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Atlantis Found. Again.
Tufriast writes "Paul McCartney and Mythic eat your heart out! BBC News has an interesting revelation regarding the lost city of Atlantis: "American researchers claim to have found convincing evidence that locates the site of the lost kingdom of Atlantis off the coast of Cyprus."" Hey, here's an idea: The idea of an almost mythical lost civilization is common thread throughout all old human societies - much like, say, really big Floods. Perhaps there could be more then one story that fits? But, no, that wouldn't be a simplistic enough answer to be sound-bitten into oblivion.
Looks like the existance of this story has been lost too!
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Actualy, I should have said Christian Bibles, since there are more than one version of it (translations, additions/omissions). The reason I qualified it as the Christian Bible is so that the New Testement would be included, since the Old Testemant is also the basis of Jewish faith. And yeah, other faiths use the term Bible.
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But I say I am skeptical about this discovery. Mainly because of who funded the expedition. It cost about $250k, which was raised by proceedes from book sales and donations, with the largest donation of $60k comming from a "Tourisim" society/acency in Cypris. Well, where does "Atlatis" show up? Off the coast of Cypris...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Altantis seems to be very mobile. It's been spotted in Cyprus now. Last time it was Ireland, before that it was in Spain and then Gibraltar
Prior to that it was in the mid atlantic where it moved to from Greece. Of course, it's original location was off the coast of Cornwall.
The Torah are the five books of Moses. The Hebrew Bible (in Hebrew, Tanakh) consistes of the Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim. Bible simply means a collection of books.
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Err... I thought only the Atlantian island capital was lost? Plato (supposedly) never claimed that the entire continent was lost. This has led many to suggest that the Americas were the lost continent of Atlantis. The island capital could have easily been lost in a disaster such as a tidal wave.
Ancient Hindu texts may confirm this theory, as they refer to great wars in arial and orbital machines. Some have suggested that their enemy was the Atlantians, who were actually the Aztecs. This has been corroborated by some pretty strange artifacts like these. It's hard to look at those and not believe that they're planes.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Also, I should mention that the oldest records we have of written Hebrew are from around 1000 BC.
See here
It's not like Moses was trying to encrypt the 10 commandments on his laptop... We're talking the Bronze Age here, after all.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Hey, here's an idea: The idea of an almost mythical lost civilization is common thread throughout all old human societies - much like, say, really big Floods. Perhaps there could be more then one story that fits? But, no, that wouldn't be a simplistic enough answer to be sound-bitten into oblivion.
-Hemos, from the original post
Hemos tries to make a good point, but reduces himself to ineffectual sarcasm -- evidently because he didn't RTFA.
Yes, many cities were flooded and sunk in ancient times. Yes, these events have become mythologized as a generic Atlantis.
But the article makes very clear: the discovers believe that *this* Atlantis is the Atlantis of Plato, because the dimesions and layout of the sunken city closely correspond to Plato's descriptions.
-kgj
-kgj
You are wrong! There are many references to Atlantis
I'd advised reading the novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and compare them to the very comprehensive historical records of the era. It is very easy to see how real history can be distorted to add magic and mythological things where none existed before. The author of the novel didn't just make it up. Things just got more and more exaggerated in oral history over the centuries. He simply wrote down events based on the history books as well as adding many of the exaggerated stories which had developed by his time. Historians call this the "story cycle" and one of the beauties of this era is that histories of the era are comprehensive enough over a period of time it is possible to see how certain story cycles develop, culiminating in what it written in the novel.
