Serious Really Want to Turn to Christ

[based_meme]

What about the possibility of you being convinced by my arguments and changing your mind? I always keep that possibility open for myself and this is why I keep arguing. I find it very strange that you don't want to debate anymore. The only reason I can think of as a motivation for such a behavior is that your convictions are as brittle as they are rigid and you are afraid they will break under stress.

I am mentioning Thomas Kuhn, you bail out.
I am using first order predicate logic, you bail out.

As soon as we get into the real meat of things, you bail out.

Only possible conclusion: you are afraid.

Now why should you be afraid? Debate should never scare anyone because no one ever loses in a debate. At worst, you get nothing. At best, you get a new understanding of things. Unless, of course, you value your ego more than your understanding and you are afraid of the shame you would feel as a result of being proven wrong in public, because that would damage your brittle ego and your ego, brittle as it is, is the only thing you have. That is the corner in which anyone who wants to believe in themselves paint themselves eventually. This is the best possible demonstration of why you have to believe in something that transcends you (i.e. a religion). Otherwise, you have no option but to believe in yourself and that inevitably leads you into the kind of solipsistic constipation you are now locked in.

@Moroccancel2- @Intellectual @Intellau_Celistic @Transcended Trucel @JayGoptri @MarquisDeSade @Ahnfeltia , don't you think that @based_meme is a pussy for not wanting to debate me on the above questions (which are fundamental and useful, right? I think we can all agree) ?

I'm just tired of your BS bro. Everyone who's name isn't Jay is ( ). You deny the dog pill, you argue that everything is a religion, and you're a sophist who's more interested in playing politics and appearances, than you are of arguing in good faith and reaching truths (you've even argued AGAINST truth in the past, JFL). You're doing it right now by pitifully attempting to embarrass me and hoping to goad me into engaging with you further. It's foid tier attention seeking behavior.

Before trying to convince anyone of anything, you should first check your own views and beliefs. When you say...

The only reason I can think of as a motivation for such a behavior is that your convictions are as brittle as they are rigid and you are afraid they will break under stress.

... you're really just talking about yourself. I'm very secure in my own thinking, beliefs, and worldview, and have been for the better part of almost 25 years. I learn new things that interest me and regularly work to update my thinking.

You love talking about yourself through your ideas. You have this burning desire to have others accept your wild ideas and philosophies (before you deny that, you wrote a fucking book KEK). But I'm just not interested in your nonsense bro.

 

[Ahnfeltia]

don't you think that @ B @based_meme is a pussy for not wanting to debate me on the above questions (which are fundamental and useful, right? I think we can all agree) ?

Not really. There's a difference between not wanting to debate something and not wanting to debate someone. It seems to me as tho @based_meme merely doesn't want to debate you. Him disliking how you roll don't make him a pussy.

[1] is analysable as ∀u "K is measured at X value"(u) ⇒ "Phenomenon A occurs"(u), where u describes a certain situation. This inference rule is a bare predicate-level inference rule of type 1. without theoretical framework specification, which makes it incomplete. [1] does not have an antecedent or a conclusion but this is not necessary for the rule to be complete (it would be required only in the case of a complete inference)

I disagree. I think [1] should reasonably be interpreted as

if measuring K at value X always seems to yield A, then one should expect A upon measuring K at value X

which is in fact modus ponens.

 

[Immolator]

Go for it

 

[K9Otaku]

You are turning the art of not answering into an olympic sport.

you argue that everything is a religion

I am not the only one. Look at this guy.

You deny the dog pill,

yes, but why is that disqualifying? As usual, you sound like a religious dogmatist: "You deny the dog-pill and therefore you are an heretic, so I do not need to listen to you!" (proving my point above)

I'm just tired of your BS bro ... and you're a sophist who's more interested in playing politics and appearances, than you are of arguing in good faith and reaching truths (you've even argued AGAINST truth in the past, JFL).

Denying the accessibility of truth is a very old and well established philosophical position that has existed for over 2000 years. It is called Skepticism (in the philosophical sense). The Middle Academy espoused it, as well as the disciples of Pyrrho of Elis. In modern times, both Hume and Descartes were influenced by Pyrrhonian skepticism. In the last century, Wittgenstein has been characterized by some (notably Saul Kripke) as the creator of "a new kind of Skepticism". Thomas Kuhn created a whole new branch of epistemology based on the idea of "confidence" and "consensus" instead of truth. Skepticism (the denial of truth) has always been the elephant in the room of philosophy.

How is all this "sophistry" or "BS"? Are you that ignorant or just dishonest?

Now what about this?

more interested in playing politics and appearances ... It's foid tier attention seeking behavior ... you should first check your own views and beliefs ... When you say ... you're really just talking about yourself ... You love talking about yourself through your ideas.

All this language is the best example of confession through projection ever. Look at your post count compared to mine. Who is seeking attention? The guy with over 22 000 posts or the one with 3000 and change? (We joined .is at the almost exact same time)

I'm just tired of your BS bro. Everyone who's name isn't Jay is ( )

That is politics, not honest dialogue. Who says that valid positions are going to be popular? Do you juge "truth" by popularity? Of course you do.

I'm very secure in my own thinking, beliefs, and worldview, and have been for the better part of almost 25 years.

Really? That sounds like "I have been rigid and dogmatic for this whole time". My own personal positions have changed markedly during that time period.

You have this burning desire to have others accept your wild ideas and philosophies (before you deny that, you wrote a fucking book KEK).

Of course I am, like every religious person (i.e. everyone). And so are you, as the 22 000 posts attest.

Every time I publish something on this forum you intervene. You just cannot resist. And then, when I reply and the going starts to get tough, you retreat into "I'm just tired of your BS bro"

The reason you are morally obliged to answer me is because the subject under discussion is fundamental and has an impact on everyone, whether on this forum or everywhere else. Deciding whether humans can have knowledge or should instead rely on trust is one of the most fundamental ethical questions there is (it is not just metaphysics or epistemology). The whole existence of Marxism, and the damage it did and is still doing, or the kind of behavior we all saw during the COVID nonsense ("believe the science") depends on it.

Of course, you can refuse to discharge your moral obligations, but that makes you a coward, a pussy, and ultimately a bluepiller.

@Intellectual @Intellau_Celistic @Marquis de Sade @JayGoptri @Transcended Trucel @Moroccancel2- @Mortis, thoughts?

 

[JayGoptri]

I'm just tired of your BS bro. Everyone who's name isn't Jay is ( ).

It's funny that you say this, when I can tag at least 4-5 users who have expressed the opposite.

 

[K9Otaku]

Not really. There's a difference between not wanting to debate something and not wanting to debate someone. It seems to me as tho @based_meme merely doesn't want to debate you. Him disliking how you roll don't make him a pussy.

That is foid morality, @Ahnfeltia: "I don't like you so I don't talk to you, TeeHee"

Debating someone is not an optional past-time, it is a moral obligation, if the challenge is reasonably well formulated and the debater is reasonably credentialled (which everyone on this forum, especially you, know I am). As stated above, the question at hand is ethical in nature and as such affects everyone. It goes to the heart of our current cultural malaise, including wokeness and Foid-Supremacism. There is no excuse to refuse to discuss it, for as long as it takes.

 

[based_meme]

You are turning the art of not answering into an olympic sport.

I am not the only one. Look at this guy.


yes, but why is that disqualifying? As usual, you sound like a religious dogmatist: "You deny the dog-pill and therefore you are an heretic, so I do not need to listen to you!" (proving my point above)


Denying the accessibility of truth is a very old and well established philosophical position that has existed for over 2000 years. It is called Skepticism (in the philosophical sense). The Middle Academy espoused it, as well as the disciples of Pyrrho of Elis. In modern times, both Hume and Descartes were influenced by Pyrrhonian skepticism. In the last century, Wittgenstein has been characterized by some (notably Saul Kripke) as the creator of "a new kind of Skepticism". Thomas Kuhn created a whole new branch of epistemology based on the idea of "confidence" and "consensus" instead of truth. Skepticism (the denial of truth) has always been the elephant in the room of philosophy.

How is all this "sophistry" or "BS"? Are you that ignorant or just dishonest?

Now what about this?

All this language is the best example of confession through projection ever. Look at your post count compared to mine. Who is seeking attention? The guy with over 22 000 posts or the one with 3000 and change? (We joined .is at the almost exact same time)


That is politics, not honest dialogue. Who says that valid positions are going to be popular? Do you juge "truth" by popularity? Of course you do.


Really? That sounds like "I have been rigid and dogmatic for this whole time". My own personal positions have changed markedly during that time period.


Of course, I am, like every religious person (i.e. everyone). And so are you, as the 22 000 posts attest.

Every time I publish something on this forum you intervene. You just cannot resist. And then, when I reply and the going starts to get tough, you retreat into "I'm just tired of your BS bro"

The reason you are morally obliged to answer me is because the subject under discussion is fundamental and has an impact on everyone, whether on this forum or everywhere else. Deciding whether humans can have knowledge or should instead rely on trust is one of the most fundamental ethical questions there is (it is not just metaphysics or epistemology). The whole existence of Marxism, and the damage it did and is still doing, or the kind of behavior we all saw during the COVID nonsense ("believe the science") depends on it.

Of course, you can refuse to discharge your moral obligations, but that makes you a coward, a pussy, and ultimately a bluepiller.

@Intellectual @Intellau_Celistic @Marquis de Sade @JayGoptri @Transcended Trucel @Moroccancel2- @Mortis, thoughts?

Btw, I don't care about my post count. I've volunteered to the admin to have my posts nuked before in exchange for nuking the sewers and resetting it so it doesn't add to post count.

Carry on, brocel.

(You tagged me in this thread for no good reason and now want to argue about me not having a desire to argue with you. It really is just too funny.)

 

[K9Otaku]

Btw, I don't care about my post count. I've volunteered to the admin to have my posts nuked before in exchange for nuking the sewers and resetting it so it doesn't add to post count.

I obviously struck a nerve ... You have over 7 times more posts than I do, and I never post in the sewers. Who is the attention whore here?

 

[based_meme]

That is foid morality, @Ahnfeltia: "I don't like you so I don't talk to you, TeeHee"

Just to set the record straight, I don't like or dislike you. I'm neutral. I even put your name forward as one of the users who should form the small group of users who should vote on ID threads being approved to maintain quality control.

Remember? Or are you letting your assumptions and biases cloud your judgement?

Debating someone is not an optional past-time, it is a moral obligation

There it is. I knew this would get good eventually.

You really ought to try your hand at comedy. It would just be you lecturing the audience about ridiculous things that they would laugh at. And as you get angrier they would laugh harder.

Your comedy nickname would be "the professor."

 

[K9Otaku]

Just to set the record straight, I don't like or dislike you. I'm neutral. I even put your name forward as one of the users who should form the small group of users who should vote on ID threads being approved to maintain quality control.

I know. I was not talking to you.

You really ought to try your hand at comedy. It would just be you lecturing the audience about ridiculous things that they would laugh at. And as you get angrier they would laugh harder.

Your comedy nickname would be "the professor."

"Haha! you are funny!" Once again, foid morality. "If I can make fun of it, no need to answer it". Foids have corrupted us in subtle ways.

 

[based_meme]

I obviously struck a nerve ... You have over 7 times more posts than I do, and I never post in the sewers. Who is the attention whore here?

You're free to believe what you want. What do you want me to tell you? I literally don't care about post count. You want to tell me what I care about? Bro what.

Everything else I said there is 100% true, and you can ask both decembrist_kirillov, the notorious spam tranny postmaxxer, and Fat Link, who I've asked to nuke the sewers and offered up all of my posts in exchange to show that I'm serious about it.

Why are you turning this into a drama? You should be working on how to improve your own arguments and ideas, instead of wasting time being petty with me. You know there's wisdom in what I'm telling you. Go and do it.

 

[K9Otaku]

You want to tell me what I care about? Bro what.

I am telling you that you are an attention whore, i.e. you care about getting noticed and being popular. Your post total speaks for itself.

Everything else I said there is 100% true, and you can ask both decembrist_kirillov, the notorious spam tranny postmaxxer, and Fat Link, who I've asked to nuke the sewers and offered up all of my posts in exchange to show that I'm serious about it.

Why are you turning this into a drama? You should be working on how to improve your own arguments and ideas, instead of wasting time being petty with me. You know there's wisdom in what I'm telling you. Go and do it.

So again. Nerve struck. What this means is very clear. You care more about how others see you than about the ideas under discussion. I have worked a lot on "improving my arguments and ideas". The post above, with the first order predicate logic arguments, is a perfect example. Yet, it makes you even less willing to get on with the debate because it scares you. Answer that post, if you dare.

 

[nice_try]

@K9Otaku Read Chapter 1 but had to quit. Not interested in your fiction. Ghost bases in Antarctica and snow that doesn't melt and shit, wtf is this? I thought you had rational, fact based arguments, but then you make me read a fiction novel ... wtf???

 

[Moroccancel]

don't you think that @ B @based_meme is a pussy for not wanting to debate me on the above questions (which are fundamental and useful, right? I think we can all agree) ?

The debates burn a lot. It is intellectually exhausting. If the antithesis is not developed through him, it may come through other analyses.

 

[RuudVanNistelrooy]

Hold Sabbath for the start. Jesus held Sabbath too.

 

[K9Otaku]

@K9Otaku Read Chapter 1 but had to quit. Not interested in your fiction. Ghost bases in Antarctica and snow that doesn't melt and shit, wtf is this? I thought you had rational, fact based arguments, but then you make me read a fiction novel ... wtf???

The first chapter is just a framing device to set the stage. The arguments come later, in chapter 2 and especially chapter 3 and after.

