Saturday, November 21, 2015
Friday, November 20, 2015
The Elasticity of Time
| The Elasticity of Time
By Daniel Siegel
In December of 1923 a pierce of doggerel appeared in Punch, poking fun at Albert Einstein's newly famous theory of relativity:
There once was a lady named Bright,The piece was unsigned, but years later A.H. Reginald Buller stepped forward to claim authorship. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and came from a different field of science: he was editor of the seven-volume Researches in Fungi.
In the early years, experimental support for relativity theory was meager: full vindication of Albert Einstein's ideas was still to come. Relativity theory had drawn startling conclusions concerning the four most basic physical quantities-length, time, mass, and energy. In the course of the century, these results would receive direct and very striking experimental confirmation. The relativistic effects also became the basis for new technologies, such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS), whose continued functioning would verify these effects every day and every passing hour.
The disruption of time was the most fundamental conclusion. Both in Einstein's technical paper of 1905 and in Relativity Clear and Simple, the relativity of simultaneity formed the basis for all subsequent discussion. In particular, Einstein showed that moving clocks as compared with stationary clocks would run slow as a result of their motion.
As Einstein was philosophically committed to the idea that time was nothing more nor less than what you could measure with standardized clocks, he necessarily concluded that time itself passed more slowly in a moving frame of reference and the faster the motion of the reference frame, the slower the passage of time. Background, collage on the relativity of time; inset, Einstein's written notes on the theory of relativity; left, Einstein in 1905, the year his theory was published. This was called time dilation: time slows down, stretches out, dilates, in a moving reference frame. This was the most revolutionary conclusion of relativity theory. It was also, for a period of more than thirty years, completely unsupported by any direct experimental evidence.
Critics of relativity theory, of course, jumped on Einstein: Wasn't it ridiculous to make the claim--on the basis of no direct evidence whatsoever--that time itself could slow down? And wouldn't various paradoxes and absurdities result from this kind of elasticity of time? Would an astronaut who traveled in a rocket ship at high velocity age less than his twin who stayed at home? If time could slow down as a result of motion at high speed, would time reverse if one went fast enough?
Discussion of time dilation left the realm of the fanciful when it became possible to verify this effect in a direct manner.
This first occurred in 1941, when time dilation was detected in experiments on cosmic rays. The earth is continually bombarded by atomic particles from outer space. These swiftly moving particles are the "primary" cosmic rays. When the particles reach the top of the atmosphere, they collide with atomic nuclei. Subatomic debris is produced, constituting the "secondary" cosmic rays, which then travel downward toward the surface of the earth. In particular, particles called muons are produced in the upper atmosphere and move downward toward the surface.
Muons are highly unstable particles, having an average lifetime of about a millionth of a second. Given the short lifetimes of the muons and the long distances they have to travel to get down to the surface of the earth, one can calculate that, given the velocities at which they travel, very few of them should actually make it down to sea level. However, large numbers can be detected- many more than expected. It appears that, somehow, the moving muons have longer lifetimes than expected, so that they can travel longer distances than expected. This is exactly what would be expected on the basis of time dilation. The muons are traveling at velocities comparable to the velocity of light, and their internal "clocks" should slow down as a result--in accordance with Einstein's prediction--so that many more are able to reach the surface of the earth than would be otherwise expected. Precise experiments on muons gave results exactly in accord with Einstein's equation for time dilation, verifying the effect quite convincingly.
In the years after World War II, experiments on unstable elementary particles such as muons were carried out by using high-voltage particle accelerators to produce beams of the particles. The time dilation equation was again verified to high precision, and the experimental technologies used in particle physics have come to rely on time dilation for their successful day-to-day operation.
For those who are not particle physicists, verification of time dilation has become possible with the development of a device known as an atomic clock, which can measure time intervals to a precision of one part in a trillion.
Consider flying in an airplane at five hundred miles per hour. This produces minimal time dilation, and air travelers have not noticed their watches running slow as a result of this effect. Calculations on the basis of Einstein's equation for the time dilation, however, show that the expected effort is a slowing down by about one part in a trillion, which should be measurable by an atomic clock.
In 1971, a team of scientists who were experts in the use of atomic clocks set out to detect and measure time dilation and other relativistic effects. The research team was able to devise a cheap and effective plan, which received some support from the Office of Naval Research. We are told that the researchers purchased three around-the-world tickets on regularly scheduled commercial airliners-two tickets for the accompanying scientists and one for an array of four atomic clocks. The clock array had its own seat; it sat, belted in for safety, between its two caretakers. Before leaving on the trip, the clocks were synchronized with a master clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory. The four clocks then went around the world, following which they were compared again with their counterpart, which had stayed behind at the Naval Observatory. After correcting for the rotation of the earth and the variation of the force of gravity with altitude, it was found that the clocks that had been in motion in their journey around the earth had in fact slowed as compared with the clock at the Naval Observatory, and by exactly the amount predicted by the theory of relativity. The result was further confirmed in a second around-the-world flight in the opposite direction.
The effect of this exercise on the scientific community was more to demonstrate the capabilities of atomic clocks than to make any substantive change in the way scientists regarded the theory of relativity, but the result was nevertheless satisfying: it was the most direct possible realization of Einstein's thinking about measuring time with real, physical, standard clocks. The clocks had behaved exactly as Einstein had predicted they would.
These days, when atomic clocks are transported by air from Washington, D.C., to Boulder, Colorado, as part of the regular maintenance of the United States time standard, corrections are made for the time dilation based on a log of the flight with records of ground speed and elapsed time. Similarly, in the satellitebased GPS that represents the current state of the art in navigation, corrections are made for the effect of time dilation on the atomic clocks orbiting in satellites whose time signals form the basis for the system.
If time dilation were somehow turned off, not only would particle physics experiments shut down, but the most advanced navigational systems for both military and civilian needs would fail to operate. Aircraft and missiles, ships and submarines, trucks and trains, and hikers and hunters with their consumer-market GPS systems would literally lose their bearings. In the new millennium both science and technology have come to depend at every passing moment on the particulars of the behavior of time as specified in the theory of relativity.
Daniel Siegel is emeritus professor of history of science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This article is adapted from an edition he is preparing with $40,922 in support from NEH--to be entitledRelatively Clear and Simple--of Einstein's book-length popularization of relativity theory.
|
he Art of Rice
| The Art of Rice |
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By Cynthia Barnes
In Java they call her Dewi Sri. In Bengal, she is the Hindu goddess Annapurna, and in Japan, one out of four shrines is dedicated to her. Rituals honoring the “Rice Mother,” the goddess of the sacred grain, are prevalent throughout Asia. For centuries, rice has been more than a diet staple: it is a symbol of spirituality.
From Java to Japan, the cultivation of rice is viewed as reflecting the cycle of human life and the actions of the gods. UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History has mounted an exhibition to celebrate the importance of the grain, and to record the ancient customs before they are eroded from the modern world. “The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia,” opening October 5, brings together an international team of scholars, museums, universities, and artists to examine the role rice has played in the Pacific Rim for more than five thousand years.
Each day, more than three billion of the earth’s inhabitants seek their primary nutrition from rice’s 120,000 varieties. “Intellectually, a meal is conceived of as rice. To not eat rice is to not eat.” says Roy Hamilton, the Fowler’s curator of Asian and Pacific art. He first became aware of the central role rice plays in the region in 1970, while volunteering in Indonesia through Stanford University.
Hamilton has observed similar beliefs throughout the Pacific Rim. “In reality, it is most of what people eat in the poorer countries. But in wealthier nations like Japan, where there is much more nutritional variety, on a cultural level they maintain this ideal. I thought it would be interesting to take a pan-Asian look at this culture.”
The exhibition charts rice’s reign throughout the portion of Asia where rice-focused cultures exist. “Iran, for example, produces and consumes rice, but there’s not this idea of a sacred connection between people and plant,” says Hamilton. “We focused on the ‘rice belt,’ roughly from India through Southeast Asia to China and on to Korea and Japan.”
Three hundred and five objects from thirteen countries will be displayed in Los Angeles before embarking on a three-city tour. The exhibition includes two works of art commissioned particularly for the Fowler. A publication of twenty-seven essays by authors from the United States, India, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Korea, France, and the Netherlands, an educational website, and a series of twenty-five public outreach programs round out the project.
The aim of “The Art of Rice” is to expose audiences to the vast and interrelated historical cultures of rice in Asia, as well as to document the ancient rituals and customs being swept away by agricultural modernity and increasing globalism.
Aurora Ammayao, a folklorist and project consultant, remembers the rice deities of her childhood. She is Ifugao, one of the peoples of the mountainous north of the Philippines. During rice rites, her father, a mumbaki or priest, used to chant the “Myth of the Origin of Rice,” a huuwa, or folk epic.
They pour the wine andAs an adolescent, Ammayao turned away from the rice rituals, viewing them as an excuse for the village men to get drunk on rice wine while the women and girls harvested the crop under the hot sun. “Much of it would end up as more wine to drink!” she writes. “I saw no merit or purpose in preserving such traditions.”
But forty years later, Ammayao has changed her mind. She has seen many Ifugao convert to Christianity and renounce their traditional ways, and has witnessed her father become “born again” and abandon the rice rituals. Ammayao is now trying to preserve the old ways by conducting interviews in Ifugao with members of the community where she was born, and videotaping the rituals that are still observed.
