What is astro-culture? In The Babylonian Planet it is unfolded as an aesthetic, an idea, a field of study, a position, and a practice. It helps to engineer the shift from a world view that is segregated to one that is integrated - from global to planetary; from distance to intimacy and where closeness and cosmic distance live side-by-side. In this tour de force, Sonja Neef takes her cue from Edouard Glissant's vision of multilingualism and reignites the myth of (...) the Tower of Babel to anticipate new forms of cultural encounter. For her, Babel is an organic construction site at which she fuses theoretical analysis and case studies of artists, writers and thinkers like William Kentridge, Orhan Pamuk and Immanuel Kant. Her skilful interrogations then allow her to paint a portrait of art and culture that abolishes the horizon as a barrier to vision and reclaims it as a place of contact and relation. By combining the Babylonian concept of the encounter and the planetary concept of the whole-earth, Neef creates a space - an astro-culture - in which she can examine topics as varied as language, translation, media, modernity, migration and the moon. In doing so, she instigates a renewed cultural understanding receptive to the kinder forms of cultural encounter and globalisation she hopes will come. (shrink)

Late Babylonian astronomical texts contain records of the stationary points of the outer planets using three different notational formats: Type S where the position is given relative to a Normal Star and whether it is an eastern or western station is noted, Type I which is similar to Type S except that the Normal Star is replaced by a reference to a zodiacal sign, and Type Z the position is given by reference to a zodiacal sign, but no indication (...) of whether the station is an eastern or western station is included. In these records, the date of the station is sometimes preceded by the terms in and/or EN. We have created a database of station records in order to determine whether there was any pattern in the use of these notation types over time or an association with any bias in the station date or the type of text the station was recorded in. Predictive texts, which include Almanacs and Normal Star Almanacs, almost always use Type Z notation, while the Diaries, compilations, and Goal-Year Texts use all three types. Type Z records almost never include in or EN, while other types seem to include these interchangeably. When compared with modern computed station dates, the records show bias toward earlier dates, suggesting that the Babylonians were observing dates when the planets appeared to stop moving rather than the true station. Overlapping reports, where a station on the same date was recorded in two or more texts, suggest that predicted station dates were used to guide observations, and that the planet’s position on the predicted stationary date was the true point of the observation rather than the specific date of the stationary point. (shrink)

There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn’t unique to the West, that it didn’t begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was "before philosophy." In Philosophy before the Greeks, Marc Van De Mieroop, an acclaimed historian of the ancient Near East, presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people had (...) a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus’s comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. Van De Mieroop uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and humans; and the rules of law, which confirmed that royal justice was founded on truth. The result is an innovative intellectual history of the ancient Near Eastern world during the many centuries in which Babylonian philosophers inspired scholars throughout the region—until the first millennium BC, when the breakdown of this cosmopolitan system enabled others, including the Greeks, to develop alternative methods of philosophical reasoning. (shrink)

In this study I attempt to provide an answer to the question how the Babylonian scholars arrived at their mathematical theory of planetary motion. Although no texts are preserved in which the Babylonians tell us how they did it, from the surviving Astronomical Diaries we have a fairly complete picture of the nature of the observational material on which the scholars must have based their theory and from which they must have derived the values of the defining parameters. Limiting (...) the discussion to system A theory of the outer planets Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, I will argue that the development of Babylonian planetary theory was a gradual process of more than a century, starting sometime in the fifth century BC and finally resulting in the appearance of the first full-fledged astronomical ephemeris around 300 BC. The process of theory formation involved the derivation of long “exact” periods by linear combination of “Goal–Year” periods, the invention of a 360° zodiac, the discovery of the variable motion of the planets and the development of the numerical method to model this as a step function. Longitudes of the planets in the Babylonian zodiac could be determined by the scholars with an accuracy of 1° to 2° from observations of angular distances to Normal Stars with known positions. However, since the sky is too bright at first and last appearances of the planets and at acronychal rising for nearby stars to be visible, accurate longitudes as input for theoretical work could only be determined when the planets were near the stationary points in their orbits. In this study I show that the Babylonian scholars indeed based their system A modeling of the outer planets on planetary longitudes near stations, that their system A models of Saturn and Jupiter provided satisfactory results for all synodic phenomena, that they realized that their system A model of Mars did not produce satisfactory results for the second station so that separate numerical schemes were constructed to predict the positions of Mars at second station from the model at first station, and finally that their system A model for Mars provided quite poor predictions of the longitude of Mars at first and last appearances over large stretches of the zodiac. I further discuss ways in which the parameters of the system A models may have been derived from observations of the outer planets. By analyzing contemporaneous ephemerides from Uruk of four synodic phenomena of Jupiter from the second century BC, I finally illustrate how the Babylonian scholars may have used observations of Normal Star passages of planets to choose the initial conditions for their ephemerides. (shrink)

