BHR-86
Brit-Am Historical Reports
13 February 2012 20 Shevat 5772
Contents:
1. A Very Brief History of European Christian Anti-Jewish Sentiment by Toni L.
Kamins.
2.
Isaac Newton: A Summarized Biography from Wikipedia.
3.
Archaeology: Brit-Am Version of Explorator 14.43
1. A Very Brief History of European
Christian Anti-Jewish Sentiment by Toni L. Kamins
http://www.crethiplethi.com/a-very-brief-history-of-european-christian-anti-jewish-sentiment/the-holocaust/2012/
Extracts:
European anti-Semitism is integral to European culture.
Beginnings
The Crusades of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries proved to be a watershed
for European Jew-hatred. When the Crusaders set out for Jerusalem to free
it from the Turks their roads through Germany and France were littered
with the corpses of the descendents of the alleged killers of Jesus '
local Jewish residents. In Rouen, Orleans, Limoges and Mainz Jews were
portrayed as forces of the anti-Christ and summarily murdered. Oftentimes
given the choice of conversion to Christianity or death, many Jews
committed suicide rather than submit to forced conversion.
From the beginning of the Crusades onward Jewish civic life in Europe was
severely restricted and Jews subject to greater and greater acts of
violence and murder. It is in this period that we see the rise of many of
the trumped-up stories that were to characterize Jew-hatred and
anti-Jewish violence for centuries through to the present day ' the blood
libel, lies about a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, fabrications
that Jews desecrate the Host and carry diseases etc. Indeed anecdotes of
the Host coming to life when set upon by a Jew were in wide circulation.
Many of these were spread by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which also
established the rules that required Jews to wear distinctive marks or
clothing.
The Middle Ages was also a time when rabbis were forced to take part in
religious disputations with Catholic clergy to defend Jewish religious
texts, such as the Talmud. A verdict of guilty against the Jewish texts
was always a given and often resulted in the burning of the books.
Money lending
The Church forbade Catholics to lend money at high rates of interest '
usury ' but it did permit Jews to engage in it. Before the Middle Ages all
professions, commerce and agriculture, were open to Jews, but by the end
of the Crusades lending money was one of the very few occupations the
Church permitted them.
The Reformation
The Reformation proved to be good news and bad news for the Jews of
Europe. Jews in countries that remained Catholic were subjected to the
same (and worse) anti-Jewish measures as they were before. In Italy and
Germany ghettos were established. But some of the new Protestants (i.e.
Calvinism) were more lenient toward Jews and Judaism. Some countries, such
as the Netherlands, became havens for Jews and would become particularly
important during the Spanish Inquisition when Jews were forced to either
convert or burn.
The Enlightenment
Segregation of Jews started to decline in the 18th century when many
European intellectuals began to question the orthodoxies of the Catholic
and Protestant religious establishments. Secularism and justice were the
popular slogans, and philosophers like Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau viewed Jews as oppressed people and came to their defense. In
1714, the Englishman John Toland recommended freeing Jews from the
restrictions under which they were forced to live. But it was not until
1791 that France became the first European country to remove many of the
limitations.
Napoleon Bonaparte became the Jews unlikely champion. Bonaparte hated
Jewish practice and theology, but his quest for empire made him determined
to bring them into the French mainstream. In 1806 he convened an Assembly
of Jewish Notables, the sole purpose of which was to make sure there was
nothing about Jewish law that was inherently incompatible with French
civil law. There wasn't and soon the physical and legal barriers to Jewish
civil rights were falling throughout Europe.
Modern Anti-Semitism
Though anti-Jewish sentiment was far from gone, most legal impediments to
civil rights for Jews had been dismantled by the middle of the 19th
century. But some, like the More Judaico, the Jewish Oath, remained. The
only purpose of this bizarre oath, used during legal disputes between
Christians and Jews, was to demonstrate that Jews were untrustworthy. It
was common from the Middle Ages through the 18th century, but was still
used in France until the mid-19th, and in other countries into the 20th.
