Irving Finkel

Their words

I honestly believe that the people at this time were not stupid. They weren’t gorillas. They weren’t less advanced than we are. They were probably indistinguishable from what we are.

Their words

Because I think that the modern adherence to the electronic universe is disastrous for humans, and because it reduces the vitality of the human component. I think it’s restrictive in a way that people don’t realize until it’s too late.

Their words

But it has built within it, is the way I understand the game plays, a measurable quota of strategy. It’s a mix of probability and strategy.

Their words

Before the flood, the gods had not created death. So I think the noise was a reflex of the fact there were just too many animals, too many people, and they had to do something about it.

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I think it’s a literary construction out of the reality that people who did survive were on boats.

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But I do believe that the story in Mesopotamia owes its inception to a disastrous flood, but nothing global. Nothing that touched America or China or Birmingham.

Their words

And the authorities who were there prevented this by drawing up a kind of charter of their history, explaining things from the beginning of time up until now, how it happened and what happened, and it was all intentional. So that is, in my opinion, the driving force behind the Hebrew text.

Their words

So this was not only in the Epic of Gilgamesh, but it was also in the Book of Genesis. So what it meant was that it wasn’t… You couldn’t have two stories… It wasn’t two stories about the same thing. It was literary dependence.

Their words

It’s a kind of conception that’s not actually based on reality, that the individual’s response to religious stimuli fluctuates and is varied and is often a response to need.

Their words

But they didn’t believe in ghosts, they took them for granted. And they didn’t believe in the gods, they took them for granted. This is a different mechanism, because nobody here in the world today takes those things for granted, just the opposite.

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Because not having religion does not mean not having law or morality or sensitivity or consideration or love or any of those things. None of those things depends on religion, and those are the things which are important.

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I think the big mistake for mankind was the creation of monotheistic religions, because they brought evil into the world. Because if you believe in a monotheistic religion, that means I’m right and you’re wrong if you don’t.

Their words

Well, you know, the truth about translation is that you never really have a word in one language which precisely equates another. You never do.

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And if you translate, “He will,” in a literary text, “He might,” then the whole text is different. The whole text is different.

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So all you can ever do and ever, ever have been able to do is to say, “There’s a sign here that says that the queen could die,” meaning “could die,” not “will die.”

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And it was in no one’s interest whatsoever. Nobody would ever concede any interest in the idea of literacy for all.

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But they wouldn’t destroy the library because it was the giant brain from which the Assyrians ran a world empire, and it had all the knowledge in the world. They destroyed that? They spoke the same language, they had the same writing system. They’d have taken them all safely home, cart after cart after cart.

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So our view of it is skewed by the nature of the material, and sometimes the material is opulent and benevolent, but not always, and sometimes the people who work with skewed material don’t even realize how skewed it is.

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but it means that Assyriologists have the inbuilt idea that what we have is something like all there ever was, which is absurd.

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But actually, that argument is utterly, utterly fallacious, because the process of evolution is stymied left, right, and center by inertia. Inertia is nearly as strong as evolution, and this is something that the people who talk about progress and ideas have no idea about.

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And it’s obvious, it’s obvious that they had writing on a perishable material. They can’t just have had inscribed stone seals, and many parts of India today write on palm leaf.

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Well, that seal from Gobekli Tepe is a raindrop from which I infer writing, and it’s perfectly possible they all wrote on flat leaves.

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And my hunch is that the archaeological evidence that we have on this score is ultimately misleading, because I think this: that probably for a very, very long time before the Sumerians, people in the world, the world of what we call the Middle East, were in contact.

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And once they had the idea that you could write sounds with pictures, that’s the crucial thing, that a picture of a foot not only meant foot but it meant the sound of the word for foot.