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What is the good that comes from knowing even a little about the ancient Greeks’ religion?

I prefer to learn of actual people who once lived in a historical setting, a time and a place. Greek mythology, instead, is a collection of make-believe fantasy stories I would like to know more of, but I find it hard to gain much traction from them, practical use. I wonder.

Mark Twain disparaged the whole notion. “Classics,” he said, “are the books that everybody wants to claim to have read, but nobody wants to read.”

After all, Greek religion is mythology, a series of stories about the gods and the goddesses whom the Greeks believed resided on or near Mount Olympus.

They included a dozen Olympians: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Hera, Ares, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes, Artemis, and Hephaestus, plus a host of others.

A twentieth-century writer devoted to the ancient Greeks, Edith Hamilton, said this about the Greek religion, “It was developed not by priests, nor by prophets, nor by saints, nor by any sect of men because of a superior degree of holiness.

“It was developed by poets and artists and philosophers. The Greeks had no authoritative Sacred Book, no creed, no ten commandments, no dogmas. The very idea of orthodoxy was unknown to them. They had no theologians to draw up definitions of the eternal and infinite.”

Instead their religion was stories, written to explain difficult-to-comprehend facets of men and women’s adult lives: How to live life well. How to strive for excellence. How to recognize a good way to live.

It was Margaret Fuller, an eighteenth-century intellect, a Transcendentalist, and a contemporary of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, “made Emerson aware of the peculiar power of mythology.” She saw what he had not seen, or could not have seen.

The twentieth-century writer and scholar of mythology Joseph Campbell would agree with Margaret Fuller. find Joseph Campbell ok at explaining mythology, Greek or others.

In 1988, Joseph Campbell and journalist Bill Moyers, appeared together in six episodes, three hours each, on a PBS show entitled, “The Power of Myth.”

In their first episode, “The Hero’s Adventure,” Campbell retells the story of Daedalus and his son Icarus, who glued wings to their backs to fly to safety on a distant island.

Daedalus warns Icarus, “Fly the middle way. Not too high, or the sun will melt the wax on your wings. Not too low, or the tides of the sea will catch you.”

Daedalus, the dad, flies the middle way and arrives safely at the island, but the ecstatic Icarus, the son, flies too high. The sun melts the wax, and the boy falls into the sea.

The myth’s takeaway? Fly the middle way. Live your life easy, without highs and lows.

In that same episode, Bill Moyers prompts Campbell, saying, “One of the intriguing points of your scholarship is that you do not believe science and mythology conflict.”

Campbell agrees. “No, they do not conflict. Science is breaking through now into mystery’s dimensions. It’s pushed itself into the sphere that myth is talking about. It has come to the edge, the interface between what can be known and what is never to be discovered.”

He gives an example. “There is a transcendent energy source. When the physicist observes subatomic particles, he’s seeing a trace on a screen. These traces come and go. We come and go. All of life comes and goes.

“That [unknowable] energy is the informing energy of all things. That’s the reason we speak of the divine. Mythic worship is addressed to that.”

In the fourth episode, “Sacrifice and Bliss,” Campbell quotes the last line of Sinclair Lewis’ novel, “Babbitt.” George Babbitt says, “I have never done the thing that I wanted to in all my life.” Campbell says of George Babbit, “That’s the man who never followed his bliss.”

Mythology. I understand that Joseph Campbell believed that if we see the myth, identify it, and apply it to our lives, it may lead us to a better outcome in life. I would agree, the myth may do that, but still, I wonder.

Since 2004, radio personality Steve Inskeep has hosted National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” During Covid lockdown in 2020, at home with time to spare, Inskeep researched and wrote a book that was published this past week.

Inskeep found its title, “Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America,” in a letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote to his good friend Joshua Speed, dated August 24, 1855.

Last week, Inskeep explained to Amna Nawaz of PBS News Hour, and Scott Simon of NPR, that Speed was from Kentucky, that he was from a rich family that owned more than 50 slaves. Speed approved of slavery. Lincoln also was from Kentucky, but his family was poor, and Lincoln hated slavery.

