Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant

[Justin]

"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"

What are our origins? Where are we now? Where are we headed? Share your thoughts with us!

   Volume Five (The Renaissance)

       
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
 
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
       
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
       
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."

SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC

The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution

In this volume the  term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples. 

In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.

Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.

This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.

Discussion Leader: robby

Trevor, you raise the toughest questions. In what context can I place Jesus so one can challenge his Jewishness. What did he do in his lifetime, as we know it, that was not consistent with Jewish customs? He railed against animal sacrifice by tossing the money changers out of the temple but in the end he became a very human sacrifice himself. Quite contradictory.  He forgave a woman adulterous rather than stoned her to death. What else? Help me on this one, folks. There must be other differences.

[mabel1015j]

Trevor says Jesus Christ was only one of several who over the centuries sought to found a new religion, and also was the only one, I think, to eventually succeed. And then only outside Palestine.
In my Methodist Church and my Presbyterian household i was taught that Jesus was Jewish, celebrated the Jewish holidays and was not looking to start a new religion. My perception was that he was quite like Martin Luther and was trying to bring Judaism back to its ideal. I learned that it was the early Christians fanning out from Jerusalem, especially Paul (those letters from Corinth) and Peter, who spread the teachings and story of Jesus, which became Christianity. .................. it's been so long since i did any studying of the period to add specifics w/ any confidence, but every one whom i've had contact w/ over the last 60 yrs, who i remember hearing  talk about the subject, had the same opinion......................jean

[JoanK]

Jean: that has always been my understanding too (which doesn't mean it's right, but I'd like to know the basis for thinking otherwise).

[Brian]

Was Jesus a Jew ?

Justin and Trevor - - - no one will win this argument - - - it's like trying to adjudicate (pun intended) which came first the chicken or the egg.

As professor Joad used to say on British TV : "It all depends on what you mean by . . . Jew".
If you take the definition of Judiasm as the religion of the people of Judea, then Jesus was patently NOT a Jew as he came from Gallilee (Nazareth).

Brian.

[mabel1015j]

PBS must be peeking in on our discussion. Tomorrow night on Frontline at 9:00 the show is "From Jesus to Christ: the First Christians"  " The birthplace and life of Jesus; rise of Christianity after Jesus' death; siege of Jerusalem." Maybe they will answer the question..........

Congrats on being a subject in the book Robby, they know a real good story when they see it...................jean

[Justin]

Good Try Brian, but no cigar.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem of a Jewish Mother. Bethlehem is in Judea. He lived in Galilee, in Nazareth and for that reason is often referred to as the Nazarene. However, it is not geography that makes a person a Jew but rather it is birth by a Jewish mother.

[3kings(Trevor)]

If being born to a mother who is a Jew is all that it takes to make one a Jew, then I guess Christ must have been a Jew.

But where does that leave those who are born to a Gentile mother, and then seek to become a Jew? Also how about those Hebrews who convert to Christianity. Is it impossible for them to renounce their Jewishness?

From my occasional reading of the New Testament, it seems to be full of Christ's condemnation of the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Hardly the action of one who thinks of himself as a Jew..,..

He also said " Thy name is Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church." Unlikely statement of one who regarded himself as a member of the jewish faith...

Lastly, if he was a true member of the Jewish congregation, why did they have him killed ?  It seems to me that he was killed because he was regarded as a danger to the Jews.  +++ Trevor

[Justin]

There is a Jewish sect called" Jews for Jesus". They are a group of Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah. In Spain during the Inquisition many Jews were baptised as Catholics but they were burned at the stake anyway. If one is born a Jew, one is a Jew, but one may adopt the trappings of another religion certainly without losing one's birthright. One can be both. Alternatively, I see no reason one may not, as a gentile of gentile parentage, adopt the trappings of a Hebrew community without having a Jewish Mama. That makes one a Jew by adoption.

You don't think Mary was Jewish? My God! She traces her ancestry back to Jesse.

The Sadducees and the  Pharissees were just two dominant sects at the time  but they were not the only sects. (If I recall correctly, Jesus himself was a Pharissee.)  The Essenes also disagreed with them. That doesn't make the Essenes any the less Jewish. Why should that make Jesus any the less Jewish? Internecine warfare was common then just as it is now.

The Sadducees were the priests, the descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses.They had the most to lose from any group that opposed animal sacrifice in the Temple. They collected a fee for the service and probably got a cut from the breeders, dealers, and money changers. Jesus had a following and he physically attacked the money changers. He could cause trouble. So they opposed him.

