Mesopotamian Origins

[flowperson]

Hi Chris
Met him some years ago. Just a small slight jewish fellow in a rumpled suit. I don't think he does peyote. Most of his early research was done in solitude at the New York Public Library. His work has really changed a lot of things.

flow....

[mee]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

1949 eh? You need to catch up. Middle eastern archaeologists abandoned bibliocentrism more than three decades ago. The view generally accepted by scholars today is that the Bible presents foundational mythology which has almost no relationship to historical fact.

Chris

many things were discovered years ago, and reveal how things were , and are still relevent today,

even though that book was printed in 1949 it is still good reading it does not make discoveries found then ,out of date ,it reveals much knowledge . And yes, even more up to date books are making known more discoveries that have been found later on

[flowperson]

mee...I believe you've missed Chris' point. Perhaps the most famous archaeologist of the ancient Mesopotamians was Sir Leonard Woolley who excavated royal complexes there in the 1930's .He too found wondrous things. Undoubtedly the information you've cited which was published in 1949 was also chock full of useful information. These discoveries were interpreted according to the standards of their eras. But interpretations tend to shift and expand over time as new discoveries are made.

But the art and science of archaeology is the context in which the discovered information is interpreted and understood. As Chris pointed out, that has decidedly shifted in academic circles from interpreting the discoveries in the light of Biblical mythology and stories which were usually mistakenly considered to be history, until the past thirty years or so; to one in which related discoveries in other locations over the years have pointed to interconnections in the ancient world that just make more practical sense than myths.

Sadly this is not going to happen much any more in Iraq because of the horribly destructive war your nation and mine have imposed upon theses poor people and their heritage for many years now. But then maybe that's just the point. Maybe someone simply doesn't want any of us to find the real truths still hidden under the sands of Iraq.

flow....

[flowperson]

Hey Chris...Can you imagine just what the valiant and fearless Government of the USA is doing with our tax dollars these days ?

I missed this but it appears that government agents arrested Mr. Sitchin sometime ago and are now trying him for...well, I don't know or understand the charges. The Government even wanted to imprison him until the trial, which was going on in September, but I believe all information has since been totally cut off *surprise*.

Suffice it to say, our enemy is now a slight, seventy-ish, Jewish, self taught scholar who came up with some original ideas about Sumer/Mesopotamia/Iraq and its origins and had the audacity to publish them in BOOKS !. Even I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but he has generated prodigious amounts of original information which helps us all to understand the "bigger" pictures of our origins and destiny. That's, IMHO, the real reason they're clonking Sitchin with these bogus charges.

This poor guy is the new template for the "terrorists" that we are all supposed to loath and fear. As I've said many times on this site, if you "think too much" in America these days, you automatically become an extremeist or terrorist in the eyes and minds of the snoops. And that's especially so if you are a knowledgeable independent scholar and not "controlled" by an extant institutional framework such as a University or politicized "think tank".

Who are they gonna demonize next, Harry Potter ? Oh...they've already tried that in a covert manner through right wing religious organizations..

Here's a GOVERNMENT CENSORED blog about the daily happenings at Sitchin's trial, at least up to 9/9/07. And of course the evidence records have been sealed so that none of us may see or understand what may really be going on.

flow....

2012 on Trial
p.s.
I wish to amend my rant to say that I have found no corroborating evidence on the web for my suppositions or the trial, including Sitchin's website. So it just all may be a bogus mis-dis information plant by parties unknown to trigger rants by old farts. Please take that possibility into account.

flow....
http://www.sitchin.com/

[bob x]

Hislop's "Two Babylons" is complete and unmitigated rubbish. He could make up anything he wanted, then, since the decipherment of the languages was then in its infancy.

[flowperson]

Etymological and English-Sumerian dictionary and lexicon projects have been underway at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Chicago for at least twenty years. Neither project is yet completed, although some volumes have been issued by each project. It takes a long time.
I did a little web browsing and I really had no idea how log one of these projects take. The lexicon project at Chicago either withered in the mid-nineties, or went underground. Here's a really good article on the history of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary:

Oriental Institute | THE CHICAGO ASSYRIAN DICTIONARY AT SEVENTY

flow....

