Dear Friends, While I believe that cultural traits can and often are diffused from one cultural centre to impact other cultures, I find excessive reliance on diffusionism suspect. It is as if cultures can not develop in their own right without external assistance from superior civilizations. While Socrates may have learned wisdom from Jewish prophets, he had to be receptive to such learning. In other words a seed will not grow into a healthy tree unless the soil is fertile.
Occasionally I feel those who focus on the Jewish, Greek and Greco/Roman influence on western civilization are neglecting the Phoenicians. From what I recall the Phoenicians were great travellers, merchants, colonizers and their quazi empire stretched all the way from Canaan, across the Mediterranean to North Africa and even to Great Britain. Of course, it was a mercantile empire rather than a conquering one. Nevertheless, the Greeks adopted their alphabet , Solomon was said to have been anointed king By Zadok a pagan Phoenician priest and a number of the Psalms apparently were adopted from Ugaritic sources. Thus it seems to me that they had quite an influence on the Greeks and the Israelis. Tyre survived until Alexander the Great besieged & conquered it and IMO predated the arrival of the children of Israel ( Herodotus claimed its founding was around 2750) The Phoenicians could provide a link between Classical Greece & Israel. I wonder if any of the ancient histories referred to by Abdu'l-baha could have been Phoenician in origin? One last request, my eldest daughter has challenged me to come up with a good argument against re-incarnation. While I did refer to Abdul-Baha's eminently sensible answer in Some Answered Questions, this did not satisfy her. So, maybe you could supply me with some 'logically coherent' arguments regarding the fallacy of re-incarnation. Thank you, Elainna ---------- You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Baha'i Studies is available through the following: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://list.jccc.net/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=bahai-st news://list.jccc.net/bahai-st http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist (public) http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] (public)
