91–100 of 218 posts
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wp3wL8g2Eg
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So this is just the very begining? Will they be able to decypher whole docs? I guess you wouldn't have written all that otherwise! Anyway, if there's religion involved, I doubt any revelation will shake anything.
That's true of zealots, but growing the religion anywhere where literate people are will become exceptionally difficult if the myth of Jesus the Christ turns out to be, say, a cipher of the re-execution of Alexandros I, the son of Herod the Great and Mariamne I, with contemporary first-party proofs untouched by time. Sure, there'll be dinosaurs-are-just-a-test-of-faith types, but the explanation of Christianity as a…
“by Constantine's Christianity“ is also an interesting reference, although he was just a politician realizing half of the population had adopted a revolutionizing family structure.
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That's true of zealots, but growing the religion anywhere where literate people are will become exceptionally difficult if the myth of Jesus the Christ turns out to be, say, a cipher of the re-execution of Alexandros I, the son of Herod the Great and Mariamne I, with contemporary first-party proofs untouched by time. Sure, there'll be dinosaurs-are-just-a-test-of-faith types, but the explanation of Christianity as a…
What makes you think "myth of Jesus the Christ turns out to be, say, a cipher of the re-execution of Alexandros I, the son of Herod the Great and Mariamne I" is at all likely? I read a theory once that Jesus Christ was a reinterpretation of Julius Caesar that was adopted by Romans after the former imperial cult fell out of favor. That seems farfetched, but more likely than this - at least it provides a better explana…
It's not just Nicholas of Damascus that would reveal such information. Gaius Asinius Pollio, a multifaceted Roman figure known for his connections with literary giants like Virgil and Horace as well as Augustus himself, mentored Alexander, the son of Herod the Great. The Roman world in the first century was wide.
Anyway, as to why I think it's possible, I think it's the most simple explanation as to how it emerged. According to what we have (i.e. Josephus) Alexander had the support of the public but was disliked by Herod's loyalists due to his opposing qualities and lineage from the Hasmonean dynasty.
Herod the Great, notorious for his brutal tactics, killed off male members of the Hasmonean dynasty and married the last Hasmonean princess to solidify his rule. He exhibited suspicion towards his wife Mariamne who was also killed eventually, along with their son Alexander.
I posit that Alexander was not actually executed, being a popular favorite and the son of the tyrant who might regret his decision and punish accordingly. Instead, he laid low until Herod's death, aiming to rightfully claim the throne, but was instead executed to maintain Roman rule over Judea with the consent of the Sanhedrin.
After the First Roman-Jewish War, continued supporters of Alexander coded secret histories into what became the apocryphal and synoptic gospels. Episodes like the massacre of the innocents coming from the Hasmonean male purge, "Jesus" being found in His Father's temple coming from Alexander visiting the building site of the Second Temple erected by his father, Herod. There are plenty of other episodes that seem to neatly correspond to and dispel underlying "mysteries" in the synoptic gospels for anyone actually looking for them.
The survival of works by Asinius Pollio or Nicholas of Damascus in particular in the Herculaneum library could confirm or refute this theory. Their writings, likely popular in aristocratic households due to Nicholas and Gaius Asinius Pollio's favor with the Julians, would very much be pertinent to a Roman aristocrat in 79AD.
But I don't need to prove it via circumstantial and inferential evidence--that's why I'm excited. We could actually uncover period documentation by the actual participants rather than the heresay of the following generations living under the shadow of Roman retribution.
See also Nat’s twitter announcement: https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1712470683207532906 $700k is a life changing amount of money. I admit, it’s tempting to drop everything and go devote myself like a monk to the pursuit of ancient enlightenment via modern ML. I wonder where we’d start… It’s also funny that the scroll might just be a laundry list.
It's likely somehow a reference to the Emperor. Purple cloth was extremely rare and expensive, and it was the colour worn by the Emperors. Indeed, it eventually became a capital crime for people outside the Emperor's family to wear it. I don't know if that was yet true at the time of Vesuvius, although Wikipedia claims Caligula may have had someone killed for wearing purple.
Similarly, various Emperors far away in China had a similar enforced color-monopoly, except it was on yellow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_in_Chinese_culture#Yello...
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That's true of zealots, but growing the religion anywhere where literate people are will become exceptionally difficult if the myth of Jesus the Christ turns out to be, say, a cipher of the re-execution of Alexandros I, the son of Herod the Great and Mariamne I, with contemporary first-party proofs untouched by time. Sure, there'll be dinosaurs-are-just-a-test-of-faith types, but the explanation of Christianity as a…
Demographics refutes your last point. “by Constantine's Christianity“ is also an interesting reference, although he was just a politician realizing half of the population had adopted a revolutionizing family structure.
By all means, please explain.
This might count as one of the most extreme stories of data recovery I've seen. I wonder if in another 2000 years we'll have a "first file discovered on discarded hard drive platter".
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While modern people make that connection, that is culturally dependent. The color terms available to speakers of a language, and what objects those terms can be associated with, change over time. In the case of the Greek word for "purple", it was connected to a dye and therefore used for clothing, but one shouldn't expect it to be used for wine.
Says you.
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What makes you think "myth of Jesus the Christ turns out to be, say, a cipher of the re-execution of Alexandros I, the son of Herod the Great and Mariamne I" is at all likely? I read a theory once that Jesus Christ was a reinterpretation of Julius Caesar that was adopted by Romans after the former imperial cult fell out of favor. That seems farfetched, but more likely than this - at least it provides a better explana…
>What makes you think "myth of Jesus the Christ turns out to be, say, a cipher of the re-execution of Alexandros I, the son of Herod the Great and Mariamne I" is at all likely? It's not just Nicholas of Damascus that would reveal such information. Gaius Asinius Pollio, a multifaceted Roman figure known for his connections with literary giants like Virgil and Horace as well as Augustus himself, mentored Alexander, the…
People love these conspiracy theories about religions but they're definitely not the simple or logical explanations.
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Must be nice to be a billionaire. I'm a fairly well paid engineer and I would certainly consider a $700k gift to be life-changing.
I make good, but not FAANG, money, and $350k after-tax, all at once, would still put me most of a decade ahead, financially, and give me some much better options for dealing with a bunch of stuff. Yeah, life changing.
I think that might be the kind of the crux of it. Saving this money to get a decade "ahead" might help your retirement life (assuming things don't collapse before then), but not your current life. Whether that's considered "life-changing" might be in the eye of the beholder.