Short Stuff: What's the oldest book?

Published Mar 31, 2021, 11:18 AM

In order to figure out what the oldest book is, one has to define what a book actually is. Listen in as we discuss this debatable topic.

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Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and there's Jerry again sitting in for producer Dave ce. Uh. And this is short stuff. As I've already said, that's right, and we're talking about books. What is a book? What isn't a book? That book in the window, the one with the waggony tail, That's right. Do we get going? I thought we already had, but yes, let's keep going. So there's this book in in the National Museum of History in Bulgaria, and uh, it is what some people consider the oldest book in the world. Have you seen pictures of it. It's six pages of gold sheet, like the pages are gold and not like they took paper and put gold around it or the edges are gilded. It is like a sheet of gold metal and there's six pages like that and they're bound together. Um. And it's written in a Truscan and uh. The Etruscans were the direct predecessors to the Romans. They kind of ran the area. I think that hey days around five b C. And they're kind of this mysterious group because we haven't deciphered their their writing yet, but we know that this is a is in a Truscan book, and so a lot of people say, there you have it, everybody. The oldest book in the world is called the gold Orphism Book, and this is it. Yes, it is actual, multiple pages, like you said, it is bound. There are illustrations. There's a mermaid and a harp and some soldiers and a horse rider. And you know that. They say this thing is years old. They found it along a river, the Strauma River in southwestern Bulgaria and a tomb. It was donated. This is all kind of mysterious. It was donated by an anonymous person and then authenticated by two anonymous scientists. Yeah, little sketchy. It sounds like aliens to me. But the debate then started, well, that's not true. There's always been debates about what is the oldest this, what's the oldest that, what's the oldest book? And if you think about oldest book, it becomes a little bit of an esoteric question because you have to ask yourself what is a book? Could it be a clay tablet or a scroll, or you know, can it be something that is an exit like doesn't tell a story, it's just like accounting records. So you really have to sort of define what a book is first. Yeah, So I mean a lot of people would define a book by its physical attributes, right, Like it's a certain shape, Um, it's bound together. That's a big one for a lot of people. Um. Some people say it has to be on paper, which would um discount the gold Orphism book. Um. And then other people say, well, no, no, no, it's just got to like tell a story, say, and it can be on anything and it doesn't have to be bound together. And this is when everybody goes, oh boy, here we go. Becomes another debate on what constitutes a book. Yeah, but it's not an angry debate, is it. No, it's not angry. But yet I'm angered by it because I think it's largely unnecessary. And there is a person cited in this House to Works article who I suspect purposefully obfuskates this and initiates this debate because they don't want this question ever to be answered. Are you talking about Laurent Ferry m. Yeah. This is a curator of rare books and manuscripts at Cornell and Cornell and they were actually interviewed for this House stuff Works article about eleven years ago and Cornell is in possession of these clay tablets that they maintain the largest in the world. And uh, they're pretty old. And some people might say, well, those are books, but most of those, like I said about like tax records, their financial records, legal proceedings. Uh, they don't espouse any worldview, so I think they're in that means they are not books. Yeah, Lauren Ferry says, a book would be something that has a binding and that espouses a worldview, right, So yeah, you can discount those um clay tablets there there. They just don't They don't count as a book, but to other people they would count as a book. So so they said, well, okay, Lauren Ferry, what what is the oldest book then? And Fairy said, either Homer's Iliad or the Epic of Gilgamesh. The problem is, and this is where I think Lauren Ferry is purposefully doing this just to keep this debate going because they like to talk about this kind of stuff. So the Epic of Gilgamesh the oldest is a very old book. Um, the British Museum has one, but it's written on clay tablets from the seventh century b C. And yeah, it's not bound. So the very example that this curator gave as the oldest book doesn't even fall within their own parameter. And here's where I started getting angry. All right, Well, let's take a break then for you hulk out and hulk smash, and we'll be right back to Well, we're not gonna settle any debate, but we'll just talk about it more and make you more mad. All right, let's let's get back to me getting mad. Well, it depends on who you talk to. If you start bringing religion into it and all this stuff, then of course you're going to have people that say you might have Christians that say, well, the Bible is clearly the oldest book because the world is, you know, only a few thousand years old, and the Bible was written right after that, so what's older than that? Bub and boobal scholars will say in scientists will say, actually, the Bible has