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u/ummmbacon · 7 pointsr/badhistory

> I've never actually read Maccabees I and II as its outside the Tanach

Yea the only reason I looked into it is because my Rabbi brought it up.

>and any learning I did, but is it a retelling of the same narrative twice or part I and part II respectively?

The first book shows the struggle between Pious Jews (The Maccabees) vs Seleucid King & The Jews that supported the king. The second book creates the terms "Judaism" and "Hellenism", which were coined by the author. Really this is an internal civil war between a pious people and those who were wanted to assimilate into Greek lifestyle. The Maccabees of course forced converted these non-pious people by forced circumcision and massacre.


It is also worth noting that neither book actually mentioned the 'miracle' of the oil. They talk about the re-dedication and the second book talks about 8 days (again going back to Sukkot). The second book even calls back to the feast of booths, and they talk about what could even be the lulav and etrog.

To quote:

1 Maccabees 4:52-59 reads:

Early in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, which is the month of Kislev, in the one hundred forty-eighth year, they rose and offered sacrifice, as the law directs, on the new altar of the burn offering that they had built. At the very season and on the very day that the Gentiles had profaned it, it was dedicated with songs and harps and lutes and cymbals… So they celebrated the dedication of the altar for eight days, and joyfully offered burnt offerings… Then Judas and his brothers and all the assembly of Israel determined that every year at that season the days of dedication of the altar should be observed with joy and gladness for eight days, beginning with the twenty-fifth day of the month of Kislev.

2 Maccabees, is a more stylized and less historically accurate account. 2 Maccabees 10:5-9 reads:

It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Kislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing….therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days every year.

The entire story of the oil lasting for 8 days comes out of the Rabbinic tradition.

It is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud in tractate Shabbat 21b:

What is [the reason of] Chanuka? For our Rabbis taught: On the twenty-fifth of Kislev [commence] the days of Chanukah, which are eight on which a lamentation for the dead and fasting are forbidden. For when the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils therein, and when the Hasmonean dynasty prevailed against and defeated them, they made search and found only one cruse of oil which lay with the seal of the High Priest, but which contained sufficient for one day’s lighting only; yet a miracle was wrought therein and they lit [the lamp] therewith for eight days. The following year these [days] were appointed a Festival with [the recital of] Hallel and thanksgiving.

> I've never seen this nor read this anywhere but I'd love to hear you out on that one!

I could type this up, but it is easier to scan it, apologies for my laziness.

Here is the album of 5 pages.

It compares the story side by side with Exodus, and shows the similarities in the names essentially one letter difference (which was commonly switched in Aramaic) is the only change from Moses to Mattathias is essentially a one letter difference in transliteration.

>So they had to wait the seven days THEN as purified people make some NEW oil then light the menorah. So yes it could've been any oil but they had to be pure when it was made and when they lit the menorah

The stories don't follow those accounts, they speak of very long times between victory, and re-dedication. Although I think the latter part of your comments are answered already in the sources in the first part of this posts.

Oh also it is worth noting that the Talmud only tells us to light a single candle and only the very zealous should light more:

Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, page 21b

Our Rabbis taught: The commandment of Chanukah requires one light per household; the zealous kindle a light for each member of the household; and the extremely zealous -- Beit Shammai maintain: On the first day eight lights are lit and thereafter they are gradually reduced [by one each day]; but Beit Hillel say: On the first day one is lit and thereafter they are progressively increased. Ulla said: In the West [Eretz Yisrael] two amoraim, R. Jose b. Abin and R. Jose b. Zebida, differ concerning this: one maintains, the reasoning of Beit Shammai is that it should correspond to the days still to come, and that of Beit Hillel is that it shall correspond to the days that are gone. But another maintains: Beit Shammai's reason is that it shall correspond to the bullocks of the Festival [of Tabernacles; i.e. Sukkot], while Beit Hillel's reason is that we increase in matters of sanctity but do not reduce.

