09/1/26

Looking at Richard Cuttler’s Article (2013) “Considering Marine Transgression as a Mechanism for Enforced Migration and the Littoral Gulf ‘Ubaid Phenomenon”  FSAEH

0001 The citation for this article is: Cuttler, R. (2013). Considering marine transgression as a mechanism for enforced migration and the littoral Gulf ʿUbaid phenomenon. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, 24(1), 37–43.

I obtained my copy from Wiley online.  Thank you.

0002 In the early 2010s, Dr. Richard Cuttler smells a very interesting intellectual aroma, but is unable to sense where the trail leads.  What is the link between the infilling of the Persian Gulf and the appearance of the Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia?

0003 The titular “consider” is one way of saying, “Imagine the possibility.”

If the marine transgression into the Arabian… or is it Persian?.. Gulf enforces a migration of the people who originally settled the fresh water marshes of the Ur Shatt (that’s “Ur Schatt” for Germans) waterway, then does that account for the Ubaid appearing in both Mesopotamia and on the shoreline of central Arabia?

0004 Why would an archaeologist consider such an if-then scenario?

During the glacial period, the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers flowed together into a waterway, the Ur-Shatt, that fed a corridor of lakes and marshes (now underwater “basins”) into the sea.  Such a concourse would be a favorable place for Epipaleolithic enthnoses to settle, taking advantage of diverse natural resources.

0005 Little did they realize that the Ur-Shatt waterway, a veritable oasis during the glacial period, would slowly be covered with around 70 meters of sea-water.  By “slowly”, I mean thousands of years.  At the same time, the rise in sea-level has a horizontal dimension.  After filling the basins, sea-water spreads into a shallow geological bowl.

0006 Here is a picture of the scenario once the low-lying basins are full.

The indigenous settlements are represented by red and purple dots.

The sea-rise will force these people to migrate.

0007 Here is a picture once the Gulf is filled to the brim (as far as the sea-rise would go, which is several meters above the present sea-level).

The Ubaid settlements are represented by magenta dots.  Plus, the background color has taken on a magenta hue, denoting two spheres of interaction, the central Arabian Gulf and southern Mesopotamia.  This is my rendition of Figure 1 of the article.

0008 How does anyone know that there are two spheres of Ubaid settlements?

Originally, the term, “Ubaid”, labels a type of pottery found in excavations throughout southern Mesopotamia.  Why did archaeologists not also look at the central Arabian Gulf region?

The author is perhaps too embarrassed to say that late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century archaeologists focused on this region because… well… that is where the Garden of Eden is supposed to be.  That is where Noah’s flood took place.  That is where Judah was taken into exile in ancient times.  So, of course, Protestant Christians are going to pay for exorbitant excavations in order to reveal… you know… something about justification by faith alone, scripture alone, and grace alone.

0009 Okay, I am just guessing on that one.

0010 Then, in 1968, G. Burkholder discovers Ubaid pottery in the western Gulf littoral.

0011 What a surprise.

The Ubaid is the lowest level excavated in southern Mesopotamia, which means that it has the deepest time horizon.  Now, the Ubaid shows up near Bahrain.  Doesn’t that smell like a great research project?   To an archaeologist, it sure smells good… but, how does one follow the scent when the trail goes under the waters of the Gulf?

Professor Richard Cuttler, who I am sure has some good stories to tell, seeks funding for seismic reflection maps of the Gulf’s underwater landscape, in order to obtain better placed sediment cores of the sea-floor.  He wants to investigate, but he does not know that there is another component to the puzzle.  Also, big funding is hard to come by.

0012 If the project is funded, what will he find?

Among other points, the sediment cores would provide pollen-based clues to the changing climate of the time.

0013 At the start of the current interglacial, the Inter-Tropical Conversion Zone (ITCZ) shifts north, then back, then north again, in a most fickle manner.  For the time under consideration, the ITCZ moves north, but not as far north as the gulf-to-be.

Here is a picture.

0014 The two dotted gray lines indicate the furthest extend of the ITCZ currently, and between 9.5 and 6.3 thousands of years ago (kyr).  South of the line, the monsoons deliver plenty of rain water.  North of the line, the westerlies lose all their water before arriving in Arabia.

0015 Curiously, all the Ubaid sites develop north of the early Holocene ITCZ line, suggesting that water was not a crucial issue.  That makes no sense.  Southern Mesopotamia obviously has lots of fresh water because of the Euphrates and Tigris and other rivers.  What provides water to the pre-Ubaid sites in the central western Gulf?

0016 Take a look again at the above figure.  The gray brushstrokes and the red line denote a massive aquifer that is tilted.  It is high in the west and low in the east.  The Dammam label is a concatenation of the saying, “That’s a damn aquifer, ma’am.”  Am I kidding?  This aquifer relies on a huge tilted fault-riddled plate of non-porous rock supporting porous layers that allow rain water, falling south of the northernmost ITCZ line, to flow underground and come to surface in springs that stand outside the low-lying basins.

0017 Here is my version of the article’s Figure 2.

Note how water flows downhill in the Dammam aquifer then comes up in springs further inland from the sea-water filled basins.

0018 Why is this so important for this examination?

This examiner wants to show that… in the land surrounding the freshwater marshes and salt-water depths of the basins at 10,000 BP… there are two cultures: a Mesolithic culture that lives right along the water and uses fresh and salt water resources and a Neolithic culture that exploits the water from Dammum-fed springs to engage in rudimentary agriculture and stockbreeding.

0019 The question is, “Why would I want to establish two disparate cultures in the same region?”

Wouldn’t that just complicate the story of an enforced migration?

