|
Amused to Death posted:Not even Renaissance, more so Victorian revisionism. Heck think about the most famous voyage ever, Columbus gets hired by the government to find a sea route to China, you're not going to China on a flat Earth. Most of his men didn't want to turn back because they were worried about falling off the Earth, they were worried about starving to death. And they were worried because Colombus was using bad math and his crew knew it. Columbus believed the world's diameter was waaaay smaller than it actually is. If they hadn't run into America, they would have starved before they got more than halfway the Indies.
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 01:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 17:16 |
|
|
Nenonen posted:In the case of Joseph the carpenter, who would he have paid his taxes to and what would have been done if he had fled to, say, Egypt? Bible says "and all went to be taxed, every one into his own city". But what if nobody came? In the case of Joseph, the person collecting his taxes would have been another local who was probably of a higher social standing (or one of their lackeys). Like I said before, the Romans didn't care how harshly people were taxed as long as they got the money they needed. Governors would often allow the upper class members of the provincial natives to bid on the right to collect taxes, which was lucrative for both parties. The governor got however much money he was telling the collectors they had to give him plus the money the collectors paid in order for the right to collect taxes, and the collectors gambled on being able to skim off the top in order to make a profit. To use another example from the Bible: the apostle Matthew was originally a subordinate tax collector for the Tetrarch of Galilee, Herod, who was the successor of the Herod who killed all those babies in an attempt to snuff out Jesus. How the tax collectors actually got people to pay their taxes is something I'm not as clear on. Logically, most people just paid the tax because they were supposed to and it wasn't worth the trouble to resist. Tax collectors may have been accompanied be thugs or even Roman auxiliary troops in order to add a little more incentive to not cause trouble when it came time to pay your taxes. Since the Romans didn't really handle taxation of the provinces, and didn't keep records of provincials, it was actually beneficial to have other provincials handle collection because they would have been much more familiar with the land and the people and therefore would have a better idea if someone was evading paying their taxes. As far as fleeing to avoid taxes, this was actually a pretty easy thing to do if you lived in a rural enough area. Rome was able to tax the hell out of settlements without any difficulty, but if you lived in the country as a farmer or a herder, it wasn't difficult at all to simply hide your loot (or take it with you) and leave before the tax collectors got there. Like I said, parts of Egypt had a big problem with this, but rural areas in Gaul, Britain, and Spain were equally hard to keep track of and tax efficiently. As for Joseph, I don't think the Romans actively hunted down small scale tax-evaders, that would have again fallen to the locals and they would have had to decide if it was worth it to chase him down. If Joseph's whole village had decided to flee and not pay their taxes, then something certainly would have been done to stop them, but one carpenter avoiding them was peanuts. He likely wouldn't have been able to return to his village without getting into serious trouble though, and if he moved somewhere else he would have ended up getting taxed by whoever was in charge there anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 01:25
|
|
|
Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Isn't there guaranteed to be some record of them establishing their trading outpost in India? Might be destroyed but hey, mostly likely they made one I'd assume. There certainly were records, but whether they survived somewhere? Who knows. furushotakeru posted:I find it curious that the map seems to indicate that the Romans had at least an inkling that Earth is round, not flat. The Romans were quite aware the Earth was round. In fact the diameter of the globe was calculated very accurately by a Greek whose name I forget in like 400 BCE. When you see a statue of the emperor and he's holding a sphere, that's Earth. As for how they got the maps so accurate, I'm not really sure how cartography was done prior to modern instruments. Roman traders sailed all along those coastlines and were able to map them somehow. The biggest fuckups on that map are having India as an island (this is common in maps for ages, I don't know why) and whatever the gently caress is going on east of Indochina there, where the land goes south and connects to the assumed but undiscovered southern continent. General Panic posted:In her introduction to an edition of Livy's histories on the Second Punic War, Betty Radice says that "the Romans did not travel for the mere pleasure of sight-seeing" Eh. There was a whole tourism industry with hotels and souvenirs and such, and we know people traveled within the empire for games and shows. I don't buy that Romans didn't travel for travel's sake. It is true that many