The Pharissees on the other hand were the critics of all that is written and the ways of the priests. They evolved into rabinical judaism after the destruction of the Temple. They were critics in the true sense of the term. They were not against the laws and customs but enjoyed interpreting through argument. When Jesus came of age, probably at the time of his Bar Mitzvah, he argued with the Pharissees in the Temple.

The direction to Peter to build a church is a telling point. However, we don't know what Jesus had in mind. Was it to be what James thought and began to build in Jerusalem, a Jewish sect that accepted Jesus as a Messiah,  or was it what Paul developed with the gentiles thirty years later. Was it the Church of the middle ages or the Church as we know it today with all the splinter groups? Who knows what lurked in the mind of that man in the days before Peter denied knowing him?

I talked a little about why he was killed above. His death was a response to his challenge to the Sadducee power base. He was not some little upstart. Jesus had a following and he had radical ideas about the Temple and it's operation. Money is a consideration here just as it is whenever power is challenged. They didn't care about Barabas. He was no threat to them. But Jesus, gentle Jesus, he was a threat and he was. His death was not about religion. Far from it. It was about money. I think you are absolutely right, Trevor. Jesus was a danger to some Jews, especially to the Sadducees.  

[3kings(Trevor)]

Christ was born a Jew, certainly. But as he grew into adulthood, he moved away from that faith and fashioned his own religion.As he was the founder the sect has become known as Christian in honour of his name. He was the first Christian. I sometimes wonder if maybe he has been the only one.

If he was alive today, I wonder what he would think of the Christian Church? His followers were soon taken over, and redirected by Paul, who was really a politician.

But we've been through all this during our reading of 'Caesar & Christ.' Robby will be wanting us to get back on track. ++ Trevor.

[Justin]

Jesus was argumentative at an early age. At his Bar Mitzvah he argued with strength we are told with the elders of the Temple. He was a Pharisee and it was their job to challenge the ways of their fellow Jews. It is only a century or so since the Jews were engaged in the worship of Baal, a sacred Bull. Monotheism is a new thing to them even though Abraham several centuries earlier had introduced the idea and Moses had tried to reintroduce the concept after several centuries of Bull worship in Egypt.  Judaiism in this period, the period of Christ, was not  a fixed entity. It's tenets were subject to change just as they are today when a reform movement is quite active. For one to suggest that Jesus moved away from the tenets of Judaism and that in some way made him less a Jew is a very long reach.
Examine the Sermon on the Mount in which he preaches the good neighbor message. That message has been the one unchanging Jewish concept throughout history.

Caiphas did not excommunicate Jesus. He punished him as a  blasphemous Jew who attacked the money lenders in the Temple after Caiphas had told them and their patrons to go inside when they complained that the odor of animal dung was too strong for them to function.

It is hard to find a rational argument to support the idea that Jesus was the first Christian and not a Jew for his entire life. AS much as we offer counter positions he took against the powerful Jewish priesthood the more we are forced to give him credit as a Pharisean Jew. 

Let us go to the next stage of the discussion and ask what pieces of Christianity came from ideas of the Jews and what parts are from the minds of those who came later?

Robby started us off on this track and he will call us back when he thinks we should end it.

[JoanK]

Good points Justin.

[Robby]

I will call you back to the topic at hand this weekend when I find a few extra minutes.  In the meantime, enjoy yourselves and try to solve this unsolvable question.  If Bubble were here, maybe she would give us some words of wisdom.

Robby

[winsummm]

where did I read that some jews broke off  from common practices in order to excape circumcision but cotinued to call themselves jews.  Justin??? wht aboutthat.

As a secular Jew I know that being born of a jewish mother can be lethal. At least Hitler thought so and sought to destroy the BLOOD line of all jews no matter how small a trace in an individual.  Wasn't he Jewish in some respect. . .anyone???

[Justin]

Whether or not  this man passed on the Jewish tradition or something new or was himself the author he was certainly the inspiration for what has become one of the most enduring religious experiences in the history mankind. The monotheism that started in the mind of an Egyptian Pharoah, blossomed in the expressions of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus,  and found fruit in the minds of James, Peter, and Paul. The road to monotheism was paved with the  blood of those  who contributed to it's eventual acceptance. We see it today, accepted as though it were a natural part of man's inheritance. The Pharaoh Aknaten who worshipped Aten, the God of the Noonday sun, spurned the priests of the multiple Gods worshipped by the people of Egypt and lived to regret it. Jesus died, cast as a criminal. James was stoned to death at the hand of the High Priest. Peter and Paul were killed by the Romans.