0020 Here, I review.

0021 First, the sea level starts to rise, if there is not a paleolithic culture already on the fresh-lakes of the Ur-Shatt waterway, then a Mesolithic culture displaced from living on the continental shelf could enter into the environs.  Such a culture would simply follow the water into the eastern, central and western basins, since they already know how to exploit fresh-water and marine resources.

0022 Second, there is a shift from dry to wet climactic conditions, as the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) shifts north.  Does it shift north enough to provide water directly to lands around the infilling Gulf?  The author establishes that even if it does not, the ITCZ shifts north enough to feed the Dammum aquifer which would provide fresh water to a Neolithic agricultural and stockbreeding culture that migrates in from the north and settles in the dry-lands just beyond the marshes.

0023 Then the sea-level rises more, overfilling the basins and entering into the flat-bowl terrain of the surrounding landscape.  Now, both the Mesolithic and Neolithic culture are forced to migrate in response to the rising seas.

0024 Here is where I introduce an idea that Dr. Cuttler did not think of and may have never heard about until this moment.

The economies of the Mesolithic and the Neolithic culture are different.  They do not depend on the same resources.  Practical reason predicts that these cultures should mingle with one another and eventually become one.

However, each culture practices its own hand-speech talking language.  That means that they have a serious impediment to talking with one another.  Both practice a dual-mode style of language.  How are they going to get around that?

0025 Let me step back and say that the evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.  Almost every book available on human evolution discusses the evolution of language as a facet of hominin communication.  Only Razie Mah’s books discuss the evolution of talk as a semiotic adaptation.

0026 Here is a brief overview.

0027 The first period ranges from the separation of the chimpanzee and human lineages (around 7 Myr) to the start of bipedalism (around 3.5 Myr).  The hominin lineage communicates in two small and one larger social circles.  The small social circles are family (5) and friends (5).  The larger social circle is the band (50).

0028 The second period ranges from the start of bipedalism to the domestication of fire (around 0.6 Myr).  Michael Tomasello says that this period is dominated by “obligatory collaborative foraging”.  That means that the social circle under the most intense selection pressure is the team (15).  Hominins forage in teams.  Pre-linguistic hand-talk is an adaptation to team work.  Pre-linguistic hand-talk relies on sensible construction.  Sensible construction relies on content and situation.

0029 The third period ranges from the domestication of fire to the first singularity (around 9kyr).  The social circle under the most intense selection pressure is the community (150), the team of teams.  This period is dominated by, what Razie Mah calls, “obligatory social-circle harmonizing”.  Hand-talk becomes fully linguistic as an adaptation to the semiotic dynamics of social construction.  Social construction involves content, situation and perspective.

0030 Prior to the evolution of Homo sapiens, the voice comes under voluntary neural control for singing.  Why sing?  There are two social circles larger than the community, the seasonally gathering mega-band (500) and the occasionally gathering tribe (1500).  Their episodic gatherings require rapid synchronization.  The voice was recruited to do precisely this.  Singing identifies each participant within these larger social circles as belonging to the group.  Plus, singing synchronizes all participants to the tasks at hand.

Sexual selection does the rest.

0031 With the evolution of Homo sapiens, the voice is systematically adapted for use as an adornment to hand-talk.  In liminal lighting, communal hand-talk is difficult to instantly recognize.  The voice is added as an adornment.  Sound-word adorns gestural-word.  The semiotics of the union remains grounded in hand-talk.  However, the semiotic qualities of the sound-word (speech) are unique.  So, cultural evolution produces two independent channels of talk, hand and speech talk, that are highly socially regulated.

In short, the transition from the voice as an adornment to hand-talk to fully elaborated hand-speech talk occurs over hundreds of thousands of years during the Paleolithic.  My guess is that archaeological evidence of adornment parallels the development of this cultural adaptation.

0032 The fourth period begins when two hand-speech talking cultures, one Mesolithic and one Neolithic, are forced into the same migration.  These cultures have different economies, so they do not fight over resources.  Rather, they trade and get along.  They intermarry.  They engage in interactions familiar to anthropology.  They start with a pidgin.  Then, later generations establish a creole.  That creole is the proto-Sumerian language.  Sumerian is unrelated to any large family of languages.

0033 Plus, that creole is the first speech-alone talk on Earth.

The semiotic properties of hand- (and hand-speech) talk and speech-alone talk are significantly different.  The following figure presents dyads (characteristic of the Charles Peirce’s category of secondness) that may be read as Aristotle’s dyad of {matter [substance] form}.

0034 Hand- (and hand-speech) talk requires only one hylomorphe.  A referent as matter substantiates, by way of icon and index, a manual-brachial word-gesture as form.  The fact that word-gestures become routinized, and thereby instantly recognized, does not detract from this semiotic grounding.  The referent precedes the hand-talk word.

0035 Speech-alone talk requires two hylomorphes, one on the content and one on the situation level.  In terms of content, Ferdinand de Saussure (1859-1913) defined spoken language as “two arbitrarily related” systems of differences.  What I think is arbitrarily related to what I say.  So, where does the referent come in?

The referent comes on the situation-level, because each content-level word-utterance2af must be validated2bm (as situation-level matter) by the form of an artifact2bf.  The spoken word precedes its referent.

0036 While this explanation sounds like gibberish to any newcomer to the field of semiotics, including many anthropologists and archaeologists in 2026, there is clearly method to the madness.

0037 Here is a list of Razie Mah’s e-works that are pertinent to this topic.

0038 The bottom line?

Hand- and hand-speech talk constrain social complexity.

Speech-alone talk facilitates unconstrained social complexity.

0039 This is precisely the theory that Dr. Cuttler needs in order to bring his research proposals to the next level.

0040 The origin of the Ubaid is the first step in a huge research project that is intrinsic to The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.

