK THOUGHT
IRAN AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY


The idea of oriental, and especially Iranian, origins of Greek philosophy was endowed by antiquity with a legendary aura, either by declaring that Pythagoras had been Zoroaster’s pupil in Babylon (a city where neither of them had probably ever been), or by writing, as did Clement of Alexandria (Clement of Alexandria, 5.9.4), that Heraclitus had drawn on “the barbarian philosophy,” an expression by which, in view of the proximity of Ephesus to the Persian empire, he must have meant primarily the Iranian doctrines.
The problem, studied seriously since the beginning of the 19th century, has often been negatively solved by the great historians of Greek philosophy; but it seems, nevertheless, repeatedly to rise anew like the Phoenix from its ashes, as though the temptation to compare the two traditions and discover a bond of interdependence between them periodically became irresistible.
Pherecydes of Syros was one of the first Greek prose writers and may be considered, as the author of a theogony-cosmogony, to have been a precursor of the Ionian philosophers. He told of the marriage of Zās and Chthoniē. Zās, genitive Zantos, is a conflation of Zeus with the Luvian god Šanta, which points to a region in western Asia Minor from which Pherecydes’ father Babys or Babis originated (West, p. 243). A third god in Pherecydes’s narrative was said to have produced from his own seed, fire, wind, and water; he is called in some sources Kronos, in others Chronos. Both gods were later identified, but we do not know which of the two Pherecydes meant. If he meant Chronos, the question arises of a borrowing from Iran. Zurvan, mentioned as a minor deity in the Avesta (see Zaehner, p. 57; Gray, Foundations, p. 124), was ignored by Zarathushtra, perhaps on purpose, as Mithra was also omitted. Anyhow, Zurvan is attested in Elamite tablets (509-494 B.C.E.) in the name Izrutukma (i.e., *Zru[va]taukma “descended from Zurvan”; see Schwartz, p. 687). The myth of his giving birth to Ohrmazd and Ahriman as recounted by Eznik Kołb in the 5th century (q.v.; see Zaehner, pp. 60-61) and not attested, indirectly before Eudemus of Rhodes (4th century) may, however, have had Indo-Iranian roots, for in India Prajāpati, connected with time, offered sacrifice, like Zurvan in Iran, in order to get a progeny and, just like him, doubted once about the efficacy of his ritual. Pherecydes may therefore, if he wrote about Chronos, have borrowed him from the Magi who, perhaps under the threat of Cyrus, had emigrated to Asia Minor.
Anaximander, according to Hippolytus’ evidence (Refutatio omnium haeresium 1.6), taught that the spheres of the heavenly bodies followed one another in this order, starting from the earth: the stars, the moon, and the sun. The Avesta (Hādoxt nask 2.15; Yt. 12.9 ff.) teaches that the souls of the dead reach paradise through three intermediate stages: humata (good thoughts), huxta (good words), and huuaršta (good deeds). Now, according to the Pahlavi books (e.g., Mēnōg ī xrad 57.13), each of these stages is respectively identified with the place of the stars, the moon, and the sun. It is obvious that the stars, the moon, and the sun follow each other in the order of increasing light, and this progression is completed in a fourth and final stage, which is the destination point of the soul’s journey; one of the Pahlavi names of Paradise is, in fact, anaγrān “beginningless (lights)” (Frahang ī pahlavīk 28). To each stage there corresponds a category of living beings: to the stars, the plants; to the moon, the animals; to the sun, man; to the beginningless lights, the gods or God. The hierarchy between these beings is obvious. So we can explain, through Iran and by means of an organic body of beliefs, Anaximander’s doctrine on the spheres of the stars, the moon, and the sun (see also Panaino, pp. 205-26).
Everything that exists comes, according to Anaxi-menes (Diels, I, p. 22) from a single substance, aēr, which notably means wind. In Iran it is said in the Dēnkart (278.14) that “He who quickens the world and is the life of living things is Wāy, etc.” The existence of a great god Vayu, already Indo-Iranian, is warranted by similar testimonies in the Rig Veda (4.46 etc.).
Anaximenes’ explanation of eclipses as being caused by dark bodies has its counterpart in Dāmād nask, in Šāyest nē šāyest (12.5). These dark sun and dark moon are not mentioned in the Avesta, but, as writes West (p. 108), “One would not expect to find a theory of eclipses in the Avesta,” at least not in the extant, liturgical part of it.
The question of an Iranian origin of Heraclitus’s doctrines was raised by Friedrich Daniel Schleiermacher, whose work as well as that of his successors Friedrich Creuzer, August Gladisch, etc., have been reviewed by Martin Lutchfield West (pp. 166 ff.). There are several fragments which expound Heraclitus’s reflections on fire. “This cosmic order, which is the same for all, was not made by any of the gods or of mankind, but was ever and is and shall be ever-living fire, kindled in measure and quenched in measure” (Fr. 29); “the transformations of fire: first sea, and of sea, half is earth, half fiery water spout” (Fr. 32); “all things are counterparts of fire, and fire of all things, as goods of gold and gold of goods” (Fr. 28). According to Heraclitus, “fire lives the death of the earth, and air lives the death of fire, water lives the death of air, and earth that of water” (Fr. 76). Another fragment names lightning: “The thunder-bolt steers all things” (Fr. 64). And another one says that fire is to judge all things at the end of the world (Fr. 72).
In the Gāθās the role of fire is fundamental. Twice Zarathushtra calls upon “the fire of Ahura Mazdā,” either to make offerings to it (Y. 43.9) or to acknowledge its protection (Y. 46.7). In all the other passages, fire is an instrument of ordeal. Ordeal is found only once in the Gāθās (Y. 32.7) as an actual practice, but several times there is reference to a future ordeal which is to be made by means of fire to separate the good from the wicked. Here fire is the instrument of truth or justice (aṧa, q.v.), from which it derives its power (hence the epithet aṧa-aojah). This connection of fire with aṧa is constant, e.g, “I wish to think, insofar as I am able, of making unto thy fire (O Ahura Mazdā!) the offering of veneration for Aṧa” (Y. 43). And when each of the elements are placed under the protection of the Aməṧa Spəntas, who surround Ahura Mazdā (qq.v.), Aṧa is the patron of fire.
