Introductory Essay 5

Comment on Lack of Information - Fact VS. Myth

My effort, as noted, is not one that is easy, simply because we know so little about our real past and what we think we know to be “facts” change frequently as solid research increases and “control of thought” (by religion and culture) dissipates. Even with the new advances in our basic understanding of the past, it is still extremely difficult to write about what we really know so little about.

When we do try to write about religion or more exactly, the religions of peoples in the past, the difficulty is exacerbated by the constant conflict between our current issues of “faith” and “knowledge, and past and current “dogmas” and “fact.” Those who believe in the current modern versions of Christianity or Judaism or Islam, need to maintain a “belief” in history as presented in their holy books. Without the “history, much of their religion tends to fall apart. For example, for many Christian believers “Adam and Eve” and “original sin” are real and therefore must be seen as actual “history”.

• If there was no Adam and Eve and no first rejection of God’s command (by Eve, I.E. the original sin) then there is no need for “salvation”.

This relationship between religion and “history” can be seen in other issues as well, including;

• If there was no Abraham and no Moses, and no contracts between them and God, then there is no foundation for the modern state of Israel.
• And if there was no Jesus, there was no son of God, and there is no foundation for the very existence of Christianity.

There appears to be little to no historical evidence outside of the Bible to support these four events (Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus). Yet, in the West, all four of these personal stories are presented in schools and in religious settings, to some degree or another, as fact.

This teaching, of these people as fact, is very much needed to maintain the very foundations of the modern Western religions. Therefore, we can see that such things as the fight between “creationism” (or “intelligent design”) and evolution, is not simply a fight over “modernism” and “tradition”, it is a fight by the religious to maintain the very foundations of their core beliefs. (Without Adam and Eve, and Original Sin, without Christ, is there a basis for the Christian religion?)

The religious will not go “quiet into that good night.” The forces of the current power (the Christian religion) will fight to maintain a view of history that supports their beliefs and resist new understandings in history that challenge them. Christians are still very powerful in the United States and have great influence on how history is taught and presented in our culture.

Aside from the need of the religious to control history, the time span that needs to be covered makes the task of understanding “history” hard, if not out right impossible. We actually remember (or know) so little. It’s difficult enough to comprehend the 400 years since the settlement of Jamestown (1607) and the incredible development of the North American continent, so how can we be expected to know much about events 4,000 years ago, never mind 40,000 years ago?

• We hardly understand the allusions of people writing during our American Revolution, how can we understand the allusions of peoples writing at the time of the Jewish revolution against the Seleucid Greeks or the first worshipers of a Sky God, rather than the Mother Goddess?

I was at a meeting in Washington DC, working on a project to change the questions used in the US citizenship tests, where a noted “professional historian” stated that he felt that it was better for the new immigrants to the United States to know the “myths of America” as opposed to the real “history.” He felt that the “cultural myths” were the foundations of a society, filled with the good things about the society. He felt that the “actual history” often was made of “real people,” who were all combinations of “good and bad” (like Jefferson and Washington owning slaves). In his view, it was better that the immigrants understood the “intent” of the “founding fathers” or the “outcomes,” rather than the actual history and struggles that led to these outcomes, with all the “human problems” involved.

He wanted the immigrants to become Americans by buying into the “meaning” of America through the “outcomes,” rather than understanding America, through the study of the struggles that got us here. “Outcomes” were projected by the “cultural myths.” He saw in these “cultural myths” stories created as a short hand to explain the key elements of the struggle and the intended meaning of the outcomes.

In some ways, this approach to teaching history is understandable and excusable, and in fact, the way most history has always been taught (the picture of the Twelve Stations of the Cross is a shorthand way of teaching the Christianity and its “outcomes” and about the “folk culture” of Christianity itself). However, the problem arises when the “cultural myths” become accepted, and institutionalized, leaving the real history to be completely, or almost completely, lost. (Also some, like me, argue that the “struggle” and the freedom to have a struggle is the real meaning of America, but that is a different book)

In truth, much of what we think we know as “history” is really “cultural myth” produced and promulgated by the “winning interests” in countless struggles within and between societies. Some of these “cultural myths” grew into “sacred events” confusing matters to even a greater degree. Sometimes, over the course of time, we get very confused on who was real or not. Was there a “real” Romulus, Hercules, Achilles, or even Moses, Jesus, or Paul (or American icons such as Francis Marion, Pretty Boy Floyd, or say Zorro)?

