Jesus?

Byrnzie

Gern Blansten wrote:

And don't pull out the crap in Josephus' writings because that was written probably 60 years after the supposed time of Christ

The mentions of Jesus in the writings of Josephus were fake. They were later interpolations.

Edit: Arq beat me to it.

Gern Blansten

Byrnzie wrote:

Gern Blansten wrote:

And don't pull out the crap in Josephus' writings because that was written probably 60 years after the supposed time of Christ

The mentions of Jesus in the writings of Josephus were fake. They were later interpolations.

Edit: Arq beat me to it.

yeah isn't it likely that they were placed there by the Church of England?

Given To DragonFly

I usually steer clear of AMT, but nice post, OP!

Byrnzie

Gern Blansten wrote:

Byrnzie wrote:

Gern Blansten wrote:

And don't pull out the crap in Josephus' writings because that was written probably 60 years after the supposed time of Christ

The mentions of Jesus in the writings of Josephus were fake. They were later interpolations.

Edit: Arq beat me to it.

yeah isn't it likely that they were placed there by the Church of England?

http://www.truthbeknown.com/josephus.htm

'Despite the best wishes of sincere believers and the erroneous claims of truculent apologists, the Testimonium Flavianum has been demonstrated continually over the centuries to be a forgery, likely interpolated by Catholic Church historian Eusebius in the fourth century...'

yosi

B, I wasn't referring to Rome the city, I was referring to Rome the empire. This seems entirely appropriate to me because the Dark Ages are so called because of our perception of the relative intellectual achievements of that period compared to what came before (i.e. the intellectual tradition that we trace from Greece and Egypt through the Roman Empire). When you refer to the scientific achievements of the ancient world you are implicitly talking about the Mediterranean basin (i.e. the Roman Empire), and specifically not the areas of Northern Europe that were beyond Rome's borders.

To argue that the Dark Ages were the result of Christianity is, again, a simple, and I think wrong reading. The Roman Empire was Christian for an extensive period and did not see a decline in its ability to produce scientific achievements. It was only with the dissolution of the Christian Western Roman Empire due to the invasions of non-Christian peoples that we see the descent into the "Dark Ages." This descent had a lot to do with economic and political conditions, not the ideology of the Church.

Lastly, the term "Dark Ages" is not longer really used by scholars of the period it refers to. The reason for this is because it greatly miscasts the period. While it is certainly true that a lot of the scientific achievements of the Roman (and pre-Roman world) were lost (or more precisely forgotten, though much of the knowledge was actually preserved in writings held by the Church, but never referenced), the period produced many remarkable achievements of its own, particularly in theology, philosophy, architecture, art, music, etc. By calling the period a "Dark Age" you are privileging a certain set of human achievements over another set, making a value judgement based on your own anachronistic modern view of the world.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

B, I wasn't referring to Rome the city, I was referring to Rome the empire. This seems entirely appropriate to me because the Dark Ages are so called because of our perception of the relative intellectual achievements of that period compared to what came before (i.e. the intellectual tradition that we trace from Greece and Egypt through the Roman Empire). When you refer to the scientific achievements of the ancient world you are implicitly talking about the Mediterranean basin (i.e. the Roman Empire), and specifically not the areas of Northern Europe that were beyond Rome's borders.

To argue that the Dark Ages were the result of Christianity is, again, a simple, and I think wrong reading. The Roman Empire was Christian for an extensive period and did not see a decline in its ability to produce scientific achievements. It was only with the dissolution of the Christian Western Roman Empire due to the invasions of non-Christian peoples that we see the descent into the "Dark Ages." This descent had a lot to do with economic and political conditions, not the ideology of the Church.

Lastly, the term "Dark Ages" is not longer really used by scholars of the period it refers to. The reason for this is because it greatly miscasts the period. While it is certainly true that a lot of the scientific achievements of the Roman (and pre-Roman world) were lost (or more precisely forgotten, though much of the knowledge was actually preserved in writings held by the Church, but never referenced), the period produced many remarkable achievements of its own, particularly in theology, philosophy, architecture, art, music, etc. By calling the period a "Dark Age" you are privileging a certain set of human achievements over another set, making a value judgement based on your own anachronistic modern view of the world.

So you don't think that the Christian view of the world was in any way contrary to the scientific view - for which such blatantly non-Christian practices such as alchemy were paramount, as evidenced by the practice of alchemy much later by people such as Isaac Newton - and that the Christian paradigm in any way hindered or suppressed scientific progress?

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

By calling the period a "Dark Age" you are privileging a certain set of human achievements over another set, making a value judgement based on your own anachronistic modern view of the world.

Is it a biased value judgement that the Earth revolves around the sun?

yosi

I'm not arguing that Christianity did not play a role in hindering scientific progress. I'm just saying that your absurdly reductionist argument that science was forestalled solely or primarily because of Christianity is simplistic to say the least.

catefrances

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzrAfkyq-xM

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

The Roman Empire was Christian for an extensive period and did not see a decline in its ability to produce scientific achievements. It was only with the dissolution of the Christian Western Roman Empire due to the invasions of non-Christian peoples that we see the descent into the "Dark Ages." This descent had a lot to do with economic and political conditions, not the ideology of the Church.

This presumes that the Western Roman Empire was essentially Christian, which it wasn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire#Religion
'As Rome extended its influence and presence throughout the Mediterranean world, it encountered and absorbed deities and practices by seeking (and often finding) their equivalence to its own or acknowledging their role in local identity and tradition. Some were officially embraced, others tolerated and a few might be condemned as alien hysteria, magic or superstition....Christianity was [regarded as] superstition, or atheism, or both..