There was also a doctrine of cosmic fire. Fire penetrated all the six stages of creation. Although this is not attested before Zādspram’s Wīzīdagīhā (1.25), its antiquity is proven by the appearance, both in Iran and in India, of two equivalent classifications, one in three fires, one in five.
Parallel to the relationship of fire with Aṧa is Heraclitus’s doctrine that fire is ruled by Dikē “Justice” (not by the Logos as is the case in the Stoic interpretation of Heraclitus). As West writes (p. 137), “the sun’s measures are maintained, through the Erinyes, by Dikē, and since the sun’s measures cannot be isolated from the measures of the world at large, it must be possible to say that Dikē governs the whole process.”
Heraclitus’s god watches men the whole time, not only by day. Ahura Mazdā sees all that men do (Y. 31.13) and is not to be deceived (Y. 45.4). He is never asleep and never dulled by narcotics (Vd 19.20). “Heraclitus’ conception of the soul’s history is, from a Greek point of view, novel. It has a deep ‘account’ that increases it-self . . . According to the Pahlavi books [e.g., Mēnōg ī xrad 2.118 ff.], at death, the soul’s good and bad deeds are counted up, and determine its fate” (West, p. 184).
The fravašis (q.v.) are parallel to Heraclitus’s hero-spirits and to the immortals “that live the death of mortals.” “Heraclitus’ novel emphasis on the function of Eris or Polemos in determining the apportionment of the natural world, his conviction that opposition is the essence of the universe has long seemed to comparativists a counterpart of the Zoroastrian doctrine of agelong war between Ahura Mazdā and Aŋra Mainiiu. Heraclitus strikes a prophetic note that has reminded more than one reader of Zoroaster” (West, p. 186).
Pausanias attributed to the Chaldaeans and the Magi an influence on Plato’s teachings. And Aristotle at one time considered Plato the founder of a religion of the Good and therefore a continuator of the work of the ancient prophet (Jaeger, pp. 13 ff.). In the myth of Er, the souls must choose between two paths: on the left is the way to descend from heaven to hell, on the right is the ascent of the souls who rise from the Tartarus up to the stars (Replica 614 CD). The very idea of this ascension was quite new in Greece and must have come from the Zoro-astrian belief in the primeval choice and in the Činuuatō Pərətu (see ČINWAD PUHL) separating the good from the wicked. Plato may have heard of it through Eudo-xus of Cnidus, who was well aware of the doctrines of the Magi. In the myth of the Politic, Plato envisaged the idea of an alternate predominance of a good god and an evil god, an idea he may have learned from the Magi. But he decidedly refused it. In the Timaeus time is given as the mobile image of immobile eternity, maybe a Platonic transposition of the Iranian distinction between “time long autonomous” and “time infinite” (Av. zurvan darəγō.xᵛaδāta- and zurvan akarana-; see Air Wb., cols. 46 696). The Timaeus owed much to Democritus, whose relationship with the teachings of the Magi is well attested. In the Phaedrus, Plato, with reference to Hippocrates, views man as an image of the world, a microcosm, an idea propounded in the Dāmdāt nask, a lost part of the Avesta summarized in the Bundahišn and whose antiquity is proved by the Indo-Iranian myth of a primeval man sacrificed and dismembered to form the different parts of the world (Duchesne Guillemin, 1958, pp. 72 ff.).
Empedocles already shared the microcosm idea, which governed the conception of medicine he had inherited from the Cnidian school, influenced by Iran. He also declared that “the general law is widely extended through the ether of the vast dominion and the immense brightness of the sky,” (Fr. 38), which harks back to Heraclitus and, through him, to Zarathushtra proclaiming the coincidence of Aṧa with the light (Y. 31.7).
The Chaldaic Oracles, despite their fire-cult, probably owe nothing to Iran (contra: des Places, p. 13). Greek mágos, magikós, magía come from Old Persian maguš, but how to trace Iranian elements in Greek magic? The Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha were not written by Hellenized Magi, who may never have existed (R. Beck apud Boyce and Grenet, Zoroastrianism, pp. 491-565).
Three kinds of medicine were distinguished, through spells, the knife, or herbs, both in Iran (Vd. 7.44) and in Greece (Pindar, 3.47-55), not elsewhere; borrowing seems, therefore, plausible, either way (Dumézil, pp. 20 ff.).
Bibliography: Ruhi Muhsen Afnan, Zoroaster’s Influence on Greek Thought, New York, 1965. Joseph Bidez, Eos ou Platon et l’Orient, Brussels, 1945. Joseph Bidez and Franz Cumont, Les mages hellénisés, 2 vols., Paris, 1938; repr. 1973. M. Burkert, Iranisches bei Anaximander, Rheinisches Museum 106, 1963, pp. 97-134. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5.9.4. Hermann Diels, ed. and tr., Die fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols., 1922. Jacques Duchesne Guillemin, The Western Response to Zoroaster, Ratanbai Katrak Lectures for 1956, Oxford, 1958. Idem, “Persische Weisheit in griechischem Gewande?” Harvard Theological Review, April 1956, pp. 115-22. Idem, “Notes on Zervanism in the Light of Zaehner’s Zurvan, with Additional References,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 15, April 1956, pp. 108 ff. Idem, “D’Anaximandre à Empédocle: Contacts gréco-romano,” La Per-sia e il Mondo greco-romano, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, 1966, pp. 423-31. George Dumézil, Le Roman des Jumeaux, Paris, 1994. Gherardo Gnoli, “Zoroastro nelle fenti classiche,” Studi Urbineti, B Sciense umani e sociali 67, 1995-96, pp. 281-95. Idem, “Zoroastro nelle nestra cultura,” ibid., 68, 1997-98, pp. 205-19. Louis Gray, Foundations of Iranian Religion, Bombay, 1929. Werner Wilhelm Jaeger, “Aristotle’s Praise of Plato,” Classical Quarterly 21, 1927, pp. 13 ff. Wilhelm J. Wolff Koster, Le mythe de Platon, de Zarathoustra et des Chaldéens, Leiden, 1951. Antonio Panaino, “Uranographia Iranica: The Three Heavens in the Zoroastrian Tradition and the Mesopotamian Background,” in Rika Gyselen, ed., Au carrefour des religions: Mélanges offerts à Philippe Gignoux, Res Orientales 7, 1995, pp. 205-26. Pindar, Pythionikai, 3.47-53. Edouard des Places, ed. and tr., Oracles chaldaïques, Paris, 1971. Martin Schwarz, “The Religion of Achaemenian Iran,” in Camb. Hist. Iran II, pp. 664-97. Henrik Willem J. Surig, De betekeris van Logosbij Herakleitos volgens de traditie en de fragmenten, Nijmegen, 1951. Martin Litchfield West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient, Oxford, 1971 (to which the present article owes a great deal). Robert Charles Zaehner, Zurvan. A Zoroastian Dilemma, Oxford, 1955.


(Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin)
Originally Published: December 15, 2002
Last Updated: February 23, 2012
This article is available in print.
Vol. XI, Fasc. 3, pp. 319-321



Biblical Queens Roamin' Into Roman History (So-Called)



For full article, see:
http://prophetess.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/Zlotnick.htm

Helena ZLOTNICK

Biblica 82 (2001) 477-495

From Jezebel to Esther:
Fashioning Images of Queenship in the Hebrew Bible

 

 

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II. The Two Faces of Queenship

 

Casting an Esther as a Jezebel carried, potentially, dangerous connotations. The hostility of biblical narrators to queens who, like Jezebel, usurp the role of kings in a manner that highlights the limitations of kingly power and the breakdown of male authority within the home is undisguised. It finds an amplified echo in the annals of the early Roman monarchy (6^th century BCE) which chart the career of two queens, Tanaquil and Tullia, who bear curious similarities to the biblical female monarchs. Because Roman authors are considerably more expansive than biblical narrators they provide valuable insights into the process that molded queenly images in antiquity.
In the hindsight of several centuries, the history of early Rome emerges in the pages of the historian Livy (57-14 BCE) as a family narrative dominated by the ambitions of its female members and punctuated by their sense of honor and shame⁹. Of these, Tullia, like Jezebel, is a daughter of a king (Servius Tullius). Her husband, Tarquinius (Superbus), is likewise a son of a monarch (Tarquinius Priscus) who, however, had designated another man, a non-relative, as his successor. To win the stakes in the complicated game of succession