In this study I attempt to provide an answer to the question how the Babylonian scholars arrived at their mathematical theory of planetary motion. Although no texts are preserved in which the Babylonians tell us how they did it, from the surviving Astronomical Diaries we have a fairly complete picture of the nature of the observational material on which the scholars must have based their theory and from which they must have derived the values of the defining parameters. Limiting (...) the discussion to system A theory of the outer planets Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, I will argue that the development of Babylonian planetary theory was a gradual process of more than a century, starting sometime in the fifth century BC and finally resulting in the appearance of the first full-fledged astronomical ephemeris around 300 BC. The process of theory formation involved the derivation of long “exact” periods by linear combination of “Goal–Year” periods, the invention of a 360° zodiac, the discovery of the variable motion of the planets and the development of the numerical method to model this as a step function. Longitudes of the planets in the Babylonian zodiac could be determined by the scholars with an accuracy of 1° to 2° from observations of angular distances to Normal Stars with known positions. However, since the sky is too bright at first and last appearances of the planets and at acronychal rising for nearby stars to be visible, accurate longitudes as input for theoretical work could only be determined when the planets were near the stationary points in their orbits. In this study I show that the Babylonian scholars indeed based their system A modeling of the outer planets on planetary longitudes near stations, that their system A models of Saturn and Jupiter provided satisfactory results for all synodic phenomena, that they realized that their system A model of Mars did not produce satisfactory results for the second station so that separate numerical schemes were constructed to predict the positions of Mars at second station from the model at first station, and finally that their system A model for Mars provided quite poor predictions of the longitude of Mars at first and last appearances over large stretches of the zodiac. I further discuss ways in which the parameters of the system A models may have been derived from observations of the outer planets. By analyzing contemporaneous ephemerides from Uruk of four synodic phenomena of Jupiter from the second century BC, I finally illustrate how the Babylonian scholars may have used observations of Normal Star passages of planets to choose the initial conditions for their ephemerides. (shrink)

In this series of papers I attempt to provide an answer to the question how the Babylonian scholars arrived at their mathematical theory of planetary motion. Papers I and II were devoted to system A theory of the outer planets and of the planet Venus. In this third and last paper I will study system A theory of the planet Mercury. Our knowledge of the Babylonian theory of Mercury is at present based on twelveEphemeridesand sevenProcedure Texts. Three computational (...) systems of Mercury are known, all of system A. System A1is represented by nineEphemeridescovering the years 190 BC to 100 BC and system A2by twoEphemeridescovering the years 310 to 290 BC. System A3is known from aProcedure Textand from Text M, anEphemerisof the last evening visibility of Mercury for the years 424 to 403 BC. From an analysis of the Babylonian observations of Mercury preserved in theAstronomical DiariesandPlanetary Textswe find: (1) that dates on which Mercury reaches its stationary points are not recorded, (2) that Normal Star observations on or near dates of first and last appearance of Mercury are rare (about once every twenty observations), and (3) that about one out of every seven pairs of first and last appearances is recorded as “omitted” when Mercury remains invisible due to a combination of the low inclination of its orbit to the horizon and the attenuation by atmospheric extinction. To be able to study the way in which the Babylonian scholars constructed their system A models of Mercury from the available observational material I have created a database of synthetic observations by computing the dates and zodiacal longitudes of all first and last appearances and of all stationary points of Mercury in Babylon between 450 and 50 BC. Of the data required for the construction of an ephemeris synodic time intervals Δt can be directly derived from observed dates but zodiacal longitudes and synodic arcs Δλ must be determined in some other way. Because for Mercury positions with respect to Normal Stars can only rarely be determined at its first or last appearance I propose that the Babylonian scholars used the relation Δλ = Δt −3;39,40, which follows from the period relations, to compute synodic arcs of Mercury from the observed synodic time intervals. An additional difficulty in the construction of System A step functions is that most amplitudes are larger than the associated zone lengths so that in the computation of the longitudes of the synodic phases of Mercury quite often two zone boundaries are crossed. This complication makes it difficult to understand how the Babylonian scholars managed to construct System A models for Mercury that fitted the observations so well because it requires an excessive amount of computational effort to find the best possible step function in a complicated trial and error fitting process with four or five free parameters. To circumvent this difficulty I propose that the Babylonian scholars used an alternative more direct method to fit System A-type models to the observational data of Mercury. This alternative method is based on the fact that after three synodic intervals Mercury returns to a position in the sky which is on average only 17.4° less in longitude. Using reduced amplitudes of about 14°–25° but keeping the same zone boundaries, the computation of what I will call 3-synarc system A models of Mercury is significantly simplified. A full ephemeris of a synodic phase of Mercury can then be composed by combining three columns of longitudes computed with 3-synarc step functions, each column starting with a longitude of Mercury one synodic event apart. Confirmation that this method was indeed used by the Babylonian astronomers comes from Text M (BM 36551+), a very early ephemeris of the last appearances in the evening of Mercury from 424 to 403 BC, computed in three columns according to System A3. Based on an analysis of Text M I suggest that around 400 BC the initial approach in system A modelling of Mercury may have been directed towards choosing “nice” sexagesimal numbers for the amplitudes of the system A step functions while in the later final models, dating from around 300 BC onwards, more emphasis was put on selecting numerical values for the amplitudes such that they were related by simple ratios. The fact that different ephemeris periods were used for each of the four synodic phases of Mercury in the later models may be related to the selection of a best fitting set of System A step function amplitudes for each synodic phase. (shrink)

