Toto

Carrier responds to Killings

darstec

I see yours and counter with Carrier update after watching movie

Toto

UPDATE:

Agora will be shown Sunday Aug 21 at the Atheist Film Festival, and Richard Carrier will do a Q&A after the film.

stj

The guy who wrote the review puts altogether too much faith in Socrates Scholasticus, who is authoritative.

One aspect, the idea that the movie distorts things so that Cyril is the bad guy is just plain wrong in one respect: Neither side is singled out as having a monopoly on virute. Cyril is properly perceived as the primary aggressor because, let's face it, Orestes was the prefect and is actually supposed to be running things, and Cyril wasn't. In particular, it is completely unasked how Hypatia being murdered is just a political squabble.

Curiously, the reviewer ignores the most glaring sign of a modern agenda, which is showing how firewalking was a fraud and assigning this fraud to Christians. The guy also doesn't get that the philosophers being snooty Brits in white wasn't necessarily intended as a positive. Hypatia herself is criticized by the movie for being a slave owner. The parabolani being like moderm images of Muslim fanatics yet being Christian is plainly commentary on our images of Christians.

The really huge dramatic license, which has no defense in the litereature and fact, is Hypatia anticipating Kepler. But the movie is rather clear if you bothered to read the stuff at the end. So strictly speaking, there is no reason for anyone's views to be seriously distorted. Except of course some people think in anecdotes and movies can join their anecdotes. I'm not quite sure why the guy who wrote the review is so intent on being offended. Doesn't like modern Muslims and is offended that they are equated to Christians? This really got his goat so he's nitpicking everything else?

PhilosopherJay

Hi all,

In the introduction to the new book What happened to the ancient Library of Alexandria? By Mostafa El-Abbadi, et al., Ismail Serageldin, director of New Library of Alexandria, quotes the article by Professor El-Abbadi (Egypt) and notes that Dzielska (Poland) agrees (pg. viii):

It appears that the destruction of the library by Julius Caesar is largely a myth spread (and perhaps originated) by Plutarch 100 years after the alleged event. Likewise the myth that Caliph Umar destroyed it comes from a text 500 years after the event.

This basically leaves us with the most likely hypothesis, for which there are contemporary accounts, Christian fanatics destroyed it in the year 391.


Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Jedi Mind Trick

Didn't the Church also invent Catharine of Alexandria based upon Hypatia?

Toto

Probably - see María Dzielska in Hypatia of Alexandría (or via: amazon.co.uk)

andrewcriddle

The paper by William J Cherf in What happened to the ancient Library of Alexandria? takes the destruction (or at least serious damage) of the library by Julius Caesar very seriously.

It seems an interesting book but may possibly have a slight bias towards the thesis that whoever destroyed the library it wasn't the Muslims.

Andrew Criddle

PhilosopherJay

Hi andrewcriddle,

I thought also that the dismissal of Muslim blame for the destruction of the library was also bias, but the main author seems to be a secularist. The arguments given seem pretty convincing. The gap of 600 years between the supposed burning of the library around 640 and the writing of the story in the 1200's makes the fictional nature of it clear. First, we have to imagine that for the almost two hundred and fifty years time that the library was in Christian hands from circa 390 to 640, no Christian used it or wrote about. Second, the period 750 to 1250 was considered a golden age for learning in Islam. We would have to consider that no writer during this time brought up the burning of the Library either to support or criticize it. Finally we have to consider that 1100-1200 was a time of Crusades. One would expect that the burning of the library would have been used as a propaganda point for Christians to prove that the Muslims were barbarians. Only later in 1200's did any Christian bring it up.
The article points out that the story was used by Muslim propagandists in the 1200's to sanction contemporary actions by Muslim leaders. So the book doesn't absolve Muslims of anti-intellectual activity, but shows how they made up a false history to justify these actions. It seems quite reasonable. Unless evidence is found that the library existed after 400, I think we have to agree that the story of the destruction by Muslims is a much later Muslim invention.

As you mention, the book does include an article that places the blame on Julius Caesar, but this article just says that the descriptions of the firestorm in later writers are accurate. If the library was burned in the firestorm still remains problematical as all later writers seem to get the idea from Plutarch who lived 100 years after the event. As a Greek writer comparing Alexander to Julius Caesar, Plutarch is a little too symmetrical in trying to tell us that the great Alexander builds a library and the bungling Roman imitator burns it or a part of it down. It smacks of invention to prove a point.


This website gives the opinion of the present Library at Alexandria http://www.crystalinks.com/libraryofalexandria.html

Warmly,

Jay Raskin