Babylon’s Ishtar Gate: Tangible History

Archeology is an enjoyable companion to History. In addition to reading accounts of what happened in the past, the student can see physical objects which were part of those events. This makes History palpable.

Many texts tell of the Babylonian Exile, during which time many Israelites were taken prisoner, and transported from the area around Jerusalem to Babylon, where they became slaves. This happened roughly between 609 B.C., when the first groups of captives left the Jerusalem area, and 538 B.C., when the captives started leaving Babylon to return to their homeland.

Today, students can see the gates which were part of the wall which surrounded the city of Babylon at the time of the Babylonian Captivity. They are located in a museum in Berlin, as historians Joachim Marzahn and Klaudia Englund write:

Today the most famous buildings of Babylon are the Processional Way and the Ishtar Gate. They were situated at the northern limits of the old city, where access had been confined by the outer walls of the palaces. The road was thus bordered on both sides by walls and town planners were afforded the opportunity to decorate the course of the street with a frieze of glazed bricks. The choice of decoration was determined by the New Year's Festival. On the eleventh day of the festival the procession of gods followed the street on its way from the outer festival house to the temples in the center of Babylon. Building inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar II point explicitly to this fact. The visitor to Babylon saw two rows of striding lions - symbols of the goddess Ishtar - before he arrived at the gate. In a stretch of ca. 180 m were once 120 lions, 60 on each side.

The Ishtar gate was built approximately between 605 B.C. and 562 B.C., meaning that the Isrealites were present in the city at the time of construction. Some of the Israelites may have assembled the gates; certainly, they saw it.

The walled street canyon was 20 m wide and 250 m long. This enclosed part of the Processional Way was, however, shorter than its continuation to the corner of the Etemenanki sanctuary, where it turned off and ended at the bridge over the Euphrates. Destination and high point of the outer part of the city was the Ishtar Gate. Integrated into the procession course, it had been furnished with colored reliefs, here covering the complete outer wall. Erected in three building stages, the uppermost level displayed colored representations of dragons and bulls, the symbols of the gods Marduk and Adad. In the Vorderasiatisches Museum, only parts of this installation have been reconstructed: about 30 m of street walls 8 m apart, as well as the smaller city gate with its two flanking towers. From countless fragments, the animals of the relief have here been pieced together with some parts of the walls, showing that the reconstruction largely matches the original.

To stand in Berlin and see the Ishtar gates is to see the same physical objects which Ezra and Nehemiah, and many others, saw more than 2,000 years ago. Such tangible history complements the primary texts which are the foundation of History.

The Habsburgs: A Most Enduring Dynasty

It would be oversimplification to the point of error to say that the history of Europe is the history of the rivalry between the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollern. Such a proposition ignores the Bourbons and the Plantagenets, the Stuarts and the Windsors.

The Habsburgs may, however, claim the significance of having reigned and otherwise exerted influence over a longer span of time and over a greater area of territory than any of these other royal families.

The founder of the dynasty is generally understood to be Count Radbot, who constructed a castle in Switzerland around the year 1020. The genealogy of the family goes back several generations earlier, but with Radbot begins the name and the claim to various titles.

The last official claim of the family to power ended with World War I, but even so, the current Prince of Liechtenstein, Hans-Adam II, has Habsburg elements in his bloodline. So, to this day, the Habsburgs are ruling Europe.

This dynasty has over a millennium of accumulated reign.

The territories over which the Habsburgs ruled changed constantly over the course of that millennium. When they emerged onto the world stage, the map of Europe had none of the modern nation-states which now determine it. Instead, it was a patchwork quilt of many smaller kingdoms. The Habsburgs built empires by collecting those kingdoms into alliances of various types.

At times, the Habsburg have ruled in part or in whole regions which we now identify as Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Serbia, Portugal, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and others.

As the Habsburg lands expanded and contracted over the centuries, the most famous Habsburg empire was the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), which they ruled from 1415 until its demise in 1806.

The HRE was a loose coalition: the emperor did not have the absolute powers of the earlier Roman emperors or of the later French absolutist monarchs. He could implement his policies only by achieving a consensus among the ‘Electors,’ a group of princes called the Kurfürsten, of whom there were six.