I've been trying to find a way to give credence to the premise that Jesus invented a new concept in religion but I have not been successful. Unbiased Biblical scholars, in general, think the idea is bizarre. However, a few have been willing to entertain the notion. I don't know of any who have made a good case. Bruce Chilton thought about it and passed up the idea after reading the available documents in pre Greek translations and in Aramaic and Syriac. He makes a strong case for the Jewishness in Jesus. l

[winsummm]

is formal groups that meet to argue only a part of Jewish tradition? The catholic church discourages lay   members reading of the bible.

[Justin]

 Claire: The Catholic Church is not an argumentative thing. It is a take it or leave it proposition. The membership does not have the power to make changes especially in theological questions. The folks cannot do much more than decide to pass the basket from back to front or vice versa. They can of course decide whether to participate or not.

Jewish groups are different. Argument is a virtue.

[winsummm]

justin re: take it or leave it. but if they leave it do they go to hell?

[Emily]

Justin

"Jewish groups are different. Argument is a virtue."

I disagree with 'argument being a virtue'. There is nothing virtuous in argument for the sake of argument. The end result is always propaganda, and is unreadable and incomprehensible, usually resulting in a thousand page broadsheet with a thousand different interpretations.

Solves nothing, but keeps the propagandists in work.

Emily

[winsummm]

Emily I had a thought about arguing and wondered i it could be in the genes.  It is a part of Jewish tradition and look how many jews go into the LAW.  I must admit to a characteristic devils advocate flaw if that is one, but I suspect that you share it with me.

claire

[Emily]

Here is an article whose title might be, 'You may not be a Jew after all'. Dr. Shlomo Sand a professor at Tel Aviv University has written a new book that says 'Jewish people are an invention'.

It was previewed in the New York Times, so they take a few shots at him, and like 'argument for the sake of argument' say 'facts' really don't matter in the long run. The reviewer says 'propaganda' (my word) will overcome any and all reality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/books/24jews.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all

Emily

[winsummm]

so I asked google about discussion or arguing or propiganda etc.  

since there is no single authority other than god for jews there are two kinds of law.  The Talmud or ORAL law is the basis for change and discussion while the Torah or written law is unchanged.

some of the items discussed can have to do with interpretation of a single word by more than one rabbi and must be submitted to the community for discussion and study before accepted as law.  So the entire situation over the many years has been fluid due to this aspect of the system of jewish laws.    

all of that is new to me since ours was a reform or liberal family.

claire

[Justin]

Trevor: Recent archaeological findings indicate the presence of a Bethlehem in Galilee. Mary, a thirteen year old, was pregnant prior to the arrival of Joseph. Nazareth was a small town. Tongues must have wagged and to avoid further damage to his little bride, Joseph may well have taken her to near by Bethlehem in Galilee for the birth  and subsequent Brise. The Galilean Bethlehem is the place where Joseph resided with his first wife and therefore felt familiar with the area and the people.  (See Mathew 1:18) Bethlehem in Judea seems a long way to go for Joseph and there is no familiarity there for him. The logical location for the birth is Bethlehem in Galilee. Why , I wonder, do the Gospels point to Judea as the Birth place and why did you say He was born in Galilee? Two interesting questions.

[Justin]

Fitfty years after the death of Jesus, the writer of Matthew's gospel is sitting in Damascus, Syria trying to figure out how to tie in Jesus with Messianic forecasts of the Prophets. I wonder if any prophets connect the predicted  Messiah with Judea?

[Brian]

Good Try Brian, but no cigar. 

Justin - - -  I'm still looking for that cigar.

“If the historical Jesus were truly born in Bethlehem,” Oshri adds, “it was most likely the
Bethlehem of Galilee, not that in Judaea. The archaeological evidence certainly seems to
favor the former, a busy center [of Jewish life] a few miles from the home of Joseph and
Mary, as opposed to an unpopulated spot almost a hundred miles from home.” In this
Bethlehem, Oshri and his team have uncovered the remains of a later monastery and the
largest Byzantine church in Israel, which raises the question of why such a huge house of
Christian worship was built in the heart of a Jewish area. The Israeli archaeologist
believes that it’s because early Christians revered Bethlehem of Galilee as the birthplace
of Jesus.

