ancient religions Archives - Page 8 of 12

Can We Know What Biblical Texts Originally Said?

One of the most commonly asked questions about the Bible is the question of whether we can know what the texts that make it up originally said. This question is of interest to a lot of people. Obviously, Christians want to know what these texts originally said because they believe that the writings included in the Bible are directly inspired by God and that they can teach people the right way to live their lives.

Meanwhile, many of us who aren’t Christians are interested in knowing what these texts originally said as well because we want to know more about the historical development of Christianity and about what the earliest Christians in ancient times believed.

I suppose, then, there’s good news and bad news for everyone. The bad news is that the surviving manuscripts of the texts included in the New Testament contain a wide array of overt discrepancies, errors, and later insertions. The good news is that, in spite of this, in the vast majority of cases, we actually have a pretty good idea of what the texts originally said.

For the purposes of this article, I will be focusing primarily on the texts of the New Testament because I know more about them and they were originally written in a language that I have personally studied (i.e. Koine Greek). Many of the general things I am about to say are applicable to the texts of the Hebrew Bible as well, but I will not be focusing on those texts here.

The Shocking True Origin of the Name “Philadelphia”

You’ve all been taught the name Philadelphia comes from Greek meaning “City of Brotherly Love.” That’s mostly true. What you haven’t been taught is the long, fascinating history behind the name. As it turns out, the name Philadelphia ultimately comes from a nickname given to an ancient Greek ruler of Egypt who gained notoriety for marrying his own full sister. The “brotherly love” in the name originally referred to literal incest.

Carl Sagan Was Really Bad at History

Carl Sagan’s thirteen-episode documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which originally aired on PBS in 1980, is the most watched PBS documentary series in history. The miniseries, which is, broadly speaking, about the history and importance of science, has had a massive influence on both our culture as a whole and on individual people’s lives. Many people say that watching Cosmos growing up was what inspired them to go into STEM.

Unfortunately, while Carl Sagan may have been a brilliant scientist and a great science popularizer, he was an unbelievably terrible historian and, in the show, he gets a boatload of facts about history blatantly wrong. Because Sagan was a scientist with an established reputation, though, many people have assumed that everything he says in the miniseries must be correct and, as a result, these misconceptions have spread and become embedded in popular culture.

Perhaps the most influentially wrong segment in the whole series is a twenty-two-and-a-half-minute segment in the last episode about the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria and the murder of the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia. In this one segment, Sagan manages to promote what seems like roughly half of all the misconceptions about the ancient world that I have ever debunked.

I wrote an article in August 2018 debunking misconceptions about Hypatia and another article in July 2019 debunking misconceptions about the Library of Alexandria. In both of those articles, I have noted that many of the misconceptions I debunk originated from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, but, in those articles, I did not address Carl Sagan’s PBS miniseries directly.

I have therefore decided to undertake the ambitious task of going through the entire segment about Hypatia and the Library of Alexandria and correcting all the inaccuracies I come across. This should give you some impression of how historically accurate Carl Sagan’s documentary really is.

No, Groundhog Day Is Not of Ancient Pagan Origin

As you may or may not know, February 2nd is known as “Groundhog Day” in North America because there is a popular superstition that, if a groundhog comes out of his hole on February 2nd and sees his shadow because it is sunny, he will go back in his hole and there will be six more weeks of winter, but, if he does not see his shadow because it is too cloudy, he will stay out of his hole and winter will be over soon.

Every year, at the site of Gobbler’s Knob in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a widely-publicized ceremony is held in which a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil is brought forward by members of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club dressed in tuxedos and top hats.

The president of the Inner Circle then pretends to listen to Punxsutawney Phil, who allegedly tells him in a language that only the president can understand known as “Groundhogese” whether or not he has seen his shadow. The president of the Inner Circle makes a pronouncement of whether there will be an early spring or six more weeks of winter. It’s all a very silly affair and very few people, if any, actually think the groundhog can predict the weather.

Naturally, there are people insisting that Groundhog Day is of ancient pagan origin. This is, of course, entirely wrong; there’s really nothing ancient or pagan about Groundhog Day as we know it today. Nonetheless, people today are obsessed with trying to connect all modern holiday customs back to ancient paganism. People like to believe that the traditions we have today are ancient. In reality, though, most modern holidays customs are products of only the past few centuries.

No, Researchers Didn’t Really Reconstruct the Voice of a 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy

In case you haven’t heard, on 23 January 2020, a group of British researchers published a paper in the British scientific journal Scientific Reports claiming that they had reconstructed the voice of an ancient Egyptian man named Nesyamun, who worked as a priest, scribe, and incense-bearer at the temple complex at the site of Karnak in Upper Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Ramesses XI (most likely ruled c. 1107– c. 1077 BC). Nesyamun was probably of Nubian descent. He died in around his mid-fifties and, at the time of his death, suffered from severe gum disease.

The researchers used a CT scanner, a 3D printer, a loudspeaker, and computer software to reconstruct what they claim is what it would sound like if Nesyamun were to speak the vowel sound “eh.” Unfortunately, the claim of the researchers that they have reconstructed Nesyamun’s actual voice is highly dubious.