After the HRE, the Habsburg exerted their influence via the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That they maintained a dynastic rule well into the industrial age made them anachronistic, as historian Alan John Percivale Taylor writes:

The Empire of the Habsburgs which was dissolved in 1918 had a unique character, out of time and out of place. Metternich, a European from the Rhineland, felt that the Habsburg Empire did not belong in Europe. “Asia,” he said, “begins at the Landstrasse” - the road out of Vienna to the east. Francis Joseph was conscious that he belonged to the wrong century. He told Theodore Roosevelt: “You see in me the last monarch of the old school.”

The nature of the Habsburg Dynasty sheds light on a twenty-first century concern. Some political scientists have wondered what the world would look like if the nation-state, in our modern understanding of the term, was not the defining unit of the globe.

The world of the Habsburgs was not structured by the nation-state, and the Habsburgs were not the least bit nationalistic. In fact, they were opposed to nationalism. The Habsburgs were not Austrian, Spanish, or German; they were not Hungarian, Bohemian, or Czech. They were simply the Habsburgs. They were not identified by any particular language, culture, or geographical region.

The Habsburgs were identified by their bloodline, and their business was the dynasty. They were not interested in establishing or sustaining any particular territory or culture. They were interested in maintaining themselves.

To this end, their dominion was known primarily not by names like ‘Austria’ or ‘Spain,’ but rather simply ‘the lands of the Habsburgs,’ as A.J.P. Taylor writes:

The collection of territories ruled over by the House of Habsburg never found a settled description. Their broad lines were determined in 1526, when Ferdinand, possessing already a variety of titles as ruler of the Alpine-Germanic lands, became King of Bohemia and King of Hungary: yet for almost three hundred years they had no common name. They were “the lands of the House of Habsburg” or “the lands of the [Holy Roman] Emperor.” Between 1740 and 1745, when the imperial title passed out of Habsburg hands, Maria Theresa could only call herself “Queen of Hungary,” yet her empire was certainly not the Hungarian Empire. In 1804, Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, saw his imperial title threatened by Napoleon and invented for himself the title of “Emperor of Austria.” This, too, was a dynamic name; the Empire was the Empire of the House of Austria, not the Empire of the Austrians. In 1867 the nation of Hungary established its claim to the partnership with the Emperor; and the Empire became “Austria-Hungary.” The non-Hungarian lands remained without a name until the end.

Those who wonder about how the world would look after the demise of the concept of the nation-state might consider how the world looked prior to the rise of the nation-state. A world without a nation-state is the world of the Habsburgs, and the rise of the nation-state was the fall of the Habsburgs.

The Habsburgs were a world-historical force. Those nations not directly shaped by the dynasty were nonetheless indirectly shaped by it: England and Scandinavia, for example.

Yet most of the Europe was directly shaped by the Habsburgs, and their imprint remains to this day on the continent, and with it, on civilization as a whole. It is difficult to overstate the lingering influence of the Habsburgs up to the present time. Where their influence fades, it is often the case that civilization and humanity itself also fade.

To be sure, the Habsburgs were not perfect. Their courts were filled with intrigue, deception, power brokering, manipulation, and a host of other sins. Yet they remain a high point of human civilization, and as such, a reminder that humanity at its very best is still deeply flawed.

Without sycophancy it can be said that the Habsburgs were great and their reign glorious.

Michael Faraday and History of Science: A Creative Tension Between the Mathematical and the Intuitive

The principles of electromagnetism are essential to nearly all technology, science, and industry in the early twenty-first century. The world’s digital computing and communication systems are founded on the laws of electromagnetism, and both impossible and unimaginable without those laws.

Michael Faraday was born in 1791 in England, and his discoveries, both in the field of chemistry and in the field of electromagnetism, have shaped and built much of the world’s current and future technology.

Faraday’s scientific thought was both unique and yet founded on the work of scientists who lived prior to him. His uniqueness lies, in part, in the manner in which he conceptualized his investigations.

While electromagnetism is an inherently mathematical discipline, Faraday proceeded mainly along intuitive lines, visualizing fields as shapes rather than as equations. His written works, both published and unpublished, contain many drawings and sketches, and sometimes surprisingly few mathematical formulas.

Two of Faraday’s followers, Williams Thomson and James Maxwell, considered it their task to translate Faraday’s results into the quantified language of science.