Rabbah b. Bar Hana said: There are two old men in Sidon: one did as Beth Shammai and the other as Beth Hillel: the former gave the reason of his action that it should correspond to the bullocks of the Festival, while the latter stated his reason because we promote in [matters of] sanctity but do not reduce.

Our Rabbis taught: It is incumbent to place the Chanukah lamp by the door of one's house on the outside; if one dwells in an upper chamber, place it at the window nearest the street. But in times of danger it is sufficient to place it on the table. Raba said: Another lamp is required for its light to be used, yet if there is a blazing fire it is unnecessary. But in the case of an important person, even if there is a blazing fire another lamp is required.

Also to note a lot of this is covered in The Jewish Holidays a Guide and Commentary

Chag Sameach!

u/metatron-one · 8 pointsr/badhistory

I've been reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, due to an interest in the history of the human species brought about by an Intro to Biological Anthropology class I'm in. I'm maybe three chapters in so far, but I'm engrossed. Harari theorizes that the reason that Homo Sapiens were able to outlive all the other Homo species is our ability to conceive fiction, our ability to conceptualise things that don't exist, like religions, nations, etc. This isn't really a historic text, but it's well written and seems to be worth reading if you have an interest in the topic. I'd like to read some critical reviews from experts in the field, though.

u/flunkybuckets · 1 pointr/badhistory

But "The Habsburg Empire: A New History," says that the Empire was effective on an institutional level? Granted I haven't read the book, but the Amazon description pretty clearly states this.

u/eonge · 2 pointsr/badhistory

Currently enrolled in a history/political economy of education course. The content has been quite enjoyable.

Two of the main texts used thus far:

The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch

The American School, A Global Context: From the Puritans to the Obama Administration by Joel Spring

u/chocolatepot · 2 pointsr/badhistory

Positive: I just got a batch of books from my museum's annual book sale! Relevant to here are: The Stolen Prince, Hugh Barnes; Women in an Industrializing Society: England 1750-1880, Jane Rendall (1990); Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850, Dianne Dugaw (1989); To Ornament Their Minds: Sara Pierce's Litchfield Female Academy 1792-1833, Litchfield Historical Society (1993); Our Own Snug Fireside: Images of the New England Home, 1760-1860, Jane C. Nylander (1993); and Women's Life & Work in the Southern Colonies, Julia Cherry Spruill (1938, but reprinted in 1977 and it seems to be good scholarship). Good deals on a few of those! It would be more handy to have them as ebooks but at 50c-$1, you can't beat the price. I fully intend to read them soon but read Rachel Dratch's memoir first and am now on the complete short stories of Dorothy Parker. It was a good sale.

Negative: It's an awful sale. We got an insane number of books donated this year and I was run ragged setting it all up with only a couple of volunteers, only one able to really do anything physical. Very few books have sold, and we're going to be left with a still-insane number to get rid of. All the local libraries are having their sales this weekend so nobody wants the remainder. What are we going to do??

u/jony4real · 27 pointsr/badhistory

There's no kind of history I would never read or never put on my bookshelf, but I tend to be turned off by history that believes in Progress^TM or History^TM itself as more of a force within history rather than just a way to describe the past. Especially if it's dumbed down and aimed at the public, like that one book How the Irish Saved Civilization. That doesn't mean people who believe in Progress are stupid or even wrong, it's just personally I don't like hearing about it in my history. Why put your energy into learning about this vaguely-defined, self-centered idea when you could be learning tons of details about people and eras you'd never thought were important before, like in this book which I love?

u/SnapshillBot · 37 pointsr/badhistory

Yes, but on Ancient Aliens...

Snapshots:

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u/Guy_de_Nolastname · 3 pointsr/badhistory

Since you're asking specifically about '68 and '72, I'm sure you've probably heard of it, and might have read it, but...

The Selling of the President, 1968?

