Well like everything else on this thread that appears in great dispute with Julius Cesar being blamed, as well as a Christian mob, and even Muslim invaders.

So at this point I am not really sure myself anymore but certainly now willing to simply accept anything Clarise says or people that call me an idiot for that matter.

http://ehistory.osu.edu/world/articles/ArticleView.cfm?AID=9

[/FONT]

 

Here's the cross reference from the things I highlighted in the previous post. And while it doesn't order burning non christian books it does say to confiscate them.

448
Theodosius II orders all non-christian books burned.

425
Aug 4 CT 16.5.63 389 Theodosius II, Valentinian III Confiscation is the punishment for heresy, perfidy, schism, pagan superstition, or other errors hostile to the catholic faith.

http://www.fourthcentury.com/old/Theodosian/CTh16.htm

 

Very interesting! I wonder to what degree that extended to secular works (in, say, mathematics) even if they were by pagan authors? And to what extent was the law applied - did it allow for premises to be deliberately searched?

 

+1

DL, do you mind if I call a truce for a sec and ask, "What are these boys arguing about?"

I did try to read much of pages 5 and 6, and one thing I do find appalling: that a certain someone is challenging Orion's claim that Trinity is a secular university. As though Trinity might have been founded in the antebellum south by a radio televangelist.

Trinity College is an ancient institution and one of the greatest universities of the world.

This goes to show that Internet knowledge has severe limits.

I would also submit that it strains credibility to suggest that Christians conducted a coordinated, multi-century effort to destroy the knowledge of antiquity. That would involve literally thousands of Christian sects, many of which did not overlap chronologically, much less geographically. Even the Acropolis and Memphis- the two locales that started all this off- are separated by the Mediterranean. People in 400BCE did not have telephones, much less the Internet. If the purported "sackings" really happened, they could not have been coordinated (unless perhaps by signal fire ).

Besides, if early Christian sects did "sack" the temples of Thebes, they most likely found a lot of graffiti before they started. The Acropolis was already in decay by 400BCE (after all, Greece had already declined, and its temples were already in varying states of ruin and neglect). To the local people of Greece, Memphis, Egypt would have been nothing but a murky legend.

The Christians of Antioch would have been somewhat closer to Memphis, but they were too busy being slaughtered by the Byzantines at the time, and besides, they too were fragmented into dozens of Gnostic sects.

If any of the legends of Alexandria hold water, most significant would be the final sacking by the Moslems, by the order of Caliph Omar. But I do not think that it was particularly important, if it had even happened; it is far more likely that anything of value had been spirited away from Alexandria and locked in vaults long before Amr's siege of Memphis. After all, the Catholic monks of the Middle Ages transcribed most of what remains of antiquity, and they had to have had primary sources at their disposal.

If I had to guess, I would wager that most of the "missing parchment," to this very day, is locked safely in catacombs hundreds of feet below the Vatican.

But again, I ask, what is the point of all of this?

 

Well anyone practicing science would be included. And that was true clear up until Galileo.

By the way I found my text book.

A Practical Guide To the Theater; A New Introduction to Theater; Wright and Downs; Copyright 2001, ISBN 0-759-30734-2 page 273

 

Oh dear, could you have used a more obvious truck to move the goalposts? Really, it's embarrassing.

I'm sure a christian burned a book at some point, I'm sure everyone in every sect in every part of the world attacked what they saw as "the enemy" at some point, as well as his ideas. You stated that "all non-christian" books were burned, and you stated that it set civilization back thousands of years. This is the point you were wrong on, and the only point I had any interest in debating. Whether or not there existed in history, some over zealous Christians, has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion of the dark ages, or with your claim of such a blow to civilization. You can try to change the debate as much as you please, but at least have the decency to do so in a more cunning fashion.

Yes, it is in dispute, and it is a monumentally important dispute. You pass it off backhandedly, and yet the point is that some things were destroyed at some point in history, but certainly not in any number large enough to be seen as an "attack" on civilization(as you tried to characterize it). You also smoothly coast over the facts of monks in the Dark Ages being almost entirely responsible for the preservation of knowledge, which, one might think, certainly outweighs the destructive nature of a few angry mobs.