0041 Cuttler’s analysis concerns the material arrangements that set in motion a dramatic shift in semiotic reality.

0042 Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

The image on the left represents two hand-speech talking cultures that belong to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

The image on the right represents one speech-alone talking culture that initiates our current Lebenswelt.

0043 I suspect that the Ubaid narod knows that they are different.  They are surrounded by ethnoses that are poor and disorganized, in comparison to the wealth and the power that comes from (even a little) labor and social specialization.

The Ubaid does not know why it is special, it only knows that the surrounding hand-speech talking cultures talk with their hands.  The hand-speech talking culture cannot help but notice the inverse.  The Ubaid emissaries do not talk with their hands.  However, they have the best dried fish.  Plus, they want to give us their pottery, but it seems that they expect something in return.

Soon enough, the Ubaid strains at maintaining communality, or whatever it was that they had before their creation.  Meanwhile, their way of talking encourages them to create artifacts that validate their spoken words, condemning them to further social complexity.

0044 It is hard to imagine what it was like, when every youth is ready to move past the tired artifacts that validate their grand-parent’s words.

Or, maybe it is not hard to imagine.

0045 Nor is it hard to imagine Abdullah Hassan Masry’s 1974 “sphere of interaction” hypothesis. Each Ubaid site belongs to a sphere of interaction, where it takes on its own “specialties”, its own gods, and its own ways of accommodating its labor and social specializations.

Doesn’t that sound like the contemporary term, “multipolar world”?

0046 Here is a picture.

0047 What is the second research project demanded by the hypothesis of the first singularity?

From the spheres pictured above, speech-alone talk spreads to the four corners of the world.

Imagine the research project needed to establish whether that claim is plausible!

0048 Dr. Richard Cuttler, the door is open.  Follow your nose. Thank you for publishing your considerations.

08/31/26

Looking at E. Michael Jones’s Book (2025) “Walking with a Bible and a Gun”  (Part 1 of 27)

0001 The book before me is published by Fidelity Press.  The subtitle is “The Rise, Fall and Return of American Identity”.  The author is editor of Culture Wars Magazine.  And, everyone knows what “culture wars” means.

For students who are pursuing Semiotics and History, please have a copy of this book at hand.  Look at the title and read the table of contents.  The instructions in this examination should be clear.

Dr. E. Michael Jones, the author, reads and comments on literature from a Catholic point of view.  His works are iconic, in so far as he is orthodox.  “Ortho” means “right”.  What about “dox”?  Here, I mix terminology.  Orthodox love icons.  You know, those paintings that adorn the churches with names like “Saint Basil’s”.

0002 Of course, for the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, an icon is one of three types of natural signs.  An icon is a triadic sign-relation whose sign-object is based on the qualities of similarity, imagery, pantomime, likeness and so on.  In other words, an icon offers a sign-vehicle that allows me to visualize its sign-object.

0003 But what about the icon rendered in E. Michael Jones’s text?

What about the icon on the wall of St. Basil’s?

Razie Mah’s blog appearing in January 2025, Looking at Boris Uspenskij’s Article (2016) “Semiotics and History”, contains a hypothesis about Russian icons.

0004 Boris Uspenskij (1937-present) is a Soviet era expert on Slavic literature who, along with Juri Lotman (1922-1993), proposes that semiotic arrangements substantiate the human condition.  He does so in the 1990s, after the Soviet political system lost all credibility.  The Soviet system enshrined Marx’s slogan:  Material arrangements substantiate the human condition.  How well did that thing work?

0005 Boris Uspenskij’s journey into semiotics begins in the 1950s, when the Soviet empire is intimidating and everyone senses that Marx’s slogan applies.  After all, it sounds so scientific.

Uspenskij wants to offer a materialist explanation for the power of Russian iconography.  Russian icons are portraits and scenes painted on the foreground with a background of thinly hammered gold foil.  Uspenskij figured that icons are meant to be viewed by candlelight.  The flickering light of candles produce the aesthetic effect associated with Russian icons.

0006 Of course, this is a materialist explanation for Russian iconography, fully congruent with the central slogan of the Marxist thing: material arrangements [substantiate] human conditions.

However, from the Korean War until the fall of the Berlin Wall, Uspenskij (along with Lotman) reach the conclusion that Marxism does not have the vocabulary to explain Slavic literature.  Instead, they figure out the aesthetic effects of Slavic art by using the vocabularies of semiology and structuralism.

“Figuring out” means “bricolage”.  They practice what they figure out.  The vocabularies of semiology and structuralism hammer out a model. Then, when the form of the work of art is viewed in the flickering light of that model, an aesthetic effect is reproduced as matter.  The work of art entangles the contemporary language of the positivist mind.

0007 In the flickering illumination of a semiological and structuralist model, the work of art begins to speak to the viewer.

The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics is discussed in Razie Mah’s blogs, spanning from December 2025 to May 2026.  These blogs initialize an online course titled “Semiotics and History”.  See Razie Mah’s blogs for October 3-6, 2025 for an introduction.

0008 This is confounding.

“Confounding” is a technical term, labeling a single form (B) that originates from one matter (A), yet entangles another matter (C)

A historical literary text (or a work of art, such as a Russian icon, A&B) becomes a form (from the perspective of a semiological and structuralist model, B alone) that entangles a voice (matter within the viewer, speaking to the viewer, in a contemporary vocabulary of meaning, presence and message, C).

0009 A as matter [substantiates] B as form.  {A[&]B} constitutes a thing.

B as form [entangles] C as matter. {A[&]B[entangles]C} is a confounding.

