Ancient History Set 3

Lesson 15: Early Egypt
Lesson 16: More about Egypt

Lesson 16: Harappa

Ancient Art Recognition #1


UNIT THREE: Patriarchs

Chapter 2: Father in Faith

Abraham
Readings on Abraham
Readings on Abraham #2
World of the Patriarchs

chapter 4 -- overviedw

read Promised Land pages 81-95

pages 81-top of 85

Jericho
Joshua

pages 85 -- 88
Saul
David

pages 89-92

David
Solomon

pages 93-95

divided Israel

Read Bible History to consolidate this part

chapter 3 -- OVerview

Fire in Sinai --- read pages 59-74

read pages 59- mid-62

Sinai
I AM
unlikeness to other religions
how the teachings came down -- oral/written
history of Israel -- OT

pages 62 - 65

Ramses
Moses
Plagues
First Passover -- eldest son
(watch 10 commandments?)

mid-65 - top of 69

Red Sea
Wilderness
Sinai
decalogue
wandering for 38 years

Chapter 2 -- Overview

Father in Faith -- pages 38 - 50 read through the whole thing

read pages 38- mid-40

Ur -- day of splendor
moon-god cult
ziggurats -- were temples
2029 -2006 BC -- King Ibbi-Sin
wall
Elamites sack -- cuneiform lament
(study it)
1830 BC -- Warad-Sin
city of Ur --> town --> village
nomads came to Haran
Terah -- father of Abram -- Abram's wife Sarai
Ebla -- listed same cities as Bible does -- Sodom, Gomorrah, etc
Here the Bible walks on to the historical stage

page 40 - 43

Differences between the One God and the typical gods
Abram's call -- goes to Egypt
Abram -- Bethel

pages 43-mid 45

Melchizedek
bread and wine -- type of Mass
covenant with God
Sodom and Gomorrah, Dead Sea
"nature miracles"
Isaac -- sacrifice

mid-45 to mid 48

Isaac
Jacob and Esau
resting with God
purging of idols
read Genesis

mid -48

story of Akhnaten -- read about him somewhere else

Chapter 1 -- Overview

pages 16-18

fear of death as unnatural
no other answer besides monotheism -- materialism, reincarnation, etc
(talk about definitions for these things)
read Genesis
start Shamon book

Read the whole Darkling Plain -- pages 21-33

Discuss first impressions

read pp 21 to top of 24

Stone Age -- hunters
Flood --> Mesopotamia
Deserts
Neolithic Revolution -- agriculture
Civlization's primary attributes
3 things about cities -- temples, forts, markets?

pages 24 - mid 26

Jericho -- first city -- 8000 BC
Divine planning -- locus point
challenge of rapid change vs need for preserving essentials
Palestine a hub -- conquered many times
Promised Land
Jericho -- a shrine

Founding of Christendom

Index of Chapters:

Introduction

Prologue - -In the Beginning

1. A Darkling Plain
2. Father in Faith
3. Fire on Sinai
4. The Promised Land
5. The Divided Kingdom
6. The Holy City
7. The Quest and the Chosen
8. Two Hopes
9. The March Across the World
10. The Fortitude of Rome
11. Rome Ascendant, the Temple Regained
12. Rome and Caesar
13. The Winning of the Roman Peace
14. The Incarnation of the Lord
15. God in Galilee
16. "I am the Resurrection and the Life"
17. He Chose Twelve -- and Paul
18. The Seed in the Earth
19. Blood of the Martyrs
20. Triumph of the Cross

Bibliography And Index

Origin

In the Beginning has a distinction between "beginnings" and "origin" that is interesting to think about though perhaps too advanced for a high schooler.

Thomas did not agree with Avicenna that the world is eternal, but he accepted that the fundamental sense of creation is that all existing things depend upon God as cause. Furthermore, he recognized this dependence as ongoing. Creation is not some distant event. If God were not causing all that is to exist, as it exists, there would be absolutely nothing. The expression “creation out-of-nothing” does not mean, first of all, “after nothing.” Rather, it means that in creating God does not use anything; creation is sheer exercise of divine omnipotence.

Thomas clearly saw the difference between the origin and the beginning of the universe. The universe has its origin in God. A temporal beginning concerns the kind of universe God creates. Thomas thought that an eternal universe would still be created. Although Thomas believed the universe had a temporal beginning, he advised against using scientific arguments to prove such a beginning. He always warned against using bad arguments in defence of beliefs.

If he knew contemporary cosmological theories that reject the need for a Creator by seeking to explain the world scientifically or to deny a Big Bang, Thomas would say such an analysis fails on two counts: 1) to deny a beginning is not to deny creation – whatever kind of universe (or multiverse) there is it would still require a cause; 2) speculations about a universe without a beginning (or with a beginning, for that matter) cannot be more than speculations, since, in principle, science cannot know whether there is a beginning. Cosmological theories can neither confirm nor deny creation. To the extent that creation can be grasped by reason, it is through metaphysics, not the natural sciences.

Prologue: In the Beginning -- The Fall

Adam and Eve were created with particular gifts.

