Declaration of Arbroath

Descendants rather than ancestors surely?

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I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then

I was going to raise a couple of points in the first few days of this thread but then had to go into Hospital for a while. As far as I can see from a quick read through nobody else has done it¹ so I'll give it a go and see if anybody bites.As the points are unrelated to each other I'll post them as two distinct messages so each can be followed separately.¹ This should probably have told me they weren't worth making in the first place!Edit: Added worth in sentence above.This message has been edited by MangyTiger, 02-16-2006 10:48 PM

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I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then

I agree with those folks who have parsed the text in the link Ray posted and conclude that there is no clearly identifiable claim that the Scots are the the descendants of the Hebrews.The problem is that the text being parsed isn't really the right text. This is the right text. When we're analysing the meaning of a sentence to determine what it means I'd be wary of using translations.Anybody here up to parsing early 14^th Century Latin as used in formal communications betweens the nobility and the Papacy? My best effort would probably end up as "Romans go the house"

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I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then

One thing I'd like somebody to explain is why the sentence about crossing the Red Sea is apparently arbitrarily thrown into the Declaration? I know why Ray thinks it is there but I'd be interested in other explanations. It just seems to be so far out in left field in the context of the rest of the Declaration that you have to wonder if there is a reason why that specific event was used.I see jar has suggested that it is simply a dating reference - were they just trying to say that the Scots had been established in Scotland for a long time? Was the BC/AD nomenclature not in use by then (I genuinely don't know)?Aside - I just looked in Wikipedia and it says AD was invented in 525 and has been in recorded use since the 7^thCentury. It also says Bede used the latin equivalent of BC in 731.Was it common to date ancient events relative to a Biblical chronlogy? This was a century or two before Bishop Usher so I don't even know if the people of that era had any idea (or even cared) when the Biblical pre-Christian events took place.

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I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then