The oath's wording and administration took different forms in different
countries, but usually it involved forcing the Jew to stand on a pig's
skin and recite gibberish that included vague references to the Old
Testament.
In England, the thrice-elected Baron Lionel de Rothschild could not take
his seat in the House of Commons because members of the House were
required to swear on “the true faith of a Christian, something to which a
Jew could not swear. Many attempts to amend the law failed, but after
having been elected for the first time in 1847, Rothschild was finally
able to take his seat in 1858.
Jewish Civil Rights: A Double-Edged Sword
Jewish civil rights made the ghettos, occupational restrictions and
identifiable clothing obsolete. It also changed the nature of Jew-hatred.
As long as Jews could be easily recognized either by where they lived,
their occupation or their dress, in addition to their religion, Jew-hatred
was mostly confined to religion. But at the same time as the average Jew’s
life was becoming more mainstream, and Jews became physically
indistinguishable from Christians, Jew-hatred developed into social and
political mistrust, and Jews were charged with contaminating French,
German or English life or the German nation etc.
Racial theories, in which Jews were cast as polluters of the pure European
races, were promulgated by pseudo-philosophers such as Joseph Arthur,
Comte de Gobineau (An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races), Edmond
Picard, Houston Stewart Chamberlain (.. 'The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century) and
the composer Richard Wagner. These went on to form the basis for Nazism.
It has been said by many that it was a very short walk (in terms of years)
from open ghetto gates to the gas chambers.
The 19th century also gave us the term anti-Semitism.
Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904) was a vicious Jew hater. His most famous work...The
Victory of Judaism over Germandom: From a
Non-Denominational Point of View.. laid the groundwork for his League of
Anti-Semites. Semitism, according to Marr, was the replacement of German
values, ways and sensibilities with Jewish ones. Therefore anyone who
opposed Semitism was an anti-Semite. Today the word is used as a
catchall for Jew-hatred.
The Dreyfus Affair
On October 15, 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a (Jewish) captain on the French army
general staff, was accused of selling artillery secrets to the Germans and
arrested for treason. The so-called evidence against him had been forged
by anti-Jewish officers who manipulated the anti-German paranoia of the
French army and fabricated a case against the one staff member against
whom they could get away with making the scapegoat ' the Jew. The real spy
was Major Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy. High-ranking army general officers
colluded with many in the government including Minister of War, General
Auguste Mercier, to create a conspiracy so insidious and so deep that the
fallout from it ripped France asunder and threatened to bring down the
Republic itself. Dreyfus spent several hellish years in prison on Devil’s
Island, but was eventually exonerated and restored to military rank. To
this day there are those in France who believe Dreyfus was guilty of
treason and the whole affair was a Jewish conspiracy.
The Holocaust
So much has been written about the Holocaust that it is not necessary to
go into any detail here except to say that without Europe's long and
pervasive history of Jew-hatred the Holocaust would not have occurred.
Jew Hatred Today
...It would be easy to blame Europe's Muslims, but that
would be a mistake. Although we can say with some satisfaction that many
European Christians have finally learned what hatred in the name of
religion can lead to, many still have not. Just this week the extremist Jobbik party in Hungary, with 47 seats in parliament, stated that Jews are
'invading' Hungary. And a just-released German-government study revealed
that one in five mainstream Germans have anti-Jewish attitudes...
2. Isaac Newton: A Summarized Biography
from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Extracts:
Sir Isaac Newton (1642 '1727), President of the Royal Society, was an English
physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and
theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most
influential scientist who ever lived."
His monograph Philosophi'Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687,
lays the foundations for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton
described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated
the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries.
Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are
governed by the same set of natural laws, by demonstrating the consistency
between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus
removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific
Revolution.