 

[Ahnfeltia]

That is foid morality, @Ahnfeltia: "I don't like you so I don't talk to you, TeeHee"

Debating someone is not an optional past-time, it is a moral obligation, if the challenge is reasonably well formulated and the debater is reasonably credentialled (which everyone on this forum, especially you, know I am). As stated above, the question at hand is ethical in nature and as such affects everyone. It goes to the heart of our current cultural malaise, including wokeness and Foid-Supremacism. There is no excuse to refuse to discuss it, for as long as it takes.

Guess I'm a tranny then. There are a handful of users I avoid replying to because I don't like their mien. On a serious note, moral obligations sound far more like foid morality to me than deciding that some people just ain't worth your time debating. In this world where probity has been all but denuded, insisting on moral obligations is a joke. Not to mention that you're presenting far too many subjective factors as objective for my taste:

• what should constitute a moral obligation
• what it means to be well-formulated
• what exactly being reasonably credentialed entails
• the necessity of being credentialed to begin with
• the contents of the current cultural malaise you speak of

People will disagree endlessly on all of the aforementioned conundra.

PS If discourse is a moral obligation, then why did you so summarily reject me when I brought up speciocide. Am I not credentialed enough?

 

[K9Otaku]

Guess I'm a tranny then.

Yes. You should be careful with that. The incel to tranny pipeline is real ...

On a serious note, moral obligations sound far more like foid morality to me

What? Moral obligations are "foid morality"? So, according to you, all morality is foid morality? Or Do you have something else in mind?

deciding that some people just ain't worth your time debating.

Deciding that can only be based on either 1) the subject is not worth it 2) the debater is not qualified. Nof of these 2 conditions apply here.

In this world where probity has been all but denuded, insisting on moral obligations is a joke.

If you accept that morality is a joke, you are part of the problem. Civilization cannot exist without some kind of moral code. The only question is what code should we adopt and that is an issue decided by religion.

Not to mention that you're presenting far too many subjective factors as objective for my taste:

• what should constitute a moral obligation
• what it means to be well-formulated
• what exactly being reasonably credentialed entails
• the necessity of being credentialed to begin with
• the contents of the current cultural malaise you speak of

If you treat all these as "subjective", you are no better than wokesters who consider that they can change their sexes and their pronouns because it is "subjective". In other words, you are following bluepiller logic.

People will disagree endlessly on all of the aforementioned conundra.

Doesn't mean that the debate is worthless. You forget the audience.

PS If discourse is a moral obligation, then why did you so summarily reject me when I brought up speciocide. Am I not credentialed enough?

Aha. So that is what this is about! (((Rejection))) Yet another foid obsession ...

And yes, I refused to discuss this with you because you are not credentialled enough. You are a STEM guy. You don't know enough of the humanities (literature, philosophy, religion, history, law, evolutionary biology), to be able to discuss this topic meaningfully.

PS: yes, evolutionary biology is part of the humanities ...

 

[Ahnfeltia]

What? Moral obligations are "foid morality"? So, according to you, all morality is foid morality? Or Do you have something else in mind?

What I meant was that foids like to throw around moral obligations as well. Foid morality is basically entitlement, and what's more entitled than thinking you have the authority to tell others what they should and shouldn't do?

Deciding that can only be based on either 1) the subject is not worth it 2) the debater is not qualified. Nof of these 2 conditions apply here.

There are other reasons. You just don't deem them as respectable.

If you accept that morality is a joke, you are part of the problem. Civilization cannot exist without some kind of moral code. The only question is what code should we adopt and that is an issue decided by religion.

I meant very specifically that clinging to and insisting on morality in a world where it long since died is a fool's errand. It's like telling someone to trust in a prisoner's dilemma while virtually everyone else has already chosen betrayal.

If you treat all these as "subjective", you are no better than wokesters who consider that they can change their sexes and their pronouns because it is "subjective". In other words, you are following bluepiller logic.

Let me ask you this then, what separates the objective from the subjective? Whence, pray tell, does the objective derive?

Doesn't mean that the debate is worthless. You forget the audience.

I never meant to insinuate that. But just because something is worthwhile to some doesn't mean it should be obligatory. Such logic would quickly lead to contradictory obligations.

Aha. So that is what this is about! (((Rejection))) Yet another foid obsession ...

I've been rejected all my life. The rejection itself wasn't much of a surprise. I just wanted to know why. Is it truly such a foid obsession to want to know why nobody cares for what you have to say?

And yes, I refused to discuss this with you because you are not credentialled enough. You are a STEM guy. You don't know enough of the humanities (literature, philosophy, religion, history, law, evolutionary biology), to be able to discuss this topic meaningfully.

So that really is it.

PS: yes, evolutionary biology is part of the humanities ...

Evolutionary psychology, yes, but evolutionary biology should, as the name suggests, be biology.

 

[K9Otaku]

What I meant was that foids like to throw around moral obligations as well. Foid morality is basically entitlement, and what's more entitled than thinking you have the authority to tell others what they should and shouldn't do?

That is why you need to have something transcendent to ground your conception of morality. Otherwise, indeed, it has no basis. Just remember that no group of humans can live without some kind of moral code.

There are other reasons. You just don't deem them as respectable.

Indeed.

I meant very specifically that clinging to and insisting on morality in a world where it long since died is a fool's errand. It's like telling someone to trust in a prisoner's dilemma while virtually everyone else has already chosen betrayal.

Again, this is not the case if you believe in something that transcends you. Then you don't care if others don't follow it. It is their loss.

Let me ask you this then, what separates the objective from the subjective? Whence, pray tell, does the objective derive?

If you really want to have this discussion, you have to continue reading the book I sent you (and which I am in the process of publishing in this very thread.

In short, the "objective" does not exist. What does are long-lived transcendent entities, like Christianity. If you accept to invest your trust in one of these, then it becomes a matter of allegiance, not of "objectivity". You have to choose and then stay true to your commitment. Whenever I talk about "morality", this is what I am doing. I am referring to the morals that derive from Christianity (properly understood). Imo, there is nothing else accessible to us. It is what is available in our culture.

I never meant to insinuate that. But just because something is worthwhile to some doesn't mean it should be obligatory. Such logic would quickly lead to contradictory obligations.

For me, debate is a moral obligation when the fundamentals are at stake. What is more fundamental than deciding whether we have access to truth or only to trust?

I've been rejected all my life. The rejection itself wasn't much of a surprise. I just wanted to know why. Is it truly such a foid obsession to want to know why nobody cares for what you have to say?

Foids hate being rejected. They are the ones who have infected us with that fear (Living for all those years with your mother is probably the cause as far as you are concerned). Again, this is only a problem if you do not have any transcendent anchoring. If you do, human rejection does not matter because the transcendent entity you have thrown your lot with will never reject you.

Evolutionary psychology, yes, but evolutionary biology should, as the name suggests, be biology.

Within biology, only biochemistry is science. The rest of biology is in fact part of the humanities.

 

[starcrapoo]

its uplifting entertainment and some socializing. thats all it is.

I don't think I can go week after week to listen to some preacher dude preach.

I can think of better ways to uplift my spirit most likely.

its just little things here and there that make me happy.

 

[Ahnfeltia]

That is why you need to have something transcendent to ground your conception of morality. Otherwise, indeed, it has no basis. Just remember that no group of humans can live without some kind of moral code.

It being transcendent doesn't really make it any less arbitrary. I understand there's nothing better by the way. And besides, even if people collectively decided to adopt Christian morality, good luck hashing out what exactly that's supposed to entail. Your interpretation of Christian morality is quite unorthodox as far as I can tell.

The need to split hairs never ends. Even if people agree on the big picture, they'll disagree on the minutiae. This rabbit hole is endless.

Again, this is not the case if you believe in something that transcends you. Then you don't care if others don't follow it. It is their loss.

In part maybe. If I believe in not bothering one's neighbors, but my neighbors don't give a shit, who's loss is it really? Sure, if I truly believe eternal perdition awaits them posthumously, then I'll have the last laugh, but until then, it's me who has to put up with their katzenjammer. This example obviously generalizes myriad ways.

If you really want to have this discussion, you have to continue reading the book I sent you (and which I am in the process of publishing in this very thread.

In short, the "objective" does not exist. What does are long-lived transcendent entities, like Christianity. If you accept to invest your trust in one of these, then it becomes a matter of allegiance, not of "objectivity". You have to choose and then stay true to your commitment. Whenever I talk about "morality", this is what I am doing. I am referring to the morals that derive from Christianity (properly understood). Imo, there is nothing else accessible to us. It is what is available in our culture.

You might as well pledge your fealty to a newfangled philosophy at that point. What value does longevity have in this context? Knowing that it works (whatever that means)? But what if you don't like how it works?

For me, debate is a moral obligation when the fundamentals are at stake. What is more fundamental than deciding whether we have access to truth or only to trust?

Deciding whether humanity should cease to be or not. By the way, does (your version of) Christianity say anything about needing to be credentialed? I don't recognize how that fits in with Christian morality.

Foids hate being rejected. They are the ones who have infected us with that fear (Living for all those years with your mother is probably the cause as far as you are concerned). Again, this is only a problem if you do not have any transcendent anchoring. If you do, human rejection does not matter because the transcendent entity you have thrown your lot with will never reject you.

Why wouldn't one hate being rejected? Even if you believe some god loves you unconditionally, human rejection matters less, but it still matters, esp. if everyone you've ever known has or would have rejected your inmost self. As for fear, I don't fear being rejected. How could I fear the only thing I've ever known?

Within biology, only biochemistry is science. The rest of biology is in fact part of the humanities.

What about something like anatomy? Seems like neither biochem nor humanities to me.

 

[K9Otaku]

It being transcendent doesn't really make it any less arbitrary.

Who are you to say that? This is how morality has always worked among humans and it looks like this is the way it always will. Why do we have two lungs and not three? Isn't it arbitrary? It is, but it is just the way things are. Grounding morality in the transcendent is just a feature of human life, like all the rest of it.

I understand there's nothing better by the way.

Good. Learn to appreciate what you have.

And besides, even if people collectively decided to adopt Christian morality, good luck hashing out what exactly that's supposed to entail. Your interpretation of Christian morality is quite unorthodox as far as I can tell.

Christianity itself was unorthodox in the beginning. It then became dominant in a certain region of the world and made that region the most powerful ever because it had better evolutionary fitness. Nothing more. Nothing less. I am just refurbishing Christianity with vocabulary that is current and understandable. It sounds weird to most because they have forgotten what Christianity really was.

The need to split hairs never ends. Even if people agree on the big picture, they'll disagree on the minutiae. This rabbit hole is endless.

No, it is not. In late antiquity, there was a lot a bickering over the minutiae of Christian morality, but then, in the Middle Ages, it stabilized and there was a consensus for a long time. See, this is the problem you have with not being literate enough in the Humanities. You do not have historical depth.

In part maybe. If I believe in not bothering one's neighbors, but my neighbors don't give a shit, who's loss is it really? Sure, if I truly believe eternal perdition awaits them posthumously, then I'll have the last laugh, but until then, it's me who has to put up with their katzenjammer. This example obviously generalizes myriad ways.

I don't quite get it.

You might as well pledge your fealty to a newfangled philosophy at that point. What value does longevity have in this context? Knowing that it works (whatever that means)? But what if you don't like how it works?

Longevity is a sign of evolutionary fitness, therefore of trustworthiness. When you pledge your trust to something you better choose wisely.

Deciding whether humanity should cease to be or not. By the way, does (your version of) Christianity say anything about needing to be credentialed? I don't recognize how that fits in with Christian morality.

Christianity emphasizes trustworthiness above all else ("salvation by Faith"). How can you be trustworthy if you do not know what you are talking about?

Why wouldn't one hate being rejected? Even if you believe some god loves you unconditionally, human rejection matters less, but it still matters, esp. if everyone you've ever known has or would have rejected your inmost self. As for fear, I don't fear being rejected. How could I fear the only thing I've ever known?

I am not saying that rejection is pleasant. but it is not the end of the world if you are solidly anchored in a trustworth transcendent entity. If you are, you get over it.

People, today, are grounded in their sense of self, i.e. they worship themselves. Today, this is easier for foids to do than for dudes because they face less challenges. So they can go for longer periods "believing in themselves". Yet, when rejection strikes, it is still devastating to them because it shatters the only thing they have to ground their confidence: their own ass. That is why they fear it. And of course foids influence everyone around them into thinking like they do. That is why you feel rejection so painfully.

What about something like anatomy? Seems like neither biochem nor humanities to me.

What is the difference between anatomy and geography? Describing landmasses or human body parts is the same. There is no science there. No experiments, no theories. All the real theories nowadays in biology are biochemical. The rest is just descriptive: anatomy, botany, animal behavior, etc.

 

[Ahnfeltia]

Who are you to say that?

Who is anyone to say anything?

This is how morality has always worked among humans and it looks like this is the way it always will. Why do we have two lungs and not three? Isn't it arbitrary? It is, but it is just the way things are. Grounding morality in the transcendent is just a feature of human life, like all the rest of it.

Everything is arbitrary, I know. Why do think I advocate speciocide?

Good. Learn to appreciate what you have.

What exactly do I have? Sure, I'm in the lap of luxury right now, but that'll soon be over.

It sounds weird to most because they have forgotten what Christianity really was.

Regardless, by contemporary standards, your stance is unorthodox. My point still stands.

No, it is not. In late antiquity, there was a lot a bickering over the minutiae of Christian morality, but then, in the Middle Ages, it stabilized and there was a consensus for a long time. See, this is the problem you have with not being literate enough in the Humanities. You do not have historical depth.

Among literally all theologians in that entire time period? Unlikely. And even if there was an intermezzo of sorts, the bickering eventually returned. I fail to see how your example debunks my claim.

I don't quite get it.

