Tag: greek

1,700-Year-Old Jewish Inscriptions Unearthed in Galilee

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“The wealth of inscriptions from the cemeteries attests to the strong Jewish presence and the city’s social elite in the Late Roman period,” says archaeologist.

CHR Comment: The inscriptions illustrate the ongoing use of Aramaic alongside Greek during the era of the late Roman Empire, about the time that Christianity became a recognized religion under Constantine. The latest tomb inscriptions found at Tzipori use the term “rabbi,” though archaeologists are still discussing just what that term means in this era. Tzipori is ancient Sepphoris, a Hellenized city in Galilee near Nazareth.

Source: 1,700-year-old inscriptions linked to ‘rabbis’ unearthed in Galilee – Israel News – Jerusalem Post

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How Islamic Scientists Read Up on Science

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National Geographic recently posted an article by Book Talk editor, Simon Worrall. I was struck by this paragraph:

There is a tendency on the part of some Muslim scholars to exaggerate the accomplishments of Islamic science. And they don’t need to be exaggerated. During the golden age of Islamic science, which ended somewhere between A.D. 1100 and 1200, Muslim scientists were way ahead of their contemporaries in Christian Europe.

Although it is true that the Muslim scientists were ahead of the Christian Europeans at this point, the article might have mentioned how Muslim tribesmen learned scientific method. They read Arabic translations of scientific works, which were translated by Syriac Christians from the pagan, ancient Greeks. So ironically, Christians were responsible for those medieval Arabs knowing their scientific texts, which had been lost to the Christians in Europe (though not likely lost to the Christians in Byzantium).

Medieval