/lit/ - Literature

>>19769110
Bump

bump

In the City of God Augustine critiques Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, wikipedia says "Nine or ten books of letters" survive, maybe try his orations as well. Also stuff from Julian the Apostate, maybe late pagan poets Rutilius Namatianus/ Claudian

The Interpretation of the Old Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism. It's on libgen. It goes through basically every mention of Jewish scripture by a non-Abrahamic author. The three biggest critics that you're going to find are are Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian. They're the only ones who wrote significant criticisms that have ~sort of~ survived. I say sort of because a lot of Christians at the time were of the opinion that society needed to be decimated and rebuilt by a cabal of Rabbis from the ground up; Augustine openly talked about the need to destroy non-Abrahamic literature, and Eusebius wanted to destroy all languages except Hebrew and miscegenate everyone into one single race. The works of Celsus and Julian, being subjected to state-level attempts at eradication, only "survive" as a shadow in the form of Christians quoting them and trying to come up with answers to their criticisms.

Also, another important point on this topic: Christian theology was well understood by its critics. What we have basically nothing of is Pagan critiques of the state-created orthodoxy of post-Nicaea, as it was obviously illegal to do so at this time. So for Celsus, who was writing around 928AUC, "Christianity" isn't a top-down dictated religion but a whole bunch of random shit and a number of texts, only some of which are declared canon by government fiat. Likewise, Julian was trained from birth in Christian theology (in order to make him both Pope and Emperor)

>>19769110
pagans can't read

>>19769961
Very interesting, thank you.

>>19769961
>What we have basically nothing of is Pagan critiques of the state-created orthodoxy of post-Nicaea, as it was obviously illegal to do so at this time. So for Celsus, who was writing around 928AUC, "Christianity" isn't a top-down dictated religion but a whole bunch of random shit and a number of texts, only some of which are declared canon by government fiat.
So what you're saying is SJWanity is American Empire state sponsored 'Christianity' 2.0 or like 17.63b or something?

>>19769961
My goodness. So much bullshit.

> Augustine openly talked about the need to destroy non-Abrahamic literature

He absolutely did not. What the hell. Have you actually even read his work? He constantly praises ancient authors like Plato and literally nowhere does he say that their works should be destroyed instead he says that they should be utilised for Christian purposes.

> Eusebius wanted to destroy all languages except Hebrew and miscegenate everyone into one single race

Is that why Latin was made the language of the church, never Hebrew? When did the church ever force anyone to learn Hebrew instead of their native tongue?

> The works of Celsus and Julian, being subjected to state-level attempts at eradication

Celsus’ anti-Christian polemics were destroyed, but that’s only natural. It’s not like pagans behaved any differently. When Emperor Julian seized Bishop George’s library, he ordered all his Christian books to be destroyed.

However, you’re absolutely wrong when it comes to Julian’s writings being completely destroyed by Christians. More of Julian’s writings have survived than nearly any other Roman emperor (over 1000 pages of his writings have survived) and it was preserved by Christians themselves. His only major work that hasn’t entirely survived is against the Galilean, but as I said, that’s only natural. Christians only ever targeted three types of written works for destructions

1. Anti-Christian polemics like those by Julian, Celsus and porphyry
2. Books on magic (basically magic spells and teaching people how to perform magic). Many of these have still surprisingly survived though, but of course no one reads since they’re useless and shit.
3. Heretical texts by other Christians

Christians never targeted texts like those by Plato or Homer for destruction. In fact, you will find it nearly impossible to find one Christian source that calls for their complete destruction.

>>19770101
>Books on magic (basically magic spells and teaching people how to perform magic). Many of these have still surprisingly survived though
Name 3

>>19770101
Why bother having an opinion on a topic you've never read anything on? No, seriously, why? Everyone who agrees with you agrees with you already, everyone who disagrees is laughing at you, and everyone who is on the fence is looking up Augustine saying that non-Christian works need to be destroyed and is now laughing at you.