How would you answer the question "If I believe in not bothering one's neighbors, but my neighbors don't give a shit, who's loss is it really?" then?

Longevity is a sign of evolutionary fitness, therefore of trustworthiness. When you pledge your trust to something you better choose wisely.

Trustworthiness ain't necessarily desirable. E.g., I trust the kikes to completely ruin the West, yet I don't like it one bit.

Christianity emphasizes trustworthiness above all else ("salvation by Faith"). How can you be trustworthy if you do not know what you are talking about?

If there's only trust, other people have no way of definitively knowing whether I know what I'm talking about, unless, of course, they know better. Nobody has any definitive answers when it comes to morality (metaphysical knowledge is impossible) so I should be as trustworthy as anyone else in that regard.

That is why you feel rejection so painfully.

Individual rejections are often easy to shrug off. The state of being perpetually rejected is somewhat harder to cope with, but I'd say I'm doing quite well on the whole.

What is the difference between anatomy and geography? Describing landmasses or human body parts is the same. There is no science there. No experiments, no theories. All the real theories nowadays in biology are biochemical. The rest is just descriptive: anatomy, botany, animal behavior, etc.

And yet anatomy is considered part of biology.

 

[K9Otaku]

Among literally all theologians in that entire time period? Unlikely. And even if there was an intermezzo of sorts, the bickering eventually returned. I fail to see how your example debunks my claim.

Because you don't know shit about the subject, like I said.

How would you answer the question "If I believe in not bothering one's neighbors, but my neighbors don't give a shit, who's loss is it really?" then?

I still don't get it. Not bothering your neighbors is easy. The problem starts when you have to work with them on something useful. This is what we have to do if we want to survive. Cooperation is key to human survival, yet it is the most difficult thing.

Trustworthiness ain't necessarily desirable. E.g., I trust the kikes to completely ruin the West, yet I don't like it one bit.

It means you have no idea about what trustworthiness is for. Like I said above, it is what enables cooperation, hence our survival.

If there's only trust, other people have no way of definitively knowing whether I know what I'm talking about, unless, of course, they know better. Nobody has any definitive answers when it comes to morality (metaphysical knowledge is impossible) so I should be as trustworthy as anyone else in that regard.

You don't understand what trustworthiness is because you have never worked. When you are trying to cooperate with other people for useful purposes (which is what work is), you discover quickly who is trustworthy and who is not.

And yet anatomy is considered part of biology.

And that is why biology is given dirty looks by real scientists.

What exactly do I have? Sure, I'm in the lap of luxury right now, but that'll soon be over.

Yeah, the clock is ticking. You still have a little time to learn how the world works before you are thrown into it. Make the best use of it.

 

[Chuddington]

Christians in 2023 are primarily shitskins, boomers, and women. There’s no point in it really. You can’t even say it makes society better morally because religious countries commit way more crime than secular ones.

 

[K9Otaku]

@Moroccancel2- @Intellectual @lotus2345 @DenHaag @ElTruecel @solblue @TheProphetMuscle @Mortis
Everybody ready for Chapter 7? I will publish it here tomorrow.

 

[Ahnfeltia]

I still don't get it. Not bothering your neighbors is easy.

Of course, but by "believing in not bothering your neighbors" I meant believing that nobody ought to bother their neighbors. In my hypothetical example, that means you expect not to get bothered by your neighbors as well, yet they don't seem to give a damn.

This is what we have to do if we want to survive.

I don't want us to survive...

You don't understand what trustworthiness is because you have never worked. When you are trying to cooperate with other people for useful purposes (which is what work is), you discover quickly who is trustworthy and who is not.

I've had to work together enough times in school and in uni, and it was infuriating almost every time. I was almost always the most competent member of the group, meaning I almost always had to pick up the slack. And when I made mistakes, I always had to find them myself, because nobody else ever did, not even my supervisors. Heck, one time I found a mistake in one of my supervisor's PUBLISHED papers. Is such incompetence supposed to be trustworthy? I sincerely doubt my colleagues would be any better if were to get a "real" job. Shoddy work quality seems to be the standard these days. Then again, it probably always was.

 

[Michael W. Ford]

I’ve tried praying I’ve tried manifesting nothing works for me. Idk I think I’m becoming fully just agnostic again cuz nothing has worked for me.

Manifestation/ LOA is a joke, and your doing it incorrectly. You have a roping frog as a pfp and your screen name is ElTrucel. How are you going to change into a being who fucks pussy if you're online persona is that of a suicidal truecel?

 

[starcrapoo]

you can just watch sermons on live stream or youtube.

its uplifting but i don't know if I could go to church and deal with a bunch of frenzied up crazies.

plus people make me nervous anyways.

 

[K9Otaku]

I've had to work together enough times in school and in uni, and it was infuriating almost every time.

Because you don't know how to do it. And neither did the guys you worked with.

But how do you think cars and houses get made?

I was almost always the most competent member of the group, meaning I almost always had to pick up the slack. And when I made mistakes, I always had to find them myself, because nobody else ever did, not even my supervisors. Heck, one time I found a mistake in one of my supervisor's PUBLISHED papers. Is such incompetence supposed to be trustworthy? I sincerely doubt my colleagues would be any better if were to get a "real" job. Shoddy work quality seems to be the standard these days. Then again, it probably always was.

Obviously, you really don't know how things work. In the education system, incompetence is tolerated at every level because it is impossible to measure the results. They are so long term that they are impossible to link them to the performance of any "educator".

In the real world, it is not the case. If you forget to plug a part in the right place on a car assembly line, you'll get fired fast. Same deal if your concrete columns fall apart after a week. Generally, in work situations, the quality of your output is readily measurable. As a result, people who survive in the work environment are not geniuses, but they know what they are doing.

You are just a baby who never left the kindergarten. And you want to off the whole world?

Your problem, like many high-performing students, is that you have been made promises that won't be kept. Because those promises were made by people (your teachers) who have not left the kindergarten either. The world does not run on good grades. It runs on trust. And of course, there is no way you can understand what I just said. Too bad.

 

[willystroker]

It would not be a bad cope. Just reading the bible one can absorb much wisdom. But don't get too far into it. It will not make up for the rest of what's lacking in your life. You don't have to believe everything in the scripture, as a fundamentalist does, to be a christian. I consider myself a christian deist, meaning I don't really believe the theological claims/revelations of the bible because they mostly don't line up, but I still follow the philosophy of Jesus Christ (that is, mainly New Testament, Old Testament has some ancient wisdom but otherwise it's a bunch of Jewish mythology and superstition).

I've also tried going to church but it's pretty pointless. There will most likely be no other people there your age, Just old people and some couples with young children. Even if you try to mingle anyway, typically everyone will either leave right after service is done or they aren't interested in meeting a new person because they've had the same church friends for decades. Sometimes the pastor will try to take you under his wing, if that's a road you want to take, but it's not for me.

 

[Dramus17]

It would not be a bad cope. Just reading the bible one can absorb much wisdom. But don't get too far into it. It will not make up for the rest of what's lacking in your life. You don't have to believe everything in the scripture, as a fundamentalist does, to be a christian. I consider myself a christian deist, meaning I don't really believe the theological claims/revelations of the bible because they mostly don't line up, but I still follow the philosophy of Jesus Christ (that is, mainly New Testament, Old Testament has some ancient wisdom but otherwise it's a bunch of Jewish mythology and superstition).

I've also tried going to church but it's pretty pointless. There will most likely be no other people there your age, Just old people and some couples with young children. Even if you try to mingle anyway, typically everyone will either leave right after service is done or they aren't interested in meeting a new person because they've had the same church friends for decades. Sometimes the pastor will try to take you under his wing, if that's a road you want to take, but it's not for me.

Philosophy of Jesus is to believe that he is the Son of God. Otherwise you're just an atheist.

 

[Dramus17]

@K9Otaku What are you trying to say about Christianity in your long essays? Sum it up for me. Do you even believe Jesus is Lord?

 

[K9Otaku]

@K9Otaku What are you trying to say about Christianity in your long essays? Sum it up for me. Do you even believe Jesus is Lord?

I believe that the Logos, i.e. The Son (the white part of my AV picture) is Lord, and actually more than that ("lord" is an obsolete word that does not convey the appropriate meaning anymore). Jesus, for his part is just a metaphor, a parable. I do not think he ever existed. He is a fictional character, like the characters in the book I published here, that was fashioned in order to make the idea of the Logos more palpable. I respect the people who invented that story (the evangelists, Paul). They acted wisely and in an inspired manner.

 

[Dramus17]

I believe that the Logos, i.e. The Son (the white part of my AV picture) is Lord, and actually more than that ("lord" is an obsolete word that does not convey the appropriate meaning anymore). Jesus, for his part is just a metaphor, a parable. I do not think he ever existed. He is a fictional character, like the characters in the book I published here, that was fashioned in order to make the idea of the Logos more palpable. I respect the people who invented that story (the evangelists, Paul). They acted wisely and in an inspired manner.

You think they purposely "invented" him?

 

[K9Otaku]

You think they purposely "invented" him?

No, I think they sincerely had visions.

 

[Dramus17]

I believe that the Logos, i.e. The Son (the white part of my AV picture) is Lord, and actually more than that ("lord" is an obsolete word that does not convey the appropriate meaning anymore). Jesus, for his part is just a metaphor, a parable. I do not think he ever existed. He is a fictional character, like the characters in the book I published here, that was fashioned in order to make the idea of the Logos more palpable. I respect the people who invented that story (the evangelists, Paul). They acted wisely and in an inspired manner.

And why would they want to make it more palpable?

 

[K9Otaku]

And why would they want to make it more palpable?

Because they wanted to teach the idea of the Logos/the Son. And it is difficult. So they came up with this story, or maybe they had a dream of that story, or a vision (Paul certainly did), and they used it to teach because they saw that it worked. People understood the story

 

[ElTruecel]

Manifestation/ LOA is a joke, and your doing it incorrectly. You have a roping frog as a pfp and your screen name is ElTrucel. How are you going to change into a being who fucks pussy if you're online persona is that of a suicidal truecel?

The thing is although this may be true I manifested a year ago for some events before I even logged in here that didn’t work. It wasn’t to do with women tho

 

[Ahnfeltia]

But how do you think cars and houses get made?

In the real world, it is not the case. If you forget to plug a part in the right place on a car assembly line, you'll get fired fast. Same deal if your concrete columns fall apart after a week. Generally, in work situations, the quality of your output is readily measurable. As a result, people who survive in the work environment are not geniuses, but they know what they are doing.

Of course things are of a (barely) passable quality, but that's about it. I've seen plenty examples of it too. To name a few, painters leaving blotches of paint on nearby surfaces, incorrect invoices and government systems not being up-to-date (I'm talking about being a dozen years behind the times).

You are just a baby who never left the kindergarten. And you want to off the whole world?

I don't like the view beyond the windowpane. Nor the grown-ups that occasionally visit. Not to mention my nappy is real comfy.

 

[K9Otaku]

Of course things are of a (barely) passable quality, but that's about it. I've seen plenty examples of it too. To name a few, painters leaving blotches of paint on nearby surfaces, incorrect invoices and government systems not being up-to-date (I'm talking about being a dozen years behind the times).

Surviving does not require perfection. Painters are not trying to get good grades. Just to be paid. If the job is acceptable, they will be.

Government is like education. Nobody controls them really. So they have the worst quality standards

I don't like the view beyond the windowpane. Nor the grown-ups that occasionally visit. Not to mention my nappy is real comfy.

Yeah. Enjoy it while it lasts

 

[Michael W. Ford]

The thing is although this may be true I manifested a year ago for some events before I even logged in here that didn’t work. It wasn’t to do with women tho

Stop trying to manifest. LOA is new age bullshit. Magick is so much more powerful. SpacersChoice successfully contacted Duke Zepar and documented his experiences in NEETs.net. Your still young, you can still fuck virgin pussy. Don't let these defeatists influence your mind. It's not over for you. Duke Zepar can get you a virgin.

I encountered duke zepar the goetia demon

One of the goetia demons, I had this dream where I was in an abandoned mansion by myself that had crystals everywhere, I look in the doorway and see a semi transparent figure with a red robe and what looked like a mask or helmet made of a bunch of horns and thought "zepar" I then woke up irl...

neets.net

Duke Zepar is no joke

People are treating me much better than I've ever experienced, I go into a restaurant I always go to and people are happy to see me, (they usually hate me) at work its a similar experience, its all smiles and giggles, I noticed people look at me longer and some hoe I like was interested in me...

neets.net

Am I a weirdo or what???

So I was going to the store and I see a homeless guy and something was telling me to give him money, so I did, dropped him a five and said "may Duke Zepar bless you" and he said "thank you" and I said "don't thank me thank Duke Zepar" Ever since he came whenever I go out into public its a good...

neets.net

Zepar is teaching me astral work

He's preparing me in dreams for the astral, pretty much how to steal life force in the astral, how to manuever, teleport, how to change my form into a shadow being which I thought was cool, how to re enter my body and I've seen what my astral weapon is going to be and its a scythe that looks...

neets.net

Man life is good

I'm living the main character life, I go into public, I got people waving at me, I go to the store and people ask me for help cuz they know of my superior memory, I go into work and I got multiple people excited to talk to me, telling me about the awesome stuff they're doing, I get hit on by...

neets.net

 

[Ahnfeltia]

Surviving does not require perfection. Painters are not trying to get good grades. Just to be paid. If the job is acceptable, they will be.

Unfortunately standards of adequacy differ.

Government is like education. Nobody controls them really. So they have the worst quality standards

true

 

[Intellectual]

@Moroccancel2- @Intellectual @lotus2345 @DenHaag @ElTruecel @solblue @TheProphetMuscle @Mortis
Everybody ready for Chapter 7? I will publish it here tomorrow.