[China Cat Sunflower]

From what I can tell the Sitchin trial appears to be a hoax. I have to admit that I don't have much faith in the credibility of any of the sources I googled up on the thing, though. So I just don't know. On the Wiki page on Sitchen there are a number of good resources both supportive and skeptical. I've seen Mr. Sitchens books around for a number of years. I have a number of friends who are in what I call the Space Wing of New Age thought, but I've never read any of Sitchens books, though I'm familiar with the basic concepts he proposes.

I know it's hard for people who live inside a belief system to understand, but out here beyond the dome one needn't subscribe wholly to any theory. I don't need to support any predisposition toward anything. I can change my mind in a flash as soon as I get better information. I wouldn't mind if the Bible was literal history. I don't NEED for it to be, or not to be.

Chris

[flowperson]

Absolutely the right attitude to take with this stuff Chris. I've got my own ideas, but they're just that until corroborating information comes along.

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[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by bob x

Hislop's "Two Babylons" is complete and unmitigated rubbish. He could make up anything he wanted, then, since the decipherment of the languages was then in its infancy.

Interesting...so I presume we can equally rubbish "The Golden Bough" by the same argument?

[mee]

Originally Posted by flowperson

. Maybe someone simply doesn't want any of us to find the real truths still hidden under the sands of Iraq.

flow....

i think that Jehovah reveals things at his own time and in his own way , and as his name means HE CAUSES TO BECOME what ever he whats to happen will . and no man can prevent it from becoming known . many things have been discovered to back up the truths in the bible ,and more than likely yet more will come to light .

[bob x]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Interesting...so I presume we can equally rubbish "The Golden Bough" by the same argument?

You should not rely on anything in the Golden Bough that you do not find confirmed in other sources; the same goes for Robert Graves and his very interesting but often misguided speculations. Hislop is much worse than either Frazer or Graves, though not as bad as Zachariah Sitchin, whom I would classify with L. Ron Hubbard, Erich von Daeniken, and Immanuel Velikovsky as borderline-insane.

[flowperson]

Bob...IMHO you should seriously reconsider your statements about The Golden Bough and Sitchin's work. Of course most serious researchers would not come to the same conclusions that Sitchin did. But I've met and discussed certain things with him and he's certainly not anything like the others that you mentioned.

He did not do the work, in the beginning years, to earn money, begin a religion, or to gain notoriety. He did it for the joy inherent in the discovery of new things. At one time I was a member of the Oriental Institute at Chicago and had access to their library. For my own peace of mind I personally researched and confirmed to my own satisfaction many of the facts which he had uncovered and wove together into his conclusions. Unfortunately I don't agree with his ancient astronaut conclusions. As for Von Daniken, a book of his titled, Gold of the Gods, raises many valid issues which I've also confirmed to my satisfaction. But again I don't agree with his ancient astronaut hypotheses.

The worthwhile nature of Frazier's and Sitchin's work was in the factual information that they compiled and how it was presented. The Golden Bough is acknowledged by many Anthropologists as the first modern comprehensive work of it's kind which effectively tied global cultural patterns and practices together. One doesn't have to base his/her opinions on an author's opinion. But if independently confirmed to one's satisfaction, factual information in any work should be considered to be valid.

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[China Cat Sunflower]

The problem with grand theories is that so many sharp corners get truncated in the process of trying to tie everything together. The best information is in peer reviewed scholarly journals, but one has to know what they are looking for, or have a lot of spare time to browse through and parse a lot of information.

Chris

[bob x]

Originally Posted by flowperson

But I've met and discussed certain things with him and he's certainly not anything like the others that you mentioned.

He did not do the work, in the beginning years, to earn money, begin a religion, or to gain notoriety.

Neither did Velikovsky or von Daeniken. One of my old roommates met Velikovsky, found him very impressive (I believe he's dead now, not sure). But all three of those guys just went thoroughly bats, no nice way to say it. Le Plongeon and Churchward were classic examples of similar mind-set in earlier generations.
Frazer and Graves are not in that category, and many students of comparative mythology have a lot of affection for their works. But they were working from fragmentary and often distorted information. You should not rely on such outdated sources: Newton's Principia Mathematica would not be a good calculus textbook today, nor is Darwin's Origin of the Species cutting-edge biology!

[flowperson]

Bob...You are right. The past is the past, and the present is the present. Human abilities of discernment must come into play here. The researcher today must parse past information from what may be known due to findings in the intervals between past and present. Still, there is no denying that today's knowledge base is built upon what has been done in the past. It is the process which proves truth, not individual conclusions.

flow....