Traditionally, twelve rice rites are performed during the year to mark the phases of cultivating the Ifugao rice terraces. The terraces, which may reach an altitude of five thousand feet, employ irrigation methods that defy gravity, bringing water from distant streams and following the curvature of the terrain—a forerunner of contour farming. In 1995 UNESCO designated the terraces as a world heritage site; and in 2001, added them to the list of endangered sites on the basis of their neglect, irregular development, and erosion.
Although each society has its own beliefs and values, many common threads weave together this culture of rice. Hamilton notes the collective tenet that rice is a sacred food, divinely given, and integrally linked to human life. But the veneration of rice extends beyond its divine origins: across Asia it is said that, figuratively, human bodies and souls are made of rice, which is why rice is the only food for proper human nourishment.
In animist belief systems many objects may be thought to hold spirits, but only rice has a spirit comparable to humans. With its seasons of birth, death and rebirth, the plant’s life cycle is aligned with that of humanity. Rice becomes pregnant, gives birth, and dies. Therefore, the fertility of the crop is allied with the fertility of females. Because of this, rice is seen as female in gender.
Explicit fertility rituals and symbols are recurring motifs throughout the rice belt. In the Issan region of Thailand, village monks fire off decorated rockets to “pierce” the sky and bring the monsoon rains, which will revitalize the parched fields. In the Lao Ghost Festivals of northeast Thailand, male and female papier-mâché figures are paraded with other symbols of fecundity. Elaborate masks are a hallmark of these festivals. Ghost masks were originally made from a type of basket, called huad, which is used for steaming glutinous rice. Today the huad forms only the top, and a piece of a coconut frond stem is added to form the face. A robe, belted with cowbells, a water gourd, and a phallic-shaped sword complete out the costume. Boys join the parade at the age of puberty, when they are considered old enough to make their own masks.
From its first cultivation in the middle Yangtze River Valley some eight thousand years ago through much of the twentieth century, the cyclical work of producing the grains has been seen as the natural order of human activity. Rituals surround every aspect of the food, from the moment the seed is placed into the earth to the time the hulled grains are served at the table. Just as “to eat” translates as “to eat rice,” “to live” means “to plant, nurture, and harvest rice.”
The traditional Balinese calendar was arranged in years consisting of two hundred and ten days, the period of time of the agricultural cycle of the locally produced rice variety. One of these calendars, made of wood, is displayed in the exhibition. It is decorated with carved motifs of the Hindu deities Vasuki and Anantabhoga. A pointer is used for marking days on the grid, and religious and agricultural symbols are formed in beads, holes, and carved markings.
Today, sweeping changes in agriculture have occurred, under the rubric of the “Green Revolution.” In the 1960s, new varieties of high-yield crops, coupled with chemicals, dramatically increased agricultural production on farms around the globe. In the Japanese village of Toge, torches in the form giant insects fashioned from straw and grass are traditionally burned on New Year’s Eve. Before the harvest in Tamilnadu, rice stalks are braided into garlands and hung outside, symbolically sharing the first yield with birds and small animals. Bamboo noisemakers operated by cords allowed one farmer to ward off birds from several fields at once. Although some of these rituals are still observed, modern pesticides now take center stage. Where the pregnant Dewi Sri was once powdered and offered oranges in the fields, today chemical fertilizer is applied.
“In Java, the harvest was traditionally open to anyone who showed up to help,” says Hamilton. “They could earn a portion of the crop. This was an important safety net for poor women.” Modern labor practices now involve the hiring of men who are paid cash for their efforts. “It has helped some segments of society,” he says. “But others have paid the price for progress.” The heavy application of chemical fertilizers and insecticides in some cases poses a serious risk to water supplies and wildlife.
In East Java, Kik Soleh Adi Promono uses his shadow puppet performances to illustrate the political as well as agricultural threat of the Green Revolution. He is a dhalang, or puppet master, who acts as social critic, philosopher, and shaman in addition to providing entertainment. “The Art of Rice” exhibition contains an elaborate pair of puppets specially commissioned from Soleh. They accompany a film of a Javanese shadow puppet performance of the Dewi Sri story, which reminds audiences to be aware of the spiritual and cultural heritage of their villages.
“In the past . . . natural remedies were adequate,” says Soleh. “Then in the 1970s, there were instructions to pull out all the indigenous Javanese varieties, to change from varieties that matured in four and a half months to those that matured in three and a half.” Since maintenance of special ancestral genetic strains is commonly held to be a primary link between living humans and their ancestors, this eradication further weakens cultural ties.
In addition to protecting the harvest, granaries are seen as housing the ancestral spirits of rice and, indirectly, people. Granaries are often built to resemble small houses, and ceremonial objects are placed in the granary to accompany the rice. A number of these objects are on display in the Fowler exhibition. Balinese Grandmother Rice figures are made by the senior woman of a household. These figures watch over the harvest until they are ceremonially installed in the granary, allowing the ancestral spirits of the rice to live on until the next planting cycle.
This, too, has changed. “In the end, they can’t even bring their harvest home,” says Soleh. “It is taken directly from the field to the co-op. And then what? The earth needs to rest, but there is no time anymore.”
Cynthia Barnes is a writer in Columbia, Missouri.
The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has received $250,702 in NEH support for the exhibition, which is on display from October 5 through April 2004 in Los Angeles.
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The Nature of the Game The Olympic Legacy
The Nature of the Game
The Olympic Legacy
The Olympic Legacy
By Michael B. Poliakoff
The history of combat sports at the Olympics is long and eventful, dating back to 708 B.C.E. How societies organize and pursue such sports--in which some level of violence is simply part of the game--tells us a lot about their values and priorities far beyond the world of sport. These issues are with us today, and we can benefit from the reflections of our forebears.
Modern societies often object strongly to boxing. Critics consider its casualties senseless and the violent spectacle detrimental to the values and mores of the society that tolerates it. In 1970 Sweden made prizefighting (though not amateur boxing) a punishable crime.
"It will be said that if two consenting adults want to batter each other for the amusement of paying adults, the essential niceties have been satisfied, 'consent' being almost the only nicety of a liberal society," columnist George Will wrote two decades ago. "But from Plato on, political philosophers have taken entertainments seriously, and have believed the law should, too. They have because a society is judged by the kind of citizens it produces, and some entertainments are coarsening. Good government and the good life depend on good values and passions, and some entertainments are inimical to these."
Little information exists concerning attitudes toward the hazards of combat sport in the ancient Near East and Egypt, but an abundance of witnesses show that Greek and Roman attitudes could hardly have been further from our own. The nature of these games in the Greco-Roman world must acknowledge a level of officially sanctioned violence and danger that the modern Olympic movement would never tolerate. Roman nonchalance about the behavior and welfare of athletes is, of course, readily predictable--a society used to watching gladiators as well as public executions in the arena would be disinclined to worry about injuries incurred by athletes in combat sport. But Greek society (excepting Sparta) did not encourage gratuitous cruelty, especially toward its own citizens, and it shunned lawlessness. "In regard to education," Thucydides records Pericles as saying, "whereas our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek manliness, at Athens we live in a milder way, and yet are just as ready to encounter every reasonable hazard." The near absence of what we would call humanitarian anxieties about the perils of its combat sports calls out for an explanation.
Nearly two millennia later, when the boxer Duk Koo Kim died in an American ring, Leigh Montville, sportswriter for the Boston Globe, wrote an imaginary epitaph for him:
Duk Koo Kim (1959-1982). He gave his life to provide some entertainment on a dull Saturday afternoon in November.Nothing more clearly shows the gulf between classical and modern values than the contrast between this sportswriter's reaction to Kim's death and an epitaph recently discovered at Olympia for a young boxer who met the same fate about eighteen hundred years ago:
Agathos Daimon, nicknamed 'the Camel' from Alexandria, a victor at Nemea. He died here, boxing in the stadium, having prayed to Zeus for victory or death. Age 35. Farewell.The epitaph celebrates his demise with the phrase "victory or death," which is a point of honor recorded on the tombs of Greek soldiers. The Camel's sentiments were as common in antiquity as condemnations of the hazards of prizefighting are today; as an orator of that era noted, "You know that the Olympic crown is olive, yet many have honored it above life."
The clearest praise for the athlete who scorns death comes in the accounts of Arrichion, who died at the Olympic festival of 564 B.C.E. in the final round of pankration, a combat sport that combined boxing, wrestling, and strangleholds. Arrichion won, since his injured opponent signaled submission before the lifeless Arrichion collapsed. One account, which claims to be a description of a painting of the pankratiast, reflects the popular sentiment that Arrichion's decision was sensible and praiseworthy.
. . . They shout and jump out of their seats and wave their hands and garments. Some spring into the air, others in ecstasy wrestle the man nearby. . . . Though it is indeed a great thing that he already won twice at Olympia, what has just now happened is greater: he has won at the cost of his life and goes to the land of the Blessed with the very dust of the struggle.Another account tells how Arrichion had been on the point of giving up when his trainer made him actually desire death by shouting, "What a noble epitaph, not to have conceded at Olympia!" The death-scorning perseverance of athletes in combat sport became a byword. Philo the Jewish philosopher wrote, "I know wrestlers and pankratiasts often persevere out of love for honor and zeal for victory to the point of death, when their bodies are giving up and they keep drawing breath and struggling on spirit alone, a spirit which they have accustomed to reject fear scornfully. . . . Among those competitors, death for the sake of an olive or celery crown is glorious."