0010 The question that I pose is this.

Does Dr. E. Michael Jones construct a similar cognitive apparatus in the USSA, during the years preceding the collapse of its big government (il)liberal and neoconservative Marxist ideations?

0011 I know what you are thinking.

USSA?

United Sycophantic States of America?

I love acronyms.

But, what the hell is a “sycophant”?

Okay, the author has another word that begins with “S”.

08/29/26

Looking at E. Michael Jones’s Book (2025) “Walking with a Bible and a Gun”  (Part 2 of 27)

0012 Does the author perform a confounding?

0013 Does the author start with historical literary texts (or works of art, {A[&]B})?

Yes, this book is divided into fifty-three chapters.  Each chapter focuses on an author and his works of art.  The matter, A, consists of an author’s life and the plotlines of his literary and artistic works.  The form, B, consists of the literary text in history.

0014 Does the author frame each historical text in terms of a semiological structuralist model (the Tartu-Moscow School’s flickering flame of illumination)?

No.  But, the author does frame historical works of art in terms of a model.  The model is not based on semiology or structuralism.  The model is based on the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD), who interprets Aristotle (384-322 BC) during the so-called “Middle Ages”.

0015 Of course, the historical trajectory of Thomism is not so straight-forward.  John Deely (1942-1917 AD) articulates a narrative of “the causalities inherent in signs” in his massive masterwork, Four Ages of Understanding (2001).

Aristotle treats signs as symptoms or indexes.  The Latins, starting with Augustine (354-430), notice that signs operate in both nature and culture, but the nature of signs is not a focus of inquiry.  This stance includes even Aquinas, who writes about signs, but not about their nature.  Over the centuries, Aristotle’s methods, passing through Aquinas, eventually formulate the definition of sign as a triadic relation.  The honor goes to John of St. Thomas (aka John Poinsot, 1589-1644), a junior colleague to the famous Baroque scholastic, Francisco Suarez (1548-1617).

Fast forward to America, three centuries later.  After reading Francisco Suarez, among others, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) comes up with the same definition of sign-relation as John Poinsot.  Peirce uses his own home-grown vocabulary, rather than Aristotelian terminology.  In this manner, Thomism passes from the Baroque scholastic (written in Latin) to Peirce’s philosophy and semiotics (written in English), long after (what John Deely calls) the Latin Age ends.

Here, I mention Robert Junqueira, whose 2025 doctoral thesis is titled, The Coimbra Jesuit Course as a Source of the Semiotic Logic of Charles Peirce.

0016 So what am I saying?

E. Michael Jones uses a model based on the Aristotelian philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.

However, Charles Peirce stands within the grand historical tradition of Thomism and provides a novel “scientific-sounding” terminology for Aristotle’s insights.  Plus, Peirce’s tradition allows diagrams, such as the category-based nested form.

This is where my examination adds value to the author’s text.

I offer diagrams of relational structures.

0017 Of course, E. Michael Jones does not know of this historical development in philosophical inquiry into the nature of signs.

Who does?

This diversion into disquieting twists in the history of philosophy is necessary, because the examiner intends to render the model that E. Michael Jones uses to illuminate historical persons and texts in terms of Peirce’s categories.

0018 Here is the foundational association.

For Aristotle, a thing is a hylomorphe, consisting of two real elements, matter and form.  Peirce’s category of secondness is defined as two contiguous real elements.  For proper notation, the contiguity will be placed in brackets.  For Aristotle’s hylomorphe, the contiguity is [substance].  Here is a picture of Peirce’s secondness and Aristotle’s hylomorphe.

0019 This is the basic building block of the author’s model.

I can use it to frame the author’s burning wick, in a simple fashion.  A more complex model will follow.

For now, it pays to look for other familiar terms that fit into Aristotle’s schema.  In Latin, these are esse (matter substantiating, anglicized to “esse_ce”, corresponding to Jones’s “existence”) and essentia (substantiated form, corresponding to Jones’s “essence”).

0020 Here is a picture.

0021 Now, I will anglicize the Latin terms into the terms that I will use for this examination.

0022 One more step is required in order to get my first snapshot of the model that E. Michael Jones works with, as an artisan working with historical texts.  Many slogans are attributed to Aquinas.  Jones selects the slogan, “Existence precedes essence”.

0023 How do I place this slogan into the above diagram?

The magic of spoken labels allows me to regard “esse_ce” (“existence”) and “essence” as real elements.  So, following the logic of Peirce’s category of secondness, there must be a contiguity.  This contiguity is [calls forth], according to the above slogan.

0024 What is one advantage of Jones’s hylomorphe?

It is a flickering candle of illumination.

How so?

Let me ask the question, “Which of the dyads next to the candle shines most brightly within Jones’s model?”

0025 “Calls forth” and “precedes” cannot manifest simultaneously as “calls for” and “inflows”.

At any time, [the substance] shines as one or the other.

The above figure is a Peircean diagram of the author’s model.

Existence calls forth essence.

08/28/26

Looking at E. Michael Jones’s Book (2025) “Walking with a Bible and a Gun”  (Part 3 of 27)

0026 I review.

0027 The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics grows within the repression of the USSR then blossoms with the fall of the Soviet empire.  Boris Uspenskij and Juri Lotman participate in that end-of-an-era flourishing.  That is the end of the story.  What about the start?

Uspenskij and Lotman begin their careers in Slavic studies by proposing atheist materialist explanations for the nature of Russian (and Slavic) literature.  Uspenskij’s model of the candle-illuminated Russian icon is an example.  However, the vocabulary of atheist materialism proves inadequate, so they supplant their explanations with semiology and structuralism.

