What this course is about: the development of Christendom, by which I mean Western culture or "the West" as it existed in the thirteenth century before the Renaissance and the Reformation occurred. Our guides through the ancient times of the Greeks and Hebrews will be the Frankforts, Bruno Snell, and William Irwin. The primary material will be provided on this website and in handouts of htose materials.
The interpenetration of Classical and Christian cultures in the era of the Roman empire and the Dark and High Middle Ages that follow will be our central focus in the second half of the semester. Christopher Dawson will be our main guide.You should leave the course having an idea of what is distinctive about Western culture—what sort of thing Christendom was—and how Christendom became Christendom.
The final exam will be a ninety-minute exam and will cover the assigned material since the midterm: the Dawson text and the primary source readings linked to this webpage. There will probably be three questions, at least one of which will ask for identification of primary readings.
Regarding the Dawson text, we discussed several main themes that run through Dawson's lectures:
For the primary readings, I suggest that you refresh your recollections of these primary readings by clicking on the links on theis assignment page since the Week of March 4th. All of the primary documents excerpted and linked during the semester were discussed, briefly or at length, in Dawson's text. You should be familiar with all of them and should use them to illustrate and exemplify the general assertions that you make in your essays, but your should particularly review the documents that we discussed in class or that you reported on in class. This latter groups of ten or so documents are gathered together under the assignments for weeks April 26th and April 1st. I have tried to mark the ones that you reported on with a red asterisk—*. These and a couple other similarly marked documents listed elsewhere over the last seven weeks are important enough that you should know the authors and titles, as well as contents, for identification purposes.
The timeline and chronology assignment. I even gave you a freebie to show you how to fill it out. It's a good way to review for the final.
To repeat the main points:
The purpose of the assignment is to give you a chance to get a handle on the time period and the huge amount of material that we have been studying for the past three weeks and to get an understanding of "what happened when." It is a good review of the material.
Please read chapters 13, 14, and 16 of Dawson for Tuesday. I will outline important points from chapters 13 and 14. I will try to foster a discussion of chapter 16, the telos of the second half of the course.
On Friday, each of you will have about 15 minutes to present your report. I still need selections from a couple of you.
I would like to read three more chapters of Dawson—chapters 13, 14, and 16—for the semester, as well as your individual reports for next week. So for Friday, please read chapters 13 and 14. For next week, read chapter 16, an appropriate conclusion to the semester. The essay by Dr. Fredriksen on the political context of Jesis' crucifixion, which is also linked on my main web page, is also relevant to the course. I would like to discuss it either on Friday or one day next week.
I will list the report topics here tomorrow, though if one of the topics that I listed in class last Tuesday appealed to you, email me and reserve it.
For Tuesday, please read chapter 12 of the Dawson text on the Carolingian (Carol=Charles=Charles the Great=Charlemagne) kingdom and renaissance.
Chapter 12 discusses a key event in European history: the reign of Charles the Great, commonly known as Charlemagne. Dawson and other scholars argue that European history is marked by a number of renaissances, not just the one in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that is commonly called The Renaissance. Dawson also argues that the reign of Charlemagne marks the beginning of a new civilization, which is commonly called Western Civilization or the West or Christendom. This is an important chapter.
A few study questions for chapter 12 (I have already made copies of them so I won't forget to bring them to Tuesday's class):
Accounts of the Donation of Pepin and the other Carolingian Donations:
For Friday, please read pages 138 to 145 of chapter 8, and all of chapter 11 of the Dawson text.
A few study questions to get you through Chapters 11 of Dawson (we will use these to work through the chapter—I promise!):
For Tuesday, please read chapter 10 of Dawson, "The Church and the Conversion of the Barbarians."
A few study questions to get you through chapter 10:
On Tuesday, Nicholas will report on the apocalyptic literature of the New and Old Testament (see #3, infra) and Yasmine will report on the Letter to Diagnetus (#8, infra). We will work to discuss as much of chapter 8 as possible.
Some ancient documents.If you are not familiar with biblical notation, almost all of the books of the Bible are broken down into chapters, and all of the books are broken down further into verses. Notation refers to the abbreviated name of the book, the chapter number, and, after a colon, the verse number(s). Thus Matthew, chapter 5, verses 17 to 19, is noted as Mt. 5:17-19.
1.* The Judeo-Christian Covenants. The New Covenant or New Testament is described in accounts of the Last Supper: Mk. 14:12-31 (see also Mt. 26:26-29; Lk. 22:17-23). Compare the new covenant to the covenants with Yahweh recounted in the Old Testament: Old Testament Covenants.
2. On Christ as fulfillment of Jewish prophesy: Matthew 5:1-48 (the Sermon on the Mount) (see also Mark (Mk) 1:1-11, and Luke (Lk) 4:14-21; 18:31-34; 24:25-27, 44). Compare to the Old Testament prophesy of Micah 5:2. (Matthew and Luke also provided genealogies (family histories) of Jesus to show his Jewish and ultimately divine, ancestry: Mt. 1:1-11 (Jesus back to David). See also Lk. 3:21-37 (Jesus back to Adam and to God)).
3.* Apocalyptic and eschatological literature is in both testaments. The classic Old Testament apocalyptic is the book of Daniel: see Dn. 7:1-28. Jesus spoke of the end of the world: Matthew, chs. 24 & 25; Mark, ch. 13; Luke, ch. 21: 5-36; Acts of the Apostles, ch.1:1-11; 2 Thessalonians, ch 2; 1 & 2 John; Revelation, ch. 20
4.* The Major Christian Creeds. Here are the main Christian creeds or credos of the early and present-day church. Note the dates of the creeds: these statements took hundreds of years to develop and to be agreed upon. Four Christian Creeds
5. First Epistle of Pope Clement (late 1st century). Read the introductory paragraph and chapters 1, 2, 3 and 17, 18, and 19 of the epistle (=letter) to see the points that Dawson made in the textbook.
6. Other philosophical and religious influences in Rome.
7.* The views of Tertullian and of Clement of Alexandria on classical learning.
8.* Epistle [of a disciple or a mathetes] to Diognetus (probably 2d century).
Please read chapter 8, pp. 126 through first paragraph on 138, of Dawson and the *Galerius and Constantine: Edicts of Toleration, A.D. 311, 313 and the Edict Thessalonica of Theodosius, Valentinian, Gratian.
For Friday, please read chapter 7 of Dawson and look over the list of nine topics/documents below for a class report next week or the following. Pck a couple that you are interested in.
A few study questions for chapter 7 of Dawson, "Christianity and the Greek World":
For Tuesday, please read Dawson, chapter 6. In addition to study questions for chapter 6, I have also gathered below some of the primary materials that you will be reading and reporting on during the next few weeks.
Some study questions for chapter 6, "The Coming of the Kingdom." These questions are not as paragraph-specific as were the questions for chapter 5 but are rather questions that ask you to consider the different subjects that Dawson discusses as he progresses through the chapter. The questions and the chapter are more historical than theological, too. Like the last batch of questions, they take you through the chapter and do not jump around.
Pope Gelasius's letter, dua sunt, which articulated the famous two swords doctrine.
Mid-Term on Friday. The exam will consist of three (3) essay questions of which you choose two (2) to answer. One question will focus on the Greek materials that we studied; one will cover the Old Testament materials; and one will tie the two traditions together. Review the Snell materials that I handed out. The Greek materials were selected to reflect the evolution or development of the mind, of self awareness, and of man's relation to the gods that Snell discusses in his book.
The Old Testament materials were likewise selected to illustrate the points that Dawson and Irwin were making in their books: particularly the development of the Hebrews' understanding and literary explanation of their relationship to God, Yahweh, from the early myths to the post-Exilic prophets. We also discussed the development of the Hebrew mind and the similarities and differences between Hebrew thinking in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. and compared it to Greek thinking in the same time period.
I will ask you general questions: your essays should supply an answer that is supported my many specific references to the primary texts that we have read.
For Tuesday, please complete the Irwin (and the Dawson) chapter and review the corresponding OT handout that we have been studying.
We will finish our examination of Irwin's essay and the Old Testament passages on Friday. I will briefly discuss the mid-term, which will be given on Tuesday, March 5th.
Please continue to read the chapter by William Irwin, referring to the Biblical passages he discusses in the two handouts that I gave you from the Old Testament.
I edited a bit the handout on the Old Testament prophets that I gave you on Friday. I included a list of the OT prophets and a rough chronology of OT events at the end of the handout.
For Friday, please read the handout by William Irwin the the Hebrews' understanding of God. An extra copy is in the wall rack outside my office door. Enjoy the snow first!
For Tuesday, please read chapter 5, "The Christian and Jewish Idea of Revelation," in Christopher Dawson's Formation of Christendom. Here are some study questions to guide your reading and our class discussion:
Some of the questions have simple, straight-forward answers; others call for some pondering on the reading. Each of the questions proceeds a bit later in the chapter from the previous question.
The other material that we will cover before the midterm is the following:
For Friday, please read the Mytilene Debate and the Melian Dialogue from Thucydides.
Please read the handout on the Sophists by W.K.C. Guthrie for Tuesday. We may also get to the handout with Thucydides's Melian Dialogue for Tuesday. If we do not get that far, the Melian Dialogue and the Mitylene (or "Mytilene") Debate (which I will hand out to you) are the subjects for Friday's class.
For Tuesday, please read the Agamemnon by Aeschylus. Nicholas will present a short paper commenting on the level of self-awareness reflected in the speeches of the main characters and on the relationship of men to the gods, as reflected in the play.
Aeschylus's Eumenides is the play assigned for Friday.
Both presentations on lyric poetry and pre-Socratic philosphy were excellent. Let's keep up th egood work.
For Friday, please read the handouts on the Greek lyric poets and the pre-Socratic philosophers. Yasmine and Lily will present summaries of the materials. In both sets of readings, look for indications of the authors' greater self awareness and of the emancipation of thought from mythic explanations of natural and human events.
For Tuesday, please read Hesiod's Theogony (what does "theogony" mean?). I put the Snell excerpt on the Olympian gods in the wall rack outside my office. I would also like to discuss the excerpt from Bernard Knox that I handed out in which Knox disagrees with Snell's Homeric thesis. It is only one page long. All these readings complement one another.
For Friday, we will look at some lyric poems (already handed out) and some fragments of pre-Socratic philosophy that I will hand out on Tuesday.
The summaries of the two books of Homer were exactly what I was looking for. Good job. I will be asking for volunteers to somment on the lyric poems and the philosophical fragments on Friday.
For Friday, please read the two handouts I gave you: (1) Book 1 of the Iliad and (2) Book I of the Odyssey. Madison and Jose will present short summaries of the contents of the two readings. Also review/read the first ten pages or so of chapter one of Bruno Snell's Discovery of the Mind. We will be looking for evidence in the Homeric poems of (1) Homer's understanding of the gods and (2) Homer's understanding of the souirces and origins human feelings and thoughts. Do we generate them or are they placed within us from outside?
Please (1) finish the Dawson chapter on "The Nature of Culture" that we were discussing last time and (2) read the Introduction and the first few pages (1 to 8) of chapter one of Bruno Snell's The Discovery of the Mond that I handed out in class. I believe that the discussion of what Snell means by "discovering our minds" will take up the bulk of the class, but you should read pages 1 to 8 of Snell's chapter 1, "Homer's View of Man," to prepare us to read chapter One of the Odyssey for Friday.
So on Tuesday we will
Good class discussion on Friday. Let's keep it up. To do so, you must keep up with the readings.
See also Bernard Knox, "The Oldest Dead White European Males"
Please read about half (pages 39 to 48) of the handout "The Nature of Culture" by Christopher Dawson. Extra copies are in the rack on the wall outside my office door.
As you read the chapter, try to identify Dawson's concepts of "culture" and "civilization;" his conception of the nature of man (his "philosophical anthropology"); his estimate of the importance of language; and his summary of the basic elements of all human cultures. We will complete the chapter next Tuesday, along with a new handout by Bruno Snell.
The final will consist of one or two essay questions and a number (20 or more) of short answer questions: identifications, true-false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks.
The essay will ask you to explain Dawson's argument about the origins and nature of Western Civilization or Christendom. I pointed out key passages from the text in several classes to help you follow the outlines of Dawson's case.
The short answer questions will ask you about facts—dates, people, events, places, and concepts— that we studied this past semester since the mid-term. Many of these questinos will focus on the primary readings that were assigned. I will try ask questions that ask you about important or significant facts, not obscure ones, but I ams sure thatsome of the facts that I consider important, you would consider obscure!
Exam begins at 12:00 and will last 90 minutes. See you Friday!
For Friday, please read chapter 14 and the primary readings below. There will be a quiz.
