Re: Sin once more

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "indravayu" <sonno3@...> wrote:

>
>
> > > You really don't get it, do you? The Lebor Gabala Erenn has
> > > been carefully studied by a number of scholars and they have
> > > determined that it is not an ancient text, but rather a
> > > medieval literary invention, contstructed from several
> > > different sources, including:
> > > native (and often contradictory) genealogies, some vestigial
> > > pagan Irish mythological material (filtered by Christian
> > > authors), Biblical genealogies, and early medieval pseudo-
> > > historical texts (which are wildly inaccurate and often
> > > fantastic in nature, thus the "pseudo-" tag).
> >
> > Did they remember to wear their pointy hats and all hold the stake
> > when they drove it in? Because if they didn't the evil theory will
> > rise again, unless they would come up with counterargument, which
> > is a risky business.
>
> I am sure they did. It's not like it was particularly hard work,
> since the several of the names found in the sons of Mil episode of
> the LGE are quite clearly drawn from Orosius' text.
>
> > > The sections of the LGE concerned with the
> > > migration from Spain of the Milesians was ultimately based on
> > > the wiritngs of the medieval Spanish author Orosius and Isidore.
> > >
> > > Let me quote Donnchadh Ó Corráin ("Creating The Past: The Early
> > > Irish Genealogical Tradition"):
> > > http://www.ucc.ie/chronicon/ocorr.htm
> > >
> > > "24. The earliest working out of the Isidorian schema
> >
> > What is the Isidorian schema?
>
> RTFA...paragraph 22: "The Irish adopted the Isidorian schema of the
> origins of the races of the descent of the European peoples from
> Japhet".

Sorry. I corrected that.
Now does the fact that they slapped on a Biblical prehistory to the
material they had invalidate that material? I don't get the argument.

> > > is to be found in the higher genealogical reaches of two
> > > historical poems on the Leinster dynasties, already referred
> > > to: (i) `Nuadu Necht ní dámair anfhlaith' and (ii) Énna,
> > > Labraid, lúad cáich'.
> > > These parts of the poems deal with the ascent of the
> > > Leinstermen from the common ancestor, to an ancestor of all the
> > > Irish (Míl of Spain) and thence to Japhet, Noah and Adam. While
> > > most of the fifty or so names in the line of ascent are common
> > > to both poems,
> >
> > That solves it. They must have copied each other, so it's wrong.
>
> Something tells me you don't really understand O' Corrain's
> argument - god forbid you should actually take the time to read and
> comprehend his article.

I did, but I don't comprehend the argument. See above.

> > > One of the nodal characters in this legend is Míl of Spain, a
> > > transparent literary invention (= Miles Hispaniae,
> > > `Soldier of Spain').
> >
> > Let's call that that 'an attempt at an etymology' instead.
>
> Still, it is a literary invention and not genuine history.

No, an attempt is an attempt and not the final truth. Anything based
on that is attempt too.

> > > It was believed that the Irish discovered Ireland from
> > > Brigantia in Spain. As Rolf Baumgarten has recently shown, the
> > > source of this legend is a reading of Orosius (I ii 71 and 80)
> > > in the light of Isidore (Etymologiae XIV vi 6)."

Yes, that's what the article says.

> > Has Rolf Baumgarten also shown that there couldn't have been an
> > oral tradition behind this coincidence?
>
> Names found in the LGE account, such as Scene and Bregon are quite
> clearly drawn from written sources (Orosius' Scena and Brigantia)
> and are were not passed down orally from ancient times (otherwise,
> they would have been subject to Irish sound laws – Brigantia, for
> instance, would have become Brigte). In the case of Scena, this is
> a corrupt name in Orosius' text – he (or his copyists) should have
> written Sena (now the river Shannon). The medieval Irishmen who
> borrowed this name from Orosius had no idea that he was referring
> to the Shannon, thus they invented a new character, Scene. The
> LGE's Eber is suspiciously similar to Latin (H)iberia, as well –
> Isidore suggested that the name Hibernia was derived from Hiberia.

Those eponymous founder heroes are always discounted, and for good
reason. That's no reason to discard the rest of the material.

> On and by the way, Orosius' Brigantian lighthouse (oriented towards
> Britain) – which turns up as Bregon's tower in the Irish sources
> (from which the Milesians originally spied Ireland)– it was likely
> built by the Romans in the 2nd century AD – so there goes the
> notion that this aspect of the story is some sort of pre-Iron Age
> folk memory. Look up the "Tower of Hercules".

True too.

> See Oliver Szerwiniack's article "D'Orose au Lebor Gabála Érenn: les
> gloses du manuscrit Reg. Lat. 1650" [In Études Celtiques 31 (1995)
> pp. 205-217] fort a discussion of some early medieval, HIberno-Latin
> glosses on Orosius which display for us signs of the process of
> transmission from his and Isidore's work (which were rather popular
> among the medieval Irish) to what ultimately became the LGE.

But the fact the later redactors have compared sources and adjusted
them doesn't prove the sources are false. Suppose one found Napoleon's
family name given as 'Buonaparte' instead of 'Bonaparte' in a
contemporary French journal. Would we conclude that this showed it
was all copied from the 'Journal du Corse' and that Napoleon never
existed?


Also genetics show there *is* a connection.
Look at the maps I uploaded to the file section from Oppenheimer's The
Origins of the British, those that show the marker R1b (called
'Ruisko' by Oppenheimer). How do you explain that?



Torsten