mirage

(Slightly OTT)

Greatest by what criteria? Certainly not from a structural engineering point of view. They never got the hang of the arch, the mosques being essentially a dome of some kind with a whole bunch of semi circular arches on columns.

And when it comes to domes they are all (greatly) surpassed in size by Hadrian's Pantheon. Even the Blue Mosque in Istan, which is 17th century. And almost as big as that dome is the much earlier Hagia Sofia, which was obviously originally a Byzantine church and clearly provided much of the inspiration for the Blue Mosque.

The Damascus Mosque I presume you are referring to is the Umayyad Mosque, which is another great courtyard with bunches and bunches of small arches. It has notable decorations but they and a lot of its architecture was provided by Byzantine craftsmen.

The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem are of course historically and religiously hugely significant, but again, I would question their claim to represent the pinnacle of the greatest architectural style (particularly the al-aqsa, which is just ugly.)

The grand Gothic Cathedrals surpassed these in engineering flair, grandeur and style, IMO. And the Romans are still in there with some of their huge projects, and then we are into the modern era, and I don't know how you could fairly compare at that point.

Bede

My point it is its entirely subjective. Wads4 has chosen the Temple of Artemis and I haven't. Also, artistic merit doesn't necessarily make for a society I'd want to live in.

B

Wads4

Yes I agree with much of what you say about how the pagans also invested heavily in their own temples, and used taxes and foreign booty. Also it has occurred to me since the recent Islamic problems that perhaps atheists and Christians should join forces to repel a common potential enemy which threatens our joint freedom. In such as case , it is fiddling while Rome burns, so to speak, to quarrel over whether western pagans, Christians or atheists built our way of life. We are in a clash of cultures and a war between two opposing moral systems, neither of which will concede an inch. Survival of the fittest will determine the outcome.

All the best, W4

mountainman

The central thesis failed to understand the role of Constantine
the highly intelligent supreme imperial mafia thug who took over
the empire in the period 306-324 CE, who introduced massive
social changes in his dictatorship, plundered the empire's traditional
Hellenic religous orders and collegiate structure both for its literature
and its gold, and by commandeering the technology of the preservation
of written records, created the fabrication of the Galilaeans and then
constructed hundreds of new and strange basilicas around the empire,
to move the citizens into his new THRICE BLESSED Roman religion.


This reminds me of the practice adopted in the early publications
of Philostratus' The Life of Apollonius of Tyana in which the
Eusebian treatise against the Hellenic culture (ie: Hieroclese et al)
prefaced the volume "as an antidote to the following poison".

There has been this unutterable of unutterables hanging around
the planet now since the words of Arius reverberated in the pre-
Nicaean eastern empire ........

There was time when he was not.
He was made from nothing existing.

When will it become obvious that the word-strings of Arius are
directly related to Julian's invectives against the Galilaeans, and
that the inference that there were in fact any "tribe of christians"
on the planet before Constantine created the new Roman religious
order so that it would report to him, as "bishop of bishops", the
effectiveness of his new taxations schemes, primarily the newly
introduced poll tax on the existence of each citizen.

Here is a relevant thread: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...ht=constantine



Pete Brown
AUTHORS of ANTIQUITY
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_029.htm

Clivedurdle

Bede, why do you think they were Pagan? When are you talking about? Seriously, read Barbarians!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goths

mountainman

From the above page:

In the 3rd century, the Goths split into two groups, the Tervingi or Visigoths ("West Goths"), and the Greuthungi or Ostrogoths ("East Goths"). The Visigoths launched one of the first major "barbarian" invasions of the Roman Empire from 263, sacking Byzantium in 267.[4] A year later, they suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Naissus and were driven back across the Danube River by 271. This group then settled north of the Danube and established an independent kingdom centered on the abandoned Roman province of Dacia.

Both the Ostrogoths and Visigoths became heavily Romanized during the 4th century by the influence of trade with the Byzantines, and by their membership in a military covenant centered in Byzantium to assist each other militarily. They converted to Arianism during this time.

Constantius Chlorus (tetrarchy), is described as being the son
of a goatherder from the Danube lands, so Constantine
was the grandson of a goatherder from the Danube lands.



Pete Brown
AUTHORS of ANTIQUITY
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_029.htm

NOGO

It is true that Christians preserved ancient Greek texts.
This, however, was of no value since the western world closed its mind on knowlwdge in favour of the Christian myth.
These texts were reintroduced in Europe by the Arabs.
Europeans then picked up where the Greeks had left off.

For a 1000 years Christianity monopolized the best minds for nothing else was important.