At the same time as the Greeks cultivated such brutal athletic contests, they abhorred and strictly punished violence in civic life. A man guilty of assault (hybris) commonly faced a serious lawsuit, but it was also possible to summon a jury that had the power to impose any sentence it deemed appropriate, including the death penalty, upon such malefactors. This law, the graphe hybreos, protected slaves as well as free citizens. Any citizen could act on the city's behalf and bring criminal charges against the alleged assailant, as Demosthenes explained: "The lawgiver considered every deed one commits with violence to be a public wrong and directed also against those unconcerned with the affair. . . . For he thought that one who commits hybris wrongs the city, and not only his victim." The Athenians felt that acts of physical violence betrayed attitudes inadmissible in a democracy: it was the tyrannical oligarchs who behaved in such a fashion.
What need did these contests fulfill for the Greeks in their long history, from the late archaic period until late antiquity? The legacy of the heroic age weighed heavily on later Greeks. To call Homer's works the bible of the Greeks is hardly to exaggerate; Homer's epics certainly became a standard work of education, an arbiter of correct behavior throughout the history of Greece. The expectation of a warrior was that he would distinguish himself as an individual champion, as the great warriors had sought out suitable opponents for themselves in the mêlées of the Iliad.
But after Homer's time, as scholars have noted, it became virtually impossible for anyone to excel in war the way Achilleus and Ajax had done, as the era of heroic single combat yielded to the superior power of the tightly organized and unified phalanx, the lock-step battle formation of classical times. Even the military leader had to put discretion over valor and stay behind the front; as early as Xenophon, military strategists begin to withdraw from the general his right to fight in the front lines. The battlefield was no longer a proving ground for maverick skill and honor, and the city became the arbiter of glory and reward. Athens took over the responsibility for the funeral rites of its battle casualties and suppressed attempts to garner individual repute from military success. When Cimon and his colleagues asked Athens to reward their victory over the Persians in 476-475 B.C.E., the city allowed them to erect three statues, but without inscribing their names on them, noting that it was improper to glorify the general more than the city for a victory. The consciousness of Homeric heroism persists, but the focus turns from the individual (as in the Iliad) to the city of Athens.
So also the great Miltiades, who masterminded the victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490, failed to persuade Athens to write his name on the painting of the battle in the Painted Stoa. When Pausanias, the Spartan general, inscribed his name on the Delphic tripod celebrating the victory at Plataia, the Spartans had it erased and the inscription rewritten. The German historian Victor Ehrenberg observed that the rise of the hoplite phalanx gave impetus to organized competitive athletics; the games offered displacement of certain military impulses, not training for them. As Pindar wrote, "Prowess without hazard has no honor among men or among the hollow ships": the violent Greek games had to fill the void that a lingering but inaccessible heroic ideal created. The athlete, unlike the general, was most welcome to boast about himself on his monuments.
Despite the obvious harshness and violence of the Greek combat sports, and the fierce, sometimes cruel competitiveness that surfaced, societal norms triumphed. Athletes might foul, but they received floggings and sometimes lost their crowns for it. A row of bronze statues built with the fine-money paid by athletes convicted of corrupt practices lined the entrance to the stadium at Olympia, warning competitors to shun dishonesty. At times, the Greek feeling for honor was bafflingly acute. Theogenes made a special point of competing in both boxing and pankration at Olympia in 480, and after defeating Euthymos for the pugilist's crown had to default in pankration because of exhaustion. The judges made him pay a fine for withdrawing from the contest and an indemnity to Euthymos for spitefully taking away his chance at victory.
It is nearly impossible to give a fully satisfactory analysis of a modern society's values--it is plainly impossible to do so for an ancient one which has left only partial records. But it appears that the athletic agon, for all its obsessiveness (and, in the particular case of combat sport, for all its violence) far more than it served practical ends, filled a crucial need as an outlet for the highly competitive and individualistic impulses Greece developed during the period from the seventh to the fifth centuries B.C.E. Not the least of combat sport's functions was to service the potentially volatile heirs of the warrior elite.
In 1983, Michael B. Poliakoff began his research into ancient combat games with support from an NEH summer stipend. This past year he became director of the Endowment's Division of Education Programs.
Tales of Beggars and Nuns, Pirates and Kings By Caroline Kim
Tales of Beggars and Nuns, Pirates and Kings
By Caroline Kim
In 1334, a mysterious epidemic swept through Hopei, a northeastern province of China, claiming the lives of five million people--a full 90 percent of the population. The Black Death would eventually kill two-thirds of China’s inhabitants and come to be known simply as the plague. It traveled westward from the Orient along the trade route, arriving in Italy in early 1348, blazing its infectious way through country and city and causing chaos and panic everywhere it landed. According to the Cronica Senese of Agnolo di Tura, it decimated the city of Siena. He writes, “And I, Agnolo di Tura, carried with my own hands my five little sons to the pit; and what I did many others did likewise.” By the time it was over, half of Italy’s population had died.
One of the Florentine survivors was Giovanni Boccaccio, author of the Decameron and, along with Dante and Petrarch, one of the three elite in the pantheon of Italian medieval literature. The Decameron Web, a website being developed at Brown University, is a virtual encyclopedia that encourages visitors to explore the book and its cultural environment by supplying annotations, critical essays, and audio and visual materials in addition to the original Italian text and translations.
In the introduction to the Decameron, Boccaccio announces that the aim of his collection of short stories is to ease the hearts of unhappy women in love and bring them pleasure. He gives an eyewitness account of the plague, providing a vivid description of the progression of the disease and its effects on society at large.
“Its first sign here in both men and women was a swelling in the groin or beneath the armpit, growing sometimes in the shape of a simple apple, sometimes in that of an egg, more or less; a bubo was the name commonly given to such a swelling. Before long this deadly bubo would begin to spread indifferently from these points to crop up all over; the symptoms would develop then into dark or livid patches that many people found appearing on their arms or thighs or elsewhere; these were large and well separated in some cases, while in others, they were a crowd of tiny spots.” The infected person often died within three days of the first appearance of the bubo.
Hysteria and chaos followed the disease as both medical science and the church were unable to cope with the contagion, either to explain its source or heal its affects. Communal and familial bonds broke down as fear of contact with those stricken rose. Many deserted their homes, their families, and the city, bringing the plague to the countryside.
“Men and women alike were possessed by such visceral terror of this scourge that a man would desert his own brother, uncle would forsake his nephew, sister her brother, and often a wife her husband. What is more, believe it or not, mothers and fathers would avoid visiting and tending their children, they would virtually disown them.”
The sight every morning of bodies thrown into the streets to be carried away to hurriedly dug pits drove Florentines to react in varied ways. Some fell into a life of debauchery, no longer caring about a tomorrow that might never arrive; others became monastic and shut themselves away to tend their souls since it seemed that the end of the world was upon them. Still others went about as best they could, keeping from extreme behavior and hoping to ride out the crisis. Fortunes were made by avaricious priests and pallbearers who charged high prices for tending the sick, and lost when they themselves fell ill. The price of candles and funeral cloth rose at an alarming rate when they could be found. All work stopped; houses were deserted, courts and jails emptied, fields left to rot. According to Boccaccio, between March and July a hundred thousand people died in Florence alone.
Boccaccio uses the plague as a framing device in the Decameron, which is composed of one hundred stories narrated by ten storytellers. Meeting by chance in the church of Santa Maria Novella, the seven noblewomen and three noblemen decide to adjourn to a country estate where they can forget the plague for a time and engage in more pleasurable activities--singing, dancing, and especially storytelling. In the Middle Ages, “comedy was something that started badly and ended well,” says Guyda Armstrong, a post-doctorate fellow at Brown University and contributor to the Decameron Website. “He’s starting at ground zero. Society has been broken down. It’s been completely destroyed by the plague and his exemplary band can go off and remake it out of the scorched earth. He’s situating it in an apocalyptic landscape--obviously a good place to start a story.”
The young men and women who compose the brigata, or company, justify their reasons for leaving the city. One of the ten, Pampinea, suggests, “We would avoid like grim death the disgraceful example set by other people and live virtuously in the country, having a good time and making merry as best we may without overdoing anything. . . . Besides, we’re not deserting anybody, if I’m not mistaken; it would be far truer to say that it’s we who have been deserted--our families have abandoned us alone to all this misery, just as if we didn’t belong to them, for they’ve either died or run away from death. No one will blame us, therefore, if we do as I suggest; if we don’t, the likely result will be sheer misery and possibly death.”
“One of the things Boccaccio was trying to create was a human comedy,” says Michael Papio, assistant professor of Italian at the College of Holy Cross and one of the creators of the Decameron Web. Unlike Dante, whose Divine Comedy is more theologically oriented, “he wanted to show a progression from bad to good on a more worldly stage.”
The stories in the Decameron present a microcosm of medieval life in fictional form. Though the narrators are of noble birth, the characters in the stories are from nearly every class and station--kings and sultans, priests and nuns, thieves, saints, common laborers, household servants, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The structural neatness of the text--ten storytellers, ten days, one hundred stories--and the cultural richness of the worlds evoked in the stories have secured its enduring popularity with both general readers and literary critics.
