[Peace-discuss] The Christmas He Dreamed for All of Us

[Morton K. Brussel]

Since this has surfaced, I'm impelled to comment,although I think it  
not pertinent to peace-discuss--

I take with a grain of salt Carl's statement which implies the  
benevolence of an imperial early Christianity:

> …Xy has generally been syncretistic in that sense.  As one of
> the patristic writers put it, 'anima naturaliter christiana'
> -- human nature is naturally Christian -- and so should
> include what is best in human achievement.

The final destruction of the ancient Library at Alexandria, a pagan  
marvel, is a major instance which belies the benevolent syncretism of  
the early church. This library, harboring much of the knowledge of  
the ancient world, had to be destroyed because all aspects of  
paganism were considered abominable. Christianity, like other  
conquering creeds, not only borrowed from the past, but destroyed  
much (of value) from the past. Quoting Micropedia:

…In the late 4th century, persecution of pagans by Christians had  
reached new levels of intensity. Temples and statues were destroyed  
throughout the Roman Empire, pagan rituals forbidden under punishment  
of death, and libraries closed. In 391, Emperor Theodosius ordered  
the destruction of all pagan temples, and Patriarch Theophilus of  
Alexandria complied with this request.…

The knowledge lost was only slowly regained in the late middle ages,  
mainly by transmission from the Arabic world.

Around the same period, Hypatia, an erudite librarian of the Library,  
had a cruel fate at the hands of Christians: From http:// 
www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/HYPATIA.html.

Natural Philosopher (355? - 415 CE)

…one of the more romantic figures in science. She was the daughter of  
Theon, a mathematician who taught at the great school at the  
Alexandrine Library. She traveled widely and corresponded with people  
all over the Mediterranean. We know of her only through her letters  
because all of her work was destroyed when the Great Library of  
Alexandia was destroyed.

She taught at the school in the Library in Alexandria, Egypt. Letters  
written and addressed simply to the philosopher were delivered to  
her. She taught mathematics and natural philosophy. She is credited  
with the authorship of three major treatises on geometry and algebra  
and one on astronomy. She invented several tools: an instrument for  
distilling water, an instrument to measure the specific gravity of  
water, an astrolabe and a planisphere.

She died violently. She was dragged to her death by a mob who pulled  
her from her classroom into the streets where they peeled her to  
death with oyster shells.
She wrote that

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be  
accepted by self-respecting persons as final.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than  
not to think at all.

To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing.

––mkb


On Dec 22, 2005, at 11:50 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

>
>> the early Xn movement purposely scheduled the celebration of
>> Christ's birth at the time of the solstice festivals popular
>> in the rather sophisticated urban culture of the first
>> century. (E.g., Mithraism, popular in the Roman military, used
>> sun symbols.)
>>
>> In the larger sense, the relation of Xy to the surrounding
>> religious culture, which eventually came to be called pagan
>> (lit., the religion of country-people), was much debated in
>> the Xn writings of the first several centuries ('patristics'),
>> In the period ca. 100-500 CE, Christianity worked its way up
>> the social scale of Roman imperial civilization, which was a
>> league of city-states of varying cultures. (The imperial court
>> became Xn only in the course of the fourth century.)
>>
>> The culmination (and in some sense the conclusion, as the
>> empire in the West gave way to 'barbarian' kingdoms) of this
>> process came in the work of Augustine of Hippo (d. 430 CE),
>> who thought that Xy should properly 'despoil the Egyptians':
>> just as the Israelites had taken things of value as they
>> escaped from Egypt, according to the book of Exodus,
>
> Xy has generally been syncretistic in that sense.  As one of
> the patristic writers put it, 'anima naturaliter christiana'
> -- human nature is naturally Christian -- and so should
> include what is best in human achievement.  It's been a
> popular sentiment: Karl Marx took as his motto a line from the
> Roman poet Terence, 'homo sum; nihil humanum alienum a me
> puto' -- 'Being human, I don't consider anything human foreign
> to me.'
>
> And Chesterton's ballad is a strange but interesting read.
>
> Merry Xmas, CGE
>
>
>
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 09:05:41 -0600
>> From: Tracy Nectoux <tnectoux at uiuc.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] The Christmas He Dreamed for All
> of Us
>> To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>
>> ---- Original message ----
>>> Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 08:34:52 -0600
>>> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>>
>>>
>>>   "...because it is only Christian men
>>>   Guard even heathen things."
>>>
>>>   --Chesterton, Ballad of the White Horse
>>
>> A beautiful quote.  But is it true?
>>
>> Peace,
>> Tracy
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