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cheetah7071 posted:Did they have the understanding of the math behind lenses down well enough to design a pair of glasses? I assume you need a lot more knowledge of lens mechanics to make a properly functioning pair of corrective glasses than a magnifying glass. But maybe I'm wrong. Even today isn't it more a process of trial and error and having you look through different lenses to narrow it down?
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Aug 11, 2021 20:13
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There are a couple of ancient works on the mathematics of optics. I haven't read them nor do I know the science enough to judge if I did read them.
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Aug 11, 2021 20:16
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Brendan Rodgers posted:Even today isn't it more a process of trial and error and having you look through different lenses to narrow it down? Eh I guess? I think of that as more taking some basic measurements than just trying out random stuff. When I show up for a new prescription they've already got the materials and shape about 90% down just from me saying "I can't see far good." That said the math followed the glasses by centuries. I don't know that there's any particular reason that high medieval europe was when glasses started to show up as opposed to late antiquity or early medieval levant, or for that matter Song China. Lenses for magnifying had been in use for some time but they were pretty much always designed to be used on the thing being read i.e. have a lens that is concave on one side and flat on the other and put it right on the paper. I don't know if the hard part was deciding that you should just put them right up on the face or if it was making the frames.
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Aug 11, 2021 21:26
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Grand Fromage posted:There are a couple of ancient works on the mathematics of optics. I haven't read them nor do I know the science enough to judge if I did read them. Ptolmey had a book on Optics that only exists now in an Arabic form that Wikipedia calls “badly translated”. Pliny the Elder said Nero had some glasses made from emerald, but those could just be sunglasses.
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Aug 11, 2021 21:26
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Triskelli posted:Ptolmey had a book on Optics that only exists now in an Arabic form that Wikipedia calls “badly translated”. Pliny the Elder said Nero had some glasses made from emerald, but those could just be sunglasses. drat that must've looked baller
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Aug 11, 2021 21:29
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Brendan Rodgers posted:Even today isn't it more a process of trial and error and having you look through different lenses to narrow it down?
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Aug 11, 2021 21:39
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This is pretty cool. An intersex, probably non-binary, Finnish warrior-leader. https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...17833D87C997D3D quote:In 1968, a weapon grave with brooches was found at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki, Hattula, Finland. Since then, the grave has been interpreted as evidence of powerful women, even female warriors and leaders in early medieval Finland. Others have denied the possibility of a woman buried with a sword and tried to explain it as a double burial. We present the first modern analysis of the grave, including an examination of its context, a soil sample analysis for microremains, and an aDNA analysis. Based on these analyses, we suggest a new interpretation: the Suontaka grave possibly belonged to an individual with sex-chromosomal aneuploidy XXY. The overall context of the grave indicates that it was a respected person whose gender identity may well have been non-binary.
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Aug 11, 2021 22:42
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Lead out in cuffs posted:This is pretty cool. An intersex, probably non-binary, Finnish warrior-leader. Oh nice, hell yea
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Aug 11, 2021 23:07
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Speaking of podcasts, does anyone with more biblical history knowledge know if Apocrypals holds up? It's two dudes doing a read of the christian Bible (and as the name suggests, various apocryphal books), in random order. I'm really enjoying it even though it's prolly like a lot of pop history podcasts, infuriating to those of y'all who are actual published academics sometimes. As a jew who never really knew anything about the Jesus half of the text it's especially fun. Some is genuinely historically interesting-. Mark uses clumsy greek, loves to quote the jewish prophets, never bothers explaining jewish traditions or translating aramaic. Meanwhile Luke uses native greek but stops to explain jewish stuff. Jesus explicitly dying for the sins of mankind doesn't even come up until John. You can suss out the authors, audiences, and chronologies of the historical texts from stuff like that. Basic stuff but fascinating if you've never thought about it. There's also just great stories I never heard. Of course I knew Jesus got better after three days, but I did not know that in Luke, it's not a big solemn religious event. He reveals himself by teleporting into the apostle's apartment, stealing some leftovers, dropping a zinger, and then teleporting out. They're all left going "dudes y'all saw that poo poo too right?" The apocrypha gets even better. Peter reaches Rome only to find a flying satanic wizard and has to pray him to death to prove to Nero that that guy wasn't the true Messiah.
