Chaucer

Back in May, there was a thread on the historical accuracy of a brand new film on the ancient librarian Hypatia (http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....ighlight=agora). Since then, I've read a sobering article by an atheist on the Web that seriously questions its historical accuracy --

http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2...ora-redux.html

I'm wondering if anyone here may have any more information on some of this blogger's points. Should we take them seriously? Thanks.

Chaucer

Toto

Agora is a movie, not a documentary.

squiz

Richard Carrier reviewed it here.

Chaucer

Birth of a Nation was also "only" a movie, and it helped revive the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. I have no objection to either Birth of a Nation or Agora being shown in movie theaters. But when a distortion like Birth of a Nation (or Mel Gibson's Passion, say) becomes accepted as "the facts", it's always worthwhile to challenge those "facts". Shak[e]speare's Richard III is an awesome piece of absolutely superb writing, and I'd never regret having seen it on stage with luminaries like Michael Moriarty back in the '70s. But that doesn't gainsay that the novel Daughter of Time remains an important corrective to Shak[e]speare's play. As Thomas Jefferson remarked, it's vital that those peddling absurdities "stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it". The atheist blogger I reference in my OP is using reason to combat an apparent string of pretty blatant distortions in Agora.

Chaucer

Toto

Richard Carrier seems to agree that there are historical errors, although he does not classify them as earth shattering: So what do you want to discuss? The ease with which engaging fiction trumps boring reality, especially when it fits into our biases? Would you like to apply this to any other topics here?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Chaucer,

I think we have to remember that any narrative of an historical period will tend to present a certain viewpoint that represents the present situation projected back into the past.

Obviously, the filmmakers could not show all the facts, the millions of men, women and children who were burned, tortured, and murdered by fanatical Christians in the Fourth and Fifth century. Hypatia thus has to be made into a symbol to represent all of them. Likewise, the thousands of private libraries that were destroyed, the tens of thousands of statues broken, and the millions of scrolls burned by Christians of the time cannot be shown in one film (or a thousand films for that matter). Thus the Library of Alexandria has to stand as a fitting symbol for all of them.

As long as the movie is faithful to the spirit of age, and shows the unparalleled terror and repression that Christianity brought into the world at that time, then we can call the film truthful, and a good representation of the time, if not entirely historically accurate in every detail.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

charles

Is it certain that Hypatia was a pagan? I read somewhere that her religion is not even known. She might even have been a Christian as she had a number of Christian admirers.

Doug Shaver

Millions? You're calling that a fact?

Can you cite a source that I might take seriously?

Toto

review by medievalist S James Killings - Was Hypatia a Scientist?

Roger Pearse

The only way to answer this is to tabulate all the ancient sources that mention her, and see what they say. You'd probably find it was no more than half a dozen.

But she wasn't a Christian as far as anyone knows, and was engaged in politicking against the "Christian" faction of the Alexandrian mob when she was killed. The Ptolemaic kings were afraid of that mob, so she was doing something very risky indeed.

An interest in philosophy did run across both religious groups. Educated Christians were very interested in neo-platonism, enough so that it caused the works of Libanius and even a selection of those by the hated Porphyry to be preserved. Basil of Caesarea and Gregory Nazianzen were pupils of Libanius (I hope I have remembered the correct Fathers), and Synesius, bishop of Cyrene, was a pupil of Hypatia. Eusebius of Caesarea's "Praeparatio Evangelica" in 15 books includes books 11-15 which are more or less a primer of Greek philosophy, much of it from lost sources.

On the other hand the Christians were definitely hostile to theurgy, and magic in general.

The hostility of the fathers to paganism, to the idea of the planets as gods, combined with their interest in astronomy (a philosophical subject), had the positive consequence of removing superstition from the latter, and thereby pointing the way towards modern science. The Christians, after all, did not worship a god visible in the heavens as a planet or star. Unfortunately astrology survived this purge by simply casting the superstitious elements in different ways, so in the end perhaps it made little difference.

All the best,

Roger Pearse