Models of planetary motion as observed from Earth must account for two principal anomalies: the nonuniform speed of the planet as it circles the zodiac, and the correlation of the planet’s position with the position of the Sun. In the context of the geometrical models used by the Greeks, the practical difficulty is to somehow isolate the motion of the epicycle center on the deferent from the motion of the planet on its epicycle. One way to isolate the motion of (...) the epicycle center is to determine the longitude and time of oppositions of the planet with the mean Sun. A Greek astronomer might have realized that the predictions of mean oppositions by Babylonian models could serve as useful proxies for real empirical observations. It is shown that a Greek astronomer with a reasonable understanding of Babylonian System A models for the outer planets and the Sun–Moon could have used those models to estimate approximate values for the eccentricity e and longitude of apogee A required for geometrical models. The same method would work for the inner planets if conjunctions were observable, but they are not, and the variation of the observable synodic events—first and last morning and evening visibilities—is dominated more by the motion of the planet in latitude than the nonuniform motion of the epicycle center. (shrink)

Hartung works out both the linguistic and philosophy of language setting as well as socio-political and cultural implications of the radical critique of language developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by philosophers as diverse as Steinthal, Cohen, Simmel or Cassirer. He argues that the theories pleaded for a plurality of linguistic and cultural forms as well as for a new logic beyond the traditional nature/culture partition"--Page 4 of cover.

This study examines Babylonian records of the new moon interval NA (sunset to moonset on the day of first lunar visibility) and the connection of this interval to the length of the moon. I show that the NA intervals in the Normal Star Almanacs were computed using the goal-year method and were then used in turn to predict the lengths of each month of the year. I further argue that these predicted month lengths, adjusted occasionally on the basis of (...) observation in cases where the moon’s visibility was considered marginal, formed the basis of the Late Babylonian calendar. (shrink)

BM 76829, a fragment from the mid-section of a small tablet from Sippar in Late Babylonian script, preserves what remains of two new unparalleled pieces from the cuneiform astronomical repertoire relating to the zodiac. The text on the obverse assigns numerical values to sectors assigned to zodiacal signs, while the text on the reverse seems to relate zodiacal signs with specific days or intervals of days. The system used on the obverse also presents a new way of representing the (...) concept of numerical ‘zero’ in cuneiform, and for the first time in cuneiform, a system for dividing the horizon into six arcs in the east and six arcs in the west akin to that used in the Astronomical Book of Enoch. Both the obverse and the reverse may describe the periodical courses of the sun and moon, in a similar way to what is found in astronomical texts from Qumran, thus adding to our knowledge of the scientific relationship between the two cultures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.1 (2002) 63-82 [Access article in PDF] Faith, Philosophy, and the Nominalist Background to Luther's Defense of the Real Presence Thomas Osborne Recent scholarship has brought into question the traditional interpretation of Luther as being hostile towards philosophy. 1 Graham White claims that Luther holds a place in the history of logic as a member of the Nominalist tradition. 2 Bruce D. Marshall (...) argues that Luther and Thomas Aquinas fundamentally agree on the relationship between faith and reason. 3 Both scholars recognize that Luther himself stressed the importance of logic and used late medieval philosophical techniques. Although I agree with this scholarship that Luther's thought must not be understood in isolation from late medieval thought, I will argue that Luther uses philosophical ideas in a way which conflicts with that of the scholastic tradition. The focus here is on Luther's understanding of the relationship between faith and reason in the context of Luther's controversy over the Eucharist with the Swiss sacramentarians, among whom Zwingli and Oecolampadius were the most prominent. 4 Although Luther uses philosophical [End Page 63] distinctions to argue against what he thinks are misinterpretations of the Bible, he does not in any explicit and systematic way use philosophy to arrive at a theological understanding of the Eucharist. Luther differs from his scholastic predecessors in that he uses philosophy not to develop theological conclusions but only to attack errors about the Bible, and so the concern here is with Luther's use of Nominalist doctrines about presence in his attack on the sacra-mentarians' belief that Christ cannot be present both at the right hand of God and in the Eucharist at the same time.In his discussion of the Eucharistic doctrine which is presented in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), Luther not only argues against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice but also against transubstantiation. 5 Luther explicitly states that he was influenced on this issue by Peter D'Ailly, a Nominalist follower of William of Ockham. D'Ailly and other Nominalists thought that transubstantiation was not the only possible way that Christ could be present in the Eucharist, since if God wished he could also make Christ present along with the substance of the bread and wine. 6 From a Nominalist [End Page 64] perspective transubstantiation requires two actions of God, namely, the annihilation of the substance of the bread and the placement of Christ's body under the species. Therefore, consubstantiation would be a simpler account of Christ's Eucharistic presence. If Christ's body were present along with the substance of the bread annihilation would not have to occur. But D'Ailly and the Nominalists argue that we know from Church authority that the real presence occurs through transubstantiation. On this issue the Nominalists differ from Thomas Aquinas, who gives philosophically-based arguments against consubstantiation. 7 When Luther attacks Thomas, he attacks not so much the use of philosophy in theology as Thomas's philosophy: "But this opinion of Thomas hangs so completely in the air without support of Scripture or reason that it seems to me he knows neither his philosophy nor his dialectic." 8Since the Nominalist belief in transubstantiation rather than consubstantiation rests on an acceptance of Church authority, the rejection of such authority would seem to lead to a rejection of transubstantiation. If Luther had assented to traditional Nominalist theology with the sole exception of its reliance on Church authority, one would expect him to argue for the necessity of consubstantiation. However, Luther sees himself as rejecting an unnecessarily philosophical theology in a return to a more biblical faith. 9 Luther claims that he argues for a particular understanding of the Eucharistic presence but rather "that every one may feel at liberty to ponder, hold, and believe either one view or the other without endangering his salvation." 10 Although Luther's training in Nominalist theology leads him to think that consubstantiation is possible, he at no point argues that a belief... (shrink)