For Tuesday, please read chapter 13 of Dawson and the following primary materials:
For Friday, please read (1) chapter 14 of Dawson on the renewal of the papacy in the eleventh century and (2) the famous speech of Pope Urban II at Clermont in A.D.1095, touching off the first crusade, and (3) Pope Gregory VII's Dictatus Papae, A.D.1075. You may want to read ahead over the weekend to lighten the load for Friday. There will be a quiz on Friday.
Chronologies will also be due on Friday. You do not need entries for the 13th and 14th centuries.
For Friday, please read the following primary materials that are either referred to or alluded to in chapter 12 and in the opening pages of chapter 13 (King Alfred) of Dawson's text:
There will be a quiz.
Celtic monasticism.
One of the outstanding features of Celtic Christianity was the monastic movement. Thousands of people learned about the earliest monks from the deserts of Egypt and Palestine, and copied their way of life. Tiny hermitages were built on cliffs, and rocky outcrops became monastic sites. In Western Europe the culture of the Roman Christian world was largely lost in the Fifth and Sixth Century as pagan barbarians (such as the Goths, Lombards, Franks, and Anglo-Saxons) settled. Levels of education, literacy, scholarship and culture declined. This was the period often called the Dark Ages. It was during this dark period that monasticism reached Britain and Ireland. The model of monasticism used in the Celtic lands was largely Egyptian or eastern, with the same monastic enclosure surrounding a collection of individual monastic cells. Monks and nuns took up a fierce struggle against temptation, using exactly the same methods as the earlier monastics of the desert. They even called their monastic centres the “desert”, and this word is common in Wales and Ireland. Monastic leaders such as Saint David or Saint Columba or Saint Columbanus established groups of monasteries, and wrote monastic rules for them - setting out the prayer services, penances and the fasting rules for the monks. "We have not formed a community in the monastery for quiet or security, but for struggle and conflict. We have met here for a contest; we have embarked on a war against our sins ... The struggle is full of hardships, full of dangers, for it is the struggle of man against himself... day after day we wage a war against our passions..." (Faustus, a Celtic Christian who became Bishop of Riez in France.) Although many modern writers like to describe the Celtic Christians as if they were New Age nature lovers, they were in fact simply very traditional Christians who maintained the customs of the early Church. They believed in the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and Salvation, though they expressed these in their own unique way.("I found them!" The early Celtic monasteries in Europe.)
The Benedictine Rule.
The Rule, written during the years at Monte Cassino, was Benedict's foremost literary achievement; it was also the means by which he exerted such great influence on the history of monasticism, enabling the Benedictines to expand across Europe and dominate the religious life of the Middle Ages. Benedict's purpose was "to erect a school for beginners in the service of the Lord," and he promised his followers, "If then we keep close to our school and the doctrine we learn in it, and preserve in the monastery till death, we shall here share by patience in the Passion of Christ and hereafter deserve to be visited with Him in His kingdom." Unlike the rigorously ascetic and solitary life that was the model for Eastern [and Celtic] monasticism, Benedict's plan involved life in a community in which all members shared. Government was the responsibility of an elected abbot who ruled the monks as a father did his children. The details of daily life were set forward but were not "difficult or grievous." After 8 hours of sleep the monks got up for the night office, which was followed by six other services during the day. The remainder of the day was spent in labor and in study of the Bible and other spiritual books. A novice entered the community only after a probationary period, which tested him for the required virtues of humility and obedience. Benedict believed that the life of the monk depended on his brothers in the community to which he was bound for life. The monk's daily duties and responsibilities were carefully outlined. He was to leave behind the world and grow to "greater heights of knowledge and virtue" in the seclusion of the monastery. Benedict changed the monastic movement in the West. The chaotic pattern of isolated individuals or disorderly communities was transformed by a sense of organization and practicality. Men were brought together in communities ruled by discretion and moderation. In subsequent centuries the Rule of Benedict guided communities located over all of Europe. For Tuesday, please read Dawson, chapter 11, on the monastic movement.Early Monasticism, Celtic and Benedictine
For Friday, please read chapter ten of Dawson.
A few study questions to get you through chapter 10:
For Tuesday, please read chapter 8 of Dawson and the Galerius and Constantine: Edicts of Toleration, A.D. 311, 313 and the Edict Thessalonica of Theodosius, Valentinian, Gratian From now until the end of the semester, be prepared for frequent quizzes on the assigned readings.
Gregory of Tours, Venerable Bede
Donation of Pepin, Donation of Pepin and Donations of Charlemagne
Charlemagne’s Capitulary for Saxony and on serfs and coloni
The reading assignment is (1) chapter 7 of the Dawson text (study/quiz questions below) and (2) the excerpts from other philosophical and religious influences in Rome during the first few centuries of the first millennium (#6 on the list of primary readings below).
I will also be handing out and explaining a chronological chart that will be one of the two remaining projects or presentations for the course. Excellent class discussions in the last two classes. You asked good questions and you referred to passages in the assigned readings. Good seminar discussion. Please keep it up.For the Week of March 19th and the Class of March 27th:
If you are not familiar with biblical notation, almost all of the books of the Bible are broken down into chapters, and all of the books are broken down further into verses. Notation refers to the abbreviated name of the book, the chapter number, and, after a colon, the verse number(s). Thus Matthew, chapter 5, verses 17 to 19, is noted as Mt. 5:17-19.
1. The Judeo-Christian Covenants. The New Covenant or New Testament is described in accounts of the Last Supper: Mk. 14:12-31 (see also Mt. 26:26-29; Lk. 22:17-23). Compare the new covenant to the covenants with Yahweh recounted in the Old Testament: Old Testament Covenants.
2. On Christ as fulfillment of Jewish prophesy: Matthew 5:1-48 (the Sermon on the Mount) (see also Mark (Mk) 1:1-11, and Luke (Lk) 4:14-21; 18:31-34; 24:25-27, 44). Compare to the Old Testament prophesy of Micah 5:2. (Matthew and Luke also provided genealogies (family histories) of Jesus to show his Jewish and ultimately divine, ancestry: Mt. 1:1-11 (Jesus back to David). See also Lk. 3:21-37 (Jesus back to Adam and to God)).
3. Apocalyptic and eschatological literature is in both testaments. The classic Old Testament apocalyptic is the book of Daniel: see Dn. 7:1-28. Jesus spoke of the end of the world: Matthew, chs. 24 & 25; Mark, ch. 13; Luke, ch. 21: 5-36; Acts of the Apostles, ch.1:1-11; 2 Thessalonians, ch 2; 1 & 2 John; Revelation, ch. 20
4. The Major Christian Creeds. Here are the main Christian creeds or credos of the early and present-day church. Note the dates of the creeds: these statements took hundreds of years to develop and to be agreed upon. Four Christian Creeds
5. First Epistle of Pope Clement (late 1st century). Read the introductory paragraph and chapters 1, 2, 3 and 17, 18, and 19 of the epistle (=letter) to see the points that Dawson made in the textbook.
6. Other philosophical and religious influences in Rome.
7. The views of Tertullian and of Clement of Alexandria on classical learning.
8. Epistle [of a disciple or a mathetes] to Diognetus (probably 2d century).
For Friday, April 6th, a few study questions for chapter 7 of Dawson, "Christianity and the Greek World":
Some study questions for chapter 6, "The Coming of the Kingdom." These questions are not as paragraph-specific as were the questions for chapter 5 but rather questions that ask you to consider the different subjects that Dawson discusses as he progresses through the chapter. The questions and the chapter are more historical than theological, too. Like the last batch of questions, they take you through the chapter and do not jump around.
Those of you who were interested in the nature of "culture" and "civilization" may want to look at Dawson's discussion of those ideas in the chapters prior to chapter 5. Those of you who are interested in the political or social action aspect of Jewish (and Hindu and Muslim) religion that has led to terroristic behavior may want to read David Rapaport's article of ancient religious terrorism. I can get a copy for you; just ask. The post-millennialist scenario that emerged in the late 18th century and that was, and perhaps still is, particulary influential in the United States may read about it in Ernest Tuveson's book Redeemer Nation, available on Amazon. For the subject of millenarian fantasies generally, there is not better place to start than Norman Cohn's Pursuit of the Millennium, also on Amazon. Great book.
For the second half of the course, I will be assigning chapters from Christopher Dawson's Formation of Christendom on a weekly basis—two this first week. You must have the hard copy of the text and must bring it to each class. The primary materials that we read will be based upon the Dawson narrative. I will be giving more frequent quizzes, announced and unannounced, to (1) make sure you are keeping up and (2) see how well you are understanding what you read. The quizzes will be given only in the first few minutes of each class, so many of you must make a better effort to get to class on time. I won't give make-ups.
For Tuesday, let's read Chapter 5 again, with a quiz this time. Chapter 5 discusses the "intimate connection between Christianity and Judaism," how "deeply Christianity was rooted in the Old Testament and in the Jewish tradition." Chapter 5, unlike the following two chapters, is a theological discussion rather than a historical account. What were the Old Covenant and the New Covenant? What were the Old Testament themes that carried over into Christianity? What made the Jews and the Christians essentially different from the other world religions existing in the ancient world?
Some study questions to work you through Dawson, chapter five:
Some of the questions have simple, straight-forward answers; others call for some pondering on the reading. Each of the questions proceeds a bit later in the chapter from the previous question.
I will base the quiz on these questions. I want to get an idea of how well you are understanding the text.
Even though we lost a class due to the wind (?), I must double up the assignments for Tuesday in order to avoid requiring a make-up class. So, in addition to the readings from the Old Testament prophets that were oroginally assigned for Friday, please read pages 77-87 of chapter 5 in Christopher Dawson's Formation of Christendom for Tuesday. I originally planned to assign this; we can't skip it because of the windy day.
The mid-term will be on Friday. To help you prepare, consider the following.
The main, the best advice that I can give you is to make sure you have read all of the assigned material! You still have some time to catch up before Friday.
The exam will be a combination of several essay questions and identification questions based on the assigned readings. Those readings are:
For the identification questions, you should be familiar with the authors and titles of the primary materials. Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Plato. If the author of one of the quotes is one of the lytic poets, you may simply say "poet." If the author is one of the pre-Socratic philosophers, simply say "philosopher." If one of the prophets from the Old Testament, "prophet." If one of the books of the Pentateuch, "Moses" or, better, "Old Testament author." The only specific writers that you really need to know are Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, and Plato. You should also know the names of these authors' works that we studied.
For each of the readings, you should review the original study or discussion questions that I asked on this page. We are mainly concerned with the developing Greek and Hebrew understandings of God (the gods) and man's relationhship to God (or the gods). How do the specific readings reflect these understandings? Regarding the Greeks, we followed Snell's hypothesis that the four centuries of literature that we surveyed reflected a changing awareness of oneself and one's mental and emotional abilities.
I have placed on reserve in the library chapters from Bruno Snell's Discovery of the Mind on each of the types of Greek literature (epic, lyric, and tragic poetry, and pre-Socratic philosophy) that we have been studying thus far. I will also hand out a copy of "Myth and Reality" to those of you who have not taken POL 210, where it is required reading. For the mid-term exam, you may want to review these commentaries. As a general approach for the essay and identification exam, you should review the instructions for your individual presentations and apply those questions to the literature that has been assigned so far in the course.
Here is the link to the article on ancient Jewish/Hebrew art that I referred to in class.
The assignment for Friday is the material that I handed out on the Old Testament prophetic literature and please review carefully the Irwin essay "God" that we partly discussed in class.
The assignment for next Tuesday will be part of Christopher Dawson's Formation of Christendom, chapter 5. If you have not done so yet, it is time to get the book!
For Tuesday, please read the handout that I gave you by William Irwin entitled "God." This was originally a chapter in the book The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man edited by the Frankforts, who wrote the essay "Myth and Reality." Irwin's essay refers to Old Testament readings that we have already read and that we will read for Friday: Old Testament prophetic literature.
I am going to juggle the schedule a bit to include some of the Old Testament material on the mid-term, and I will move the mid-term back a couple of days. For Friday, please read these excerpts from the Old Testament. The assignment for next Tuesday is a handout by William Irwin, which I will give you on Friday. We will also take a look at some of the Old Testament prophetic literature before the mid-term.
The presentations on Friday were good. They presented the material that I described below, and they provoked the best class discussion that we have had this semester. Amro, James, Brian, and Mac will follow on Tuesday. Everyone should also have read the excerpt from Plato's Meno by Tuesday, also.