The Problem with Percy Jackson

The book series Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan, originally published from 2005 to 2009, is one of the most popular series of children’s fantasy novels of the twenty-first century so far. According to the Wikipedia article on it (which may or may not be reliable here since the source it cites is a Fox Business article from 2010 with a dead link), over sixty-nine million copies of books in the series have been sold worldwide.

In case you haven’t read the series, the basic premise is that the Greek gods are real, they live in the United States, and their demigod offspring live among us. According to the series, these demigods have special powers that they have inherited from their parents. The main character of the series is Percy Jackson, the demigod son of Poseidon and a mortal woman. Major supporting characters introduced in the first book include Annabeth Chase (a daughter of Athena), Grover Underwood (a satyr), Luke Castellan (a son of Hermes), and Chiron (a wise centaur).

I first read the series when I was in late elementary school and, at the time, I loved it—although I never quite got as obsessed with it as I did with Harry Potter or The Spiderwick Chronicles (probably because I read it at a significantly older age). As I grew older, though, there was something about the series that really started to bother me. I was in around seventh grade when I really started to notice it and, ever since then, it is something that I have found very disturbing about the series and the message that it sends.

This article will be just as much an account of my personal experience with the books and how they have affected me, as well as an assessment of them and a reflection on how my sentiments towards them have changed over the years.

The So-Called “Vatican Secret Archive” Isn’t Very Secret

There are all kinds of conspiracy theories floating around about what the Roman Catholic Church might be hiding in the notorious Vatican Secret Archive. Many people believe that the Secret Archive may hide secret, incriminating information about the origins of Christianity—or certainly at least shocking revelations about the history of the Catholic Church.

As it turns out, though, there’s not really anything “secret” about the so-called “Vatican Secret Archive”; its location is shown on every map of the Vatican and it is actually surprisingly easy to gain access to it. Indeed, thousands of scholars and journalists are allowed to access it every year. To gain access, you just have to prove your qualifications and provide a decent explanation for why you want access.

Did the Ancient Greeks Really Believe in Their Myths?

On Quora, I have noticed there seems to be an endless number of questions dealing with the same overall theme: “Did the ancient Greeks and Romans really believe in their gods?” and “Did the ancient Greeks really believe in their myths?”

I think these questions are born from a strange discordance that people have noticed between the ancient Greeks’ reputation for rational skepticism and the stories we still tell about their gods and heroes—stories that—let’s face it—in most cases are pretty unbelievable to say the least.

Thus people have wondered, “How on Earth could a people so supposedly enlightened believe in such absurd stories?” As it turns out, though, believing in the Greek deities and believing in Greek myths are two different things; many people in ancient times believed in the deities without necessarily believing in all the stories attached to them.

Here’s Where Some Famous Rulers from Ancient Times Were Buried

I am frequently asked the question of where famous people from the ancient world were buried. In most cases, we have no idea where the remains of famous people from the ancient world were originally deposited. Nonetheless, when it comes to famous rulers from the ancient Mediterranean world, we often have a great deal more information about where they were buried than we do for ordinary people.

For instance, we actually do have some information about where famous leaders such as Perikles, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and Augustus’s remains were deposited. Unfortunately, even when we do know the exact location of a person’s original burial, it is exceedingly rare for their remains to have survived to the present day. None of the bodies of any of the rulers I have mentioned have ever been identified by archaeologists.

Burial practices in the ancient world varied considerably from one culture to the next. The ancient Romans traditionally cremated their dead. The ancient Greeks traditionally buried their dead in the ground uncremated and unembalmed with grave markers to show where the person was buried. The ancient Egyptians traditionally embalmed their dead and placed their embalmed bodies in tombs with extensive grave goods.

Did Christians Really Burn Sappho’s Poetry?

Sappho of Lesbos (lived c. 630 – c. 570 BCE) was the most praised and highly regarded of all Greek lyric poets in antiquity. She was known as the “tenth Muse” and some ancient authors regarded her work as on par with that of Homer (the putative author of the Iliad and the Odyssey and most revered of all ancient Greek poets) himself. She produced an enormous body of poems, but, sadly, extremely little of her work has survived to the present day.

In the third century BCE, the Greek scholars working at the Great Library of Alexandria produced a standard text for all of Sappho’s poems that was divided into at least eight “books” or rolls of papyrus. Many scholars believe that the collection probably contained nine books for the nine Muses. Today, though, less than seven hundred lines of Sappho’s poetry are extant. Only one of her poems, Fragment 1 (known as the “Ode to Aphrodite”), has survived to the present day totally complete with no lacunae or parts missing. A few other poems have survived to the present day nearly complete, including Fragment 16 (the “Anaktoria Poem”), Fragment 31 (“Phainetai Moi”), Fragment 58 (the “Tithonos Poem”), and the “Brothers Poem.”

The most common explanation that people give for why so little of Sappho’s poetry has survived to the present day is that (supposedly) Christian authorities in late antiquity or the Middle Ages had all the collections of her poems rounded up and burned, because they were disgusted and horrified by how openly she describes her erotic desire for other women. This makes for a good story with clear villains. Unfortunately, it is probably not true. In reality, as I shall explain in this post, we have no evidence to support the idea that Christians went around burning Sappho’s poems. The real reasons why so little of her poetry has survived are far more complicated—and actually far more interesting.