Greater Israel: Theology as Cartography – Cartography as Catastrophe

Posted5 months agoActive4 months ago

bryanrasmussen

17 points

23 comments

blogs.timesofisrael.comOtherstory

heatedmixed

Debate

80/100

Israel-Palestine ConflictReligious ExtremismCartography

Key topics

Israel-Palestine Conflict

Religious Extremism

Cartography

Discussion around the concept of 'Greater Israel' and its theological and cartographic implications.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

22m

Peak period

0-2h

Avg / period

3.8

Comment distribution15 data points

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Based on 15 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Aug 21, 2025 at 12:43 AM EDT
5 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Aug 21, 2025 at 1:05 AM EDT
22m after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
9 comments in 0-2h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Aug 22, 2025 at 4:50 AM EDT
4 months ago
Step 04

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Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (23 comments)

Showing 15 comments of 23

KnuthIsGod

5 months ago

2 replies

"lo tirtzach (do not murder) and

tzedek tzedek tirdof (justice, justice shall you pursue) "

pfannkuchen

5 months ago

3 replies

Historically, don’t most moral codes only apply to the in group?

nielsbot

5 months ago

1 reply

Hopefully we've evolved.

pfannkuchen

5 months ago

It makes complete sense that people feel that way. European and Euro derived cultures are universalist from Christianity. But universalism isn’t the norm for moral systems throughout history. We only feel like universalism is best because it permeates the morality we grew up with.

stephen_g

5 months ago

2 replies

Not the Torah - e.g. “[18] He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. [19] Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 10:18-19 (ESV)

Cordiali

5 months ago

2 replies

Regarding the second one, variations of that, to help or protect strangers/travellers, seems to have been relatively common across a variety of historical cultures.

Tangentially, it also reminds me of a woman's grave that was found in Denmark I think. I can't remember how old the grave was, but something like 3-4000 years. They were able to use isotope analysis of her teeth, hair, stomach contents, etc. to trace her movements.

She was from the area, but in the last year of her life, she'd travelled down to around Switzerland and back. There was a documentary about it, I'll see if I can find it...

pfannkuchen

5 months ago

1 reply

Tangential, but I am always skeptical of these sorts of reconstructed stories when they rely on purely academic methods such as ancient stomach contents analysis and inferred historical geographic flora. Like, if that’s wrong somehow, how would you know, exactly? Both of those examples are fundamentally non-verifiable.

Cordiali

5 months ago

1 reply

You can check if there's agreement between different techniques. Tooth enamel would be a pretty trustworthy source of information, for example. It just depends on what level of confidence you want in the results.

I'm personally comfortable with a "probable" or "it's likely that" in my history docos. I'm a lot less comfortable with that standard when it comes to planes, trains, and automobiles.

pfannkuchen

4 months ago

That makes sense to me and I’m comfortable with redundant agreeing evidence as well (assuming we don’t ignore any contradictory evidence), but my impression is that these fields do not consistently have such a standard. Maybe my impression is wrong? To me it seems like you need to crawl through the dependency chain and verify that reasonable standards were used all the way up. Does the peer review process in these fields actually enforce this? It seems like no, but I am just a spectator.

Cordiali

5 months ago

Well... I'm not sure which bog body it was, there were a few!

It might've been the 'Haraldskær Woman', I found an article [1] about her which roughly matches my recollections, and is from around the same time I would've seen the documentary. Although she might've only travelled as far as central Germany.

[1]: https://journals.openedition.org/archeosciences/4407

pfannkuchen

5 months ago

And the New Testament says all kinds of things Christians don’t follow in practice as well.

bryanrasmussenAuthor

4 months ago

there are in most primitive moral codes requirements to welcome strangers and give them hospitality, this is a chance to make an out member come in of course, but there are the truly out - enemies that you are not required to treat nicely.

nivertech

5 months ago

1 reply

Gibbon1

5 months ago

I'm not sure what to say about people that encourage other people to keep starting wars they can't win instead of cutting a deal. While being at no personal risk themselves.

lifestyleguru

5 months ago

When people start quoting their "holy book" you know shit is going to turn insane.

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