Re: [tied] Re: Post-Gothic "Getic" fantasies: the source(s)

From: george knysh
Message: 13174
Date: 2002-04-10

--- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > "Must"? Another interpretation is that he meant
> that
> > > whenever a
> > > learned man of the past mentioned both
> ethnonyms,
> > > that eruditus
> > > asserted that they designated the same people?
> > >
> > > Torsten
> >
> > *******GK:(new) That won't work either Torsten. In
> the
> > first place I know of no interpreter of Jerome who
> > understood his meaning as you do. in the second
> place,
> > even if we were to allow this idiosyncratic
> stretch
> > for the context of "all" we would be faced with
> > insuperable difficulties. Pliny and Strabo were
> > certainly both "learned men". They both mentioned
> > Goths and Getae. They did not identify them.
> Sorry,
> > but we're looking at another dead horse
> here.******
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> Let me see if I understand you. Jerome says all
> learned men in the
> past claimed that Getae = Goths. But this is not the
> case since Pliny
> and Strabo were both learned men and did not clain
> that. Therefore
> Jerome told an untruth. And therefore he can't be
> trusted and
> therefore Getae were not Goths. Correct?
>
> Torsten

******GK (new): Here is the quote from Jerome again:
"But in fact all learned men in the past had certainly
been accustomed to calling the Goths Getae rather than
Gog and Magog"... "The Goths" are the Goths of his
time, some of whom resided south of the Danube, on
Roman Imperial territory, and some of whom resided
north of the Danube in the barbaricum loosely
controlled by the Huns at the time Jerome was writing
this (393 AD). This is precisely the area where "in
the past" one finds the Getae (both sides of the
Danube). Jerome simply assumes them to be one and the
same. To the extent that science means anything at all
we know better of course. Jerome, for his part, has no
evidence that "all" or even "some" of his learned
predecessors had ever said "You can call the Goths
Getae" or "you can call the Getae Goths", "they are
one and the same". But he does have a good deal of
evidence indicating that "all" of his learned sources
(2nd c. and older) who spoke of the populations on
both sides of the Lower Danube called them "Getae".
And so he uses this as an argument against Ambrose,
who called the Goths of his time "Gog and Magog". This
of course, does not mean that the Goths of Jerome's
time were the old Getae, now renamed Goths (for some
reason). It only means that Jerome incorrectly
believed them to be the same. He was the first
documented writer to hold such a belief, but clearly
not the last (:=)))*****
>
>
>


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