In that letter, Lincoln wrote, “I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unrewarded toil; but I bite my lip and keep quiet.”

Lincoln then recollected a journey that he and Speed went on together, “in 1841, on a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis.” Lincoln wrote, “There were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me.”

Lincoln then pointed out, “It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. I do oppose the extension of slavery because my judgment and feelings so prompt me.”

Lincoln then wrote, “If for this you and I must differ, differ we must.”

But when he signed the letter, he wrote, “Your friend forever, A. Lincoln.” Although they did not share the same opinion on slavery, Lincoln chose to maintain their friendship, keep it alive.

This is one reason how Lincoln succeeded in a divided America. He avoided hurting others’ feelings. He hesitated to exclude people. He kept the door open. He burnt few bridges.

Yet, Lincoln was a master politician. He understood that democracy works when a majority of voters support and vote for laws that promote their self-interest.

Inskeep explained, that Lincoln told residents in the western territories, like Kansas and Nebraska, that it was in their self-interest to prohibit slavery from expanding there, because it would eliminate paying jobs that non-slaves would want to pursue and obtain.

In addition, Inskeep underscored Lincoln’s ability to relax people by telling them stories, cracking jokes, to draw them away from their harsher opinions and to align more with his.

Inskeep also noted another quality in Lincoln; the future president kept much in reserve. His campaign manager David Davis wrote of Lincoln’s ability to say little, saying, “he was the most reticent, secretive man I ever saw or expect to see.”

Steve Inskeep repeated Leonard Swett’s comment upon Lincoln, saying, “He always told only enough of his plans and purposes to induce the belief that he had communicated all, yet he reserved enough to have communicated nothing.” I say, that is a talent to admire and pursue.

The middle years of the nineteenth century were fractious times, far more so than now. The northern states favored halting the extension of slavery, but the southern states disagreed.

Because Abraham Lincoln ran for President of the United States in 1860, and was elected, voters in eleven states voted to secede, or to vacate from the Union. Between December 20, 1860, and July 2, 1861, in six months, this Union of States split apart.

In Inskeep’s book, he lists sixteen people with whom Lincoln agreed to disagree. In addition to Joshua Speed, there was Stephen Douglas, William Seward, George McClellan, Frederick Douglass, Mary Ellen Wise, Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and others.

Inskeep said, “Lincoln didn’t ostracize people. He didn’t take a Puritan approach to politics. He tried to persuade them. That often failed. With some he was not going to compromise.”

Lincoln knew, Inskeep said, “that he had to figure out a way to reach out to people who differed with him to find enough agreement that they could form a majority,” that would then vote and change the laws written into the Constitution that permitted slavery.

In that effort, Abraham Lincoln succeeded.

Some people possess a talent to peer deep into the future. In Biblical times people called them prophets. In the Middle Ages, people believed them wizards. Today they are economists who make projections based upon previous business data.

Thomas Paine was an unknown writer in Philadelphia, fresh off the boat from England, but he peered deep into the future, more than did others already here.

In 1776, in “Common Sense, Paine wrote, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.

“The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, as perhaps numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months.”

Paine was wrong about one thing there. The American Revolution lasted for over eight years, not “the events of a few months.” Yet, after two and a half centuries, we can conclude that Paine for the most part was correct in his opinion of America.

He saw what his contemporaries dared not to see, that the colonists in America needed to separate from King and Parliament.

In recent years, Warren Buffett echoed Paine’s long-term view of the United States.

“I’ll repeat what I’ve said in the past and expect to say in future years: Babies born in America today are the luckiest crop in history. It is a mistake to bet against America.”

Thomas Paine and Warren Buffett recognized America’s vast potential, a runway of opportunity for the world’s ambitious and hardworking people, a flywheel of success, a role model for other nations.

