A thought about reading and writing....

[BaalChatzaf]

Do any of you recall the Cecil B. Demill movie, The Ten Commandments? A phrase was used over and over. "So it is written, so let it be done".

In the days of the Egyptian pharos 3 to 4 thousand years ago, reading and writing were relatively recent innovations. Only a small class of people know how to read and write. The rulers of Egypt were probably not literate, but they had scribes who would take down what they said. So a Pharo would tell his scribe an action to be carried out. The scribe would write it and deliver it to the scribe of the person who was responsible for seeing the action carried out. That scribe would tell his boss what the orders of Pharo were and since Pharo is the morning and evening star and the god-kind of Egypt the order would be carried out. Cities and storehouses were built this way. Armies were gathered, deployed and committed to battle this way.

It is amazing. All Pharo had to do was to dictate his order by way of a scribe, and by golly within an acceptable period of time it would be done. It is no wonder that the rulers of the day regarded written language as some kind of fraking magic! So it is written, so let it be done!

Nowadays we do something like that. We type commands in to our computers and thousands of miles away machinery whirs into action. It is fraking magic! So it is programmed, so let it be done!

Ba'al CHatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

And yet another thought. Through the "magic" of the written and preserved word, I read (and understood) Prop 17, Book III of Euclid's elements. It says that from a point external to a circle a tangent line through that point can be drawn (i.e. constructed). I also proved it using analytic geometry. It took a page and a half of algebra to compute the points of tangency on the circle (try it as an exercise). It turns out Euclid's construction is quicker, slicker and more elegant than the more modern analytic solution.

Now here is the magic. I was sharing the thoughts of Euclid who died nearly 2500 years ago! It is magic I tell you, fraking magic!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

It's inspiring to see you inspired.

But there is something to think about in your commments.

Imagine lining 20 people up, then whispering a story into the first person's ear. He will then whisper it into the next person's. And so on. When you get to the 20th person, compare the final version to the first. The difference is always striking.

This, or a variation of it, is done on TV for entertainment at times because it's so amusing to see how much the story changes.

Back in ancient times before Guttenberg, even when there was writing, most communication of important stuff was oral. This meant that it was not very reliable. And that gives a much different nuance to the phrase, "So it is written, so let it be done," than you intended. There was no way for people to get copies of what the Pharaoh wrote.

Now, to address what you mentioned about computers and distance, consider this. We are recapturing the oral times. During the print publication and later broadcast media eras, the producers and publishers (and their gatekeepers) dictated what was available and the public consumed it.

Nowadays, with the internet and interactivity, producer and consumer are merging and people pass stuff around all over the place, with the ensuing confusions. You can publish anything you write for free if you want.

So it is written, so let the message-polishing be done.

I believe the information and stories that will ultimately come from all this churning and sifting will be extremely accurate in terms of human universals. And the garbage will end up in history where it's supposed to end up: forgotten. On record in this new phase, maybe, but still forgotten.

Michael

[syrakusos]

Literacy began as numeracy. The first true writing, cuneiform, originated with clay tokens to keep track of goods promised to the city temples of Ur, Uruk, Jemdet Nasr, and about 100 others in Sumeria, all approximately contemporaneous as the idea spread almost instanteously across the culture.

Before writing, art was unstructured. Animals and men swirled without apparent reasons for their sizes or locations. After writing, art became an ordered narrative that we now take as natural, forgetting that it was purposely invented.

Accounting for Civilization

Debt: the Seed of Civilization

Art as Ordered Narrative

We all know the Code of Hamurabi, Two earlier codes are known. The Code of Ur Nammu precedes Hammurabi by 300 years. Earlier, unreconstructed, but attested, is the revolt declaration of Uruk Ag Ina, from which we have the oldest word for "liberty."

http://oll.libertyfu....php?Itemid=269

MSK: Sorry, while transcription always suggest the possibility of error, Bob's point is cogent. The word was recorded and transmitted as given. Once set in stone - literally: dried clay - or carved into stone - the word did not change.

Moreover, if you understood Jewish culture, you would know a bit about how they integrate a process for error correction when copying the Torah. When a new synagogue is formed, they get their book from an existing community. A copy is made. If the copyist spots an error, he notes it - but does not change it - it become a footnote. Error of an error? Footnote to a footnote!

You are right, we repeat stuff here as if it were oral. That is a problem with electronic communication and why the permanant word will always remain with us, as it has since the days of Uruk.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

MSK: Sorry, while transcription always suggest the possibility of error, Bob's point is cogent. The word was recorded and transmitted as given. Once set in stone - literally: dried clay - or carved into stone - the word did not change.

Michael,

You should read a little clearer than just make assumptions. Of course once a word is in stone, it doesn't change. The problem with humanity in ancient times was who was able to read it?

Reading used to be a highly specialized skill available only to a few, not to the many.

From your comments, you seem to be making the error of presentism, i.e., applying modern access to literature to what they had in ancient times.

Moreover, if you understood Jewish culture...

I just stopped reading at this point. What a load of horse-crap. I won't even bother trying to comment on this.

Objectivists are totally obnoxious about presuming what others know. It's a horrible bad habit.

But, I suppose it's a way to scratch that insecurity itch of pretending to be superior when a nagging doubt lingers in the shadows...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Maybe I was a little harsh in this last post, but fer Keriist sake, I've been talking about the ancient Jewish culture ever since I started posting on Objectivist forums, including a lot of stuff on whether an historical Jesus existed. (I read a guy named Earl Doherty back in 2005 or so, he caused me to think from a different angle and I posted several times about his work--on SoloHQ (now RoR) and here on OL.