The chief gift bestowed on Adam and Eve by God was sanctifying grace, which made them children of God and gave them the right to heaven......The other gifts bestowed on Adam and Eve by God were happiness in the Garden of Paradise, great knowledge, control of the passions by reason, and freedom from suffering and death.

After the Fall, our intellect was darkened; our control over our passions was weakened; and we were no longer free from suffering and death. We are more liable to error, more likely to be led astray by temporal things, and we have inherited an inclination to sin. We were blind, in pain, and subject to the appalling indignity of eventual death.

Now Dr Carroll moves to what might be called the historical perspective. It's not necessary to assent to the distilled doctrine of the Baltimore Catechism in order to see empirically that man, historically, is haunted by death, rather literally. A dog isn't, for instance.

"The first tangible proof of the existence of true man on earth is to be found in the fact that the earliest true men buried their dead. To all animals death is a part of nature -- sometimes to be mourned, as a mother beast will mourn her dead young, but never frightening or uncanny, because for an animal death is the end. But to all men -- except those of our modern age most insulated from reality by sophisticated rationalization -- deaht is a ghastly mystery, a sign of fear..... We think it natural that most men, especially primitive men, should be afraid of ghosts. But what in the world is natural about it? .... We fear the dead because in the depths of our being we feel that they ought not to be dead and might not stay dead; because they remind us of what we would much rather forgot. That some day we will be as they, and because we cannot understand why this should be, and how it will be. ...

The victory of our "last enemy" is assured."

The perceived uncanniness and unnaturalness of death, along with its utter inevitability, is something that he brings up again in the context of some of the ancient civilizations.

“This is an appalling horror; a stinking indignity.”“Christianity does not simply affirm or simply deny the horror of death: it tells me something quite new about it.”

God in the Dock

Freud, for example, wrote: "As an unbelieving fatalist, I can only sink into a state of resignation when faced with the horror of death." He became "obsessed with death, extraordinarily fearful and superstitious about it." Nicholi writes:

"Freud believed that people accepted the religious worldview because of their fear of death and their wish for permanence. Yet 'the terrors of eternal nothingness' preoccupied Freud more than most people--and he remained an unbeliever, resigned to the harsh reality of his worldview."

Lewis, on the other hand, faced his own death with amazingly good humor, writing: "There is nothing discreditable in dying: I've known the most respectable people to do it!" and (in a more serious vein) "If we really believe what we say we believe--if we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is 'a wandering to find home,' why should we not look forward to the arrival?"

“Nothing will reconcile us to the unnaturalness of death. We know that we were not made for it; we know how it crept into our destiny as an intruder; and we know Who has defeated it.”

"In the Beginning"

I'm on to the Prologue in Warren Carroll's book Founding of Christendom. It is subtitled "In the Beginning" and it basically sums up Creation and the Fall. This is a "connection chapter" -- it is short, but it brings in not just history but theology and natural sciences, and even connects to literature and philosophy in the sense that some Big Questions are raised. These are all inevitably related whenever you talk about how things started. How could they not be?

First, what is "history"? When did it begin?

The word comes from a Greek word meaning inquiry or knowledge acquired by investigation. That's why science could be called "Natural History" in the Renaissance, and why you get terms like "case history" or "medical history". It is related to the word "story" and this is because history is in many ways intrinsically narrative. Even in the dryest exposition of economic trends or population charting, the chronological and narrative basis of the study is still implicit. (This is my thinking, not Dr Carroll's, so if it sounds stupid it's not his fault).

Dr Carroll says history, broadly speaking, began with the appearance of the first human beings on earth. That is why he starts there, though of course there are no written testimonies of those early times. Most historians make a distinction between "history" and "prehistory" -- in this use of the words, history began with the first written records. The Book of Genesis in the Bible goes into detail about Creation, but of course was written much, much later. It's a secondary account insofar as it was written by human agency (Yikes, I will not be able to help tripping over theology everywhere in this!)

Since most creation stories of the time were wild speculation, Genesis was written at least in part to consolidate the very different Hebrew understanding of God and the First Things. A book called Genesis: The Book of Origins by Father Albert Shamon goes into more detail about this aspect of the book. Cardinal Ratzinger in a transcription of a homiletic series published with the title of In the Beginning discusses the Catholic understanding of some of the main issues about the earliest times. I will not be able to do that aspect justice in this post.

There's a PDF article "Reading Genesis with Cardinal Ratzinger" by Fr Austriaco and to hone critical skills you could read this "Rebutal" (sic) by the increasingly quirky R Sungenis. Sungenis does include a LOT of documentation in his article which could be valuable for a research project though I think his arguments skirt the real issue. I doubt if I will go much into this with a 14 year old but it would probably be fun with an older or very motivated student. I probably will have him read at least some of the Fr Shamon book.

For additional resources, Humani Generis is a pivotal encyclical which is quoted in this chapter, and is recommended reading by Mother of Divine Grace for 10th graders. I think I will have my student read this towards the end of his science year. Hedge School has a resource about Creation from a non-young-Earth perspective (see sidebar).