Since the presentations are for the students' benefit more than for mine, be sure to begin with a clear, concise description of the text that you are discussing: characters-plot, issue or idea at the center of the dialogue, specific texts or passages from the philosophical fragments, and so on. The class should have a clear idea of what you are talking about. (Most of my comments on Friday were aimed at clarifying this basic information for the students who were listening to the presenters.) Then focus on the course theme or the stage of intellectual development or self-awareness that is (or is not!) reflected in your text.
Finally, keep it to two pages, double-spaced: about five hundred words. With the discussions that we had last time, we can easily fill an hour or more with the discussion.
The presentations will begin Friday. Carolina, Forrest, Alexandra, Joe, and Cameron are due up.
The papers that you present to us should be typed, double-spaced, with standard margins using a 12-point font. No title page, bibliography, or footnotes are necessary; make references to the text (line numbers and so on) in your narrative. For instance, "In line 8 of the 'Hymn to Aphrodite' (Myatt translation), Sappho uses the three-part heaven-middle air-earth schema common in ancient and medieval literature." And so on . . . . Reading a two-page, double-spaced paper takes about ten minutes. Be prepared to answer questions on your topic.
In your first paragraph, briefly describe your subject—play, dialogue, fragments, poems—to the class so that we have an idea of what you are talking about.
Your paper should focus on the themes that we have been following in the course and should demonstrate demonstrate how your subject reflects or departs from one of the themes that Snell discusses in The Discovery of the Mind, which is the basic framework of this first part of the course. Now that you have some Greek literature under your belt, your paper can compare and contrast your subject to other stages of the development of the Greek mind and soul or to other examples of the same stage. For example, compare and contrast a tragedy to the Agamemnon or to the lyric poetry or philosophy that was assigned.
To repeat, this is not a formal research paper. The only new material in your paper should be what you choose to focus on. Compare and contrast it to what has been assigned to the class. In two pages, you have space to make an observation about your chosen material and its relation to one of the themes of the course and to support your observation with evidence (i.e., references to the sources). That's it! Keep it simple and direct.
Come to class with a copy for you and a copy for me. Be prepared to read it to the class. Keep us awake!
The report topics:
Please read this excerpt from Plato's dialogue the Meno by next Tuesday.
Tragic Poetry. For Tuesday, please read The Eumenides by Aeschylus (trans. Morshead), one of the three great tragic poets of classical Greece. Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) wrote more than seventy plays for the Dionysia Festival at Athens; seven remain, and among them the three plays of the Oresteia trilogy—Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, Eumenides. Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), his younger contemporary, is known best, perhaps, for the three plays that focus on the tragic life of King Oedipus—Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. The three were not written as a trilogy. Only seven of his more than one hundred twenty plays have survived. The youngest of the three great tragedians, though a contemporary of Sophocles, is Euripides (480-406 B.C.). Eighteen of his more than ninety plays have survived, including Medea, Trojan Women, and The Bacchae or Bacchants.
Consider the following as you read The Eumenides:
Here is a short syopsis of the first two parts of the three-play Oresteia trilogy to put the Eumenides in context. (Remember that handout on the House of Atreus that I gave you a couple of weeks ago?)
Beginning either on Friday (February 16) or on Tuesday (February 20), each of you will present your first two-page paper/report on one of the four genres of literature that we have been reading:
Your presentation should focus on material that was not assigned in class: for example, other books of the Iliad or Odyssey or other material of Hesiod or other poems from the epic cycle; other lyric poems than those in the handout; another tragedy (approved by me); other pre-Socratic fragments than those I gave you or another Platonic dialogue. In other words, other material that should be about as long as the material assigned in class.
This is not a research paper, and the grade will not be based on the quality of the writing. BUT, I must approve the subject you are presenting on and you must use one scholarly source—book or article—that is not on the internet.
You should choose what is of interest to you, but I want only two students to present papers on each of the four areas (2 X 4 = 8 students) with a third student on one of the areas. To decide who gets what, I would like you to send me an email ranking your choices. I will assign them on a first come-first served basis and let you know as soon as possible so that you and I can determine what exactly you will write about.
I would like the short presentations to begin next Friday (February 16th, and then on the following Tuesday (February 20th. We'll go by last name, alphabetical order, but I will expect a little more from the students who wait until Tuesday the 20th, so you will not be placed at a great disadvantage by presenting on Friday.
The reading assignment for Friday is the excerpts from the Greek Pre-Socratic ("before Socrates") pnilosophers that I handed out to you.
The first few philosophers are fairly easy to get a handle on, but don't worry if you do not fully understand the writings of Herakleitos and Parmenides: nobody does. The following questions should help you. Enjoy!
Hesiod's Theogony. (This translation of the poem is in prose with the line numbers of the original poem version in parentheses at the beginning of each paragraph.) You should read the whole poem. Pay special attention to the content in lines 1-225, 453-491, and 543-744. It is fun to read.
The poet Hesiod lived and wrote a few decades after Homer wrote the Iliad. What is the subject of the Theogony? What is Hesiod explaining? What kind of an explanation is he giving? Does his explanation make sense (even if you do not accept it)? Is it rational? logical? just "science-fiction"? Does it reflect an advance from Homer's view of the world?
What does "theogony" mean? Where did the Greek gods literally come from? What is Hesiod trying to do here? How is Hesiod's project different from Homer's? What existed at the beginning of time? Generally, what happened thereafter, according to Hesiod? What stages in the history of the gods are described in the assigned readings? What are the great generational divisions in the history of the gods?
Does Hesiod's poem include an element of "abstract" thinking? What is he doing to well-known stories?
On Friday, pre-Socratic philosophers.
Please read Book One of the Iliad and the material in the Snell, chapter 1, handout that relates to the Greek understanding of the human body and the human mind. Note also the relationship of the gods to the actors in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Are the Olympian gods the supreme powers of the universe, according to Homer? Is there any power or order above them?
For Friday, the reading assignment is some fragments of Greek lyric (written to be sung, accompanied by a string instrument, the lyre) poetry that I handed out in class. Greek lyric poetry, written in the seventh, sixth, and fifth centuries B.C. (the Iliad and Odyssey are usually dated in the eighth century), marks a step between the epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod, whose Theogony we will read for next Tuesday, and the later fragments of the Pre-Socratic philosophers (the sixth and fifth centuries). There may be a short quiz at the beginning of class to see how well you are understanding the readings.
As you read these poems, answer the following [potential quiz] questions:
Additional questions for class discussion:
Please read (1) the "Introduction" to Bruno Snell's Discovery of the Mind and (2) Book One of the Odyssey , both of which are handouts. Extra copies are available in the rack on my office door. You may use another translation if you have your own copy of the Odyssey. My own favorites are the translations by Lattimore and Fagles.
The Snell essay explains the context for the readings in the first part of the course. Study it carefully.
Other translations of Book One of Homer's Odyssey:
(I suggest the Murray translation if you do not have a hard copy of another translation. Move forward and back in the Murray translation by using the little blue arrows in the upper left-hand corner of the text.)Snell says that "the intellect [mind or soul] was not discovered, and did not come into being, until after the time of Homer, [but] we realize that Homer conceived of the thing which we call intellect in a different manner, and that in a sense the intellect existed also for him, though not qua [as] intellect." In other words, Homer knew that people could think—people had ideas, feelings, thoughts—but he did not describe the process of thinking that is familiar to all of us in the same way that we would describe it today. What examples can you find of people such as Achilles or Agamemnon or Telemachus (Odysseus's son) thinking or feeling but that describe those moments in ways different from the way we would describe them today? Why does Agamemnon get mad? What is the source of his and Achilles's ideas? Where does Telemachus get the resolve to go looking for his father?
What is the significance of the opening lines of each assigned poem? How do they reflect Snell's idea that the intellect had not yet been discovered in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.?
Butler calls the Greek gods by their Roman/Latin names. Thus, the Greek goddess Athene is called Minerva, Zeus is Jove, Poseidon is Neptune; the human hero of the poem, Odysseus, after whom the poem is named, is Ulysses, and so on (click here for a useful guide to the dual names).
The Iliad and the Odyssey were two of the poems about the Trojan war that were part of the Epic Cycle. Except for the Iliad and the Odyssey, the other poems of the Epic Cycle have been lost, although (1) fragments of each of them and (2) references to, and quotations from, them in the writings of other authors remain and give us a good idea of the contents of each. (The famous story of the Trojan horse, for instance, is not found in the Iliad or the Odyssey: it is found in the so-called Sack of Ilion.)
If this material is totally new to you, you might also want to watch the Eugen Weber videos on "The Western Tradition" linked below. Videos 1-4 discuss various aspects of the "mythopoeic" primitive peoples, to use the Frankforts' term. Video #5 provides a good intro to classical Greek culture. Check them out.
Art of the Western World. Narrated by Michael Wood. Annenberg Learner Series.
The Western Tradition. Narrated by Eugen Weber. Annenberg Learner Series.
For Tuesday, the monastic movement. Please read (1) chapter 11 (That's "XI" for you Latin buffs) of Dawson's text and (2) the rules of St. Benedict and St. Columba, both of which are available in the "Four Bs and a C" link that we used last week.
I apologize for my lack of organization today (Tuesday). Last week was an extremely busy one. Here is some material you will find helpful:
A few study questions to get you through Chapters 11 of Dawson:
As I mentioned in class, I am re-editing (patching together) excerpts for assignments. For Friday, I want you to add excerpts from Boethius and St. Augustine. To get you started, please read the excerpts from St. Augustine, and from and about Boethius in "Four Bs and a C." It should now be called "An A, Four Bs, and a C."
Here is the form for the timeline that I promised you.
History of Cement and Concrete: A Classic Thriller!. Consider this with the Michael Wood video on Roman art and architecture.
For Tuesday: History Week on the History Channel: Please read the following excerpts from five Roman and Christian historians. As you read, consider:
It is a long assignment; allow yourself enough time to get through it, or most of it, by class on Tuesday. We will continue to discuss the material on Friday, but I do not want to lecture on Tuesday. Read it so you can discuss it.
Tacitus, GermaniaSt. Gregory of Tours and the Venerable Bede, two early Christian historians mentioned in chapter ten.
early Greek and Roman historians—Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus.For Tuesday, please read Dawson, chapter 8, pp. 126 through first paragraph on 138, and nos. 1 & 2 below. (We might finally get to the Christian creeds on Tuesday, too.)
Constantine and Licinius's Edict of Milan" (A.D. 313)
Theodosius, Valentinian, and Gratian's Edict of Thessalonika (A.D. 380)
St. Ambrose hymn "O Trinity of Blessèd Light"
St. Ambrose hymn "Come, Holy Ghost, With God the Son"
Please (1) complete chapter seven of Dawson's text (use the study questions below), (2) review the Christian creeds that I handed out, (3) read one of these these two short descriptions of neoplatonism (or neoplatonism), and read this account of the ancient mystery cults of Greece and Rome.
Chapter 10 of Dawson and some primary materials when we return.
For Friday, using the handout of excerpts that I gave you (Sources of the Western Tradition by Marvin Perry; extra copies are in the rack on my office door), please read the brief outline of Roman history on pp. 69-70 and the excerpts from Plutarch and Epicurus (pp. 64-67); Cicero and Cato (pp. 74-77); Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian (pp. 106-108); and this fragment from the Nag Hammadi Gnostic library, The Apocalypse of Paul. You should also review the Christian creeds that I handed out a couple of weeks ago. Additional fragments from the Nag Hammadi library can be found here. We briefly review most of the excerpts from the Marvin Perry handout in class on Tuesday. What we want to do in class Friday is compare and contrast their the various ideas found in the Stoic, Epicurean, Gnostic, and Christian writings about the nature of the universe, salvation, the nature of man, the proper life, and the unique characteristics of the religion, the philosophy, or the religious-philosophy in question.
Welcome back! For Tuesday, please read Dawson, chapter 7, from page 111 to the last paragraph on page 118. We will look at some of the non-Christian philosophic and religious influences in Rome on Friday.
Chapter 7 follows the history of the early Christians from the second to the fourth centuries and the change in the Christian church after the death of the last of the original apostolic leaders of the Christians. Dawson also focuses on the relation of the Christians to the Hellenic culture in which it was developing. What were the Christian responses to the Hellenic culture and to Hellenic philosophy during these centuries? What made Christianity different from the competing philosophies or religious philosophies that sought to attract Roman followers during these centuries?
A few study questions for chapter 7 of Dawson, "Christianity and the Greek World":
I will also return the exams on Tuesday.
*
The mid-term exam will consist of two or three essay questions that ask about (1) the development of Greek thought in light of Bruno Snell's argument, (2) the development of Judeo-Christian thought in light of William Irwin's and Christopher Dawson's arguments, and (3) some comparison-contrast of the two lines of development either in a third question or as part of the questions on the Greek and the Judeo-Christian traditions. You should be familiar enough with the primary readings to be able to identify the different types of sources (epic, lyric, and tragic poetry; philosophical writings; Old Testament myths and historical writings, Old Testament prophetic writings; and New Testament writings.) Identification by author and title of work is always appreciated, but because many of the assigned readings were either known fragments of lost works or bits and pieces of larger works, identification simply by the types listed above will be sufficient.