The era of Christian hegemony began with the conversion of Constantine I. In 391, Christianity became the state religion of Rome under Theodosius I, to the exclusion of all other cults.'

The most commonly given start date for the Middle Ages is 476, therefore your assertion that The Roman Empire was Christian for an extensive period' isn't quite true. 80 years does not constitute an extensive period.


Either way, my original post didn't claim that the Dark Ages began as a result of the decline of the Roman Empire. My original post claimed that the Dark Ages and the regression of science and other forms of learning occured as a result of the Christianization of Europe.


'The term "Middle Ages" (medium aevum) was coined in the 15th century and reflects the view that this period was a deviation from the path of classical learning, a path supposedly reconnected by Renaissance scholarship.'

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

While it is certainly true that a lot of the scientific achievements of the Roman (and pre-Roman world) were lost (or more precisely forgotten, though much of the knowledge was actually preserved in writings held by the Church, but never referenced), the period produced many remarkable achievements of its own, particularly in theology, philosophy, architecture, art, music, etc.

Though we really have the Islamic world to thank for that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_co ... val_Europe
'Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe were numerous , affecting such varied areas as art, architecture, medicine, agriculture, music, language, education, law, and technology. From the 11th to 13th centuries, Europe absorbed knowledge from the Islamic civilization. Of particular importance was the rediscovery of the ancient classic texts, most notably the work of the Greek natural philosopher Aristotle, through retranslations from Arabic. In the early 20th century the musicologist Henry George Farmer wrote that a "growing number of scholars...recognize(d) that the influence of the Muslim civilization as a whole on medieval Europe was enormous in such fields as science, philosophy, theology, literature, aesthetics, than has been recognized."[2] For one historian the contributions from the Islamic world have had a considerable effect on the development of Western civilization and contributed to the achievements of the Renaissance...

Following the fall of the Roman Empire and the dawn of the Middle Ages, many texts from Classical Antiquity had been lost to the Europeans. In the Middle East however, many of these Greek texts (such as Aristotle) were translated from Greek into Syriac during the 6th and 7th centuries by Nestorian, Melkites or Jacobite monks living in Palestine, or by Greek exiles from Athens or Edessa who visited Islamic Universities. Many of these texts however were then kept, translated, and developed upon by the Islamic world, especially in centers of learning such as Baghdad, where a “House of Wisdom”, with thousands of manuscripts existed as soon as 832. These texts were translated again into European languages during the Middle Ages.[1] Eastern Christians played an important role in exploiting this knowledge, especially through the Christian Aristotelician School of Baghdad in the 11th and 12th centuries...'

Pepe Silvia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IONyLZn0pLI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsEa_M7MqYE

Byrnzie

Pepe Silvia wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IONyLZn0pLI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsEa_M7MqYE

catefrances

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik0yz5Jo4Os

Byrnzie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym-k5viJ7tA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUBAx8jb ... re=related

yosi

The Islamic world certainly produced many remarkable achievements, but medieval Europe had many achievements of its own. You personally may not think as much of them, but that is really beside the point. Again, your equation of Christianity = Dark Ages is overly simplistic at best.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

your equation of Christianity = Dark Ages is overly simplistic at best.

According to you.

MK1980

europe hit the dark ages because of the collapse of the roman empire, not christianity...where from hadrians wall south to the bottom of the iberian peninsula had been governed by one dictator, had one army, trade/knowledge flowed freely....emipre collapses = europe in the dark ages. Anyway do you think all those followers of the way, Peter (cruicified upsidown in rome) John exiled to do hard labour on Patmos, Paul under house arrest in rome...not to mention the unnamed who were killed for their faith....would have let themselves die for something that hadn't been true, that they hadn't been witness to?

ONCE DEVIDED

MK1980 wrote:

europe hit the dark ages because of the collapse of the roman empire, not christianity...where from hadrians wall south to the bottom of the iberian peninsula had been governed by one dictator, had one army, trade/knowledge flowed freely....emipre collapses = europe in the dark ages. Anyway do you think all those followers of the way, Peter (cruicified upsidown in rome) John exiled to do hard labour on Patmos, Paul under house arrest in rome...not to mention the unnamed who were killed for their faith....would have let themselves die for something that hadn't been true, that they hadn't been witness to?

would have let themselves die for something that hadn't been true, that they hadn't been witness to

Well lets put that to the Jihadists who have died for their faith, were they witness's to The birth of Islam

MK1980

ONCE DEVIDED wrote:

MK1980 wrote:

europe hit the dark ages because of the collapse of the roman empire, not christianity...where from hadrians wall south to the bottom of the iberian peninsula had been governed by one dictator, had one army, trade/knowledge flowed freely....emipre collapses = europe in the dark ages. Anyway do you think all those followers of the way, Peter (cruicified upsidown in rome) John exiled to do hard labour on Patmos, Paul under house arrest in rome...not to mention the unnamed who were killed for their faith....would have let themselves die for something that hadn't been true, that they hadn't been witness to?

would have let themselves die for something that hadn't been true, that they hadn't been witness to

Well lets put that to the Jihadists who have died for their faith, were they witness's to The birth of Islam

No I don't think jihadists were around at the time of Mohammed...

Christians circa ad 50-150 were not choosing to die...they were being murdured because of what they believed...to try and equate that to a suicide bomber/taliban member is frankly (i'm sorry to be so blunt) stupid...