Why, 500 years ago, did Erasmus predict a Golden Age of Knowledge, Science and Technology?

In 1934 Stefan Zweig in a biography said Erasmus represented the supranational ideal He used the term ‘supranational‘ many times throughout the book. What did he mean?

Robert Schuman declared on 9 May 1950 that peace could be built in Europe based on the same supranational principle. It brought an end to 2000 years of Western Europe’s internal wars.

Look back over the last 500 years since the great work of Erasmus in 1516 in publishing the New Testament and exposing the fraud of priests and the Vulgate version of the NT. What do we see? We witness a world changed from top to bottom. Science and technology are the great dominant forces in society. That is based on the axiom of a Creator God who brought laws of physics and mathematics. That central concept did not come from pagan superstitions of Rome and Greece. We owe much of our comfort and prosperity and the fecundity of earth’s population to science and technology. So it would seem.

The elements, the materials and the means to assemble the proponent parts of inventions existed throughout the history of mankind. Are we more intelligent today? Probably not, probably the reverse. Many of our everyday books on mathematics, philosophy, and politics originated one, two three millennia ago. How many people today could write from first principles a book on the geometry of conics or work out how to predict eclipses like the ancient Babylonians did?

Why is it then that only our last half-millennium was able to put the various pieces of these many different jig-saw pieces together to create a jet plane, satellite technology or a probe to the limits of the solar system and beyond? What sparked our scientific and technological revolution from around 1500? Up till then society plodded along at the same speed as the Romans and ancient Greeks.

We have electricity – a force that propels much of our traffic. It sparks our internal combustion engines. It propels our electric cars, some of which now drive themselves without the aid of a human. Electricity activates tiny splodges of metal on boards made from the same silicon material as seaside sand. We call them our computers. It also makes our light for us to see at night. It powers our ability to communicate as 

I am doing right now. Artificial intelligence answers our verbal questions.

What lies behind this great change of society, this supranational innovation that changes the way we live and think? Was it the genius of one man? Do we owe all this to someone like the practical Michael Faraday or the mathematics of James Clerk Maxwell?

Here we are confounded by the facts of history. Our west European society was not the first to have electricity. We may have been the first to exploit it on such a wide scale.

Two thousand years ago, the Parthians, that great super-power that rivalled and defeated the Roman Empire many times, possessed the electric cell. The construction of it implied that they used the cells in series to create a stronger current of electricity. They may have used the electricity to electroplate base metals with gold or for other uses we know not of.

But they did not, as far as we know, create semi-conductors as the essential elements for digital computers.

Some intellectual impulse far greater than the life-and-death battles, that the Romans fought on the Euphrates, in Israel and Greece, ignited and motivated our western society. The Parthians had abundant wealth, wealth so great that it provoked the covetous Romans to try vainly to conquer them.

The Parthians also debunk a common assumption of today’s Erasmus programme of student exchanges. The presumption is that students will gain from cultural exchange. Science will progress because one set of students or scholars interact with another who approach a problem from a different cultural point of view.

Yet the Parthians had global reach in their cultural interactions. They traded with the Far East. It was probably the Parthians who in the first century introduced silk from the Far East to the Romans in their Far West.

Mixing cultures may have some positive results. What is more important is to let truth flourish and not smother it with myth and nonsense. That weakens truth. 

Despite all this cultural exchange neither Romans or Parthians had aeroplanes. The native brilliance of Parthian rulers established a rich and long-lived empire that confederated different tribes and competing religions for nearly 500 years from 250 BCE to 226 CE. Neither Romans or Parthians produced a scientific society like our own. Why? The Romans on the contrary may have destroyed the early roots of it.

One can perhaps excuse the Roman Empire for its lack of accomplishments in these areas. It was for most of its time involved in a bloody struggle to attain the peak of a military dictatorship. Once they had reached the emperorship, many of the emperors gave themselves over to sexual excess and the persecution of dissenters.

What of the great engineering accomplishments of the Roman Empire? These have been much vaunted by too many of the West’s historians who still live under the Stockholm symptoms of the Roman conquest of their lands. Many of the most extraordinary achievements of the so-called Roman Empire were in fact due to engineering skills that existed prior to Roman conquest. 

Take for instance, the building of a harbor at Israel’s Caesarea, from nothing. It became the largest port in the Roman world. Jewish engineers set huge limestone blocks 15m by 2.7m by 3m exactly in place, one exactly on top of the other, in 60m depth of seawater. Figure that out.

Then look at the great fort of Jerusalem, Antonia. How would you manoeuvre a polished limestone oblong block 13.6m x 3m x3.3m still in its foundations? How would today’s engineers, smooth it to perfection and place it exactly within millimeters? It weighs an estimated 570 tons.

 
Look high to the mountain fortress of Masada where a city and a palace with its Roman baths were created in what many would today say was barren, arid Dead Sea.

In the west Keltic Britons built hundreds of astronomical circles and ellipses to measure the calendar and examine the stars. Hero of Alexandria, Egypt, created a steam engine but neither he nor the next generation built a locomotive.