• There was recently yet another movie remake of the story of the Battle of the Alamo, which was actually far more accurate than the famous John Wayne version. The movie however “bombed” at the box office, as people did not want to see a Davy Crockett who appeared to be bordering on cowardice and who only acted brave to meet the expectations of others. This was most likely what the real Davy was like, but definitely not the cultural image of the man. The cultural image trumped reality again, and the movie failed.

We need to ask why we currently “believe” in one (or more) of these “cultural myths” and not another? What criteria do we use to justify the acceptance of one of these heroes as “fact” and reject another as “story”, even though there is an equal level of information to prove them both, or, perhaps better said, there is an equal amount of lack of information to actually, one way or the other, not prove them. Are these not issues of the archetype of Jung, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CarlJung or the concepts presented by Joseph Campbell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JosephCampbell ? Perhaps so, and, therefore too much work to consider all of that here. However, all these confront me in my “in the beginning” to write this work. How do you write in a serious fashion, while going against “beliefs” and “facts” of the current time, and still be taken seriously?

In addition, our lack of information is largely based in the deliberate policies of rulers that led to episodes of destruction of cultures and the local “history.” These types of events have been repeated many times throughout history, and are not the exclusive domain of the Greeks or Romans. These actions of invaders, and the remaking of their world in their image, are one of the key reasons we know so little about the past. Conquering powers destroy much of what was in place when they arrive.

• One prime example of this is that Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas. The extensive written (and oral) histories of these peoples were destroyed, their cities made over to the designs of the Spanish, the religions repressed by force, and the peoples enslaved. Of all the written histories of the Mayas (codices) only four escaped destruction and eventually were translated. The few that remain gives us only a glimpse of the greatness of the Maya scientific thinking and their understanding of “time” and the movement of the stars. The Maya, in fact, developed a calendar that is second to none in accuracy. In addition, the few texts that remain show an extensive history of politics and kings. At least these few texts of the Maya remained, despite the effort to destroy them.
• This story of destruction in the Americas (mainly for religious issues) only tangentially connects to the main story line here. So while I’ll return to it later it will only be briefly. For more details on this please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_script and http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/pdf/146/14601901.pdf -

The Nazi book burnings were also nothing new in world history. We see a prime example of the destruction of “unwanted knowledge” in the obliteration of anything considered heretical by the Catholic Church once it had obtained power in the Roman world. This intolerance inspired frenzied “Christian mobs” to attack the centers of learning of the Classical world (as recently portrayed in the movie Agora.). For a clear history of this effort please see “The Closing of the Western Mind.”

• Only in very recent times have we begun to gain more insight into the diversity of the early Christian churches with the discovery of ancient texts (Dead Sea Scrolls, and others). In addition, several other “gospels” which the Orthodox (both Eastern and what is later the Roman Catholic Orthodox Church) tried to destroy in their entirety.

In reality, these policies of destruction both old and new shape our understanding of history and religion. Our fragmentary overview is based on these policies of repression, since the knowledge of the “Ancients” was lost in the West for almost 1000 years, and only partially recovered today.

We’re all familiar with the concept of the “Renaissance” or how the knowledge of the Ancients, and Classical world re-entered the Western world through contact with the Islamic world, where it had been preserved in both its Greek and Roman original texts, as well as in Arabic translations. However, this “simple” history of revival is mostly not true, and how much we actually got back through the Arabs is greatly over-estimated (when compared to what had been lost forever).

Truthfully, so much was lost and, in fact, can never be recovered. Imagine if we had only four complete plays by Shakespeare, and had only heard of someone named Samuel Johnson or that there was a once a woman writer named Jane Austen. Imagine again, if the works of all other writers for an approximate three hundred year period (from Shakespeare to Austen) were simply gone. That is close to what we have left from the writers of the “classical period” (never mind the lost literature of the Ancients). We have precious few of the plays written over four to five hundred years and which were performed every “season” in Athens or Rome. What we have left are of course, treasured. However, they reflect just a fraction of the acts and opinions of the time.