For example, the Shu-Han general, Guan Yu died at the hands of the Wu general Lu Meng. Now Lu Meng died of illness shortly afterwards. This is certified history. In the *novel* however, Lu Meng dies due to the manifestation of the ghost of Guan Yu in vengeance for his death. At the seminal Battle of Chibi, Zhou Yu's fire attacks are so effective against Cao Cao's navy because of an unseasonable SE wind. It is possible that Zhuge Liang was a bit of a meteorologist and predicted it. In the novel, this turned into Zhuge Liang *calling* the SE wind in a mystical Taoist ceremony lasting many days, thus cementing his reputation as one of China's great magicians. According to historical records, the great warlord, the "young wolf cub" Sun Ce of Wu died of an arrow after an ambush. In the novel he got an arrow in the ambush but was recovering but died because he executed a Taoist sage. Sun Jian, Sun Ce's father finds the missing royal seal in a well in the ruins of the capital. Now this is mentioned in history and seems a pretty likely event. However in the novel it is mentioned that he was attracted to the location because of a great glowing light and that the perfectly preserved body of a maid was found in the well with the seal.
In history, the general Wei Yan was denounced as a traitor after Zhuge Liang's death (though I suspect that there is some politics going on here). The novel has Zhuge Liang denouncing Wei Yan as a possible traitor *for absolutely and totally no good reason and something which is totally out of character for him* when they first meet. Since this incident is also not mentioned in historical records and seems so out of place even in the novel it seems obvious it was inserted later on to make Zhuge Liang seem wise beyond the ken of mortal men (wow, by one look he can predict the "rebellion" of a general decades later. A general who Zhuge Liang made great use and gave a lot of responsibility to and made one of his right-hand men and trusted a lot and...). I think people can see the trend here...
Donovan is the one associated with Atlantis. Not Paul McCartney. Heck, the link above is to a "MAYBE THE BEATLES PLAYED ON THE SONG!" Except they didn't. It's a freakin' Donovan track.
Someone's google search for "shit, which popstars sing about Atlantis!" seriously let them down.
Uh, well, the Wikipedia article basically says 'some people think these stories were made up; you can read about this perspective in this here book'. Well, here's your book. What do you propose the troll is lying about? The contents of the book?
You're partially correct. Chinese dragons are most certainly not all evil; in fact, few are evil at all. There are stories of them breathing fire though: the Futs Long, who create volcanos when they leave earth to travel to heaven, are described sometimes has breathing flame. Since the Chinese' dragon's head is styled after a kind of mythical deer which is always aflame, this isn't too surprising.
"Stumble before you crawl"
You do realize that modern translations are derived from the oldest hebrew and greek texts we have do you not? They also use the dead sea scrolls as a reference now when performing translations.
If you look at any modern translation (ie NIV), you will see what the translators thought was the correct word to fit in context of the passage. Where there is disagreement (usually slight variation/synonym of the same word), a foot note will be present at the bottom of the page listing the possible variations and sometimes and explanation of why they chose a particular version of the verse. There is no great conspiracy to hide things and the translators of the major modern translations are not tied to any specific denomination's view point/doctrine.
I hope you educate yourself rather than continue to live in ignorance. After all, ignorance breeds fear and intolerance.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
If you do have useful information on Abraham and Lot, please post that to the respective wikipedia pages (Abraham, Lot).
This paragraph has comments about Jericho, but again, this is just armchair historian stuff.
What IS clear to me though is that... There ARE legitimate historical references in the bible that are corroborated by many other historical documents (eg. the temple in jerusalem, King Nebuchadnezzar). However, the Bible only seems to address history from about the 7th century BC to the 1st century AD, and that there's a lot of other cultures and events before and after that period that are very eductional, and focusing on that time and ignoring things that happened afterwards is perhaps less eductional and too narrow of a view of the world.
Plato, not Homer :)
I can't believe no one else cought this yet.
Anyone who has read Josephus knows these claims to be false. He wrote to the Greeks using non-Hebrew sources to prove the age of his people. History from the Egyptians, the Greeks, Phoenicians and others all showing historical meetings with kings such as Solomon and David. Biblical accounts such as the Queen of Sheba coming to visit Solomon were actually mentioned in the records of the visiting person as well. Specifically I'm talking about "Against Apion" which was written around A.D. 93-100, in which he answers those who made similar claims 2,000 years ago. "The Jews did not come from Egypt, they are just a bunch of nomads", "They haven't been around that long, they just popped up the other day".