>>19770097
If we're where Celsus was, imagine if in two centuries General Mgkombo Bambutsu took the Presidency by force one day, declared Bambutsiua (he's renamed London this, Paris he renamed Gombatsotkto after his mother) the capital of the US, and then declared the new state ideology to be Social Justice. He then gets a collection of Harvard Academics to create a falsified lineage going back to Marx, and spends large sums of money on propaganda. According to the state narrative, everyone in 2021 actually believed the true words of St. Vaush, who held an impeccable pedigree given to him by St. Judith Butler, and it was just the evil KKK White Supremacist government acting otherwise because they were INSANE and CRAZY. Any criticisms of this doctrine can easily be dealt with by pointing out that critics in 2021 CLEARLY had no idea what they were talking about because they're addressing an amorphous cloud of all sorts of whacky shit instead of the Holy and True doctrines of the Church of St. Floyd as held in 2221. It's a defensive anachronism.

This is obviously horseshit though because Social Justice, being a top-down narrative enforced upon people, isn't in the same position that Christianity was in second century Rome. You can draw comparisons between the US and Rome, but they work so well.

>>19770101
pretty convenient how all literature that isnt christian is a book on magic, a polemic, or a heresy, and rab- sorry, FATHER goldwitzenberg gets to decide what is and isnt magic, huh?

>>19770126
Well, like I said, they’re not popular so no has heard of them and many aren’t even translated into English since no one reads them cause they’re shit. But there’s Kyranides, which is an Ancient Greek collection of magical texts. Parts of it have been translated by J. C. McKeown in his book A Cabinet of Greek Curiosities if you’re interested. Doubt you are.

>>19770174
And if they actually did their research they would find that Augustine did not call for the destruction of non-Abrahamic texts, idiot.

> So while Tertullian famously asked “what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, John Damascene and many others answered “quite a bit”. They argued that all truth ultimately came from God, even if the conduit for it was Jewish revelation or Greek reasoning. So to reject all potential sources of truth other than scripture was to reject gifts from God. Augustine gave the triumphant argument its classic and most influential expression:

> “Just as the Egyptians had not only idols and grave burdens which the people of Israel detested and avoided, so also they had vases and ornaments of gold and silver and clothing which the Israelites took with them secretly when they fled, as if to put them to a better use. …. In the same way all the teachings of the pagans contain not only simulated and superstitious imaginings and grave burdens of unnecessary labour, …. but also liberal disciplines more suited to the uses of truth, and some most useful precepts concerning morals. Even some truths concerning the worship of the one God are discovered among them.” (De Doctrina Christiana, II.40.60)

> This set the precedent that was then followed in both the east and west: pagan learning could and should be preserved and examined for “the uses of truth”.

>>19770201
No, that is interesting. I'd only ever heard of the picatrix.

>>19770252
>quoting a homosexual communist
this is why people laugh at you

>>19770252
>I am an atheist, sceptic and rationalist who is a subscribing member of the Atheist Foundation of Australia and a former state president of the Australian Skeptics. I have contributed to many atheism and scepticism fora over the years and have a posting record as a rationalist that goes back to at least 1992.

>“Are you really an atheist?”
>Yes.

>I regularly criticise all kinds of other people who allow a combination of ideology, prejudice and/or ignorance to distort their ideas about history, including Holocaust deniers, fundamentalist Christians, Catholic apologists and New Agers. But this blog is focused on distortions of history by atheists.
>Catholic Apologists
He's calling you out bro!

>There are other forums where I have tackled Christian distortions of history, such as the claim the Crusades were actually justified defensive wars against Islamic encroachment on western Europe, or Christian attempts at reconciling the contradictory accounts of Jesus’ birth in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. I have also written detailed articles debunking common Christian apologetic claims on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, the supposed Old Testament prophecies allegedly fulfilled by Jesus or the claim that Jesus claimed to be divine. But this blog is focused on examples of atheist bad history.
Oof.

>No. When scholars talk about “the historical Jesus” they are referring to the Jewish man on whom the later figure of “Jesus Christ” was based.
Ouch.

This is why you should get your opinions on things from primary sources rather than whatever niche micro-celeb you learned about historyforatheists from.