You might be asking for something more academic, but it's a classic, in case you haven't read it.

u/Gunlord500 · 15 pointsr/badhistory

Well, that's actually a pretty significant problem with the prison system, historically. I'm not just being glib, it's something historians of incarceration and African American history have been saying for a long time. Long story short, following the American Civil War, when slavery was abolished, many white Southerners still needed 'forced labor' simply because there were many jobs it wouldn't be economic to hire free labor for. Thus was born the "prison-industrial complex," where newly freed slaves would be incarcerated for things like "vagrancy" and had to do labor similar to that under slavery. Naturally, this led to many social problems similar to those found under the antebellum regime. Again, it's hard to get into off the cuff like this, but this book is a pretty solid introduction to the issues, IMO:

https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465956818&sr=8-1&keywords=jim+crow+prison#reader_1595586431

u/Lion_And_Sun · 3 pointsr/badhistory

This one. I'm guessing it's out of print.

I should be able to borrow it from the library, so it's not a huge problem, but it still took me aback.

u/AShitInASilkStocking · 1 pointr/badhistory

Is that this one? I thought about downloading it myself, how are you finding it on the whole?

u/Platypuskeeper · 9 pointsr/badhistory

So I got Arnved Nedkvitne's recent book Norse Greenland: Viking Peasants in the Arctic.

It seemed like he was proving wrong a claim I've made many times; that Scandinavian historians don't refer to Viking Age Scandinavians in general as 'Vikings'. But once I look through the e-book, I find he does use the title's term "Viking peasants" once in the preface and introduction but after that there's zero references to any person or persons in the whole book as viking(s). Just the term "Viking Age" and such. I strongly smell an editor at work here!

Other than that, not a bad book.

Except for the godawful cover. WTF is up with that, Routledge? If you want me to pay €130 for the hardcover, you could at least spend ten minutes online finding some public-domain image with some sort of relevancy to the text. It looks like it belongs on a maths textbook from the 1960s; "Introduction to Graph Theory" or whatever.

u/Louis_Farizee · 38 pointsr/badhistory

Devil's advocate:

I don't think this is a work of bad history as such. I think this is written from the perspective of someone who has never done a bit of manual labor in their lives, and probably stands in awe at the thought of an ordinary human being being able to take a car apart and put it back together again, or whatever. This Redditor is probably half-convinced that carpenters and plumbers are secretly warlocks. As /u/Ilitarist says, the average peasant probably knew some basic metalwork and carpentry and so forth.

Or this Redditor recently read Reaper Man, in which a blacksmith exposits the quasi-mythical qualities of blacksmithing.

u/G_Fil_24 · 2 pointsr/badhistory

Is his book about Siemund Warbung decent? Or is it another example of bad history?

u/smileyman · 3 pointsr/badhistory

> How did emancipation change the war? Don't have a thesis yet. But shouldn't be too hard.

Couple of things to look at.

1.) Did slaves escaping to find freedom deny labor to the South? If so what kind of labor? Was that labor crucial to the war effort?

2.) Was preventing runaway slaves important enough to the South to divert resources from the war effort to track down slaves/prevent escapees?

3.) Were escaped slaves useful to the Union as labor, soldiers, etc.?

(In at least one example they were, during Sherman's "March to the Sea". Read Noah Trudeau's Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea for more information on that.)

Eric Forner is another good resource.

u/ecumenical · 20 pointsr/badhistory

Aggravated assault is a felony charge. A number of studies have demonstrated that whites are more likely to be allowed to plead to a lesser charge, or to not be charged at all. The aggregate effect of the favorable treatment of whites is reflected in the arrest statistics. For example, see Racial Disparities in Pretrial Diversions.

For a more detailed treatment of this topic—and the "big picture"—I highly recommend reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

Edit: Here's [a BJA summary of the research](https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSummary.pdf "Research Summary: Plea and Charge Bargaining"), from 2011, that calls out the racial disparity in plea and charge bargaining.

u/SkyPilotOne · 3 pointsr/badhistory

Hang on, if we're talking history here then Afghanistan was already a training ground for jihaddists by the time the Taliban came to power. The Taliban were one faction to have been trained and battle hardened in the mujahideen resistance to the Soviet invasion.