The Principia is generally considered to be one of the most important scientific
books ever written, due, independently, to the specific physical laws the work
successfully described, and for the style of the work, which assisted in setting
standards for scientific publication down to the present time. Newton built the
first practical reflecting telescope[8] and developed a theory of colour based
on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours
that form the visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling
and studied the speed of sound. In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with
Gottfried Leibniz for the development of differential and integral calculus. He
also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed Newton's method
for approximating the roots of a function, and contributed to the study of power
series. Newton was also highly religious. He was an unorthodox Christian, and
wrote more on Biblical hermeneutics and occult studies than on science and
mathematics, the subjects he is mainly associated with. Newton secretly rejected
Trinitarianism, fearing to be accused of refusing holy orders.[9]
Isaac Newton was born ...at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a
hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. ... Newton was born three months after the
death of his father, a prosperous farmer also named Isaac Newton. Born
prematurely, he was a small child; his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said
that he could have fit inside a quart mug ( 1.1 litres). When Newton was three,
his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend
Barnabus Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery
Ayscough. The young Isaac disliked his stepfather and held some enmity towards
his mother for marrying him, as revealed by this entry in a list of sins
committed up to the age of 19: "Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn
them and the house over them."[10] While Newton was once engaged in his late
teens to a Miss Storey, he never married, being highly engrossed in his studies
and work.
From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The
King's School, Grantham (where his alleged signature can still be seen upon a
library window sill). He was removed from school, and by October 1659, he was to
be found at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, where his mother, widowed by now for a
second time, attempted to make a farmer of him. He hated farming.[14] Henry
Stokes, master at the King's School, persuaded his mother to send him back to
school so that he might complete his education. Motivated partly by a desire for
revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student.[15] The
Cambridge psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen considers it "fairly certain" that
Newton suffered from Asperger syndrome.[16]
Asperger syndrome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome
[Asperger syndrome, also known as Asperger's syndrome or Asperger disorder,
is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant
difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns
of behavior and interests. It differs from other autism spectrum disorders by
its relative preservation of linguistic and cognitive development. Although not
required for diagnosis, physical clumsiness and atypical use of language are
frequently reported.[1][2]]
Newton's work has been said "to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics
then studied".[21]
In the 1690s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal
interpretation of the Bible. Henry More's belief in the Universe and rejection
of Cartesian dualism may have influenced Newton's religious ideas. A manuscript
he sent to John Locke in which he disputed the existence of the Trinity was
never published. Later works ' The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728)
and Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John
(1733) ' were published after his death. He also devoted a great deal of time to
alchemy (see above).
Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England from 1689 to 1690 and in
1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about a
cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed.[53]
French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange often said that Newton was the
greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that Newton was also "the most
fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to
establish."[61] English poet Alexander Pope was moved by Newton's
accomplishments to write the famous epitaph:
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.
Newton himself had been rather more modest of his own achievements, famously
writing in a letter to Robert Hooke in February 1676:
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.[62]
In a later memoir, Newton wrote:
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been
only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then
finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great
ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.[65]
Albert Einstein kept a picture of Newton on his study wall alongside ones of
Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell.[66] Newton remains influential to
today's scientists, as demonstrated by a 2005 survey of members of Britain's
Royal Society (formerly headed by Newton) asking who had the greater effect on
the history of science, Newton or Einstein. Royal Society scientists deemed
Newton to have made the greater overall contribution.[67] In 1999, an opinion
poll of 100 of today's leading physicists voted Einstein the "greatest physicist
ever;" with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file
physicists by the site PhysicsWeb gave the top spot to Newton.[68]
Newton's monument (1731) can be seen in Westminster Abbey..The Latin inscription
on the base translates as:
Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine,
and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures
of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities
in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the
properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in
his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by
his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity
of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so
great an ornament of the human race! ...
According to most scholars, Newton was a monotheist who believed in biblical
prophecies but was Antitrinitarian.
Newton himself often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory
of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree.[101] Although it
has been said that the apple story is a myth and that he did not arrive at his
theory of gravity in any single moment,[102] acquaintances of Newton (such as
William Stukeley, whose manuscript account, published in 1752, has been made
available by the Royal Society)[103] do in fact confirm the incident, though not
the cartoon version that the apple actually hit Newton's head. Stukeley recorded
in his Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life a conversation with Newton in
Kensington on 15 April 1726:
... We went into the garden, & drank thea under the shade of some appletrees,
only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same
situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. "why
should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground," thought he to
him self: occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood:
"why should it not go sideways, or upwards' but constantly to the earths centre'
assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power
in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in
the earths centre, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall
perpendicularly, or toward the centre. if matter thus draws matter; it must be
in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as
the earth draws the apple."[104]
John Conduitt, Newton's assistant at the Royal Mint and husband of Newton's
niece, also described the event when he wrote about Newton's life:
In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire.
Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the
power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not
limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much
further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself
& if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit,
whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that
supposition.[105]
3. Archaeology: Brit-Am Version of
Explorator 14.43
From: david meadows <rogueclassicist@gmail.com>
================================================================
AFRICA
================================================================
A possible clue to the Queen of Sheba's gold wealth:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/12/archaeologists-and-quest-for-sheba-goldmines
Leptis Magna is apparently a 'ghost town':
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/africa/2012/02/20122105011366224.html
On humans' role in the decline of African rainforests some
3000 years b.p.:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-humans-decline-african-rainforests-years.html
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/december-2011/article/ancient-farmers-had-impact-on-disappearance-of-african-rainforests
================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND EGYPT
================================================================
Plenty of coverage that the 'Hill of Jonah' was inhabited some
3000 years b.p.:
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp'int_sec=2&int_new=53483
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/History/Early+History+-+Archaeology/Archaeology_verifies_life_time_Jonah_6-Feb-2012.htm
http://www.antiquities.org.il/about_eng.asp'Modul_id=14
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx'id=256717
http://www.livescience.com/18327-fortress-hill-jonah-prophet.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2097616/Fortress-hill-Israel-Bibles-Jonah-supposedly-buried-dates-800BC.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46294237/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Mount Scopus National Park seems to be the latest site of archaeological
controversy in
Israel:
http://www.haaretz.com/watch-israel-nature-authority-destroys-caves-in-new-national-park-1.411431
A new approach to the Nag Hammadi codices:
http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/02/2012/nag-hammadi-codices-a-new-interpretive-approach
Dr Leen Ritmeyer's Blog:
http://blog.ritmeyer.com/
Paleojudaica:
http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/
================================================================
ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME (AND CLASSICS)
================================================================
Evidence of the Romans using camels ... in Belgium:
http://www.newser.com/story/139357/romans-beasts-of-burden-camels.html
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2012/02/roman-army-ran-on-camel-power/1'csp=34news
Visit our blog:
http://rogueclassicism.com/
================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
A 13th century Jewish tombstone from Effurt:
http://www.vosizneias.com/100623/2012/02/08/effurt-germany-oldest-jewish-tombstone-found-intact-in-germany/
A WWI trench turns up 21 German soldiers 'perfectly preserved' a la Pompeii,
supposedly:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2099187/Bodies-21-German-soldiers-buried-alive-WW1-trench-perfectly-preserved-94-years-later.html
Feature on the good side of Attila the Hun:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/02/nice-things-to-say-about-attila-the-hun/
Pondering Napoleon's failure in Russia:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16929522
Latest theory on the origin of Robin Hood:
http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Robin-Hood-really-Kent/story-15097152-detail/story.html
Interesting application of Google Earth and Stonehenge:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/feb/06/stonehenge-models-google-software
More on those Viking mercenaries in the guise of tv hype:
http://scienceblog.com/51992/viking-apocalypse-linked-to-elite-killers-of-the-medieval-world/
Archaeology in Europe Blog:
http://archaeology-in-europe.blogspot.com/
================================================================
ASIA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC
================================================================
New Zealand Archaeology eNews:
http://www.nzarchaeology.org/netsubnews.htm
===============================================================
EXHIBITIONS, AUCTIONS, AND MUSEUM-RELATED
DSS:
http://www.njherald.com/story/16685706/nycs-dead-sea-scrolls-exhibit-has-10-new-scrolls
The Bison:
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/feb/02/story-of-survival/
================================================================
HUMOUR
================================================================
Mayan 'calendar' worries'
http://www.gocomics.com/theargylesweater/2012/02/07
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