>>19770271
I don’t know what you’re on about, but no actual historian today holds that view that Christians deliberately tried to destroy pagan literature. The historian Edward Grant writes

> “The handmaiden concept of Greek learning was widely adopted and became the standard Christian attitude toward secular learning. …. With the total triumph of Christianity at the end of the fourth century, the Church might have reacted against pagan learning in general, and Greek philosophy in particular, finding much in the latter that was unacceptable or perhaps even offensive. They might have launched a major effort to suppress pagan learning as a danger to the Church and its doctrines. But they did not.” (The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages), Cambridge, 1996, p. 4

>>19770305
>but no actual historian today holds that view that Christians deliberately tried to destroy pagan literature
I'm not sure what you mean by this, there's a large body of academic literature dedicated to St. Cyril. Or by "actual historian" do you mean "random nuatheist blogger"?

>>19769961
>So for Celsus, who was writing around 928AUC,
i get the distinct impression that you have an emotional investment in this argument

>>19770300
Well, that’s fine. I’m an atheist like Tim too. I’m not a Christian either. You don’t actually have to be a Christian to call out anti-Christians for their bullshit and distortion of history, you know. I enjoy reading about late antiquity and the Middle Ages and I wish people would stop spreading misinformation about that time period.

>>19770331
>I enjoy reading about late antiquity and the Middle Ages
clearly not if you get all of your information from fucking bloggers lmfao

>>19770174
Everything you said already came to pass with Nazis and Hitler although they failed to change the past as they wished.

>>19770353
And where are you getting your bullshit? I doubt any historian says Augustine called for the destruction of all non-Abrahamic texts as you claim.

Here’s some good books for the time period by the way although I doubt you actually read

The world of late antiquity by Peter Brown
The final pagan generation by Edward J. Watts
The last pagans of Rome by Alan Cameron

>>19769961
>>19770174

Holy shit. How can one seethe so much about what happened 1700 years ago? And people think Jews are too hang up on what happened to them 80 years ago. Neo-pagans must be on a whole other level.

>>19770414
>And where are you getting your bullshit?
That would be City of God, by Augustine.

You haven't read The Final Pagan Generation btw, as it covers the state mandated destruction of non-Abrahamic religions texts.

Holy fuck Augustine wrote a ton of books that are in the public domain. Just post the exact fucking quote where he says we need to destroy the pagan texts

>>19770174
Isn't it more commonly believed the Roman aristocracy saw the changing tides of the general populations moral demeanor and so got out ahead of it and embraced a general doctrine which helped keep general peace and order.

Like corporations and government using Sjwism to their advantage, even if they don't believe in it, they allow their subjects to suck on that general pacifier of their choosing, though to degrees there are many things to agree with, as there were many things the nobility of Rome agreed with of Christianity, they likely to large degrees treated each other Christianly, or gentlemanly, a large amount of the doctrine seems to be of politely behaving manners.

When Christianity was adopted did the gladiator games suddenly end?
Did slavery end?

And then how really did Rome fall and then the dark ages, northern hoardes raping and pillaging, less as a United Unit Rome, citizens, families, groups of families splintered and went into save themselves mode, and then compounds, estates, castles, arose,

So Rome was like a giant dinosaur, that grew too big to support itself, and so was sliced in many pieces forming many smaller lizards, that then in turn and time consumed their surroundings and grew larger

>>19770457
Did you also read St. Augustine literally write in the city of God

> However, if the philosophers have made any discoveries which are sufficient to guide men to virtue and blessedness, would it not have been greater justice to vote divine honours to them? Were it not more accordant with every virtuous sentiment to read Plato's writings in a "Temple of Plato," than to be present in the temples of devils to witness the priests of Cybele[93] mutilating themselves, the effeminate being consecrated, the raving fanatics cutting themselves, and whatever other cruel or shameful, or shamefully cruel or cruelly shameful, ceremony is enjoined by the ritual of such gods as these? Were it not a more suitable education, and more likely to prompt the youth to virtue, if they heard public recitals of the laws of the gods, instead of the vain laudation of the customs and laws of their ancestors? Certainly all the worshippers of the Roman gods, when once they are possessed by what Persius calls "the burning poison of lust,"[94] prefer to witness the deeds of Jupiter rather than to hear what Plato taught or Cato censured.