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the couple embarks on a career of crimes, including the murder of their first respective spouses and the killing of Tullia’s father, the reigning ruler. Although apparently a match made in heaven, Livy shows no hesitation in casting Tullia as the moving spirit behind the rocky ride to the throne of Rome.
Echoing what Jezebel might have said to Ahab, had the text been recorded and transmitted in full, Tullia addresses her husband as follows:
If you are the man I thought I was marrying, then show yourself to be a man and a king. If not ... you have compounded a crime with cowardice. What is the matter with you? You are not from Corinth or from Tarquinii, like your father, nor is it necessary for you to make yourself a king in a foreign land. The gods of your family, your ancestors, the image of your father, the royal palace, its throne and the very name Tarquinius make and proclaim you king. Why else, if your spirit is too mean to (undertake) this, do you deceive the city? Why do you allow yourself to be looked upon as a prince? Depart to Taquinii or Corinth where you can sink once more into oblivion...¹⁰.
Focusing on the interaction between the family and the state as two social entities Livy shows how the privileging of the family interest at the expense of public duty generates chaos¹¹. Tullia and Tarquinius base their claim to the kingship on kinship alone, thus reversing and subverting the principle of merit and of inclusion on which the Roman royal succession had been established from the start. Jezebel ‘vindicates’ the king who is also her husband, thereby undermining the foundations of the royal system of dispensing justice.
In Livy’s landscape of early Rome the palace is the focus and the symbol of the couple’s unbridled ambitions. From the seclusion of their domestic space Tullia and Tarquinius launch their criminal activities. When Tarquinius appears in the curia (= senate house) with an armed bodyguard, Tullia burst on the scene and hails him as king. Her action and gesture constitute a double transgression. Not only does she violate the physical boundaries of males’ space by intruding into male business in the forum, but she also crosses the frontiers of male authority by being the first to confer royalty on a man in public.
Responding to censure, not the least from her own husband, Tullia

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defends herself by appealing to another queenly model. She regards herself as a faithful imitator, if not an improved version of Tanaquil, her mother-in-law who had been instrumental in helping her own husband (Tarquinius Priscus) to become a king at Rome, and who had ensured the smooth transfer of power to a successor she herself had chosen (Servius Tullius, Tullia’s father).
Livy’s presentation of Tanaquil is ambiguous. In his words, she is ‘a woman of the most exalted birth and not of a character lightly to endure a humbler rank in her new [Roman] environment than the one she had enjoyed by birth’¹². To save the monarchy Tanaquil alters the deliberative process reserved for the senate and the people of Rome. When her husband falls victim to an assassination plot, she encourages Servius to take the reigns into his hands:
To you, Servius, if you are a man, belongs this kingdom, not to those who by the hands of others have committed a dastardly crime. Arouse yourself and follow the guidance of the gods ... Now is the time ... Rise up to the occasion. We, too, although foreigners, ruled over Rome. Consider who you are and not where you were born. If your judgement is numb in so sudden a crisis then follow my council ¹³.
The fact that Livy leaves the ultimate tribute to Tanaquil in Tullia’s hands reflects a deep-seated uneasiness with the assumption of male power by women, laudable as their intentions and ultimate results might have been. Although Tanaquil’s resourcefulness saves the dynasty that she had created she also violates male norms by claiming a higher authority than the traditional mos maiorum (custom) would have allowed any woman, queens included. By setting herself and her late husband as models for Tullius to be imitated, Tanaquil also paves the way to Tullia.
As the biblical narrative recreates Jewish queenship in the scroll of Esther, the leading female character undergoes the same kind of transformation that underlies the Tanaquil-to-Tullia process, but in reverse. To begin with, Esther is not only Jewish but a woman with impeccable royal (Jewish) blood in her veins. Jezebel is constantly branded a foreigner in a manner that reflects not only her ethnicity but also her proclivities¹⁴. In the redactional history of the Hebrew Bible

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the Deuteronomist antipathy to foreigners, and particularly to foreign queens, has been associated with a deep-seated fear of idolatry through contamination¹⁵. The elevation of foreigners to Rome’s throne, by contrast, reflects Rome’s greatness and her openness to strangers, while Tullia’s urging of her husband to seize the throne on the ground of his ‘nativeness’ is clearly misplaced.
The scroll depicts the decree of Ahasuerus-Haman ordering the elimination of the Jews as a writ of national emergency. The clash between Ahab and Naboth appears, at first, as carrying little import beyond the king’s petty desire to expand to plant vegetables. Yet behind the issue of the vineyard versus royal garden lurks the larger question of the legitimate scope of monarchical actions vis-à-vis the king’s subjects¹⁶. In the Esther scroll the queen reacts to a patriarchal call to action and only exercises her potential royal power to save her people, as Tanaquil does to save Rome from revolution. Jezebel, like Tullia, acts on her own initiative, subverting male standards of royal behavior.
Just how perilously close to each other are, nevertheless, constructs of royal women like Tanaquil and Tullia on the one hand, and Jezebel and Esther on the other, can be further gauged from the attitude of all the texts to the public appearance of queens. Roman and Jewish authors are unanimous in banning women from the public eye. Jezebel and Esther never appear in public. Tanaquil makes a single public appearance when there is no one else who can save the dynasty. Even then she remains standing at a window in the palace, shielded by its walls. Tullia’s venturing into the forum invokes censure by her husband, and by the historian Livy. But Tanaquil’s position near a top window, although emphasizing Tullia’s boldness in venturing outdoors, also signifies the female usurpation of male authority at home. Ultimately, both women embark on a course of action that contradicts male expectations of female royalty. Nevertheless Tanaquil garners praise while Tullia is condemned.
Jezebel’s sole ‘public’ appearance is made as a spectator standing at the window of the palace that another king is about to possess. Observing the approach of Jehu, she stands at the window as a visual