Like Einstein a century later, Faraday made his discoveries on an intuitive level. Those discoveries had then to be repackaged into the language of mathematics, as Alan Hirshfeld writes:

In February 1854, Maxwell wrote to William Thomson, who had first “mathematized” Faraday’s lines of force, and asked for a readling list of great works on electricity and magnetism. Maxwell sought a path toward the observed phenomena untrammeled by doctrinaire thinking or mathematical abstraction. He wished to avoid what he termed “old traditions about forces acting at a distance” and instead tackle the subject without prejudice. Although Thomson’s reply is lost, there is no doubt about his prime recommendation, for soon Maxwell was immersed in Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity. It didn’t take him long to realize that this was truly “a first step in right thinking.”

Faraday did his work at a time when physicists and chemists were making discoveries in large quantities. The observational and empirical natural sciences had been primed for growth by worldviews worked out in previous centuries.

The debt of modern science to the Middle Ages lies in the medieval view that there was a rational - and therefore mathematical - structure to the universe. Algebra and geometry are not only self-contained consistent systems of thought, but rather also express themselves in the mechanics of the universal.

The laws, and lawlike regularity, of motion demonstrate a rational ubiquity in the universe. On the macro scale as well as the mico - from the motions of planets and stars to the behavior of microscopic dust particles, mathematical reasoning manifests itself as the skeleton of the physical world.

The work of Thomas Bradwardine reveals how this medieval foundation underlies modern physics. Bradwardine explained how acceleration, specifically gravitational acceleration, is mathematically explained by exponential growth. In the 1300s - Bradwardine died in 1349 - he was giving an algebraic explication of the ‘Law of Falling Bodies,’ as it came to be called.

By the time of Michael Faraday, this view of the empirical sciences was becoming an almost unconscious assumption within European culture: that it was an assumption that the study of chemistry and physics was informed by algebra and geometry.

At a young age, his education still in very much in process, Faraday focused on electromagnetism. Alan Hirshfeld, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, writes:

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, science and its institutions were in flux, spurred as much by new discoveries as by the growing belief that scientific research might enhance a nation’s agricultural and industrial development. The fundamental building blocks of matter - atoms - were as yet unknown. Electricity, magnetism, heat, and light were variously “explained,” none convincingly. Through careful measurement, the mathematical character of nature’s forces could be determined, but their underlying mechanisms, interrelationships, and means of conveyance through space were subjects of dispute. Faraday plunged headlong into the melange of ideas, trying with his meager knowledge to sort out fact from fancy. All around was God’s handiwork, in plain sight, yet inextricably bound up in mystery, a seemingly limitless horizon of possibilities for off-hours study.

Eventually, Faraday’s knowledge would no longer be ‘meager’ and would enable him to make the discoveries and formulate the laws which then generated nearly all of the world’s modern electronic technology.

As an adult, Faraday took on leadership roles as his knowledge and education grew. Ian Hutchinson, Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, writes:

Throughout his long and productive life, Michael Faraday was also a committed Christian. Not a social church-goer - although he spent more hours in a pew than any of us are likely to; not just a conforming member of a “Christian” society - although he lived in a society which saw itself as Christian; on the contrary, he belonged to a distinctly nonconformist denomination, which demanded from its members an extremely high level of commitment and devotion: the Sandemanians. Moreover, in addition to his lifelong lay involvement, he acted for significant periods of his career as co-pastor (strictly ‘Elder’) of the London congregation of which he was a member. During those periods he preached (or rather, exhorted) in the services and undertook the spiritual oversight and pastoral care of the people in the congregation.

The synonymous words ‘Sandemanian’ and ‘Glasite’ (or ‘Glassite’) are usually used to describe Faraday’s thought.

The brilliance of Faraday’s work in electromagnetism may arise, in part, from the tension which exists between the absolute necessity of mathematics for his work, and his inclination to express both laws and observations intuitive concepts and images rather than formulas and equations.

The Same Thing, Only Different: The Babylonian Empire and the Neo-Babylonian Empire

Sorting out the history of Babylonia is not easy. The city of Babylon began as a small town in the Akkadian Empire. Gradually, the city grew in importance, and eventually became a seat of power for the Akkadian Empire or for its successor empires.

Under the famous King Hammurabi, Babylon achieved its own empire, and flourished in the 1700s and 1600s B.C. (These dates are approximations; scholars debate the exact timing of Babylonian chronology.)