>>19770457
And oh yes. The final pagan generation the book which also blames your hero Julian for the destruction of the Roman economy

> Valentinian and Valens faced a different, less visible type of crisis as well. They had taken over an empire that could not pay the bills previous emperors had accumulated and could not cover the future promises that Julian and Jovian had made. Much of the blame lay with Julian. Julian had cut tribute payments in many different parts of the empire,20 and he had also forgiven a large number of debts owed the treasury.21 He led an army of perhaps sixty-five thousand people into Persia, spent a great deal of money supplying it, and promised significant bonuses to his troops during the campaign. In addition to increasing expenses and cutting revenues, Julian reduced the total amount of property that the imperial government owned—an important resource that emperors could use to address food or revenue shortfalls.23 He returned to temples the properties that Constantine had taken from them, he returned to the cities civic estates that Constantius had taken over, and he gave properties to friends as gifts.

> Even supporters of Julian understood the severity of the situation. Ammianus compared the debts that Valentinian inherited to those left to the third-century emperor Aurelian (an allusion whose significance would be clearer if the books of Ammianus’s history covering the reign of Aurelian had not been lost), and Eutropius characterized Julian as “having a mediocre concern for the treasury.

>>19770474
>When Christianity was adopted did the gladiator games suddenly end?
About 80 years after yes, the gladiator games were officially made illegal. However, Constantine immediately began staffing the legal structure of Rome with Christians who held it as an active point of Christian doctrine to destroy the gladiator games (Tertullian talks about this, they're part of his whole "eating meat is human sacrifice" bit), and significantly cut funding.

So yes, you're right about the structure of this process, but I find the sort of whiggishness implicit in "oh of COURSE they'd eventually stop doing munera because something something progress" to be incorrect. There's general historical trends caused by energy wells, and then there's explicit action motivated by ideology. Augustine himself is a good example of this, in that you can make an argument that his views on the necessity of destroying non-Abrahamic literature and repurposing whatever you absolutely couldn't get rid of was just what all ideologies do (which all ideologies do, at some level, do), as compared to his views on language which are a demand for a total Year Zero in order to rebuild society from the ground up in a very specific manner.

>>19770489
No, but then I read City of God, not a Wikipedia article.

>>19770500
I'm not sure what you're getting at. If this discussion is making you upset enough to get incoherent like this, perhaps you need to take a minute and step away from your computer.

>>19770500
>They had taken over an empire that could not pay the bills previous emperors had accumulated and could not cover the future promises that Julian and Jovian had made. Much of the blame lay with Julian. Julian had cut tribute payments in many different parts of the empire,20 and he had also forgiven a large number of debts owed the treasury.
Lol when a bank is more powerful than the Roman Empire

You would think a Roman Emperor could just waive his hand like a Jedi and say 'there are no debts, we owe no debts'

But what, was it all based on physical gold? So they literally were running out of gold to pay for things they needed? But what was the government in charge of constantly mining more gold? And/or were there many private gold miners? That would sell to the government for minting? But if gold was the money what would they sell the gold for

>>19770506
Are you an idiot? The quote I gave you was literally from Augustine’s City of God, not from a Wikipedia article.

>>19770557
>was it all based on physical gold?
Unironically, yes. Julian's scheme seems to have been to invade the Persians, loot the SHIT out of it (and in doing so kill it once and for all), and use this to bribe everyone that he needed. He'd then (apparently) slash taxes. This would be a double blow to the Christians, as it would prove the truth of Zeus, and then cut the Church's funding (as it had no real economic base other than government patronage). Of course, he died, and while there's a lot of fun theorizing you can do along the "Julian-as-icebreaker" lines, he fucking died.

The Roman economy was based on constant expansion, and its economic downturn starts the precise moment that the total cost of expansion was negative. There's a really interesting flow of gold at play here, as during the Bronze Age there's a massive influx of gold into the Middle East, and then Alexander takes it all and ships it to Greece, and then the Romans ship it all to Rome and try to suck as much out of the Middle East as they can. With the collapse of Rome, it gets brought back to the Middle East (via Constantinople, then the Turks). European global domination brings it back to Europe. The Nazis suck it all up and bring it to Germany, and then the US invades, steals all of the gold from Germany, ships it to the US. The Jews then ship it off to Israel back into the Middle East. The Chinese have been trying something similar with silver.

