A book by Catherine Nixey about the early history of the Christian church. It specifically focuses on things like the destruction of pagan temples (as well as their accumulated libraries which often included books on science, as well as philosophy, not to mention vast art collections). Fun fact from the book: The actual number of years Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, according to historians and the Catholic Church, is only about 13. The number of Christians killed by the Empire during this time? Probably less than 300, certainly nowhere near the thousands, which is often claimed. Nixey, interestingly enough, was originally planning on following the path that the last of the Greek philosophers took when they were expelled in the fifth century, but had to abandon that idea because many of the places they traveled to as they fled are now under the control of ISIS. The temples that the Christians demolished centuries ago, and were rebuilt a little more than a century ago, are now being razed by ISIS. The book is both a quick read, as well as amazingly detailed in its accounts. I was hooked as soon as I read the opening quote of the book: You can hear an interview with the author here.
Overall, it wasn't actually very good. I could personally go into detail, but since I don't want to type a lot of stuff I'll just copy and paste from the review below, that echoes many of my own complaints. https://www.amazon.com/Darkening-Ag...r&reviewerType=all_reviews#reviews-filter-bar This guy has done his homework.
Those are actually very minor complaints, none of which refute the substance of her work. (Really, does the exact method of Hypatia's death matter? Who cares if she was ripped apart by pottery shards or mussel shells? And "flaying" can mean any method of removing one's flesh from the bones in a violent, horrific manner, not simply being whipped.) I don't doubt that there are flaws to be found in her work (What work isn't flawed, after all?), but she provides a scope about the early history of the church that hasn't been widely promulgated.
Oh, and allow me to add this: At its peak, the Library of Alexandria had an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 books. A thousand years after the library was burned, the largest library in Europe contained less than 2,000 books.
Well, the general idea is hardly new since it was fairly prominent in Edward Gibbon's work. But it isn't at all well-known enough. I might read this. On Hypatia, I recommend the movie Agora. Christians were the ISIS of their day.
From what I gather (not having read Gibbons work yet), she goes beyond what he mentions. The podcast I linked to with the interview of Nixey talks about Agora and Rachel Weisz's motivation for taking the role.
One episode of the original Cosmos explores the Library at Alexandria. The recreation, in spite of the limited video capabilities of 1980, gives you a sense of just how extensive it was:
I've also seen Agora and, while I wasn't impressed with the script, the other production values were excellent - gave you a real sense of being there.
Unfortunately that "fact" is substantially wrong. Nixey is working from Moss' research on the persecutions, but Moss is referring to 13 years of Empire-wide, imperially mandated persecution. That was limited to a brief persecution under Decius in 250 and then the later ones under Valerian, Diocletian and Galerius later in the same century. This ignores the fact that we have plenty of evidence for local, periodic and less extensive persecutions from at least the 60s AD onwards. So Nixey is not being very honest with her readers on this point. Ditto for her claim that the victims of these Empire wide persecutions "hundreds, not thousands" (p. 176). Her endnote for this refers to W.H.C. Frend , Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965) p. 413 but if a reader bothers to check Frend’s book they will find he is not estimating the total number of martyrs, just the number for the short-lived persecution by Decius in 250 AD. Later in the same book Frend gives his estimate for the much more sustained and widespread Great Persecution of Diocletian as “a grand total of 3,000-3,500 victims” (Frend, p. 357). Nixey's book is full of this kind of distortion of the facts. Then you can find a far more detailed critique of the problems historians of the period have with Nixey's polemic here - History for Atheists - Review: Catherine Nixey "The Darkening Age. The idea that the Great Library's holdings were as large as "500,000 to 700,000 books." is one of the many myths about the Library that you can find analysed and debunked here - History for Atheists - The Great Myths 5: The Destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria. Agora was riddled with pseudo historical nonsense and outright fantasy and gets the essential historial facts wrong so it can turn the story into a moral fable. See HERE for an analysis of what it gets wrong. Sagan was an astronomer, not a historian, and much of what he says in that sequence is wrong. See HERE for a critical analysis.
And that evidence is? Perhaps, but to give a more modern example, the US formally ended slavery in 1865, yet slavery in the US still continues to this day. Again, when talking about slavery in the US, people generally only refer to the period from Jamestown to the end of the Civil War, despite the fact that slavery, in various forms, continues to the present day. The issue is if it is state sanctioned or not. While many would argue that the prison system in the US is merely an extension of slavery, others would not. A thousand years from now, how much of that is going to seem relevant? It may be that people see much of what our society sees today as "normal" will be considered slavery, or they may have an entirely different view of the matter. Presently, many people see the events at Benghazi as a "big deal," but that may not be the case 100 or even 10 years from now. Nixey doesn't deny that she has been selective in her subject, and quite early on in the book states she is attempting to present a narrative of events that hasn't been given much attention. Her goal is to shine a light on aspects of a period of history which isn't commonly discussed. She's covering a period of time of roughly 500 years, that she get's things wrong, or oversimplifies things is to be expected. It is said that there are two people who have more books written about them than anyone else in the English language. The first is Jesus, the second is Abraham Lincoln. Jesus, according to many, was said to be no more than 33 years old, while Lincoln was 56 when he died. If those two can engender so many books, with many more to come, then how can a span of nearly 500 years expect one work to be far from complete? And Wikipedia says that it ranged from 40K to 400K What's your error bars? The exact total can never be known. Let's take the low-end and say that there were only 40K books One of which would have been Aristotle's writings about comedy. If that would have prevented Garrison Keillor from having a career, then I would say humanity had suffered an incalcuable loss. Holy shit balls, admirial! A movie isn't 100% accurate! Whoda thunk? And? Sagan also thought that the oil well fires in Kuwait would never be extinguished. He was clearly wrong about that. (Not to mention a number of other things.) The difference between science and religion is that science will eventually accept that its experts were wrong, while religion will continue to praise wrongheaded ideas.
If one says that something "ranges from 40,000 t0 400,000" then that means "we really have no idea how many there were". At any rate, I thought that beyond the destruction of the Library at Alexandria a substantial number of material lost there was due to the material that the writing was on, deteriorating prematurely
So I haven't read the book. It seems to me that while a lot of the criticisms brought up are strange (are we really sure that being ripped apart by shards of ceramic doesn't count as flaying?), others are really problematic (there is NO reason to assume that the Serapeion contained any remnants of the Library that had been destroyed a century before). There seems to be a lot of subtext here that makes this debate really strange. All of this seems to assume that if any Christians ever hurt other people, then being Christian is generally bad, whereas if any Christians were ever hurt by other people, then being Christian is generally good. Neither of those conclusions makes any sense whatsoever.
According to the Wikipedia entry on the library, it might well have been several fires over a period of years plus an earthquake that destroyed the library. Though effectively much of the "history" related to the Library of Alexandria is more legend than fact.
I have often heard it said that the particularly intense persecution that early Christians suffered and their commitment in the face of this constitutes evidence for the truth of their doctrines. That seems likely a very clear fallacy to me but it's possibly the reason why their successors are so keen to defend that version of history.
The initial claim was "The burning of the Library of Alexandria probably set humanity back 1,000 years.". That stands on its on, true on its face, but "that's probably an exaggeration" requires substantiation, huh? Just making sure everyone is clear on the ever so obviously not at all biased evidentiary expectations.
No I'll stick around. I've always felt this board benefits from my presence in a number of ways. You're welcome.
The whole concept is flawed. History is not a race along one straight course. There is no simple backwards and forwards movement.
It presumes a lot, sure, but had the dark ages not happened, for example, I think it's fair to say science and technology would have advanced a lot quicker and perhaps our society would be space fairing.