0028 This fits the pattern of a confounding.

0029 By the time the USSR ends (along with the incentives for atheist material explanations), their confounding is refined into the following script for inquiry into aesthetics.

0029 This is not the same as the original confounding.

Instead, the above figure matches Uspenskij’s original insight arguing that Russian icons should be regarded in candlelight.

B: The form is a literary historical text (which is like the Russian icon).

A: The originating matter is the Slavic language and literary genres (which is like the material for the substance of the flame of a semiological and structuralist model).

C: The entangled matter is a contemporary (and, yes, academically inclined) language of meaning, presence and message.

0030 Independently, E. Michael Jones learns to practice these steps in the USSA, using a model that is not associated with semiology or structuralism.

0031 To me, the parallel is striking.

The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics develops a practice that coheres to the categorical structure of a confounding.  They do so in order to plumb the beauty and insights of Slavic arts and literature.  Yet, no one in that school explicitly articulates that structure.

Similarly, E. Michael Jones develops a practice that coheres to the categorical structure of a confounding.  He does so in order to plumb the charisma of the American identity, as expressed historically in its arts and literature.  Yet, he does not explicitly articulate the structure of the confounding.

0032 I wonder, “What is the esse_ce that calls forth the essence of the title of this book?”

08/27/26

Looking at E. Michael Jones’s Book (2025) “Walking with a Bible and a Gun”  (Part 4 of 27)

0033 Esse_ce [calls forth] essence.

Or, as the author puts it, “Existence precedes essence.”

0034 Some Christians may associate esse_ce to “nature” and essence to “grace”.

Some Christians may make the opposite associations.

Some Christians may flicker from one association to another.

0035 In regards to the provocative title of this book, I suppose that “matter [substantiating]” might cohere to the purely relational structure of the category-based nested form.

Here is a picture.

0036 For those unfamiliar with the above figure, consult Razie Mah’s e-books, A Primer for the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer for Sensible and Social Construction.

A formulaic way to read the above figure goes like this.

A triadic normal context3 brings a dyadic actuality2 into relation with a monadic potential1.

0037 The essence of Jones’s title flows into the esse_ce of the category-based nested form, as shown in the following figure.

0038 The triadic normal context3 is walking3.  Walking3 is different than staying put3.  Walking3 is very natural for humans.  It is the first adaptation away from our chimpanzee-like ancestors.  Walking may be regarded literally as well as figuratively.  Typically, walking3 implies a path2.  That is where the Bible2 comes in.

0039 The dyadic actuality contains only one thing, the Bible2.  If I consider two real elements that compose the term, “Bible2“, then scripture and us come to mind.  Scripture2am is like matter.  We are like form2af.

Maybe, I may also say Scripture as esse_ce [precedes] the essence of Americans.

0040 Here is a picture of the resulting category-based nested form.

0041 The monadic possibility of ‘the gun’1 carries many contradictory implications.  Such is the nature of the category of firstness, which is the realm of possibility.  The logics of firstness are inclusive and allow contradictions.  A gun can potentially do one thing really well.  But, it is really a person using a gun that is accomplishing a goal.  So, the gun is a tool.  The question is a tool for what.  The answer is many things.

What do these many things have in common?

0042 That is precisely the question that the author subtly raises (in potentia) and not-so-subtly answers, by announcing, right at the start, that the wilderness is Satanic.

What wilderness?

The wilderness that we (Americans) are walking into.

0043 What else?

The subtitles denote three historical phases, as well as the tripartite structure of the book.  The central panel is twice the size of the side panels.

0044 So far, this examination of E. Michael Jones’s book brings me through the title.

Student’s who are looking at the book in conjunction with this examination should now read the Introduction and Chapter 4 before continuing.

08/26/26

Looking at E. Michael Jones’s Book (2025) “Walking with a Bible and a Gun”  (Part 5 of 27)

0045 I review.

The author, Dr. E. Michael Jones, uses a model in order to illuminate historical texts and arts of America.

That model, in its most thing-like expression, is esse_ce precedes (or calls forth) essence.

I demonstrated the utility of this model using an empty category-based nested form as esse_ce and the title of this book as essence.  The essence of the book transforms into a filled-in category-based nested form.

0046 Here is the first manifestation of the author’s model.

The gun1 becomes a talisman not in service to a transcendental, but rather for protection from a Satanic transcendental, the wilderness, which is where we (Americans) are walking.

If the gun was a “symbol” of a transcendental, then the gun would represent its transcendental.

The gun is a “talisman” of a transcendental, so the gun is “an expression of”, or is “in touch with”, or “makes obvious” its Satanic transcendental.

That transcendental is um… not what is good or what is beautiful or what is prudent or what is wise.

It is potentially deadly foe.

0047 So far so good.

Have I missed anything?

0048 What about “American Identity”?

It is right there in the title.

0049 Oops.  Maybe the American identity goes with essence.

Does that mean that the above nested form goes with esse_ce?

If so, then the esse_ce calls forth essence paradigm shifts, creating the space for an expanded model.

0050 The introduction says as much.

The Introduction opens with a question, “What does it mean to be an American?”

0051 Sam P. Huntington (1927-2008), famous for his book The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order (1996), publishes a book titled, Who Are We? (2004).

Who are we (Americans)?

That is a good question.

We are the ones who are walking3 with a Bible2 and a gun1.

This is like our esse_ce, writ large.

0052 Different views are common.

The so-called “triple-melting agenda” says that Americans classify as Protestants, Catholics and Jews.

Perhaps, another agenda divides people between um… capitalist and communist affiliations.

0053 The author notes that America starts as a Protestant nation. The Protestant work-ethic serves as a spirit of capitalism.

What else informs the American intuition?

