Star Man posted:

Does anyone have any juicy sources on archaeoastronomy?

Amateur naked eye astronomy was my starting point to getting into classics. I had to memorize it all out of a book in the late nineties, and helped me get a handle on myths related to constellations, stars, and the planets. That knowledge base has made me the weird humanities kid among a group of amateur astronomers with STEM backgrounds in my local amateur astronomy group.

Which to my surprise makes me stand out as one of the few people at star parties that knows where anything is without reference, how any of it correlates to other nearby constellations, and anything outside of Greco-Roman myth. So I would like to know more about anything, whether it's Greek, Roman, anywhere else from Europe, Egyptian, Chinese, Native American, etc.

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

I can produce a short book named, "Archaeoastronomy."

Like previous articles, this is downloaded by proxy, please nobody try and dox me from the IP address at the bottom of this pdf

Star Man posted:

oh gently caress there's a distinction between archaeoastronomy and astroarchaeology

bob dobbs is dead posted:

thats some orthodoxy poo poo speaking. that wasn't a serious factor for mass religion until the 1500s AD. religion was sanctioned magic until they figured out magic doesn't exist

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

The line Nessus refers to is Genesis 3:22

and indeed the accepted explanation is that "us" is the Father, the Son and the Spirit and the Lord is talking to himself, so to speak.

feedmegin posted:

Presumably not the accepted Jewish or indeed Muslim explanation, how do they handle it?

Gaius Marius posted:

If only someone had written a book on the Trinity so you could find out.

Groda posted:

How can anyone become a trinitarian after reading the Bible?

A_Bluenoser posted:

It is also worth noting that scripture is not a scientific treatise and makes no claim to be one: in particular the idea that a Biblical passage must have a single, correct, unambiguous meaning is a very modern one and would not have been shared by the Church Fathers or early theologians (and this probably remains true well into the Middle Ages). Rather most Biblical texts would have been seen as having multiple meanings and multiple different but valid interpretations and no-one would have had any problem with this.

euphronius posted:

There were creeds though you had to agree to or profess

"Magic, Religion, Materiality," by Gustavo Benavides posted:

bob dobbs is dead posted:

christian fundamentalism is younger than electric lighting

SlothfulCobra posted:

*which the fantasy that times used to be better is wide-rangingly popular and has been around since the written word. Ancient Greeks talked about how they lived in the iron age, not because that was the type of tool they used, but because previous ages were silver and gold, and then the world became so dull and dreary. I think some cultures with the idea that the world was in a cycle of being destroyed and remade added in that this is the worst iteration of existence. I don't know if ancient groups ever got into fundamentalist larps, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Nessus posted:

"everything sucks now, unlike when I was young, when it was much better" is a universal human idea, I think, and the fact that literally ten seconds of thought will probably find glaring flaws in this assessment does not make it less tempting.

bob dobbs is dead posted:

that's my standard response nowadays to peeps needing a theodicy. "why does god let evil poo poo happen?" "god is basically a ball of every god the hebrews had. they had some trouble formally rolling in the apotropaic demons like pazuzu, who you made sacrifice to to avoid falling off of cliffs, avoid unwanted guests and anyone fuckin w pregnant women, and others like him"

quote:

Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?
Sister Miriam Godwinson, "But for the Grace of God"

Foxtrot_13 posted:

Not really

The Puritans were the very definition of fundamentalists who did some pretty hard core things during the English Commonwealth. Banning Christmas as well as other feasts, imposing a strict set of worship practices, destroying church statues, white washing church walls or destroying religious murals, ripping out rood screens, effectively banning anything other than worship on Sunday, trying to ban sports and gambling etc. You can still see the effects of this time in English churches if you know what to look for.

They were so bad that when Cromwell died the populace welcomed back the Stuart kings as monarchy was better than the Puritans.

I'm sure people familiar with the history of the Catholic church could chime in with times when they went off the deep end as well.

A_Bluenoser posted:

I would push back against that characterisation on the basis of precision if nothing else. The term "fundamentalism" does not appear as a defined thing until the 1920s and it is largely a North American movement (at least to start with). If I recall properly the term actually originates with a series of pamphlets published in the 19teens called "The Fundamentals: a Testimony of Truth". We should be very cautious about backporting terms that develop in a specific context to earlier contexts or to different cultures because it can obscure what was actually going on and what people actually thought they were doing. It is the same problem as when people describe Medival peasant groups as "Marxist": that philosophy just does not exist in that context and trying to apply it ignores the very real (and often very well thought-out and sophisticated) concerns that the real historical people had and to be honest really devalues them.

The Puritans in the 17th century certainly believed that Biblical scripture as they received it was the sole basis for correct religion and was completely "true" in some sense but they did not necessarily mean the same thing when they said that as someone would when they said it in the early 20th century. I don't think it is clear that there is any line to be drawn between Puritan iconoclasm and young earth creationism: they don't necessarily have anything to do with each other.

This is getting rather beyond the topic of ancient history but I think it is important to remember that our current concepts don't necessarily map to what historical people were doing or thinking: just because thing X in history looks like modern thing Y to us on first glance does not necessarily mean they are actually similar or that the comparison is valid.

Thanks for listening to my TED talk

A_Bluenoser posted:

I would push back against that characterisation on the basis of precision if nothing else. The term "fundamentalism" does not appear as a defined thing until the 1920s and it is largely a North American movement (at least to start with).

Astral Magic in Babylonia, Erica Reiner 1995: Introduction posted:

quote:

The nobles are deep in sleep,
the bars (of the doors) are lowered, the bolts(?) are in place-
(also) the (ordinary) people do not utter a sound,
the(ir always) open doors are locked.
The gods and goddesses of the country-
Samas, Sin, Adad and Istar-
have gone home to heaven to sleep,
they will not give decisions or verdicts (tonight).

And the diviner ends:

quote:

May the great gods of the night:
shining Fire-star,
heroic Irra,
Bow-star, Yoke-star,
Orion, Dragon-star,
Wagon, Goat-star,
Bison-star, Serpent-star
stand by and
put a propitious sign
in the lamb I am blessing now
for the haruspicy I will perform (at dawn).

One of the rare prayers from Mesopotamia that strike a responsive chord in a modern reader, this prayer, or rather lyric poem, is known among Assyriologists as 'Prayer to the Gods of the Night.' The Gods of the Night of the title is but the translation of the Akkadian phrase that appears in line 14 of this poem and in the incipit of various other versions of the prayer.

The Gods of the Night, as their enumeration in this poem shows, are the stars and constellations of the night sky. How prevalent is the appeal to stellar deities, and to what extent and in what circumstances are the gods and goddesses worshipped in Mesopotamia considered under their stellar manifestations, is the subject I wish to treat here.