And Michael has been posting on these same venues at the same time.

Here's a really pertinent example I remember discussing. I would have to look it up for links, but it's out there.

If anyone reads Genesis (or any of the other books in the Pentateuch), they will notice that the events usually have two different accounts, often conflicting ones. These different versions are almost always near each other. Scholars call these "dublets."

The way I understand it, in the time of Moses, writing was done on animal hides, which were scrolled up for safekeeping. People would not read these hides, but instead, gather around once a week to witness a holy man open them and read from them. Over time, these hides wore out and new ones had to be made. Enter the scribes.

Nothing from those times remains in the original because the hides simply rotted. A widespread opinion is that over the centuries, with different generations and people in power, certain policies changed, including minor changes in the stories. And these conflicting versions got added as a form of reconciling the differences instead of outright replacing the first versions, which were probably considered as holy. That's the theory I find most reasonable.

And that's just one way stories have evolved over the centuries from the oral tradition to the publishing era.

I can go into a lot more cool stuff from my studies and would love input from others. But tut tut tutting that I'm not familiar with this from a dude who has been reading me write about it since about 2005?

Dayaamm!

It's irritating.

I don't know what to call it except vanity. It reminds me of the vain academics in the Sufi story called "Ajmal Hussein and the Scholars" I posted here: Ayn Rand, Sufis and Scholars.

btw - I'm not calling Michael a shallow person. He has a really good mind. But he has attacks of this kind of shallowness at times (just like another person I lampooned recently).

Michael

[Xray]

Do any of you recall the Cecil B. Demill movie, The Ten Commandments? A phrase was used over and over. "So it is

It is amazing. All Pharo had to do was to dictate his order by way of a scribe, and by golly within an acceptable period of time it would be done. It is no wonder that the rulers of the day regarded written language as some kind of fraking magic! So it is written, so let it be done!

I think the 'magic' in the writing of ancient days was closely connected to which 'source' gave the message to the scribe; if the source was believed to be 'divine' (e. g. rulers/leaders that were worshiped as gods, or regarded as representing god on earth, or who were seen (like Moses) as coming in closest possible contact with their god (directly receiving his 'message') - written words of that kind certainly had a magic quality.

But if for example another scribe's job was more mundane - like listing the food portions fed to the slaves building the pyramids - I don't think this kind of written language had an aura of magic to it.

[BaalChatzaf]

Do any of you recall the Cecil B. Demill movie, The Ten Commandments? A phrase was used over and over. "So it is

It is amazing. All Pharo had to do was to dictate his order by way of a scribe, and by golly within an acceptable period of time it would be done. It is no wonder that the rulers of the day regarded written language as some kind of fraking magic! So it is written, so let it be done!

I think the 'magic' in the writing of ancient days was closely connected to which 'source' gave the message to the scribe; if the source was believed to be 'divine' (e. g. rulers/leaders that were worshiped as gods, or regarded as representing god on earth, or who were seen (like Moses) as coming in closest possible contact with their god (directly receiving his 'message') - written words of that kind certainly had a magic quality.

But if for example another scribe's job was more mundane - like listing the food portions fed to the slaves building the pyramids - I don't think this kind of written language had an aura of magic to it.

The Medium is the Message according to Mcluin. Thus Pharo'w command became action with the intermediate doings of the scribes.

You blow in Here and it comes out There. It is fraking magic!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

The way I understand it, in the time of Moses, writing was done on animal hides, which were scrolled up for safekeeping. People would not read these hides, but instead, gather around once a week to witness a holy man open them and read from them. Over time, these hides wore out and new ones had to be made. Enter the scribes.

Nothing from those times remains in the original because the hides simply rotted.

It makes some sense, as the Jews were wanderers and nomads cannot be burdened with stone and clay. They, of course, pushed herds with them, so animal hides would be easy. Once they settled into cities, though, it is not clear what was next.

For one thing, papyrus lasts for centuries. I heard of a demo in which a scholar rolled and unrolled a sheet while talking. His audience got more and more nervous. He finally explained the durability of the medium. Even the ink was made with what we call "gum Arabic." In later Greek and then Roman times poor people were buried in coffins made from recycled papyrus documents. Taking them apart (by soaking and steaming) revealed some lost works such as the poems of Archelochus, probably 300 years old when reused about 0-100 CE.

The town of Pergamum became famous for parchment - whence the word - because they attempted a library rivalling Alexandria's and the Egyptians cut off exports of papyrus to them. So, papyrus, not parchment was probably the preferred medium all along, though parchment ("animal skins") perhaps was used alternately by different peoples in other times and places.

Avoiding presentism is always important. It remains that in ancient Athens, philosophers (largely "metics" or foreign Greeks) wrote and sold "books" of their ideas. The very alphabet itself began as merchant's shorthand among Phoenicians, which is why the Greeks called the alphabet "Cadmian letters" from the prince of Tyre who supposedly taught them writing. This would be the same "paleo-Hebrew" writing from before or up to the time of the Babylonian Captivity.

Linear A, Linear B, Shang's ideograms.... It seems that when writing as we understand it was invented about 2500 or 3000 BCE, it spread easily, as it was, after all, intended as a medium of communication.