Now you're rambling on about whether or not some Christians persecuted some pagans, as if it means something. You mean just as some pagans persecuted some Christians? How some people have persecuted others throughout history and even to this day? What does this have to do with the "Dark ages"? Your entire argument has broken down. Your whole idea of the "Dark ages" existing because "Christians" set the world back thousands of years has been entirely dismantled. Yet you simply refuse to say you were mistaken and move along.

Of course people were persecuted, as has been said, it has happened at every moment in history. The powerful persecute their opposition. And yet this is entirely beside the point. Mainly, your point. "Persecution" and "the destruction of civilization" are two slightly different things. That goal post isn't going anywhere. Try, try, try as you might.

 

Take this "The Bell Curve" thread and shove it up your ass.

 

Hey, asswipe! Yeah, you, Joliet, you shriveled old ball bag! When the fuck are you going to invite me to be your XNXX friend?!

 

You probably feel bad because you've been thoroughly ignored lately, so this is just for you . . .

shut

the

fuck

up

you

dimpled

moron

. . . that's all the charity you're getting from me. :-|

 

Book Burning in China

Not to be pedantic, or anything, but you overestimate the age of Chinese writing by about three thousand years. The oldest surviving Chinese book I am aware of is The Book of Songs.

--------

Various current Chinese characters have been traced back to the late 商 Shāng Dynasty about 1200–1050 BCE,[3][4][5] but the process of creating characters is thought to have begun some centuries earlier.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_writing

as the Book of Songs, the Book of Odes, and often known simply as its original name The Odes, is the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems and songs. It comprises 305 poems and songs, with many range from the 10th to the 7th centuries BC.[1][2] It forms part of the Five Classics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Songs_(Chinese)

The Qin Dynasty (Chinese: 秦朝; pinyin: Qín Cháo; Wade–Giles: Ch'in Ch'ao; IPA: [tɕʰǐn tʂʰɑ̌ʊ̯]) was the first imperial dynasty of China, lasting from 221 to 207 BC...

An attempt to purge all traces of the old dynasties led to the infamous burning of books and burying of scholars incident, which has been criticized greatly by subsequent scholars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Dynasty

--------

The emperor of the Qin Dynasty was unable to destroy all of the old books, but his effort was more thorough than that of any Christian ruler.

 

I'm going to call a bullshit on you now Orion. I've been researching and searching my garage all day providing you with information, documentation, and multiple sources while you've provided next to nothing except an anecdote that claims Christians and Pagans apparently got a long in some litte town in Greece.

I've very much willing to be educated on this by people with better educations and better sources but that ain't you kid.

 

That is an interesting theory. In The 10,000 Year Explosion Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending theorize that the discoveries of Greek scientists did not lead earlier to more advanced technology earlier because the general level of European intelligence had not evolved sufficiently. They are not talking about the spread of education, but biological evolution.

 

I've provided my sources and have even looked at the sources that claim it was the barbarians that destroyed the collected past knowledge and not the Christians but that's the only dispute I've found that contradicts what I'm contending.

So let me ask you. Prior to the early Middle Ages if you prefer that terminology was the bulk of previous knowledge lost/.

Did people lose the ability to read?

Did human progress fall back to levels before the Romans?

Was much of the world literature lost and did it take nearly 1,000 years to recover?

You seem to know it all. Can you answer those questions for me?

PS Instead of some Christians persecuting Pagans I've proven Roman Emperors persecuted Pagans and ordered their property confiscated.

So who;'s really bluffing here? I saying its you.

 

This is a bit awkward, because I can't find anything on that book online whatsoever, so what I'm about to say is my opinion.

First, as we've seen, a scholarly approach to the writings of the time indicates that the veracity of the claims made by the book are certainly up for dispute. Something I read to day - and I feel very embarrassed as I can't remember which of the multitude of books I looked at on Google Book says this - remarks that the 6 months of burning comment is most likely apocryphal.

Secondly, the fact that it makes mention of a 'slumber known as the Dark Ages' indicates that the writers are either not aware, or not bothering to mention the fact that current scholarly thinking is that the Dark Ages were anything but dark, at least intellectually!

Thirdly - on the strength of the title alone - it would not seem a stretch to say that it is not about the Library (at least as a main focal point of research) and so anything written in those pages about the library runs the risk of not being properly researched.