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reminder of the legitimacy of her royal position and of his usurpation. Her words reinforce the image that her presence conveys: ‘Is it peace, Zimri, murderer of his master?’ (2 Kgs 9,30). Her words, like Tanaquil’s to Tullius, are filtered through space and the conventions of official language as she faces the successor of her dynasty and her ultimate executioner¹⁷.
Esther is never seen or heard addressing directly any man besides her husband and cousin/father. In fact, no biblical narrator or redactor ventured to place either queen, Jezebel or Esther, outside the confines of the palace itself. Both women use messengers to gather information and agents to convey their commands and their threats. Yet, like Tanaquil and Tullia, the two biblical queens were destined for vastly disparate ‘after-life’. In collective memory Jezebel became a stereotype of shrewish and detestable queens¹⁸. Esther’s adventures are still celebrated.

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Important Maccabean Connection of Spartans to Hebrews

 

 

According to the letter sent by the king of the Spartans to the High Priest, found in the 1st book of Maccabees, the Spartans are "of stock of Abraham" ?

"19 And this is the copy of the letter which he had sent to Onias:
20 Arius, king of the Spartans, to Onias, the high priest, greeting.
21 It is found in writing concerning the Spartans, and the Jews, that they are brethren, and that they are of the stock of Abraham.

22 And now since this has come to our knowledge, you do well to write to us of your prosperity.

23 And we also have written back to you, That our cattle, and our possessions, are yours: and yours, ours. We, therefore, have commanded that these things should be told you."

1 Maccabees 12:19-23

 

 

Now, Steve Collins claims that they were Simeonites:

 

The Spartans themselves declared that they were a fellow tribe of the Jews and corresponded with an ancient Jewish High Priest about their relationship. The book of I Maccabees14:16-23 records this correspondence, which includes this statement:

"And this is the copy of the letter which the Spartans

sent: The Chief magistrates and the city of the Spartans

send greeting to Simon, the chief priest, and to the elders

and the priests and the rest of the Jewish people, our

kinsmen." (Emphasis added.)

Notice the Spartans called the Jews "our kinsmen." The Spartans did not proclaim themselves to be Jews, but rather that they were "kinsmen" to the Jews (i.e. members of one of the other tribes of Israel). That the Spartans acknowledged a common ancestry with the Jews of the tribe of Judah gives powerful weight to the assertion that they were Israelites who migrated to Greece instead of the Promised Land. The Spartan culture is most like that of the tribe of Simeon, most of which apparently left the Israelite encampment in the Wilderness after a Simeon prince was executed by a Levite.

There is a third group of wanderers in ancient history which manifested a Simeonite/Israelite ancestry, but this column is now long enough. The story of another band of Simeonites who struck out on their own in the world will be told in a future column.

Shalom and Greetings to all,

Steve Collins

 

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Taken from: http://stevenmcollins.com/html/simeon.html


Collins tells of these interesting points by Professor Jones:

 

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The Book, Sparta, by A.H.M. Jones, a Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge University, noted several things about Sparta. He states the Spartans worshipped a "great law-giver" who had given them their laws in the "dim past" (page 5 of his book). This law-giver may have been Moses.

Professor Jones also noted the Spartans celebrated "the new moons" and the "seventh day" of the month" (page 13). Observing new moons was an Israelite calendar custom, and their observance of "a seventh day" could originate with the Sabbath celebration. Prof. Jones also notes, as do other authorities, that the Spartans were known for being "ruthless" in war and times of crisis. This sounds exactly like the Simeonite nature, which was given to impulsive cruelty, as the Bible confirms.

Interestingly, Prof. Jones writes that the Spartans were themselves divided into several "tribes" which constituted distinct military formations within the Spartan army (pages 31-32).