The rest of the plays were destroyed or simply disappeared. Whether this is all due to the Christians, or perhaps just based on the loss of literacy and the fashion of going to the theater, we can’t be sure. The plays, the science and the medicine, and so much more were all lost and never can be regained. So in actuality, the Arabs preserved very little, not because they did not want to, but because so much was completely destroyed before the coming of the Arab rule.

We generally know of the “Library of Alexandria” where the knowledge of the “Ancients” was collected. We generally do not know that all major cities and towns throughout the Ancient Western World (including communities all the way through India) had libraries and schools and centers where knowledge was openly discussed and debated. The libraries and the debating of ideas were a major element of Hellenistic culture (and a major source of popular entertainment).

• In the city of Ephesus, in modern Turkey, you can still see the ruins of the library in the core of the ancient city. Clearly written in Latin is an inscription stating that the building was a donation from Julius Caesar.

We also generally know that the Library of Alexandria (Egypt) was burned. There are four major stories on how it was destroyed. The first is that it was an accident and occurred while Caesar was under siege (roughly 47 BC); the second is that Emperor Aurelian sacked the building while suppressing revolts during 270′s, another is that the Christians destroyed it during riots in the 391 AD, when they went on rampages trying to destroy anything associated with the old Classical religions; and the fourth is that it was destroyed in the 642 AD by the Arabs who supposedly destroyed all writings other than the Koran. Some say all four events actually happened and the library suffered repeated losses. Others argue that there is only independent confirmation for the Christian attacks in 391, and that it is the most likely source for the major destruction of the classical texts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibraryofAlexandria

However, the repressions of libraries and schools took place everywhere throughout the Roman (and Byzantines) Empire based on the demands of the new power, the Christian Church. The classical world was repressed. The Olympic Games were ended by Imperial Edict, after some 1,200 years of continual uninterrupted events, and that’s a long time. After some 900 years of continual discussion and training, the schools of philosophy in Athens (and elsewhere) ended. Then under the later Emperors and the Eastern Empire, the practicing of traditional religious rites became a capital offense.

I have friends, historians who argue that many of the leading church members of the period still loved to read the “classical literature” and made great references to them in some writings, and he argues that there was no great general church repression of the classical world – no organized book burning, per say. However, people and writers I know give different views, believing that there was a strong effort to repress the Classical world. I feel that both views are true. There were some in the Church who maintained a fondness for the past and the writing of the classics, but the main effort of the Church was to present their world, based on the Bible, to the mass of people. (Am I being corrupted in my view by the movie/book “The Name of the Rose”?)

However, it seems to be mostly true and mostly agreed to by historians that with the victory of Christianity, all kinds of searching for understanding of the world, of math, science and the “spirit” ended in Europe. A firm belief in the “facts” of the Bible was the only world view allowed, despite some remaining fascination with the writing of the Ancients.

• The loss to human understanding, and history (as well as art, literature, science, medicine, etc) is incomprehensible. It’s as if the Taliban ruled the whole world, for hundreds of years and that they did to the West what they did to Afghanistan. This is the closest analogy in the modern world there is to the coming to power of the Christians in the Roman Empire. (The Nazis and Communists, with all their repression did at least, unlike the Christians, promote scientific research and achievement)

Once in power, starting about 400 AD, under the mandates of the new Universal Church and the new Christian Emperors, all knowledge and world views that were counter to the “Bible” were considered a capital offense. In that later Roman world, and into what became known as the “dark ages,” the pursuit of knowledge, other than efforts to better understand the “Bible,” also became a capital offense.

To be fair, this type of destruction of knowledge is not the domain of the West alone. One of the key examples of this effort to control the present by destroying the knowledge of the past is the “noted” first emperor of China, (most famous for his grave site in Xian with its thousands of clay warriors, and recently, made more recognizable to modern peoples as a character in the new Chinese movie epic “Hero”) whose philosophical concept of governance was called “Legalism” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(philosophy). Once he obtained complete dominance over the “Warring States” of China, he ordered the burning of all rival schools of thought, notably Confucian and Taoist texts.

