Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 July 4

= July 4 =

Aristotle conversion to Judaism and letter to Alexander
Hi, this is my first time using the Reference desk. So if I've formatted this incorrectly, or this is too long, or any other thing I've done utterly wrong, I apologize. I've seen possibly dubious references to a letter that was supposedly written by Aristotle to Alexander the Great about his denouncing his own works and converting to Judaism. I know that the letter is written, in full, in the book Meam Loez (a Jewish commentary on Tanach.) I was wondering about the validity of the claim. I have found that the source of the Meam Loez is another book, Shalshelet HaLabalah, but I haven't been able to go any deeper, nor do I know how much validity these sources get in the historical community. I saw on this website: https://www.jerusalemlife.com/?p=3749 the claim that it was posted on Wikipedia before but was taken down (you can also read the letter there, as well as another version from it's source). So my question is as follows: How believable is this source and is there any reason to believe that Aristotle converted to Judaism near the end of his life? And, if it's not a believable source, why not? -- Askaqp (talk) 05:55, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

If you don't want to visit that site here is an excerpt from the English version of the Meam Loez (originally written in Ladino):

″There is a true story of a great philosopher renowned throughout the world, whose name was Aristotle – that at the time of his old age he wrote a letter to his student Alexander the Macedonian – the king of Greece (See source Shalshelet HaKabalah) this text:

Blessed is Hashem [the G-d of the Jews – the sole G-d of the universe and of all], that opens eyes of the blind, that shows the sinners the straight path. He is exalted with praises that are worthy of Him – For I do not know how to praise Him upon all of the mercy and great kindness that he bestowed upon me.

That he took me out of this foolishness that I was immersed in all the days of my life in dealing with wisdom of philosophy to explain everything according to nature – that’s understood through rationalization.

And I made many books on this wisdom – like the sand that is on the banks of the of the sea.

Until I was rebuked now by the mingling of my life with one (Jewish) sage from the sages of Israel. And in his speaking to me, he demonstrated his tremendous wisdom.

And I recognized the high level of the holy Torah, that was given at the Mount Sinai.

And he drew my heart with the words of the Torah that showed me and explained to me true novelties and wonders that were done [by Hash-m, the G-d of Israel].

And I was uncivilized that I did not understand that most of the things that are driven by the Holy One Blessed be He [Hashem – the G-d of Israel] in a wondrous manner that’s external to the way of nature.

And from the time that I saw this – I took to heart to expound and to investigate [or fathom] the wisdom of the Torah. For all of its words are founded on foundations of truths, and it is not like the wisdom of philosophy that is vanity.

And therefore, you my student – Alexander the the great king – Do not push my works [for people to learn them]– not you and not my fellow philosophers.

For if it was in my hands to gather all of the books that I authored using this wisdom, surely I would burn them with fire in order that they would not remain any part of them.

However, this matter is not in my hands for my books are spread throughout the world and it’s impossible to gather them all.

And I know well of the stringent punishment that my Creator will punish me for this great sin that I transgressed. That I lost my time with my own hands and that I caused the multitude to sin.

Therefore, my son Alexander I wrote this letter in order to inform you, you and all of your fellows – that most of the things that people want to explain in the way of nature in order that they will be understood by the intellect are matters of falsehood.

For surely, the Holy One Blessed be He (Hashem – G-d), He is the Solution to the world and He leads it with great force.

And because of my fate that caused my books to be spread throughout the western lands – I hereby inform on all of them – that one should not waste his time with them. Do not look at them and do not touch them with your hands. For it is a great sin to waste time on my books of philosophy – for it is a lie that has no legs [to stand upon]. And now I have saved my soul with this that I proclaimed my error and my guilt – it [the Law of the Torah’s punishment] is not as stringent upon me for the past [faults of mine] for I didn’t know.

However now that I revealed this matter to the creatures – that I lived in error and my heart burns for the time that I destroyed with vanities. Woe is to those that their hearts continue [to follow] after my books. Surely under them will be the grave.