ancient historians are just writing down poo poo they've heard and don't attempt to verify anything. Nenonen posted:Can you explain how taxation worked in Rome? Essentially, the governor would need to raise X amount of taxes from the province. Say 1,000 denarii for the sake of the discussion. So, what he's going to do is take bids from tax collection companies and hire the one he thinks is best. The tax collectors will be given a commission to go out and collect the taxes. They have to give the governor 1,000 denarii to pay the taxes Rome wants (plus, say, another 100 for the governor and the fee the collection company is paying for the right to collect), and anything the collectors raise beyond that they get to keep as their payment. As you can imagine, this system lends itself to abuse and pisses people off a lot. But it gets the money.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 01:29
|
|
|
There was one point in the Dominate I think where inflation was so bad that taxes were actually collected in kind. Which is pretty amazing. The bureaucrats figured out how much stuff they needed each year and then apportioned it among the population based on people's jobs and wealth.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 01:58
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:The Romans were quite aware the Earth was round. In fact the diameter of the globe was calculated very accurately by a Greek whose name I forget in like 400 BCE. When you see a statue of the emperor and he's holding a sphere, that's Earth. Wikipedia says there some dispute about whether it was Pythagoras or Parmenides, but either way it was well established by the beginning of the 5th century BCE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth#Classical_Greece
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 02:11
|
|
|
Whelp I'm just a dumb product of (California) public education apparently 
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 04:37
|
|
|
It's a pretty common myth. Fact is no educated person has thought the world was flat for at least 2,500 years, and probably longer than that. You can see it's curved for yourself at a beach when a ship sails away. That was probably the first good evidence people had.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 04:47
|
|
|
I know Commodus was really into gladiator combat and had a thing for slashing animals to bits in front of people but is there any truth to the story that he had a large number of mentally and physically disabled people rounded up, armed and thrown into an arena for his amusement? or is it one of of those false propaganda claims like a lot of the stories about Nero?
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 05:08
|
|
|
I thought that it was Eratosthenes who measured the Earth's size. He was the guy who figured out the circumference of the Earth based on a well that had the sun shine directly over it on midsummer day in modern-day Aswan, the sun's angle on a pole in Alexandria, and then hiring professional walkers to measure the exact distance between those two points. After that, it was just applied trigonometry. He wasn't that far off from the currently-used measurement, depending on which stadia you used (Greek gave 16% error vs. Egyptian's 2%). Of course, he did that in the 200s BC, so he might have just been checking previous measurements. Dude was also in charge of the Library of Alexandria, so he knew what was up.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 05:40
|
|
|
Yeah that was the guy I was thinking of, I got the century wrong. It's amazing that a guy used a couple of obelisk shadows and some math to calculate the size of the planet.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 05:49
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:It's a pretty common myth. Fact is no educated person has thought the world was flat for at least 2,500 years, and probably longer than that. You can see it's curved for yourself at a beach when a ship sails away. That was probably the first good evidence people had. Yup. Usually the discourse relies heavily on written tradition, guess who wrote stuff down, and what kind of info got copied. Sailors knew that the earth wasn't flat, simply by seeing that the mast of a ship slowly disappears behind the horizon.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 08:40
|
|
|
Smirking_Serpent posted:How true is the ending line of Patton – the story about a slave standing behind a general during a triumph and whispering that all glory is fleeting? A translation of the relevant passage goes 'Even when, amid the honours of a triumph, he sits on that lofty chariot, he is reminded that he is only human. A voice at his back keeps whispering in his ear, “Look behind thee; remember thou art but a man.” And it only adds to his exultation, that he shines with a glory so surpassing as to require an admonitory reference to his condition.' No mention of a real person, slave or not, standing behind the victor. Of course, Latin translations are pretty flexible and i've seen translations that did say it was a real person, so it might be a matter of interpretation. Perhaps it was a real person, or it might be talking about the conscious of the victor. There is a silver cup from Boscoreale which depicts Tiberius with a slave standing behind him, so there is some proof supporting the idea of a slave behind the victor. However, if you see the order of the procession, the soldiers were right behind the general, so it could also be taken literally: 'you did not win this victory alone, like some god, but thanks to your soldiers'. Anyway, while i still think the story is not true, there is also enough proof for it to be true. We simply cant be sure due to the vagueness of the statements we got. It just shows how hard it is to make definitive statements about Roman times. Most facts can be interpreted in multiple ways. 9-Volt Assault fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Jul 18, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 09:10