The Babylonian Empire came to an end, and Babylon was sacked. The city was subject to alternating waves of invasions, interspersed with attempts to re-establish its own political independence. Finally, it was under Assyrian rule from the 900s to the 600s B.C.

As scholars Joachim Marzahn and Klaudia Englund write,

The beginnings of Babylon lay in the 3rd millennium B.C. Only at the beginning of the 2nd millennium, however, does a dynasty of Babylonian kings become evident, constantly contesting neighboring states for the rule of Mesopotamia. King Hammurabi (1792-1750) eventually succeeded in uniting into one empire the lands from the region of the Persian Gulf all the way to eastern Syria. At the beginning of the first millennium B.C., Babylon was under Assyrian rule. Following the collapse of the Assyrian Empire in 612, Babylon once more became a capital. The so-called Neo-Babylonian Empire, whose most important kings were Nabopolassar (625-605) and Nebuchadnezzar (605-562), comprised the entire cultivated land and the steppe regions of the Near East west of the Tigris. From all parts of the empire, booty and tribute as well as merchandise flowed into the city and formed, next to an enormous agricultural income, the base of its wealth, which was to find its architectural expression in buildings of a hitherto unknown scale. But already in 539 the Persians conquered the country, and Babylon lost its significance. In the course of the following centuries the city was slowly deserted.

Babylon managed to free itself from Assyrian rule in 626 B.C., but its freedom was never secure, being constantly threatened by not only the Assyrians, but other military powers in the region as well. This independence was short-lived, and in 539 B.C., Babylon fell to the Persians, never to be an imperial power again.

The Necessary Preconditions for Intellectual Growth: Integrity at the University Requires Diversity of Thought

Analyzing the problematic subcultures which arose in the last decade or two on university campuses and which are now spreading to other parts of society, author Bradley Campbell distinguishes between ‘dignity culture’ and ‘victimhood culture.’

The ‘victimhood’ culture assigns permanent moral values to an individual based, not on her or his being a rational human being, but rather based on the individual’s race, gender, ethnicity, etc. According to this ideology, an African-American is essentially a victim, regardless of academic or economic achievements. So is a woman, or a person whose heritage is from the Spanish-speaking parts of Central or South America.

Likewise, a person of “white” (European) descent, or a male, is permanently an ‘oppressor,’ despite the morality or immorality of any of his actions. Being a victim or an oppressor is, for those who embrace victimhood culture, an innate and immutable status. Bradley Campbell writes:

Dignity culture fights oppression by appealing to what we all have in common. Our status as human beings is what’s most important about us. But victimhood culture conceives of people as victims or oppressors, and maintains that where we fall on this dimension is what’s most important about us, even in our everyday relationships and interactions.

Although the ideology of the victimhood culture arose at universities, it is not friendly to intellectual integrity. In fact, integrity and consistency are not virtues in the eyes of victimhood culture.

The political vision of the Enlightenment - that the governed, being uniformly rational despite differences of race or gender, are the source of the government’s legitimacy because their rationality directs them toward a general consensus about those social structures which best preserve life, liberty, and property - is not accepted by the victimhood culture.

Citizens or voters in a state - or researchers or professors at a university - do not have validity because they embody human reason’s quest for knowledge, according to the victimhood mentality. Instead, victimhood teaches, they are valid because they are of a certain race, gender, ethnicity, etc.

This means that victimhood culture is ultimately incompatible with the goals of the university. Pursuing truth in an environment of vigorous debate will always involve causing offense — and one of the shibboleths of victimhood culture is that it’s okay to offend the oppressors but not the oppressed. Many campus activists, realizing this, have attacked the ideals of free speech and academic freedom. One of these visions will have to prevail — either dignity culture and the notion of the university as a place to pursue truth, or victimhood culture and the notion of the university as a place to pursue social justice.

Some critics of victimhood culture, Bradley Campbell writes, mistakenly assume that the campus activists who promote the victimhood culture are too fragile, too much like a snowflake, to be confronted by a diversity of opinions. Campbell disagrees. He argues that the victimhood culture is a reaction to what it perceives as injustice.

This raises several questions: How does one determine what is justice or injustice? How does one respond, rather than react, to it? These questions are at least as old as Socrates, and are never easy to answer.

Is it an injustice for a person to be exposed to individuals who have contrasting opinions? Or is it a healthy and intellectually stimulating experience?