>>19770474
Except the Roman aristocracy was literally the last to convert to Christianity. Christian converts usually came from those who had climbed the social ladder like Constantine and his father. They did not come from the original Roman aristocracy. Theodosius, Valentinian and many other prominent Christians did not come from the Roman aristocracy.

>>19770506
>you can make an argument that his views on the necessity of destroying non-Abrahamic literature
Well and then even speaking of, speaking of Plato, famously contemplates the banning of poetry for an ideal republic, the bible is full of poetry, but I guess one they concluded would be net benefit to the state, and yes, poetry from before his time did survive.

And if you think about it, Christianity for whoevers ultimate purpose did concur the world with it's missionaries and inquisitions.

And how many church's and cathedrals sprung in the lands of the northern hordes, mimicries of Rome.

>>19770616
We can humor the LARPer who keeps seething about Augustine and point out that Augustine, who was some kind of weird Berber, gets really butthurt about this. He rants in a few of his letters to his sugar-mommy about how some noble who paid for temples out of his own pocket was burning in hell for this crime.

Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul talks about this too, how all of the "Roman Aristocrats" who ended up founding the Catholic Church as we know it were all just merchants who'd made it big within the past century or so.

>>19770489
What did he conclude? That there should be a temple of Plato (Was it the academy and academies?)? Or simply that it would be better, but in the end Christianity is the deified gospel, the source of soul of the state and culture, and Plato is a secular usefulness for mere commerce?

>>19770647
The anon who posted that hasn't read City of God, but Augustine's conclusion is that Plato's dialogues should be rewritten as Christian works with no reference to Plato. He borrowed heavily from Plato in his own thought, and this was a problem that he had to solve. He's typically taken as a moderate for this stance, as other colleagues of his (like Cyril) just wanted to destroy it all. His whole theory on language is heavily reliant on Plato for example. In short, he uses Plato and Rabbinical theories on Hebrew being the language spoken in the Garden of Eden by Adam and Eve to try and prove the objective truthfulness of the Gospels and the Torah.

>>19770585
So Julian's error was buying foreign goods instead of domestic(and/or this had been occuring some time prior), allowing gold to leave the borders? Instead of remain in the borders wherein a portion could always be siphoned as taxes.

Also:
>and he had also forgiven a large number of debts owed the treasury.
Does that mean owed by the Treasury or owed to the Treasury?


and he had also forgiven a large number of debts owed the treasury.

>>19770101
I don't think anyone is disputing that christers destroyed books they disagreed with, but it's a pretty anti-intellectual thing to do, and typical of all the other smashy smashy behavior they had against works they could neither comprehend nor reproduce if they tried, whether art, architecture, and indeed literature

>>19770696
Every group of people likes to smishy smashy.

>>19770676
It's not really Julian's error, because as seen, and as anon admitted, Julian did the right thing:
>pay off everyone one last time
and then
>massively slash taxes to allow for local power centers to be self sufficient
Remember that at this time the Roman tax rate was something like 96% of your income in a physical asset: gold (attempts at diluting the currency were done, this just made it so that it was harder to get gold). How do you get gold? From other people, outside of the empire, because you can't make more gold inside the empire. Even gold mines required slaves (because gold mining had a huge casualty rate, due to the mercury used in gold purification, it was actually a net-negative to mine gold rather than take it from foreigners).

EVERYONE has to do this. If you owe someone 110 gold coins, and there's only 100 in the system, you have to get the 10 remaining from outside of the system. That means taking it from foreigners. Without a state mercantile policy, you can't do what the Chinese did and get it from trade, you have to get it from conquest. When conquest becomes too costly, you're fucked. The entire system was dependent upon an ever increasing supply of more gold. It's not like with fiat where you can skillfully maneuver parts inside the system to cool down, you HAVE to get more gold. The gold leaking out was a pittance compared to the gold needed to pay everyone off. This was made worse by the increasing reliance on the central government, which worked via gold instead of local favors and barter. This is part of the irony of Julian's taxcuts, as this was the first time in decades that Christians could build their own churches instead of having to ask the Emperor (who was the only one with any spare cash) to build them for them.

If you want to make a comparison to the US, you can replace "gold" with "economic gains" and this is more or less the same.

>>19770667
Oh yes. Cyril the guy who banned Jews from his city was part of a larger Jewish conspiracy.