Absolutely

 

[K9Otaku]

@Intellectual @Ahnfeltia @Moroccancel2- @lotus2345 @DenHaag @ElTruecel @solblue @TheProphetMuscle @Mortis
Here we go. Chapter 7 below:

---

Chapter 7 – Nabû-naʾid

In the aftermath of the shooting, all members of the Boffin team were granted two months leave while the CIA and the other agencies involved in the project conducted their investigations. These investigations did not uncover anything of note, and it was concluded that Turing's act was the result of an individual psychological imbalance, hence not a security threat. Eventually, in September 1949, everyone was flown back from their respective countries and work resumed. There were a few loose ends that still required tying up regarding the Babylon experiment. This work lasted until late 1949 and even into January 1950 for some of the task groups. While this was going on, the team started considering what the next step should be.

Contrary to the previous “what to do next ?” discussions, this one was much more subdued. It was now painfully obvious to all that they were not detached observers casually investigating their object of study from a position of moral superiority. They were wretched human beings grappling with the terrifying mysteries of their own deeply veiled inner workings. As a result, there was no acrimony. The old partisan dichotomy that had pitted Wittgenstein, Kuhn and Brady on the one hand, against Quine, Oppenheimer and Turing, on the other, had vanished. There were some debates about dates, periods and locations but everyone now agreed that the approach first outlined by the Brady paper on Eridu and eventually expanded upon by the “Credit Masturbation Report” (although the Philadelphia team did not use that phrase to refer to it) was the proper framework for their investigation. Wittgenstein had been shot by Turing just as he was advocating for this approach. This fact alone seemed to validate it. Turing's act, and the tumult that had engulfed the whole company after the reading of the report, were felt to be clear indications that everyone's inner demons had been pricked into action by what was being said. Inner demons would hardly ever rear their heads in such a well-mannered crowd unless they had been put in the spotlight by some extra-bright glare.

The contents of the personal logbooks had taken on a distinctly introspective tenor during this period. Several of the American members of the team worried that an "European" mental disease had seized them all while the other members tended to use literary comparisons to try and put a name on what had happened. George Dumézil wrote:

Il est difficile d'ignorer le parallèle avec "Le Rouge et le Noir". A. Turing est-il un nouveau Julien Sorel ? Celà en a tout l'air. La passion Stendhalienne conduit le héros au coup de pistolet comme dans le cas de Mme de Rênal. On ne brûle plus l'idole que l'on a adoré mais on la gratifie d'une balle. Personne n'a jamais vraiment compris le geste de Julien Sorel, d'ailleurs, et il est à parier que le romancier lui même n'était pas bien au clair sur les raisons qui l'ont poussé à écrire cette scène. Allons-nous devoir plonger dans ce genre d'interrogation ? C'est probable.​

[English translation] It is difficult not to notice the parallel with “The Red and the Black” [a famous French novel published in 1830]. Is A. Turing a new Julien Sorel [A character from the novel] ? It seems to be the case. Passion, according to Stendhal [the novel's author], leads the hero to fire a gun like Julien does in the trial scene with Mme de Rênal [another character]. We no longer burn the idol once beloved but we now shoot a bullet at it. By the way, nobody has ever really figured out the motive of Julien Sorel's act. It is likely that the author himself did not have a completely clear understanding of the reasons that led him to write this scene. Are we going to have to tackle this kind of puzzle ? It seems likely.​

Most of the debates regarding the project's next step revolved around Pharaonic Egypt and the rest of Ancient Mesopotamian history. Should any aspect of these two periods be investigated and, if so, which ones ? Eventually, Both von Soden and Landsberger convinced the team that none of them actually required their attention except one, the very last episode of Mesopotamia's independent existence before the advent of the Achaemenid Empire, i.e. the reign of Nabonidus, the last King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Both German Assyriologists argued that the extensive investigation of the first Babylonian Dynasty, which was then near completion, had yielded enough data to get a good grasp on Mesopotamian culture as a whole since all the cultural patterns present in 1800 B.C. Babylon would remain without appreciable changes until the end of the period. Regarding Egypt, they were of the opinion that although this culture had a lot of idiosyncrasies in the realm of architecture and the visual arts, it was not different enough from Mesopotamia at its core to warrant a separate study.

The choice of Nabonidus's reign as the next milestone in the Boffin's teamwork might appear odd at first glance. Why study the last king of a declining civilization about to be overwhelmed and replaced by an entirely different one ? Landsberger and von Soden’s argument was that this late period of Babylonian history was the key to the the events that would unfold immediately after it, especially the emergence of the fully monotheistic Jewish theocracy in Jerusalem which was to emerge under Persian overlordship.

Some kind of Israelite polity had been in existence since around 1000 B.C., but it had never been truly monotheistic. There was a strong henotheistic faction among the Jewish priesthood, which promoted the exclusive worship of the syncretistic YAHWEH-ELOHIM deity. However, although this faction had been patronized by certain pre-exilic kings, it had never been dominant for long within the Jewish principalities before the Babylonian Exile. The temple of Jerusalem, in its primitive form, had hosted the worship of several other deities like, Ba'al or Astarte, at various periods of its existence. Israelite petty kings were cast in the old Babylonian mold which had now become the norm all over the Middle-East. They combined a “righteous ruler” persona, bolstered by the worship of first-tier gods like Ba'al or Yahweh, with an orgiastic warrior ethos fuelled by the cult of Astarte, the local variant of Inanna/Ishtar.

In other words, before the Exile, the northern and southern Israelite kingdoms were not much different from the many other petty states dotting the borderlands extending from the western Zagros to the Sinai. This area formed a buffer zone between Egypt in the South-West and the Neo-Assyrian Empire to the North-East. As Assyria expanded into the region, it conquered and destroyed the Northern Kingdom in 720 B.C. and soon vassalized the southern one, as it did with all the neighbouring petty kingdoms in the run-up to its conquest of Egypt in 671 B.C. Eventually the Assyrian Empire, weakened by internal strife and Median attacks from the east, was replaced by a resurgent Babylon in 609 BC. A decade later, the neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, while re-asserting the Empire’s influence in the Syro-Palestinian borderlands, finally destroyed the southern Kingdom of Judah in 597 B.C. Jerusalem was sacked, its temple razed and the upper strata of its population deported to Babylon. The exile of the Jewish elites started the chain of events which would bear fruit during the reign of Nabonidus. This would eventually turn the Jewish Nation from a petty backwater tribal kingdom into the founding people of three major world religious traditions.

The Nabonidus sub-project would eventually be run along the same industrial lines as the Babylon experiment. However, at first, the team was much smaller as they focused almost exclusively on the king himself in order to get enough data to decide what to investigate next. In late 1949, in parallel with the remaining task-groups working on 1800 B.C. Babylon, a small team centred around Wolfram von Soden and Joseph Brady started observing the last king of the same city, 1300 years later.

From now on, I will use the native form of the king's name, Nabû-naʾid, instead of “Nabonidus”, its Greek and Latin transliteration. Nabû-naʾid was a usurper. He had been an official in several of the previous kings’ administrations and had been brought to power in a palace coup, in 556 B.C. The king he replaced was the under-age and inexperienced Labashi Marduk. The group of courtiers to which Nabû-naʾid belonged felt that a steadier hand was required, given the challenges faced by Babylonia at the time. The biggest threat was the Achaemenid Persian expansion in the East. During the 550s B.C., the Pārsa, originally a vassal tribes of the Medes, had rebelled against their former overlords and managed to take over their dominions, which encompassed most of the Iranian Plateau. The Pārsa, known in the Greek and Latin sources as “Persians”, were headed by an ambitious leader known as Kūrauš (Cyrus, in classical sources) who gave every sign of having expansionist aims to the West. Kūrauš's lineage was reckoned to have been founded by one Hakhāmaneš, transliterated as “Achaemenes” in the classical sources, which gave the dynasty its name of “Achaemenid”.

One of the enigmas which had long puzzled historians regarding the reign of Nabû-naʾid is that his policies do not appear to have been focused on the Persian threat. Instead, he seems to have embarked on a religious reform of the Babylonian pantheon, triggering loud protests from the established clergy of Marduk, and then to have left the city of Babylon to spend a full decade in the middle of the Arabian desert, in the Oasis of Teima, well over 800 km away from his capital. During his absence, Nabû-naʾid's son, Bēl-šar-uṣur (Belshazzar in Hebrew sources) was handed over the reins of power by his father. The issue of Nabû-naʾid's motivation for his long stay in Teima had long miffed and divided historians.

The first goal of the Nabonidus project was to tackle this issue. After a few weeks of fruitless searches, von Soden and Brady were able to record the following events. A little over four months after his accession, and nearly a year before his departure for Teima, Nabû-naʾid was enjoying the cool evening breeze on the roof of one of the royal palace’ buildings. He was surrounded by a small group of close friends and advisers which included, among others, the head of his chancellery, Dāniyyēl, an exiled Jew who had risen in the ranks of the Babylonian bureaucracy over several decades, and Adad-Guppi, his mother, who belonged to the chief priestly family of the moon-god Sîn temple in Harran. In the distance, on the other bank of the Euphrates, the blue ceramic tiles of the Esagila gleamed in the setting sun. The following exchange was recorded:

- NABU-NAʾID: As some of you know, I feel that we are no longer faithful heirs to the greatness of Babylon. We bicker. We betray each other for trifles. Every man is like a treacherous reed which pierces the hand of anyone who tries to lean on it.

- COURTIER No.1: I heartily agree my Lord. Even under Ashurbanipal the great, the people of Sumer and Akkad were starting to falter. It is only on account of the mighty fear he put into their hearts that they were kept in line. Under Nebuchadnezzar it was far worse and I trembled that some terrible misfortune might befall us. Glory and thanks be to Marduk for protecting the great king.

- COURTIER No.2: When I lived in Nineveh, I met with some men of learning who said that we are no longer following the ancient lore faithfully and, as a result, the gods are abandoning us. These men said that they had gathered many tablets from before the flood and studied their contents.

- DANIYYEL: I have heard similar stories. Aren't they spread by clever people who peddle such tablets for gold ?

- ADAD-GUPPI: You are an ignorant foreigner, DANIYYEL the scribe. In Harran there are tablets that some learned men brought from the primordial abode of blessed Sîn in Ur; great is the name of the dwelling place of Nanna [Sumerian name of Sîn]. These tablets had been written in Eridu before the flood and collected at Ur when Eridu's ABZU dried up long before Hammurabi the great reigned in this city.

- DANIYYEL: I apologize for my ignorance and my lack of manners, m'lady.

- NABU-NAʾID: What do these tablets say, mother ? Do you know ?

- ADAD-GUPPI: You will have to ask the learned men of Ur, my son. Only they have kept the ancient lore intact in all its details. What I learned at the feet of my father, the chief priest of Harran, is that in the beginning there was only Eridu and its Lord was Enki. The land was green and free from diseases. Men and beasts multiplied like locusts and yet they always had food in plenty. Then the flood came and Eridu was ruined. People gave Enki other names, like Enlil, Sîn or even Marduk ...

- COURTIER No.1: M'lady, I fear for your blessed head. Aren't you blaspheming the name of Holy Marduk ?

- ADAD-GUPPI: No, young man. Do not fear for the old lady. Blessed Marduk is called the son of Father Enki, but he is in fact Enki himself in another guise come to earth in order to save us from the fury that shall not be named [TIAMAT].

- NABU-NAʾID: Mother, you are fount of wisdom, as usual, and you have greatly piqued my curiosity. I shall travel south to Ur at once.

- DANIYYEL: Isn't that premature, my Lord ? There is worrying news from the East.

- NABU-NAʾID: I value your advice DANIYYEL, but what is upon us is a worse threat than a few long-bearded horsemen. How can a people, however glorious and ancient, keep prospering if it disregards the old gods ? We have little time if we want to attract their favour once more.

The following day, Nabû-naʾid was on his way, accompanied by the usual retinue of several thousand attendants and soldiers. Dāniyyēl and Adad-Guppi stayed behind in Babylon, together with the 17 years old Bēl-šar-uṣur. Two weeks later, the royal party reached Ur, nearly 300 km south-east of Babylon, and headed for the governor's palace where the king would be staying while in the city. The morning after his arrival, Nabû-naʾid headed for the Egish-shirgal, the main Sîn shrine in the city and by far the oldest moon-god temple in Mesopotamia. The buildings were imposing but, next to them, the old Ziggurat was in a bad state of disrepair. It had crumbled over the years, leaving only its first layer standing.

The priests had been forewarned of the king's arrival and they were duly assembled in front of the main temple gate. After the usual ceremonies, culminating in a sacrifice to the temple’s chief cultic statue, the king was led to a side chamber where a throne had been set up for him. After the king had been seated and taken some refreshments, the chief priest moved forward:

- CHIEF PRIEST OF SIN: The Lord Sîn is pleased by your visit to his abode in Ur and your offering has turned his heart in your favour. He is well aware of your family's relationship to him through your mother, the blessed Adad-Guppi of Harran. May I inquire as to the purpose of your visit to the Holy city of the Moon ?

- NABU-NAʾID: I wish to offer a modest contribution out of the Royal Coffers for the glory of Holy Nanna. I had been told that the Ziggurat needed repair but I did not realize how much this was true until I saw it on my way in. I cannot live one more moment knowing that the great Ziggurat of king Ur Nammu is in such a sorry state. Therefore, I have decreed that it will be rebuilt to a height of 200 cubits and with seven stages. My governor here in the city will personally supervise the work.

- THE GOVERNOR: Your majesty, I am honoured and humbled that you would entrust such a task into my hands. I will gather the best workers and order the best bricks gold can buy. I will start the work this very day.

- NABU-NAʾID: Also, I wish to know about the old tablets from before the Flood. The tablets from Eridu.