0054 The author asks, “What about Paradise Lost?

Here is where a professor of literature has advantage over political and economic historians.  John Milton (1608-1674) composed an epic poem titled, Paradise Lost (1667).  Paradise Lost is not a political treatise.  It is not an economic program.  Perhaps, it is a theological disquisition.  Most of all, it is a work of art, a vision, an icon of the intellect, depicting the rebellion of Satan, and the fall of Humanity.

0055 Paradise Lost begins with… hmmm… the personification of the transcendental whose talisman is the gun.  E. Michael Jones does not draw this association.  But, what better way to isolate the transcendental value animating the declaration, “I will not serve.”?

I not only will not serve, but I got a gun.

0056 Satan’s heroic proclamation resonates with King Henry VIII’s reform of the English Catholic Church (1509-1547), which was not so much a “reformation”, as a revolution.

How so?

Revolutions tend to be looting operations.  This is the topic of Chapter 4.

0057 Furthermore, looting operations lead to civil wars.

Is it all about the booty?

Compare the time span between the Henry VIII’s first divorce (1533) and the start of the English Civil War (1642-1651) to the time span between the American Revolution (1776) and the start of the American Civil War (1864).

0058 King Henry VIII (1491-1547) and fellow travelers extracted the wealth of the great monasteries and churches of England and repurposing those lands and properties for um… their own personal advantages.  One wonders, “Is this where the ‘capital’ of ‘capitalism’ gets its start?”

In order to do this, the king established a police state.  His henchmen executed many minor establishment figures.  He founded a precedent that becomes paradigmatic.  If you get a lot of wealth, then temptations increase dramatically, and the only way to overcome those temptations is an equally dramatic exercise of one’s own authority.

Many of Henry’s pals squandered their fortunes.  They lost their ‘capital’.  Not Henry.  Henry had something that money cannot buy.  Like Satan, he had celestial blood and an insatiable will to rule over his own domain.

0059 So, if Henry VIII conducts the revolution that slowly constellates a civil war, then who are the parties that were present at the beginning, who would fall into conflict, and battle within the one jurisdiction?

One party consists of Anglicans, who are Protestants in the mildest manner possible.  They retain all the sacraments of the Catholic Church and reject the papal institutional framework, preferring to have their own “pope”, or something like that, in the person of the Archbishop of Canterbury…er… I meant to say, the King or Queen of England. 

The other party includes the Puritans, who are Protestants in the most militant manner possible.  They reject all the sacraments of the Catholic Church except for one or two (depending on the sect) and regard the papal institutional framework with derision, preferring authority to be constellated in the people (of the sect) or their charismatic leader.

0060 The Puritans follow Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564) in promulgating a slogan, which, in Latin, goes like this, “Sola fide, sola scriptura, et sola gratia”. The slogan translates into “By faith alone, by scripture alone and by grace alone”.

The Puritans are so successful that even the Anglicans adopt the slogan.

0061 Why?

Sola fide (by faith alone) jettison’s reason.  They reject not just any reason, but the logic of the scholastics who had been so successful at taming the philosophy of Aristotle and bringing its logical powers into service of the Catholic Church.  The rejection is in Latin because Latin is the disciplinary language of scholastics, who were the only educated people around.  Scholastics ran the medieval universities.

0062 So, how does a Protestant become educated?

One learns to read the Bible, in one’s own language, and dismisses all the Aristotelian claptrap, which is in Latin.  Faith no longer requires the logical reasoning of educated (and fat and manipulative) priests.  Faith comes directly from reading the Bible.

Of course, the Puritans were very happy to provide you with a translation of the Bible in your vernacular, because of the invention of the movable-type printing press (by German Johannes Gutenberg, around 1440).  The price was reasonable, but the authorities must never know.

With one’s own Bible in hand, then one can walk3a in faith alone.

0063 Sole scriptura (by scripture alone) situates the actuality of the Bible2a, as {scripture [substantiates] who we are}2a.

Some of the doctrines of the Catholic Church are retained, even though every “educated person” (who can read the Bible on his or her own) can interpret the sacred text.  For example, the doctrine of original sin is retained, but modified according to Luther, Calvin and other notables in the Protestant tradition.

0064 Sola gratia (by grace alone) situates the potential of ‘the gun’1a, which is a talisman (an “enforcer”, if I may say) of the Satanic transcendental that declares, “I will be my own sovereign, even if against the will of God.”

Does that sound like essence, writ large?

08/25/26

Looking at E. Michael Jones’s Book (2025) “Walking with a Bible and a Gun”  (Part 6 of 27)

0065 So, where am I going with this discussion of Chapters 1 and 4?

0066 To me, the following diagram applies.

The Protestant slogan, “sola fide, sola scriptura, et sola gratia” virtually situates the title of Jones’s book, “Walking with a Bible and a Gun”.

0067 The author’s model constitutes a two-level interscope.  Esse_ce associates to content.  Essence associates to situation.

For instruction on this purely relational structure, consult Razie Man’s e-books, A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.  They are not long and will help immensely.

0068 On the content level, the normal context of walking3a brings the actuality of the Bible2a into relation with the potential of ‘the gun’1a.

On the situation level, the normal context of sola fide3b brings the actuality of sola scriptura2b into relation with sola gratia (the potential of grace alone)1b.

0069 Yes, sola gratia1b labels the potential of grace alone1b.

Plus, I already know that, in Jones’s mantra where existence precedes essence, grace is never alone.

0070 I review.

Jones’s dyad derives from Aristotle’s hylomorphe.

0071 If I imagine that esse_ce corresponds to the book’s title, “walking with a Bible and a gun “, and, essence corresponds to the slogan, “sola fide, sola scriptura et sola gratia “, then I can say that the American identity calls forth the Protestant reformation. 