>>19770616
>They did not come from the original Roman aristocracy. Theodosius, Valentinian and many other prominent Christians did not come from the Roman aristocracy.
Ok but so for a few hundred years the powers opposed it severely and brutally, but then as they saw this was causing too much division and distraction among the populous (before a thousand or so years in which it was rooted and comfortable enough to only gain advantage from such) it was adopted and promoted.

So those people you name are like AOC and the like. How many southerners and Midwesterners would unironically literally enjoy breaking her over the wheel or feeding her to the lions.

We can make remarkable analogies to the past because there is only so much contained in fundamental human nature

>>19770632
Perhaps Christianity was a more manageable form of order in relation to paganisms chaos'

And when the northern hordes aquired their wealth and settled down, and could stop and smell the roses they themselves realized the preference of polite civilization over the constant fear of neighbor barbarians

>>19770696
Yes. Christians burned anti-Christian polemical books like those of Celsus, but neither were the first nor were they the last so I’m not sure why people decide to make it seems like they were.

Julian himself writes that he wishes all of Bishop George’s Christian books to be completely eradicated

> “Do you therefore grant me this personal favour, that all the books which belonged to Bishop George be sought out. For there were in his house many on philosophy, and many on rhetoric; many also on the teachings of the impious Galilaeans. These latter I should wish to be utterly annihilated,”

Diocletian had all books on chemistry destroyed when he captured Alexandria

> James Partington’s 1957 book entitled, A Short History of Chemistry. In this book, Partington explains that little is known today about ancient chemistry because much of what was written down did not survive antiquity. He says that the word “Chemistry” first appeared in a Roman edict by Diocletian in which all books of the Egyptians in Alexandria on the topic of chemeia are ordered to be burnt.

> “Diocletian sought out and burned books about this. [It is said] that due to the Egyptians' revolting behavior Diocletian treated them harshly and murderously. After seeking out the books written by the ancient [Egyptians] concerning the alchemy of gold and silver, he burned them so that the Egyptians would no longer have wealth from such a technique, nor would their surfeit of money in the future embolden them against the Romans.”

And there’s so many examples you can find of book destruction before and after Christian. Christians did not invent book burnings. If anything they learned it from the pagans.

>>19770717
No, we're talking about the Cyril that used Jews as muscle and kicked the ones that wouldn't toe the line out when they wanted more money, only for them to come back a few years later after he'd been assassinated by church rivals.

>>19770742
It isn't until Christianization that the Germanic world really kicks off in terms of mass violence. It's easy to look at the nationstates in the 20th century and make a linear connection between then and now, but that was absolutely not the case. In Continental Germania, Gaul, and even in Scandinavia, it isn't really until about two centuries of time passes before the massive bloodshed that Christianity brought with it ceases and you get monarchs who are willing to put the brakes on the Cultural Revolution.

>>19770755
>Diocletian had all books on chemistry destroyed when he captured Alexandria
It's cute how you try to turn Diocletian's' attempt at stopping alchemists from coin-clipping and currency dilution into some kind of RABID ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACK on SCIENCE!!!.

>>19770667
It seems like you are painting Augustine like a good to do meaning well good doer but slightly naive, like he was a fanatic force and all about the legitimacy but those above him just wanted to use his passions and fervor to get the most powerful text they could for ruling?

Like some Soviet Marxist intellectual theorist in relation to the brass heads of state.

Or was Augustine and his supporters and the church fathers becoming the true powers of Rome? Or were there so many true powers of Rome they were split in terms of physical distant space and idealogy.

Augustine and the church mission was to create a culture, and eventually opposers to this culture could not compete? So they just kept their mouths shut and went on living pleasently on their estates regardless?

>>19770755
Well isn't Julian playing their game at this point? He's not really a good example since he is revolting against Christianity as it had revolted. Dialectic and all that jazz. Not an uncontaminated case

>>19770714
Ok, so a mistake was all the lavishness of the rulers? How did they run out of all their gold? Too many wealthy citizens hording? Or also as you mention, just buying things on credit, paying for architecture and ships and soliders armor and weapons? If they were getting all that tax money gold, literally where did it all go?