- CHIEF PRIEST OF SIN: Your majesty, I am not sure what tablets you are referring to.

- NABU-NAʾID: Do not test my patience, Chief priest of the Holy moon. I was told of these tablets by my mother, the blessed Adad-Guppi of Harran. Are you questioning her word ?

At this, the great priest became quite agitated. He directed his attendants to leave the room, together with the priests of junior ranks.

- CHIEF PRIEST OF SIN: Your majesty, do you give me your permission to humbly move near you and whisper in your ear ?

He prostrated himself to the floor and waited for the king's answer.

- NABU-NAʾID: You may approach.

- CHIEF PRIEST OF SIN [whispering in Nabû-naʾid's ear]: Your majesty, these tablets are only for the elect to read. We will perform the appropriate rituals to induct you into the college of Ea's servants as soon as you give the order. Once this is done, you will see the tablets and our learned men will help you decipher them. They are written in very old Sumerian and quite hard to read.

- NABU-NAʾID: I order you to do as you said.

- CHIEF PRIEST OF SIN [no longer whispering]: Very well your majesty. We will move to the house of Holy Enki that king Rim-Sin of Larsa built. It is barely 300 cubits from here. During the ceremony and afterwards you will have to be accompanied by deaf-mute attendants only.

All Middle-Eastern rulers of the time had some deaf-mutes among their staff to be used as guards during secret diplomatic meetings. Nabû-naʾid ordered his to be fetched at once. Once the royal party had moved to the nearby Enki temple, the three-hour long ritual began. Stripped to his undergarment, the king was bathed in water and laid on his back in a simulated burial ceremony. Beer, milk and honey were then poured into his mouth to “bring him back to life”. Two bulls were slaughtered outside the temple and their blood was brought inside in a large bronze vessel. Some of it was poured on the floor in front of Enki's statue. Finally, the Chief Priest of Sîn dipped his index finger into the blood and traced a vertical line with it on the king's forehead. Nabû-naʾid was now a duly initiated member of what the chief priest had called “the college of Ea's servants”.

In fact, the ritual Nabû-naʾid had just gone through retained the essential features of a very old shamanic initiation ritual dating back from the Neolithic. It had been amalgamated into the burgeoning Eridu tradition by the head shaman of the town when he was co-opted into the En council in 4172 BC. The death-and-rebirth ceremony had been in continuous use since then as the standard way to consecrate a new member of Eridu's En council. It signified the En's “death” to the world of men and his rebirth as an anonymous being solely dedicated to the service of Enki. In effect, Nabû-naʾid was now a duly ordained member of the En council of Eridu's venerable Great House.

Once the ceremony was complete, Nabû-naʾid retreated to the governor’s palace for the night. The following morning at dawn, he performed the ritual opening of the new Ziggurat building site, carrying a basket of earth on his head and laying a dedicatory brick, as was the custom. He then eagerly walked to the temple of Enki, followed by four deaf-mute guards and, at a respectful distance, by the rest of his retinue. In the temple, the Chief Priest was waiting for him. He led the king to a row of three large chambers, located to the right of the temple's sanctum. These rooms were filled to the ceiling with shelf after shelf of clay tablets.

- CHIEF PRIEST OF SIN: Your majesty, this is the archive of Enki's House at Eridu. The tablets were moved here when Eridu was deserted after the ABZU dried up. They have been taken care of by the college of Ea's servants ever since. Some of the tablets were copied over the years and the copies were sent to other temples of Sîn like the one at Harran, where the family of your blessed mother came to know about their content.

The chief priest then introduced Nabû-naʾid to a group of seven old men who were sitting on the floor in a corner of the farthest room. They were the other members of the college into which the king had just been inducted. Nabû-naʾid sat on the floor with the men and motioned to his guards to stand at the door. He then started listening in silence as the old men began telling him about the lore of Eridu. A group of four or five boys, some of the older scholars' pupils, were bringing them tablets whenever needed and earthen cups full of fresh water when they were thirsty. The king sat there in long daily sessions for the next two months, learning from and conversing with the keepers of the old tradition of Eridu.

By the time king Nabû-naʾid was learning about the Eridu lore from the old scholars of Ur, it was deeply wrapped in myth. However, most of the essential features of the original Eridu model could still be discerned. Eridu was widely known in Mesopotamian culture as a kind of primeval paradise. What the original Eridu lore added to this general picture were parables depicting the extraordinary growth in wealth that Eridu had experienced. Some tablets contained stories about loaves of bread left on Enki's altar at night only to become two loaves the next morning. Others told tales of miraculous fishing trips or of craftsmen learning from Enki the secret to making infinite amounts of gold. Furthermore, the Eridu archives made it clear that the town and “the world around it” had enjoyed such a prosperity because it had a single god, the Lord Enki who reigned in peace and made righteousness (níĝ-gi-na) flourish.

Even more tellingly, the Eridu lore was the only subset of Mesopotamian culture in which the memory of the intrusive nature of Inanna/Ishtar's cult was kept intact and its catastrophic consequences accurately remembered. Everywhere else, Eridu's ruin was said to have occurred on account of “the flood”, the cause of which was left mysterious. Here, in the Eridu archives, it was made painfully clear that Inanna was nothing but a scourge which had appeared one day in Uruk only to roam the whole world on her lion to set it all aflame and bring ruin to the House of Enki. This was the reason for the secrecy surrounding the college of Ea's servants. Given Inanna/Ishtar's unabating popularity and, above all, it's role as a key support of the monarchy, her portrayal as a purely evil goddess, which appeared at every turn in the Eridu tablets, could not have survived if it had been made public. Nabû-naʾid was shocked by this discovery, as any other educated upper-class Mesopotamian would have been. Like everyone else, he knew about the attenuated echoes of Inanna's evil nature which had gained currency around the time of Hammurabi, like the negative portrayal of the goddess in the reworked version of the Gilgamesh cycle or the story of Marduk slaying the female chaos dragon Tiamat. Now he knew the whole story because the priests of Sîn at Ur had gambled that he could take it without killing them all. To be fair, the priests had been helped in their decision by a letter they had received from Adad-Guppi, in which she had told them of her son's state of mind.

The priest’s gamble paid off. Far from considering their elimination and that of their Eridu archivist colleagues, Nabû-naʾid was elated and full of gratitude towards them all. Finally, he had found the answer to the questions which kept him awake at night. At last, he had a clear idea about what had made his civilization so worryingly brittle. His immediate reaction was to tell the Eridu scholars of his desire to make all their tales public and to reinstate the exclusive cult of Enki as the religion of the Empire. They reacted with horror at such a suggestion. Both they and the few priests of Sîn who were in the know, were well aware that the most likely outcome of such a move would be civil war and the assassination of the king (not to mention their own slaughter). After offering some resistance, Nabû-naʾid was eventually convinced by their wise advice. In further discussion with them, he hatched the plan of what would become his future religious policy: the gradual promotion of a syncretistic cult of Sîn which would slowly absorb all the other gods. To that end, he was supplied by the Ur scholars with a list of ancient texts which offered some justification to the identification of Sîn with other gods. Syncretism is a natural tendency of all polytheistic religions and, in the Mesopotamian theological tradition, there was plenty of tales and ritual hymns in which Sîn was equated with Nabu, Nabu with Enlil, so on and so forth.

Once this plan had been settled on, Nabû-naʾid decided that he should visit Eridu before going back to the capital. The site of the ancient town was but a short distance away from Ur and the royal party was able to reach it within a day. The only part of the old city that remained visible was Enki's temple complex and it was almost entirely ruined. This sight deeply saddened the king and filled him with foreboding. How could Babylon survive if it treated its only real protector that way ? As he had done at Ur, the king took immediate measures to have the entire complex rebuilt, including its unfinished 1500 years old ziggurat. However, that was not nearly enough. Even if he could not directly promote the cult of Enki to his subjects, Nabû-naʾid felt that he had to forge a personal bond with the old god if he was to have any hope of stemming the tide of Babylonian decline. To that end, he commissioned extensive digging on the site, before the start of the construction works, to find as many artifacts as possible from Eridu's oldest period. A number of statues, tablets, bronze vessels, and so on were thus dug up from the sand dunes of Eridu. Some of these were kept on site, to adorn the new complex, while others were to be brought back by Nabû-naʾid to Babylon where the king planned to display them in a wing of the royal palace for the benefit of his court. This has been described by modern historians as the first instance of an archaeological museum and earned Nabû-naʾid the title of “first archaeologist in history”. After a little over a month spent in Eridu, the royal party journeyed back to the capital, followed by a train of camels loaded with crated artifacts.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-​

I was reading binder X-50/13, which contained an inventory of the objects dug-up at Eridu along with verbatim accounts of the comings and goings of Nabû-naʾid's servants as they were undertaking their new archaeological assignments. One question was bothering me. To what extent did the last king of Babylon understood what had happened to this town in the late fifth millennium B.C. ? Finn was at his desk, drinking coffee, while Ekaterina was at hers, poring over another binder. I asked:

- ME: Finn, to what extent does Nabû-naʾid understand what he is discovering at Eridu ? He cannot interpret it the way we do, right ?

- FINN: No, of course not. But what exactly do you mean ?

- ME: All the theorizing about Authority-S vs. the L variant; the role of Inanna as a biological engineering construct; all that escapes him, doesn't it ?

- FINN: Yes, naturally. From his point of view, all he has discovered boils down to a powerful insight about the true nature of the gods. For him, there is absolutely no doubt that the gods exist. What only matters is to know how to behave properly towards them.

- ME: But he has just learned that some gods might not exist at all: Sîn, Marduk, Nabu, Enlil ...

- FINN: That is probably not the way he sees it. From his point of view, what he has learned shows that these gods, rather than being independent entities, are closer to what Hindus would call avatars of Enki; guises that this god has appeared under at different points in time to intervene in human affairs. Inanna, for her part remains an independent being, albeit an entirely malevolent one. Nabû-naʾid is in the process of moving towards a dualistic theology, in which a good god, Enki, battles an evil principle, Inanna. This is not unheard of in Nabû-naʾid's time. The reforms of the old Persian religion enacted by Zoroaster, a few centuries before, were motivated by the same logic. Also, syncretistic assimilations to one god of a host of other deities were quite widespread in the first Millennium B.C. Middle Eastern religions as well. The henotheistic YAHWEH-ELOHIM cult of the Jews is an obvious example.

- ME: But the Jews are not monotheistic yet, right ?

- FINN: Nobody is fully monotheistic during the period in question. There are only varying degrees of henotheism/syncretism, with the dualist current in Persian religion exerting a strong influence in the Eastern part of the region.

- ME: I see. Something else is bothering me.

- FINN: what ?

- ME: Nabû-naʾid obviously feels that he has found the reason why his civilization is in decline. However, nothing of what he just learned, and, for that matter, nothing of what the Boffins have discovered at Eridu, Uruk or Babylon, explains why Mesopotamian civilization started declining when it did. I mean, it had ups and downs, to be sure, but it flourished for over 3000 years. Why did things start to go wrong in the mid-first millennium B.C. ?

- FINN: We do not have the answer to that question. Wittgenstein et al. reckoned that although the early Babylonian cultural synthesis was a costly societal model to run, and not a very stable one at that, it was workable because it kept some of its own self-destructive tendencies under control. That is about all we can say. Why had it stopped being workable in Nabû-naʾid’s time ? We do not know. The only thing we can do is speculate.

- ME: What do you mean ?

- FINN: For example, you may recall that Schlesinger noted that Hammurabi's synthesis involved a fundamental dose of hypocrisy. “An Ishtar-powered hand hidden within a glove of righteousness” ? Remember that ?

- ME: Yes.

- FINN: Well, it may be that this hypocrisy has corrosive effects in the long run. At first, it works fine because few people are aware of it. However, as time passes, some awareness that the whole system relies on a swindle may start to accumulate within society. As more and more people are conscious of this fundamental deceit, a threshold may eventually be reached where too many people become cynical enough to find it impossible to trust each other anymore. Since trust is the basis of language and of the whole societal construct, collapse eventually ensues. This is a plausible theory, but we are currently unable to put it to the test experimentally. Even the Boffins could not do that. They would have needed an enormous amount of additional resources and more fine-grained analytical methods than anything they had at their disposal.

- ME: I see what you mean. So, there will still be problems to solve for our descendants, I guess ?

- FINN: As there always will be.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-​

In Babylon, Adad-Guppi, Dāniyyēl and the other courtiers were eagerly awaiting the return of the King. Various rumors had reached the capital. Those describing the King sitting on the floor of a back-room in a minor temple for months on end or digging up sand dunes in the middle of the desert had the court slightly worried. The day following his return, Nabû-naʾid gathered the same group of close advisers who had been present when he had taken the decision to go to Ur. He told them about the discoveries he had made and outlined his plans for the future religious policy of the Empire. Finally, he had them all swear an oath of secrecy regarding everything he had just told them about.

Unfortunately, this oath proved difficult to keep, especially for Dāniyyēl the Jew. He had been blown away by the King's revelations more so than any of the other courtiers. The similarities with the cult of YAHWEH-ELOHIM, of which Dāniyyēl was a devotee, were too obvious not to be noticed immediately. After all, the theonym “El” is the West Semitic rendering of “Ea”, the Akkadian name of Enki, and “Elohim” is nothing but El's plural of majesty. That night, after dinner, Dāniyyēl gathered his three sons on the roof of his home and told them everything he had learned from the king. Naturally, Dāniyyēl took the perfunctory step of making his sons swear an oath of secrecy too but he was well aware that this one was unlikely to be more effective than the pledge he had made himself just a few hours earlier.