It’s not that campus activists are afraid of taking risks; rather, they’re outraged by what they see as injustice. An example from the book’s first chapter actually highlights the difference. In the 1990s, parents began following medical advice to keep their young children away from peanuts. Peanut allergies were very rare at the time, but they could be deadly. The strange thing was, peanut allergies began to skyrocket after that. We now know this was precisely because children were no longer being exposed to peanuts. It turns out that early exposure to peanuts is good for most children’s immune systems.

Bradley Campbell examines a recent book, written by Lukianoff and Haidt. He argues that the book makes the mistake of labels in the ‘social justice warriors’ as fragile snowflakes. Campbell argues that the advocates of victimhood culture aren’t timid, but rather they are mistaken.

Lukianoff and Haidt use the analogy of peanut allergies:

What Lukianoff and Haidt say, correctly, is that this illustrates the principle of antifragility. As with the immune system, various kinds of adversity often strengthen us. Campus activists, like the parents protecting their children from peanuts, often embrace a myth of fragility. They believe people need protection from microaggressions and conservative speakers, lest they cause them harm.

Instead of embracing head-to-head debate with those who embrace divergent viewpoints, the campus activists believe that they need to shelter their fellow students from those viewpoints. These activists picture themselves, not as timid or fragile, but rather as strong: hence the ‘warrior’ in ‘social justice warrior.’

But they view their fellow students as fragile, as victims, and as members of various oppressed classes. Hence the drive to shelter them.

The question which these advocates have failed to contemplate is this: might it not be a strengthening experience for their fellow students, the alleged victims, to learn that they will not wither when encountering a diversity of opinions, but rather that such intellectual sparring is in fact a strengthening experience?

The Building Blocks of Both Fiction and History: Archetypes

In literary studies, scholars use the word ‘archetype’ to describe a pattern which is at the highest or broadest level of application. An archetype is a feature of reality which is so ubiquitous in human experience that it requires no explanation.

The reader will note that ‘arch’ occurs in both ‘archetype’ and ‘overarching’ - these are patterns so universal that they encompass both fiction and reality, and are in some sense inescapable. They constitute limits to imagination in fiction, inasmuch as any and every author will obliged, often unconsciously, to include them.

Leland Ryken, James Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman write:

An archetype is an image or pattern that recurs throughout literature and life. More specifically, an archetype falls into one of three categories: it is either an image or symbol (such as the mountaintop or evil city), or a plot motif (such as crime and punishment or the quest), or a character type (such as the trickster or jealous sibling).

Part of the definition of what it means to be human - part of the essence of being human - is shown in archetypes. They are necessarily a part of human life.

Any discourse about humans or about human life may or may not include archetypes, but if that discourse takes the form of a sustained narrative, it will necessarily include archetypes.

Archetypes are a universal language. We know what they mean simply by virtue of being humans in this world. We all the experiences of hunger and thirst, garden and wilderness. Ideas and customs vary widely from one time and place to another, but archetypes are the elemental stuff of life. In the words of literary scholar Northrop Frye (noted archetypal critic), “Some symbols are images of things common to all men, and therefore have a communicable power which is potentially unlimited.” Another literary scholar defines the master images of the imagination as “any of the immemorial patterns of response to the human situation in its permanent aspects.”

Some scholars, notably C.J. Jung, have been prompted by archetypes to posit some form of collective cultural memory. Whether or not one accepts Jung’s hypothesis, it is understandable how the ubiquity of archetypes could tempt him to invent such a conjecture.

Archetypes also explain the power of narrative. A gripping narrative often seizes the reader in ways more powerful than a sharp polemic or brilliantly logical argumentation.

Such elemental images are primal in the sense of being rooted in essential humanity, independent of civilized trappings and complexity.

As something essentially human, archetypes can cross all boundaries: cultural, linguistic, social, racial, religious, etc.

Archetypes are contained in, and shape, the deepest levels of human thought, consciousness, perception, and awareness. Developmentally, they must take up residence in the human mind at a very early age. Humans use them to process sensations into perceptions.

Perhaps the only structures deeper than archetypes would be Kantian notions of space and time. The will have also embedded themselves into the structures of all human languages.