And know that according to what that same sage taught me – I found many matters in the book of proverbs that King Solomon authored that a person should not be drawn after the wisdom of philosophy in his saying to “Guard yourself from a strange woman from a foreign female whose words are smooth.” (Mishlei / Proverbs 7:5)

Woe to the eyes that thus they see. Woe to the ears that they thus is what they hear. Woe is to me that I destroyed my body and my strength – for these damaging matters. And this that you praise me by saying that my fame has spread throughout the world because of the books that I made. And they admire me with great admiration. Surely death is better than this – that my books are spread throughout the world. Surely those that are diligent in [the learning of] the Torah will inherit [eternal] life in the world to come.

And those that deal with my books will inherit purgatory. And even I am prepared to be punished for them all. And the reason why I did not write you this letter before now, for I suspected that you would be angry at me and you would do me evil. However now, I decided to say, to inform you of this.

For I know that before this letter of mine will arrive in your hand I will have already been placed in an ark of wood – for I reached the end of my days. And Peace from the Teacher Aristotle – that separates from [life in] the world – to Alexander the great king of Greece.″


 * I added a collapse box. Here's links to Aristotle and ancient Israel, for anyone who wants to research this further. StuRat (talk) 05:59, 4 July 2017 (UTC)


 * What a load of woe'ing. Investigate it if you want to find out why such tripe is written but it was not Aristotle. I don't even see how it could be derived from Aristotle using Chinese whispers. Dmcq (talk) 10:37, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Askaqp -- In Aristotle's generation, the Jews were really not well-known to Greeks. The majority of Jews lived in a small landlocked sub-province of the Persian Empire ("Yahud" or Judea), and were not long-distance traders, did not have a cosmopolitan outlook, and did not speak the Greek language, so that Greeks rarely encountered them, and certainly didn't commonly have long discussions about religion and philosophy with them. Some Jews lived in Mesopotamia, where they were even less accessible to Greeks, while others lived in southern Egypt (but do not seem to have been consistent monotheists -- see Elephantine papyri). At a later date, Jews and Greeks very commonly interacted with each other in the streets of the city of Alexandria in Egypt, the Hebrew scriptures were translated into the Greek language there (Septuagint), and there came to be groups of Hellenistic "God-fearers" who admired Judaism in various ways, but were not willing to formally convert (which involved renouncing one's previous ethnicity and taking on a number of ritual obligations, and of course circumcision for males). However, none of this was true in Aristotle's time... AnonMoos (talk) 10:58, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Aristotelian philosophy was, in its day (which can post-date Aristotle by many many centuries) seen by Judaism as its main philosophical opponent. This theoretical antagonism is a mainstay of other works, eg the Kuzari. I wouldn't assume that even the author was thinking that this was more than a non-literal literary [see what I did there?] device, but I'm no expert on the Meam Loez. I'll ask for input at WT:JUDAISM. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:02, 4 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The Me'am Lo'ez is a religious work of rabbinical Judaism. It would likely be a bad source for such claims. Debresser (talk) 17:30, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Carians
Churchward's map in Mu (lost continent) shows two populations, Negroid and Carian, spreading out over the rest of the world once Mu sank. In his writings, are these Carians related to the Carians of Anatolia? Rojomoke (talk) 09:06, 4 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Very likely. In his book The Children of Mu
 * (found on the site linked as the first entry under External Links in the James Churchward article – http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_autor_churchward.htm#Books-Treaties)
 * he writes in Chapter II The Eastern Lines:
 * "In addition to the black line there was a white race known as the Caras or Carians who are the Greeks today."
 * and in Chapter VIII The Greeks:
 * "The Greeks under their ancient names, however, had passed through tens of thousands of years of trials and tribulations before the first Olympiad. Their first settlements were made in Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula and adjacent islands if there were any at that time.
 * and further on:
 * "As far as can be traced, the original Greeks came from Central America via Atlantis and made their first settlements in Asia Minor, the lower part of the Balkans, and on what islands there were then of the Grecian Archipelago.
 * In Central America I find them called Kars, Karas, Caras, and Carians. They spoke their own dialect of the Maya tongue. Some of their American settlements were within the boundaries of the Mayax Empire. They, however, extended themselves far south on both the Eastern and Western Coasts of South America.