You should be able to respond to general questions based on the Snell, Irwin, and Dawson readings with general answers supported by details from the assigned primary readings. The more specific detail, the better. Demonstrate to me that you have read the materials and that you are able to discuss them. Do not just recite grand generalities, even though they may be correct. As they say, the Devil is into details! And so am I.
If they don't say that, well, they should.
For Tuesday, please read chapter six of the Dawson text and the handout on Old and New Testament covenants.
Friday is the mid-term exam.
We will begin the second half of the semester after break with chapter seven of Dawson and readings from the religious philosophies that competed with Christianity (and Judaism) in the Hellenic world: Epicureanism and Stoicism.
We will continue to two-track the class this week. As announced, we will focus the beginning of class on Tuesday on Irwin's essay and the Old Testament passages reflecting his argument. For Friday, please read chapter five of Christopher Dawson's Formation of Christendom. The beginning of Friday's class will begin with that. The last half hour of each class will be devoted to the video on Classical art (available at the bottom of this page).
For Friday, as you read Dawson, consider the following study questions:
Some of the questions have simple, straight-forward answers; others call for some pondering on the reading. Each of the questions proceeds a bit later in the chapter from the previous question.
The handouts for Tuesday and Friday are in the rack on my office door: William Irwin's essay on the Hebrew conception of God for Tuesday; the Old Testament passages/excerpts for Friday. The Irwin essay is only available in the handout; it is not online. Excerpts from the Old Testament prophets, as well as a chapter from Dawson's Formation of Christendom will follow next week.
As you read the Old Testament passages, look for changes in the understanding of God/Yahweh/Jehova and man and for the early understandings of justice. Follow the guidelines of the introductory section of the readings (the material in bold at the beginning of the excerpts).
The schedule for presenting your papers is as follows:
If one of you who is scheduled for Friday wishes to present on Tuesday, that will be fine. Let me know.
For Monday, in the handout that I placed in the rack on my office door, please read (1) the fragments of pre-Socratic philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Xenophanes (the rest of the fragments are not assigned; see below) and (2) the excerpt from Plato's dialogue the Meno. Extra copies are available in the rack, or you can use these links. These examples of the emergence of thinking that Snell (and most all scholars) call "philosophy" are unprecedented and unparalleled in the rest of the world. As you read the short excerpts, again compare them with the other readings of the course and consider the following questions:
Beginning either on Friday or on Tuesday (February 16), you will present a two-page paper on one of the four genres of literature that we have been reading:
Your paper should focus on material that was not assigned in class: for example, other books of the Iliad or Odyssey or other material of Hesiod or other poems from the epic cycle; the other lyric poems that were part of the handout; another tragedy (approved by me); the other pre-Socratic fragments I gave you or another Platonic dialogue. In other words, other material that should be about as long as the material assigned in class. It is not a research paper.
You should choose what is of interest to you, but I would like only two students to present papers on each of the four areas (2 X 4 = 8 students). To decide who gets what, I would like you to send me an email ranking your choices. I will assign them on a first come-first served basis and let you know as soon as possible so that you and I can determine what exactly you will write about.
OK. Now I think we are ready to apply some of the overarching ideas of the course and of Snell's book to the Agamemnon. For Friday, please write a couple of paragraphs on one of the following questions:
Be prepared to read it in class. Keep this informal: no title page; just one page; double-spaced; two paragraphs at the most.
I want to change the assignment for Tuesday (make it a bit less work for you!) that I described in class on Friday. I would like you to read (1) the Agamemnon by Aeschylus (the translation by Lattimore that I handed out) and (2) both of the excerpts from Bruno Snell's book that I have handed out--the "Introduction" and the first few pages of chapter one that discuss some of the Greek words that Homer used in his poems. I realized after class that the short paper or paragraphs that I want you to write about the play require the more extensive discussion of Snell's arguments that was in part blotted out by the snow. So, we will begin the class with a discussion of the Snell excerpts ( I will add another short one in class) and postpone the paper until Friday, tying it to the pre-Socratic fragments that we will look at on Friday.
For Tuesday's class, consider the following as you read Agamemnon:
Tragic Poetry. Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) was one of the three great tragic poets of classical Greece. He wrote more than seventy plays for the Dionysia Festival at Athens; seven remain, and among them the three plays of the Oresteia trilogy—Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, Eumenides. Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), his younger contemporary, is known best, perhaps, for the three plays that focus on the tragic life of King Oedipus—Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. The three were not written as a trilogy. Only seven of his more than one hundred twenty plays have survived. The youngest of the three great tragedians, though a contemporary of Sophocles, is Euripides (480-406 B.C.). Eighteen of Euripedes's more than ninety plays have survived, including Medea, Trojan Women, and The Bacchae or Bacchants.
You should recognize the difference between epic, lyric, and tragic poetry and the significance of each of these forms in the evolution from mythic thought to rational or philosophic thought. The development of philosophic thought parallels the development of the Greeks' understanding of the nature of man and man's relation to the gods and the divine.
All right. Let's get back to order. The assignment for tomorrow, Friday, January 29th, is the original assignment for Friday, January 22d: (1) the excerpts from Hesiod's Theogony and the selected poems of Archilochos and (2) the excerpt from Bruno Snell's The Discovery of the Mind that I handed out in class.
There are copies of Aeschylos's play The Agamemnon in the rack on my office door. There will be a short written assignment relating to the play for Tuesday, so pick up a copy and start reading it as soon as you can. For next Friday, some selections from the pre-Socratic philosophers and another short excerpt from Snell's book. Then, a short dialogue from Plato, probably the Meno.
For Friday, please read (1) the excerpts from Hesiod's Theogony and the selected poems of Archilochos and (2) the excerpt from Bruno Snell's The Discovery of the Mind that I handed out in class. Extra copies are in the rack on my office door.
Please read Book one of the Odyssey and Book one of the Iliad. You may use any of the following online translations or another translation if you have a copy of either the Iliad or Odyssey. My own favorites are the translations by Lattimore and Fagles.
For Book One of the Iliad,
For Book One of Homer's Odyssey:
(I suggest the Murray translation if you do not have a hard copy of another translation. Move forward and back in the Murray translation by using the little blue arrows in the upper left-hand corner of the text.)Butler calls the Greek gods by their Roman/Latin names. Thus, the Greek goddess Athene is called Minerva, Zeus is Jove, Poseidon is Neptune; the human hero of the poem, Odysseus, after whom the poem is named, is Ulysses, and so on (click here for a useful guide to the dual names).
The Iliad and the Odyssey were two of the poems about the Trojan war that were part of the Epic Cycle. Except for the Iliad and the Odyssey, the other poems of the Epic Cycle have been lost, although (1) fragments of each of them and (2) references to, and quotations from, them in the writings of other authors remain and give us a good idea of the contents of each. (The famous story of the Trojan horse, for instance, is not found in the Iliad or the Odyssey: it is found in the so-called Sack of Ilion.)
If this material is totally new to you, you might also want to watch the Eugen Weber videos on "The Western Tradition" linked at the very bottom of this web page. Videos 1-4 discuss various aspects of the "mythopoeic" primitive peoples, to use the Frankforts' term. Video #5 provides a good intro to classical Greek culture. Check them out.
The book that I use as a guide for this section of the course on the ancient Greeks is Bruno Snell's Discovery of the Mind. (You will be reading an excerpt for Friday's class.)
Snell says that "the intellect [mind or soul] was not discovered, and did not come into being, until after the time of Homer, [but] we realize that Homer conceived of the thing which we call intellect in a different manner, and that in a sense the intellect existed also for him, though not qua [as] intellect." In other words, Homer knew that people could think—people had ideas, feelings, thoughts—but he did not describe the process of thinking that is familiar to all of us in the same way that we would describe it today. What examples can you find of people such as Achilles or Agamemnon or Telemachus (Odysseus's son) thinking or feeling but that describe those moments in ways different from the way we would describe them today? Why does Agamemnon get mad? What is the source of his and Achilles's ideas? Where does Telemachus get the resolve to go looking for his father?
What is the significance of the opening lines of each assigned poem? How do they reflect Snell's idea that the intellect had not yet been discovered in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.?
The exam will consist of three essay questions: two focusing on the material since the last mid-term and one on the whole semester. The material since the last mid-term is as follows:
One or both of the questions on this material will have identifications attached. The cumulative question on the course will not have identifications.
To prepare for the cumulative question, consider what this course was all about: the formation of the early stage of Western culture or Western civilization—Christendom. To quote the first entry on this webpage: "You should leave the course having an idea of what is distinctive about Western culture—what sort of thing Christendom was—and how Christendom became Christendom."
For Tuesday, please read chapter 13 of Dawson (I already assigned the first section on Alfred) and the following primary materials:
For Friday, the new material in Dawson that I want you to read is Section One of Chapter 13 (Pp.202-207), "Feudal Europe and the Age of Anarchy" (for an account of Alfred the Great) and these accounts of the Donation of Pepin and the other Carolingian Donations:
Then, the "Snow Days Writing Assignment," or SDWA for short: Please read the following short excerpts that are referred to in the Dawson text.
For each of these five documents, write a one paragraph description of the content and, using the Dawson text or the other assigned readings above or accompanying the documents, its importance in medieval history. The assignment should be no longer than one page. You will probably see quotes from some of these documents again on the Final.
For , please read chapter 14 of Dawson on the renewal of the papacy in the eleventh century and the famous speech of Pope Urban II at Clermont in A.D.1095, touching off the first crusade. Also, Pope Gregory VII's Dictatus Papae, A.D.1075.
For Friday, a potpourri of Carolingian era literature: please read ; ; and finally Beowulf (Episodes One and Two).
See also the originals at Bucknell. You only have to write about the English translation of the Preface.
Please read Dawson, ch. 12, "The Carolingian Age." I will also give you a written assignment to be completed over the break. (We will not meet again until April 25th.) This will satisfy the University requirement to make up the snow days cancellations.
Chapter 12 discusses a key event in European history: the reign of Charles the Great, commonly known as Charlemagne, the subject of this year's Leverett Lecture, which you were asked to attend a few weeks ago. Dawson and other scholars argue that European history is marked by a number of renaissances, not just the one in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that is commonly called The Renaissance. Dawson also argues that the reign of Charlemagne marks the beginning of a new civilization, which is commonly called Western Civilization or the West. This is an important chapter.
A few study questions for chapter 12:
For Friday, we will read chapter 11 on the important role of the monks and monasteries in Europe during the Dark Ages. We will also look at the monastic rules of St. Benedict and St. Columba. I also want to go over some of the material in chapter 10 again. In particular Dawson's idea of the "Christian culture process" and the complementary theme of cultural interpenetration or mutual cultural influence. What do you think these ideas mean?
A few study questions to get you through Chapters 10 & 11 of Dawson:
For this Tuesday, please read Dawson, chapter 10 ("The Church and the Conversion of the Barbarians") and these excerpts from St. Gregory of Tours and the Venerable Bede, two early Christian historians mentioned in the chapter.
The Dawson chapter describes the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages, a period of about 500 years that we (along with many others) will identify as A.D. 500 to 1000. Note on page 166 Dawson's definition of "barbarism" and, by implication, "civilization." It is a useful and oft-cited definition.
For Tuesday please read chapter 7 in Dawson, "Christianity and the Greek World." A few study questions:
In looking over the syllabus schedule and our snow-hampered progress this semester, I find that we are only one class behind the schedule. The syllabus called for a mid-term yesterday, Friday, MArch 28th. I would therefore like to schedule the mid-term for next Friday, April 4th. The following is what you can expect:
The exam will cover all of the assigned material since the last exam:
Most of the themes from the first part of the course carry over to this material as well:
The new themes reflected in the three assigned chapters of Dawson's book are the following:
If you are not familiar with biblical notation, almost all of the books of the Bible are broken down into chapters, and all of the books are broken down further into verses. Notation refers to the abbreviated name of the book, the chapter number, and, after a colon, the verse number(s). Thus Matthew, chapter 5, verses 17 to 19, is noted as Mt. 5:17-19.
1. The Judeo-Christian Covenants. The New Covenant or New Testament is described in accounts of the Last Supper: Mk. 14:12-31 (see also Mt. 26:26-29; Lk. 22:17-23). Compare the new covenant to the covenants with Yahweh recounted in the Old Testament: Old Testament Covenants.