It doesn't cost anything to sow doubt and disbelief... and it takes only a second to claim something is a lie, much easier than actually examining the evidence. (Those claims sell a book much better too)
-Don.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
http://www.universalway.org/Foreign/origins.html
h ttp://www.geocities.com/wally_mo/moses2.html
d /streams/thera/egy pt.html
s econd_centu ry_writings.htm
"It is the position of many Biblical researchers that most of the Old Testament comes from other, more ancient writings.
Even ** Jewish ** writers admit that most of the Hebrew writings were merely taken freely from Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and even Greek sources.
- Horace Meyer Kallen, at one time a professor at the Jewish New School of Social Research, said that the Book of Job was lifted bodily from an early and obscure Greek play.
- Scientist and author Immanuel Velikovsky admitted that there are "many parallels" between the Vedic Hymns and the Books of Joel and Isaiah.
- Hebrew scholar Zecharia Sitchin claimed that the Book of Genesis is based on the Sumerian creation myth.
- The story of Noah comes from the Sumerian legend of Gilgamesh.
- The Psalms were taken word for word from Akhenaton's Hymns to the Sun, written 600 years earlier in Egypt.
- The Ten Commandments (3,5,6,7,8,9,10) were taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/EGYPT/BOD125.HTM
#3 I have come to you, my Lord, I have brought myself here to behold
your beauties.
I know you, and I know your name,
I have not cursed a god. I have not scorned any god.
#5 I have not oppressed the members of my family.
I have not oppressed servants.
I have not cause harm to be done to a servant by his master.
#6 I have not killed.
I have not given the order to kill.
I have not inflicted pain on anyone.
#7 I have not fornicated.
#8 I have not added to or stolen land.
I have not added weights to the scales to cheat buyers.
I have not misread the scales to cheat buyers.
#9 I have not lied,
#10 I have not encroached on the land of others.
Here is an interesting link to more Egyptian & Old Testament
scriptural similiarilities:
http://www.mystae.com/restricte
- The New Testament wasn't compiled until 200-400 years after the fact. by Irenaeus.
http://www.thenazareneway.com/gospels_
"If this is true, then many informed researchers have asked: How can
we call the Torah and other books of the Old Testament the Word of
God?"
The Bible is NOT to be interpreted strictly literally, for why does Paul write in Gal 4:21-24 "These things may be taken _figuratively_, for the women represent two covenants." ?
Furthermore, if the Bible is the word of God, _which_ version would that be??
Peace
--
The evolution & "supposed" pre-ancient history of man is a crock.
One of the many proofs that intelligent pre-historic civilizations existed long BEFORE man's ancient civilizations...
1. Progression of "apparent" history of "man" - Hominidae is 3 millions years old
2. Geological Time Frames perspective
3. A machined 3D relief map 120-million years old in a 1-ton stone, with inscriptions. WTF?!
Oh for the love of...
Okay; here's the deal. The Bible is translated and preserved extremely well from the original editions. The problem is this- where did the original edition come from?
What? You want me to educate you? My pleasure. *Ahem* When Constantine wanted to have a state religion, he decided Christianity was the optimal choice, since at the time it had little set dogma, and hence little political baggage. A system of control for him to leverage without having to give up much control to a well-established church/religion.
The problem? Everyone had their own stories about Jesus and the rest of the boys (this was 200-300 years after Jesus' death, mind you), and it's arguable how much of the stories were written and how many were passed by oral tradition (read: mostly bulls**t). So, Constantine convenes the Nicene council; mostly of religious leaders (Rabbis, proto-priests, etc.) and tells them to put together the "true" stories into a canonized book.
What this should make you ask is: how much editorializing went into the bible to make it politically acceptable, and how many flat-out lies and half-truths went into to make it palatable for the masses and rulers?
This is one major reason why I'm not a Christian.
You do realize that modern translations are derived from the oldest hebrew and greek texts we have do you not?