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:Considering the Vikings were not just raiding but conquering parts of the British Isles quite a bit before this, that seems a bit unlikely. I mean Beowulf is set in Scandinavia, even. It wasn't considered worth going to. As far as the rest of the world was concerned it was a barren desolate place where barbarians, cannibals and cyclops ruled. The first to try to explore the region was Adam of Bremen in 1068 and it's doubtful if he even made it past Denmark. He probably relied on the stories that the current king, Svein Estridsson, told him.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 13:34
|
|
|
Wasn't there also a tradition where during a triumph, the soldiers or the spectators or something carried mocking images of the imperator? I don't know, it was something like that. Meant to deal with the whole hubris thing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 13:35
|
|
|
Was Roman culture pretty consistant for hundreds of years? For instance culture around the world is a lot different now than it was in the 1700s. But it always seems that Roman culture was pretty static and never changed.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 14:08
|
|
|
R. Mute posted:Wasn't there also a tradition where during a triumph, the soldiers or the spectators or something carried mocking images of the imperator? I don't know, it was something like that. Meant to deal with the whole hubris thing. I dont think it was so much a formal tradition as on a triumph to triumph basis. Caesars troops sang a song that went something like "Romans, lock up your daughters! Our generals bald, but he'll gently caress anything that moves!" and there's some mention somewhere I dont remember of the troops of Claudius singing songs about what a slut Messalina was during the triumph under britain
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 14:10
|
|
|
Are there any references to the beginnings of the Jewish Revolt in the Bible? If the historical Jesus died in 33 A.D and the Revolt was between 66–73 A.D, wouldn't there have been Zelots running around? I know it was a generation prior, but I was under the impression that this sort of thing didn't happen overnight. E: and how accurate are Josephus' references to Christ? Apparently parts of his work may have been doctored by later Christians.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 15:18
|
|
|
Paxicon posted:I dont think it was so much a formal tradition as on a triumph to triumph basis. Caesars troops sang a song that went something like "Romans, lock up your daughters! Our generals bald, but he'll gently caress anything that moves!" Also according to Suetonius, they also chanted a joke about the widespead rumor on how Caesar had a relationship with King Nicomedes of Bithynia, and preferred to be on the receiving end of sex. Gaul was brought to shame by Caesar; By King Nicomedes, he. Here comes Caesar, wreathed in triumph For his Gallic victory! Nicomedes wears no laurels, Though the greatest of the three.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 16:45
|
|
|
Charlie Mopps posted:I was still curious about this, especially since all we have is a statement from Tertullian (apparently Epictetus also wrote about it in Discourses 3.24.85, but i cant find the relevant passage on the internet), and not even someone like Suetonius wrote about it, despite mentioning such inane things like Vespasian being bored by his own triumph. I looked it up in my copy of Epictetus. For context, the chapter is a long one entitled, in my edition, "That We Ought Not To Be Moved By A Desire Of Those Things Which Are Not In Our Power". Epictetus posted:What then is the discipline for this purpose? First of all the highest and the principal, and that which stands as it were at the entrance, is this; when you are delighted with anything, be delighted as with a thing which is not one of those which cannot be taken away, but with as something of such a kind, as an earthen pot is, or a class cup, that when it has been broken, you may remember what it was, and may not be troubled. So in this matter also: if you kiss your own child, your brother, or your friend, never give full license to the appearance, and allow not your pleasure to go as far as it chooses; but check it, and curb it as those who stand behind men in their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal. The editor of the edition includes a footnote: "It was the custom in Roman triumphs for a slave to stand behind the triumphant general and to remind him that he was still mortal. Juvenal, x. 41."