2. On Christ as fulfillment of Jewish prophesy: Matthew 5:1-48 (the Sermon on the Mount) (see also Mark (Mk) 1:1-11, and Luke (Lk) 4:14-21; 18:31-34; 24:25-27, 44). Compare to the Old Testament prophesy of Micah 5:2.
3. Matthew and Luke also provided genealogies (family histories) of Jesus to show his Jewish and ultimately divine, ancestry: Mt. 1:1-11 (Jesus back to David). See also Lk. 3:21-37 (Jesus back to Adam and to God).
4. The Major Christian Creeds. Here are the main Christian creeds or credos of the early and present-day church. Note the dates of the creeds: these statements took hundreds of years to develop and to be agreed upon. Four Christian Creeds
5. The views of Tertullian and of Clement of Alexandria on classical learning.
Here are additional sources if you want to read a bit more.
Epicurus, "Principal Doctrines": read at least paragraphs 1-10, 29-38.
Book Two of Stoic Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: read at least the first nine paragraphs.
Epictetus, The Enchiridion: read at least paragraphs 15, 22, 31.
Excerpts from Cicero, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius on Stoci cosmology.
The Manichaean Fifth Psalm to Jesus.
The Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul.
Please read Dawson, chapter 6.
Some study questions for chapter 6, "The Coming of the Kingdom." These questions are not as paragraph-specific as were the questions for chapter 5 but rather questions that ask you to consider the different subjects that Dawson discusses as he progresses through the chapter. Like the last batch of questions, they take you through the chapter and do not jump around.
I will base the quiz on these questions. I want to get an idea of how well you are understanding the text.
Let's try that again. Same assignment as last time: chapter 5 of Dawson's Formation of Christendom and a few passages from the new Testament:
Some study questions to work you through Dawson, chapter five:Some of the questions have simple, straight-forward answers; others call for some pondering on the reading. Each of the questions proceeds a bit later in the chapter from the previous question.
The assignment for Tuesday is these excerpts from the Old Testament prophets.
Assignment for Friday is
For Friday, please read the handout by William Irwin on the Hebrews' understanding of God, as described in the passages from the Old Testament prophets. An extra copy of the handout is in the rack on my office door. On Tuesday, we will read the excerpts from the Prophets and some passages from the New Testament.
Please read the excerpts from the early books of the Old Testament for Tuesday.
Over the next two weeks we will read materials from and about the Bible, the scriptural basis of the Judeo-Christian tradition that will meet and form the new Western Culture in the ninth century. First, we look at the scriptural materials themselves and an excerpt from an article by William Irwin, then we begin the Dawson text for an account of how the two traditions (Judeo-Christian and Hellenic or Greco-Roman traditions) interacted.
As you read the Old Testament passages, look for changes in the understanding of God/Yahweh/Jehova and man and for the early understandings of justice. Follow the guidelines of the introductory section of the readings (the material in bold at the beginning of the excerpts).
The mid-term will be three essay questions based entirely on the following themes and assigned sources:
We have read and seen evidence of the Greeks' increasing focus upon the individual, his powers and his place in the world. This is reflected in the following themes:
The materials that will be covered on the first exam are the following:
If you have been keeping up with the readings, take this opportunity to jot down some notes on how the different readings reflect the themes listed above. Not all of the writings are evidence of all of the themes; for example, the lyric poems say little or nothing about justice; Plato's parable of the cave says little about the gods. Each of the themes is supported by a few of the readings, however. You may want to set up a little chart with the themes and the writings (or video!) that relates to each theme and why or how it relates.
If you have not read one of the assignments, read it now. If you forget what the Frankforts or Guthrie write, go back and review the materials. Just about everything we covered will be on the exam someplace.
See you Friday. Bring pens (no pencils) and your student ID number. You will use your ID, not your name, on the blue book.
The Leverett Lecture on the Invention of Europe is on Wednesday at 2:00pm in Reinsch.
For Tuesday, a bit of Plato and Aristotle to round out our survey of the ancient Greeks: please read Plato's Parable of the Cave and Aristotle's conception of the four causes.
On Plato's parable, he intended this story as an allegory to illustrate and explain in a different way the theory of the "divided line" that he explained immediately before in the Republic (Book VI, 509-511). He is attempting to explain how people understand the world. This is called "epistemology." He argues that human beings and animals can both perceive qualities of color, shape, sound, taste, and so on, but that human understanding goes beyond animal understanding makes use of abstract ideas to understand reality. Abstract ideas are ideas of things like beauty and justice or relationships like over-under and addition or general qualities like whiteness or heaviness. This ability to grasp abstractions (we have all done it when we learned math and other relationships and when we recognize what something is, though we have never seen it before, because it resembles something we already know.
The parable of the cave sets out the steps that we must go through in order to understand things that all of us take for granted. See if you can relate the symbolic steps described in the parable to the real stages we might go through in figuring out what something is.
The excerpt from Aristotle is his famous doctrine of the four "causes" or four aspects of reality that we normally want to know if we want to understand what something is. I think you will be able to apply this to inquiries about man-made things, but what does Aristotle say about inquiries about natural things? See if you can translate Aristotle's somewhat formal language into plain English.
We will begin with a short identifications quiz on the readings thus far. The quiz will consist of a few quoted passages from the works that we have read, and you will be asked to identify them by author, title, and type of writing. For instance, if the quoted passage is from Homer's Iliad, you would indicate "Author: Homer," "Title: Iliad," "Type of Writing: Epic Poetry." And so on.
Now, you do not have to know each individual lyric poet and poem and each pre-Socratic philosopher that we read. If the quoted passage is from a lyric poem or a philosophical fragment, simply indicate that the author is "Lyric poet" or "pre-Socratic philosopher" and that the title is "fragment." If you want to take a shot at identifying the poet or philosopher and you are correct, I'll give you a bonus point. The authors and titles that you must know are Homer/Iliad, Hesiod/Theogony, Aeschylus/Eumenides, Plato/Euthyphro and Republic, Aristotle/Physics. (And get the spelling correct! We're no longer in high school.) The types of writing are epic poetry, lyric poetry, tragic poetry, and philosophy. These identifications will set up one or two of the essays.
The material on the video that we watched in class will be part of the material covered in the exam. You can watch the video again at your leisure by scrolling to the end of this page and clicking on the link to "Art of the Western World." We watched the first half of the first video.
Mid-term on Friday!
For Friday, please read Plato's dialogue, Euthyphro. What are the definitions of "piety" or "holiness" (same thing here) that Socrates and his friend Euthyphro consider in the ourse of the dialogue? What final definition do they decide upon? How does this dialogue or "dialectical" inquiry mark a step further away from the mytho-poeic understanding of ancient man? The usual way of citing Plato is to the little numbers in brackets throughout this excerpt, which are called Stephanus Numbers.
We will start class next Tuesday with a short identificaitons quiz. The mid-term is next Friday, the 21st.
Please read the handout on the sophists for Tuesday. Extra copies for Corey and Marilyn are in the rack on my office door.
Keep in mind the themes (listed above) that we are following in all of the assigned readings thus far. The mid-term questions will be based squarely upon them. The quiz on Friday will ask you to identify some key passages of the readings thus far by author, title, and type of poetry. There will be one or two similar questions on the exam, so be sure you know who wrote what in this class (and how to spell the names and titles!).
For Friday, please read the tragedy The Eumenides by Aeschylus. There will be a short quiz at the beginning of class, so don't be late!
Tragic Poetry. Please read The Eumenides by Aeschylus (trans. Morshead), one of the three great tragic poets of classical Greece. Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) wrote more than seventy plays for the Dionysia Festival at Athens; seven remain, and among them the three plays of the Oresteia trilogy—Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, Eumenides. Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), his younger contemporary, is known best, perhaps, for the three plays that focus on the tragic life of King Oedipus—Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. The three were not written as a trilogy. Only seven of his more than one hundred twenty plays have survived. The youngest of the three great tragedians, though a contemporary of Sophocles, is Euripides (480-406 B.C.). Eighteen of his more than ninety plays have survived, including Medea, Trojan Women, and The Bacchae or Bacchants.
Consider the following as you read The Eumenides:
Please read these fragments by and about the first philosophers, who, since they lived in the century before the first famous philosopher Socrates, were collectively called the pre-Socratic philosophers: Excerpts from or about the Pre-Socratic philosophers. The first few philosophers are fairly easy to get a handle on, but don't worry if you do not fully understand the writings of Herakleitos and Parmenides: nobody does. The following questions should help you. Enjoy!
As you read the excerpts from the pre-Socratic philosophers, consider the following questions:
For Friday, January 31st, there is a reading and writing assignment. The reading assignment is some fragments of Greek lyric (written to be sung, accompanied by a string instrument, the lyre) poetry.
Greek lyric poetry, written in the seventh, sixth, and fifth centuries B.C. (the Iliad and Odyssey are usually dated in the eighth century), marks a step between the epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod and the later fragments of the Pre-Socratic philosophers (the sixth and fifth centuries). Instead of reading all the poems, simply find answers in three or four of them to the following questions in the poetry and then write a one page answer to one of the following questions. (Since the questions are based on the excerpt from Bruno Snell, you ought to review Snell's explanation of how the Greeks discovered the mind or soul or self.)
1. Bring a hard copy of the paper to hand in at class on Friday. 2. One page only; double-spaced, one-inch margins, 11 or 12 point font, black type. 3. At least two paragraphs (always organize your writing into paragraphs) and about 200 to 250 words total. 4. Clearly indicate and cite the passages you discuss in your text. For example, you may want to say, "Anacreon, in Fragment 417, likens a young girl to a filly." This lets me know exactly what you are referring to. If your paper indicates that you have read at least three of the poets (you should really read all of them), and if you follow the directins above, you will pass the assignment. Higher grades depend upon the content and the writing level. Careful writing always is figured into your paper grades. For Tuesday, please read (1) Book One ("The Quarrel by the Ships") of Homer's Iliad, (2) the first 200 lines or so of Hesiod's Theogony (lines are marked "ll." in parentheses on the left), and (3) the first few pages of the excerpt from Bruno Snell's Discovery of the Mind, upon which I base the first third of the course. I am sure that the Iliad is familiar to most of you; perhaps the Theogony is not. As you read the assigned excerpts from both of these poems, try to relate them to the ideas in the excerpts from the Frankforts and Snell. How do the poems reflect the Frankforts' idea that ancient man explained things by telling stories, not by critical analysis? Snell says that "the intellect [mind or soul] was not discovered, and did not come into being, until after the time of Homer, [but] we realize that Homer conceived of the thing which we call intellect in a different manner, and that in a sense the intellect existed also for him, though not qua [as] intellect." In other words, Homer knew that people could think—people had ideas, feeling, thoughts—but he did not describe the process of thinking that is familiar to all of us in the same way that we would describe it today. What examples can you find of people such as Achilles or Agamemnon thinking or feeling but that describe those moments in ways different from the way we would describe them today? Why does Agamemnon get mad? What is the source of his and Achilles's ideas? The Iliad and the Odyssey were two of the poems about the Trojan war that were part of the Epic Cycle. Except for the Iliad and the Odyssey, the other poems of the Epic Cycle have been lost, although (1) fragments of each of them and (2) references to, and quotations from, them in the writings of other authors remain and give us a good iead of the contents of each. (The famous story of the Trojan horse, for instance, is not found in theIliad or the Odyssey: it is found in the so-called Sack of Ilion.) The poet Hesiod lived and wrote a few decades after Homer wrote the Iliad. What is the subject of his poem, the Theogony? What is Hesiod explaining? What kind of an explanation is he giving? Does his explanation make sense (even if you do not accept it)? Is it rational? logical? mytho-poeic? Does it reflect an advance from Homer's view of the world? What is the significance of the opening lines of each assigned poem? How do they reflect Snell's idea that the intellect had not yet been discovered in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.? Hesiod's Theogony. (This translation of the poem is in prose with the line numbers of the original poem version in parentheses at the beginning of each paragraph.) You do not have to read the whole poem, but you should be familiar with the content in lines 1-225, 453-491, and 543-744, and should skim the rest of the poem. It is fun to read. In Hesiod's poem, what does "theogony" mean? Where did the Greek gods literally come from? What is Hesiod trying to do here? What existed at the beginning of time? Generally, what happened thereafter, according to Hesiod? What stages in the history of the gods are described in the assigned readings? Does Hesiod's poem about the origins of the gods remind you of either the article by the Frankforts or the article by Snell? What kind of information is Hesiod conveying to his readers? With the Frankforts' article in mind, would you call Hesiod's attitude "scientific" or "mythopoeic" or "mid-way between the two"? Why? Finally, do the lyric poems of Archilochus and Alcman reflect the same attitude toward the world as Homer's Odyssey, Hesiod's Theogony, or neither of the two? Why? Is there anything different about the lyric poets' attitude toward the gods or themselves when compared to Homer's and Hesiod's? What? If not, how are all three sets of poems the same? For Tuesday, please read the essay on "Myth and Reality" that I handed out on the first day of class. Extra copies are in the rack on my office door (Ireton 107). Since we have been snowed in (snowed out?) on Tuesday, let me give you the assignment for Friday as well. A cancelled class is seldom made up in the schedule, so we will have to double up the assignments over the next week or so. I am using a new translation of the Iliad. My favorite translations are those by Fagles and Lattimore, but they are unavailable on the internet. Use 'em if you got 'em! "Myth and Realty" by Henri and H.A. Frankfort describes some of the ways people thought about the world before the advent of the speculative, philosophic and scientific thought that we take for granted today. They also describe some of the fundamental ways in which primitive or ancient men understood the world. According to the Frankforts,
Assignments for the Week of January 21st:
There were good questions and some good discussion in class today. Keep it up.