Yes, that is why the NIV does not include the word "Lucifer." "Lucifer" is, after all, a Latin word, and not a Hebrew word, and never should have been in the English Bible in the first place.
However, my bench with the NIV is that it still translates "logos" as "word" in John 1:1. In MODERN greek "logos" means "word." In ANCIENT greek it meant "order," (roughly). It was a very mystical concept of the underlying order of the universe, used by many of the pre-socratics when philosophizing about reality. It had nothing to do with language, and the translation "word" is very misleading in this regard.
Where do the Vedas talk about Atlantis? Nowhere.
Indian mythology does include a city that was submerged - Dwaraka - but this is completely different from Atlantis because
a) it was a coastal city, not an island
b) there's a modern city called Dwaraka, more or less where the Mahabharata says Dwaraka is supposed to be
c) there are a bunch of submerged ruins near modern Dwaraka*
Which leads to the hypothesis that there was once a historical city, which submerged due to rising sea levels/land subsidence/other geological weirdness, whose inhabitants resettled nearby. No resorting to missing continents or racial memory or UFOs.
(cf. Current Science 86(9):1256-60 (10 May 2004))
"If you don't know, don't say."
Wait... have I been trolled? Dammit.
My other sig is also a
The First Emperor burnt all the books in the 3rd century BC that was true, but a good deal of the Confucian texts survived thanks to the habit of Chinese scholars of memorising things word for word. The thing is we are not dealing here with historical texts though but *mythological stories* which would have survived any burning of the books as it is generally passed down by oral tradition. For example, mythological stories of the Shang and Hsia dynasties certainly survived the burning of the books. A lot of (real) history dealing with the Zhou and Shang also survived the burning of the books. It was a big set-back but it was hardly something that would have negated mythological stories of a lost civilisation.
As far as I know, there are no stories of any "lost" civilisation in Chinese mythology. There are certainly stories of visitors from foreign lands - I can think of stories about Indians (esp. with the spread of Buddhism. E.g. Shaolin's Dharma was an Indian. Journey to the West was about a trip to India) and stories about Japan (when the ruler priestess Himiko sent envoys to the Chinese emperor during the 3rd century AD). There's even vague references to Romans. There was even contact with Persia. But no "lost" civilisations besides the mythological Chinese dynasties which were located in Chinese proper.
But consider how limited the finding is: there was a city in about the right place that seemed to have been sacked at about the right time (among other occassions). It is reasonable to suspect that this actual city is somehow connected to the legend we know from Homer. So there seems to be some grains of history in the Iliad, we don't know how big and frequent those grains are, but we do know that there is a lot of myth in there, too.
But the greater lesson of Troy is that the nay-sayers about Atlantis might be wrong. The point is taken. I might be wrong. The knowledge that I could conceivably be wrong doesn't prevent me from holding an opinion.
Parable or not Some have pointed out that Plato's character who recites the Atlantis story says that he heard this as an ancient Egyptian story. Plato was not the only person writing back then, and there is no other indication of this story (or of its story teller) for a very long time. The form of the story fits so tightly to Plato's political and metaphysical views, that either Plato made it entirely or dramatically adapted it for his purposes.While ancients also wrote about it, it really appears that they picked up the story from Plato and not from any sources that pre-date Plato, execpt that they repeat Plato's claim of an ancient Egyptian origin. And it was only the the 19th century that serious speculation began.
A deluge of flood stories There is no dispute that there are loads of ancient flood stories. There is also no doubht that there were lots of ancient floods. We don't know the scale of these. A flood that destroys a few villages will seem to the survivers to have engulfed the whole world. It seems to me that even small floods can generate big stories, and that those floods may have been much more recent.The Black Sea flood hypothesis is extremely interesting. If, indeed, the Black Sea did fill up rapidly, it certainly would have generated big flood stories for the generations that followed. But whether it is those or other floods that serve as the origin of the flood stories we know today is hard to determine.