Hmmm, this seems to be the very opposite of what the author claims.

However, if the esse_ce of content calls to mind the essence of situation, then the following intuitively satisfying dyad results.

0072 “Walking with a Bible and a gun” intuitively calls to mind the slogan “sola fide, sola scriptura, et sola gratia”.

Content (esse_ce) [calls forth] situation (essence).

I think that provides an insight into the Introduction and Chapter 4.

0073 What else?

I suspect that there is a dyad that complements the above dyad.  Plus, this complementary dyad contains the term, “identity”.  This dyad derives from a post by an independent scholar, responding to a 2025 article on hylomorphism by Mariusz Tabaczek O.P., titled “Contemporary and Classical Versions of Hylomorphism: A Critical Evaluation”.

0074 Here is a picture.

0075 What does this imply?

These two dyads complement one another.  They are not identical.  They do not perfectly align.  Rather, they offer two relational structures, one from an expert in literary analysis and one from a respondent to Aquinian philosophers.  Both can be used in examining this book.

For example, the esse_ce of the title of Jones’s book provides a structure3a for a thing2a, according to the thing’s dispositions1a.  The essence of the Protestant slogan provides an identity3b for an embodiment2bf, according to the embodiment’s powers1b.

0076 Further, the dyad opens into a two-level interscope that complements the interscope attained from examining the Introduction and Chapter 4.

0077 Students should now read Chapter 1.

08/24/26

Looking at E. Michael Jones’s Book (2025) “Walking with a Bible and a Gun”  (Part 7 of 27)

0078 Here is a cue card for some of Jones’s terminology.

0079 The term, “existence”, corresponds to the Latin term, esse, or “matter substantiating”.

The term, “hidden grammar” corresponds to the substance, or the contiguity between esse_ce and essence.

The essence allows a contemporary meaning, presence and message to historical art and literature.  Recall that the slogan, “existence precedes essence” constitutes a model that allows the matter of American history to substantiate the form of American literature in such a way as to entangle a contemporary language of meaning, presence and message (points 26-32).

0080 Chapter 1 starts with “A Brief Recognition of New England’s Errand into the Wilderness”, a lecture by Samuel Danforth, delivered in 1670, forty years after the founding of the Massachusetts’ Bay Colony.  Of course, the natives who once lived on the hills of Boston are long displaced.  Why?  They did not have guns.

0081 Danforth regards the forested lands stretching inland as a desert, a “wilderness”, because… well… the Puritan colony compares to the tribes of Israel after they crossed the Jordan River… er… the Atlantic Ocean.

Yeah, I see the comparison, especially when the Puritan’s claim to fame is sola scriptura2b.

Here is a diagram of my associations.

0082 On the situation level, covenant theology3b is a version of sola fide3b.

Here is the deal.  Humans are well… totally depraved because of the Fall of Adam and Eve.  So, God, through Jesus the Christ, pays for all the sins of humanity.  But, there is a catch.  If you are not predestined to failure (the fate of all Catholics, I am afraid to say), then God will offer you a covenant, which you may elect to join.  Then, you are saved because your personal covenant with God1b has been actualized.

Jones makes a great commotion about how a total depravity of reason (due to Adam’s Fall) does not allow the reasoning that goes into the above paragraph.  However, the total depravity of reason associated with Calvinist theology does permit the above-mentioned reasoning.

0083 The Puritans’ personal covenants3b allows the members of the English sect to migrate to a place where they will be free1b from… you know… those criminal Anglicans who are their enemies in the English Civil War.

So, in the normal context of settling this Puritan colony3a, the scriptural narrative of Joshua crossing the Jordan as matter2am provides the hidden grammar for us2bf, locating our new England1a in the Boston hills.

0084 In Virginia, another English colony is founded for commercial, rather than religious, purposes.  The Anglicans have plans for English colonies to supply raw materials for an always-improving British industry, under the auspices of a clever crown.  Amazingly, after liberating the Church properties in the Revolution of Henry VIII, and then surviving the English Civil War (which was anything but “civil”), the crown was ready to do business.

0085 The theology is acquisitional.  Recall, when Joshua entered into the promised land, he takes the title from the Canaanites who are already there.  Similarly, Henry VIII takes the titles for the monastic lands and common areas and gives them to his buddies.  Then, he executes anyone who says that such acts are… um… “ungodly”.

0086 Compared to cold, damp Britain, sunny Virginia seems like paradise.  Plus, the crown is able to award large “plantation-sized” land grants.  The parcels are larger than anyone can possibly farm without help.  Happily, some enterprising agents start to supply indentured Irish… well, slaves.  So, the labor shortage is solved… but wait… what about these Africans who are much less expensive and more clueless than those Irish slaves?

The English are so enterprising.

They can pluck the fruit of slave labor from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and not get kicked out of paradise.

0087 Here is my guess as to Virginia’s sensible construction.

0088 Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote a play about some of Henry VIII’s buddies who squandered great fortunes.  The name of the play is Timon.

For theatrical purposes, Timon lives in Arcadia (the Greek analog to paradise) before he goes bust.  So, theologically, Arcadia is the wonderful span between acquisition (of great wealth) and dispossession (a turn of fortune).  The theology of acquisition mimics covenantal theology because God delivers some sort of bonus deal to certain people (the English plantation owners), but not to others (the folk that end up as property in order for others to command their labor).

08/22/26

Looking at E. Michael Jones’s Book (2025) “Walking with a Bible and a Gun”  (Part 8 of 27)

0089 I ask, “What are the implications of my initial associations to Chapter 1?”

0090 First, the identities3b of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and of the Virginia plantations are characterized by Protestant theology3b.  Both colonies are structured3a as settlements3a from English civilization, which had passed through revolution (1533-1547) then civil war (1642-1651) then restoration (1660-1688).