Indeed, at the crack of dawn, Dāniyyēl's sons, in a state of utter excitement, ran straight to the house of their teacher, Shealtiel. This man was the son of Jeconiah the last king of Judah before the exile. He had been imprisoned after the fall of Jerusalem for over 35 years, together with his father and brothers, on the orders of Nebuchadnezzar. Released upon the accession of Nebuchadnezzar's successor Amel-Marduk, 8 years before Nabû-naʾid's own accession, he had been granted a small living stipend by the Babylonian Imperial administration. Nominally, he was the “Exilarch”, i.e. the head of the Jewish community in exile. However, this function was purely ceremonial and he therefore spent most of his time teaching to the children of those Jews like Dāniyyēl, who had found employment in the service of the Babylonian kings. He taught them Hebrew and the lore of their lost country.

Shealtiel was having breakfast in the small garden behind his house and he was surprised to see some of his pupils arrive so early. At first, he had trouble making sense of the excited exclamations and disconnected narration of Dāniyyēl's sons. Eventually, he realized that he had just received news of prophetic importance. Unlike his father, Shealtiel was a devout follower of the YAHWEH-ELOHIM priestly faction. While in prison, he had kept in touch with some of this group’s exiled leading figures, notably the prophet Ezekiel who had founded an influential theological school in a town near Nippur, less than a hundred kilometers away from Babylon. Ezekiel was now dead, but the influence of his school had continued to grow among the exiles. The now deceased master was famous for having prophesied that YAHWEH-ELOHIM would soon release the Jews from captivity and allow them to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The key tenet of his teaching was that captivity in Babylon was a punishment visited upon the Jews by YAHWEH-ELOHIM for “whoring after other gods”. Naturally, this meant that the exiles would only be allowed to return once they had become firmly committed to consecrating the new Temple and their whole country to the exclusive worship of YAHWEH-ELOHIM. At this point, the theology of Ezekiel's school was still based on the kind of henotheistic exclusivism that was also prevalent in other Middle-Eastern religious movements. As the "whoring after other gods" formula implied, there might be "other gods". They were just not good for the Jews.

After Shealtiel had sent Dāniyyēl's sons back home, with stern admonishments not to speak to anyone else about what they had just told him, he sent messengers to summon to his house as many Jewish religious men as he could find. The meeting took place that evening, in the same small garden behind Shealtiel's house where he had heard Dāniyyēl’s sons’ stories in the morning. Among those present were Haggai and Zechariah, two of the most prominent members of Ezekiel's school Babylonian branch. Zerubbabel, Shealtiel's 25 years old son, was also present. This is the transcript of the most significant part of the meeting, as it appeared in binder X-50/22:

- SHEALTIEL: I had a dream last night in which the Lord YAHWEH told me that he would send us a sign. This morning, the sign came to me, carried by three of my pupils. These boys, the sons of Dāniyyēl, head of the King's chancellery, told me what the King had revealed to their father. As you know, the King had been absent from Babylon for three months. During that time, he went to Ur, where he received a revelation from the god Sîn. The king was resting in his tent in the desert and the god appeared to him in a vision of glory. The god said to the King: “I am not Sîn. I am Ea, that the sons of Shinar called Enki. The Jews call me YAHWEH-ELOHIM. The name Sîn is merely a disguise that I took to wander among men.”

- HAGGAI: Are you saying that a king of the nations, and king of Babylon of all people, is a prophet now ?!

- ZECHARIAH: Hold your temper Haggai. The Lord can use anyone he wishes. He is showing us that we need to repent if we want Him to talk to us like he did before.

- SHEALTIEL: I told everything like I heard it from the boys. Not a word more.

Naturally, this is not exactly what Dāniyyēl's sons had told him in the morning. Retelling with embellishment is the modus operandi of religious creativity. The conversation continued:

- ZECHARIAH: We call the Lord YAHWEH, among other names, and sometimes just “Yah”, like at the end of my own name. In Egyptian, the mother tongue of Moses, “Yah” is the name of the moon god. I have heard some Midianite elders say that, in Egyptian, the name of Moses was "Ahmose", which means “Son of the Moon” ...

- HAGGAI: What do you mean ?

- ZECHARIAH: Nabû-naʾid, king of Babylon has revealed to Dāniyyēl that the very god worshiped by his mother, the moon god Sîn, is none other than our god ELOHIM. And it so happens that our god is also called “Yah”, which means “the Moon” in Egyptian. Isn’t that the mother of all signs ?

- SHEALTIEL: Blessed be the Lord. I shall bow before his altar seven times seventy-seven times.

- ZERUBABBEL: Father, blessed elders, the time has come for me to reveal a vision I had of the Lord. I was too afraid to tell anyone about it lest I'd be stoned. Now that this sign has come, I feel that the Lord is giving me permission to speak. The Lord appeared to me on his Merkabah; wheels within wheels and the wheels had eyes all around them. He told me “There are no gods but me. All other gods that men bow to are either demons or names that I have taken to appear to the nations. Only to the Jews have I revealed my real name, which is the four letters YHWH.”

- HAGGAI: Son, when did you have this vision ?

- ZERUBABBEL: Two months ago, on Rosh Chodesh.

- SHEALTIEL: This is when the King was in Ur and had his own vision ! Blessed is the Lord ELOHIM !

- ZECHARIAH: Our Lord has blessed us greatly today. He has made it manifest that far from being only our god he is in fact the God of all nations. Yet, we are His People, the only people he has made a covenant with. Let us repent and regain his favour in all haste. Let us raise our prayers to his divine ears; let him hear our supplications and extend his hand to return us to His City, Zion the Holy.

With these words, the meeting was adjourned. In the weeks that followed, both Zechariah and Haggai, together with their pupils, started developing what would eventually become the monotheistic theology of YAHWEH-ELOHIM that we find in the Old Testament today. It would be a long journey before this new account of the old god of Israel would be accepted by all Jews. Yet, it had a lot going for it from the outset. For one thing, it was enthusiastically supported by the Exilarch and his son. Above all, the world was ripe for it. As we have seen, syncretism and henotheism had been popular all over the Middle-East for quite some time. The crumbling state of Mesopotamian society, its increasingly severe fractiousness, were leading a great many people to the same question: “what went wrong ?” Monotheism was the answer, in its bold Gordian Knot-cutting simplicity. Beyond its allegorical and theological language, the only one that could be widely understood at the time, it advocated for nothing less than a return to the very beginning of civilization itself: Eridu.

Unfortunately for Nabû-naʾid, the enthusiasm of the Jews for the new theology of Enki/Ea/Yahweh-Elohim would have severe consequences for him. After the meeting in Shealtiel's house, the news of the King's trip to Ur was spreading like wildfire within the Jewish exiled community. Within a few days, it began to seep into the general Babylonian population. Soon, the whole city was aflame with rumor and unrest. Some were saying that the king wished to remove the statue of Marduk from the Esagila and send it to Harran. Others claimed that he was going to shift the capital to Eridu, while yet another small but vocal group were convinced that he had converted to the religion of the Persians. In the middle of all this, one of Nabû-naʾid's senior courtiers decided that the opportunity to stir up the proverbial hornet's nest was too good to be passed up. Having taken refuge in the Esagila and placed himself under the protection of the Marduk clergy, he made a lengthy speech to the populace assembled on the temple grounds. In his rambling but passionate address, the old courtier said that the rumors were partly true and that the King was indeed planning to raise the god Sîn above all others, including Marduk. He finally urged the crowd to protect the temple of the city's chief god at all costs and prevent any “blasphemous deeds” to be committed.

The rabble-rousing speech of the old courtier was a severe blow to the King. The man in question had been one of Nabû-naʾid's key supporters during the coup that had resulted in the previous king's ouster. His defection could well lead to another coup, this time at Nabû-naʾid's expense. A vigorous response was vital. Within 24 hours, the King issued a proclamation to be read on all market-places and major street corners. It was particularly scathing regarding the behavior of the Marduk priesthood:

I have heard reports that the temple officials, the pašišu-priests, ne-šakku priests and the dingirgubbû-priests of Marduk in Babylon have taken to falsehood, committed an abomination, been stained with blood, spoken untruths. Inwardly, they profane and desecrate their god, they prattle and cavort about. Things that their god did not command they established for their god.​

This proclamation was a masterpiece of royal propaganda. It took its text almost verbatim from a letter of Samsu-Iluna, the son and successor of Hammurabi. This letter had become such a classic of Akkadian literature that it was included in the curriculum of all scribal schools. It established a clear precedent of royal authority over the priesthood and its hallowed antiquity made it hard for anyone to question. The proclamation had the desired effect of browbeating the Marduk priesthood into submission. They sent a delegation to the King the following day to seek his pardon and promptly delivered the trouble-making courtier, who was immediately beheaded.

However, Nabû-naʾid was not out of the woods yet. For one thing, his plans of religious reform were in tatters. It was far too dangerous to do anything in the present circumstances. Furthermore, there was still unrest within the King's own court. Many of the courtiers who had supported Nabû-naʾid's accession to the throne were now wondering whether they had chosen the right man for the job. The whole palace was filled with whispers of plots and counter-plots. After a week of this, in the absence of any sign that the situation was going to calm down on its own, Nabû-naʾid knew he had to do something drastic. An old hand at palace intrigue himself, he knew how to placate his peers and find a suitable compromise to rally the moderates and prevent them from being carried away to the extremes. He announced that he would go on campaign into the Western Desert for an extended period of time and would leave his now 18 years old son, Bēl-šar-uṣur, in charge of daily administration in the capital, under the supervision of an advisory council headed by his mother Adad-Guppi. Some of the key moderates in the court were strategically inducted into this council. The announcement did the trick. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and the court's affairs went back to normal.

On January 555 B.C., king Nabû-naʾid started his journey into the Western desert, accompanied by a medium-sized army of 6000 troops, mostly composed of camel-riders. His first objective was the oasis of Adummatu (known today as Dumat al-Jandal) in what is now northern Saudi Arabia. Officially, the reason for this choice was the necessity to pull the small desert kingdom firmly into the Babylonian orbit and get them to pay the annual tribute in a timely fashion. In fact, Nabû-naʾid had a much more personal motive. The Oasis of Adummatu had long been home to the chief sanctuary of Allat, the Arabian variant of Inanna/Ishtar. Now more convinced than ever that his reign would witness a cosmic battle between good and evil, the King had a burning desire to take revenge on Ishtar for the recent reverses that his Sîn-centric religious policy had suffered in Babylon. According to his dualistic worldview, whenever the side of goodness experienced a setback, it must be on account of the evil side's deity, Ishtar.

It took Nabû-naʾid's army nearly six months to secure the watering holes along the 600 km desert track from Babylon to Adummatu and to bring up enough supplies to support the final assault on the Oasis. When the time came for the battle, it was clear to everyone how lopsided it would be. The Oasis town was defended by no more than a few hundred troops and its outer defenses were not in a good state of repair. Within less than thirty minutes, the Babylonian soldiers had breached the wall in several places and were busy slaughtering the remaining defenders. Nabû-naʾid had given strict instructions. The town itself and its inhabitants were to be left unmolested but the soldiers were given a free pass to loot and sack the Allat temple complex to their heart’s content. The King had the deep satisfaction of watching the once proud sanctuary burn. Before leaving the city, he had it razed to the ground.

Nabû-naʾid's next objective after Adummatu was Teima, 250 km further to the south-west. On the face of it, the decision to capture this second oasis town made a lot of strategic sense too. Comparable in size to Adummatu, Teima sat on a busy trade route linking incense-producing Yemen to the Syro-Palestinian coast and was thus a potential source of lucrative customs revenue. However, once again, Nabû-naʾid's reasons were more personal. Teima was the traditional seat of Hilal, the Arabic moon god, who was known simply to the locals as al-ilāh, "the god". To Nabû-naʾid, this had tremendous symbolic value. After vanquishing Ishtar in Adummatu, he would now offer his protection to the desert abode of Sîn and make it flourish like no other.

Soon after the capture of Adummatu, the King received a delegation from Teima. Having heard of their northern neighbor's fate, the elders of Teima had come to offer tribute and implore mercy from the Babylonian ruler. They were astonished to discover how well disposed Nabû-naʾid was towards them. To their amazement each of them was offered a sumptuously embroidered robe, the kind of which was the mark of high rank in Mesopotamian courts. After being allowed to deliver their message of submission in front of a King whose face beamed with kindness and fatherly care, they were invited to dinner in Nabû-naʾid's very own tent. What the King told them during the feast was even more astonishing than the robes and the dinner itself. Teima was to become the capital of the Babylonian Empire for a time; the residence of its King. Above all, the sanctuary of their moon god was to receive royal patronage to an extent that would put it on par with Sîn's temples in Ur and Harran. Teima's elders could not believe their ears. On their way back from the King's camp they burst into a song of praise to their god Al-ilāh (which they pronounced Allāh) as they were riding their camels towards their home town.

For the next 12 years, Nabû-naʾid ran the oasis of Teima as a benevolently despotic theocracy. Every morning at dawn, he would walk to the temple of Allāh-Sîn and conduct in person the “waking up” ceremony in front of the god's idol. Year after year, the temple was growing bigger and the ceremony more elaborate. Every day without fail, the King would be there in the morning, officiating as high priest. Afterwards, he would hold court for three long hours, dispensing justice to all comers, without distinction of rank or wealth. After a short meal, he would then attend to the Babylonian affairs of state and dictate answers to the voluminous amount of mail which arrived daily from Bēl-šar-uṣur and the advisory council. After sunset, came the part of the day which he enjoyed the most, the conversations with the circle of theologians and scholars he had gathered from all corners the Empire. Naturally, the clergy of Ur and Harran had supplied the largest share of this group but there was also a Persian Magi, as well as several Jews and a few other Syro-Palestinians. Dāniyyēl was invited to join this circle three years after the King's arrival in Teima. The former head of the King's chancellery had been dismissed from his position and imprisoned after his role in leaking Nabû-naʾid's religious reform plans had come to light. However, the King had been quick to pardon him as he understood that the religious enthusiasm which had led to Dāniyyēl's lapse in judgment was kindred to his own.