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Aug 13, 2021 01:02
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I can't tell you how it holds up from an academic biblical perspective - I know they get angry corrections sometimes, so at best it might be out-of-date? - but I enjoy it a lot. It's a pop-understanding of the scholarship with jokes from comic book guys. And when they get into the cult of the saints stuff it scratches an itch in my lapsed-Catholic brain. Edgar Allen Ho posted:Peter reaches Rome only to find a flying satanic wizard and has to pray him to death to prove to Nero that that guy wasn't the true Messiah. That's the episode that hooked me early, with St. Peter putting the Holy Spirit into a dog to give it the power to walk and speak like a man.
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Aug 13, 2021 14:14
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Triskelli posted:Ptolmey had a book on Optics that only exists now in an Arabic form that Wikipedia calls “badly translated”. Pliny the Elder said Nero had some glasses made from emerald, but those could just be sunglasses. My latin teacher said that using jewels for making special glasses was a diversion among the rich in rome. You could make your enemies green and laugh at them while popping another grape.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:59
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OPAONI posted:My latin teacher said that using jewels for making special glasses was a diversion among the rich in rome. You could make your enemies green and laugh at them while popping another grape. I think that’s from Ustinov's portrayal of Nero in Quo Vadis.
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Aug 13, 2021 19:58
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Speaking of podcasts, does anyone with more biblical history knowledge know if Apocrypals holds up? It's two dudes doing a read of the christian Bible (and as the name suggests, various apocryphal books), in random order. I'm really enjoying it even though it's prolly like a lot of pop history podcasts, infuriating to those of y'all who are actual published academics sometimes. I cant' speak to the quality of the podcast, but if that's the sort of thing you're interested in then there's a pretty good book called Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman that talks about some of the lost scriptures that never made it into canon - because they are all varying degrees of forgeries. Some of the rejected scriptures are pretty interesting and Simon Magus gets mentioned more than a few times. Sometimes as a stand-in for apostolic disagreements. I'm not sure how good it is from a scholarly standpoint though, the author has a lot of books on the subject, but in the references I see that he cites himself a lot.
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Aug 13, 2021 21:54
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listened to the first one of those on Mark and was pleasantly surprised -- obviously it's lighthearted and not a Serious History Podcast but it does seem to be a genuinely close, interested reading with a real attempt to engage with the history and original text. not sure if the one co-host actually has some knowledge of koine greek or if he's just very on point at summarizing relevant translation details from other sources, but either way it's more than i expected eke out fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Aug 13, 2021 |
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Aug 13, 2021 22:07
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eke out posted:not sure if the one co-host actually has some knowledge of koine greek or if he's just very on point at summarizing relevant translation details from other sources, but either way it's more than i expected That host (Benito Cereno) says he studied classics in college and learned Greek and Latin. Then he went on to become a comic book writer and eventual bible podcaster.
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Aug 13, 2021 22:44
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If you’re interested in New Testament history, I would also recommend NT Pod. It’s a little more dry, but the host is a respected scholar of the subject, and his approach is generally historical. Plus most of the episodes are short and digestible, if you don’t want to listen to the equivalent of a full university lecture.
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Aug 13, 2021 22:47
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Well Played Mauer posted:Question that I haven't seen yet: What options did nearsighted people have in ancient times? I remember reading or hearing somewhere that the Romans used the nickname "Strabo" to refer to people as blind, but I interpreted that to mean "their eyes suck," not actually without Remember when we were kids and could see the smallest things? When our parents brought us wee stuff to identify they couldn't see? "Stonehenge: children revealed to be the metal workers of prehistoric Britain" https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/18/stonehenge-gold-workers-metal-children-eyesight
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Aug 13, 2021 22:53
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Ithle01 posted:I'm not sure how good it is from a scholarly standpoint though, the author has a lot of books on the subject, but in the references I see that he cites himself a lot. Ehrman is a very legitimate scholar, but he is also a very polarizing figure, especially on the topic of early Christian forgery. You will get good scholarship from him, but you may not get a presentation of the view of the majority of scholars. He takes a very hard line on what should be considered a "forgery," classifying almost anything not written by its claimed author as such (including half of the New Testament). He also generally views these "forgeries" as being the result of malicious acts, rather then good faith pseudonymous writings. Both of these are controversial claims, but they aren't fringe views either.