Everyone I heard from has a copy of the text, so the assignment for Friday is chapter 3 of Dawson's Formation of Christendom. If you do not have the text, email me ASAP.
As you read chapter 3, consider the following questions, presented in the order they appear in the chapter:
Most of these questions focus on discussions that occur over several pages, so there is no simple or one sentence answer to each question. They are questions that ask you to consider different sides of a very complex subject—human culture. Some understanding of what culture and civilization are will help us in the semester-long study of the origins and nature of early Western culture.
For the Final Exam:
The final exam will consist of three essay questions: two on the material that we have covered since the second mid-term and one on the whole semester. The two questions on the last third of the semester will include identifications—author ("Unknown" if authorship is unknown to scholars), title, and some other characteristic of the writing that the exam asks for.
The readings for this last third of the semester were Dawson, chapters 10 to 14 and part of 15, and the following primary readings:
The question on the entire semester will not contain identifications, but will expect you to use material from the entire course to back up your essay (remember the Bible and the Greeks?). The question will ask you to reflect on the main subject of the course: the development of Christendom out of the forces, people, documents, and other works that we have studied this whole semester. What was Christendom or Western Civilization? What were the main historical forces that made it possible and the main cultural components that provided its unique character? Pay particular attention to the theme of "inter-penetration" or mutual influence of conflicting forces that Dawson mentions throughout his book: e.g., Christians converted barbarians, but in the process Christians were influenced by barbarian practices. The first few pages of Dawson, chapter 15 are a good place to start formulating an answer.
We will take a too-brief look at the Reformation and Renaissance this week, as well as tie up a few loose ends.
For Tuesday, please read pages 226 to 235 of Dawson (partly a loose end), and the following brief excerpts from Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, John Calvin's "Letter to the King", and Thomas Muntzer's "Sermon to the Princes". The latter two excerpts are brief; you need not read all of Luther's ninety-five thesis (statements or sentences), but review enough of them to figure out who Luther's target was, what Luther was complaining about, and what he thought should be done about it. In reading Muntzer's sermon, try to determine how is message differes from Luther's and Calvin's. What does Muntzer advocate? If you are unfamiliar with the Reformation in general, this brief summary may be helpful.
On Friday, we will review the basics of the great Renaissance that often is linked to the Reformation as marking the end of the High Middle Ages. We will look at a film on Renaissance art and at a few excerpts reflecting the different directions of thought during this time by Bruni, Machiavelli, and Pico della Mirandola.
Please read chapter 12 of the Dawson text, "The Carolingian Age."
I have made the assignment for Tuesday very short to give you an opportunity to review the material we just went over in chapters 10 and 11.
After grading the exams, I came to the conclusion that you would continue to find study questions on the Dawson text useful. I had dispensed with them last week, but I have posted them here for you to use in reviewing those two chapters. We will discuss all three chapters on Tuesday.
Here is the form for the timeline that I promised you, and the chapter 12 study questions are posted below:
There will be one question, possibly with quotes to be identified, on the Greek and Roman historians. (Review those study questions.) There will be one question, possibly with quotes to be identified, on the religions and the religious philosophies represented in the "Documents of the Roman Hellenistic Era" excerpts. (Dawson, chapter 7, is relevant to this second question.) There will be two questions on the Judeo-Christian biblical material from the Old and New Testament and from Dawson chapters 5 and 6, but there will be no quotes to identify taken from this material. In these two questions, I will ask you about general themes either that we have been following in this course or that Irwin or Dawson explained. It will be up to you to answer the question and then to cite material from the biblical sources to support your answer. Remember, the passages from the Old and New Testaments was selected to reflect the materials discussed by Irwin and Dawson in their writings. So: no surprises. Your study of the materials and familiarity with them will be rewarded. Hope this helps.
(I posted the following links in case you want to read further, fuller accounts of these writings, but all you will be responsible for in class is the material in the "Documents of the Roman Hellenistic Era" link in the preceding paragraph.)
History of Cement and Concrete: A Classic Thriller!. Consider this with the Michael Wood video on Roman art and architecture.
For Friday please read chapter 7 in Dawson, "Christianity and the Greek World." A few study questions:
We will take a bit of a diversion for Tuesday and look at excerpts from some of the early Greek and Roman historians—Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus. This is a pretty lengthy assignment, so leave yourself enough time to complete it.
Each of these excerpts contains a statement by the author of his approach to writing history, usually a few paragraphs at the beginning of the linked excerpt. I want you to read a bit more by Herodotus and Thucydides to get a taste of what kind of historical materials made up their works.
As you read the excerpts from the historians consider the following questions:
For Friday, please read the following linked passages from the New Testament. There are any number of websites with copies of all of the books of the Bible. The "New Advent" and the "Christian Classics Ethereal Library" that are linked on my main web site under "Useful Links" are two good sources. If you are not familiar with biblical notation, almost all of the books of the Bible are broken down into chapters, and all of the books are broken down further into verses. Notation refers to the abbreviated name of the book, the chapter number, and, after a colon, the verse number(s). Thus Matthew, chapter 5, verses 17 to 19, is noted as Mt. 5:17-19.
Please read the following: These passages will provide a number of basic Christian ideas that were referred to by Dawson and that carry forward into the development of the Western tradition. Try to look up a few of the alternative passages as well as the ones directly linked here. The whole assignment amounts to about ten pages.
On Christ as fulfillment of Jewish prophesy: Matthew 5:17-19 (see also Mark (Mk) 1:1-11, and Luke (Lk) 4:14-21; 18:31-34; 24:25-27, 44).
Matthew and Luke also provided genealogies (family histories) of Jesus to show his Jewish and ultimately divine, ancestry: Mt. 1:1-11 (Jesus back to David). See also Lk. 3:21-37 (Jesus back to Adam and to God).
The New Covenant or New Testament is described in accounts of the Last Supper: Mk. 14:12-31 (see also Mt. 26:26-29; Lk. 22:17-23).
Jesus's description of the end of the world ("eschatology") can be found in parallel passages from the first three gospels: Mk. 13:1-31 (see also Matthew 24 and Luke 21: 5-33). The book of Revelation or the Book of the Apocalypse contains this famous eschatalogical passage: Rev. 20: 1-10.
The community of Christ's apostles and disciples after his resurrection is recounted in the Acts of the Apostles. One influential passage describes the "apostolic communism: Acts chapters 3 & 4.
The gospel of John reflects the early influence of Greek or Hellenic thought on the understanding of Christ: John 1Please read Dawson, chapter 6. We will resume the weekly quizzes on the readings after Break.
Some study questions for chapter 6, "The Coming of the Kingdom." These questions are not paragraph-specific questions but rather questions that ask you to consider the different subjects that Dawson discusses as he progresses through the chapter.
For Friday, please read chapter 5 of Christopher Dawson's The Formation of Christendom. Some study questions to work you through chapter five:
Some of the questions have simple, straight-forward answers; others call for some pondering on the reading. Each of the questions proceeds a bit later in the chapter from the previous question.
For Tuesday, please read the excerpt from William Irwin's chapter, "God," that I handed out in class and these excerpts from the Old Testament prophets.
For Friday, we will read some passages from the Old Testament. Follow the study questions at the end of the excerpts.
On Friday we will (1) study an excerpt from Aristotle's Physics, Book Two, only parts 3, 7, & 8, on the "four causes"—what they are and whether they apply to nature as well as to man-made products and activities—and (2) watch the video on Classical Greek art. The mid-term is on Tuesday the 19th. You can preview the video (and watch other ones for the course) by clicking on the links at the very bottom of this webpage. We will be viewing the first one in Michael Wood's "Art of the Western World" series.
The exam questions will focus exclusively on the themes that we have been following all semester. I have listed them again in the next paragraph. The material that you must consider in your essays is the following:
Please remember: as we study Greek and (later) Old Testament literature and culture, we are looking for evidence of the Greeks' increasing focus upon the individual, his powers and his place in the world. This is reflected in the following themes:
For Tuesday, please the following excerpts from Plato's dialogue Meno and Plato's grand work the Republic. The usual way of citing Plato is to the little numbers in brackets throughout these excerpts, which are called Stephanus Numbers.
In reading all of the assignments, keep looking for examples to support these major themes: the increasing realization of the powers of the human mind and the existence of the human soul, the increasingly "rational" or non-mythical discussion of the gods and the world, the discussion of different ideas of justice—especially in The Eumenides—man's evolving understanding of the gods or the divine and of our relationship to the gods. These themes are the focus of the first part of the course and will be the focus of the essay questions on the first exam and also much of the second exam.
Please read the excerpt from The Sophists that I handed out. Extra copies are in the rack on my office door. There will be a quiz on the material in the handout at the beginning of class.
To get ready for the mid-term on Tuesday, February 19th, there will be an identifications quiz on Tuesday. I will explain more about it in class of Friday.
We will look at two types of poetry that provide some evidence of the progress of human thought in ancient Greece—the poet Hesiod's Theogony and a few lyric poems by various poets. The questions below are the basis of the class discussion, so come prepared to answer them. (Write something down!)
Please read Book One of Homer's Odyssey. You may use any translation. I think the ones by Richmond Lattimore and Robert Fagles are the best, but the only two available on the internet are the old translation by Samuel Butler and the A.T. Murray translation available from the Tufts University Perseus website. (I suggest the Murray translation if you do not have a hard copy of another translation. Move forward and back in the Murray translation by using the little blue arrows in the upper left-hand corner of the text.)
Butler calls the Greek gods by their Roman/Latin names. Thus, the Greek goddess Athene is called Minerva, Zeus is Jove, Poseidon is Neptune; the human hero of the poem, Odysseus, after whom the poem is named, is Ulysses, and so on (click here for a useful guide to the dual names).
The Iliad and the Odyssey were two of the poems about the Trojan war that were part of the Epic Cycle. Except for the Iliad and the Odyssey, the other poems of the Epic Cycle have been lost, although (1) fragments of each of them and (2) references to, and quotations from, them in the writings of other authors remain and give us a good iead of the contents of each. (The famous story of the Trojan horse, for instance, is not found in the Iliad or the Odyssey: it is found in the so-called Sack of Ilion.)
If this material is totally new to you, you might also want to watch the Eugen Weber videos on "The Western Tradition" linked at the bottom of this web page. Videos 1-4 discuss various aspects of the "mythopoeic" primitive peoples, to use the Frankforts' term. Video #5 provides a good intro to classical Greek culture. Check them out.
Please read the handout with excerpts by Henri and H.A. Frankfort and by Mircea Eliade on primitive thought. Extra copies are in the rack on my office door (Ireton, G-107). Use the study questions below to work your way through the articles.
Caliphate of Cordoba: al-Andalus and Christian kingdoms circa A.D. 1000
The questions will focus exclusively on the themes that we have been following all semester. I have listed them again in the next paragraph. The material that you must consider in your essays is the following:
This list should mirror exactly the assignments for the semester so far. With some chronological overlaps, this list also represents the time sequence of the Greek writers that we have studied; so if the question calls for tracing the development of philosophic thought or ideas of justice, for example, you would do well to present your surveys in this order. Not every reading deals directly with every theme; you do not have to refer to every single one of the sources above in each essay, of course. Select those sources that best exemplify the theme that you are discussing. For example, the lyric poems, the Eumenides, and the Wood video do not reflect much about the development of philosophic thought; you should base an essay on the development of philosophic thought on other, more relevant sources in the list above.