There are also psychological overtones to an exploration of these elemental images of human life. The modern study of archetypes began with psychologists (though archetypes have long since been separated from that source). Part of the psychological dimension is that there is wisdom and strength to be found in being put in touch with bedrock humanity in this way. Carl Jung wrote that archetypes “make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them.”

All authors, knowingly or not, will work with archetypes as they create narratives. Some authors consciously and deliberately use archetypes, and have the opportunity to create narratives which are more effective in moving the emotions and more effective in powerfully imprinting themselves on the mind.

Leland Ryken, James Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman continue:

A further useful thing to know about images and archetypes is that when we begin to categorize them, we find good and bad, desirable and undesirable, ideal and unideal versions of the various categories. Kings can be benevolent or tyrannical, for example. Lions are usually a negative archetype, but the can also symbolize power or rulership in the hands of the good.

Not only in fiction, but in accounts of historical events, archetypes will make themselves felt. The habit of examining a text in terms of its use of archetypes should not be restricted to literary studies. It is equally as valid in history. Because history and fiction are both human experiences, they are both shaped by, and composed of, archetypes.

The universality of archetypes allows the reader to span the chasms of time, space, language, and culture to engage in narrative texts. A narrative which is several millennia old can take hold of the reader’s mind as effectively as if it were written yesterday.

General Notes Concerning History

History has three levels: First, the physical and mechanical facts about people and events, caricatured under the heading of “dates, kings, and wars.” Second, a deeper level looks at the ideas, trends, and movements underlying the first level, “-isms”, politics, and ideologies. Finally, there is a history to the development of philosophy, religion, and worldviews.

Higher level critical thinking about history is possible only when the individual is in command of the lower level data. Attempts to wax philosophical about history in the absence of specific evidence result merely in vacuous generalizations.

History begins with text, with written records of human activity; anything prior to writing is speculative and not part of history, and properly belongs under headings like “archeology”, “paleontology”, and “prehistory.” For the nearly simultaneous start of writing, civilization, and history, a certain amount of stability was needed: the continental drift which now moves land masses a fraction of an inch a year used to move them miles in the same time; volcanic activity was many times what it is now, causing entire mountains to rise and fall rapidly. Geological instability delayed the widespread use of writing and the founding of communities.

History is ultimately about constructing and analyzing narratives, sometimes competing narratives about the same facts; a mere list of facts is a chronicle and not properly a history. A mere list of facts would also be useless and uninformative. The quest for an “objective” history is absolutely necessary, yet elusive. The absolute and objective historical narrative exists, and we seek to discover it, not invent it. Yet human reason and human cognition remain limited, and so our ability to discover is limited; we may be happy that this ability is limited, rather than completely nonexistent.

When we examine a historical person, we can choose the method by which we will conduct our historical evaluation: we can either confine ourselves to the texts written by that person and the actions performed by that person, or we can include other personal data about that individual. The latter approach is called ad hominem, and often includes a quasi-psychological investigation into the childhood relationships to the parents.

Historians also distinguish between primary texts and secondary texts. Primary texts were written at or near the time and place of the events which they describe, and written by eyewitnesses or someone with direct knowledge or experiences of the events. Secondary texts are written by people at removed in either time or space from the events they describe.

One constant factor in history is human nature: from the earliest recorded human thoughts, roughly 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, until the present time, human beings have asked the same questions, encountered the same problems, and sought the same goals. This is what makes you as human as Aristotle or Cleopatra. This is why we can understand the concepts and passions of texts which are thousands of years old: because the authors shared the same unchanging human nature which we all have.

Partly because we all share this same human nature, and perhaps partly for other reasons, there are “eternal questions” which recur throughout history. Historians disagree on exactly how many “eternal questions” there are, but here’s an example of what three of them might be:

• How can I escape my “subjective bubble” (my ideas, perceptions, and opinions) and obtain objective knowledge?
• Does God love me or hate me, and why?
• How should a community or society be organized? How should society and government interact?

There are many other candidates for “eternal questions”. The reader’s imagination should suggest some.

It becomes necessary to clearly and rigorously define some words: “history”, “religion”, and “philosophy”.

The role of religion in civilization and history is both significant and obvious. The emergence of religion from early, non-religious phases of civilization is not so obvious.

Early civilization embraces myth, magic, and manipulation, and lacked religion. Myth explained; magic and manipulation were attempts to control the forces of nature, obtain fertility, and ensure military victories. This type of polytheistic paganism prescribes some ritual or sacrifice designed to persuade a deity to deliver the goods.