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Aug 13, 2021 22:57
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Otteration posted:Remember when we were kids and could see the smallest things? When our parents brought us wee stuff to identify they couldn't see? That seems very dubious. Eye strain (rather than excess radiation or other type of exposure) causing blindness? Citation desperately needed. Cool daggers though.
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Aug 13, 2021 23:28
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CrypticFox posted:Ehrman is a very legitimate scholar, but he is also a very polarizing figure, especially on the topic of early Christian forgery. You will get good scholarship from him, but you may not get a presentation of the view of the majority of scholars. He takes a very hard line on what should be considered a "forgery," classifying almost anything not written by its claimed author as such (including half of the New Testament). He also generally views these "forgeries" as being the result of malicious acts, rather then good faith pseudonymous writings. Both of these are controversial claims, but they aren't fringe views either. Yeah I could tell that he considers a lot of texts as forgeries, although he does go out of his way to qualify different kinds of forgeries. The second thing you said I didn't really get from his writing though because he did note that texts could contain good faith errors or simply errors caused by repeated copying by scribes through the centuries. Good to hear that he's the real deal though. For obvious reasons a layman like me has a hell of a time finding good commentaries on any biblical scholar.
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Aug 13, 2021 23:41
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Ola posted:That seems very dubious. Eye strain (rather than excess radiation or other type of exposure) causing blindness? Citation desperately needed. Cool daggers though. Have your kids work on jewelry for eight hours a day and see how their eyes turn out. I'm away from my desktop right now, but I'm sure you can find other examples if you're curious.
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Aug 13, 2021 23:53
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Ithle01 posted:Yeah I could tell that he considers a lot of texts as forgeries, although he does go out of his way to qualify different kinds of forgeries. The second thing you said I didn't really get from his writing though because he did note that texts could contain good faith errors or simply errors caused by repeated copying by scribes through the centuries. The word "generally" may have been too strong, but he is certainly less willing to accept arguments of good faith in the case of forgeries from the first few centuries of Christianity then many scholars are. He has a book more focused on this, called Forgery and Counterforgery where he talks a lot more about early forgeries, and argues that most of them (even parts of the New Testament) were written with the intent to deceive.
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Aug 13, 2021 23:57
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Otteration posted:Have your kids work on jewelry for eight hours a day and see how their eyes turn out. I don't have any kids, but I have google. "eye strain causes blindness" is filled with hits that says it doesn't, even from those that would profit if it did. https://www.specsavers.com.au/help-and-faqs/what-is-the-impact-of-eye-strain https://www.nvisioncenters.com/education/screen-time-and-your-eyes/ https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/can-chronic-eyestrain-cause-blindness https://www.sharp.com/health-news/can-staring-at-a-screen-make-me-go-blind.cfm quote:Asthenopia is more commonly known as eyestrain or ocular fatigue. It’s a common condition that occurs when your eyes become tired from intense use. Staring at a computer screen for long periods or straining to see in dim light are common causes. https://www.healthline.com/health/asthenopia I'm happy to check out any science to the contrary. I'll have no problem reading it even though I've been staring at screens for most of my waking hours for 20+ years.
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Aug 14, 2021 00:36
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CrypticFox posted:The word "generally" may have been too strong, but he is certainly less willing to accept arguments of good faith in the case of forgeries from the first few centuries of Christianity then many scholars are. He has a book more focused on this, called Forgery and Counterforgery where he talks a lot more about early forgeries, and argues that most of them (even parts of the New Testament) were written with the intent to deceive. Gotcha, forgeries as a means of settling doctrinal disputes was definitely something that was mentioned.
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Aug 14, 2021 01:21
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I was thinking that the NT is generally full and n forgery and basically exists now as “what Constantine” felt should be in it. But then I remembered that most people that study the bible think it’s somewhat real and the idea of a Roman Emperor making up most of their faith would cause issues.
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Aug 14, 2021 18:02
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Eh, I can't speak for christianity but the vast majority of even religious jews I know don't actually think the Torah was written by Moses. I can see christianity being more fraught given we're the dudes who had the god of things like sabbath lights or the Oven of Akhnai. "My children have triumphed over Me; My children have triumphed over Me." Dunno if the Pope is as fond of rules lawyering the one true god.