It also makes excellent hypertext material. Massimo Riva, associate professor of Italian studies at Brown University, came up with the idea of creating the Decameron Web in 1993, just before the Internet became a household word. “I was interested in the Decameron as one of those wonderfully narrative texts that can trigger all sorts of responses from the reader,” he says. “It fascinates twentieth-century critics because it goes to the roots of what narrative is.”
With a group of dedicated graduate students and the assistance of the Scholarly Technology Group at Brown, he began “taking new innovations in technology and looking at new ways of reading an old text,” and considering how to put the two together.
“The Decameron is a fascinating labyrinth, a palace, a series of physical spaces that can be explored. Perhaps the new technology allows us to explore it in a way we hadn’t even thought about,” says Riva.
From the beginning it has been a collaborative project and its inspirations are both theoretical and pedagogical. “We wanted to create an archive of material to provide students who had little or no knowledge of Italian or medieval literature with an easily accessible set of information about the book and its historical context, the Middle Ages,” says Riva. “On the one hand, there was this theoretical interest in the Decameron as a proto-hypertext, as one of those great complex works of narrative with all sorts of internal symmetries and correspondences. At the same time, there was this idea that we could recreate the backdrop of this text and begin illustrating, illuminating aspects of the text.”
Instead of students turning in their final projects to a professor and having them returned or put away in a drawer and forgotten, Papio says the Decameron Web team chose to allow students to put their best work on the website for the benefit of successive generations of students. “It made for a much more interactive environment among the students, where it wasn’t just the professor explaining the canonical approach to the text. Everyone was able to bring to the table something fun and interesting that helped in the elucidation of the text as a whole.”
Students brought their own interests to the site--biology students wrote about the plague, history students researched the text’s historical background, music students studied medieval songs and instruments, and culture and media students brought Marxist, feminist, and even film theory to the mix.
“The text is interactive in itself,” says project director Cristiana Fordyce. “The narrators respond to one another’s stories.”
Even so, each story is complete in itself and can be read apart from the others. Papio says, “As hypertext, rather than a linear trajectory through the text, it allows you to skip according to whichever way the reader wants to pursue the text.” On the website, one can choose to read only the stories of one particular narrator or stories with certain themes such as love, fate, or jealousy--or only those stories having to do with the clergy--with the simple click of a mouse.
English and Italian versions of the text are found on the site, along with links to secondary sources often not available in bookstores or libraries, and pages providing historical and cultural context on religion, literature, society, and arts in the Middle Ages.
“It’s a fantastic, rich text,” says Armstrong. “I’ve been working on it for seven years now and I’m still discovering new things every time I read it. It’s a very structured and highly organized text--you already have a framework with which you can navigate through the text. The subject matter is varied. It’s an encyclopedia of literary genres.”
An avid reader, Boccaccio did not limit himself to the classics as his contemporary and friend, Petrarch, did. He was as familiar with historical tales, chivalric romances, exempla--a type of sermon--and the bawdy French fabliaux, as he was with Ovid and Homer. According to Riva, he drew from literary tradition, popular literature, and oral literature, and put them together on the page.
“The Decameron is linked to a revolution in the visual arts that was taking place at the time with the invention of perspective from Giotto,” says Riva. “He was visualizing all the aspects of this new world and doing it almost as a visual artist would do it.” In turn, Boccaccio inspired visual artists who succeeded him, most noticeably Botticelli, who painted scenes out of the pages of the Decameron.
His reach toward the writers that came after him extends even further. “The short story before Boccaccio didn’t really exist,” says Papio. “That is to say, what you really had was anecdotes, exempla, fabliaux, bon mots, etc. What you didn’t have until Boccaccio was the kind of well-hewn construction of a story that has real characters.” The forerunner of the Decameron is the novellino, a string of exempla, anecdotes, and quips without a unifying thread. Typically, they feature stock characters.
“In Boccaccio, you actually have character development,” Papio says. “You have changes of scenery that are pertinent to the actual development of the tale. And these are all Boccaccio’s inventions.”
“It had an immediate diffusion into the culture,” says Fordyce. The book was considered both high art and popular art. This is in part due to the fact that Boccaccio wrote theDecameron in the vernacular instead of in Latin. Influenced by Dante’s choice to write the poetry of the Divine Comedy in Italian, Boccaccio chose to experiment with the vernacular in prose.
“He writes in Italian so that the nonerudite type can appreciate it, but there are also allusions in it that the uneducated would not get. Definite references to high culture--a lot of translations or adaptations of stories that were available only in Latin,” says Papio.
Boccaccio himself lived easily in different social worlds. The illegitimate son of a wealthy banker who nonetheless recognized him officially, “he was at home with the very highest, intellectual elite as well as in the tavern,” says Papio. “And so you get a relativistic perspective on everything.”
“There is something in the book for everyone,” continues Papio, “which is one of the testaments to its enduring popularity. It’s been translated into just about every language and it still continues to fly off the shelves in bookstores. You don’t really need a lot of information about medieval society to understand certain aspects because they’re so universal--like love and hate and jealousy--just things that are part of the glory of being a human being. And so in that way, it’s exciting and it’s accessible.”
Many of the stories are about love and the role that fate plays in gaining or losing love. Inverting the literary trope of appealing to the muses, Boccaccio dedicates the book to unhappy women in love, writing that when men are heartbroken or depressed, they can turn to outside distractions such as hawking or hunting, fishing or riding, gambling, or pursuing business. He writes, “The effect of such activities will be to improve his spirits to a greater or lesser degree and stave off depression for a while at any rate, after which somehow or other he obtains comfort or else the problem recedes.” In contrast, women in medieval times had little freedom of movement outside of their family circle.
“Now since Fortune has tended to be at her most niggardly in that one quarter where strength has proved the most defective, as is evident in the gentle sex, I will to some degree make amends for her sin: to afford assistance and refuge to women in love--the rest have all they want in their needles, their spools and spindles--I propose to tell a hundred tales (or fables or parables or stories or what you will).”
“One of the things I enjoy about Boccaccio is that he’s so contradictory,” says Armstrong. “He says one thing and then he subtly undermines it. In the authorial proem, he says that he’s offering these tales to console women in love and give them advice. And then, in fact, he gives them advice in how to take a lover. I think that’s one of the inherent, deliberate contradictions in the text. And also one of the things that makes it so enjoyable.”
On “Day Two” of the tales, Dioneo narrates the story of Ricciardo and Bartolomea, an old man who marries a young bride whom he cannot satisfy sexually. Trying not to lose face, he brings his bride a religious calendar and points out the inappropriateness of sharing a bed on holy days, fast days, the vigils of apostles’ feast days, “as well as Fridays, Saturdays, the Lord’s Day and the whole of Lent, as well as during certain phases of the moon, and on many another exceptional occasion.”
During a fishing excursion, the pirate Paganino captures Bartolomea and whisks her away. Ricciardo eventually discovers the identity of the pirate and finds Paganino and Bartolomea living happily as husband and wife. Bewildered and angry that Bartolomea chooses to stay with Paganino, he asks, “Would you live here as this man’s concubine, and in a state of moral sin, rather than as my wife in Pisa? When he tires of you he’ll throw you out, and what a humiliation for you that will be. Are you going to forsake your honor and desert me, who love you more than my life, all on account of this dissolute and disgraceful appetite of yours?”
Bartolomea cares little for his moral attitude. She says, “You ought to have been awake enough to notice that I’m a hale and hearty young woman, and to realize what it is that young women need beyond feeding and clothing, even if it’s a thing they’re too modest to give a name to. . . . Let me tell you, here I feel like Paganino’s wife; in Pisa I felt like your strumpet, to think that we depended on phases of the moon and geometrical calculations for the conjunction of our planets. Here Paganino clasps me all night long in his arms and cuddles me and nibbles me; his particular attentions I’ll leave to the Good Lord to describe.”
Fordyce says that in such stories, far from being heretical, Boccaccio is reminding his readers of the rule of natural love, and that it is unnatural to pair an old man with a young woman. He is also asserting that women are equal to men, Fordyce says. “They have the same sexual desires, the same needs.”
Armstrong agrees. “He allows women to be human. He acknowledges women’s sexuality.” She says another reason for Boccaccio’s popularity may be that he “has a good understanding of human psychology, and female psychology in particular.” In the Divine Comedy, the two major female figures are Beatrice and the Virgin Mary, who operate as role models and remain distant. “Boccaccio’s cunning, crafty ladies are completely different,” says Armstrong.
Each new reading of the Decameron offers fresh interpretations and ideas about literature and medieval society. Since the project’s inception in 1994, the Decameron Web has changed and grown as the scholarship continues to yield new commentary and research materials. Riva says there may soon be a medieval cookbook on the site--the idea of one student. Talented music students have researched fourteenth-century music, played it themselves, and are in the process of recording it for the website. More and more, it becomes possible to imagine the world of Boccaccio as one reads the Decameron. Papio says, “It is a whole new way of looking at literature.”
Caroline Kim is a writer in San Francisco. Brown University has received $370,000 in NEH support for the development of the Decameron Web. To visit the site, go to www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/dweb.shtml.
