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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Mr Brown's review doesn't seem to have had a negative effect judging by the book's sales figures.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Stukeley's been in the news again, at least in the Guardian's Saturday review. Seems he was completely taken in by an apparently medieval manuscript forged by Charles Julius Bertram, an English teacher at Copenhagen's Royal Marine Academy.
This Bertram used pseudo-Latin names which, to be fair to Stukeley, fooled everyone for the next hundred years plus. It may be that Stukeley's endorsement is the main reason for the hoax's success since the manuscript contained several fairly egregious errors, e.g. place names, that contradicted on the ground observations. As the Wiki entry for Bertram points out
| No actual manuscript was ever seen by anyone except Charles Bertram. The only evidence of it was produced by Bertram, who always provided a credible reason why the actual document could not be made available, and who was always willing to provide a copy to satisfy each new request for information. |
Interestingly one of the fake names that has stuck is the Penines which the alleged author of the MS had dubbed 'the Penine Alps'. Bertram may have got the idea from William Camden, the sixteenth-century antiquarian and author of Britannia, a survey of the British Isles, who compared Britain's still-unnamed range to Italy's Apennines.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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In THOBR I pointed out that the best place to discover a new mammal would be in the basement of the Natural History Museum. How wrong I was. It was The Smithsonian.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23701150
I suppose this means a knighthood for me. What a bore.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Quite a nice review posted on Amazon yesterday
-----------------------------------
This acidic barb at mainstream academia is not without great merit. Using Ockhams Razor as its main tool, MJ Harper points out, with great venom, the flaws with received wisdom in the mainstream view on the origins of the English language.
The basic premise is 'what is is what was unless proven otherwise'.
I did like the commonsense approach to understanding the subject.
Personally I did not mind its corrosive tone, nor its backfire attempt at humour.
There are some flaws in his argument, but overall shows a great understanding of the subject matter.
The biggest failure is that there is no reference section. If you are going to launch an attack against academia, then you really need to support your POV. I happened to know many of the references, hence the 4 stars, but otherwise, it would have been 3 at best.
Still, a worthy read.
--------------------------------------
from Nicholas W. Le Huquet, a Jersey name but I don't expect that is significant.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The reviews come in thick and fast
.... but it'd take some extremely hard evidence for me to accept Francis Pryor's "nope, no migrations at all, not of anyone, not ever" point of view (and even Pryor has the decency to skate very lightly over the subject of language when it comes to the origins of English).
I've tried reading Harper's "The History of Britain Revealed" which also looks at the issue of a Germanic 'british' language but just can't get on with it, or rather him. Smug, self satisfied little ....man. |
Five foot eleven and threequarters in my socks!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Finally I've cracked India. From the Afternoon Dispatch and Courier:
In schools this subject is jokingly called 'istri'...the 'istrification' of inconvenient wrinkles on the time-canvas of culture, politics and social agendas by the powers that be. As in George Orwell's '1984', we get new history periodically. But India is not alone in this. The book that describes best how history is re-written and re-interpreted is 'The Secret History of the English Language' by MJ Harper. The entire spectrum of time is divided into history and pre-history. Pre-history comes with caveats and the usual anticipatory bail -- we don't have all the records; it is ancient and what is there is difficult to translate etc. If gods are involved, then the 'how dare you question my God' strategy is sufficient. Like istri, another subject, in Tamilian households, was 'shakadaypee' -- not difficult to guess which one. It means 'gutter-shit'. Since history is a function of geography (and meteorology) no wonder so much muck is entering it.
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http://www.afternoondc.in/letters/history-or-istri/article_129966
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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BIG market if you cracked it.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Well, it's one bloke writing a letter to an obscure Tamil English-language paper but that's how Gandhi started. I expect.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Nice to see I'm considered an authority among Biblical scholars:
We assume that our scholars and leaders examine such assumptions carefully and reject ones that are unjustified, but that is not the case. On the contrary, what M.J. Harper says about historians holds true for Biblical scholars, as well: '(historians) aren't asked to consider the evidence for the paradigm assumptions of their subject; they are taught the paradigms in the first five minutes -- or better still are assumed to know them when they arrive.'4
These paradigms are absorbed without question in seminary; as Harper correctly says, 'If that version is taught formally to you at school by authority figures, then repeated to you as an undergraduate by even more highly regarded authority figures, and all your colleagues agree that it's more or less 'self-evidently true ' you tend pretty much to go along with things.' So the liberal paradigm assumptions are passed on from teacher to student, who in turn becomes the new teacher passing it on to new students. And all the while the credibility of the NT is diminished.
We assume that when evangelical apologists and scholars investigate a matter and make pronouncements upon it they carefully weigh all available evidence and think it through carefully, but it is exceedingly rare that this is done. What actually happens is the apologist opens a book or two to see what the party line is on the matter under question and then he passes on this party line with little if any critical filtering, blissfully unaware of the quintessential role that may have been played by liberal paradigm assumptions in formulating that party line.
The word of God deserves better from us. Serious apologetics requires that we not simply trust what we read in books or hear from professors and pass it on; we must investigate matters carefully and verify everything, in order to make sure that what we teach is correct. Those who take on the mantle of Bible teacher or apologist or Bible scholar must take very seriously such warnings as are given in James 3:1 ('My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.') and Job 42:7b ('My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right').
http://www.truthinmydays.com/a-call-for-serious-evangelical-apologetics-the-authenticity-of-john-753-811-as-a-case-study/ | |
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | Nice to see I'm considered an authority among Biblical scholars:
| Job 42:7b ('My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right'). |
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Friends? You've got friends? We'll have to deny you thrice before the heavy mob arrives. Nobody expects the Epistemological Inquisition.
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I have posted a reply to his Peterborough Chronicle musings.
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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I recently recommended THOBR to someone in an email, anyway they mentioned that they'd seen the following documentary about Romania that discusses similar things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PBdNU7xAcM&feature=youtu.be
[It's only the first 10 minutes or so that discusses languages - after that they're mainly just bigging up Romanian history.]
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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THORR?
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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I tried watching/reading the subtitles, and the henges looks good. But I gave up because it the subtitles were illegible. Maybe it's my carp internet connection? Can anyone translate?
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