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Aug 14, 2021 18:22
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sbaldrick posted:I was thinking that the NT is generally full and n forgery and basically exists now as “what Constantine” felt should be in it. Well the Bible was more or less hashed out before Constantine. He just gave it state backing and made the dissenters officially “wrong”. Though it’s obvious had he not done so, it would have become increasingly common for different movements to keep adding/removing stuff that supported/undermined their beliefs, until there were like six different bibles and Christianity was more a genre of faiths rather than a relatively coherent single one. Think like six religions all as different from each other as “normal” Christianity is from Judaism and none of them having plurality.
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Aug 14, 2021 18:24
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galagazombie posted:Well the Bible was more or less hashed out before Constantine. He just gave it state backing and made the dissenters officially “wrong”. Though it’s obvious had he not done so, it would have become increasingly common for different movements to keep adding/removing stuff that supported/undermined their beliefs, until there were like six different bibles and Christianity was more a genre of faiths rather than a relatively coherent single one. Think like six religions all as different from each other as “normal” Christianity is from Judaism and none of them having plurality. based
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Aug 14, 2021 19:02
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sbaldrick posted:I was thinking that the NT is generally full and n forgery and basically exists now as “what Constantine” felt should be in it. Yeah but you’re wrong though. Origen did most of the assembly of the NT canon. But that gets played down because he has some heretical ideas about the Logos.
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Aug 14, 2021 19:02
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I thought the New Testament was put together by a bunch of Christian bigshots from across the empire (but mostly the parts nearer to Greece because by then the Empire was not in a great condition to organize events), and even then it was from texts that had already been written. Much like how the Torah had a couple events of assembling a central book out of a collection of documents, and the Quran had to be assembled after Muhammed. There may be some administrative influence from on high, but the religion was already big, there would be outrage over majorly changing things from what had already been established. Heck, Christianity got its first schisms from seemingly inconsequential semantic disputes that might've been proxies for larger regional disputes, and the Emperor couldn't stop them.
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Aug 14, 2021 19:09
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SlothfulCobra posted:I thought the New Testament was put together by a bunch of Christian bigshots from across the empire (but mostly the parts nearer to Greece because by then the Empire was not in a great condition to organize events), and even then it was from texts that had already been written. Much like how the Torah had a couple events of assembling a central book out of a collection of documents, and the Quran had to be assembled after Muhammed. But the thing is without state backing and endorsement of an original "orthodoxy" there would have been even less ability to keep people from running off on their own and making new books. Like no poo poo one of the reasons Mormonism could get away with adding books to the Bible is because of a combination of the U.S having no state church and the fact they could flee out to Utah where they were too far away and isolated for anyone to do anything about them. The reason the Christianity and Islam are relatively self-coherent theologically and doctrinally is that they had "immutable" holy books, something that is only possible due to the backing of an Imperial Power (Rome/The Caliphates) with complete Hegemony over such a massive amount of territory enforcing that "immutability". Even the most severe disputes between Christian denominations or Islamic schools pales in comparison to the differences among pretty much every religion that has ever existed. The constantly killing each other over these "small" differences is as you put it, more due to the fact they were often proxies for regional disputes. And you can almost always find a direct correlation between "more different" forms of these faiths (and whether or not they change the holy books) to how far they were from the Imperial power center. Arianism was big with the Germanic tribes beyond Romes control, The Church of the East was in the borderlands shifting control with of the eastern empires like the Sassanids.
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Aug 14, 2021 20:03
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galagazombie posted:until there were like six different bibles and Christianity was more a genre of faiths rather than a relatively coherent single one. Think like six religions all as different from each other as “normal” Christianity is from Judaism and none of them having plurality. How is this different from the actual current situation?
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Aug 14, 2021 20:07
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Yeah, the Christian canon took shape gradually over several centuries (arguably not finalized until the Reformation), and the individual texts that make it up were all written at least a century and a half before Constantine, textual variations aside. The main role Constantine and later emperors played was to enforce the “correct” interpretation of scripture, rather than its contents.
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Aug 14, 2021 20:08
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galagazombie posted:Even the most severe disputes between Christian denominations or Islamic schools pales in comparison to the differences among pretty much every religion that has ever existed. nah, no intrareligious differences have caused more death than those examples
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Aug 14, 2021 20:48
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ChubbyChecker posted:nah, no intrareligious differences have caused more death than those examples You misinterpreted me. talking about how big the theological/doctrinal differences themselves were, not how big the resulting conflicts were. I thought I made that clear when I talked about all the massive wars tied to regional power dynamics. Take for instance the 30 Years War. It caused a bazillion deaths. Destroyed and made nations and Empires. But the actual differences being fought over were pretty small when one looks at the spectrum of human religious belief. It's actually very ironic the massive amount of bloodshed that that Christianity and Islam have have had within themselves between sects over differences most other religions would consider "minor".