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Abelard and Heloise The Love Affair
Abelard and Heloise
The Love Affair
Abelard and Heloise are one of the most celebrated couples of all time, known for their love affair... and for the tragedy that separated them.
In a letter to Abelard, Heloise wrote: "You know, beloved, as the whole world knows, how much I have lost in you, how at one wretched stroke of fortune that supreme act of flagrant treachery robbed me of my very self in robbing me of you; and how my sorrow for my loss is nothing compared with what I feel for the manner in which I lost you."
It's perhaps the most tragic love story ever ... Abelard and Heloise were two well-educated people, brought together by their passion, then separated by the act of her uncle's vengeance.
Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was a French philosopher, considered one of the greatest thinkers of the 12th century. Among his works is "Sic et Non," a list of 158 philosophica
His teachings were controversial, and he was
repeatedly charged with heresy. Even with the controversy that
surrounded him at times, nothing probably prepared him for the
consequences of his love affair with Heloise, a relationship destined to
change his life in dramatic ways.
Heloise (1101-1164) was the
niece and pride of Canon Fulbert. She was well-educated by her uncle in
Paris. Abelard later writes in his "Historica Calamitatum": "Her uncle's
love for her was equaled only by his desire that she should have the
best education which he could possibly procure for her. Of no mean
beauty, she stood out above all by reason of her abundant knowledge of
letters."Wishing to become acquainted with Heloise, Abelard persuaded Fulbert to allow him to teach Heloise.
Using the pretext that his own house was a "handicap" to his studies, Abelard further moved in to the house of Heloise and her uncle. She was supposedly a great beauty, one of the most well-educated women of her time; so, perhaps it's not surprising that Abelard and she became lovers. Also, she was more than 20 years younger than Abelard..
nd, of course, Fulbert discovered their love, as Abelard would later write: "Oh, how great was the uncle's grief when he learned the truth, and how bitter was the sorrow of the lovers when we were forced to part!"
They were separated, but that didn't end the affair. Instead, they discovered that Heloise was pregnant... She left her uncle's house when he was not at home; and she stayed with Abelard's sister until Astrolabe was born.
Abelard asked for Fulbert's forgiveness, and permission to marry Heloise; then with Fulbert's assent, Abelard tried to persuade Heloise to marry him. In Chapter 7 of "Historia Calamitatum," Abelard wrote: "She, however, most violently disapproved of this, and for two chief reasons: the danger thereof, and the disgrace which it would bring upon me... What penalties, she said, would the world rightly demand of her if she should rob it of so shining a light!"
When she finally agreed to become Abelard's wife, Heloise told him, "Then there is no more left but this, that in our doom the sorrow yet to come shall be no less than the love we two have already known." In regard to that statement, Abelard later wrote, in his "Historica," "Nor in this, as now the whole world knows, did she lack the spirit of prophecy."
Secretly married, the couple left Astrolabe with Abelard's sister. When Heloise went to stay with the nuns at Argenteuil, her uncle and kinsmen believe Abelard had cast her off, forcing her to become a nun.
Violently incensed, they laid a plot against me, and one night while I all unsuspecting was asleep in a secret room in my lodgings, they broke in with the help of one of my servants whom they had bribed. There they had vengeance on me with a most cruel and most shameful punishment, such as astounded the whole world; for they cut off those parts of my body with which I had done that which was the cause of their sorrow.
japhet and tina mountains
On Thursday, January 10, 2008 5:53 PM, sirreynaldo maestro <sirreynaldo@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p046a.html
Sons of Japheth:
Part I
(Edition 1.0 20071020-20071020)
The
location of the sons of Japheth is an important task of identifying the
nations of the world and the blessings given to Japheth by God through
Noah.
Christian Churches of God
PO Box 369, WODEN ACT 2606, AUSTRALIA
E-mail: secretary@ccg.org
(Copyright ã 2007 Wade Cox)
This
paper may be freely copied and distributed provided it is copied in
total with no alterations or deletions. The publisher’s name and address
and the copyright notice must be
included. No charge may be levied on
recipients of distributed copies. Brief quotations may be embodied in critical articles and reviews without breaching copyright.
This paper is available from the World Wide Web page:
http://www.logon.org and http://www.ccg.org
http://www.logon.org and http://www.ccg.org
Sons of Japheth
From
the settlement by the sons of Noah after the Flood, Canaan the youngest
son of Ham was already alive when they settled the land and before Noah
had planted vines and was drunk on the wine (Heb. yayin; see the paper Wine in the Bible (No. 188)).
The term younger son
in Genesis 9:24 actually
refers to Noah’s grandson Canaan, as it is Canaan that is cursed and
not Ham. Canaan was the last of Ham’s four sons, while Ham was the
second son of Noah.
The
Bible gives no indication of how long it was till Noah “began to be a
vine dresser”. However, the vines either had to have regenerated after
the Flood or planted virtually immediately after the Flood to preserve
them. They could not remain indefinitely in pots.
The
Bible indicates Canaan, and hence all the sons of Ham, was included in
the immediate family grouping on the Ark. However, the Bible does not
elaborate on the issue.
In
this act against Noah (of which the Bible hints, but is not clear),
Canaan is made a servant of both Shem and Japheth (cf. Gen. 9:18-27). In
Genesis 9:27 the important blessing on Japheth is given where Noah
says: “God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem
and Canaan shall be his servant”.
Thus
Japheth, the eldest of the three sons of Noah, was to be made very
large and was to dwell in the tents of Shem, and be served by Canaan. In
other words, the birthright promises of Shem were to be enjoyed by an
enlarged Japheth, who would benefit from Shem’s promises but be larger
than Shem in the process.
Japheth (jā'feth),
son of Noah and ancestor of those who were to occupy the isles of the
Gentiles. This is purported to mean the Mediterranean lands of Europe
and Asia Minor. The meaning of his name is:
Japheth (SHD 3315) Yapheth from 6601 – expansion; 6601: a prim. root: to open i.e. be (make) roomy.
Japheth
was the father of the Indo-European peoples, those stretching from
India to the shores of Western Europe. They are each linked by
linguistic similarities that may seem invisible to the layman but are
more obvious to the linguist. He was also the ancestor of much of Asia
and
the Americas including some of the Pacific.
The break-up after Babel saw a number of linguistic groups develop.
Genesis 10:1-5 tells us who the sons of Japheth were.
1 These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; sons were born to them after the flood. 2 The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. 3 The sons of Gomer: Ash'kenaz, Riphath, and Togar'mah. 4 The sons of Javan:
Eli'shah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Do'danim. 5 From these the
coastland peoples spread. These are the sons of Japheth in their lands,
each with his own language, by their families, in their nations.
Note that the text says that each had his own language in their lands by families and by nations.
The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras.
The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah.
The sons of Javan were Eli’shah,
Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.
The text tells us that from these people the coastland peoples spread.
We have a number of histories from which to trace these people.
Josephus gives us valuable information regarding the sons of Japheth. In Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter Six, section 1 he says:
HOW EVERY NATION WAS DENOMINATED FROM THEIR FIRST INHABITANTS.
Now
they were the grandchildren of Noah, in honor of whom names
were imposed on the nations by those that first seized upon them.
Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven sons: they inhabited so, that,
beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they proceeded along Asia,
as far as the river Tanais, and along Europe to Cadiz; and settling
themselves on the lands which they light upon, which none had inhabited
before, they called the nations by their own names. For Gomer founded
those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, [Galls,] but were then called
Gomerites. Magog founded those that from him were named Magogites, but
who are by the Greeks called Scythians.
Here we identify two of the sons of Japheth: Gomer and Magog.
Much is known of the people identified by Josephus. We see Gomer extend from the
Taurus and Amanus Mountains in Asia Minor to the river Tanais and right across Europe to Cadiz in Spain.
The Book of Jubilees
includes Cadiz as the border of the inheritance of Ham and Japheth.
Cadiz was first established at the south-west of the Iberian Peninsula,
as a colony of Tyre, and it is a Semitic word Gadir meaning walled or fortified.
We have dealt with the inheritance of Ham in the series Sons of Ham (No. 45A to 45E).
The inheritance of Japheth was thus all of Europe and the Asian mainland north of the mouth of the River Don, as we will see
below. It extended also into the Americas, as we will see, where it was combined with the tents of Shem.
The
Tanais River appears in ancient Greek sources as the name of a river
and the city on it situated in the Maeotian Marshes. It was anciently
viewed as the border between the inheritance of the sons of Japheth to
the North, North-east and West and the sons of Shem to the South.
The Scythian (and Iranian) word for river was Danu, and is the equivalent to the modern Ossetic word for river, don,
and hence it is now called the Don River. It was a Khazar stronghold in
medieval times dominated by the fortress of Sarkel, and its later 16th- and 17th-century inhabitants are called Don
Cossacks. These are sons of Japheth but they are not sons of Gomer who were the original inhabitants.
The Book of Jubilees terms the river (Tina)
the border between Japheth and Shem beginning at its westernmost point
to its mouth. The mouth discharges into the Sea of Azov.
In
Jubilees 8:10-9:15 we see the divisions of the people of the sons of
Noah and the distribution, and the curses for breaking boundaries.