The point is this. Christianity is and was a belief that tolerated no other.
Christians would not rest until they had obliterated every other kind of thinking on earth. Luckily, by the 15th century, they had mellowed and some of them believed that there was something else worth spending time on.

At this point Bede is going to bring out his "science of the middle ages" routine, which is totally unconvincing.

This reminds of Galileo and Cardinal Bellarmino.
Essentially the cardinal thought Galileo's theories were interesting but he preferred not look into them too much for he feared that this would bring doubt and at any rate they were useless for the soul's salvation.

This is what I mean by monopolizing minds.

FatherMithras

You'd think Bede, having created thread after thread about Christianity not suppressing and hindering intellectual advancement, and being roundly trounced every time, would have learned by now. I advise anyone who thinks they can change his mind with facts to look at his profile and review his started threads.

lpetrich

I'd like to say here that I disagree totally with mountainman's claim that it was Emperor Constantine who invented Xianity. He may have given it official support, but he didn't invent it. He may have some interesting scholarship, but it's too tangled up with his Constantine-invention theory.

For my part, I think that Constantine may not have believed that Xianity had any special claim to truth; it seems to me that he thought that it was a convenient way to help unify the empire. He also promoted the worship of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, presumably for that same purpose.

Also, I wonder when Xian apologists will try to claim vicarious credit for evolution and natural selection, as they have for science in general. Their argument could be that descent with modification is prefigured in the Bible, with all its tedious lists of begots. They are neither very edifying nor very entertaining, so they must serve some other purpose, which I suspect is establishing legitimacy by descent.

Yes, Hyracotherium begot Orohippus, which begot Mesohippus, which begot Merychippus, which begot Dinohippus, which begot Equus (from Horse Evolution at talkorigins.org).

And natural selection one might deduce from the likes of Matthew 7:19, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

Metaphysical naturalism may be more difficult to deduce from the Bible, but it may be possible; consider Ecclesiastes implying that one's consciousness does not survive the death of one's body.


That aside, it is amusing to evaluate Augustine's claims of antiquity.

Greek mythology is not exactly very good at laying out chronology; it does not have anything like the Biblical lists of begots. In any case, the first dated event in Greek history is the first of the recorded Olympic Games, which were held in 776 BCE. Around then, around 750 BCE, Greek got its alphabet, the second writing system it had had.

Greek mythology was partially inspired by Mycenaean-era Greece, which had Greece's first writing system, but there was no hint of that before the late 19th cy., when Heinrich Schliemann discovered Troy.

The Bible purports to go much farther, with plenty of begots to work from; one can use them to work out that the Universe was created in about 4000 or 5500 BCE (see Dating Creation for more). And from Bible chronology, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived around 2000-1600 BCE, the Exodus happened 1250 BCE, Kings Saul, David, and Solomon ruled 1020-931 BCE, etc. -- easily beating the First Olympiad.

It is now recognized that the Bible's history from the creation to the Israelites' conquest of Canaan is 100% mythology, with the remaining debate nowadays being how historical Kings David and Solomon had been. Did they rule the big empire that the Bible described, or did they rule only a relatively small territory? There is not much outside evidence of a big Israelite empire, so I'm inclined to agree with the latter possibility.

In any case, the first Israelite king to get outside mention is King Omri, who ruled in the early 9th century BCE. Wikipedia's two date sets, 876 BCE - 869 BCE and 885 BCE - 874 BCE, are a century before the First Olympiad.


An interesting joker in the deck is Egyptian chronology; Egypt has had a continuously-recorded history since it became literate around 3000 BCE. This history was collected by Manetho, an Egyptian priest and historian who composed his Aegyptiaca around the 3rd century BCE.

However, only parts of the Aegyptiaca have survived, including a summary or epitome of its contents. But it goes back to the pharaoh Menes of the First Dynasty, around 3000 BCE, though it states that before Menes, Egypt had been ruled by various gods and demigods.

Thus, Manetho easily beats the Bible, though the surviving parts are often as dramatically interesting as the Biblical begots.


Likewise, a History of Babylonia was written by Berossos, who lived around 300 BCE, likewise extending far back in time. It contains a flood story that is much like Noah's Flood and Mesopotamian flood legends (see Ziusudra for more); and like in the Bible and in the Sumerian king list, the pre-Flood kings lived very long lives, adding up to 432,000 years.

Roger Pearse

You are quite right, and I have no idea why I made that mistake. Cyril had inherited his uncle's role, of course. I have very mixed feelings about him, I have to say.

All the best,

Roger Pearse