Their optimism in America’s future is a breath of fresh air that defies the prevalent pessimism that disturbs many Americans’ thoughts today. Zig Ziglar, a prominent 20th-century sales trainer, called that “stinking thinking.”

I say, “toss aside the ‘stinking thinking,’” “discard it,” “throw it out the window.”

Instead, grab hold of that same optimism that has enlightened millions of previous generations of Americans who were “fresh off the boat,” but knew how to work and strive for a better life and how to demonstrate that they belong here. They succeeded.

This week I mark the beginning of another decade of life, in America. At this lofty age, and after thirty-five years of writing biweekly columns, I submit a series of observations.

A first observation: America remains a wonderful place to build a better future.

A second observation: the zealots of the world who harangue or even riot because of political or religious disputes refuse to peer very far into the future. Their thirst and grasp for immediate power clouds their thinking. They see “now” but cannot see “later.”

They play checkers, jumping hither and thither, rather than chess, where they marshal their capital resources and apply them in a planned attack across sixty-four squares.

A third observation: how one treats others often dictates how far a person rises in the future. Treat others with dignity, and that tide of goodwill will lift all boats.

A fourth observation: hesitation often yields better results. There is a reason that the producers entitled Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone’s movie, “The Quick and the Dead.” Hesitation forces a person to peer into a future and check out surprise contingencies.

A fifth observation: writing and thinking are often synonymous, different sides of a coin. Shakespeare, Emerson, and Thomas Paine, I am convinced, are the better writers because they thought the best, and they thought the best because they wrote so well.

When writing and thinking, a person peers into an undefined future and sees shapes.

I say to you my dear readers, gaze deep into your own future and build whatever it is that you envision there. “A birthday of a new world is at hand.”

The main highway running east to west across Israel’s width is Highway One. It connects Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to the Jordan River Valley, near Jericho.

In 2012, highway contractors working 5 kilometers west of Jerusalem near the town of Motza uncovered a Neolithic town, home to perhaps 3,000 people at one time.

A new thing, an interstate highway, led to a discovery of an old thing, a town.

Tel Motza is now the largest Neolithic site in Israel. Archaeologists define a Tel as “a mound or small hill that has built up over centuries of occupation.” Excavators dig down through the layers until they find a bottom layer.

Archaeologists uncovered stone tools made of flint—arrowheads, axes, sickle blades, and knives—as well as human bones, clay figurines, grain silos, and a temple.

Radiocarbon dating on the artifacts found in Level 6, the bottom level, fall between 8600 and 8200 BC, which means that families were living at Motza 10,000 years ago.

To put this into context, Biblical scholars place Abraham near 2000 BC, Moses near 1400 BC, and David and his son Solomon, who built Jerusalem’s Temple, near 1000 BC.

Motza was a flourishing town several millennia before any Israelites arrived, and, according to language scholars, perhaps well before any Canaanites arrived.

I find it tragic that archaeologists failed to find any historical records. Unknown and unnamed countless numbers of people lived and died at Motza, generation after generation, and no one knows much about them.

The writer James Michener remedied this absence of historical records at a Tel by writing a massive book of almost 1000 pages, that he titled, “The Source.”

In each chapter, Michener tells a fictional story of the men and women who lived at each of the several levels at Tel Makor, which means “the source,” as time sped by.

To stare at the photos of Tel Motza and think back to human existence 10,000 years ago puts our lives into context. How tiny is one human being’s life! At most 100 years.

What can we speculate about the multiple generations who lived at Motza?

First, I would like to believe that they were concerned about how to best raise the next generation, their children, how to steer their boys and girls onto the right path.

Second, they paid homage to previous generations, to their parents and to their grandparents, burying them with decency and respect.

Third, the fact that they built a temple indicates that the ancient ones practiced a religion, one that connected the generations together into a faith and a moral code.

Fourth, the grain silos indicate that they were concerned about food, and the numerous stone walls point to a concern about shelter.