 

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A wave of secularism erasing the Christian heritage of the West

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press

VATICAN CITY October 11, 2012 (AP)

Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council — the church meetings he attended as a young priest that brought the Catholic Church into the modern world but whose true meaning is still hotly debated.
Benedict celebrated Mass in St. Peter's Square, attended by patriarchs, cardinals, bishops and a dozen elderly churchmen who participated in the council, and later will greet the faithful re-enacting the great procession into St. Peter's that launched the council in 1962.
In his homily, Benedict urged the faithful to return to the "letter" and "authentic spirit" of the council found in the Vatican II documents themselves, rather than rely on the distorted spirit promoted by those who saw in Vatican II a radical reform away from the church's tradition.
"The council did not formulate anything new in matters of faith, nor did it wish to replace what was ancient," Benedict said from the steps of St. Peter's. "Rather, it concerned itself with seeing that the same faith might continue to be lived in the present day, that it might remain a living faith in a world of change."
The anniversary comes as the church is fighting what it sees as a wave of secularism erasing the Christian heritage of the West and competition for souls from rival evangelical churches in Latin America and Africa. Clerical sex abuse scandals, debates over celibacy for priests, open dissent among some priests in Europe and a recent Vatican crackdown on liberal nuns in the United States have also contributed to erode the church's place in the world.

Pope Benedict XVI blesses the faithful during the weekly general audience in St. Peter's sqaure at the Vatican, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

The pope has spent much of his pontificate seeking to correct what he considers the misinterpretation of Vatican II, insisting that it wasn't a revolutionary break from the past, as liberal Catholics paint it, but rather a renewal and reawakening of the best traditions of the ancient church.
In that vein, he decided to mark the 50th anniversary of the council with the launch of a "Year of Faith," precisely to remind Christians of what the council truly taught and seek to "re-evangelize" those Catholics who have fallen away from their faith in the decades since.
He lamented Thursday that a "spiritual desertification" had advanced where people think they can live without God.
"In the council's time it was already possible from a few tragic pages of history to know what a life or a world without God looked like, but now we see it every day around us," he said, referring to the totalitarian, atheistic regimes of the 20th century. "But it is in starting from the experience of this desert, from this void, that we can again discover the joy of believing, its vital importance for us, men and women."
Benedict was the Rev. Joseph Ratzinger, a young priest and theological consultant to German Cardinal Joseph Frings when Vatican II began, and he has recently reminisced about what the council sought to accomplish, where it succeeded and where it erred.
"It was a splendid day on 11 October, 1962," Benedict wrote in a forward to a commemorative book about the anniversary published this week by the Vatican newspaper. "It was a moment of extraordinary expectation. Great things were about to happen."
Indeed, by its conclusion in 1965, the council had approved documents allowing for the celebration of Mass in the vernacular rather than Latin, and revolutionizing the church's relations with Jews, Muslims and people of other faiths.
Yet as great as that document on relations with other faiths was, Benedict wrote, a "weakness" has emerged in the ensuing years in that "it speaks of religion solely in a positive way and it disregards the sick and distorted forms of religion" that have become all too apparent.
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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

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Taken from: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/pope-marks-50th-anniversary-vatican-ii-17449698

Who was Queen Tamar (or Tamara) of Georgia?

 
 

AMAIC: Good question, considering our identification of (i) biblical Tamar with Abishag/Hatshepsut, 'Queen of the South'; (ii) the fact that both queen Hatshepsut and Georgian queen Tamar were 'king'; (iii) the alliance of both with a David; and (iv) the Georgian's relics being perhaps in Jerusalem. 

 

Anyway, at http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110115155030AASAGfu we read:

 

 



Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

 

Tamar Bagrationi was Queen of the kingdom of Georgia from 1184-1213. She ruled during what is generally regarded as Georgia's "golden age" and gained a reputation as an outstandingly successful ruler, dubbed "King of Kings and Queen of Queens" by her subjects.

She was born in 1160, the daughter of King Giorgi III (1156-1184) and Queen Burdukhan of Georgia. The king proclaimed that he would share the throne with his daughter from the day she turned twelve. The father and daughter ruled the country together for five years. After King George’s death in 1184, Queen Tamara was enthroned as ruler of all Georgia at the age of eighteen. She is called “King” in the Georgian language because her father had no male heir and so she ruled as a monarch and not as a consort.

She was a pious individual, an after her coronation, she convoked a local council to correct problems in church life. When the bishops had assembled from all parts of her kingdom, she called upon them to establish righteousness and stop any abuses.

Tamar's first husband was the Russian prince Yuri (known in Georgia as Giorgi) Bogolyubski (in 1185-1186). She had no children by Yuri. His marriage to Tamara exposed many of the coarser sides of his character. He was often drunk and inclined toward immoral deeds. In the end, Tamar’s court banished him to Constantinople, along with a generous allowance. Then she selected her second husband herself. He was the Ossetian prince David Soslan of the Georgian Bagrationi family, whom she married in 1188.

Tamar played an active military role as the commander of an army. In 1193 the Georgian army marched to Bardav. Following its triumphant return, a new campaign was undertaken against Erzerum. The army under Tamar and David attacked the Seljuks (Turks) wintering on the banks of the river Arax.