Brian.

[JoanK]

That's interesting. I had been told that they went to bethleham because everyone was supposed to return to their birthplace to be counted. But Justin's take seems more probable.

Too bad. I always remember sitting on a hill, looking over at the Bethleham in Judea (then still part of Jordan) and not being able to reach it. It looked a typical sleepy Arab town, and that's how I always think of it.

Bethleham in Hebrew means "house of bread" (i.e. bakery). It would not be surprising to find two towns with that name.

[Justin]

That's good stuff, Brian. Even the archaeologist is named. You get a cigar. BTW what's the source? Now all we need is a prophet who says the Messiah will be born in Judea. We are engaged in historical research, right here in this little corner of the world called SOC.

[Robby]

Just back home after spending three days snowbound in a friend's house due to the East Coast snow blizzard of 09.  Have read all this with interest.

Robby

[Brian]

Justin - - -   Follow the Navigation on this site.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/geopedia/Bethlehem

Brian.

[Justin]

Good site. The material is right on topic. The writer points to the Matthew author's problem. How to connect Jesus with the house of David. It looks like he had to move a town in Galilee all the way to Judea, a distance of 100 miles. Now Christianity is stuck with it. Good gracious. They would have give up the Messiah portion of Jesus and he would no longer be Christ for that term is Greek for Messiah.  And what are they going to do with the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Judea. My guess is they will ignore the issue and hope it goes away. Who needs a different Bethlehem? The old one is still good, no matter that it's in the wrong place. 

[Brian]

This is the time to wish you all a Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year.

Brian

[Justin]

Our topic is very timely. The morning newspapers have brought us news of archaeological work at Nazareth. They found building foundations dating from 100 BCE to 100 CE. That's the time of Jesus, Mary and Joseph or of Yeshua, Marian, and Yusef. Happy Holidays everyone.

[Robby]

The news that Christendom, divided between the Greek and the Roman Churches since 1054, was now to be united stirred all Europe.

 On February 8, 1438, the Byzantine Emperor, the Patriarch Joseph of Constantinople, seventeen Greek metropolitans, and a large number of Greek bishops, monks, and scholars, arrived at Venice, still partly a Byzantine city.  At Ferrara Eugenius received them with a pomp that must have meant little to the ceremonious Greeks.

 After the opening of the Council various commissions were appointed to reconcile the divergences of the two Churches on the primary of the pope,  the use of unleavened bread, the nature of the pains of purgatory, and the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and/or the Son.  For eight months the pundits argued these points, but could come to no agreement.  Meanwhile plague broke out in Ferrara, Cosimo de Medici invited the Council to move to Florence and be housed at the expense of himself and his friends.  It was so ordered, and some would date the Italian Renaissance from that influx of learned Greeks into Florence (1439).

 There it was agreed that the formula acceptable to the Greeks – that the “Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son” (ex Patre per Filium procedit) – meant the same as the Roman formula, “proceeds from the Father and the Son” (ex Patre Filioque procedit). And by June 1439 an accord was reached on purgatorial pains.

 The primacy of the pope led to hot debates and the Greek Emperor threatened to break up the Council.  The conciliatory Archbishop Bessarion of Nicaea  contrived a compromise that recognized the universal authority of the pope but reserved all the existing rights and privileges of the Eastern churches.  The formula was accepted and on July 6, 1439 jn the great cathedral that only three years before had received from Breunellesco its majestic dome, the decree uniting the two Churches was read in Greek by Bessarion and in Latin by Cesarini, the two relates kissed and all the members of the Council, with the Greek Emperor at their head, bent the knee before that same Eugenius who had seemed, so recently, the despised and rejected of men.


Any comments about this temporary truce?

Robby

[mabel1015j]

Sounds just like today w/ the Dems and Reps and the various legislation to which they can't compromise, ......................even w/in the parties where they eventually compromise ...............sans kissing and bending of knees.........perish the tho't! .........They seem to have the same religious zeal about social and economic issues.

What is it about human beings that we must cement ourselves into our theories and beliefs and demonize the opposition as tho we MUST  be absolutely right and they MUST be absolutely wrong? I can see that stance more easily in religious issues where i'm taking my belief on faith and therfore if anything i believe is not quite true, than everything i believe could be false. History is just full of these scenes.................usually bringing diasterous consequences, but sometimes there is progress - i guess we can call this unification of the Church as progress.................

