Truth Evolved I
Once upon a time there was opinion.
Then Thales invented truth, Plato promulgated it, and it traveled the length of the roman empire.
Some people believed that some abstract statements were true, independent of king, cathedral, clan, and counsel…independently discoverable, and universal.
First math, then physical relationships between things (string length and vibration), but truth was something we could all find.
That idea made it to Jerusalem before the beginning of the modern calendar.
And a Jew named Jesus found this idea in the air of Jerusalem. And that changed everything.
The old testament, the Jewish Torah, tells of a jealous god. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. It tells of a powerful god: Moses’s holy magic was stronger than the magic of the Egyptian sorcerers. Moloch, god of the Canaanites, was opposed, not dismissed.
The Jewish Talmud tells of religious arguments, in which one rabbi argues against another rabbi, where there are arguments, some stronger and more convincing, some weaker. But again, it talks little of Truth.
My claim: The great innovation of Jesus and the Christians was to apply the new-ish greek idea of Truth to the Jewish God.
no longer do we talk of Opposing Moloch in the new testament, but we say instead that there is no other god. The LORD alone is God. This is a shift. It’s a big shift. And the shift comes with the admixture of Greek Truth, and the Hebrew God.
Because it was truth, when Christians were tortured, they didn’t renounce their God, but continued to proclaim his Truth. It wasn’t a case of allegiance, or obedience. It was a question of whether 2+2=4. yes it does. No king or clan can say it doesn’t … and if they do THEY are the ones that are wrong.
Yesterday, I was talking with my 13yo about this, and he pointed out exactly how weird the early philosophers and other truth-believers were.
It takes a special kind of disagreeable to hear from lords, kings, or emperors, from dozens, hundreds or thousands of neighbors that you should accept our line…and then say: No. There is a truth, and no number of people can dissuade me from accepting it.
Socrates died that way. So did Jesus and many of the early Christians. Truth first. And dying because truth was a new thing, when the whole world wanted obedience, conformity.
First there was mathematical + physical truth.
Then there was divine truth.
And it shaped almost everything about Europe for at least the next 1500 years.