Nabû-naʾid's theological circle usually gathered in the gardens of the royal palace under the canopy of a fig tree orchard that the King had bought from one of the town's elders. In the cool evening breeze, priests and scholars pondered over the doctrinal issues which arose as Nabû-naʾid's universal cult of Sîn/Enki was progressively fleshed out. The main sticking point was the degree to which the evil principle, Ishtar, should be considered to have an autonomous existence. There were two competing positions. Either Ishtar and Sîn/Enki were deemed to be on the same level and the destiny of the universe was seen as a battle between two forces of equal strength; one good and one evil, or Sîn/Enki was given a paramount position, as a creator god, and Ishtar became subservient to him. The first alternative, similar in spirit to Iranian dualism, had the advantage of offering a logically simple reason for the existence of both good and evil in the world. However, it ran into trouble when one considered that Enki had been sole ruler of Eridu before Inanna made her appearance at Uruk. Furthermore, it seemed to naturally lead to the idea that a third divine entity might exist above the two principles of good and evil, somehow controlling them both. From the existing Mesopotamian tradition, it was hard to determine the nature of such an entity. The second alternatives had problems of its own, in particular what would later be known as the theodicy; the question why a good god would have any reason to allow evil to exist. In other words, Nabû-naʾid and his circle of religious advisers were grappling with the same issues which would weigh on Augustine, nearly a millennium later as he considered the comparative merits of Manichaeism (a dualist religion) and of Christianity, a religion which had, like Judaism before it, opted for the concept of a single good god who somehow tolerates evil.

In effect, under Nabû-naʾid's rule, the far-flung oasis town had become a laboratory where the doctrinal building blocks of the future universal religions were being elaborated, tested, and refined. Through Dāniyyēl and the other Jews present at Teima, some of these building blocks would find their way into the new Jewish theological synthesis which was taking shape in Babylon within the schools headed by Shealtiel, Zechariah and Haggai.

In 543 B.C., the situations on the eastern borders of the Babylonian Empire having taken a turn for the worse, the King was forced to return in haste to the capital. While Nabû-naʾid was busy shaping the religious future of the world in Teima, Cyrus the Persian had been at work fashioning its short term political one. For the next four years, Nabû-naʾid was racing up and down Mesopotamia, trying to shore up the defenses of the Empire. To no avail. in 539 B.C., having engineered the defection of the governor of a border province to his side, Cyrus started his long-planned invasion of Babylonia. Within a few months, Nabû-naʾid was holed up in his capital, his armies defeated or having switched allegiance. Unwilling to see the old city put to the torch and looted, the last king of Babylon surrendered to Cyrus.

The Persian monarch had a reputation as a merciful victor. This reputation had proved a useful tool for Cyrus in the past to take cities without a fight. When Nabû-naʾid surrendered, he was duly spared and sent into a luxurious exile at the Persian monarch’s court in Ecbatana. Cyrus was far from the “long bearded horseman” stereotype that Nabû-naʾid had used to characterize him 15 years prior. He was the heir of a long line of Iranian rulers, both Medes and Persians, who had studied Mesopotamian culture for generations and turned their highland chiefdoms into a state capable of rivaling, and now even defeating, the old polities of the fertile lowlands.

Cyrus's mastery of Mesopotamian codes of royal conduct was strikingly demonstrated a few days after his entry into Babylon. Long before the war, he had been in secret contact with the Marduk priesthood, to whom he had sent hefty bribes at regular intervals. Now, the pontiffs of the Esagila were only too happy to crown the Persian monarch as the new “King of Sumer and Akkad” and bless him in the name of Marduk. Cyrus thus paraded in front of bewildered but relieved crowds of Babylonian citizens which lined the short processional way linking the temple to the royal palace across the river.

Cyrus scored another propaganda coup when, three weeks later, he “liberated” the numerous cultic statues which had been stored in the Esagila on the orders of Nabû-naʾid and sent them back to their respective home shrines across Mesopotamia. Although gathering the statues of the main gods in the capital during wartime, in order to prevent them from falling into enemy hands, had been standard practice for millennia, Cyrus presented their concentration in Babylon as a devious maneuver by Nabû-naʾid, motivated by the desire of the deposed king to implement his Sîn-centric religious policy. In a proclamation read all over Mesopotamia, and later inscribed on steles and clay cylinders, the new Persian “King of Sumer and Akkad” thus portrayed himself as the savior and protector of Mesopotamia's old gods.

Cyrus desired to be popular not only in Mesopotamia but also in the western Syro-Palestinian borderlands which he planned to use as a spring-board for a future invasion of Egypt. To that end, he freed all the exiled nations from that region which had been deported to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar and his successors over the years. Among the Jews, this was naturally taken as the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecies and the rejoicing was tremendous. Shealtiel had died a few years earlier and the exilarch's mantle had passed on to his son Zerubbabel, now in his forties. The Persian policy was to rely as much as possible on local elites to govern the western borderlands and Shealtiel's son duly received his commission as an Achaemenid governor of Judah within a few months of Cyrus's coronation.

As soon as he was installed in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel commissioned a group of scholars headed by Zechariah and Haggai (later to be known as the “Great Assembly”) to “gather” the scriptures of the Jewish people, i.e. to re-write them in line with the new monotheistic theology of YAHWEH-ELOHIM. The output of this assembly is what we now know as the Old Testament. Given the central role already occupied by YAHWEH-ELOHIM in his previous henotheistic incarnation, the great assembly naturally chose to adopt a fully monotheistic orientation rather than a dualistic one. As a result, Ishtar was not singled out as the sole representative of evil but appeared only in the re-worked texts (under her West Semitic name of Astarte) as one of the now non-existent “other gods” that the Jews were “whoring after” before they were chastised by Yahweh. However, she was not forgotten and would reappear during the “inter-testamental period” in the works of several dissident Jewish groups. Eventually, she would find her way into the Book of Revelation as the “whore of Babylon”.

The Teima experiment had failed but its Jewish offspring would thrive. To be sure, there would be several decades of intense resistance on the part of the rank and file Jewish population, which had stayed behind during the exile. Unsurprisingly, the Jewish peasantry was not initially disposed to relinquish their home shrines and sacred trees. However, the Jewish elite returnees were not disposed to compromise. Zerubbabel justified his policy of religious cleansing by using the classic device of ante-dating its inception to some of the pre-exilic “righteous kings”. Eventually, with the backing of the Persian administration, Zerubbabel and his successors were eventually able to impose their religious views on the general population. In 515 B.C., the temple was rebuilt. Under the new religious dispensation, it became the only place in Judah where any kind of sacrifice was allowed.

Given that Judah was now a province of the Achaemenid Empire, to which it owed so much, it was impossible for the Jewish religious elite to acknowledge their debt to Nabû-naʾid openly. However, a significant fraction of the Great Assembly scholars were adamant that some clues must be inserted into the new scriptures to honor the memory of the deposed Babylonian king. This is how it was done. Before the exile, the mythical ancestor of the Israelites was reckoned not to be Abraham but Jacob a.k.a. Israel, following the immemorial tribal custom of having an eponymous ancestor. In line with Semitic naming conventions, this character had a patronymic composed of his father and grandfather's names. His full name was therefore: Jacob “Israel”, son of Isaac, son of Abraham. In pre-exilic Jewish lore, Abraham and Isaac were mere names, without any mythical roles. The scholars of the Great Assembly used these available personal handles to create a monotheistic pedigree for the Jews. In particular, the story of Abraham was created as a background to the pact concluded by Yahweh-Elohim with the Israelites according to the new theology. Naturally, Abraham was described as the first monotheist devotee of Yahweh in the period after the flood. However, this story was not only used for this etiological purpose. Some details were also added to the narrative that were not strictly necessary to it. Abraham was said to be a native of Ur and to have stayed in Harran with his father Terah until the latter's death. Why Harran and Ur ? These places are very far from Jerusalem and have obviously no place in a locally based tribal legend. However, they were, as we have seen, the two pre-eminent cultic centers of the god Sîn in the 6th century B.C. and were intimately connected to Nabû-naʾid's personal history. This is how the scholars of the Great Assembly embedded a cryptic clue within their work to acknowledge their debt to the last king of Babylon. Some members of the assembly even wanted to include Teima in the list of places visited by Abraham. However, this was judged to be too obvious (hence dangerous) and Abraham was eventually said to have gone to “Egypt” instead.

Dāniyyēl, for his part, was memorialized in the book that bears his name. A lot of material subsequently made its way into this text that has little to do with its namesake’s actual life. However, one version, preserved by a dissident Jewish sect, contains a direct reference to Nabû-naʾid and Teima, the so called “Prayer of Nabonidus” discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Finally, the question of what to do with the name “Eridu” proved to be a difficult one. The scholars of the Great Assembly wished to avoid any direct reference to the existing “pagan” gods, but they could not simply ignore the location of God’s initial presence on Earth. After years of debates, the following solution was agreed upon. God’s earthly abode was named “Eden”, after the generic Akkadian word edinnu meaning “fertile plain”. “Eridu”, for its part, was cryptically encoded into the name of one of Adam’s early descendants, Jared. In the fifth chapter of the book of Genesis, Jared was said to be the father of “Enoch”, a Hebrew rendering of “Unug”, the Sumerian name of Uruk.

 

[Ahnfeltia]

@Intellectual @Ahnfeltia @Moroccancel2- @lotus2345 @DenHaag @ElTruecel @solblue @TheProphetMuscle @Mortis
Here we go. Chapter 7 below:

I'll soon have to catch an 8 hour flight, so I'll probably catch up then.

 

[K9Otaku]

@Intellectual @Ahnfeltia @Moroccancel2- @lotus2345 @DenHaag @ElTruecel @solblue @TheProphetMuscle @Mortiguys
Hey guys. Chapter 8 coming up later today

 

[The Raper]

Christianity is a cucked religion. The virtues it advocates are to keep the populace harmless while the one's who aren't inculcated with it can steal from and harm the rest with no consequences. Might and deception makes right in this world.

 

[K9Otaku]

@Intellectual @Ahnfeltia @Moroccancel2- @lotus2345 @DenHaag @ElTruecel @solblue @TheProphetMuscle @Mortis
Here we go. Once again, some thumbnails may not appear correctly but can still be clicked to display the full page.

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Chapter 8 – From Jerusalem to Rome

In early March 1950, Brady and von Soden presented their early results about Nabû-naʾid to the rest of the team. After they had finished outlining the main episodes of the King's life and their ultimate impact on Jewish monotheism, the following exchange occurred:

- SATYENDRA NATH BOSE: I am not very familiar with Jewish history in the inter-testamental period. What happened after monotheism was established in Judah by Zerubbabel ?

- JOSEPH BRADY: Judah seems to have become very prosperous. In 539 B.C., when the exiles were allowed to return, the population of the whole Achaemenid province of Yehud Medinata was barely 50,000. Two centuries later, when Alexander the Great toppled the Persian Empire, The Jews numbered over 400,000, with nearly 250,000 of them living in Judea proper. The rest were spread over several large-scale expatriate communities located all over the Levant: Samaria, Galilee, Southern Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, etc. There was even a large community of Jewish mercenaries in Elephantine, at the southern border of Egypt.

- ARTHUR SCHLESINGER: How do you interpret this development ?

- WOLFRAM VON SODEN: I think it is quite simple. During the reign of Zerubbabel, Jerusalem had been transformed into a self-conscious replica of Eridu; a single god, a single temple and a committee of anonymous elders, the Sanhedrin, holding the reins of power locally. To be sure, Judah was part of the Achaemenid Empire, but the Emperor was very far away and his local representative, the governor, was only concerned with issues of taxation. So, in effect, there was no king. Judea in this period followed the Eridu model very faithfully. As a result, it thrived.

- BOSE: Are we sure that the mechanisms of this Judean period of prosperity are the same as those which were at work in Eridu ?

- BRADY: As much as we can be, yes. What is apparent is that Jewish society in this era developed what is, in effect, an early version of the rule of law. Most important economic transactions were governed by written contracts and conflicts were arbitrated by an increasingly sophisticated legal system. In other words, the telltale signs of Authority-L are present everywhere and Authority-S is nearly absent because there is no king. The potential of language, i.e. "the Logos", is unleashed and society thrives. Also, because of the relentless suppression of idolatry, the amount of imaginary credit production is kept to a minimum and the credit field is thus maintained in a fairly clean state; much cleaner than at any moment in the previous 3000 years of world history.

- ADAM ULAM: Are you saying that Jewish society is then completely free from credit masturbation ?

- VON SODEN: No, that would be impossible, I think. What happened is that in the Jerusalem of this era, the temple has the monopoly of credit masturbation. This is why the outlawing of sacrifice anywhere but there was so important. Because of this, all major imaginary credit-producing activities have to take place within the temple's precinct. As a result, all the imaginary credit stays concentrated there and all other locations can be kept (mostly) free from it. The Jews are very conscious that the temple contains something dangerous, which they call "the divine presence". The outer walls of the temple, like the confinement structure of an atomic pile, contain this dangerous energy, i.e. imaginary credit, and prevent it from damaging the world outside.

- BOSE: This is an illuminating insight into the idea of the sacred. The sacred precinct as a way to prevent imaginary credit from spilling out into the world.

- VON SODEN: Indeed. There are a great many words related to this idea in ancient languages which carry the notion of "cutting" in their etymological ancestry ("sacer" in Latin, "τέμενος" in Greek, "Qodesh" in Hebrew). Now we know why. The sacred precinct cuts off the credit masturbating area from the outside world.