Diogenes Laertius begins Lives of the Eminent Philosophers thus: “There are some who say that the study of philosophy had its beginning among the barbarians.” He goes on to review possible claims on behalf of the Persians, Babylonians, Indians, “Druids,” and Egyptians granting that each such peoples have wisdom traditions, but no true philosophy. Think what you may of Diogenes’ blunt Greek chauvinism, there is, indeed, something peculiar and unique about Greek philosophy. It begins in the early sixth century BCE (...) with speculation about the stuff of the world (water, air, fire); the forces moving that stuff around (Love and Strife, Mind); its beautiful-order (κοσμος) and the law(s) governing the moving cosmos (Justice, Logos). It rapidly develops by way of a diachronic dialectical process. That is, succeeding philosophers respond to the speculations of their predecessors with, often implicit, but always incisive criticism followed by ever subtler speculation. (shrink)

Dr. Drew A. Hyland traces the origins of philosophy from its earliest roots in Babylonian and Homeric-Hesiodic mythology to its flowering in the Pre-Socratic imagination. Using selections from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hesiod, Homer, Pythagoras, Zeno, Plato, and Socrates, to name but a few, Dr. Hyland argues against what he calls the "historical approach" to the origin of philosophy. In Hyland's view the differentiation of the human self from notions of God and nature may rightly be called the origin (...) of philosophy. The book's skilled intermingling of original source material, with commentaries by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, among others, and the author's own thought-provoking introduction, provides an invaluable study of this fascinating period in human intellectual development. (shrink)

L’intitulé de l’ouvrage fait inévitablement référence à un livre plus ancien, écrit à plusieurs mains : H. A. Frankfort, J. A. Wilson, Th. Jacobsen, et W. A. Irwin, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man : an essay on speculative thought in the ancient Near East, University Press, Chicago, 1946. On pense également à R. Watson et W. Horowitz, Writing Science Before the Greeks : a naturalistic analysis of the Babylonian astronomical treatise MUL.APIN, Brill, Leyde, 2011. Dans le premier, il...

The book is designed as an introductory text in the history of pre-Christian religion. The religions are examined in their socio-historical context and are treated as religions in the broad sense in which they provided total frameworks of meaning for a particular culture. The religions treated are the standard ones: Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebraic, and Greek. Loew's technique is to examine in detail the literature of each culture and to reconstruct from it the sacred space in which the people (...) of that culture must have moved. His categories of myth, sacred history, and philosophy are meant to be more or less adequate characterizations of the shape of the expression of the sacred in the Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian, Hebraic, and Greek cultures respectively. Of course there is overlap, e.g., the obviously mythic roots of Greek literature. Loew is best on the Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian religions. When he comes to the Hebraic religions he oversimplifies the picture to a considerable degree, as is the case also with his treatment of the Greeks. But this is perhaps a justifiable procedure in an introductory text. Each chapter concludes with a brief but helpfully annotated bibliography.--E. A. R. (shrink)

The book is designed as an introductory text in the history of pre-Christian religion. The religions are examined in their socio-historical context and are treated as religions in the broad sense in which they provided total frameworks of meaning for a particular culture. The religions treated are the standard ones: Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebraic, and Greek. Loew's technique is to examine in detail the literature of each culture and to reconstruct from it the sacred space in which the people (...) of that culture must have moved. His categories of myth, sacred history, and philosophy are meant to be more or less adequate characterizations of the shape of the expression of the sacred in the Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian, Hebraic, and Greek cultures respectively. Of course there is overlap, e.g., the obviously mythic roots of Greek literature. Loew is best on the Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian religions. When he comes to the Hebraic religions he oversimplifies the picture to a considerable degree, as is the case also with his treatment of the Greeks. But this is perhaps a justifiable procedure in an introductory text. Each chapter concludes with a brief but helpfully annotated bibliography.--E. A. R. (shrink)

Excerpt from Die Kosmologie der Babylonier: Studien und Materialien Die vier "weltquadranten und sieben "weltzonen Das Berghaus und das Gedeihhaus (fkur und 'ara) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, (...) such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