Dr Carroll quotes Genesis 1:1-4 and John 1:1-5 which both discuss the beginning of things. Revelation 1 also deals with the big picture of what the cosmos is about.

"The earth came out of the starry heavens, and out of the earth came man. On both points the Book of Genesis and today's scientific theories agree. .... but in the last analysis, questions of geologic time and organic evolution, though fascinating, are not of primary importance to the Christian."

Here is where he quotes Humani Generis. There is also this collection of Church Fathers on the topic of Creation and Genesis. Father Shamon says:

Faith says, "God created the heavens and the earth." It does not say HOW. Let science discover that. Faith says, "God is a God of order, not chaos." Let science confirm this by discovering the laws and order that are built into the physical universe."

This is a very plain way of putting it. Here's a summary of the essential doctrine about Adam, Eve and Evolution. Basically, each human soul is a special creation, made in God's likeness, no matter how the evolutionary descent thing was worked.

There are lots of great books about the relationship between science and religion -- Father Jaki's Savior of Science is one that I've read, but it's not an easy read, and another is The Mind of the Universe, a wonderful book but steep, about the boundary questions which link science and theology, which I've started but not finished. The Language of God, by Francis Collins, is clear enough for a high schooler to read and is of interest because the author is an eminent geneticist, an evangelical Christian AND a former homeschooler (back in the 50's!). If I was going into a lot of depth on the topic I would have the student read this one -- Collins has a pleasant writing voice and the book woke my up till then dormant interest in DNA -- I went on to read several more books on the subject through the years.

I'll stop now! That covers Creation, the beginning of natural science, and the beginning of human history. So though this seems long, it did cover a LOT of ground all things considered!

Oh, one more resource -- a grown son of a longtime internet acquaintance, who runs a science blog called The Deeps of Time, recently started this Year's Tour of Biology, which I enjoy reading too.

More on Method

Ancient History in one year -- but continue to study Greek and Roman classics after that, as literary works.

Methods

Context -- broader (backdrop) -- erudition
Link to last lesson -- review or transition
Question or lead-in -- what's the importance of the next thing

Word/Lectio

Present material
Present method (what's to be done)

Review/Assessment

Think of what would help someone understand the passage -- what I think is most important to carry away -- style, theme, historical content??

Have a running list of key points to reinforce occasionally -- like Christendom

Week 1

Read Introduction pages 9- top of 11. Four causes -- who, what, how, why -- efficient, material, formal, final. Answer "who" (author) and "what" (outline of scope). Look at ABC's Christian Culture timeline. .... know the general outline. Know how Christendom is defined.

Read pages 11-13 "how" "why" -- what's the purpose, how the author intends to carry it out. What does he emphasize? What does he leave out through limitations or because he considers it less important?

Learn about the course layout and expectations. Supplementary literature, knowledge and skills emphasized in course. Read a handout on primary sources. (I can write out a syllabus that can be flexed as things go through).

Study Skills Tips (optional). Memory, Research, Thinking (Logic, cause-effect, compare/contrast). see Jensen's and here.

Week 2

Prologue: In the Beginning

Read Genesis 1 (questions)
Scripture Study for Catholics
Agape Bible Study

Read pages 14-16

Read Genesis 2-3

Read pages 16-18


Chapter 3 -- Darkling Plain

Pages 21-23 The Flood
read Genesis account

pages 23-26 -- Neolithic REvolution
Jericho, Palestine as center of Earth

pages 26-30 Eridu -- Ur
Sumer -- Gilgamesh
read some sections of Gilgamesh
despair and death

pages 30-33
Egypt, monotheism

Harappa

End of Unit One

Unit Two

Chapter 2 -- Father in Faith

pages 38-40 Ur

pages 40-44 Sodom and Gomorrah

pages 44-45 Abraham

pages 45-46 Jacob

pages 47-50 Egypt -- Joseph

map of ancient world

Chapter Three -- Fire on Sinai

pages 59-63 Egypt

pages 63-67 Exodus

pages 67-72 Decalogue

pages 72-74 Wandering

Notes

Outline of Method

• Planning the Unit
• What You Already Know
• Vocabulary
• Aims for the Unit
• Assignment/Activity Ideas
• Outline of Contents (for preview, review, and organization)
• Actual content

General Lesson Plan

• Review what's already known
• Preview -- questions, context, importance
• Outline
• Vocabulary
• To Do
• Assessment

Unit 1 -- Introducing the Course

Introduction, Prologue, Darkling Plain

Unit 2 -- Early Civilization

chapters 2-4

Unit 3 -- Kings and Prophets

chapters 5-7

Unit 4 -- Greece

chapters 8-9

Unit 5 -- Rome

chapters 10-12

Midterm

Unit 6 -- Incarnation

chapters 13-14

Unit 7 -- Kingdom

chapters 15-17

Unit 8 -- Martyrs

chapters 18-19

Unit 9 -- In This Sign

chapter 20

Notes:

possibly go only up to Unit 7