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Aug 14, 2021 21:39
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galagazombie posted:You misinterpreted me. talking about how big the theological/doctrinal differences themselves were, not how big the resulting conflicts were. I thought I made that clear when I talked about all the massive wars tied to regional power dynamics. Take for instance the 30 Years War. It caused a bazillion deaths. Destroyed and made nations and Empires. But the actual differences being fought over were pretty small when one looks at the spectrum of human religious belief. It's actually very ironic the massive amount of bloodshed that that Christianity and Islam have have had within themselves between sects over differences most other religions would consider "minor". ah, check
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Aug 14, 2021 21:40
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PittTheElder posted:Serious answer: probably not. The theocratic nature of the ERE is hella exaggerated in the western consciousness. Kind of the opposite to theocratic, or maybe not, in that unlike the West the Emperor decided what goes re: religion. The head of state not having control of that is kind of the aberration.
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Aug 14, 2021 21:55
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galagazombie posted:You misinterpreted me. talking about how big the theological/doctrinal differences themselves were, not how big the resulting conflicts were. I thought I made that clear when I talked about all the massive wars tied to regional power dynamics. Take for instance the 30 Years War. It caused a bazillion deaths. Destroyed and made nations and Empires. But the actual differences being fought over were pretty small when one looks at the spectrum of human religious belief. It's actually very ironic the massive amount of bloodshed that that Christianity and Islam have have had within themselves between sects over differences most other religions would consider "minor". Minor? MINOR? What are you, some sick homoiousian heretic?
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Aug 14, 2021 21:56
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ChubbyChecker posted:ah, check No bigee. We are, after all, all members of the Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879.
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Aug 14, 2021 23:10
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SlothfulCobra posted:I thought the New Testament was put together by a bunch of Christian bigshots from across the empire (but mostly the parts nearer to Greece because by then the Empire was not in a great condition to organize events), and even then it was from texts that had already been written. Much like how the Torah had a couple events of assembling a central book out of a collection of documents, and the Quran had to be assembled after Muhammed. No one, not Constantine, or Origen, or a council of Christian bigshots ever consciously sat down to determine what the bible should contain. You may be thinking of the Council of Nicaea, which was held in 325 AD, and was the first meeting of bishops from all across the empire (although mostly the East). It has filtered into the public consciousness that Nicaea pronounced what the bible should contain, but this is untrue. By the time anyone was thinking in terms of councils and law and enforcement, the books of the bible were already relatively fixed. Irenaeus, who wrote in the mid to late 2nd century AD, was confident in referring to a known collection of sacred texts that were known, and accepted by all Christians. He may have been exaggerating the degree to which they were widely accepted, since he was writing about this in his work Against Heresies. However, it is clear from his writings, and the writings of other second century Christians, that most the New Testament canon as we know it today was already in circulation by the late 2nd century. Notably, none of these 2nd century writers, or later writers for that matter, ever refer to a meeting or council or individual who picked which texts should be included in the Christian scripture. They only ever refer to the fact that those texts had been in use for generations, and therefore had the authority of antiquity. What makes Origen important to historians looking at the development of scripture is that he actually lists the books that everyone is known to accept. Irenaeus and other 2nd century writers did not do this, they only referred to its existence (no doubt expecting their audience to know what they were talking about without having to list it the books out). However this does not mean that Origen (or any of the other 3rd century authors whose writings include lists of NT books) created the list. They were simply being more explicit about things that had previously not been written down in texts which survive. This makes sense, since by the 3rd century, educated Christian authors like Origen were making a concerted effort to appeal to educated non-Christians through literature, scholarship, and philosophy. This effort required making written lists of scriptural texts in literary works that would end up being copied out, whereas previous lists of scripture would not have been included in literary works that were intended for a solely Christian audience (like Irenaeus's Against Heresies, he did not expect any non-Christians to read this, so he does not bother to explain or list things out).
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Aug 15, 2021 01:00
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