Religion concerns relationships: the individual’s relation to God, and to other humans. A religion has a text and a founder. Religion is an attempt to bridge the gap between the perfect/infinite deity and the imperfect/finite human. Religion is personal, inasmuch as it treats both the human and the deity as person, i.e., having beliefs, desires, emotions, and agency. Religion is not private, inasmuch as it encompasses visions of society. A religion is related to a way of life; it has various forms in different times and places; it can be related to geography.

Religion is not ethics and morals, is not traditions, rules, culture, opinions, beliefs.

To directly contradict what has been stated immediately above, there is a different paradigm in which ‘religion’ is defined as exactly those those things: culture, tradition, institutions, and organizations. In such a paradigm, then, religion is an artifact, and the word ‘religion’ then does not refer to the relationship between the individual and the deity, and does not refer to a state of affairs in the world.

We can see how such great confusion has emerged about religion: the word ‘religion’ itself is subject to two quite different definitions. Does it refer, on the one hand, to social and cultural artifacts, or on the other hand, to the deity’s personal agency and relationship to human beings?

Three cornerstones of civilization, as it emerged in the ancient world: (1) the alphabet replaces other symbolic forms, (2) monogamy is valued, (3) human sacrifice is gradually phased out.

Another recurring theme in history is the tension between centralized and decentralized forms of government. From Persia to Rome, from Alexander the Great to the Holy Roman Empire, this will be a consideration; feudalism, often derided as an archaic system, proves to be, in this light, a champion of local independence and of decentralization. It is also no accident that the series of “Star Wars” films by George Lucas echoes the events of Roman history.

Feudalism also introduced a mutuality of obligation: the feudal lord was obliged to his vassal to the same extent that the vassal was obliged to his lord.

As we look at historical texts, we will need to be alert to issues of translation and transliteration.

Maps are also an important part of studying history.

There are different ways to look at historical change: it might be an organic process, working its way gradually through societies and populations in the attitudes and decisions of the average person, or it might be the decisive choice of one man at a crucial moment. History is either a series of historical choices by great men at decisive moments, or it can be told as a gradual process of growth and change in slow waves and trends through entire communities, cultures, and civilizations.

Population and Economics: the pattern seems to be that a steadily growing population is the best circumstance for economic prosperity and stability, as well as political tranquility. If the population grows too quickly, too slowly, or erratically (i.e., the annual rate varies too much from one year to the next), or if the population does not grow at all, or even shrinks, then economic hardship is inevitable. This pattern is relevant to events both in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. It is relevant also to the study of Thomas Malthus, whose brilliant, but sadly misunderstood, views have been reinterpreted in light of the discovery of the fact that our planet has always produced more food than was needed by the humans living on it, and that all hunger and starvation has been unnecessary, and the result of human incompetence or greed. The deeper insight of Malthus was the imperfectability of the world.

Since the time of Moses, we see that the majority trend within “western” or “Euro-centric” civilization has held a certain “sympathy for the underdog”, a tendency to consider, and act in, the interests of those who are most vulnerable in society. Notable exceptions, of course, exist, in the persons of Nietzsche, Hitler, and Stalin. But general trend has held, and perhaps even gained in predominance, over time. This strength, however, of our civilization has also recently become a weakness, because those who wish to gain power by claiming to be victims can exploit this sentiment. It has now become necessary to distinguish between those who are at the bottom of societal structures and those who merely claim “victim status” as a path to political power. In non-western, or non-Eurocentric societies, this path to power is not open.

The events of history take place within the framework of time, space, matter, and energy. Another way of saying this is that the events of history involve elements that are, at least in principle, directly or indirectly detectable by the five senses. We need to be aware that these are the minority of events. The majority of events are composed of elements that lie outside of space and time, which are therefore not composed of matter or energy, and not detectable to the five senses. Strictly speaking, history does not concern itself with such things. Practically, however, we will concern ourselves with them to some extent, when we consider the history of philosophy and the history of religion. We need to be aware, then, that we have, at that point, left behind history, narrowly defined, and entered a separate field of study.

Given that text is central to historical study, issues of language will interface; at a minimum, we will need to continuously acknowledge that we are dealing with texts that are either translated into our language, or written in an older form of our language. Philology is relevant to history.