As far as the law and order thing goes, they were welcomed at first by poorer Afghans who thought that because they were imposing theocratic rule that this would result in less corruption in public life. Of course this gradually turned to dissatisfaction once they were consolidated in government and started outlawing haircuts and the like.

The human rights abuses were horrible but to put it in perspective those practices were the same under the Northern Alliance, Karzai and whichever warlords are locally in power. I would venture so far as to say that if you want to improve people's human rights then government by warlord is not the way to go.

As unpalatable as just standing by is the alternative strategies of intervention firstly covert during the 70's and 80's and secondly by invasion in the 2000's have done little or nothing to improve Afghan's human rights.

There is a book called Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden by an American journalist called Steve Coll which traces the whole mess back to the time of the Soviet Invasion.

u/DanDierdorf · 5 pointsr/badhistory

Picked up this biography of George C. Marshall and holy hell, it's bad. It hardly delves into the man himself, but rather wastes space writing about the context of the times and what was happening in the world. And there, these two dive into bad history repeatedly and repeating nostrums that were abandoned decades ago. Awful.
It appears these two authors are "professional biographers" with little to no background in history. Most of the biography was shallower than a pool of spit.

u/RickyDPhillips1 · 5 pointsr/badhistory

The book in question is "The First Casualty" and is thoroughly well researched from over 300 primary sources plus the Falkland Islanders' diaries and draws from the personal accounts of the Royal Marines, their Argentine opponents and those Stanley residents in the middle of it, to include the hospital staff at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Stanley and the hospital records. Here is a very good account by BFBS from an interview with myself (the author) and including a video with Royal Marine Jim Fairfield BEM where he also states that the Argentine forces took very heavy casualties and more than they ever admitted to and that the Royal Marines were told to say nothing about the truth:

https://www.forces.net/news/did-royal-marines-really-surrender-after-falklands-invasion

The words of many of these Royal Marines were also documented at the launch of The First Casualty on 28/3/17 by the Portsmouth News:

https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/our-region/portsmouth/revealed-untold-story-of-how-60-marines-battled-thousands-of-argentinians-1-7895621

I would also point to the Daily Mail article of July 2017:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4721140/Falklands-final-secret.html

It is apparent that the Argentine forces lost very heavily that day and covered it up. An LCVP Landing Craft was sunk that day, which only Martin Middlebrook mentions (and conjectured in another book, oddly) which has since been found and dragged up (its picture is in the first link) as part of the investigation. John Smith recorded it as early as 1983 in his book "74 Days" and actually, immediately after the invasion, the editor of the Penguin News went to London (having been deported by the Argentine forces) and reported via Reuters not only that a Landing Craft had been sunk but even a figure of 200 Argentine casualties. The MOD certainly knows about it but never mentioned it. General Julian Thompson is on record as saying "The official line if asked, is that it exploded due to some form of premature detonation." It existed then, it exists now, Sir Rex Hunt even mentioned it twice on FIBS Radio on April 2nd. This can be confirmed via the radio broadcasts on YouTube which are very easy to find. The LCVP Landing Craft had a capacity of 40 men and lots of bodies were seen floating in the harbour for days afterwards (again, direct quotes in John Smith and in The First Casualty) one very direct account from the latter states, "looking over the side into the harbour (April 3rd) three Argentine bodies were floating who had come up from the sunken landing craft. One of them, I remember, actually looked like he had his hands in his pockets."

Next is the LVTP-7 Amtrack APC, of which each one was carrying 25 men plus three crew. This was always officially denied and a mildly damaged one substituted to show that the Royal Marines must have thought they destroyed it but didn't. They never claimed this vehicle but the one before it. Amtrack 07 (The one used to show no damage) turned to its left across the front of the Royals' position, the one they always maintained they had hit turned right, away from them and became stuck on a bank.