Again I stress: these are opinions formed from the research I have done today.

To skip back to your first point: the Church was certainly attempting to suppress the work of scientists and the like; that much isn't in dispute. I would be interested, however, to know what prompted Gallileo to make the helio-centric statements that he did; was it entirely through observational astronomy, or did he read the texts from antiquity that survived in spite of the Church's attempts at the subversion of 'pagan' literature? I suspect we'll never know.

Lastly: my research and findings today have utterly failed to convince me that [a] the Christian forces attempted a large scale and systematic destruction of all pre-Christian literature, though there were certainly several individual instances, and that the so-called 'Dark Ages' that are attributed to the aforementioned destruction actually happened at all.

 

Allow me, if I may, to answer those as well.

"Did people lose the ability to read?"
I would say no, not significantly. Remember that in pre-Christian/pre-Middle Ages the vast majority of the population could not read anyway. That is why the great debates and the great polemicists and orators spoke in public, because everyone understood the spoken word.

"Did human progress fall back to levels before the Romans?"
I feel this question is meaningless. How do you quantify progress? The Romans, largely, were occupying forces. when occupying forces retreat, the impositions they once held begin to fade away as the natural population reasserts its own ethos on the community.

"Was much of the world literature lost and did it take nearly 1,000 years to recover?"
This is up for debate. Certainly the loss of Alexandria was a terrible blow, but private collections appear to have survived - how else would we have as many writings from antiquity as we do? I think it's easy to assume that we have only the works of the famous greats; Plato, Socrates, Aristotle; but vast screeds of writings survive. The culture of writing did not end; the work of historians did not end either.

However, I think the culture changed. With the demise of the Roman Empire, the 'civilised' world, as it were, fragmented, and such fragmentation is not conducive to the spread of ideas. If ever there could be said to be a cause of any dark age, it would be the death of the Roman empire - and that was as much administrative as anything else!

The problem, still, is that it's probably impossible to know the impact of the suppression of literature. Such suppression certainly took place, but the demise of the literary culture was almost certainly inevitable; the Grecian states that made so much of the literary lifestyle were riven with unrest and civil war. It was a utopia that's easy to romanticise, and one that couldn't possibly have lasted.

 

x__orion and I have already pointed out that Christian monks preserved most of ancient writing. I assume this included the writings of Samos.

We can only guess what Western history would have been like without the adoption by the Roman Empire of Christianity as its established religion.

In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the first volume of which was published in 1776, Edward Gibbon blamed Christianity in part for the decline and fall. He argued that Roman citizens concentrated on life after death when they should have been trying to defend the empire from barbarian invasions.

However, the Eastern Roman Empire, which was thoroughly Christian, survived until 1453. The Holy Roman Empire, which was also thoroughly Christian, and which may be seen as a restoration of the Western Roman Empire, lasted until 1806.

In his book, On Human Nature, Harvard professor, and founder of sociobiology E.O.Wilson argued that nations and empires that are unified by single religions have an advantage over nations and empires that are not because a unifying religion achieves greater harmony and resilience against national traumas.

 

For what it's worth: Gibbons was a staunch atheist and was highly critical of organised religion. For this reason, the acts he attributes to Christian mobs may not be quite as cut-and-dry as he makes out.

 

I agree. Nevertheless, learning that he blamed Christianity for the fall of the Roman Empire made me think. Until then, what I read blamed Roman paganism and decadence for the fall.

 

This has been quite a day for me Orion, you know especially for an idiot.

But while I certainly have to back off the information I actually paid for in good faith, no I'm not willing to concede that the Roman persecution of the Pagans and the burning of the Library At Alexandria and the burning of books and libraries by the Christians didn't erase 1,000 years of accumulated knowledge that was supplemented by the Holy Bible and Catholic Church, and facilitated the Dark Ages which was a pretty good term until Christian apologists objected and altered the term because it reflected on them badly.

Instead, I guess I'll admit the universal observation that the more we know the less we know. And that many things taken as facts by one is in great dispute with another. But that seems the general condition to me and not everyone who disagrees or makes a statement is an idiot.

 

Let me guess. Because this source takes the opposite opinion I bet this one is "credible."

http://christianthinktank.com/qburnbx.html