Also was the Roman Treasury a public bank owned by who? And was it generally kept full like proverbial dirt knox

>>19770756
>two centuries of time passes before the massive bloodshed that Christianity brought with it ceases and you get monarchs who are willing to put the brakes on the Cultural Revolution.

Easily the most idiotic thing I’ve ever read and obviously written by someone who really hasn’t read any history. Charlemagne lived nearly four centuries after the establishment of Christianity, but his reign marked the first combination of conquest and forced conversion in the history of Christianity.

>>19770756
>it isn't really until about two centuries of time passes before the massive bloodshed that Christianity brought with it ceases and you get monarchs who are willing to put the brakes on the Cultural Revolution.
2 centuries when? around 400 or 600 ad?
And the bloodshed against outer tribes, or bloodshed between supposedly christian villages, territory, city states, castles?

We see again in this Castles situation, castles using their inner forces to gain outer territories, and defeating neighboring castles, as if each castle was a little Rome, using a strong uniting, organizing inner doctrine, for citizen morale and inter peace, while denying the substance of the doctrine in the name of needing material aquisition beyond the territories gates
It seems all of history can be broken down into relative quantitys and qualities of chaos and order

>>19770835
Not really since Julian himself was taught all the pagan classical texts as part of his education growing up and even by bishops. So he was not “playing their game” by burning their books.

In fact, Julian never says that growing up he was kept from reading Homer or other pagan texts by his Christian family or that Christians burnt them. Quite the opposite actually. He asks why Christians liked to teaching pagan texts so much, writing

> “If the reading of your own scriptures is sufficient for you, why do you nibble at the learning of the Hellenes? And yet it were better to keep men away from that learning than from the eating of sacrificial meat. For by that, as even Paul says, he who eats thereof is not harmed, but the conscience of the brother who sees him might be offended according to you”

> Julian is also suppose to have said about Christians teaching and learning pagan classical texts: “For in the words of the proverb, we are stricken by our own arrows. For from our own writings they take the weapons where with they engage in the war against us.”

>>19770714
>Or also as you mention, just buying things on credit, paying for architecture and ships and soliders armor and weapons? If they were getting all that tax money gold, literally where did it all go?

Because as long as they were getting 96% tax, no matter what they bought, architecture, roads, armour, ships food; if they bought all this from Ronan citizens... 96% of it would be paid right back to the coffers

>>19770921
>In fact, Julian never says that growing up he was kept from reading Homer or other pagan texts
Wouldn't one in this discussion with you presuppose that those were the texts allowed to survive?

Surely the history of paganism was more rich and varied than those handfulsvof examples? I mean there are a lot of texts about the Greek gods. But there is talk referring to all the odd temples and sacrifices and rites and rituals, and beliefs in occult and magic and superstitions, and witchcraft and the like, if all that was assumed to exist in great depth in the BCs, this Convo is I think referring to those types of texts?

>>19770696
>I don't think anyone is disputing that christers destroyed books

But that’s exactly what we are disputing. I’ve already debunked it with Julian’s own words.

>>19770921

Julian himself says that Christians preferred teaching pagan classical texts, not destroying them. In fact, Julian basically tries to incite Christians to destroy those texts instead.

You know. I’m tired of this shit. I’ve given so many primary and secondary sources to back up everything I’ve said while this loser >>19769961

has yet to give even ONE direct quote from Augustine (which he claims he has read) or literally any other primary or secondary sources yet everyone is taking his side.

This is a messed up world. Fuck everyone on here.

>59 replies
>only 2 book suggestions
Thanks guys.

>>19771019
Besides tame texts like homer and ovid and the Greek gods, would you agree there might have been a lot of writing regarding the hundreds and hundreds of years of pagan, rite, ritual, superstition, belief, and custom?

Withcraft and occult and magic, and all the temples ( is a lot of pagan stuff even pre Greek roman gods?) (That was even a process to wrangle the barbaric infinities of pagan potential ?)

I personally don't care about this specific topic I think we were touching upon much more interesting things in relation to these times of history.

There were books, these people did or didn't burn them, they would or wouldn't be interesting to read, if the christians did destroy them that would be an ouchy tarnish on their reputation

Hey did anyone think to check the vatican libraries?