The
text is not inspired, but it and the text in Josephus represents the
understanding of Judah in the Temple period of the placement of the
tribes.
The
first portion was given to Gomer and the area to the north (termed inner north) of that was given to the sons of Magog who were the Scythians. Herodotus also places the Scythians in this area (Hist. 4).
The sons of Gomer also included the sons of Togarmah and these were described as inhabiting the uttermost parts, or the recesses,
of the north (Ezek. 38:6). We shall identify these and the root
division of the people and see just how numerous and widespread these
people really are in Asia. By the time of Ezekiel they had spread over
the entire north and that extended into Asia.
Magog
We
know where these people were in Central Asia in what became the Steppes
and into Persia. We know from the Irish and Scottish histories that
these people founded the Scoto-Milesians that occupied Ireland and
Scotland as the last conquerors of those areas before the Normans came
into them. The Welsh also entered Britain and later some entered
Ireland, however, these are not Scythians but rather Riphathian Celts of
the kingdom of Wilusia whose capital was at Troy until 1054 BCE when it
was overthrown by the alliance of the Greeks and Thracians called
Phrygians. They merged with some Javanites in Britain where there were
sons of Elisha and Tarshish, and hence we get the K2 YDNA in Britain as
well as the Hamitic A and B and E Haplogroups from various sources that
we will discuss in the relevant papers.
The
genealogy of the Milesians is explained in the genealogy of the
Geoghegan clan, which takes the Magogites from Adam to the Milesian
clans in Ireland of recent centuries. Appendix 1 of this series is
extremely helpful in understanding their history.
We
know for a fact that the Scythians were as far east as the Uigur
Autonomous Region of China at Urumqi in the second millennium BCE, as we
have found their mummified bodies there in the middle of the twentieth
century. Their physiology is Celt and the clothes and kilts they
possessed resemble ancient Scottish hunting tartans and plaids. A
textile expert, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, has written on the subject (The Mummies of Urümchi, London,
1999).
The
Bible says clearly that in the Last Days the land of Magog is in fact
occupied by the tribes of Meshech and Tubal under their leader, who is
termed Gog. This name is used of the enemies of the sons of Israel, and
extended from Agag of Amalek to Haman the Agagite or descendant of Agag
the Amalekite, and on to the leader of the Last Days in the area of
ancient Magog. This leader is not of Magog but of Meshech and Tubal
ruling the area we now describe as central Russia and the countries that
made up what was the Soviet Union. There is a letter Y immediately
before Gog in the Hebrew and thus it should read Ygog or the old Agag.
In Ezekiel 1:2-3 God says to Ezekiel:
2
Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the
prince of Rosh, (or Chief Prince of depending on how “Rosh” is
translated.), Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, 3 And you shall say; So says the Lord God: Behold I am against you, Gog, the prince the head of Meshech and Tubal
Magog
by this text no longer lives in its ancient lands in Scythia but has
moved. As we trace it, we shall see that the tribe of Magog has moved
all over the world. The leader that God is against is of the houses of
Mesech and Tubal that now have occupied the lands of Magog in what was
Scythia. We have examined this war in the paper War of Hamon-Gog (No. 294). It refers to the war of the Last Days and the alliance that comes against
Israel.
At
the end of the Millennium, Gog is conjoined with Magog and marches
against Christ at Jerusalem (Rev. 20:7-8) under the influence of the
newly-released Satan. This is another war altogether under another
leader who embodies the spirit of the adversary, as what we would term
the Antichrist. In this case, Gog is used rather that Antichrist, as the
person carrying this label is already dead. The false prophet and this
entity, Antichrist, are killed by Christ at his return. Gog and Magog in
the end sequence are considered to be two beings of the fallen Host
that influence all the lands of the Earth in the end of the Millennium
rebellion.
The early Churchmen identified the Goths as the Getae
of Thrace, rather than the Goths being the Magog as identified by Ambrose in De Fide (378) when the emperor Gratian was going to fight the Goths in the Gothic War of 376-382. Ambrose wrote Gog iste Gothus este meaning that Gog is the Goth.
Gog has taken on the name of whoever is against you at the time. Note,
however, that the Goths were identified with the Getae in Thrace by
Jerome in his comment on Genesis 10:2. Augustine in his City of God
identifies Gog and Magog as not being a particular people in a
particular place, but says that they exist all over the world. The
location of the Getae in Thrace ca. 390 by Jerome means that they had
moved into Thrace and replaced the Tirasians from the horde of the
Massagetae further east. They may have been part-Tirasian in Parthia as
well, as were the Svear or Swedes who also claim descent from Magog
among its leaders.
The Qur’an in Surah 21:96-97 refers to this letting loose as a sign of the end before the judgment.
But
when Gog and Magog are let loose and they rush headlong down every
height (or advantage). Then will the True Promise draw near.
The text is thus a paraphrase of Revelation 20.
The
sons of Magog were the Scythians, whose own historians numbered
themselves among them. The Spanish Visigoths claimed descent from Magog
as we see from the writings of Isidore of Seville, who said that all the
Goths were descended from Magog. The Swedes also claim
descent from the Scythian Magogites. The Swede Johannes Magnus
(1488-1544) held that Magog’s sons were Sven and Gethar (who is asserted
to be also named Gog). They allegedly became the ancestors of the
Swedes (Sven) and Goths (Gethar). Queen Christina of Sweden reportedly
held she was number 249 in a list of kings going back to Magog. The line
thus must have been simply the successive kings of the sub-tribe since
the line from Magog in the Irish lineages only numbers between 122-130
from Magog to the present time (see the Genealogy of the Geoghegans at the Appendix).
We now look at the next of the sons according to Josephus.
Madai
Regarding Madai and the Medes, Josephus states:
Now as to Javan and Madai, the sons of Japhet; from Madai came the Madeans, who are called Medes, by the Greeks; (Ant. Jews, op. cit.)
The
Medes were situated in the hill country north-west of the Elamites, who
comprised the Persians in what was Persia and is now Iran.
These
Medes formed the core of what became the Kurds in what is now
Kurdistan. Their female
mtDNA groups entered the Parthians and also the Riphathian Celts. That
is why the I mtDNA Haplogroup is significant among Kurds, Italians and
the English.
The error in Josephus concerns Javan. Jubilees ascribes
the Greeks as deriving from Javan, however, the Spartan Greeks we know
to be Semites of the sons of Keturah. The Greeks derived from Javan are
in the islands and extend west on the Mediterranean to Spain. Some half
of modern Greeks are E3b North Africans and are not sons of Japheth.
Almost all modern Greeks are either Hamitic or Semitic at a ratio of
approximately 55% to 45%. Josephus claims:
... but from Javan, Ionia, and all the Grecians, are derived.
As we now know this is incorrect in that the modern mainland Greeks are not all sons of Japheth.
These Ionian Greeks inhabited the islands and not mainland Greece.
Jubilees
8:25-26 identifies the inheritance of Japheth as being north of the
Tina or Don River to the north-east of all the “region of Gog”. Thus the
term Gog was originally applied to the Steppes in what was termed the
former Central Soviet Republics and “everything east of it”.
That takes us into Asia proper, and East Asia. We will see the significance of this
in later papers as we examine the distribution of the Japhethite tribes.
Jubilees identifies the origin of the term Celt in
8:26, where it says that the inheritance went “towards the mountains of
Qelt toward the north, toward the Ma’uk Sea”; in other words, to the
Caucasus. The term Ma’uk Sea means “the world ocean known to the Greeks as Okeanos” (cf. Jubilees to James H Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, p. 73, fn. s). In other words, the boundary for Japheth was the world sea that surrounds Europe and Asia from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Jubilees makes this clearer by saying that the border was also
to the east of Cadiz, where it is at the edge of the water of the sea (i.e. the Atlantic).
Javan
The Book of Jubilees also identifies the five great islands of the Mediterranean as being the inheritance of Japheth and seemingly of Javan.
Now, there are six great islands of the Mediterranean. The text reads:
And
to Javan the fourth portion was assigned, every island and the islands
which are towards the side of Lud.” Lud was the son of Shem that was
assigned the portion from Mt Asshur to the Mediterranean Sea and thus
Javan held the islands
off the Anatolian Coast.
The
five great islands are mentioned in 1 Enoch 77:8 and these islands
would be Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Cyprus and Crete, but Jubilees assigns four of these to Japheth, and the fifth (island) belongs to Arphaxad or Arphachsad, son of Shem. That is Crete (Caphtor) (cf. Jub. 8:21). In Jubilees 9:13 we see this island referred to as Kamaturi, which is understood to be a corruption of Caphtor (involving the substitution of a labial m for a labial p). The five islands of Japheth would thus be Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Cyprus, and Malta.
Some have linked Cyprus to Dan, as mention is made of the Danaan in the Mediterranean as well as in
Ireland. These are a Semitic group associated with Javan and were in Ireland before the Milesian Magogites came there.
We have seen from the detail of the Sons of Ham Part III: Mizraim that Crete or Capthor ended up as part of the Libyan possessions of the sons of Egypt and not that of Arphaxad.
