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Library of Alexandria (Original)

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Raven
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« Reply #60 on: April 01, 2008, 01:27:29 pm »

Helios

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   posted 08-25-2004 11:02 PM                       
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Christianity and Pagan Literature
Introduction

One thing that everyone thinks they know about early Christians is that they went around and burnt down libraries and anything else they felt
threatened by. For a 'fact' that is so widely believed, there is remarkably little evidence around. When challenged the best that most people
can do is mention the Christians who destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria but as I have established in this article, that is itself a myth.
That has not stopped authors like Carl Sagan in Cosmos and others who really ought to know better, from recycling it to make anti-Christian
points.

After finding the example most commonly given was untrue, I decided to launch an in-depth inquiry into the two related questions of what has
happened to the majority of the corpus of ancient writing and whether the Christian contribution to their preservation has been positive or
negative. This survey only covers the early church and the period through the Dark Ages so it does not examine the work of medieval
inquisitors or later church authorities. I hope to look at these areas at a later date but for the moment my conclusions are as follows:


Indiscriminate destruction of ancient literature by institutional Christianity never occurred;

There was no attempt to suppress pagan writing per se;

On a few occasions, pagan tracts specifically targeted against Christianity were condemned but others have been preserved;

Suppression of heretical Christian writing was widespread;

Magical and esoteric works were treated in exactly the same way as they were under the pagan Emperors which was not very
sympathetic;

With some exceptions, respect for pagan learning was widespread among Christians;

Survival of classical literature is almost entirely due to the efforts of Christian monks laboriously copying out texts by hand.


Burning down libraries

The idea of deliberating setting fire to a repository of knowledge appals us in a way that few other crimes can do. As demonstrated by the
astronomical sums paid at auction, we value art far more than human life. Tens of thousands of Afghans could die in war without anyone in
the West caring very much but, as the BBC reported, when the Taleban demolish a couple of ancient statues, there is world wide horror and
condemnation.

This attitude has meant that the false accusation that Edward Gibbon laid at the door of the Patriarch Theophilus in chapter 28 of his Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire regarding the Great Library of Alexandria has been tremendously damaging to Christianity and is repeated
by every author with a bone to pick. But although we can establish that this library was not destroyed by a Christian mob, were there not
other ancient libraries that did suffer exactly that fate? The saying that there is no smoke without fire would seem to be exceedingly
appropriate in this case. I do not for a second claim to have analysed every ancient source but I have read a good deal and have only located
one example of deliberate destruction of an entire library recorded by the chroniclers.

The chronicler in question is John of Antioch about whom we know almost nothing. He was a Greek speaking Christian historian who may
have lived between the sixth and tenth centuries. All his works are lost and only fragments of his chronicle remain preserved in other places.
Among them is following passage from the great Byzantine encyclopaedia called the Suda in the article on the Emperor Jovian:

Emperor Hadrian had built a beautiful temple for the worship of his father Trajan which, on the orders of Emperor Julian, the
eunuch Theophilus had made into a library. Jovian, at the urging of his wife, burned the temple with all the books in it with his
concubines laughing and setting the fire.

Scholars believe that it is John of Antioch is being quoted. The Suda itself is full of snippets of information but it is treated with justifiable
caution by the scholars who have studied it. Certainly, it is very often wrong but usually not deliberately. Instead it just quotes earlier authors
uncritically and repeats their mistakes.

In favour of the verity of this story, John was from the city of Antioch where the alleged event happened and Jovian did visit there during the
few months of his reign. On the other hand, the problems with its credibility are extremely wide ranging.

1.The pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus was actually with Jovian in Antioch and does not breath a word about any libraries (We
complains about their closure at other points in his narrative so was not uninterested in the question. We will return to other these
libraries later).
2.Although Jovian was a Christian he is recorded by the rhetor Themistius to have insisted on tolerance towards pagans.
3.The great pagan orator Libanius who lived in Antioch at the time and from whom we have speeches, lectures and no less than 1,500
letters, makes no mention of the library's destruction.
4.We have no other record of there being a temple of Trajan built by Hadrian in Antioch.
5.John was writing several hundred years after the library burning is supposed to have taken place but no one else mentions it. No
source for his story is given although some scholars like RC Blockley believe it may have come from Eunapius of Sardis who was a
near contemporary of Jovian and whom John of Antioch used as a source.

All the counter arguments depend on silence which demonstrates just how hard it is to prove a negative. On a personal note, the involvement
of Jovian's wife and concubines makes me feel the story is less convincing although the women could be later accretions. If we knew that
burning down libraries was the sort of thing that Jovian or other Christians actually did, we might have a case for believing it happened here
but as it is a single example it cannot be allowed to simply reinforce our prejudices. Still, this remains the only possible record of a library
being deliberately destroyed that I have been able to find in the sources and those who with an anti-Christian axe to grind should use this case
rather than Alexandria. Furthermore, it does illustrate that Christian writers were happy to report such things and repeat them from other
sources. Contrary to the allegations of many sceptics, the Christian scribes made no effort to censor this alleged misdeed of Jovian even
though he was a Christian emperor.


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