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Only 2 cultures in the ancient world produced "literature" and "history". What other cultures? Migrant cultures?

1. Greece (Herodotus)
2. Judah (on the Greek model)

Other cultures have monuments, not literature:
- Egypt
- Chaldea/Babylonia
- Persia
- Hittites

Hasmonean propaganda
- Great empire (small territory)
- Grandiose treatment of great kings (Solomon/David)
- Fake heros (Hezekiah/Josiah)?
- Only 1 temple, destruction of Mt. Gerazim (Samaritans)
- Orthodoxy
- Propaganda as history (Kings and Chronicles) - re-evaluate in this light
- Re-use of patriarchal myths (Pentateuch)
- Leviticus only applied to ideal priesthood
- Claim to dual legitimacy of kingship and priesthood (a new invention)

Development of Hebrew language:
- Not by nomadic tribes
- Originally only for nobility and priests
- Alongside cuneiform for international correspondence
- Scribal developments

Judean culture:
- Population mostly illiterate, had to be taught Torah by Pharisees
- Pharisees taught, Sadducees ruled, Essenes (former priests) rejected
- Other temples (Leontopolis, Elephantine)
- Hebrew Bible was constantly evolving, not finished
- Only 1 verified Exodus: returnees from Elephantine in Egypt
- No evidence Israelites ever were enslaved in Egypt
- Role of Dead Sea Scrolls and works of Enoch tradition
- Challenges to authority & legitimacy were squashed (Jesus/John the Baptist)
- Relationship to Septuagint in Egypt (timing and people/who?)
- Early mystical traditions
- Early tradition of female consort for Yahweh

Warning - I come well-armed to any discussion.

Religion

- Hebrew Bible
- Hebrew Origins
- New Testament
- Christian Origins
- Dead Sea Scrolls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls)
- Gnosticism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism)
- Fundamentalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism)
- Asian Religions
- American Sects and Cults
- Mysticism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism)
- Ethics

Psychology

- Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Abnormal Psychology
- Personality Theory
- Perception
- Jungian Psychology (MA)
- Ways of Knowing (Doctoral)
- Systems Theory for Human Systems (Doctoral)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory)
- Research Methodologies for the Social Sciences (Doctoral)
- Experimental Methods (Doctoral)
- Phenomenology (Doctoral)
- History and Philosophy of Science (Doctoral)
- Creativity (Doctoral)
- Human Science (Doctoral) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_science)

Miscellaneous

- Anthropology
- Symbolic Anthropology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_anthropology)
- Primitive Religions/Shamanism
- Civil Rights

History

- American History
- World History
- Ancient History
- Military History
- Civil War
- Jim Crow
- Slavery in America
- Genealogy/Family History
- US Constitution
- Bill of Rights
- White Supremacy
- Colonization

Brief History of the Heresy of Christianity

• Jesus and John the Baptizer intended to start a “personal piety movement” in contrast to the Pharisees.
• They were killed because the elites did not appreciate having their lack of "holiness" shown up.
• They were completely orthodox Jews (Judahites?) living in recently converted/conquered regions which were unfamiliar with Torah.
• After the death of Jesus, his family is said by ancient sources to have stayed in Jerusalem. His brother, James, was widely appreciated for his extreme piety, spending hours in prayer on his knees in the Temple. This led to him being killed by order of the High Priest, presumably for showing up the lack of piety in the Temple priesthood.
• After James’ death, the remaining members of Jesus’ family were believed to have decamped across the Jordan River into what is now Jordan, where they completely disappeared from history.
• Because Jesus and family were completely aligned with tradition in their Jewishness, everything that followed would have been considered blasphemy.
• Saul is said to have had a conversion experience, following which Paul organized a Hellenistic, mystery-religion adaptation of a Christ-cult. The scenes portrayed in Acts of the Apostles are problematic, as the family and followers of Jesus would have considered everything that Paul taught to be blasphemy - worthy of stoning.
• As early versions of Christianity developed and spread, all sorts of heretical variations evolved, some of which were squelched but many survived for a time.
• As proto-Christians wrestled with different concepts of Christology, key questions became battlegrounds for future ideas about orthodoxy:

1. Was Jesus always fully human?
2. Was Jesus a human who became divine upon his death?
3. Was Jesus a divine being who took on the appearance of humanity?
4. Was Jesus some kind of ghostly spirit/shade who was never human?

• Stringent concepts of orthodoxy – right thinking – resulted in violence against alternative religions (paganism) and oppression of alternative Christianities (Gnostics).
• When Emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire, the suppression of and violence against alternative religions and Christian faiths accelerated with imperial support. Christian leaders now had military support to enforce their control.
• In the 5th-6th centuries CE, Christian leaders abolished non-religious education, contributing to the decline of Roman civilization and the onslaught of the “Dark Ages”. You can’t repair what you no longer have the knowledge to build. This process of cultural control established Christianity as a religion of “right-belief”, in which any actions were permissible in support of uniformity.
• The Early Middle Ages were a time of frequent deviations from the Roman norm, which required persecution and elimination of the heretics: Lombards, Cathars, etc. This led to a variety of inquisitions, which involved significant efforts to suppress heresies, as well as suppressing minority populations (such as Jews and women).
• Finally, Martin Luther established an alternative that survived Roman Catholic hegemony, but Lutheranism was primarily a belief-oriented diversion. Most of the other denominations and cults that split off during this period were also belief-centric, although some (Pietists) also attempted to return to what they thought of as a “primitive Christianity”.
• Some Christian denominations went strongly down a path that could be characterized as deviant according to modern norms of psychology. Calvinism, and all subsequent forms of it, emphasized beliefs and practices that today might be considered as sociopathic – mean-spirited, authoritarian to a disturbing degree, and horribly un-Christian in attitude.
• Christian revivals in the US increasingly took on an emotional context – what developed into Evangelical Christianity. Despite the hyper-emotionalism of tent meetings, these denominations and groups were still authoritarian and controlling. In slave-states, a belief that slavery was appropriate and good became local dogma.
• People like John Nelson Darby further developed evangelical versions of into sects that today would be identified as Fundamentalists, Reconstructionists or even New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). These groups espouse an ideology that includes a moral imperative to make the USA into a religious country, even if the methods of accomplishing this involve subterfuge, dishonesty, and political machinations. Given the teachings of Jesus as written in the Gospels, much of the activities and many of the beliefs of these groups would have to be considered completely un-Christian, if not outright blasphemous. Take for example Texas Senator Ted Cruz, whose father is an NAR-affiliated preacher. Cruz. If you will remember, was the architect of the sequester event that paralyzed the federal government some years ago, and who continues to try to spike the federal government. Why? Because the NAR seeks to destabilize the federal government in an effort to open up a window of opportunity for the creation of a government rooted in biblical principles – on other words, a religious tyranny in opposition to the current US Constitution.