The _Epic of Gilgamesh_, a 3600-year 12-tablet collection, was looted from an Iraqi museum during the 1991 Gulf War, and fraudulently imported into the United States. In September, 2021, UNESCO facilitated its repatriation to Iraq, which is seen as an occasion to consolidate Iraq’s efforts to rebuild its legacy, since the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ is of immense cultural, historical and religious value for Iraq The current study examines the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ in the light of the ancient Sumerian and Akkadian (...) traditions. This collection of tablets carries a great legacy of the contemporary Babylonian and Mesopotamian beliefs and socio-religious values, also evident in the use of cuneiform and clay tablets, being ancient forms of writings. The study made use of content analysis and historical and analytical approaches to retrieve data through a documentation research design. The study found that the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ is not only a work of religious literature, but a treatise on civilization. On one hand it narrates the stories engrained in the Mesopotamian mythology, such as those of Ninsun, Shamash and Utnapishtim; on the other hand, owing to its content, literary style and tone, characterization and symbolism, this study would be a great contribution to relive the story of Gilgamesh from current literary, and socio-religious perspective and provide a comprehensive account of the legacy and inheritance that it brings in for the modern generation. (shrink)

This paper is an updated translation of an article published in French in the Journal Lato Sensu (I, 2014, p. 70-80). We study here the so-called 'Mathematical part' of Plato's Theaetetus. Its subject concerns the incommensurability of certain magnitudes, in modern terms the question of the rationality or irrationality of the square roots of integers. As the most ancient text on the subject, and on Greek mathematics and mathematicians as well, its historical importance is enormous. The difficulty to understand it (...) lies in the close intertwining of different fields we found in it: philosophy, history and mathematics. But conversely, correctly understood, it gives some evidences both about the question of the origins of the irrationals in Greek mathematics and some points concerning Plato's thought. Taking into account the historical context and the philosophical background generally forgotten in mathematical analyses, we get a new interpretation of this text, which far from being a tribute to some mathematicians, is a radical criticism of their ways of thinking. And the mathematical lesson, far from being a tribute to some future mathematical achievements, is ending on an aporia, in accordance with the whole dialogue. Résumé. Cet article est une traduction anglaise révisée d'un article paru en français dans la revue Lato Sensu (I, 2014, p. 70-80). (shrink)

THIS ESSAY CONSIDERS THE ROLE OF THE PROPHET IN CONTEMPORARY public policy debate. After identifying some problems that contemporary appeals to the prophets often encounter, the essay moves into an analysis of the Babylonian and Egyptian contexts out of which the Israelites and the Hebrew prophets emerged. A consideration of all three contexts shows that the central prophetic concern is a disruption of the divinely established social order that is most clearly indicated by the rich getting richer at the (...) expense of the poor. The essay then explores how this prophetic context can be understood in light of ethical appeals to the common good. Finally, the essay applies the notion of disruption in the social order to two issues of public policy: affordable housing and the stock market. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Wisdom Calls: The Moral Story of the Hebrew Bible by Paul LewisTherese LysaughtWisdom Calls: The Moral Story of the Hebrew Bible Paul Lewis MACON, GA: NURTURING FAITH, 2017. 99 pp. $18.00Paul Lewis invites us into a thought experiment: What can we discern about moral development from a "naive" reading of the Hebrew Scriptures as narrative, starting at Genesis and working our way through to Chronicles? If we remove (...) our presuppositions and eisegesis, ossified through centuries of familiarity, and read the stories at face value, what can we discern about character, virtue, and moral development via the human protagonists as well as God? In this book aimed at undergraduates and faith-seeking adults, Lewis provides an accessible introduction to both scripture and ethics, as well as a creative endeavor at the interface.Using an eclectic hermeneutical approach, Lewis offers a fresh reading of the Hebrew Scriptures. Fundamental to his thesis are two points. First, even though the Hebrew Scriptures are made up of a variety of texts in different genres written by different authors over almost a millennium, at some point, they were collated into the canonical, three-part sequence (Law, Prophets, and Writings—the Tanakh, TNK) by redactors who shaped the collection with a particular directionality. Pivotal to this process was the Babylonian Exile, which Lewis considers a crucial lens for reading a narrative arc across the collection. Second, he reminds Christian readers that the structure and sequence of texts in the Christian "Old Testament" differs from that of the Jewish TNK. As a result, "TNK and Old Testament, by the way they order the documents that make them up, thus tell different stories" (9).Lewis walks the reader through a series of ordered reflections on the three main sections of the Hebrew Scriptures. From Genesis to Chronicles, he charts a shift toward increasing moral complexity, finding in this narrative "a story of moral development" that begins with the need for and establishment of rules or laws (Torah—chap. 2), moves to the discernment of principles at the heart of the laws (Prophets—chap. 3), and culminates with a vision of wisdom captured in the multifaceted and sometimes conflicting texts in the Writings (chap. 4), complete with a controversial yet intriguing interpretation of Job. Wisdom, in his reading of these texts, is the practical skill needed to interpret the laws, rules, and principles of the tradition with the nuance necessary for the ever-changing sociocultural context of the "hard, cruel world" in which the Jews of ancient Palestine found themselves. [End Page 204]The book culminates with chapter 5, titled "Wisdom Calls," where he brings the multilayered Wisdom tradition (chochmah, in Hebrew) into conversation with the Aristotelian tradition of virtue and practical wisdom (phronesis), finding the analog for Aristotle's endpoint of eudaimonia in the Hebraic vision of shalom. Shalom is "the goal toward which wisdom strives and the good that it seeks to achieve" (p. 73). In a short appendix, he also brings chochmah into conversation with contemporary developments in the moral psychology of wisdom, drawing on the work of Darcia Narvaez and scholars at the Max Planck Institute, among others.Lewis's reading brings the Hebrew Scriptures alive, reminding us how wonderfully messy, interesting, and complicated its characters and stories are. By way of critique, one might ask: Can one read a scriptural text too naively? At points, this reader wished for a bit more historical-critical interpretation as a way of enhancing the conclusions being drawn. Integration of the material on the moral psychology of wisdom into the final chapter, rather than as an appendix, would also have been welcome. In the end, Wisdom Calls provides an engaging starting point for students and congregations.Therese LysaughtLoyola University ChicagoCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Objects of knowledge exist within material, immaterial, and conceptual worlds. Once the world is conceived from the perspective of others, the physical ontology of modern science no longer functions as a standard by which to understand other orderings of reality, whether from ethnographical or historical sources. Because premodern and non-western sources attest to a plurality of sciences practiced in accordance with different ways of worldmaking from that of the modern West, their study belongs to the history of science, the philosophy (...) of science, and the sociology of science, as well as the anthropology of science. In Worldmaking and Cuneiform Antiquity, Francesca Rochberg extends an anthropology of science to the historical world of cuneiform texts of ancient Babylonia. Exploring how Babylonian science has been understood, she proposes a new direction for scholarship by recognizing the world of ancient science, not as a less developed form of modern science, but as legitimate and real in its own right. (shrink)

