Civilization and Its Discontents

HUM 2051: Civilization IFall 2010

Dr. PerdigaoAugust 18, 2010

Timing• Paleolithic (“Old Stone”) Age: 200,000-100,000 B.C.E.• Neolithic (“New Stone”) Age: 10,000-4,000 B.C.E.• 4000-1000 B.C.E.: Bronze Age

• Civilization: beginnings five thousand years ago in Near East (Mesopotamia and Egypt) and then Far East (India and China) (Perry 8)

• Western Civilization: Sumer, Mesopotamia (4000-3000 B.C.E.), Egypt, northeastern Africa (3050 B.C.E.)

• Anatolia (Turkey) (2000-1900 B.C.E.), Crete, Greece

Developing Civilizations• Writing: 3500 BCE—Sumer: cuneiform; Egypt: hieroglyphs

(perhaps learned from Sumerians), Coptic alphabet

• Assyrian: commerce; Babylonian: law

• Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE)—Babylon; “eye for an eye,” code unearthed in 1901-1902 by French archaeologists (Perry 13)

• http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/Law508/CodeHammurabi-1.htm

• Phoenicians (descendents of the Canaanites): alphabet

• Canaanites: writing, phonetic alphabet; Hebrews: religion

• Mesopotamian kings—not gods but selected by gods, difference from Egyptian pharaohs (both man and god, earthly embodiment of deity Horus [Perry 15])

• Egyptian polytheism, belief in afterlife

• Egyptian Ma’at (justice, law, right, and truth); Re (sun god); Isis (goddess of love and fertility); Thoth (god of wisdom and inventor of writing); Nut (sky goddess); piety

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

• Mesopotamians’ contributions in mathematics—multiplication and division tables, cubes, cube routes, area of right-angle triangles and rectangles, circle divided into 360 degrees, basis for Pythagorean theorem and quadratic equations (Perry 14); Egyptian calendar, medicine (19)

Globalization?• International empires—Indo-Europeans: Hurrians; Kassites;

Hittites

• Phoenicians (descendents of Canaanites), Armaaeans, Hebrews

• Assyria, 9th century BCE, empire building, but spread culture of past, Mesopotamia’s literature, religion, art (Perry 23-24)

• Destruction of Assyrian power, rise of Chaldean, Neo-Babylonian Empire; Nebuchadnezzar (ruled 604-562 BCE), rebuilt Babylon, Hanging Gardens

• After his death, civil war, Persia gains power under Cyrus the Great and his son Cambyses (Perry 25)

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

Framing• B.C./B.C.E.—“before the common era” or “before the Christian

era”• A.D.=anno Domini (“in the year of the Lord”)

• Western culture—classical/pagan world of Greece and Rome and Judeo-Christian world of Europe

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

Schemata• Ancient World—Hebrew, Greek, Roman (1), hinge on

Augustine as encompassing figure

• Fall to captivity to redemptive rise; after expansion under kings David and Solomon (1005-925 BCE), deportation to Babylon (586 BCE), exile until Cyrus releases from bondage (539 BCE) (2)

• Diaspora (131-134 CE) (“scattering”): 1948 Israel

• OT written, organized, gathered 1100 BCE-100 CE

Structural Unity• Hebrews—semi-nomadic pastoral people, left no work except Bible itself

• Bible means “Little books”

• Shifts from prose: poetry

• Genesis—2 parts: first=etymological account; Chapter 11, the story of Hebrew people as began with Abraham and descendents; difference from Mesopotamian and Greek stories is the focus on human beings (35)

• Good/evil here—Greeks=chaos/order, strife/peace (no moral judgments)

Design• Biblical stories—the Flood, Cain and Abel, Tower of Babel—stem from

Mesopotamian antecedents (Perry 28); Hebrews and Greeks borrowing themes

• Narrative shape of book as single document that begins in Genesis with origins and ends with apocalypse in revelations—creation of this world, replacement of this world with next

• Humanity created in perfect union with God, humanity sins, falls, God with covenant, renews that union (climaxes with the story of Moses and the Promised Land, Jesus), and stories written in the wake of the Bible

• With covenant, God takes care, no labor, no pain, no death; the demand side is obedience to rule

• Redemptive rise—story of Moses’ people who fall into captivity, led into captivity, rise into independent nation

• Fall of Adam and Eve into sin, rise of Christianity, resurrection, thereby defeating sin and death in NT

• Patterns of 6, 7; fall; mark; covenant

A Broken Covenant?: Three Days of Fay

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

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

Alligator, Catfish Walk Onto Airport Runway During TS Fay MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Melbourne International Airport workers had to clear away two gopher tortoises, four walking catfish, an alligator and a blue indigo snake that had washed onto the active runway during Tropical Storm Fay.

The menagerie was discovered on Wednesday.

Airport officials said the tortoises were moved to the airport's designated gopher tortoise relocation area and the walking catfish and snake were tossed into a nearby pond. The gator walked into a drainage ditch.

Walking catfish use their pectoral fins to get around on land and can breathe out of water as long as they stay moist.

http://www.nbc6.net/newsnet/17252134/detail.html

From the Fall to Reunion• Hebrew: Torah (“instruction” or “guidance,” “law”);

Pentateuch; Old Testament

• Fortunate fall?

• Humans—one with God and nature, then with fall, expulsion from garden, drought and storms

• At odds with one another—Cain kills Abel after expulsion

• Cover selves in shame—alienated, self-conscious yet “fortunate fall” into knowledge

• Covenants are made, broken, and restored as in the flood

• Tower of Babel, “new beginning” (35)

To Brueghel’s Babel (1563)

http://www.ecfs.org/Projects/Fieldston272/ClassNotes/INDEXED%20SLIDES/Sumerian_Babylonian/ziggurat3.gif

http://www.slu.edu/x32907.xml

Framing the Text• “sacred text” as revealed truth

• J: Yahwist (Jehovah) c. 1000 BCE “I AM”—Yahweh• E: Elohist 8th c. BCE “Elohim” or El

—“God”• P: “priestly writer” 7th c. BCE (adds Genesis)

• 3 main strands of text—3 writers—influence the organization of the text—J—oral tradition—brought together. Genesis added late but makes sense of later pieces.

History of Translations»Jerome—Latin Vulgate (tongue known by most of

the people—later “vulgar”)

»Wyclif—English; early Renaissance

»Tyndale—16th c. printing press—Protestant Reformation

»King James—1611—assigned task to translator, most influential form of

literature