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 17:33
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:Are there any references to the beginnings of the Jewish Revolt in the Bible? Well, one of Jesus' disciples was called Simon the Zealot. More generally, it's pretty clear from the Gospels that this was a country where the occupying power was very unpopular and there was a lot of social unrest e.g. the Pharisees try to trick Jesus into saying whether or not the Jews should pay taxes, so that he shows himself either to be a rebel or a collaborator, Barabbas in one Gospel is said to have committed murder "in the insurrection", there are references to other prophets who were briefly popular but then were killed and had their followings forcibly dispersed.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2012 20:08
|
|
|
Charlie Mopps posted:No mention of a real person, slave or not, standing behind the victor. Of course, Latin translations are pretty flexible and i've seen translations that did say it was a real person, so it might be a matter of interpretation. Perhaps it was a real person, or it might be talking about the conscious of the victor. There is a silver cup from Boscoreale which depicts Tiberius with a slave standing behind him, so there is some proof supporting the idea of a slave behind the victor.  (Excuse the lovely quality, I got this image from a site about angels) I read somewhere that he might have actually triumphed on horseback instead. Suetonius however claims that he drove a chariot and that Tiberius (his stepson) and Marcellus (his nephew) rode the horses. Then again, he triumphed thrice in three days so maybe he did both. After 29, by the way, Augustus refused to triumph and would instead accept an ovation (i.e. a lesser triumph) and definitely enter the city on horseback. Ancient historians (Cassius Dio for example) would later confuse ovations and triumphs which further complicates the issue. So who knows.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 01:36
|
|
|
There's also no reason why there couldn't have been different traditions. Triumphs happened rarely and we're talking about a span of centuries so things likely changed. It would probably be weirder if they were all exactly the same.Frosted Flake posted:Are there any references to the beginnings of the Jewish Revolt in the Bible? I don't know of any specific references to it in the Bible. Judea was always a restless area that revolted frequently so it would be hard to pin down. I'm not sure what timeframe you're asking about for the zealots, they were around during the entire period trying to start a revolution. "How accurate" is usually an unanswerable question. There aren't any non-religious contemporary references to Jesus. Later Christians did edit books they copied. That's about as far as you can go with confirmed stuff.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 02:51
|
|
|
What resulted in the religious split between both halves of the empire? Why did the two halves of the empire ultimately result in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions? Differences in culture?
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 05:41
|
|
|
karl fungus posted:What resulted in the religious split between both halves of the empire? Why did the two halves of the empire ultimately result in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions? Differences in culture? Primarily a dispute as to whether the Pope was able to control the Patriarch of Constantinople and other Eastern bishops; the Bishop of Rome was traditionally considered a first among equals, and that became increasingly contentious over time as the Pope tried to assert more of a "you guys are equals, I'm above you" status. This was particularly galling to Constantinople because the Pope was controlled by barbarians, or a "barbarian" himself later; the Greek/Latin divide became very pronounced, and a fairly minor doctrinal change (the "filioque clause" in the Nicene Creed) that was only supported by the West was either the last straw or simply a justification for schism, depending on who you ask. These two differences are still the reason why the two churches haven't reconciled since. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Jul 19, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 06:10
|
|
|
So they won't make up because they've been arguing for a good 1700 years over if the Holy Ghost is just from dad or also from junior?
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 06:19
|
|
|
DerLeo posted:So they won't make up because they've been arguing for a good 1700 years over if the Holy Ghost is just from dad or also from junior? Yes, but in the meantime that divergence has resulted in other changes over the centuries that have not transferred between the two traditions. I don't think they'd ever end up reconciling.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 06:40
|
|
|
DerLeo posted:So they won't make up because they've been arguing for a good 1700 years over if the Holy Ghost is just from dad or also from junior? That and just how far the cultures have diverged. I think they officially made peace with one another a few decades ago. The Pope vs the other big bishops (Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem) is the basic reason and well summarized. I don't actually know if Antioch and Alexandria became subordinate to Constantiople or what, but the eastern guys thought all four should be equals and the Pope thought he should be the top. The official split doesn't occur until 1054 but the tension grows over centuries. There was also a major dispute over whether communion bread should be leavened or unleavened. I don't know. There are tons of arcane detailed theological disputes that I can't make myself give enough of a poo poo to learn about but I guess the differences are significant. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Jul 19, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 07:06
|
|
|
General Panic posted:Well, one of Jesus' disciples was called Simon the Zealot. Remember that the gospels were mostly written in the 2nd century. They are more likely to reflect the sentiment after the Jewish war, when the civil rights of the jews were greatly limited. The entire Barabbas episode is certainly a fabrication. There was no such prisoner-releasing tradition and Jesus, being charged with conspiracy, would not have had a trial anyway (and neither would the other prophets).