If we treat Atlantis as a flood story, than it probably has the same kind of factual basis as many other flood stories: We'll never no location or scale of the floods, but there probably were lots of floods.
I've always thought of the Atlantis story is more than a flood story or earthquake story. Maybe I've just read too much Plato. If we really do take it to be about a lost civilization on some lost island, then I continue to bet on it being a myth.
On the otherhand, if we take it to be that some populated region was destroyed by earthquake or flood, then it almost certainly happened. But it is fruitless to try to tie a particular story to one of the many such events.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
I love Exodus 17:14:
Then the LORD said to Moses, 'Write this as a reminder in a book and recite it in the hearing of Joshua: I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.
The Hebrew word for "remembrance" is zikaron ; it connotates a participation in an event of the past rather than simply a mental recollection of that event.
When material is written by a culture, understanding of the language of the culture, rather than simply reading translations, leads to greater understanding of the intention of the writer.
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
With Homer, the writing of the epics are as much mythological as the epics themselves, so it becomes very difficult to ascribe intention. However, many people believe that the Illiad was intended to be as much history as mythology, and it's not clear they distinguished between the two at the time.
If you've read the Illiad, you've probably noticed that there are all sorts of accounts of people fighting and dying, their names, and who their relatives are, who aren't really proper characters. There are plenty of people in the story who exist long enough to be killed, and aren't mentioned before or after. Some have interpreted this to be a result of the story being used to keep track of individual's ancestors and such.
Additionally, all the talk of the Gods, taking sides, fighting, causing problems, it's not clear that wasn't meant to be equally historical as the sacking of Troy itself. As I said, it's hard to know if they even distinguished between the two. It might be fair to compare the Illiad to the Tanakh. Was it written with the intention of being history, myth, religious work, or fiction? Historically, it's hard to say because we aren't even sure who wrote it down, but it seems to be a mix.
Disclaimer: I'm not going to argue with those who say they know who wrote the Tanakh and why, but I only want to say that we don't have an independant historical account, and so a scientific sort of knowledge about it is pretty much impossible to establish.
Plato, on the other hand, came considerably later, and things had changed. Quite a bit of Plato's writings have survived, as well as writings about him and Socrates from their contemporaries.
Many first year philosophy students mistakenly believe that Plato's writings were historical transcripts of discussions he had witnessed, but it's well established that Plato could not have been present for half of these discussions, even were we to presume that these discussions all took place. Further, within the dialogs, there are allusions to the fact that they're carefully crafted to make a point, and we have writings of people like Aristotle (who knew Plato) who write about why Plato's dialogs should not be taken literally, and that Plato was a satirist at heart.
So these situations are quite a bit different. In one case, we can't know the intention, but it seems to be an attempt at oral history. In another case, we have evidence of the intention, and it's clearly not meant to be historical.
Pontius Pilate?
Yeah, okay. Not only was he written about but there were COINS made of his likeness. When was this magical time that people had no evidence of his life?
You got it wrong, buddy. The Catholic Church states that Holy Scripture was "inspired" by God, not "dictated" by God. Here's a reference for you.
"According to the Encyclical Prov. Deus, "God stirred up and impelled the sacred writers to determine to write all that God meant them to write" (Denz., 1952). Theologians discuss the question whether, in order to impart this motion, God moves the will of the writer directly or decides it by proposing maotvies of an intellectual order. At any rate, everybody admits that the Holy Ghost can arouse or simply utilize external influences capable of acting on the will of the sacred writer. According to an ancient tradition, St. Mark and St. John wrote their Gospels at the instance of the faithful."
No, we have no original manuscripts of the gospels. The oldest copies we have are from a couple of centuries or so after the originals were supposedly written. I think textual analysis suggests that some of them, at least, were put down on paper a generation or so after Jesus' death - that is to say, might have been written by someone who actually knew him - but some may have been later than that. It's a while since I've read about this stuff, and my books are at home, so somebody more current can correct me if I'm wrong about the dates ...
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.