Popular election from the Dynasty.—Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim.—Defeat of Necho at Carchemish.—Jeremiah’s Political Prophecies.—Babylonian invasions.—Firstdeportation of Jews to Babylon.—Rebellion of Zedekiah.—Destruction of Jerusalem.—Gedaliah the Babylonian Satrap.—Prophecies against Egypt.—Later School of Prophecy.—Function of the Jewish Nation.

Con la ayuda de un diagrama y aplicando la formula del agrimensor, los matemáticos de la Antigua Babilonia descubrieron un método sencillo y elegante de bisecar figuras trapezoidales. En este trabajo intentaremos demostrar, únicamente como conjetura, que en el “Problema de los Seis hermanos” - Tablilla AO 17264 - se pudo haber manejado este mismo procedimiento, aunque ampliado y generalizado.The Mathematicians of the Old Babylonian Period, with the aid of a diagram and applying the surveyor formula, discovered a simple (...) and smart method to bisect trapezoidal figures. In this paper, we will try to demonstrate, only as a conjecture, that in the Problem of Six Brothers, Tablet AO 17264, it could be used the same procedure, although extended and generalized. (shrink)

Given the unprecedented scope and stakes of contemporary environmental crisis, ethicists have raised critical questions about whether traditional religious texts can speak in a meaningful way to climate change and other environmental risks in the anthropocene. Building on the ethical urgency of the environmental justice movement, this essay offers a feminist reading of Jewish narratives from the Babylonian Talmud that centers attention on issues of power, privilege, and social inequality in the midst of disaster. Talmudic tales of the destruction (...) of Jerusalem critique the moral oblivion of wealthy residents who failed to act in response to crisis. Articulating a Jewish feminist reconstituative ethics, the author uses these tales to trace the ethical costs of epistemologies of ignorance—the complex strategies and social processes through which privileged communities cultivate ignorance of environmental suffering, maintain social distance from environmental risk, and disown moral culpability for environmental injustice. (shrink)

These lectures are concerned with spiritual forces and influences working in world history and in the karma of human beings. Steiner's penetrating insights into the events and personalities history are one of his major contributions to modern times. Steiner focuses here on the Babylonian and Greek cultures and the connecting threads running between individual personalities and the evolution of humanity as a whole.

The Babylonian Talmud, compiled from the 2nd to 7th centuries C.E., is the primary source for all subsequent Jewish laws. It is not written in apodeictic style, but rather as a discursive record of (real or imagined) legal (and other) arguments crossing a wide range of technical topics. Thus, it is not a simple matter to infer general methodological principles underlying the Talmudic approach to legal reasoning. Nevertheless, in this article, we propose a general principle that we believe helps (...) to explain the variety of methods used by the Rabbis of the Talmud for resolving uncertainty in matters of Jewish Law (henceforth: Halakhah). Such uncertainty might arise either if the facts of a case are clear but the relevant law is debatable or if the facts themselves are unclear. (shrink)

Rabbinic Talmudic tradition is marked by chains of tradition, integrating written Scripture and oral Traditions. The interrelation of word, voice, and instruction is paramount. Levinas’s reading of Talmudic texts follows this format and continues this tradition, by superimposing his voice and philosophical concerns. I have chosen his reading of Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Makkot 10a as an exemplum. In the process, Levinas’s style and method can be seen as a contemporary meta-commentary on the ancient rabbinic source.