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 07:43
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:That and just how far the cultures have diverged. I think they officially made peace with one another a few decades ago. The vast majority of the arcane theological disputes originally arose from the two sides dicking each other over in various ways; the leavened vs. unleavened bread thing was basically just a difference in tradition that nobody really cared about (because the Bible doesn't answer it either way, or says both in different places, or something along those lines) until the Byzantines were tossed out of southern Italy and the Eastern rite churches there forced to convert to Latin rite. Constantinople responded by closing Latin rite churches in the East, so the two main channels that kept the West and the East in contact and at least nominally cooperating were shut down and the schism occurred very shortly afterward through mutual excommunication. It was just the most recent doctrinal difference to become an issue immediately prior to the schism (the actual last straw; filioque was second-to-last, sorry), which is why it's remembered prominently. DerLeo posted:So they won't make up because they've been arguing for a good 1700 years over if the Holy Ghost is just from dad or also from junior? Papal supremacy is the real issue. The other doctrinal disputes were genuine, but more a matter of slightly differing tradition that could be smoothed over if the Pope or Patriarchs wanted to be friendly and emphasized if they didn't than they were anything that inevitably would have led to schism or prevented reconciliation. Actually, all of it, sometimes including papal supremacy, was smoothed over during several failed reconciliation attempts until the Ottomans captured Constantinople; this was viewed by the Orthodox Church as proof that the doctrinal differences shouldn't be ignored for political expediency, which solidified and amplified them. Today, there's no compelling reason to reconcile since both churches are more or less devoid of serious political power and the doctrinal differences are very old rather than relatively new.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 08:24
|
|
|
DerLeo posted:So they won't make up because they've been arguing for a good 1700 years over if the Holy Ghost is just from dad or also from junior? But the main issue was, and remains, papal primacy among equals. After the mutual excommunication of 1054 the Catholic Church went its own way in developing the papacy - no salvation outside the [Catholic] Church, papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals, Mary being immaculate as soon as she was conceived, etc. - which put more and more distance between the Churches, and so less and less incentive to reunite them. But yes, they're friendlier towards each other these days. WillieWestwood fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Jul 19, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 10:41
|
|
|
The real issue of Papal supremacy really had very little to do with the Patriarch and everything to do on whether the Emperor was supreme or not. The Emperor was generally considered God's True right hand on earth (which is why they always had Halos on them in icons)
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2012 20:57
|
|
|
Tao Jones posted:A lot of stuff found after colonial independence tends to end up in museum archives in the country it was found in. I tried to find a link to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, but the url I found for their site isn't working. I looked at the National Archaeological Museum's site to see if they had any interesting links, but the information for researchers wasn't available yet in English and the same page on the Greek-language website just said, in essence, "if you're a researcher or student and want access, call this official". (The Italian, Greek, and Egyptian governments are not exactly known for their efficiency, or, lately, stability.) To elaborate a bit more on this, while there are treasure troves of Medieval documents out there, probably almost all ancient documents in them have already been discovered. One of the only recent non-papyrus discoveries of ancient literary sources has come from the Archimedes Palimpsest (a palimpsest is a piece of parchment which has been scratched "clean" and written over), a manuscript which originally featured a lost work by Archimedes, a commentary by Alexander of Aphrodisias on Aristotle's works, and a fragment of a speech by an Athenian orator named Hypereides. The only reason this text went undiscovered for so long, however, is that the writing was very faint (and required modern imaging technology to fully read) and it was simply bought by a collector as a Medieval manuscript. quote:A major problem in Antiquity is that merchant-explorers of all peoples are basically huge liars. This isn't an age where international law exists so a merchant who discovers a route or location has no reason to announce it to anyone. The Roman state emerged into a Med that was an economic battle with the lines roughly split between the Greeks and the Phoenicians. And of course, since both cultures organized around the city-state, there's likely