In
the excavations of Crete and the palace at Knossos and from detail in
the National Museum, however, we can see plainly that there were two
types of people there. One was the dark-skinned Cretans and the other
type was Semite ruling priestesses with dresses cut to reveal their
breasts. They were deliberately painted with lighter skins. In the
museum also there are earrings of the Golden Calf of the Semites in
Shinar. In my
discussions with the museum staff they appeared not to fully realise
the importance or significance of what they had there, or they resisted
the concepts for nationalist reasons. These were probably the early
Assyrian Arphaxadites referred to by Josephus.
The
distribution of the sons of Javan in the islands is also supported by
the K2 YDNA groups in Malta and in Spain. We will discuss this aspect
later in the paper on Javan.
However,
every island was given to Javan and that in the first instance involved
the settlement beyond the Mediterranean. The first settler of Ireland
was one of these early Greeks called Parthelon, as we will see later.
The islands that went to Javan were indeed extensive and extended to the
island groups in
Asia and the Pacific, as we will also see later from an examination of
the distribution of the YDNA K Haplogroup and its Hg M derivative.
Of
the three sons of Javan also, the son of Japhet, Elisa gave name to the
Eliseans, who were his subjects; they are now the Aeolians. Tharsus to
the Tharsians, for so was Cilicia of old called; the sign of which is
this, that the noblest city they have, and a metropolis also, is Tarsus,
the tau being by change put for the theta. Cethimus
possessed the island Cethima: it is now called Cyprus; and from that it
is that all islands, and the greatest part of the sea-coasts, are named
Cethim by the Hebrews: and one city there is in Cyprus that has been
able to preserve its denomination; it has been called Citius by those
who use the language of the Greeks, and has not, by the use of that
dialect, escaped the
name of Cethim. And so many nations have the children and grandchildren
of Japhet possessed. Now when I have premised somewhat, which perhaps
the Greeks do not know, I will return and explain what I have omitted;
for such names are pronounced here after the manner of the Greeks, to
please my readers; for our own country language does not so pronounce
them: but the names in all cases are of one and the same ending; for the
name we here pronounce Noeas, is there Noah, and in every case retains
the same termination. (Josephus, Ant. Jews, ibid.)
The King of Javan
The Bible identifies Alexander of Macedonia as the King of Javan, which is
rendered as the King of Greece in the KJV (Dan. 8:21; 10:20; cf.
11:2; and Zech. 9:13). It is thus assumed that we are speaking of the
sons of Javan, son of Japheth here.
The
problem is that we are dealing with two Javans. One is the son of
Japheth and the progenitor of the Ionian or island and coastal Anatolian
Greeks, and the other is a descendant of Joktan (cf. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary
3120). Javan, son of Joktan, was Haplogroup I from Shem, and a great
many I and J are found in mainland Greece that were the early
inhabitants of the sons of Joktan and Keturah, and the later Hg J sons
of Abraham. Haplogroup J is a split from Haplogroup I which was the
original Hebrew group, and both contain S2 and S22. The other half are
the E3b North Africans that entered Greece at a later date. The Island
and Anatolian Greeks seem to be Hg K2 (from the Dodanim) as are the
Maltese and some Spaniards and some in Britain. The mainland Greeks are
sons of Shem and Ham. Javan is also a place in Arabia, perhaps related
also to Joktan. The YDNA simply does not support the contention that the
Dodanim of Rhodes were mainland Greeks, mixed up
with the Tirasians, as some suppose. If they were, they certainly moved
with the Tirasians away from there with the fall of Parthia. There are
certainly K2 Javanite bloodlines in Wales, as we know from the family of
President Thomas Jefferson and others.
Tubal
Tubal,
son of Japheth, is connected with the Tabali, an Anatolian tribe, and
both the Iberians of the Caucasus and those of the Iberian peninsula
(modern Spain and Portugal), as well as Illyrians and Italics. In the Book of Jubilees he was bequeathed the three 'tongues' of Europe.
The Tabali (Tibarenoi
in Greek) were Luwian tribes of Asia Minor of the 3rd-1st millennias
BCE. They and other related tribes, the Chalybes (Khalib/Khaldi) and the
Mossynoeci (Mossynoikoi in Greek), are sometimes considered the founders of metallurgy.
According
to the Scriptures and secular history, Tubal's descendants, along with
those of Magog, Gomer, Meshech and others form a great north and central
Asiatic confederation that includes parts of Russia, Mongolia and
China. Although mentioned in Bible history, most of what the Scriptures
have to say about Tubal is yet-to-occur prophecy.
Iberia
The
common view in antiquity was that the settlers of Iberes were the
Thobelites. Iberes was originally in the area later occupied by Parthia
near the Black Sea. The groups there also moved into the western
Mediterranean and named the land there Iberia, now called Spain.
Thobel founded the Thobelites, who are now
called Iberes; (Ant. Jews, ibid.)
The Iberes of the Caucasus were relatives of modern-day Georgians, founders of the city of Tobolsk.
The origins of the name Iberian
has many theories of which the most accepted for scholars is the tribe
of Tiberani (from the annals of the Assyrian Kings) or Tubal-kain from
which name allegedly Iberian has derived. The name itself is used by
ancient Greek authors who identify these early Georgian (Kartvelian)
tribes as Iberoi and also in the Roman annals of Plutarch. The
Iberians called their kingdom
Kartli and their nation Kartlians. There are many theories among the
scholars which claim that there are common ethnic and linguistic origins
of Caucasian Iberians with pre-Indo European Iberians of the Iberian
Peninsula in Spain (mainly Basques).
Retrieved from: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Iberians"
A Georgian historian, Ivane Javakhishvili, considered Tabal, Tubal, Jabal and Jubal to be ancient Georgian tribal designations.
However,
the Welsh historian Nennius stated that Tubal was ancestor to the
Iberians, 'Italians' [i.e., Italic tribes] and 'Spanish' [who were also
called Iberians]. Tubal is also said to be the founder of the Portuguese
city of Setubal.
Basque
intellectuals like Poza have named Tubal as the ancestor of Basques
and, by extension, the Iberians. The French Basque author Augustin Chaho
published The Legend of Aitor, asserting that the common patriarch of the Basques was Aitor, a descendant of Tubal.
Thus Thobel is in two
places. One is in what is now Russia and the surrounding territories and the other is in Spain.
What
is important is that most Georgian and Armenians are of Semitic
bloodlines of Assyrian and Israelite origin from G, H, I and J.
Approximately 40% only are Japhethitic.
Meshech
The next reference is to Mosoch or the Japhethite Meshech who inhabited Cappadocia in what was Anatolia.
…
and the Mosocheni were founded by Mosoch; now they are Cappadocians.
There is also a
mark of their ancient denomination still to be shown; for there is even
now among them a city called Mazaca, which may inform those that are
able to understand, that so was the entire nation once called. (Ant. Jews, op. cit.)
These people were displaced northwards with the sons of Tubal and were north of the Parthian and Scythian horde at a later date.
Probably Tubal was in Pontus, and Meshech was in the Moschian Mountains. Their movement was from eastern Asia Minor north to the Black Sea.
Meshech
is named
with Tubal as a principality of the prince of Gog in the land of Magog
in Ezekiel 38:2 and 39:1, and was considered a Japhetite tribe
identified by Flavius Josephus with the Cappadocian Moschoi and their capital Mazaca.
The extent of Magog may also indicate they are also in
Mesech and Tubal.
The
Mushki (Muški) were an Iron Age people of Anatolia, known from Assyrian
sources. They do not appear in Hittite records. Several authors have
connected them with the Moschoi (Μόσχοι) of Greek sources and the
Georgian tribe of the Meskhi. Josephus identified the Moschoi with the Biblical Meshech (cf. Wikipedia article on Mushki).
These people can only be definitively identified by reference to the DNA.
Meshech (Easton’s Bible Dictionary)
They
were in all probability the Moschi, a people inhabiting the Moschian
Mountains, between the Black and the Caspian Seas. In Ps. 120:5 the name
occurs as simply a synonym for foreigners or barbarians. "During the
ascendency of the Babylonians and Persians in Western Asia, the Moschi
were subdued; but it seems probable that a large number of them crossed
the Caucasus range and spread over the northern steppes, mingling with
the Scythians. There they became known as Muscovs, and gave that name to
the Russian nation and its ancient capital by which they are still
generally known throughout the East".
Tiras
The next group are the Tirasians or Thirasians, called Thracians.
Thiras also called those whom he ruled over Thirasians; but the Greeks changed the name into Thracians (Ant. Jews, ibid.).
These
people encompassed a great horde of the Parthians, and also from them
sprang the Phrygians who invaded Anatolia from Thrace after the fall
of Troy.
They too will provide a great surprise for the student of Bible history.
The
Tirasians were the first fair-haired people known to antiquity and they
allegedly later became known as part of the Getae. We will test this
hypothesis in the paper on Tiras.
They
are sometimnes identifed as the Pereset (Peleset) or Sea Peoples know
to the Egyptians also as Tursha and the Greeks as Tyrsenoi (cf. article
‘Tiras’, Wikipedia stub).
These
people were of various origins and they attacked Egypt as a
confederation in the reign of Rameses III. They are mentioned in a number of inscriptions.
In Year 8 of his reign the alliance of the “Nine Bows” appear again as a "conspiracy in their isles." In
this record they are revealed unquestionably as sea peoples: the
Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, which are classified as
"foreign countries" in the inscription. They camped in Amor and sent a
fleet to the Nile. (cf. Wikipedia article ‘Sea Peoples’). For the first
time in history the Israelites are identified as one of the peoples that the 19th dynasty fought against in the union of the Nine Bows. There were land armies and the Peoples of the Sea (also “Great Green”) who lived in ships and behaved like the later Vikings.
