[ClearCase_guy]

Back then, the people were all schizophrenic and heard voices in their head. But eventually we got control and achieved consciousness. At least that's what this guy said back in the 1970s. He spent a fair amount of time examining Gilgamesh and the Homeric epics.

[Cicero]

Did he think that Homer must have been a nut case because he wrote such silly epics? Not to mention Virgil or Dante.

[DManA]

Carl Sagan said the same thing in “Broca’s Brain”. Did Carl rip him off?

[Tainan]

jeeez!...I actually have a copy of that book in my storage room.

[varmintman]

Jaynes bought into the evolutionay paradigm. His studies indicated that people living between he times of Exodus and of Alexander were using a part of the brain which is no longer used in such a way as to produce what he called "auditory hallucinations" and that entire societies were being controlled by such hallucinations at the time of the Trojan war. At every point at which you or I would have to make a decision, those people were being told what to do by inner voices which they called gods and goddesses. Another way to interpret the same findings is to entertain the notion that human language prior to the flood and the tower of Babel had been telepathic and that what was going on at the time of the Trojan war was a broken remnant of that former capability.

All of that had nothing to do with the flood itself of course, the flood was a real event, but a natural event. It takes a sorry opinion of God to imagine that he would wipe the entire solar system for sin only to have sin back in business a few decades later as if nothing had happened.

[RoosterRedux]

Actually, Jaynes didn't say people were schizophrenic but that they really did here voices of the gods (just as the Hebrew prophets heard the voice of God and as schizophrenics of today may hear voices).

Jaynes theory was that humans were not independent but were acting as agents of higher authorities. Perhaps those authorities were themselves agents of God or agents of the forces who had rebelled against God.

Having read Jaynes many times, I have the clear impression that idols did indeed speak to the non-dominant part of the bicameral brain...and may still do so in ways too subtle to hear.

[SunkenCiv]

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Thanks ClearCase_guy et al, there hasn't been a Jaynes discussion on FR in at least a few years (or, everyone kept it quiet so I wouldn't storm on in). Makes this topic pingworthy, it looked ludicrous otherwise. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.