Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!yale!husc6!think!nike!aurora!ames!barry From: barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) Newsgroups: net.religion,talk.religion Subject: Re: More Non-History Message-ID: <1642@ames.UUCP> Date: Fri, 5-Sep-86 01:24:07 EDT Article-I.D.: ames.1642 Posted: Fri Sep 5 01:24:07 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 9-Sep-86 05:17:04 EDT References: <15499@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1639@ames.UUCP> <15546@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA Lines: 111 Xref: linus net.religion:10724 talk.religion:57 From: gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith): [Medieval history] >>I have a few problems with Gene's, as well. > > And I have a problem with Kenn's: his method of disagreeing with me >is to agree with me. This makes it harder to argue, but I found a way. Guilty as charged; we have a partial disagreement, at most. >>> While there were book burning incidents, on the whole the Church is >>>credited much more for *saving* the literature of the ancient world than >>>destroying it. > >> It is true that one of the monastic orders preserved >>ancient writings. One might wonder if anti-Xian and heretical >>tracts numbered among the documents they preserved :-). But books >>were also ordered destroyed by the church. An edict of Theodosius >>II in 448 ordered the works of Porphyry (a leading pagan) >>destroyed, and no more than fragments of his works survive, in >>fact. Seems he wrote a treatise called "Against The Christians" >>which Theodosius didn't like. > > This is what I mean by a "book burning incident". Porphyry (if memory >serves) was a neo-Platonist philosopher, so this in any case is not a >destruction a non-Christian version of events of the 1st century. > > As you suggest, I think a lot of the reason we don't have anti-Christian >literature is due to passive rather than active reasons. A medieval copyist >will copy Origen's 'Contra Celsus', but not Celsus. Why fault him for that? >It's a lot of work just to copy some naughty old pagan author you know is >being stir-fried in Hell somewhere anyway. And as you mention later, the >result is that we *do* end up knowing a lot about people like Celsus, anyway. I see this discussion as centering on the question of whether the medieval Church took steps to rewrite the history of early Xianity. If so, the matter of Porphyry is not incidental. I can dig up additional references if you like, but there was a definite pattern of the orthodox church suppressing non-orthodox thought, and destroying non-orthodox writings. What is important is that Porphyry was writing against the orthodox Xianity of his time. His writings might have told us much about the 1st century of Xianity through whatever references he made to heterodox 1st century writings that still existed in his time. But we will never know. What we do know is that there were many early writings that portrayed Jesus and early Xianity in a very different light than the official version, and that the Church made real efforts to suppress these. >>>It is false that the Crusades destroyed most non-Christians >>>(that is not even what they attempted to do). The Albigensian campaign >>>and the Spanish Inquisition were the main attacks on non-Christians I >>>can recall. > >>And the Middle Ages were not one of the worst times for slavery by any means. Again, perhaps we see the point of this discussion differently. I would be the last person to trash the Middle Ages. Wouldn't have wanted to live then, but it wasn't that bad. But I do agree with Mr McNeill about the Church having done a middlin-good job of rewriting the history of early Xianity during the early Middle Ages. >>>In article <3556@sdcc3.ucsd.EDU> za56@sdcc3.UUCP (Brian McNeill) writes: >>> >>>>Really? The only evidence remaining from that time period [1st cent.] (due to >>>>the Xian purge in the middle ages, wherein all "heretical" works >>>>were destroyed (or at least as much as could be found)) we have >>>>is the Bible, plus a very few other scattered works of no relevence. > >>> Care to document this claim? > >> I've mentioned one instance; here's another. Here's a >>quote from J.B. Bury's HISTORY OF THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE, vol. 1, >>p. 380: "Marcian's law of A.D. 455 against the Eutychians was >>severe enough. They were excluded from the service of the State; >>they were forbidden to publish books criticising the Council of >>Chalcedon; and their literature, like that of the Nestorians, was >>condemned to be burned." > > This IS NOT documentation of Brian's claim, but of some other claim. >Read what he wrote. I did. He makes the effort to suppress heresy sound more organized and consistent than it was, but I think he's basically on the mark. What do *you* see as the claim you need documented, Gene? I tried to make clear that McNeill exagerrated the knownothingism of the Middle Ages, but religious history is the topic, and heresy was suppressed by the Church. So was paganism, but not quite as completely. > I still maintain that Brian's stuff is typical of the sporadic nonsense >that appears about the Middle Ages. Brian is worried about how completely >oppressive the times were. I know. We're just focusing on different aspects of what he had to say. I also sometimes get annoyed at naive caricatures of the Middle Ages. But the religious repression was real. Look either to the beginning of the Middle Ages, when paganism and heresy were competing with orthodox Xianity, or to the end, when the first seeds of Protestantism began sprouting, and one can find plenty of examples of the prosecution of thought-crime. >I think people >should quit talking nonsense about the Middle Ages. And Kenn -- as a person >who cares about history, I would like to think you agree. It's a fascinating period, and would probably be even more interesting if our records of the early Middle Ages were more complete. I just think the Church must take part of the blame for the incompleteness of the record of the religious thought of the 1st-5th centuries. - From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry NASA-Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ELECTRIC AVENUE: {ihnp4,vortex,dual,nsc,hao,hplabs}!ames!barry