The Medicis are fascinating characters of history, in many ways....................jean

[Justin]

One might well wonder how the delegates to the Council could spend a year or more debating the issues with out coming to an agreement. Two of these differences have no clear  basis in scripture. Purgatory had not been invented till the 13th century. There is a reference in Maccabees that says" If we did not expect the fallen to rise again there would be no point in praying for them after death." Justin Martyr and Tertullian both thought "the dead are waiting" and Origen thought everyone would be saved after a little purification. Augustinian thought all the just should enter heaven immediately. The penal character of purgatory came along in the 12th century. The easterners objected to the juridical character of the concept and it was this they resolved in 1439. The pain of purgatory came from being deprived of the sight of God. It's a little like some guys sitting around an office  inventing a video game for the internet. They must give the players some chance to win, however small.

The delegates battled over whether the Holy Ghost and its power came from the Father through the Son or from the Father and the Son equally. In the end they found a way to say it both could agree upon but interpret in their own way.

The big political issue was one of Primacy. Who was going to be the boss? They decided Rome could be the chief but the easterners would make all their own decisions.

I too Jean have wondered what it is about humans that causes us to cement ourselves in to protect what we think is ours. It does not seem to matter whether we are protecting trivia or substance. Often we can't tell the difference. However, I think our ideologies will put us in PYA mode quicker than geography or property. It has something to do with pride and fear of loss of face.

[Robby]

I don't believe PYA has anything to do with pride or loss of face or any other human trait.  PYA can be applied to mammals or fish or whatever.  I believe that it is the evolutionary need for survival. 

Robby

[Brian]

One might well wonder how the delegates to the Council could spend a year or more debating the issues with out coming to an agreement.

Nothing has changed - - - how can one fit the recent Climate Change "discussions" into a PYA stance?

The Doomsday bunch and the Deny'ers have about as much chance of coming to an agreement.

http://www.kusi.com:80/home/78477082.html?video=pop&t=a

Brian.

[Justin]

Brian: Isn't that what we thought the recent uncovering of climate change emails were all about?

Robby: I think you may be saying something technical. Is there not a connection between human traits and the PYA response? If humans feel threatened, even in a trivial way, the evolutionary survival response (called PYA) is to be expected I should think. You may describe lower level threats, those leading to embarrassment, for example,  a human trait, as unworthy of PYA but it's hard for me to draw such a line.  Is there some psychological definition that I am unaware of that prevents me from drawing the same conclusion you draw?

[Robby]

Following the theory of evolution, there are only two basic behaviors - survival and reproduction.  We have no trouble understanding that if we are talking about lower level organisms.  Darwin worked with pigeons but realized it was also true of plants.  As we move toward higher level organisms - humans, for example - as we go about our daily activities, e.g. earning a living, raising a child, passing a law, holding diplomatic discussions, fighting a war.  Is not the basic drive one of survival?  We want our job to continue.  We want our child to grow and prosper.  We want the new law to benefit us.  We want the diplomatic decision to be in our favor.  We want to win the war.

We can speak of such traits as unselfishness, altruism, love, and whatever but allowing that we can all find "exceptions" to the survival trait, whether we are talking about the papacy, the Roman Empire, or the majority in Congress, the bottom line is "me first."

How's that for a kindly thought on this Christmas Day?  

Robby

[JoanK]

Altruism, the sacrifice of oneself for others, has been a problem in evolutionary theory. It exists in animals as well as humans.

In humans, there are millions of examples of people dying for a country, a friend, an idea, etc. Max Weber explained it this way: in every society people try to stay alive. But staying alive is meaningless, since it always fails. So in every society, people search for a way to make life meaningful in the face of death.

He studied the ways people use to make life meaningful: passing on something of themselves through children, through increasing knowledge (science) or beauty (art), through leaving the world a "better place" (politics in that broad sense).

He also studied the sense that people have of "who they are" which can be more powerful than the urge to survive, since without it life becomes meaningless (the hero who dashes to certain death rather than admit s(he)'s a coward, the rich man who kills himselfwhen he loses his money etc.)

[Justin]

Robby; You and Joan in conjunction with Darwin and Weber make me think the protection response is applicable to human traits as well as to survival needs. Challenges to "who I am" as well as to my "survival" will drive me to a defensive response. I'm guessing but I think a survival challenge produces an almost involuntary response whereas an identity challenge gives one options.