plenty of internal strife between mercantile concerns betwixt cities and even between opposing merchant houses. But many merchants did publish their routes and tips about sailing - just look at the works of Pseudo-Skylax or Ptolemy, for instance, which provide details about distances, friendly ports of call, and places to purchase or offload cargo that are all about as accurate as they could be at the time. quote:Well, I'm aware they did go outside of the Empire all the time - my question had more to do with whether, as GF mentioned, any kind of Marco Polo type stuff survived. Knowing what I know of the Romans and their taste for exoticity, I would have thought one of the merchants that went to the East might have written semi-accurately about Indochina and then spun some bullshit about the gold paved roads of China to sell a ton of copies of his book. Most explorers were Greeks, and in many cases their accounts do not survive. One good example is Megasthenes, a Greek who was sent by the Hellenistic king Seleucus I to make contact with the Mauryan king Chandragupta I and explore his kingdom (comprising much of northern India) and who wrote an account of what he found. We have no evidence of Mediterranean peoples reaching farther east than Afghanistan or Sri Lanka, however. On an interesting side note, a Greek from what is modern Marseille navigated around the Iberian peninsula in the fourth century BC and was the first explorer to provide a written account of sea ice, shorter days in the north, and the presence of amber on the beaches of the North Sea.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2012 00:53
|
|
|
Can somebody explain the differences between Roman and Greek sexuality?
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2012 05:16
|
|
|
Orkiec posted:Can somebody explain the differences between Roman and Greek sexuality? They were pretty similar, frank and open about sexuality, just look at some of the art. That being said, one area where they had some more significant differences was in regards to same sex relationships. This type of behavior was not frowned upon by either culture, sex was sex and it didn't matter who you did it with. What was different was the way they went about it. In the Greek world pederasty was common. The older man was supposed to be a sort of mentor, both sexually and in other ways, to a boy. Relationships between two adults of the same sex were less common in the Greek world. We also know that there were lesbian relationships in the Greek world and that was ok with them too. In Rome same sex encounters were acceptable if you were in the dominant/penetrating role. Roman masculinity was about being in control, so having sex with another male was ok as long as you were the dominant one. Additionally, you'd probably be having sex with a partner of a lower social standing such as a slave, prostitute, or an entertainer (gladiators were notorious sluts). I'm sure there were lesbian relationships as well but I'm not as clear about the Roman attitudes about that.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2012 05:36
|
|
|
Regarding all the talk of the Catholic/Orthodox split above, is one closer to the "original" church as it was practiced in the late Roman/early Christian era--the actual rituals and traditions? I've had friendly arguments with Catholics about which church is older (my family is Orthodox) and they always claim that the Orthodox church split from them. But compared to the Catholic services and churches I've been to, the Orthodox ones seemed much more mystical and maybe even a little pagan: the sing-song chanting, veneration of icons, frescos... Obviously, getting rid of the Latin mass and all that did a lot to modernize the Catholic church, but is all the other stuff I associate with the Orthodox church part of an older tradition that Catholics dropped during the split? Or do I have it backwards? Disclaimer: I am not religous and actually know very little about Christianity in general. I don't want to derail this great thread with too much church chat, so more on topic: my boyfriend and I just started watching I Claudius. How crazy/evil was Livia really? I'm guessing it's something like her/her husband's political enemies writing the history, like if archives of the Freep boards were our only records of Hillary Clinton. And how plausible is the show's depiction of Claudius's relationship Herod? It seemed odd to both of us that the Jewish king would just hang out in Rome with the imperial family. hotgreenpeas fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Jul 20, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2012 16:48
|
|
|