This book is the second part of the second volume of Ricœur's projected three volume work, La Philosophie de la Volonté. The first volume has already been translated as The Voluntary and the Involuntary and the first part of the second volume, which is titled generally Finitude et Culpabilité, has been translated as Fallible Man. The third part of the second volume has been projected as an Empirics of the Will, while the third volume has been broadcast as a Poetics (...) of the Will. The entire project moves from phenomenology to thought, in an attempt to give an account of man from the standpoint of Will, or more dramatically put, from the standpoint of human freedom and all the vicissitudes of existence that come with this freedom. Evil is one of the more portentous consequences of human freedom, and this book is concerned to explore it in a fashion which is initially phenomenological. But it moves toward the reflective thought that will emerge full blown in the Empirics. There Ricœur will offer a transcendental validation of the hermeneutic he has adopted to explain man through interpreting the way man presents himself to himself in his prereflective language and comportment with the world. In the first part of the book Ricœur picks up the leading symbols of evil, given through the phenomenon of confession, and follows them in their dialectical progression from evil as defilement, through evil as sin, to evil as guilt. His discussions of the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Hebrew writings, as they witness to these stages in the symbolization of evil, are exceptionally sensitive and thoroughly informed by the scholarship. Ricœur then turns his attention to the systematization of these symbols in the various archaic myths, giving first a typology of these myths and, finally, a dynamics of the myths. In the latter his Christian as well as his hermeneutical standpoints begin to assert themselves more explicitly. The preferred myth on evil, for Ricœur, is the Adamic myth, and he moves outward from there to the tragic myth, as expressed in the Greek dramatists, to the theogonic myth as expressed in Hesiod and the Sumerian and Babylonian literature, and finally to the orphic myth of the exiled soul. In addition to sustaining the development of the main thesis about the way in which a phenomenology of the symbols of evil gives rise to thought, Ricœur has many individual analyses and insights that are extremely exciting. His consideration of Plato's supposed dualism, which he interprets along the lines of Pauline dualism, which is to say, as not being an ontological dualism, is one of the more striking of these analyses. The combined rigor of argument and richness of material in this book signal a high place for it in the recent philosophical literature in general.--E. A. R. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to certain problems in the philosophy of science through the study of four case histories in the history of science. It is designed for undergraduate science majors whom, the author feels, often have difficulties connecting the usual discussions in the philosophy of science with the science they have studied and are studying. Each case history is followed by a commentary which considers its philosophical implications. The first case, Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, (...) is treated briefly and from it some implications are drawn about the relation of simple theories and the facts supporting them. The next three cases are considerably more complicated and receive more extended treatment. The first of these concerns scientific work on the motions and spacing of the planets from early Babylonian and Greek observations and theories to Kepler and Newton. The second concerns the development of the periodic table of the elements from Dalton to Mendeleev and the third discusses gene theories of inheritance from Mendel onward. In connection with these studies the author considers questions about the nature of theories and theoretical entities, methods of testing theories, the dependence of observation on theory and the issues of reduction among other topics. Although he limits his discussion to a few selected topics in the philosophy of science he has written an informative and interesting study which should fulfill its stated aims.--R. H. K. (shrink)

How deep is the current diversity in the panoply of theories to define consciousness, and to what extent do these theories share common denominators? Here we first examine to what extent different theories are commensurable (or comparable) along particular dimensions. We posit logical (and, when applicable, empirical) commensurability as a necessary condition for identifying common denominators among different theories. By consequence, dimensions for inclusion in a set of logically and empirically commensurable theories of consciousness can be proposed. Next, we compare (...) a limited subset of neuroscience-based theories in terms of commensurability. This analysis does not yield a denominator that might serve to define a minimally unifying model of consciousness. Theories that seem to be akin by one denominator can be remote by another. We suggest a methodology of comparing different theories via multiple probing questions, allowing to discern overall (dis)similarities between theories. Despite very different background definitions of consciousness, we conclude that, if attention is paid to the search for a common methological approach to brain-consciousness relationships, it should be possible in principle to overcome the current Babylonian confusion of tongues and eventually integrate and merge different theories. (shrink)

Is there a distinctly Jewish rhetoric? It's a worthwhile (and difficult) question to answer: with its several thousand-year-old tradition of disquisition, argument, knowledge making, and philosophy, a Jewish rhetoric, whatever it might look like, would have a longer tradition than the Greco-Roman one that has served as the underpinning of most of what we think of as Western philosophy. The Jewish and Hellenic worlds shared trade routes, cultural space, and texts beginning in the first millennium BCE, and in the thousand (...) years between the rise of Athens as a hub of literacy and philosophy and the partition of the Roman Empire, Jewish culture underwent a drastic shift as Jews went from the Babylonian exile, to the .. (shrink)

The development of ancient civilizations and their achievements in sciences such as mathematics and astronomy are well researched for script-using civilizations. On the basis of oral tradition and mnemonic artifacts illiterate ancient civilizations were able to attain an adequate level of knowledge. The Neolithic and Bronze Age earthworks and circles are such mnemonic artifacts. Explanatory models are given for the shape of the stone formations and the ditch of Stonehenge reflecting the circular and specific non-circular shapes of these structures. The (...) basic mathematical concepts are Pythagorean triangles, thus adopting the construction procedures of the Neolithic circular ditches of Central Europe in the fifth Millennium bc and later earthworks and stone circles in Britain and Brittany. This knowledge was extended with new elliptical concepts. Approximations for the values of π and the square root of 2 are encoded in the henge. All constructions were performed using a standardized “Babylonian” metrology that shows a remarkable consistency and comprehensible development over some 14 centuries. (shrink)

Popular election from the Dynasty.—Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim.—Defeat of Necho at Carchemish.—Jeremiah’s Political Prophecies.—Babylonian invasions.—Firstdeportation of Jews to Babylon.—Rebellion of Zedekiah.—Destruction of Jerusalem.—Gedaliah the Babylonian Satrap.—Prophecies against Egypt.—Later School of Prophecy.—Function of the Jewish Nation.