For identification purposes, you should be able to identify by author and title the longer works that we read—Homer's, Aeschylus's, Plato's, and Aristotle's. Simply identify lyric poetry as authored by "lyric poet" and as title "poem." Identify the philosophic fragments as authored by "pre-Socratic philosopher" and as titled "fragment." Don't worry about the names of individual lyric poets and philosophers. You should also take a look at the first thirty or forty lines of Hesiod's Theogony, which I discussed with you briefly in class and which you may find useful in your essays. It will not be one of the passages to identify.
A few study questions for chapter 12, "The Carolingian Age":
Chapter 10 (or "X" for you Latin-types) serves as both a description of the cultural situation—political, social, religious, artistic—in the early Dark Ages (5th to 7th centuries) as well as an introduction to the basic argument that Dawson will make in the following chapters. Remember: history is not simply a chronological list ing of events but an argument a reasoned, informed response to a subtle, complex question about events. Dawson's book, like all good histories, is such a response.
In the first excerpts, what is the difference between Clement's and Tertullian's opinions of classical Greek learning? Who are the citizens of Augustine's Heavenly City or City of God? Who are the citizens of the Earthly City or City of Man? What is the significance, do you think, of Gregory's story of the conversion of Clovis?
As Dawson and other European historians emphasize, the monastic movement—the development of monasteries throughout Europe in the centuries following the fall of the Western Roman Empire—was immensely important in the development of the single Western or European culture once called "Christendom." From the Benedictine and Columban monstic rules in the second excerpt, try to determine what differences exist in the monastic rules of Benedict and Columba and how they reflect Dawson's description of the differences in the monasticism of the Irish and the Latin churches. According to Dawson, how many different approaches to monasticism were there? Three? Four? Five?
A few study questions to get you through Chapters 10 & 11 of Dawson:
One theme that was emphasized repeatedly throughout the semester was that historical development often occurs through conflicts between peoples, cultures, and religions and, as Dawson said so many times, these conflicts mutually affect the conflicting forces: for example, barbarians may be militarily victorious but the religion or the culture of the conquered party may prove to be more enduring than the religion or culture of the victors. Christians may have faced Greek critics, but both Christians and Greeks were influenced by each other as a result of the conflict. Look for thse conflicts throughout the Dawson text, but also look for them in the Classical and Judeo-Christian material with which we began the course. It is a major theme of the course.
A few study questions for chapter 7 in Dawson, "Christianity and the Greek World":
Some study questions for chapter 6, "The Coming of the Kingdom." These questions are not paragraph-specific questions but rather questions that ask you to consider the different subjects that Dawson discusses as he progresses through the chapter.
. Some study questions to work you through Chapter 5 of Christopher Dawson's The Formation of Christendom, "The Christian and Jewish Idea of Revelation":
Some of the questions have simple, straight-forward answers; others call for some pondering on the reading. Each of the questions proceeds a bit later in the chapter from the previous question.
A few study questions to get you through Chapter 4 of Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture:
The timeline and chronology assignment. I even gave you a freebie to show you how to fill it out.
The main assignment for Tuesday is preparing the basic chronology that I discussed with you in class.
To repeat the main points:
The purpose of the assignment is to give you a chance to get a handle on the time period and the huge amount of material that we have been studying for the past three weeks and to get an understanding of "what happened when." It is a good review of the material.
If you don't know much about the Reformation at all, this very brief summary, called Reformation 101, which I took from About.com, provides a basic outline. Take a look at it.
Luther's Ninety-Five Theses
Calvin's "Letter to the King"
Thomas Muntzer's "Sermon to the Princes"
Machiavelli, The Prince, chapters XV, XVII, and XXV
Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man
Leonardo Bruni, Letter Addressed to [an] Illustrious Lady, pp. 119-124, 127-128.
Moses Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed, which shows the Jewish philosopher attempting to reconcile scripture with Aristotle.
Paul Halsall, "Islamic Political Philosophy: Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes."
excerpts from medieval Muslim thinkers. The excerpts from Avicenna and Averroes reflect the influence of Greek or Classical philosophy on Muslim thinkers during this period of time.
Pope Urban II's 1095 Speech at Clermont
The excerpt from St. Thomas's Summa Theologica illustrates the scholastic method of philosophic exposition or demonstration.
The scholastic format of the Summa or Summary of Theology (or, from St. Thomas's view, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Theology but were Afraid to Ask") of St. Thomas takes some getting used to. He divides the treatise up into numbered Questions. Each numbered question is then divided up into Articles. Each Article is divided into a series of Objections, which turn out to be criticisms of the point that Aquinas ultimately wishes to make, followed by a section headed "On the contrary," which marks the beginning of the argument for St. Thomas's position. Then follows the "I answer that" section, which is the key to St. Thomas's argument, and a series of replies to the initial objections. Focus first on the "I answer that" paragraphs and then look at the Objections and Thomas's Replies.
Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa, Volume III, Chapter XV--Greatness of Soul (Magnanimity) (QQ. 128-149).
Alfarabi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (trans. Muhsin Mahdi).
Avicenna, Excerpt from On Medicine
Averroes, On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy
King Alfred's "Preface" to St. Gregory's Pastoral Care, (English translation from Bucknell University). See also the originals at Bucknell.
Charlemagne's Capitulary for Saxony
Carolingian Capitularies on Serfs & Coloni, 803-821
Description of medieval penitentials (know what a "penitential" is—read this website)
The Anglo-Saxon poem ""The Battle of Maldon." The web page on which the poem appears has a lot of background material. When was it written? When did the battle take place? Who fought whom?
The Heimskringla, or Saga of the Great Norse Kings: Saga of Olaf Trygvason; Saga of Olaf Haraldson; Saga of Harald Hardrade, who might actually be familiar to you students of English history.
Bede's History (Preface and Chapter One) and Beowulf (Episodes One and Two)
Post-Reformation Religious Division of Europe
Empire of Otto the Great, A.D. 936-973
Division of Carolingian Empire after death of Charlemagne
Map of Merovingian-Frankish expansion (Wikipedia)
Cluniac and Cistercian Monasteries
Early Celtic Monasteries in Europe
Early monasteries
Excerpts from works by St. Augustine, John of Salisbury, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Excerpts from early Christian writers
"Four Bs and a C." There are excerpts from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, St. Benedict's and St. Columba's monastic rules, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England, and Beowulf. All are excerpts; none is complete, but they give us some idea of the nature of the literature and the intellectual activity of the period from A.D. 500 to 1000.
Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks (Fordham, Halsall)
Justinian, Institutes, Book I, parts 1 & 2.
St. Augustine, City of God, Book I, chapters 1-5; Book XIV, chapter 28.
The views of Tertullian and of Clement of Alexandria on classical learning.
Tertullian, Prescription against Heresies, chapters 1, 6 to 11
Clement, The Paedegogus or Christ the Instructor, Book I, chapter 13
St. Augustine, City of God, Book VIII chapter 10, Book XXII chapters 27 and 28, and Book XIX, chapters 20 and 25. Book XIX chapter 4 is also important here: read it if you can.
A few chapters from the New Testament: There are any number of websites with copies of all of the books of the Bible. The "New Advent" and the "Christian Classics Ethereal Library" that are linked on my main webpage are two good ones. Please read the following: the gospel of Matthew, chapters 1, 5, 7, and 24; the gospel of John chapter 1; the epistle of Paul to the Romans, chapter 13; and the Book of Revelation (or the Apocalypse), chapter 20. These chapters will provide a number of basic Christian ideas that carry forward into the development of the Western tradition.
Readings from the New Testament: On Christ as fulfillment of Jewish prophesy: Matthew 5:17-19 (see also Mark (Mk) 1:1-11, and Luke (Lk) 4:14-21; 18:31-34; 24:25-27, 44).
Matthew and Luke also provided genealogies (family histories) of Jesus to show his Jewish and ultimately divine, ancestry: Mt. 1:1-11 (Jesus back to David). See also Lk. 3:21-37 (Jesus back to Adam and to God).
The New Covenant or New Testament is described in accounts of the Last Supper: Mk. 14:12-31 (see also Mt. 26:26-29; Lk. 22:17-23).
Jesus's description of the end of the world ("eschatology") can be found in parallel passages from the first three gospels: Mk. 13:1-31 (see also Matthew 24 and Luke 21: 5-33). The book of Revelation or the Book of the Apocalypse contains this famous eschatalogical passage: Rev. 20: 1-10.
The community of Christ's apostles and disciples after his resurrection is recounted in the Acts of the Apostles. One influential passage describes the "apostolic communism: Acts chapters 3 & 4.
The gospel of John reflects the early influence of Greek or Hellenic thought on the understanding of Christ: John 1Bible passages from the Prophets selected to exemplify some of the points made by William Irwin and Christopher Dawson.
You should be familiar with the main differences between Stoic, Epicurean, and Gnostic thought in Roman times—their different understandings of the supreme good, of the nature of man, and the of the nature of the universe.
Regarding the Roman material (some of which was originally in Latin and some in Greek), you should understand the differences between Stoicism (as reflected in the writings of Cicero and Seneca), Epicureanism (as reflected in Epicurus's "Principal Doctrines"), and Gnosticism (as reflected in the Bema hymn and the Apocalypse of James). These three philosophies-religions had (1) different views of the nature of the world, (2) different views of the divine (God and the gods), and (3) different views of ethics and morality, the ultimate standards of right and wrong): know them. You should be able to identify by author and title Cicero's "Dream of Scipio," Epicurus's "Principal Doctrines, and the Apocalypse of James (author: "Anonymous") and the Bema Hymn (author: "Anonymous"). Seneca's writings are hard to distinguish from Cicero's On Duties, so I will not make either one of these works the subject of identification, but these same works are your principal source of information about Stoic principles, so don't ignore them.
The second great philosophy of the Hellenistic world and Rome: Epicureanism (named for Epicurus, a Greek philosopher of the 4th century (341-270 B.C.). He was a teenager when Aristotle died (322 B.C.).) the first 61 lines of Book II of Lucretius's poem, On the Nature of the Universe, and paragraphs (¶¶) 13 to 19 of Seneca's Letter to Gallio, "On the Happy Life," which we discussed a bit on Friday. (Actually, ¶8 to ¶19 of the letter make up one long criticism of Epicureanism.) Pay particular attention to what Epicurus says about pleasure and pain in many of the sections.
Is Seneca's criticism fair? Would the Epicurean way of life, as described by Epicurus, be dramatically different from the Stoic way of life? Are their moralities—standards and rules of right and wrong conduct—much different? Where do they differ? (You know, this would make a good short essay quiz question!)
The political philosopher Leo Strauss distinguished between two types of hedonism (hedonism is the doctrine that the ultimate standards of right and wrong are pleasure and pain—one should (it is right to) pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Strauss described "vulgar hedonism" (look up "vulgar" in a good dictionary) as the doctrine that one should try to maximize the amount and intensity of pleasure in life. To do so is to live life to the fullest: carpe diem! Philosophic hedonism he described as the doctrine that the best life is the life that minimizes pain, and that this can be done best by pursuing the pleasures of the mind, not of the body. What kind of a hedonist does Epicurus appear to be? Why?
Cicero's "The Dream of Scipio" and Parts I to IV (Paragraphs {1} to {14} of his De Officiis (On Duties). What is his view of God or the gods. What determines his standards of ethics—of the ultimate standards of right and wrong? Does he agree with Plato and Aristotle on the best way of life? on man's highest calling?
Both Cicero and Seneca reflected Stoic thought in their religious, political, and moral views. What common ideas about religion, politics, and morals can you find in the assigned writings? Seneca is sometimes thought of as a "closet Christian" (he was not): what familiar religious ideas does he express? Do the writings of these Romans reflect the Greek ideas of the excellence and the freedom of the individual that we viewed in Plato, Aristotle, and Classical Greek art?
Some of you will be pleased to know that Rome is not noted for its metaphysical philosophers. Rather, the tremendous contribution that Rome made to Western civilization is reflected more in civic (political) and ethical standards and virtues. Rome and the empire also served as the arena in which different religions and philosophies competed for the allegiance of thoughtful people when the traditional polytheism of Greece and Rome began to decline. We have already seen some of the philosophic and poetic attacks on the Olympian religion of Greece; there was a similar breakdown of the traditional Roman order several centuries later. The breakdown opened the door to philosophies—we may call them "philosophies of life" or religious philosophies—such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, Gnosticism, mystery cults, and, of course, Christianity to provide people with the ultimate certainties about life and the world that all men seem to need.
We will begin this part of the course with writings from one of the great Romans—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), commonly known as Cicero or Tully. He was a philosopher and statesman actively involved in the political life of Rome before it became an empire headed by an Emperor, and he lost his life because of his political activities. We will then study Stoicism, the religious philosophy that dominated the politically active Romans from Cicero's time to the third century A.D. Then we will read Epicurean, Gnostic, and mystery cult materials and finally excerpts from the first great historians—the Greeks Herodotus and Thucydides, and the historians of Rome, Polybius and Livy. The order of assignments, subject to change, follows.