written over many, many hundreds of years, and a lot of these stories that were written were hundreds of years after the events that they're talking about, even, right, But they don't say that to the people who say the world's a few thousand years old and the Bible was written right after they the scholars turned to the rest of us and say, well, obviously these things were written over centuries after these events. So um, here's the thing. That's another thing that Lauren Ferry does is what about religion? Why would you bring that part into it? That's not fair. They're just trying to do this. And then there was another one too that they said too, is well, you know, some books are not It's not like the stories were created out of whole cloth right when the books are written, a lot of them are based on oral traditions. And these oral traditions far predate any of the books that are these oldest books that are written. And it does not matter. It does not matter if the book is a brand new story, but it's still older than any other book than a book that was published in the fifties based on an oral tradition from five thousand years ago. That older book is going to be the older book. This Lauren Ferry person is really getting under my skin. Yeah, it can't be a book. Isn't a story. A book is a story that has been bound and written, And I'm you know what, I'm in my definition, it doesn't have to be bound. If you'd give me a scroll that's got a that's got a good beginning, middle, and end to it, then that's a book. So there's papyri that are years old that would that would qualify them, because I mean, it's a book, but it's just one long page, all right, that's a book. Okay, alright to me. So we're hot on the trail here, at least as far as what you consider a book. I mean, Caroac wrote on rolls of toilet paper, right, he wrote on was the roles of toilet paper. I know it was a very long roll of paper over like forty eight or seventy two hours or something like that, and like that was the story in the book. But you can't sell stuff like that, so you have to bind them in the traditional form so you can put them on yourself exactly. But yet, was it not a book before when it was just on one long scroll. It's a really great point. Now I'm just getting mad at us, No, not us, fairy Fairy Lauren Faery, be mad at them. All right. There's another question is what constitutes a book? What kind of book are you talking about if you're talking about a printed book in the in the understanding of printing that we have here in the modern world. Well, then that's easy to settle the Gutenberg Bible or the book printed right before the Gutenberg Bible. Man, I wish I would have looked it up. I just I forgot about it the whole episode on I know, but whatever book Guttenberg put out first, that would that would qualify. But then you remember in that episode we talked about China had printers that they didn't use um movable type. They used woodblock printing, but they were still printing book books, so you know, okay, but then other people say, well before printing, before automatic printing, there was handwriting, but they were still writing books. Okay. Well then now you're talking about manuscripts. So so actually you come back to the Biblical people and say, well what you got and they say, well, we have manuscripts that were written in the fourth century. That's pretty old, isn't it. And you say, yeah, that's pretty old. But is it is is it any more of a book than the gold Orphism Book? Right? I don't even know where we are now in this debate, to be honest, because I I think I'm becking myself into a corner that I painted myself into. You can just walk right out of it, just say this is what I now think. I think it can be handwritten, okay, because Jack Carowack was writing with his hand. I think it can be on a scroll. I can't be an oral story. Okay. Agree, I'm gonna say it doesn't have to be bound. If you want to out, it might have to be bound. But then you're getting into consumerism and like, you know that whole argument. But I think it has to be connected in some way. So like if it's one long scroll, those pages are still connected. Yeah, so what are you are you saying? If they slice that scroll up into a hundred sheets and just stacked them, that's not a book because there's a truscan um gold sheets that are not connected, that that would not really qualify as a book like the gold Orphism book that are actually older than the gold Orphism book. But they wouldn't count their just pages. You got pages, not a book. Pages are part of a book, all right. I guess it's here point I should reveal to the world that I am Laurence Ferry. Oh my gosh, he just ripped off his mask and first he was bob Yucker and then he was Laurence Ferry. Bob, what is that from? I think that was where those Budlight or the Miller commercials, right, I thought it was like a cricket gun or something. Go back and watch some of this sometime on YouTube. Those are fantastic. Yeah they really It was Millard, wasn't it. Yeah? Miller had great bits of nostalgia. Wow, we were raised on TV, weren't we? Dang straight? Well, I'll tell you who was raised on books, Laurence Ferry, and you know who was raised on radio? Journey And how could you get any better as far as endings go than that chunk? Agreed? Well, everybody, short, stuff is apt. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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