(December 1, 2011 at 10:00 am)Epimethean Wrote: Yes, I do read Greek, Attic, Koine and Demotic….
Ειλικρινά χαίρομαι πολύ!
I am pleased to hear that!
(December 1, 2011 at 10:00 am)Epimethean Wrote: You seem to think because you taught yourself a rudimentary use of hieroglyphics, you have a better understanding than a man who not only could read the ancient texts of commentators in Greek, but who, through temporal proximity, had access to thousands of texts we no longer have available to us..
I only wrote that Ovid could not read the Pyramid texts and as a result of this he was not in a position to know that the idealist Greek philosophers were teaching the rubbish that the Egyptian clergy had provided them with.
As a matter of fact neither you can read the Pyramid Texts because older translations are of no use and the modern ones are half translations since the translators leave key words unmolested, expecting the reader to decide himself for their meaning.
(December 1, 2011 at 10:00 am)Epimethean Wrote: Your suggestion that Ovid could not have known what you know has only your bias as basis, and your bias seems to be rehabilitating the OT as a major influence on Greco-Roman writers in antiquity, which is an old ploy that has generally been shot through with holes by philologists and historians worth their salt..
My suggestion was that WE, moderns, know more than what Ovid knew because we have in our disposal knowledge of people from all around the globe while he only knew his little world.
As for the OT influencing Greco-Roman writers...well, to be really influenced by the OT one has to know what the Sumerians and Egyptians wrote before understanding anything out of the apparently paranoiac stories of the OT.
I respect OT in the same way I respect the epics of Homer and Gilgamesh but in the case of the OT I also respect the scholars who transformed the oral traditions of the Hebrew nation into a history of their nation. A feat that no one else accomplished.
(December 1, 2011 at 10:00 am)Epimethean Wrote: Having testimonia about Theagenes is like saying that you have Michael Moore's notes on a lecture he once attended by a student of Nixon and then representing it as the actual Nixon in person..
Why is it that the fame of Theagenes bothers you? Are you of the opinion that the ancient Greeks, the layman, was worshiping the sun under the name of Apollo, for example?
(December 1, 2011 at 10:00 am)Epimethean Wrote: As for how I read the use of "iudex" in the passage from Ovid, I am not saying that it cannot refer to god or gods, but that it almost certainly does not refer to any christian god or the concept thereof. If you want to conflate Iuppiter, Yahweh, and Mithra, and you are willing to accept that the caused and effect you are suggesting could as easily be tail forward, I would be willing to meet you halfway. But to suggest that the OT is THE influential text here is simplistic at best, and dishonest at worst..
Please allow me to say that you jump to conclusions with an astonishing speed!
First of all OT cannot be blamed for Christianity. If you want someone to blame, there is the illustrious pupil of the Egyptian priesthood, Plato.
The OT was not translated into Greek for the use of the Christians. The OT has nothing to do with Christianity. The god of the OT is not a god of love.
As a philologist you ought to know that in all languages of the earth there is no word like “Elohim” because this word means “Judges”, “Angels”, “gods” and “God”. It is a single term that relates more than half of the story of the gods. If it was found to mean “Shepherds” too, it would be the case of a single word telling one whole story.