Please read Cicero's "The Dream of Scipio" and Parts I to IV (Paragraphs {1} to {14} of his De Officiis (On Duties).the four causes of Aristotle are usually referred to as the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. As you read the material in the Physics, match up his discussions and definitions to these titles: what does he mean by the material cause? the formal cause? and so on. According to Aristotle, do these causes apply to natural as well as to man-made things ("artifacts")? Does every thing that exists have a purpose? Does nothing have a purpose? Do only artifacts have a purpose? Regarding the excerpt from Aristotle's Politics, what is his view of God—is he an atheist, a monotheist, a polytheist? When you read the excerpts from Cicero, consider what his view of God or the gods is. What determines his standards of ethics—of the ultimate standards of right and wrong? Does he agree with Plato on the what is the best way of life? what is man's highest calling?
Throughout this part of the course, we will compare the different principles of the Epicureans with the main ideas that we identified in the Stoic writings of Cicero and Seneca and compare the Valentinian tract to the ideas of the cosmos that we find in Epicurus, Cicero, and Seneca.
Book Two of Stoic Marcus Aurelius's Meditations
Epicureanism--Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, and alternative site De Rerum Natura
Epicurus, "Principal Doctrines"
Cicero, De Officiis, Parts I to IV (or paragraphs {1} to {14})..
Cicero, "The Dream of Scipio".
Seneca, Letter XLI to Lucilius: "The God within Us"; paragraphs 1 to 12 of the essay, "On the Happy Life."
Cicero's On Duties paragraphs (¶¶) 1-14 (little numbers on the left) only.
Seneca, The God Within Us and ¶¶ 1-8 of To Gallio: On the Happy Life
Dr. Ben Schneider on Stoic Legacy to the Renaissance
Dr. David Naugle on Christianity and Stoicism
Pliny's correspondence with Emperor Trajan on the Christians.
Dr. C. George Boeree's Philosophies and Religions of the Roman Empire.
Two Gnostic documents: The First Apocalypse of James and the Manichaean (Gnostic) poem Bema Psalm 224. How do they picture the creation of the cosmos? How do they explain man's role in the world? What should be our goal? What ethical principles should we follow. You've got to think outside the box to figure this one out.
The Manichaean Fifth Psalm to Jesus.
In Quest of the Priceless Pearl.
The Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul.
The Gnostic tract A Valentinian Exposition (watch out for this one!)
Excerpts from some of the early Greek and Roman historians—Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, and Tacitus. This is a pretty lengthy assignment, so leave yourself enough time to complete it.
As you read the excerpts from the historians consider the following questions:
Herodotus's Histories, Book One, sections 1.0 to 1.15.
Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, Book One, Chapter One, paragraphs 1-6, and Book Five, Chapter Seventeen, the "Melian Dialogue".
Polybius's Histories, Book One, sections 1-5 (the big red numbers).
Livy's History of Rome, Book One, section 1.preface and sections 1.1-1.5.
Each of these excerpts contains a statement by the author of his approach to writing history, usually a few paragraphs at the beginning of the linked excerpt. I want you to read a bit more by Herodotus and Thucydides to get a taste of what kind of historical materials made up their works.
General Account, Indiana University.
An analysis of Thucydides's account, Tufts University.
Might it have been the ebola virus?
Regarding the Greek material, try to re-read each assigned reading now that you have an idea of how Greek thought developed. Look at the (1) different accounts of the gods' relationship to the world and to man (compare Homer's account to Aristotle's, for example), (2) different explanations of justice (compare Aeschylus's to Plato's, for example), (3) different levels of man's self-awareness (compare Homer's descriptions of human feelings and human thinking to the lyric poets', for example), and (4) different understandings of the nature of the universe (compare Homer's and Aeschylus's to the pre-Socratic philosophers'). Remember the film we viewed and its theme of the development of the Greeks' appreciation of the beauty and powers of the individual human being, an appreciation that existed nowhere else in the world at that time. The Greeks' main achievements are sometimes described as the individual's freedom and power of thought ("philosophy"). You should be able to provide evidence from you reading to support these ideas.
Two short excerpts from Aristotle: his famous account of the four causes in the Physics, Book Two, parts 3, 7, & 8, which discusses the "four causes"—what they are and whether they apply to nature as well as to man-made products and activities; and a short excerpt on God in Aristotle's Politics (trans. H. Rackham), sections [1323a14], [1323b1], [1324a1]. Use the little blue arrows in the upper left (right above each number just listed) to move from section to section.
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book One, chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9, which discusses "happiness"--what it is and how it is obtained; and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book Two, chapters 1, 2, 4, and 6, which discusses the nature of moral virtue—what it is and how it is obtained. You should be able to explain what the four causes are and how they are obtained; what "happiness is and how it is obtained; and what moral virtue is and how it is obtained.
Aristotle's concept of happiness or eudaimonia in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, chapters 1, 4, & 7.
Plato's Republic, Books VI-VII, 506b to 518a on the divided line and the Parable of the Cave.
As you read the accounts of the divided line and the Myth or Parable of the Cave, consider the following:
Plato's Republic, Book IV, 427e to 445e on the four Classical virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.
Plato's Crito.
Plato's Republic, Book V, 471c to 480a on the philosopher king.
As you read the passage from Book Five on the philosopher king, ask what Plato/Socrates seems to mean when he talks about "philosophers."
For Plato, use the Stephanus Numbers to mark you place in the text.
Edited article on the Sophists. In Section 2 of the article, you need only read the short bios of Protagoras, Gorgias, and Thrasymachus. We are most interested in the major themes of sophistic thought.
Excerpts from or about the Pre-Socratic philosophers.
As you read the excerpts from the pre-Socratic philosophers, consider the following questions:
Lives of the Philosophers, by Diogenes Laertius (incomplete).
You should recognize the difference between epic, lyric, and tragic poetry and the significance of each in the evolution from mythic thought to rational or philosophic thought. The development of philosophic thought parallels the development of the Greeks' understanding of the nature of man and man's relation to the gods and the divine. The different approaches to history taken by the four historians we looked at also reflect the Greeks' advancing understanding of man and of the causes of human events.
The Eumenides by Aeschylus
Sophocles's Oedipus Rex
The link to the Medea review in the Post.
Euripides's Bacchae or Bacchants.
Please read The Eumenides by Aeschylus (trans. Morshead), one of the three great tragic poets of classical Greece. Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) wrote more than seventy plays for the Dionysia Festival at Athens; seven remain, and among them the three plays of the Oresteia trilogy—Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, Eumenides. Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), his younger contemporary, is known best, perhaps, for the three plays that focus on the tragic life of King Oedipus—Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. Only seven of his more than one hundred twenty plays have survived. The youngest of the three great tragedians, though a contemporary of Sophocles, is Euripides (480-406 B.C.). Eighteen of his more than ninety plays have survived, including Medea, Trojan Women, and The Bacchae or Bacchants.
Consider the following:
Please read the Greek lyric poems. This poetry marks a step away from the Homeric epic to the Pre-Socratic philosophers.
As you read these poems, answer the following [quiz] questions:
Finally, do the lyric poems of Archilochus and Alcman reflect the same attitude toward the world as Homer's Odyssey, Hesiod's Theogony, or neither of the two? Why? Is there anything different about the lyric poets' attitude toward the gods or themselves when compared to Homer's and Hesiod's? What? If not, how are all three sets of poems the same?
Hesiod's Theogony. (This translation of the poem is in prose with the line numbers of the original poem version in parentheses at the beginning of each paragraph.) You do not have to read the whole poem, but you should be familiar with the content in lines 1-225, 453-491, and 543-744, and should skim the rest of the poem. It is fun to read.In Hesiod's poem, what does "theogony" mean? Where did the Greek gods literally come from? What is Hesiod trying to do here? What existed at the beginning of time? Generally, what happened thereafter, according to Hesiod? What stages in the history of the gods are described in the assigned readings?
Does Hesiod's poem about the origins of the gods remind you of either the article by the Frankforts or the article by Eliade? What kind of information is Hesiod conveying to his readers? With the Frankforts' article in mind, would you call Hesiod's attitude "scientific" or "mythopoeic" or "mid-way between the two"? Why?
Book Twenty-Two of the Odyssey.
Please read Book One of Homer's Odyssey. You may use any translation. I think the ones by Richmond Lattimore and Robert Fagles are the best, but the only two available on the internet are the old translation by Samuel Butler and the A.T. Murray translation available here from the Tufts University Perseus website. (I suggest the Murray translation if you do not have a hard copy of another translation. Move forward and back in the Murray translation by using the little blue arrows in the upper left-hand corner of the text.)
Butler calls the Greek gods by their Roman/Latin names. Thus, the Greek goddess Athene is called Minerva, Zeus is Jove, Poseidon is Neptune; the human hero of the poem, Odysseus, after whom the poem is named, is Ulysses, and so on (click here for a useful guide to the dual names).
The Iliad and the Odyssey were two of the poems about the Trojan war that were part of the Epic Cycle. Except for the Iliad and the Odyssey, the other poems of the Epic Cycle have been lost, although (1) fragments of each of them and (2) references to, and quotations from, them in the writings of other authors remain and give us a good iead of the contents of each. (The famous story of the Trojan horse, for instance, is not found in theIliad or the Odyssey: it is found in the so-called Sack of Ilion.)
Please read the short essay by Mircea Eliade that was handed out in class. As you read, ask yourself how Eliade describes primitive man's basic understanding of God or the gods? How, according to Eliade, does primitive man learn of the existence of God or the gods? Why is primitive man initially confused and puzzled by his experiences of the sacred? What specifically distinguishes the "sacred" or the "holy" from the "profane"? What are these concepts? (Be sure to look up all the words in the article that you are not familiar with.)
The Academy for Ancient Texts Egyptian Book of the Dead
The Osiris Legend (Deurer)
(1) the legend of Osiris; (2) the Egyptian poems "Sister without Peer," "My Brother Torments my Heart," "My Heart Flutters Hastily"; (3) the Instructions of Ptahhotep ##1, 2, 4, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25; and (4) the Hymn to Aton. Again, all are linked under "Humanities I Readings" on my main webpage. You might want to compare the version of the Osiris myth at "TourEgypt.net" with the versions at Aldokkan or at the Academy for Ancient Texts Egyptian Book of the Dead, which is also linked on the main webpage. Some interesting variations.
An interesting introduction to "Gilgamesh"
(1) read all of the creation poem "Enuma Elish"; (2) read Tablets VII and VIII of the epic "Gilgamesh"; and (3) read the following rules from Hammurabi's Law Code: 1-30, 125-140, 195-235. All of these are available by links about halfway down my main webpage under the set of links entitled "Humanities I Readings." An interesting introduction to "Gilgamesh" can be found here; you might want to read about what happened on the first six tablets of the poem. When you read the rules from Hammurabi, look for (1) the kinds of offenses that are "capital crimes," that is, crimes punishable by death; (2) the different orders of people under the laws (different people treated differently according to who they are); (3) the different purposes of the laws (not all are criminal laws); and (4) the basic principles of justice that are exemplified in the rules.
The Frankforts and Eliade describe some of the ways people thought about the world before the advent of the speculative, philosophic thought that we take for granted today. They also describe some of the fundamental ways in which primitive or ancient men understood the world. According to the Frankforts, how did primitive people view and understand the world in which they lived? How did they explain things that happened in nature—natural "phenomena"? According to the Frankforts, were the explanations of primitive people the results of their limited vocabulary and language skills—that is, primitives simply did not have the vocabulary to put into words what they really thought—or did they actually understand the world in terms of their mythological, poetic explanations? According to the Frankforts, what is "myth"? What is "reality"?
According to Eliade, how did primitives understand the world? What does Eliade mean by the "sacred"? the "profane"? On what do the Frankforts and Eliade agree in describing primitive thinking.
The two articles are not inconsistent with each other, but they focus on different aspects of the primitive outlook. The terms "primitive" and "ancient" are not intended by the authors as derogatory. The authors had the greatest respect for the people and the thought-processes that they call "primitive." These ways of thinking are still in existence (and, indeed will never be eliminated) in the population at large and, particularly, in the language and mythologies of tribal peoples throughout the world. Tony Hillerman's mystery novels about the Navajos in the Southwest reflect many of the characteristics described by the Frankforts and Eliade and European thinking.
Book Reviews
The basic guidelines for book reviews are as follows:
Art of the Western World. Narrated by Michael Wood. Annenberg Learner Series.
The Western Tradition. Narrated by Eugen Weber. Annenberg Learner Series.