- W.V.O. QUINE: This is all quite interesting, but where does that lead us ? What shall we do next ?

- SCHLESINGER: I wonder if we should not start looking at the early Greek city-states. After all they are also quite close to the Eridu Model. Each one had a single poliad deity and they were governed by councils of elders.

- QUINE: But Greek religion is polytheistic, isn't it ?

- SCHLESINGER: Yes, in the classical period, of course it is. But I wonder to what extent it was the case in earlier times. After all, Eridu itself never was explicitly monotheistic. It simply became a case of de facto local monotheism when Enki was introduced. I wonder if a similar situation did not prevail during the Greek archaic period. Almost all Greek city foundation myths give a central role to their poliad deity.

Schlesinger's suggestion that they should now focus on Greek city-states was accepted by the team without difficulty. This is a testament to how different the Boffin's worldview had become from the conventional wisdom of their time. In any other mid-20th century academic setting, the idea that Israelite monotheism and the birth of the Greek "polis" could have anything in common would have been cast aside with exclamations of disgust. To the Boffins, however, such an idea had become perfectly uncontroversial.

The choice of the early Greek city-states had an added advantage. It was very well suited to the "industrial" methods that the team had adopted and then perfected during the Babylon project. By mid-March 1950, the following task groups had been set up and started working within their assigned scope:

• TG-1: Athens. Group leader: W. v. O. Quine. Deputy: J. Oppenheimer.

• TG-2: Sparta and the Dorians. Group leader: T. Kuhn. Deputy: S. N. Bose.

• TG-3: Corinth. Group leader: A. Ulam. Deputy: W. v. O. Quine.

• TG-4: Thebes and Boeotia. Group leader: J. Oppenheimer. Deputy: G. Dumézil.

• TG-5: The Cyclades. Group leader: J. Brady. Deputy: A. Schlesinger.

• TG-6: Miletus, Ephesus and the other Ionian cities. Group leader: W. v. Soden. Deputy: J. Brady.

• TG-7: Crete and Cyprus. Group leader: B. Landsberger. Deputy: D. de Rougemont.

• TG-8: Magna Graecia. Group leader: G. Dumézil. Deputy: W. v. Soden.

• TG-9: Carthage and the Phoenician thalassocracy. Group leader: S. N. Bose. Deputy: B. Landsberger.

• TG-10: Etruria. Group leader: A. Schlesinger. Deputy: T. Kuhn.

• TG-11: Early Rome. Group leader: D. de Rougemont. Deputy: A. Ulam.

Denis de Rougemont, a Swiss anti-Nazi intellectual recommended by Georges Dumézil, had joined the team in February 1950. His recruitment had been approved by the CIA without difficulty as he had been one of the main OSS liaison channels with the Swiss government during the war. As the task group list above shows, the scope of the project had been extended to include Carthage, the Etruscans and the beginnings of the city of Rome. The rationale behind this decision was that what had happened to early Greek cities was obviously not unique to them but formed part of a wider pan-Mediterranean phenomenon.

The industrial methodology followed by the team had been perfected by now to a high degree of efficiency. As a result, it took barely three months for a picture to emerge regarding this new subject. In late June 1950, an interim synthetic report was compiled by Benno Landsberger and Thomas Kuhn. Here it is in its entirety:



As I lifted my gaze from binder X/50-23, it fell on Ekaterina, who was reading at the desk opposite mine. No doubt she was pretty, in her own way, but she was definitely not my type. In High-School and College I had had my share of short-term flings, always with curvy blond types. Not necessarily top models but always blond and well endowed. I was not an Uber-Chad (in Incel parlance, I was an "upper-tier normie", bordering on "Chad-lite") and so I could not get the 9s and the 10s, but 7s and 8s were good enough, provided they had shapes in all the right places. In grad-school, I had gone steady with a girl from Arizona, Heather, and we had stayed together for over three years. But we had broken up before I left for Antarctica and so I was single again. Despite that, Ekaterina was really not my cup of tea. I just did not feel attracted to her.

My female evaluation musings were cut short by Finn's entrance. I remembered I wanted to ask him about a few things and said:

- ME: Hey, Finn. I just finished reading the report on early Greek city-states. Amazing stuff. Completely different from what we learned at school. I was just wondering about some of the cities like Athens or Knossos in Crete. Did they not exist long before the 8th century ?

- FINN: Yes, there had been a number of palace-towns on the mainland and in Crete during the Mycenaean period. But they had all been destroyed during the so called "Bronze Age collapse". During the following "Dark Ages", people had forgotten their true origins and only legends remained. In the 8th century some of the new cities were created in the vicinity of the old Mycenaean palaces but generally not exactly on the same site. In Athens, for example, the old palace site was the Acropolis, but the new 8th century town grew around the Areopagus.

- ME: So the period called "archaic Greece" is not the oldest era in ancient Greek history, right ? That’s confusing.

-FINN: Yeah, I know. The term "archaic" gained currency before the Mycenaean period was discovered. So now, the succession of eras in ancient Greek history is: Mycenaean, Dark Ages, Archaic (including "orientalizing"), Classical and finally, Hellenistic. The Mycenaean period extends from 1600 B.C. to 1100 B.C. while the Archaic one starts in the 750s B.C. and ends in the fith century B.C. It is the time of the early city-states described in the report you just read.

- ME: There were no city-states in the Mycenaean period, right ?

- FINN: No. At best, we can call the polities of this era "petty states", in the sense given to this expression by Dumézil and Ulam. But in fact, they are more like isolated Pharaonic palaces. Culturally, they were a blind alley.

- ME: Is there a trace in Classical Greek legends of the role played by the Phoenicians in the emergence of the city-states ?

- FINN: Yes, for example, there is the legend of Cadmus, the mythical founder of Thebes. Cadmus was said to have been a son of the king of Tyre in Phoenicia. He was also generally considered to have been the inventor of the Greek Alphabet, based on the Phoenician model.

- ME: It is amazing how all this changes the way one sees Greece. In school, the Greeks were like these super-beings who had just arrived from another planet. Now they just appear as a peripheral development of Middle-Eastern culture. It makes a lot more sense.

- FINN: We have been idolizing the Greeks since the so-called "renaissance". It is one of the major cultural blinkers we have. Idolatry creates fake credit and fake credit blinds us. The fake credit given to Ancient Greece has erected a wall of darkness in Western culture which prevents us from seeing what we owe to Mesopotamia and, through it, to Eridu. We have to break this wall in order to re-gain an accurate worldview. This is what the Philadelphia Project achieved.

- ME: Is the Boffin team going to explain how early Greece eventually spawned the usual clichés, you know, the mythology, democracy, the Persian Wars, and all that ?

- FINN: Yes. As usual, all this boils down to the influence of Ishtar. The documentation is in X/50-25.

So I started reading binder X/50-25. In it I found a report, written by G. Dumézil and A. Ulam, summarising the findings of the team regarding the subsequent history of the Greek world up until the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire. Here it is:



That morning, the three of us were sitting in the mess-hall, eating the wonderful Russian-style breakfast that Ekaterina had prepared. It had been two months since any of us had been in the outside world. Our past, what we had been before we discovered this place, seemed as far away as if it had happened a century earlier. My life up to this point had been dominated by disappointment and anxiety. As I have said previously, I had had my share of female company since my teenage years, but it had never felt like the kind of bliss we are led to expect. The love we see in the movies had never happened to me. I had also been educated to think that science was the highest of callings and the answer to all questions. Eventually, I had ended up in Antarctica, my physics PhD under my belt, working as a glorified IT repairman on a project which, at best, only promised to fine-tune certain already known results. For over fifty years, theoretical physicists had been unable to come up with any new idea. No radically new experimental data had emerged either, as if we had been continuously looking under the same proverbial lamppost because there was light there.

By contrast, what I was discovering in the Philadelphia Station papers was genuinely new. It seemed as if I had been desperately looking for something, expecting to find it in arcane and remote places, while the real prize had been there all along, much closer to me than I thought. I had lived with the unspoken assumption that most of what had happened in the past was obsolete, irrelevant to our existence today. What I was slowly realizing now is that I had been anxious and unfulfilled because I had been raised to believe in legends; for example to think that science gave us access to super-human insight or that love was heavenly bliss. Legends do not keep their promises; hence the anxiety and the frustration. Fortunately, all these legends were now being demolished one by one as I went through the Philadelphia documents. Greece was no longer the pinnacle of reason and human dignity, as it was cracked up to be, but a mostly phony extension of Middle Eastern culture. Monotheism was no longer an irrelevant and vaguely sinister mythology from the dark ages but rather the best attempt so far at unleashing the power of the Logos (i.e. what Greece was supposed to be, but obviously was not). These discoveries were liberating. It felt as if a huge load had been lifted off my shoulders and that my eyes were seeing clearly for the first time in my life.

Finn was talking about the Bible with Ekaterina. He had already been through most of the documents about early Christianity; the group of binders I was myself just about to start reading. Ekaterina, for her part, was still absorbing the documentation about Uruk. I asked Finn:

- ME: I just finished the report on classical Greece and I noticed they barely mention Rome in it. Weren't they supposed to cover Rome in detail as well ?

- FINN: Yes, but TG-11 wrapped up its work on that after the report you just read was released. The relevant data is in a separate set of binders.

- ME: What is the gist of their findings ?

- FINN: Well, the biggest question about Rome has always been why they were so successful. After all, Athens had a kind of empire in the middle of the fifth century B.C., but it broke up after just a few decades and Athens started to decline after that. Why did Rome succeed where Athens had failed ? According to TG-11, the reason is that Rome is the only city-state which underwent a genuinely religious reform, and not just a "political" one, in response to the rise of the tyrants in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. TG-11's observations show that the Roman senate deliberately targeted the cults associated with the tyrants.

- ME: What did they do exactly ?

- FINN: A large temple complex dedicated to the Etruscan goddess Turan had been built at the foot of the Capitoline hill. The senators put it to the torch and razed it. At the same time, they had all the smaller shrines which covered the slopes of the Capitoline hill removed and they rededicated the old sacred precinct on top exclusively to the worship of Jupiter. In other words, what happened in Rome at the beginning of the Republican era looks somewhat like the monotheistic reform which had taken place in Jerusalem 50 years earlier.

- ME: I thought the Romans were polytheists, weren't they ?

- FINN: In the late Republican period, yes they were. The reform I was talking about did not go quite as far as what the Jews had done. The early Republican senators remembered the spirit of the New Prophecy better than most of the equivalent magistrates in other cities. They were trying to go back to the henotheistic worship of Jupiter which had led to the original synoecism. They wanted to rekindle the spiritual energy which had given birth to the city, and they largely succeeded. Afterwards, of course, polytheistic accretion resumed. But the early Republican religious reform had re-founded Rome on a much stronger footing than anything the Greeks came up with at about the same time. This is why the Romans were known in antiquity as "the most religious of all peoples".

- ME: What did that mean in practice ?

- FINN: The senatorial class was defined first and foremost according to religious criteria (and not political ones as is often assumed today). Senators were the only citizens who were allowed to serve in the highest priestly offices (Flamen, Pontifex Maximus, etc). Above all else, they were the guardians of the Roman religion, much like the Sanhedrin and the Levites in Jerusalem were the guardians of the religion of Yahweh.

- ME: How did that make them more successful than Athens, for example ?

- FINN: The Roman religious reform caused the spirit of the New Prophecy, i.e. a reflection of the Eridu model, to retain much more vitality in Rome than in any other Mediterranean city at the time. As a result, the usual Authority-L benefits were present to a far greater degree. In particular, the city of Rome was known to keep its word much better than others. In the fifth century, the instability of the Athenian political regime caused the city to behave erratically towards its allies, which resulted in the collapse of the Delian league. By contrast, Rome treated its own allies much more consistently and this is what enabled it to unify all of Italy under its banner. Also, individual personalities mattered much less in Rome than elsewhere. For example, Hannibal was able to beat several different Consuls in battle (often killing them in the process) and yet he could not prevail. Each time, the Romans would choose a different man to lead them and would resume the fight. This homogeneity and solidity of the Roman upper class goes a long way to explain their success. In other words, Roman leaders of this period were not Authority-S alpha males. They were invested with Authority-L and that made them extremely effective as a body.

- ME: But they succumbed to Authority-S, eventually, right ?

- FINN: Yes, in the late Republican era the instability caused by the rise of popularity politics led Rome down the same path as Greece. The "great men" of the first century were typical "tyrants" in the Greek sense. Both Pompey and Caesar claimed to enjoy a special relationship with Venus, the Roman Ishtar. Eventually, the only way to stabilize the situation proved to be, like in Greece, the recourse to the Middle-Eastern monarchic model. This is what we call the Roman "Empire".

After this exchange with Finn, I read the documentation from TG-11. A little while later, it dawned on me that there was a general pattern to ancient History. The Middle-East never managed to extricate itself from its Ishtar-fuelled monarchic model. Even today, it still rules the region. However, Middle-Eastern culture was able to formulate an antidote to it even if it was never able to apply this remedy to itself. The antidote first took the form of the New Prophecy. As it travelled westward, this movement brought prosperity in its wake. However, it was soon followed, by the Ishtar parasite, also travelling in a Westerly direction. The succession of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Diadochi kingdoms and the Roman Empire illustrates this westward movement.

The history of Graeco-Roman ancient times documents the rise of the New Prophecy movement, its striking effects in terms of prosperity and cultural advances, and its eventual reabsorption into the Middle Eastern monarchic model. In the end, the New Prophecy failed to provide a way for humanity out of the Ishtar plague that had been born in Uruk 3000 years earlier. Eventually, a way out would be found, more robust and more faithful to the original Eridu model than the New Prophecy had been: Christianity.