Thread by @DrPhiloponus

Althistorisches Buch begonnen!

Belegt hübsch, dass sich die Christen in der Spätantike in Sachen Kultur nicht anders verhielten als die Taliban heute.

"Utter Trash,"

the Greek intellectual Celsus evaluates the Old Testament.

Tag des kreuz-und-quer-Lesens!

"When one man asked a Greek philosopher to go with him to a shrine and pray, the friend replied that he must think the god is very deaf if he couldn't here them from where they where."
- Catherine Nixey

"I deem it a mark of human stupidity to seek to discover the shape and form of God."
- Pliny the Elder

Fun Fact:

Die Christenverfolgungen der Römer waren eine unschöne Kleinigkeit im Vergleich zu den späteren Heidenverfolgungen der Christen.

Später = Spätantike.

"Christian literature would go on to portray Roman emperors and their officials as demonically possessed servants of Satan who hungered insatiably for Christian blood.
It is a very potent picture. But it is not true."
- Catherine Nixey

"In fact, all over the empire, Romans are frustratingly unwilling to play there role as bloodthirsty martyr-makers."
- Catherine Nixey

1/2
"In one tale a Roman prefect named Probus asks the Christian on trial before him no fewer than nine times to obey him and escape execution. The prefect begs the Christian to think of his weeping family, to spare himself pain, to go free.

2/2
'Give up this madness of yours, yield to [your family's] tears, think of your youth, and offer sacrifice,' he says. 'Spare yourself death'. When the Christian refuses to budge, Probus tries one more time: 'At least offer sacrifice for the sake of your children!'" etc.

Wenn man liest, wie wortreich die Kirchenväter gegen Intellektualität hetzten, versteht man praktischerweise auch gleich, warum die meisten Evangelikalen heute Trump wählen.

Im dritten Jahrhundert gab es in Rom 28 öffentliche Bibliotheken. Als die Christen später das Sagen hatten, wurden alle geschlossen.

Ohne forcierte Dummheit funktionierte das Christentum noch nie.

"For those who wish to be intolerant, monotheism provides very powerful weapons. There was ample biblical justification for the persecution of non-believers."
- Catherine Nixey

"For centuries, the vast majority of historians unquestioningly took up the Christian cause and routinely referred to Non-Christians as 'pagans', 'heathens' and 'idolaters'."
- Catherine Nixey

"The brief and sporadic Roman persecutions of Christians would pale in comparison to what the Christians inflicted to others - not to mention their own heretics."
- Catherine Nixey

"The speed with which toleration slipped into intolerance and then downright suppression shocked non-Christian observers."
- Catherine Nixey

"But many other Christians were so keen to attack the demonic temples that they didn't wait for legal approval. Decades before the laws of the land permitted them to, zealous Christians began to indulge in acts of violent vandalism against their 'pagan' neighbours."
- C. Nixey

"Not only were the monks vulgar, stinking, ill-educated and violent they were also, said their critics, phoneys."
- Catherine Nixey

"St Benedict, St Martin, St Chrysostom; The men leading these campaigns of violence were not embarrassing eccentrics but men at the very heart of the church."
- Catherine Nixey

"It is obvious that this violence was not only one's Christian duty; it was also, for many, a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend an afternoon."
- Catherine Nixey

Buch beendet!

Ein solides Sachbuch mit einigen Schwächen. Erfüllt aber den intendierten Zweck passabel, die Brutalität und Barbarei des Frühchristentums darzustellen.

Einige Zitate kommen noch.

"Statues, the very seat of the demons themselves, suffered some of the most vicious attacks. It was not enough merely to take a statue down; the demon within it had to be humiliated, disgraced, tortured, dismembered and thus neutralized."
- Catherine Nixey

"Diogenes is watching some temple officals arrest a man who has stolen items from a temple treasury. Look, he says: 'The great thieves are leading away the little thief.'"
- Catherine Nixey