Yeah, how silly to critically analyze ancient historical/cultural texts to better understand history. Obvious the study of history is just about judging how stupid people in the past were compared to us modern day geniuses. That’s the real value of reading history - the schadenfreude of “lol those stupid ancient Greeks didn’t understand how thunder works. I’m so much smarter than they were.”
It’s not like there’s any value in trying to watch the evolution of a cultures belief over time, and try to see if you can better understand patterns and trends in human behavior. The Bible is poopoo for dumdums, and there’s no value in anything that isn’t STEM.
Thank you SO much for this comment. Elegantly put.
As a person of faith myself I’m a touch biased, but
I’m so weary of that seemingly compulsive online behavior to take every possible pot-shot at peoples’ belief systems and ancient texts and history, to appear oh-so-enlightened for easy points. It’s such reddit-farmer behavior that seems to be consistently rewarded.
It’s painful how devalued the study of humanity has become, and crazy how close history can feel when you study it in context rather than just cramming facts for a test.
We ridicule the past at our peril.
Random tidbit: you might enjoy an anime called “Termae Romae Novae” (spelling?) about a Roman bath house constructor who time travels to modern Japan. The woman who wrote it is a historian who studied the topic deeply!
It’s so endearing and really drives home how, if we could only talk to these people now, we might find each other to be absolutely brilliant. The fallacy of the “idiot ancestors” needs to be put down.
Look up when Tacitus was writing his histories versus when they happened. Most ancient history is written years after the fact.
They also give us historical information about the time they were written, even if we can’t trust their accounts of the time they claim to describe.
Also, most books in the New Testament were written within a matter of decades.
Y’all really need to take some history classes. We don’t treat sources as if they are infallible depictions of events. We think about bias. We think about corroborating evidence. And if there are problems in a source, that doesn’t mean it has no value.
I mean, all of it is made up bullshit, so analyzing it to that degree is silly.
Yeah, how silly to critically analyze ancient historical/cultural texts to better understand history. Obvious the study of history is just about judging how stupid people in the past were compared to us modern day geniuses. That’s the real value of reading history - the schadenfreude of “lol those stupid ancient Greeks didn’t understand how thunder works. I’m so much smarter than they were.”
It’s not like there’s any value in trying to watch the evolution of a cultures belief over time, and try to see if you can better understand patterns and trends in human behavior. The Bible is poopoo for dumdums, and there’s no value in anything that isn’t STEM.
Thank you SO much for this comment. Elegantly put.
As a person of faith myself I’m a touch biased, but I’m so weary of that seemingly compulsive online behavior to take every possible pot-shot at peoples’ belief systems and ancient texts and history, to appear oh-so-enlightened for easy points. It’s such reddit-farmer behavior that seems to be consistently rewarded.
It’s painful how devalued the study of humanity has become, and crazy how close history can feel when you study it in context rather than just cramming facts for a test.
We ridicule the past at our peril.
Random tidbit: you might enjoy an anime called “Termae Romae Novae” (spelling?) about a Roman bath house constructor who time travels to modern Japan. The woman who wrote it is a historian who studied the topic deeply!
It’s so endearing and really drives home how, if we could only talk to these people now, we might find each other to be absolutely brilliant. The fallacy of the “idiot ancestors” needs to be put down.
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The bible is not a historical text though. It was made up hundreds of years after the time it claims to depict.
Look up when Tacitus was writing his histories versus when they happened. Most ancient history is written years after the fact.
They also give us historical information about the time they were written, even if we can’t trust their accounts of the time they claim to describe.
Also, most books in the New Testament were written within a matter of decades.
Y’all really need to take some history classes. We don’t treat sources as if they are infallible depictions of events. We think about bias. We think about corroborating evidence. And if there are problems in a source, that doesn’t mean it has no value.