Some of these may have been Island Greeks and also Thracian groups coming out of the Black Sea.
The Book of Jubilees
states that the inheritance of Tiras consisted of “four large islands
in the midst of the sea which approaches the portion of Ham” (Jub. 9:13;
cf. 8:29). This cannot be the islands of the
Mediterranean as five of those islands were given to Javan and Crete
was given to Arphaxad. They could not be the islands of the Aegean
either as that does not approach the portion of Ham. They may have been
occupied by the Tirasians in the beginning but their inheritance could
appear to be in the Atlantic beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Wikipedia
says some have suggested that Tiras was worshipped by his descendants
as Thuras, or Thor, the god of thunder. The earliest Norse sagas name
Thor as an ancestral chieftain, and trace his origins to Thrace.
The
Germanic peoples also
worshipped a god called Tiwaz (which some scholars consider to
originally have been Odin), whose name was rendered Tyr/Tir in
Scandinavian languages, and Tiw in Old English.
The sagas hold Thor was the son of Odin and Jörd. Jörd means earth. Her rival is Frigg, the other wife of Odin (hence Friday).
Thus
Tiw’s day or Tuesday, Woden’s day or Wednesday, Thir’s day or Thursday
and Frigg’s day or Friday in the Norse and Saxon calendars. The
separation of Tiwaz and Wotan or Woden make Tiwaz and Odin unlikely to
be the same ancestor.
The medieval rabbinic Book of Jasher records the sons of Tiras as Rushash, Cushni, and Ongolis. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiras)
However, we note another reference to the sons of Tiras as being:
Jasher: Chapter 7.9 And the sons of Tiras were Benib, Gera, Lupirion and Gilak;
The
connections with the Angles and English seems obvious for Ongolis. Even
if the text is a medieval work it indicates that the authors understood
the English as Tirasians or attempted to make them so.
Parthia
Parthia
at its greatest extent in the First Century BCE was an aggregation of
Tirasians, Gomerites, Scythians, Medes, Afghan and North Persian tribes.
In the First Century BCE Parthia extended into Asia Minor and included
all Judaea and Galilee under the Parthian appointed rule of the Jewish
Antigonis. The Romans deposed him and placed
Herod on the throne. The break-up of the Parthian Empire occurred at
the beginning of the Third Century CE.
The
city of Tarsus of which Paul was born was in Cilicia on the south-east
coast of Asia Minor on the right bank of the Tarsus River (ancient
Cydnus) ten miles from the present coastline. It has never changed
location since its founding and has a better claim than Damascus to be
the most ancient city in the world. Called Gozlu Kule, the most ancient
section is the prehistoric mound on the SW side of the city. It was in
the country of Kizzuwatna in the ancient Hittite records and its name
Tarsa is preclassical and probably its original name. Hittite objects
are found there dating to the period 1400-1200 BCE This was the time of
the commencement of the hostilities towards Troy (cf. Acts 9:11,30;
11:25; 21:39; 22:3; cf. Interpreter’s Dictionary of
the Bible, Art. ‘Tarsus’, Vol. 4, p. 518).
The
city of Tarsus should not be confused with the Tarshish of the sons of
Japheth on the Black Sea in what was called Iberes (and associated by
some with the term Parthenia allegedly changed by the sons of
Tarshish). There was a Jewish population there in both Tarsus and in
Parthia as there were Israelites throughout Parthia. They seemed to have
moved to Tarshish in Spain, and named the area Iberia also. Some may
have perhaps moved then to Ireland, but the Milesian Irish and the Scots
are Scythians Magogites and not sons of Javan. However, there were sons
of Javan there. The Scythians were sons of Magog and adjoined the
Parthians, who were sons of Gomer and Tiras. At its greatest extent
Parthia included Scythian Magog; and Parthian and Scythian burial
customs were similar.
The
Taurus mountains were a chief source of gems and metal for the ships of
Tarshish as was Britain the source of tin and other metals for them for
centuries, and from the time of David (see the paper Rule of the Kings Part II: David No. 282B)).
In
224 CE Persia revolted under Ardashir I who defeated the last Parthian
king. During his reign, eastern Iran, the former Kushan Empire, was also
conquered. In 226 CE the Parthian Empire ended and Ardashir I took
Mesopotamia, which was a major portion of Parthia as an empire.
In 227 CE the Sasanian Empire was formed by Ardashir I. The Empire lasted until 651 CE.
The
sons of Madai who were the Medes remained, more or less, in situ in
what became Kurdistan, which spreads from eastern Turkey across northern
Iraq to north-west Iran. Originally it was further north, but later the
Medes were pushed into the south by the Khazar, and subsequent,
northern hordes.
The
north-western Parthians left Parthia in the area between what is now
Albania and Bulgaria and the Caspian Sea for Europe, where they
completed their occupation.
We will study these movements in greater detail in each of the papers dealing with
the sons of Japheth and their place in prophecy.
q
Appendix 1: DNA links in Europe and Asia
Both
Shem and Japheth possessed the same YDNA key at Haplogroup F. This
Haplogroup was carried by all sons of Shem and Japheth, whereas the sons
of Ham did not possess this link.
The link for Hg F is P14, M89, M213. All Haplogroups from G to R
possess this lineage.
From what we see, the lineages of Shem and the tribes Shem from F produced the Haplogroups G, H, I and J.
Japheth produced Haplogroup K and all the groups coming from K are sons of the sons of Japheth.
The
sons of Japheth can be identified from the YDNA chart, but the
mutations are not as early as the break-up of the sons and thus
some of the sons have descendants of differing Haplogroups. For
example, the sons of Gomer possess both R1a and R1b combinations, as
well as other Haplogroups. Some of the sons of Gomer as listed by the
Bible have developed the same Haplogroups as other sons of Japheth.
A
puzzle that is posed by modern science is that of the origin of the
sons of HN, who split into the N and O Haplogroups. They came from Hg K
and they were one line at M214, and from that ancestor they split into N
(LLY22) and O (M175). These sons of HN produced a massive number of
people.
HN
was the ancestor of the Huns and the sons of Han, being the Han
Chinese. The dissimilarity is only in a vowel between the two
consonants, being Hun and Han. They both had the
same ancestor HN at M214. What makes this most fascinating is that the
Finns, another Magyar people, of N Hg as are the Huns, speak
Uralic-Altaic languages. Hungarian is part of this group as is Turkic,
Mongolian, Manchurian, Manchu-Tungus, Old Korean and Japanese. The
Mongols and related peoples are Hamitic Group C and the Japanese are
Group D with some Group C, but fifty percent of the Japanese are also Hg
O coming from the same group, as are the Tibetans. The Tibetans, who
are sons of Cush, also are Hamitic Hg D, but they also have fifty
percent O. The Southern Han of South China are Hg O with some C and D.
The Sumatrans have more than 50% O and less D (say 5-10%). The Malays
have less, but some Hg C also. The Hgs C and D are discussed in the
paper Sons of Ham Part II: Cush (No. 45B). The Lapps/Sami are also Hg N, as are some Lithuanian Ashkenazim. Most
Ashkenazim are Hg R1a. Ashkenaz is a tribe of Gomer.
Riphath is the second son of Gomer and most of Riphath YDNA is R1b.
The
only son of Gomer that could qualify is Togarmah, which occupies the
uttermost parts of the North, which is what we see with the Lapps/Sami
and Finns and the tribes in northern Russia/Siberia. The problem that is
posed by this YDNA link is that China also has K, and the K, M and O
Haplogroups extend into South-East Asia in the Malays at O with some C
and D, and Borneo and Sumatra at O with some C and K. The Papuans are
mostly Hg K, and the West Papuans or Irian Jayans are Hg M with a
significant amount of Hamitic C. The Philippinos and the North
Polynesians also have significant Hg O. The Philippinos have some 15% KC
and D mix, whilst the Maori are predominantly are C3, which is Hamitic.
Some 20% of Australian Aborigines and Torres Straight Islanders are
also Hg K. They are thus
not a homogenous group of one origin but are of three distinct tribal
origins from Ham at C4 and two from Japheth at Hgs K and RxR1basic.
These are later mutations.
YDNA chart from Hg F:
G 18% Georgia Armenia (Assyrian) 12% Turkey,
F
H
I 7% Georgia Armenia, 15% Turkey
J 20% Georgia Armenia, 22% Turkey
K L
M
N Huns,
Finns, Lapps/Sami, Nenets, 15-20% of the Russians, Kazan Tartars,
Evenks, Buryats, Koryaks and 50% of Siberian Eskimos and 85% of Siberian
Yakuts.
O Han Chinese, Malays, Philippinos, 60% Western Samoans, 30% French Polynesia (majority Hg C).
P Q
Major part of all Amerindians (Q and Q3) 70% of Selkups and 15% of
Altai, 10% of Yakuts, 15% of Koryaks, 45% of Siberian Eskimos.
R RxR1 basic 10% of Australian Aborigines and North Indians, 15% of Dravidians, 45% of Cameroon,
R1 R1A R1B
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