Science in Antiquity: Part 7

 

Many modern people have a very limited view of history. They can only see or think about five or ten years into the past. They see history as boring and they think of the ancients as ignorant and backward. This was actually not true. What the ancients lacked was the modern accumulation of facts. An ancient Israelite would have been very puzzled and culture-shocked to have been dumped into the modern world, but he or she could have eventually learned to drive a car or to cook on a stove or to use a cellphone.

The ancients were just as intelligent as we are but the accumulation of scientific facts had not yet reached a critical point. Human knowledge took centuries to double, fact by fact. As knowledge accumulated, the rate of accumulation began to speed up. Every answer exposes a new question. Buckminster Fuller spoke of the Knowledge Doubling Curve which was relatively flat for centuries, then began a slow climb, and then went into an explosive upward thrust.

By the end of the 19^th Century, knowledge was doubling once per century. By about 1945, the rate of doubling was about every 25 years. By 1982, the rate was about every 12-13 months. By 2020, the doubling was occurring about every 12 hours. With at least 50,000,000,000 devices now operating and with the rise of artificial intelligence, the rate may now be in minutes.

 

387-312 BC/BCE: Life of the astronomer, Heraclides of Pontus. Among his statements; Venus and Mercury revolve around the sun; the Earth rotates on its axis once per day.

388 BC/BCE: Plato teaches that the sun, moon, and the planets move in perfect circlers around the Earth.

408 -355 BC/BCE: Eudoxus, a Greek astronomer and mathematician, explains the movements of the planets and calculates that the solar year is six hours longer than the stated 365 days.

426 BC/BCE: Thucydides correctly explains the cause of tsunamis.

428 BC/BCE: Death of Anaxogoras, a Greek philosopher whose students included Socrates, Pericles, and Euripides. He taught that matter is composed of tiny particles and that the heavenly bodies are large stones thrown from the Earth.

Book Comment: The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

F. F. Bruce was one of the pre-eminent New Testament scholars of the Twentieth Century.  He insisted that the New Testament documents are historically accurate and are better attested than universally accepted classical writings.  An emphasis of his teaching was that Christianity has its roots in history.  Though some religions (such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism) can stand independently of their actual historicity, Christianity is firmly grounded in provable dates and facts.  No credible scholar now insists that Jesus did not exist.

Dr. Bruce said,  “The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no-one dreams of questioning.  And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt.”

Here is some evidence:

There are only two known copies of Lucretius’ works.  The earliest copy comes from 1100 years after the originals were written.

There are only seven known copies of Plato’s works.  The earliest copy comes from 1200 years after the originals were written.

There are only seven known copies of Aristophanes’s works.  The earliest copy comes from 1200 years after the originals were written.

There are only eight known copies of Herodotus’ works.  The earliest copy comes from 1300 years after the originals were written.

There are only forty-nine known copies of Aristotle’s works.  The earliest copy comes from 1400 years after the originals were written.

There are only six hundred and forty three known copies of Homer’s works.  The earliest copy comes from 500 years after the originals were written.

There are only one hundred and ninety-three known copies of Sophocles’ works.  The earliest copy comes from 1400 years after the originals were written.

There are 5686 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.  The earliest dates to about 100 years after the originals were written.  There are over 25,000 partial documents.  The John Rylands Fragment, containing John 18: 31-33, dates from about twenty-nine to thirty-five years after the original was written. 

Luke says he recorded what was “handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses…” (Luke 1:2.)