0091 Second, the following purely relational structure is mind-independent reality (in Latin, ens reale).

However, once spoken words are placed into the empty slots of the two-level interscope, then one can visualize mind-dependent reality (in Latin, ens rationis).

0092 The content-level and situation-level actualities are the slots most likely to gain associations.  The author calls these associations, “categories of the mind”.

Here is a picture.

0093 Surely, categories of the mind allow free-floating associations.  After all, the forests outside the Bay colony are not like ancient Middle Eastern landscapes.  The plantations of Virginia are not like the Garden of Eden, except for the acquisition and dispossession business.

The author mentions the Puritan Grand Marshall, General Oliver Cromwell, of unhappy memory.  Cromwell categorized the Catholic Irish as “Amalek”, that is, inhabitants of Baal-worshipping Canaanite cities.  Once declared “Amalek”, the Irish were slated for slaughter.

0094 Third, a category of mind2, a label for an actuality2, no matter how goofy, occupies the foreground.  Its normal context3 and potential1 stand in the background.

The Exodus story where Joshua crosses the Jordan River in the pursuit of conquest2am is like matter.   The Massachusetts’ Bay Colony2af is like form.  This matter and form goes with the Bible2a.  The Bible2a is the Puritan’s thing.

The ancient Greek stories of Arcadia and the Genesis tale of Paradise2am are like matter.  The Virginian colonies2af are like form.  Just as in ancient Greece, slaves can do the labor on the plantations.

0095 At the end of Chapter 1, the author draws a contrast… a mirroring (so to speak)… that portrays a rupture during the Reformation.  A single situation level shears into two.

The nested form above is the Protestant slogan.

The normal context of faith alone3b brings the actuality of only scripture2b into relation with the potential of ‘spiritual blessings’1b.

The nested form below addresses Catholic scholastic inquiry.

The normal context of beings of reason3b brings the actuality of scientia (or science, writ large)2b into relation with the potential of ‘mind-independent being’1b.

0096 These two situation-level nested forms stand in dynamic tension.

With the Reformation, the second nested form (which expresses the doctrines of the Catholic Church in Thomistic formulations) falls into shadow with the Puritans and Calvinists, but not so much with the Anglicans (in England) and the Lutherans (in Germany).

Imagine a colony of Puritans sailing across the Atlantic in a wooden boat and arriving in a place that they will call, “New England”.   The forest, the wilderness, stretches before them.  The inland is full of danger.  Then, after the colony becomes a bustling town and the forests have been pushed back by hard-working farmers, it seems as if the wilderness has entered the colony.  The second nested form reflects a projection of… what?… their disconnect with England, or worse, their disconnect from Christ.

It’s hard to tell.

0097 According to their own reading of the Bible, the Massachusetts’ Bay colony is the New Israel.

0098 The student should read Chapter 2.

08/21/26

Looking at E. Michael Jones’s Book (2025) “Walking with a Bible and a Gun”  (Part 9 of 27)

0099 Nothing unites a community more than a common enemy.

But, what happens when the enemy enters into the community?

0100 Chapter 2 concerns the Salem Witch Trials (starting in 1692) and fictionalized by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), whose family lived in Salem since the 1660s. 

The elected members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony adhere to the upper situation level, yet project their fears, anxiety and guilt onto the situation-level that would have corresponded to classical Christian reason.

According to the author, one of the drivers of this projection is the Calvinist rejection of the Catholic sacrament of confession.  Confession is a sacrament built on Christ’s commissioning his disciples to preach and forgive sins.  The Puritans turned their backs on those sacraments that empowered Catholic priestly institutions.  So, the Puritan rejection of reason really applies to Catholic reason, not to plain commonsense reasoning.

0101 Okay, even plain commonsense reasoning may be suspect, especially, when the Fall of Adam has left humans devoid of reason3a and willing to use witchcraft2a in order to cast spells from the wilderness1a.  Here, the “wilderness” is both literal (the forests outside the colony) and figurative (the desires inside our bodies).

0102 In effect, the lower situation-level nested form becomes a mirror of the upper situation-level nested form.

Because the Puritan’s vocabulary is inspired by scripture alone2b, they have no words2am (or categories of the mind) for contradicting an impression that witches are operating on the premises.  They have no vocabulary for conducting an inquisition into whether the rumors have “natural” (not supernatural) formal and final causes (designs and intentions).

0103 Jones discusses Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story about Goodman Brown.  Brown’s Calvinism takes whatever matter that cannot be unified with the principle of sola scriptura2bm into the form of the Satanic2bf.

Jones’s consideration reflects the following associations.

0104 Sola scriptura2b is the category of the mind2b where a principle of unity2bm [substantiates] the embodiment2bf of the Puritan identity3b.  An election to receive a covenantal relation with God characterizes the principle of unity2bm.  Membership in a church in the Massachusetts Bay Colony figures into the embodiment2bf.  Sola scriptura2b emerges from (and situates) the potential of ‘grace alone’1b.

Sola scriptura2b virtually situates the Biblical thing2a of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which emerges from (and situates) the potential of ‘the gun’1a.

0105 The Biblical thing2a also constitutes a category of the mind2a, because the Exodus, when applied to British colonialists, grants immunity of guilt for their displacement of the Amalek… I mean… native population.  Of course, the so-called “Indians” may have deserved their misfortune, because rumors have it that the Indians kidnapped and cooked a couple of wayward colonists.

Isn’t that Satanic?

0106 The student should read Chapters 3 and 5.