Historical Jesus (2) - Philip Harland

Here is a quick heads up about the latest section in the podcast series Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (feed). After I had written about its kick off last month, two new episodes have come out. These are still preliminary. Host Philip Harland takes his time in pointing out what is problematic about the few sources we have. Hopefully, by the next chapter we will get some real reconstruction done.

On a side note: there was a weird comment on the previous post accusing me (or Harland - that is not clear) of:

"Historical Jesus"?!?
Just using this contra-historical oxymoron [...] exposes your Christian-blinkered agenda--dependent upon 4th-century, gentile, Hellenist sources.

The writer then goes on to claim the true identity of Jesus (Ribi Yehoshua) who comes out as an unblemished Jew, including a link to the website of the followers of the Ribi. This gentleman obviously has more agenda than Harland and I have together, but do browse his argument.

More on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean:
Historical Jesus (1) - Philip Harland,
New Testament, history and literature,
Da Vinci Code,
Early Christianity podcasts.

Indus Seal - World History in Objects

Didn't I just ask for more podcasts on the Indus Valley Civilization? (History of India - the search goes on; towards the end of the post) Here was yet another one. In the series A History of the World in 100 Objects (BBC) in the subsection about the first cities and states (4000-2000 BCE) there was an item from the Indus Valley: Indus Seal.

Add this to the few other references we have in podcast (see below) and the information is about as scarce and far apart as the data in the Indus Valley Civ itself. Nevertheless I am immensely fascinated by the Indus Valley and it appears I am not the only one. I guess any mystery civilization is mesmerizing, whether it is probably fictional like Atlantis, or whether it disappeared and its traces were discovered only now as with the Indus Valley Civ. Besides, when you know so little, all the more your imagination can add.

And here, I find, everybody who is fascinated appears to project into IVC what occupies him most. How factual is the assumption the IVC collapsed of climate change; or is that rather projection? How factual is the assumption that IVC was very rational and egalitarian? And when we make assumptions where the IVC people went, apart from factual, this may be very political. Does India have roots in IVC? Does Hinduism? Or do the Dravidians of South-India? Eventually all these projections tend to become political.

The IVC cities appear to have been vast and sophisticated. Their system of measures quite universal and accurate. The area they covered vast and this means probably a lot is still to be found. Among others, the script is in need of deciphering. We know the script from captions and seals, which offer little to go on. And although the script has been found as far as Mesopotamia, there is no Rosetta Stone, that is, no bilingual artifact. And so we are still left to conjecture and thus to our dreams, projections and wishful thinking.

More Indus Valley Civ:
The Story of India BBC,
History of India UCLA,
Podularity,
Engines of our Ingenuity,
David Kalivas World History.

More A World History in 100 Objects (in short: AHOW):
First AHOW Review.