The Antikythera Mechanism was a fished out from a vessel sunk off the Greek island. It contained an amazing array of cogs and delicate settings. What was its purpose? It was a mechanical computer able to predict the movement of the planets, eclipses and dates based on the 19-year Metonic cycle that controls our seasons and religious festivals. This Metonic cycle is the basis for both Judaism and Nazarene Christian worship. At the center is that axiom that the sun, moon and planets were placed there as our time-keepers by the Creator who set the laws in motion.  

Our last 500 years has not just seen great engineering achievements and computers, it has seen together with the microscope the realization that human beings are composed of cells. Further, for the proper functioning of the human body, we call on 100 trillions of bacteria and other creatures. Each human is really a community of living organisms. Scientists have explored the material components of the cell such as its DNA and the part it plays in genetics.

Why did ancient societies not investigate these vital matters themselves? Were the microscope or the telescope too complex for a society that could create the Antikythera mechanism around 100 BCE? Not at all. Did the microscope require the intervention of a highly educated scientist and advanced optics?

A century-and-a-half after Erasmus, the Royal Society in London was amazed at the extraordinary sketches of microscopic creatures coming from a correspondent, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, in the Netherlands. From 1670s he wrote more than 500 letters to the Royal Society about his discoveries. This self-educated, independent-minded businessman invented a single-lens microscope that could render visible unicellular bacteria, sperm, blood, and minute water life.

The Royal Society was set up by convinced Christians who held that we live in a world of physical, mathematical and moral laws. They rejected the dogmatism of untested experts. They wanted experimental proof.

Today we know that the human body is composed of nearly 100 trillion cells, with more than half independent uni-cellular bacteria etc. This form of life makes up most of what we are, not our own flesh! With specimens attached to the spike he could examine the various types of life on this planet — some of these forms were eternal — and they did not need sex to reproduce.

Yet Leeuvenhoek, “the father of microbiology” created his single lens from a small sphere of glass. And glass has been around for 4 or 5000 years. It was a recognized profession and trade. Ancient Egyptians made multi-colour glass vessels that compete with the finest Venetian glassware. Where were the ancient Leeuvenhoeks in antiquity who looked through a tiny ball of glass? Why don’t we have an Egyptian name for the father of microbiology?

From around 1500 all areas of knowledge, science and technology flourished all across Europe. What was the motor? Did Erasmus know it in 1516? What was the secret that Erasmus spoke of, when in 1517 — 500 years ago, he wrote:

” At the present moment I could almost wish to be young again for no other reason but this — that I anticipate the near approach of a golden age.”

 

The Parthian peace process and the birth of Jesus

Is there any event equivalent in history to Europe’s extraordinary peace record? Europe is living in the longest peace in its known history. That peace was based on supranational principles and initiated by Robert Schuman after a lifetime’s work.
An amazing peace process took place two thousand years ago between two fighting superpowers. They divided the planet as much as the Soviet Union and the USA did in recent times. And it covered the exact area that is the source of today’s conflict in the Near and Middle East — Syria, Iraq and Iran.
In the middle of the earth at the point of contact of these two superpowers lay Israel. It was conquered first by one power, the Roman Empire and then by the other, the Parthian Empire. Who won? Rome was humiliated. Its armies were decimated. It renounced any further attacks on the superpower of the East.
Then a peace treaty was forged. At this time and because of this peace, trade was boosted from the Far East to Gaul in the West. An era of prosperity allowed the Temple at Jerusalem to be rebuilt.

During this Augustan-Parthian peace, Jesus Christ was born at Bethlehem. Why have most Europeans not learned the facts behind this key event in Christian civilization? What did most people learn about the Parthian Empire at school or even university?
Yet every year many people send each other cards with Parthians on them. Who are they? The Magi! Why does the real identity of the Magi remain obscure to most people?


