
Debate between sheep and grain - diodorus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_between_sheep_and_grain
======
ISL
Brick and wood early, wheat and ore late.

Going all in on sheep with a sheep port is shooting the moon, and less
reliable.

~~~
Lich
Wheat and Ore early isn't actually a bad strategy either, although a tad
risky. It allows you to build your first two settlements into cities quickly,
which allow you to gather resources quicker, or at least trade them into brick
and wood (with the help of ports) to build roads and more settlements, which
can easily be turned into cities since you're already on those resources.

Coming back to the topic at hand, :) It's not surprising how few Christians
are aware of the influence of ancient near east literature on the formation of
the creation story in Genesis. Pastors and theologians at more conservative
and fundamentalist seminaries usually deny, ignore, or try to hide this from
lay Christians in fear that they will leave the faith. This fear is actually
probably a projection of their own fears, as I don't see this as some sort of
evidence bomb that the Bible isn't "true", whatever that word means. It's
totally expected that the ancient Israelites would be affected by the ANE
literature of their time, and says of the author(s) of Genesis that they were
using the stories that they know, and subverting them to tell their own (non-
scientific) origin story of Yahweh and the Israelites.

~~~
nyolfen
>Pastors and theologians at more conservative and fundamentalist seminaries
usually deny, ignore, or try to hide this from lay Christians in fear that
they will leave the faith. This fear is actually probably a projection of
their own fears, as I don't see this as some sort of evidence bomb that the
Bible isn't "true", whatever that word means.

it undermines a fundamentalist or literalist reading of the bible. once you
leave the realm of 'all of this happened exactly this way and god said exactly
this', and enter the realm of 'well, this is figurative/you have to understand
the historical context this draws from', things suddenly become much, much
more nebulous and less authoritative. it's not that it entirely undermines any
notion of 'truth' in the bible, but it's anathema to a particular worldview.

~~~
njarboe
The literalist reading of an English language Bible always seemed a bit
surreal to me.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Written by Jewish mystics, translated into Latin by Roman scholars, further
translated by Scottish Protestants. What could possibly go wrong?

The part that always weirds me out is right at the start, when
God/Elohim/whatever says let us create them in our image, male and female he
created them, which makes very little sense with a singular God.

~~~
njarboe
I'm sure sure there are/were whole sects based on how one interprets that
division. A bigger one along the same lines is the holy trinity.

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danielvf
Here's a link to the full text

[http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr532.htm](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr532.htm)

This seems like 3,000BC version of a rap battle, with rhyming put downs and
brags.

Unlike apparently everyone else, I can't see any likeness with the story of
Cain and Able, other than the involvement of plants and animals.
[https://www.blueletterbible.org/nlt/gen/4/1/s_4001](https://www.blueletterbible.org/nlt/gen/4/1/s_4001)

~~~
gwern
If you enjoy that, you could look up other
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyting)
&
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_debate_poetry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_debate_poetry)
to read. There are also fun prose debates like the Islamic "The Case of the
Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn".

~~~
schoen
Also the Lis Consonantium, in which the letter sigma sues the letter tau:

[https://lucianofsamosata.info/TrialInTheCourtOfVowels.html](https://lucianofsamosata.info/TrialInTheCourtOfVowels.html)

------
padobson
There must have been lots of cultural clashes during the dawn of civilization
between farmers and herders, because the Cain vs. Abel story seems to pop up
in different forms fairly often.

~~~
cimmanom
Yes.

What's interesting is that although in both this story and the Cain & Abel
story farming wins out, the value judgements are different. In this Sumerian
myth, grain is to be revered; whereas Cain (the farmer) is reviled.

Perhaps that reflects that these two cultures experienced the same struggle
from different sides.