LCpl Burt Reynolds hit it first with a 66mm LAW in the back left quadrant (he was farthest out on the right of the Marines' position with GPMG gunner Sean Egan) and then Mark Gibbs hit it just behind the Commander's Cupola as George Brown and Danny Betts hit it just starboard of the nose with an 84mm Carl Gustav. Gibbs is on record as saying, "It stopped, rocked on its suspension and blew a great cloud of black smoke and just died". This is in print and also on a BBC Radio 4 documentary "My Falklands War" with myself and Falkland Islander Rachel Simons.

Jim Fairfield (mentioned above) saw this vehicle six times in three days and described the damage exactly, even looking inside it. Stanley fireman Neville Bennett was tasked with hosing out the inside and his chilling words were "It looked like the inside of an Auschwitz oven". Jim Fairfield is on record talking about it when he saw it:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XVWivce8vzc&t=17s

Major Mike Norman listed Argentine casualties as "The most conservative figure possible of only what we knew we had got and could confirm around Government House, about which there was no doubt" and his official report, declassified in 2012, stated 5 killed, 17 wounded and 3 prisoners. Again, this is shown in the first link above.

Dr Daniel Haines actively described in his memoirs an operation performed on two men, one of whom died on the operating table, the other spirited away in a terminal condition, who were found exactly where Royal Marines Nick Williams and Marcus Bennett described shooting them. Sir Rex Hunt in his own memoir "My Falklands Days" also describes Argentine soldiers dragging two full body bags across his wife Mavis' rockery... bear in mind that Pedro Giachino, the only man Argentina admitted died, was alive when he went to hospital, and there are many photos of him being treated in a Land Rover, so neither was him.

Nurse Diane Roberts came to the hospital that morning after the battle and her first job was cleaning out the sluices in the morgue, where, she recalled, "There were three Argentine corpses laid out already. The others told me that there were two more before this but they had been taken away. I looked at them and they were certainly dead... very dead." Dr Alison Bleaney recounted how, as she arrived at the hospital, "I came in the back way and passed one of their big tracked vehicles. They were stuffing bodies in there on top of each other. I saw at least six but could see that there were more stacked behind them, all crammed in. The ward was chaos, there must have been 50-60 wounded in there, everyone was shouting, I left the dead and just tried to save the living. There was one man with a serious gunshot wound to the groin who I tried to help, but you'd turn around to get something and they would spirit the wounded away. I must have performed at least ten operations that morning."

Hospital records show 12 wounded men still in the hospital the next day who were too critical to move. None of these were the three confirmed wounded who were all evacuated on April 2nd. Corporal Williams in his account detailed "literally an endless ferry of medevac helicopters going from the hospital to the airport" and a stack of bloodied stretchers abandoned there. The hospital records show 100 stretchers from WW1 in their stores before the invasion and not one left after. All were at the airport.

Finally, recorded in John Smith and several other private diaries, 70-80 bodies were found stacked up on the Darwin Road outside of town a few days after. The Argentine soldiers burned them. A year after the war, families representing over 500 (and as many as 1,000) men still missing from the war petitioned the Argentine government for information and were lied to and told the British still held them prisoner on Ascension island. Of course there were none. They came back still asking in 1987 and were told we didn't have them:

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/08/world/around-the-world-no-clues-on-lost-troops-british-tell-argentines.html

It is evident that Argentina hid hundreds of deaths from the war, not just on April 2nd. The full account with all of the evidence from primary sources and showing the entire working method is in "The First Casualty" which, I should add, is NOT a self published book at all, but was published by Navy Books, from whom I bought the rights prior to their selling the business. It has sold in over 40 countries and has been a repeated Amazon #1 Best Seller, with reviews by the veterans themselves:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1980585792/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1521706982&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236

I hope this answers the question.

Ricky D Phillips.