As for the stories, the histories, the biographies, we can only guess, a tragedy.

This month of September I celebrate another birthday, one decade ends and another begins. After 35 years of reading, writing, and thinking about the past, and churning out biweekly columns for that long, I wonder, “Is doing history worthwhile?”

One historian who answered that question five years ago is Peggy K. Liss, historian of Spain and Latin America, who died on March 17, 2023, at 95 years of age. She said, “Yes, it is. The human past seems indispensable to anchoring the present.

“Without a reliable history, the resulting vacuum invites nostalgia for a past that never was. The past we know is sloppy. What we historians do is straighten up a selected part of it as best we can.”

A novelist, Alison Acheson, who wrote a fictional tale about life in London in 1526, wrote, “If history does have some particular shape, it might be less a circle, and more some spirally sort of thing to get tangled in.”

Harry Truman used to say, “The only thing new in the world is the history that you have never read.” To Harry’s words I would add, “something new in the world would be the history that was never written, that never can be written.”

For an example, think upon that history at Motza, a town from ancient Israel.

The list of banned, censored, and challenged books is long and illustrious.

“Decameron” (1353) by Giovanni Boccaccio, and “Canterbury Tales” (1476) by Geoffrey Chaucer were banned from U. S. mail because of the Federal Anti-Obscenity Law of 1873, known as the Comstock Law.

That law “banned the sending or receiving of works containing ‘obscene, ‘filthy,’ or ‘inappropriate’ material.

William Pynchon, a prominent New England landowner and founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, wrote a startling critique of Puritanism, that he mailed to London and had it published there in 1650. He entitled it “The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption.”

When copies of the printed book arrived back in New England, a dramatic and public scene ensued. Puritan leaders burnt Pynchon’s copies in Boston Common.

Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722) was also banned because of the Comstock Law.

Other banned titles due to other U.S. laws included: “Candide,” (1759) by Voltaire; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe; “Elmer Gantry,” (1927) by Sinclair Lewis; “Grapes of Wrath,” (1939) by John Steinbeck; and the “Pentagon Papers,” (1971) by Robert McNamara and the U. S. Department of State.

Other titles censored or withdrawn from public or school libraries in recent years include: the “American Heritage Dictionary”, the “Bible,” works of William Shakespeare, “Where’s Waldo?,” “Batman,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Jaws,” and “Charlotte’s Web.”

When Mark Twain learned that the Concord, Massachusetts library had removed a copy of his most recent book, “Huckleberry Finn,” from their shelves, he responded,

“A committee of the public library of your town [of Concord] has condemned and excommunicated my last book and doubled its sales. This generous action of theirs must benefit me in one or two ways.”

An ugly example of wholesale book destruction occurred in Nazi Germany on May 10, 1933, when students at 34 universities across Germany heaped book after book onto a burning pile, some 25,000 volumes, to “synchronize a literary community.”

Books by the following authors, among numerous others, went into the flames that day: Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud.

According to a survey dated May 2, 2023, by U. S. News and World Report, the 10 Best States for Education include, in order: Florida, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, Utah, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Connecticut, New York, and Washington.

Although Florida ranks number 1 in its educational programs, the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, pushed through Florida’s legislature at least three laws in 2022.

The laws grant authority to school boards to withdraw from the shelves of school libraries books that the boards’ members deem objectionable.

What is objectionable are frank discussions about race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Three reporters from the New York Times investigated in Florida and then reported, on April 22, 2023,

“Some teachers and librarians say the policies are vague, with imprecise language and broad requirements, leading to some confusion, but they are trying to comply.”

The three also discovered, “Efforts by Florida’s 67 public school districts to put the new regulations into practice have been uneven and often chaotic. Some districts have taken no major action. Others enacted blanket removals that gutted libraries.”

Board members at one Florida school district chose to remove two books from circulation: Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

School is now back in session this year, and one wonders, “where will this politicized censorship and book banning end?” I hope well short of a book burning.

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