 * The first knowledge of the Carians and their colonies is found in old Maya records where I find the following settlements spoken of: along the shores of the Caribbean Sea, on some of the West Indian Islands, and three settlements on the East Coast of South America.
 * One record dates back beyond 16,000 years; how far back beyond this date, I am not prepared to say.
 * From Central America I next pick them up in Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula and adjacent islands. The Greek legendary history says that their first settlements were along the Mediterranean shores of Asia Minor. The Carians are as bad as the Irish, they never would stay put. As an example, Gaelic, the Irish tongue, is spoken in Tipperary, Ireland, the Basque Province of Spain, and in Nepal, the northern part of India."
 * Churchward's incompetence in comparative linguistics is painfully obvious in the last quoted sentence. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.12.89.162 (talk) 15:52, 4 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Rojomoke -- I have no idea how Carians got dragged in, but you can read in chapter 14 of Martin Gardner's 1957 book Fads and Fallacies: In the Name of Science how James Churchward was kind of a second-rate low-rent Ignatius Donnelly. Churchward's books were inherently less credible than Donnelly's, though standards of credibility had tightened from the time Donnelly wrote to when Churchward did.  Or as Gardner puts it: "The Mu books are uniformly crude in writing, and such a mishmash of geological and archaeological errors that they are widely regarded, even by other Atlantean and Mu scholars, as a deliberate hoax."  However, the Churchward books did give Robert Plant his so-called "Zoso" "rune"... [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] -- AnonMoos (talk) 02:14, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Number of breasts/litter size
Moved to the Science desk. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:54, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Successful people and risk taking
Why is it that the most successful people in business seem to have taken at least 1 major career risk which could have destroyed their entire career? Whether this is spending a lot of money on something unproven, implementing a new idea with a high risk or even making unorthodox job moves (such as taking a pay cut or moving to an unrelated field)? 82.132.229.246 (talk) 18:14, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:31, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Although this reference desk is "not a forum", I'll take the liberty of noting that there are plenty of risk takers who are not successful -- you just never hear about them. Evidently, they don't write books about how to fail (or, if they did, those books failed to achieve success) . — 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:65B0:9134:56E3:14CB (talk) 19:13, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * There was a book about this: 79.73.134.123 (talk) 19:50, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * There are numerous books about "failing your way to success", but they seem to have failed to come to your attention. :)  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:22, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * There is a very apt xkcd comic covering this -- Q Chris (talk) 13:29, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * So apt, in fact, that Sagittarian Milky Way already mentioned it. Dragons flight (talk) 09:54, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah. But SMW didn't mention it, he said something like [23] - you only know it is xkcd if you hover or click on it. -- SGBailey (talk) 12:03, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * A very large part of being successful is pure luck, and you do need to buy a lottery ticket before winning in a lottery. If it wasn't so chancy then financial advisers would have a decent performance compared to dart throwing chimps. Dmcq (talk) 13:02, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * You do not need to buy a lottery ticket to win the lottery. You only need to get a lottery ticket. You can receive one as a gift or find one that someone else lost. Purchasing a lottery ticket is only one method of receiving a ticket. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 13:12, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * In hindsight, success makes decisions seem riskier. People can ask "what if" and give decisions that were made more mystique that they should have. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 13:11, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The financial advisers do no better than market tracking algorithms, and the algorithms don't levy management charges.     What the OP is referring to is bravery, discussed by Seth Godin in his book "Purple Cow".   As he says on page 110,

"These Purple Cows do an outrageous job. They work on high-profile projects.   These people take risks, often resulting in big failures.   These failures rarely lead to a dead end, though.   They're not really risks, after all.   Instead, they just increase the chances that these people will get an even better project next time."