#historicity

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Historians agree that Jesus existed, that there was a religious leader named Yeshua of Nazareth in 1st century Roman Judea who was crucified by the Empire, whether or not he was the son of the Hebrew god. Here's the thing, though; there are no contemporary accounts of Jesus. The Gospels were written 30 or 40 years after the fact and cannot be treated as unbiased historical documents, and the earliest non-Christian source mentioning Jesus is a Roman historian saying "there's this cult making trouble in the east because we crucified their leader almost 100 years ago." There are no records from the time of the crucifixion, only a century later. That's not exactly what I'd call irrefutable evidence. Maybe Jesus did exist, but if all we have to go on is his own book club's word and a handful of Roman footnotes, then what I think really happened is modern historians decided they weren't up for a fight over this. If they said there was no historical evidence Jesus existed then the Christians would shit their pants and throw another holy war hissy fit, dragging the entire world back for centuries, so everyone just agreed to let them have this. Oh yes, your book club's founder was a real person, not mythological like the Greek heroes or Gilgamesh, no doubt about it at all. I'm not saying he definitively did not exist, I'm just saying that there's not enough evidence to justify the scholarly consensus; there's plenty of room for doubt, but denying the historicity of Jesus is a fringe taboo.

[errantabbot]

On Gods and Lizard Tails

God(s) refuses to be captured by conceptual restraint. When we attempt to grasp infinity with finitude, at best we come up with lizard tails, that is, those self-severed bits that the lizard easily leaves behind when threatened, knowing it can grow another. Meanwhile, we humans enshrine those tails as the whole lizard, and then wonder why it is that they refuse to walk around or flick their tongues.

Archetypes and metaphors guide us into the mysteries of being, chiefly by being comprised in large part of that same mystery. When we work too hard to bind them to the temporal world in hopes of somehow capturing them, we often render them listless.

The real efficacy of these forces exists in their stories and inferences, in their images and allusions, which is to say with their chief occupation in the liminal space outside of the realm historicity and literality.

Zen Master Dae Hae once said that “the blue dragon is the most powerful being in all of existence precisely because it does not exist…if it did exist it would be finite, and therefore limited.”

~Sunyananda

[nacapito]

“Nadie se salva solo, nadie salva a nadie, todos nos salvamos en comunidad”.

— Paulo Freire. Transformational popular educator, pedagogical thinker and radical practitioner.

(“No one is saved alone, no one saves anyone, we all save ourselves in community.”)

+ If we die, we'll die together. As ourselves.

— Fionna. "Cheers" the tenth episode of Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake. This episode is the second and final part of the season finale.

[gotylocks]

Happy 10th birthday to the best tweet of all time.

[trolledu]

Please note this reblog is just for the sake of its historicity. At this time, I have no comment and am not making any comment on the nature of mass migration of people.

[bebs-art-gallery]

Two Women Kissing in Nature (b. 1859)

— by Georges Rochegrosse

[stealingpotatoes]

some alternative eras of lady normalgirl and her eunuch <3

[valemrsn]

making aus for ocs are so funny cause like. theyre already in a situation… but what if they were in a DIFFERENT situation

[bethanydelleman]

I don't know exactly how to articulate this but... if you repeatedly show historical fiction women rejecting traditionally female skills/duties and doing swords instead, because swords is obviously the Most Important Thing, you are kind of implying that all the work that has been traditionally done by female hands for millennia was useless all along and not, you know, keeping civilization going. Because it's usually rejected not as a personal preference but as This Is The Important Stuff (male work) and That is The Dumb Useless Stuff (women's work) and that kind of bothers me. The message was supposed to be Vital But Underpaid and Underappreciated, not women's work is insignificant so let's all go do swords.

[aquietwhyme]

We should, actually. It'll probably be confusing in to many people, but as one of the people above said it helps put historical periods in perspective with one another, and can piggyback a broader, global perspective onto the eurocentric mess many of us in the West are brought up with.

For example, it's interesting to know that the year of five emperors in Rome, a period where there was great uncertainty, coincided with the fall of the eunuchs and the period of great uncertainty in the Han dynasty that led to the three kingdoms period. Or that the English Magna Carta was signed during the rise of the Incan empire. Or that the rise of Mali as a powerful empire in West Africa coincided with the conquest of China and most of Asia by the Mongols.

Or any number of events or inventions that could be considered era-defining, really. History is so much easier to remember, so much more interesting to learn when you don't worry about the dates that can be easily looked up, and instead of focus on when and where things happened in relation to one another.

I mean dates are important, but only insofar as they inform and provide the context around events, and an establishing the historicity of events by tying them to dated documents. For a real lay understanding, context is king.

Whenever I see someone refer to "Victorian era-" for places outside the UK I'm tempted to start saying shit like "Han Dynasty era Rome", "Soviet era Australia" etc

[frostedmagnolias]

“Mary Wallace was the first woman bus driver with the Chicago Transit Authority in 1974. Her job applications were rejected for three years, but her persistence paid off. She was eventually hired under an affirmative action program. Wallace became one of the city’s most popular drivers over her thirty-three year career.”

Happy Black History Month!

[anteregem]

Some fanart of this ancient figurine! Also got commissioned to draw her hanging out with a friend!

[craigtowens]

The Confirming Details

When we cross-reference biblical passages, the confirming details build both out trust in the divine inspiration of the Bible, but also its historical reliability. Check out one example that Luke gives us in the Book of Acts.

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.  https://craigtowens.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/the-confirming-details.mp3 A couple of years ago I was in a car accident, but I never saw the car that hit me. Fortunately, the driver in the vehicle right behind me, a driver who was nearly hit by the car who hit me,…

[peekofhistory]

AHH!! Quickly!! The artefacts have escaped the museum!! 😘😘 This video is adorable :D

These ladies are wearing Tang Dynasty hanfu, the famous "golden age" of Chinese history. Artefacts show that aesthetics during this dynasty favored fuller shaped women, if you've ever seen the figures from the museums these ladies look like exact replicas :D

Video src: 包意凡 【博物馆闭馆时间到，我俩要粗去玩！】 https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1iJ4m1K7Mq/

[raffaellopalandri]

Book of the Day - The Order of Things

Today’s Book of the Day is The Order of Things ((Les Mots et les Choses in French), written by Michel Foucault in 1966, which I read in the 1994 edition published by Vintage. Paul-Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher, historian of systems of thought, philologist, psychologist, and social theorist. He was born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family of surgeons, and…