To ensure stability, he (the “first emperor”) outlawed Confucianism and buried many of its scholars alive, banning the possession of (and burning) all books other than those he decreed (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FirstQinEmperor )

Later again in Chinese history with the T’ang Dynasty’s effort to repress Buddhism similar repressions occurred.

• In 845 the emperor Wu-tsung began a major persecution. According to records, 4,600 Buddhist temples and 40,000 shrines were destroyed, and 260,500 monks and nuns were forced to return to lay life. http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/Buddhism%20in%20China.htm

We in the United States have been mostly free of this type of oppression (thanks to the First Amendment and dare I say it The ACLU), with the noted exception of the treatment of African Americans during slavery and “Jim Crow.” However, we too have experience times when “thought” was deemed “illegal” and persons repressed and even imprisoned for their ideas. In more recent times, the most noted examples of these repressions are:

• the Syndicalism Movement,
• Syndicalisme is a French word meaning “trade unionism”. This milder version of syndicalism was overshadowed by revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism in the early 20th century, which was most powerful in Spain, but also appeared in other parts of the world, as in the U.S.-centered Industrial Workers of the World. The federal and state governments repressed the efforts of the IWW or Wobblies, first for the efforts to organize labor into “One Big Union” and later for the opposition to World War I. Hundreds were jailed and scores killed in raids. Some (such as Joe Hill) were executed after “trials”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicalism
• The Resistance Movement to World War I
• See “Sedition Act” , A section of the Act allowed the Postmaster General to declare all letters, circulars, newspapers, pamphlets, and other materials that violated the Act to be unmailable. As a result, about 75 newspapers either lost their mailing privileges or were pressured to print nothing more about World War I between June 1917 and May 1918 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EspionageActof1917 and that 6,000 went to prison during the war based on this act .. see http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/Lesson73_Notes.htm
• and the Black Lists developed during the McCarthy era
• In the film industry, over 300 actors, authors and directors were denied work in the U.S. through the unofficial Hollywood blacklist. Blacklists were at work throughout the entertainment industry, in universities and schools at all levels, in the legal profession, and in many other fields.
• A port security program initiated by the Coast Guard shortly after the start of the Korean War required a review of every maritime worker who loaded or worked aboard any American ship, regardless of cargo or destination. As with other loyalty-security reviews of McCarthyism, the identities of any accusers and even the nature of any accusations were typically kept secret from the accused. Nearly 3,000 seamen and longshoremen lost their jobs due to this program alone. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

All things considered though, the US has come out of a century of massive repression (in Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain, Fascist Italy, Stalinist Russia (never mind Czarist Russia) and Maoist China, just to name a few) relatively with just a few bumps and bruises compared to most of the rest of the world. However, with the rise of the Fundamentalist Christian movement in the US, we face new threats to freedom of thought.

• Again, the general history of repression of thought can be (and in fact is) the focus of many books, and I can not go into much more detail here, but just to say again, we know so little about the past due to the direct policy of rulers to repress “non-conformist” thinking, regardless if that thinking had been the “norm” for centuries or not.

For the purpose of this work, we need to think of the destruction of the knowledge of the Ancients and of the Classicalists, as a key stumbling block to our understanding of the past and our ability to understand the meaning of Ancient and Classical peoples in their own words; who ever destroyed the material matters relatively little now. The fact is that it has been destroyed.

However, we need to look at who is attempting to repress knowledge of the Ancients, and Classicalists today. It still appears that the Christian churches, continue to attempt to stranglehold culture in order to maintain themselves in power, by fighting against massive distribution and explanation of what Ancient and Classical texts we are able to find. So often these texts show major contradiction to the world view of these Christian churches.

Fortunately, with the freedoms of speech and the press, cable TV and the internet, it appears that the Church is fighting a relatively losing battle. With the knowledge available to us today we can really have a “religious free” history. However, history has not been kind to “truth and knowledge.”