The Atabag of Azerbaijan Abu-Bakr was given command of the army of the coalition of Georgia's Muslim opponents. A battle was fought near Shamkhor in 1195 which ended in a Georgian victory. Numerous prisoners and huge amounts of booty were seized, including the Khalif's standard, which Tamar donated to the Icon of Our Lady of Khakhuli. The Georgians took the city of Shamkhori and the adjoining regions, and the occupied lands were turned over to the Shirvan-Shah on terms of vassalage. From Shamkhori the Georgian army marched to Gandza.

The Georgian victories alarmed the Muslim rulers of Georgia's neighbours, particularly Rukn ad-Din, Sultan of the Seljuk state in Asia Minor. The Sultan prepared for war in order to break the might of Christian Georgia and fought a major battle near Basiani in 1203. Despite the huge size of the Seljuk army - said to number more than 400,000 troops - the Georgian army under Tamar and David won a famous victory.

Under Tamar's rule, Georgia became the strongest power in the Near East and expanded its territorial influence considerably around the shores of the Black Sea. In 1204, Tamar became the main founder of the Kingdom of Trabizond on the southern shore of the Black Sea (now the Turkish province of Trabzon). This Kingdom was populated mainly by Lazi (Chani) Georgian tribes. In 1206, Tamar's army occupied the city of Kars.

Like other medieval monarchs, Tamar played an active role in promoting her country's religion and culture, sponsoring the construction of numerous Georgian Orthodox churches. The poet Shota Rustaveli commemorated Tamar in his epic poem The Knight in the Panther's Skin, in which her coronation gave Rustaveli the historical background for his sublime description of the coronation of Tinatin.

Queen Tamara carried out a regular, secret observance of a strict ascetic regime – fasting, a stone bed, and litanies chanted in bare feet, which finally took a toll on her health. The queen died in 1213 and was subsequently canonized by the Georgian Orthodox and Apostolic Church. The burial place of Queen Tamara has remained a mystery to this day. Some sources claim that her tomb is in Gelati, in a branch of burial vaults belonging to the Bagrationi dynasty, while others argue that her holy relics are preserved in a vault at the Holy Cross Monastery in Jerusalem.

http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclop…

Was There a Garden of Eden?



[The AMAIC would agree with much of this, but not e.g. the dating]