Ptolemy reports three dated lunar eclipses observed by Hipparchus, and also refers to two more, without identifying them, which Hipparchus compared with two earlier counterparts (apparently, observed in Mesopotamia) to assess the validity of the Babylonian period relations of the lunar motion. Also, in Pliny the Elder’s Historia naturalis, we are told that a horizontal lunar eclipse (selenelion) at sunrise and moonset was reported (observed?) by Hipparchus. Reviewing a paper by G.J. Toomer in 1980, it is shown that the (...) pairs of the eclipses were, almost certainly, the ones occurring on “31 January 486 b.c. and 27 January 141 b.c.” and “19 November 502 b.c. and 14 November 157 b.c.”; and if Hipparchus observed from St. Stephen’s Hill in Rhodes, the most probable candidate for the selenelion at moonset was the lunar eclipse of 7 February 142 b.c., although he also had the chance to observe any of the four others, occurring on 3 July 150 b.c., 10 April 145 b.c., 26 November 139 b.c., and 15 November 138 b.c., on a sufficiently elevated mountain on the island. (shrink)

THE THEME, "The Intelligibility of Nature," is exceedingly broad. It stretches like a vast domain in which one can only hope to leave a few footprints, some fragile impressions that are all but lost in the expanse. In attempting to understand the natural world, the enterprise that is most familiar to many of us is inherited from the Greeks and their Latin heirs, both classical and mediaeval, and this enterprise continues in our own day in the form of the modern (...) sciences of nature. Nowadays, we are more informed about the knowledge acquired by the Egyptians, Babylonians, and others prior to the Greeks. We are more conscious of the achievements of the Chinese in physics and the Indians in mathematics. And we are more aware of the medical and zoological lore present in oral traditions, such as those of Africa. Moreover, we are only now beginning to appreciate their contributions and their potential for new forms of enquiry, including other ways of approaching nature. The terms in which the topic is here designated, however, are conceived in Greek and expressed in Latin. Nevertheless, even within this cultural tradition of natural enquiry, the topic is quite broad enough. Like a grammarian of old parsing a sentence, I am forced to begin by distinguishing parts of the theme. (shrink)

The Mesopotamian system of sexagesimal counting numbers was based on the progressive series of units 1, 10, 1·60, 10·60, …. It may have been in use already before the invention of writing, with the mentioned units represented by various kinds of small clay tokens. After the invention of proto-cuneiform writing, c. 3300 BC, it continued to be used, with the successive units of the system represented by distinctive impressed cup- and disk-shaped number signs. Other kinds of “metrological” number systems in (...) the proto-cuneiform script, with similar number signs, were used to denote area numbers, capacity numbers, etc. In a handful of known mathematical cuneiform texts from the latter half of the third millennium BC, the ancient systems of sexagesimal counting numbers and area numbers were still in use, alongside new kinds of systems of capacity numbers and weight numbers. Large area numbers, capacity numbers, and weight numbers were counted sexagesimally, while each metrological number system had its own kind of fractional units. In the system of counting numbers itself, fractions could be expressed as sixtieths, sixtieths of sixtieths, and so on, but also in terms of small units borrowed from the system of weight numbers. Among them were the “basic fractions” which we would understand as 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3. In a very early series of metro-mathematical division exercises and an equally early metro-mathematical table of squares, “quasi-integers” of the form “integer plus basic fraction” play a prominent role. Quasi-integers play an essential role also in a recently found atypical cuneiform table of reciprocals. The invention of sexagesimal numbers in place-value notation, in the Neo-Sumerian period c. 2000 BC, was based on a series of innovations. The range of the system of sexagesimal counting numbers was extended indefinitely both upward and downward, and the use of quasi-integers was abolished. Sexagesimal place-value numbers were used for all kinds of calculations in Old Babylonian mathematical cuneiform texts, c. 1700 BC, while traditional metrological numbers were retained in both questions and answers of the exercises. Examples of impressive computations of reciprocals of many-place regular sexagesimal place-value numbers, with no practical applications whatsoever, are known from the Old Babylonian period. In the Late Babylonian period, such computations were still popular, performed by the same persons who constructed the many-place sexagesimal tables that make up the corpus of Late Babylonian mathematical astronomy. (shrink)

In the present paper, the meanings the term “Chaldeans” acquired during the Antiquity and the early Middle Ages are presented, but mainly the role the Chaldean Oracles played inside the movement of Neo-Platonism is emphasized. The stratification of Being according to the theology of the Chaldean Oracles, suggests a reformation of the ancient Chaldean dogmas by the Neo-Platonists. The kernel of this paper is the demonstration of the similarity between the name “En” that the ancient Babylonians used as the first (...) part of many compound words for their gods, with the One (Ἕν=En), the first theological principle in the Neo-Platonic system. Yet, a comparison between the Chaldean theology and the Neo-platonic views on Mysticism and religiosity follows. As it is well known, the later Neo-Platonism will be led to the creation of a way of thought and practice as impacts from the ancient tradition. (shrink)