Depends what you're defining as original I guess. Both churches adopted the governmental traditions of their respective halves of the empire. Much of the Roman Catholic church is a direct continuation of the Roman government. The basilicas, the clothing, the rituals are all derived from there. The Orthodox church spent a lot more time as part of the Roman empire and both sides merged into one another. If anything it's probably less pagan, though both have plenty of pagan tradition subsumed into them. Saints, for example, are pagan as poo poo--some of them are just flat out pagan gods that were adopted and rolled into the religion to help with conversion of various tribes. The evil stepmother dynamic was a very common Roman storytelling device and I generally don't believe it when it shows up. Unfortunately, it's not like we have Livia's own perspective on things. As for Herod, that was totally normal. Foreign/allied/client princes would frequently grow up in Rome. It served two purposes. They were hostages to guarantee the loyalty of the rulers, and it would indoctrinate them in Roman culture which they could then go back and spread when they took over the throne, thus bringing the region further into Roman control. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Jul 20, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2012 16:59
|
|
|
hotgreenpeas posted:Regarding all the talk of the Catholic/Orthodox split above, is one closer to the "original" church as it was practiced in the late Roman/early Christian era--the actual rituals and traditions? WillieWestwood fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jul 20, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2012 18:53
|
|
|
hotgreenpeas posted:Regarding all the talk of the Catholic/Orthodox split above, is one closer to the "original" church as it was practiced in the late Roman/early Christian era--the actual rituals and traditions? I don't think either one is more "original" because both churches continued to develop on their own after they split. I guess you can say the Orthodox because it actually had the Roman state still intact behind it, and the Catholic and Orthodox (that's the technical title both churches call themselves by, the "Universal Standard Church") church was basically a creation of the Roman state. However, if you went to a Catholic mass in average middle class suburbia, it would likely be much less similar to the original church than your average Orthodox church service. This is mostly due to the Catholic immigrants in the US being almost completely subsumed into the regular culture, while Orthodox immigrants are often much more culturally distinct (maybe I'm wrong, but in my experience). My family's church (Armenian Apostolic, actually it and some others called Oriental Orthodox broke off from the Orthodox church like 600 years before the main schism) is very much traditional, still does the entire service in medieval Armenian, and is very intertwined with the diaspora community. The stuff you talk about like the weird chanting, icons, and stuff has been basically abandoned by the Catholic church over the last 75 or so years because it tends to repel the average middle class white person. The frescoes and art style of the Orthodox church is much more similar to the Romans, though, because the west had the whole renaissance thing going on. Also, orthodox priests are allowed to marry, which I'm pretty sure was the way the original church was. The Catholics banned it because people were using feudal law in the middle ages to pass clergy positions to their sons. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jul 21, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2012 05:46
|
|
|
The intersection between political power and ritualistic memes is really interesting, it seems universal and has evolved convergently across many the world. I've been doing some light reading mesoamerican societies, and the same phenomenon seems to occur. I'd theorise these kind of rituals act to enforce hierarchical co-operation throughout the society, and societies that can be both large and co-operative outcompete those less capable of so (regardless of the welfare of the individuals). Without these kind of memes (religion, nationalism, ethnicism, regionalism) to enforce co-operation, large groups fragment into smaller groups bound by more visible ties, such as kinship.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2012 09:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 17:16 |
|
|
There are also other "old" churches beside the Catholics and the Orthodox (old in this context meaning churches that emphasise apostolic succession, i.e. the belief that there is a continuous line of ordinations from the Apostles to current church bishops and priests and an unbroken institutional history back to the first Christians), namely the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the (Assyrian) Church of the East. The former are distinct from the other churches in that they don't accept any ecumenical councils after the First Council of Ephesus in 431, while the latter don't even accept that. Their liturgies are ancient as well, possibly even more so than contemporary Orthodox liturgies. The "oldest" liturgy would probably be the one of St James which is celebrated in Jerusalem by a handful of churches. It is only a revitalisation, though, and the main problem is that while we know the texts of the prayers etc. (they go back to the 4th century), we aren't really too sure about the ceremonies accompanying them. The St James liturgies you could attend are therefore mostly guesswork. Fun fact: the Assyrian Church of the East used to be the world's largest church by geographical extent, having dioceses even as far east as India and China during the 7th and 8th centuries.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2012 11:18
|
|