		Most people are aware that legends of a global deluge are found in the ancient traditions of nearly all cultures on earth. Less well-known is that stories remarkably similar to Genesis' account of the Garden of Eden are also widespread. The Greek myths of Pandora, Epimetheus & Prometheus, and the Golden Fleece all contain basic elements of the Genesis account--plus mysterious additional details that are not found in the Biblical story, but are later reflected in rabbinical and church traditions. Upon one of the oldest of all formal human records, a cylinder seal from the ancient Sumerian civilization, is found an image of a naked or sparsely-clothed man and woman standing on either side of a tree, around which is entwined a serpent. To explain this ancient artifact away, the skeptics assert that the Jews must have taken the idea from the Babylonians. But then, where did the ancient Chinese memories of the pre-flood world originate? In fact, when ancient mythology in general is examined, most of the tales of the promordial "gods" are from the period of the pre-Deluge epoch of each cultural tradition. It is to be expected that survivors of an age-ending cataclysm would recall the recently-destroyed civilization as a much better world than the post-cataclysm condition of ruin. Yet the Bible is rather unique in taking the opposite view: The pre-flood world was evil and decadent and deserved to be destroyed, Genesis says [Gen 6:1-22]. Hence, it is ironic that Genesis would then preserve the notion of a pre-Flood Paradise in spite of its view that the old world was almost totally corrupt and wicked. Is it possible there really was a Garden of Eden?
	Until recently, there were few scientific tools which could shed light on this question or the related issue of the historicity of Adam and Eve, the first couple always included in the ancient myths of Paradise. Then, in the late 1980's, Dr. Rebecca Cann and a team of paleo-geneticists observed that all human beings carry around genetic markers inherited from our ancient ancestors that might provide clues to when and where we originated. So Cann took genetic samples from all over the world to reconstruct our genetic family tree. The results shook the foundations of science. Cann's team discovered that all females carry a particular genetic marker that must have come from a single woman who was the sole ancestor of all women now living. Moreover, they found that the time-frame for the "genetic Eve" to have lived was relatively recent: Between 180,000 and 22,000 years ago. Paleontologists had previously toyed with estimates as far back as 4,000,000 years for our common ancestor. So even the 180,000-year age was far too recent for some of them. But even more disturbing was how the 22,000-year estimate was derived. Cann's team had argued that, if only two individuals were involved, then the couple must have lived in even more recent times; the 180,000-year estimate assumed an initial group of thousands of people among whom the "genetic Eve" had distributed her genes by having sex with a large number of men However, if only a single couple had started the process, the date of the pair could have been only about 22,000 years ago. What upset many scientists was that this time-frame was uncomfortably close to the chronologies of Genesis and other ancient traditons. They had good reason to be worried. Other studies began to confirm this recent date. It was found, moreover, that roughly 23,000 years ago mankind had been located somewhere between Egypt and Mesopotamia --in other words, in the region of Israel, at the time of the emergeance of modern genes. Studies of domesticated animals were showing similar results, as were various human migration studies. Again and again, the era around 25,000 years ago was found to be the starting point for human civilization. Ironically, a book had been written back in the 1980's, before all the new genetic discoveries, which had noted the peculiar fact that all the first evidences of human inventiveness and true artistic expression emerged rather suddenly about 25,000 years ago; the title: The Creative Explosion. The pieces were coming together rapidly in the late 1990's. By 1996, evidence showed that the world's males had likewise descended from a single "genetic Adam" whose date was uncertain, but compatible with the 22,000-year age. Further confirmation came in 1997 that all males derive from a single "Adam" and that mankind had not come together from multiple simultaneous parallel populations developing in different areas, but from a single population--and apparently a single couple--in one specific area: Near Israel. According to both Islamic and Jewish tradition, the Garden of Eden was located in the viciinity of Jerusalem. Although the Greeks spoke of Atlantis as a kind of Paradise, it was not their Garden of Eden, which they had located in the land of "Cohchis" where the Grove of fruit trees was guarded by a Dragon or winged serpent-god. Cholchis was to be found by sailing south and east of Greece, but its exact location was uncertain. The Nazis searched for Paradise in Tibet because they believed Helena Blavatsky's claim that she had seen an ancient book in India which said survivors of the Deluge had landed atop mountains north of India around 9,549 BC. The Nazis assumed these were the Himalayas, but they could just as easily have been the mountains of eastern Turkey. The Nazis forgot that the myths of India come from a people who had migrated into the Indus valley from the north after the Mohenjo-Daro civilization collapsed c. 1,500 BC. But Blavatsky wrote about survivors of the Deluge, not of the original Paradise. Much confusion exists between the paradise-like Atlantis and the original Paradise of the Garden of the first couple. Francis Bacon, the famous occultist said to have edited the King James Bible, was writing a book when he died called The New Atlantis, in which he argued for America being the remnant of Atlantis and a pre-flood Paradise. In the Middle East there is no uncertainty. The Garden was located in the region of Jerusalem. Genesis implies that Abraham and Lot had seen it during their travels: "And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well- watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as THE GARDEN OF THE LORD, like the land of Egypt, as you come to Zoar." [Gen. 13:10] Notice how casually the comparison to the Garden is inserted along with an ordinary geographic reference to a place in Egypt, apparently the area near the Nile Delta from which Abraham and Lot had recently come. The obvious implication of the passage is that Abraham and Lot had also recently passed through "the Garden of the Lord" along their journeys. And it was seemingly prior to their going into Egypt because Egypt is mentioned after the Garden. Of course, the scribes knew that Abraham had passed by the mountains of Moriah around Jerusalem before going on to Egypt. Abraham knew of these mountains because he was able to recognize them from afar off when he later would bring Isaac there.   ....   Taken from: http://petragrail.tripod.com/page6.html

Senior Liberal MP Kevin Andrews rates breakdown of marriage as greatest threat to the Western world



MARRIAGE may help prevent cancer, is the best chance of fulfillment in life and divorcing parents should get better assistance to reconcile, says the MP who could become Australia's next Families Minister.

Senior Liberal MP Kevin Andrews has rated the breakdown of marriage and the family a greater threat to the Western world than climate change, the financial crisis and radical Islam.
The Opposition families spokesman is today launching his book, Maybe 'I do' - Modern Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness, which says more needs to be done to protect and support marriage and family because "stable families are also the bedrock of successful societies".
The book is based on thousands of social science studies that detail the importance of marriage for adults, children and society, and proposes policy responses.
Mr Andrews argues it is the Government's business to promote marriage, which is the "best source of physical and mental health, emotional stability, and prosperity for adults and children. It is also the best bet for attaining happiness and fulfilment".

Married men and women lead more healthy lives than unmarried and are more likely to be richer, own a home and be successful in employment, the provocative book says.

"Marriage seems to protect from contracting cancer and offers a better chance of survival after diagnosis."
It argues growing up with married parents gives kids the best chance of learning "virtues, based on respect for human life and dignity".
"The recent retreat from marriage that was meant to free individuals from economic and emotional constraints has failed many people."
The ideal of "marital permanence" needs to be entrenched in a national family and marriage policy, affirming marriage as the best environment for raising children, the Catholic MP and married father-of-five writes.
While not advocating people stay in destructive marriages, research shows up to 37 per cent of couples regret divorcing, the book says.
It says studies have found couples who cohabit before marriage appear to have higher risks of divorce.
And it encourages young people to think about what they want in a relationship and the consequences of multiple partners.
"By moving from one relationship to another, many young people may be undermining their understanding of how to live a committed, faithful relationship," Mr Andrews writes.

elissa.doherty@news.com.au

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Taken from: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/liberal-mp-kevin-andrews-book-says-marriage-best-for-you-and-the-kids/story-e6frf7kx-1226487704486