Early in the Middle Ages great confusion, not to say false propaganda, arose about the supposed three Magi who visited the infant Jesus in Bethlehem. First, it is important to go to the record itself in the New Testament (NT) and get the facts.
* There were not three Magi. The number is not specified. It is only stated that they brought three types of gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
* The Magi came from the East. No names are mentioned.
* The event took place more than a year after the birth of Jesus as he is called a ‘toddler’ in Greek. That means he was about a year and a half old.
* No other children are mentioned which means that James, the brother of Jesus, was probably not yet born.
* The visit took place in Bethlehem. When Jesus was born, the David’s ancestral home no longer existed. Why? Because Herod the Great had destroyed all trace of the Davidic dynasty and the ‘castle’ of David there. James says in Acts 15, that the ‘Tabernacle of David had fallen down’. Herod did not hesitate to kill off his own sons and wives if he thought they would usurp him. It is therefore certain that he would wipe out any trace of a Davidic dynasty he could find.
The NT says that at the time of the Magi’s visit Joseph had a house there. How come? Joseph was of direct royal lineage. He had the temerity and obligation to register the lands of David as his own. The registration took place as the first one under Quirinus, governor of Syria. (He made two.) This coincided with the celebration of twenty-five years of Augustus’s reign and the 750th anniversary of the foundation of the city of Rome. (See Dr Ernest L Martin: The Star that astonished the World).
Augustus was proclaimed Pater Patriae, Father of the Fatherland. Prominent citizens were required to register their smaller fatherlands and acclaim allegiance to Caesar. Thus Joseph registered his right under Roman and Israelite laws as patriarch of the tribe of Judah. This was a very dangerous move as his life was at immediate risk by Herod. But Joseph also had protection under Roman law. Herod could not simply kill a Davidic son without Roman acquiescence. As James said, the ruins were prophesied by Amos to be rebuilt.
So why in the Middle Ages did the Magi become a source of controversy? Firstly, the Magi were not Christian or even Jewish as far as the ignorant scholars of the time could say. People asked: why did pagans come and worship the infant Jesus? Why did they come at all? How many were there? Why didn’t Herod kill them?
The answers are clear once we understand the dilemma faced by the Roman State Church founded under Constantine in the 300s CE. Constantine’s amalgam of paganism and Christianity replaced Rome’s ancient pantheon. The Roman Empire had its capital in Constantinople, today’s Istanbul.
The lasting shame of the Roman Empire is that it destroyed the kingdom of Judah, its capital Jerusalem and its Temple. The term ‘Magi’ relates to the rival super power of Rome, the Parthian Empire. It extended from the River Euphrates to India and modern Afghanistan. Parthians traded with the Far East. It was a feudal confederation of kingdoms, not a military dictatorship like Rome.



The Head of the Parthian Empire was called Arsaces, ‘King of kings’. A single dynasty had a succession of 30 Arsakoi kings. They ruled from 255 BCE for nearly half a millennium, more than any dynasty there before or since. The kings were selected, elected and sometimes rejected by a Council of Wisemen, priestly scientists. Its name? The Magi! (See Rawlinson’s Parthia or Steven M Collins: Parthia, Forgotten Ancient Super-power.) Rawlinson says that Parthia divided ‘with Rome … the sovereignty of the earth.’
There is good reason why Europeans are so ignorant about Rome’s super-power rival. The Magi again! The paradox became an intense political problem for the Roman Empire of Constantinople. Why? Because, although the ruling Arsakoi tribes of the Parthian Empire had migrated by then, the Roman Empire was still at war with the successor Sassanian Persian Empire.
It was excruciatingly painful for the priests of the Roman ‘Mother Church’ to explain why the Magi of Persia had worshiped the infant Jesus and the Roman Empire had destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. Parthia worshiped Jesus. Rome pillaged Jerusalem and destroyed the Jews. How could Romans justify a Christian heritage?
The Roman Mother Church therefore blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus although the crucifixion was conducted by the Roman soldiers, under Roman imperial authority and with Roman nails.
As for the Magi, they became non-persons. They were reduced to just three foreigners. But in reality the Magi helped govern Parthia. They performed a similar task to the Levitical priesthood for the Israelitish kings.
Were there three Magi or more? We can say with near certainty that there were not three but many thousands! The Parthians were highly mobile and had several capitals. They traveled in massive, opulent, oriental style. The general selected by King Orodes to fight the Roman invader Crassus arrived with two hundred litters for his concubines. A thousand camels carried his personal baggage. A body of ten thousand horsemen and slaves served his personal needs. The Magi, the resplendently rich Parthian kingmakers, would have come to Jerusalem in their thousands or not at all!
This is how Matthew’s gospel describes the scene:
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah in the days of Herod the king,
BEHOLD! There came wise men (Magi) from the East to Jerusalem, saying:
‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews? … We are come to do homage to him.
When Herod heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.
The word ‘troubled’ can better be translated ‘terrified’, ‘set in a tumult’ ‘consternated’.
Parthia had forged a peace treaty with Rome two decades earlier. This came after Roman legions had been grossly humiliated. In 55 BCE the avaricious Consul Crassus sought booty. Crassus, he of the saying ‘as rich as Crassus,’ was the powerful oligarch of Rome. Parthian king Orodes slaughtered his 40,000 strong legions. Presented with his severed head during a performance of the Euripides play ‘Bacchae’, Orodes filled its mouth with molten gold, mocking him to drink to his fill. In 40 BCE Parthia invaded Judea and deposed the Roman-selected high priest at the Temple and installed another, Antigonus. In 37 BCE Mark Antony invaded Parthia with a massive 16 legions of 100,000 men. They were decimated. He barely escaped with his life. In 34 Julius Caesar planned to attack Parthia. He was assassinated in Rome.
If in the next few days you hear people talking about ‘Three wise men’, you can tell them, ‘It’s time to wise up on the Parthian Magi!’
Today’s leaders need to remind themselves how this area of an amazing peace, became again the furnace of conflict.