>>19771049
Almost anything you could want to know about the topic is contained in this thread, what more would you like to know.

Christians were good, christians were bad, christians were right, christians were wrong,

Non Christians were good, non christians were bad, non christians were right, non christians were wrong,

>>19770696
Will you likewise say that of, for example, Plato, who also wanted/tried to burn Democritus's writings?

>>19770174
>>19770300
hey Plato wanted/tried to set Democritus's writings on fire too.

>paganlarpers in the thread can only resort to the argument of supposed destruction of pagantarded books by christians yet can't cite a single work proven to be destroyed by christians

>>19771019
Lots of demon possessed posters itt. Just ignore them anon.

>>19771119
Against the Christians
literally in the OP.

>>19771149
>https://www.bookdepository.com/Porphyry-Against-Christians-Robert-Berchman/9789004148116
???????????
???
?
?
Huh? How could this be destroyed??

>>19771161
That's a collection of scraps of what was once a larger work. Theodosius II had all the copies burned.

>>19771173
So work wasnt completely destroyed though.. And its a strictly anti-christian work so its understandable why it would have been destroyed anyway.

>>19771179
>So work wasnt completely destroyed though
How would I be able to provide you with an example of a book that was completely destroyed?

>>19771149
>>19771173
>>19771217
>Some thirty Christian apologists, such as Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, Augustine, Jerome, etc., responded to his challenge. In fact, everything known about Porphyry's arguments is found in these refutations

Plus: no proof of it being lost because of destruction of ALL of its copies.

>>19771217
We have a lot of known cases of books completely lost, retard.

Might any be in Vatican libraries?

>>19771251
>Plus: no proof of it being lost because of destruction of ALL of its copies.
What are you talking about? Theodosius II ordered all copies and now there are no complete examples of the work remaining. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened to all those copies. And the fragments that remain were preserved by people trying do discredit the book, how do we know these weren't cherry picked?

>>19770921
>Julian himself was taught all the pagan classical texts as part of his education growing up and even by bishops
You don't see a problem here? Bishops, i.e. ennobled rabbis, teaching "pagan classical texts" to members of the imperial Christian household? You really think that's an unalloyed example of paganism?
>So he was not “playing their game” by burning their books.
On the contrary, his attempts to reorganize and reform Hellenism around himself was a failed effort to make "paganism" into a pseudo-Abrahamic religion. A pre-Christian pagan would not have had to engage in back and forth spats with infidels and destroy their texts or withold funds from their temples or what have you. It wasn't a problem. There were godly people and godless people under polytheism, not radical monotheists who considered everyone else to be a demon-worshiper and tool of satan. The Romans never figured out Abrahamism until it was too late and by then it had been declared illegal to practice the Roman religion by the Roman emperors several times over.

>>19771217
A book only known by quotation or reference and not by itself as an extant text is not a book we have.

>>19771319
Is English not your first language? I'm having a hard time trying to understand what you're saying here.

>>19771310
This is common among political powers, you know, right?
>fragments that remain were preserved by people trying do discredit the book, how do we know these weren't cherry picked?
You mean answer the book.
1) We know because this was not the first time it happened, see Origen and Celsus, for example. This was a common practice in ancient times, this form of written response quoting the others' arguments. Irinaeus' testimonies of gnostic sects were also all accurate, modern scholars confirm.
2) People like Jerome, Augustine, Methodius, Eusebius all died years or decades before Thedosius' order.

Also, the most important thing: this is only one book. Is this all?

>>19771290
Probably. But then they'd be lost in the back of some shelf that no one has looked at in 200 years.

>>19771339
I'm only responding to your original statement
>yet can't cite a single work proven to be destroyed by Christians
I'm not trying to have a discussion about how all sorts of governments have ordered book burning. "Aganst the Christians" was intentionally destroyed by Christians, a few scraps left over don't change that.

>>19771337
You are the one playing pilpul in saying a book cannot be destroyed if we know of it. Now you can't parse English either. Go figure.

Has anyone ITT read Gemistus Pletho? He was late Byzantine so like 1000 years after late Roman, so basically a larper but his shit seems very relevant to the topic.

>>19769961
Augustine literally echoes/quotes Lucretius who was not even pagan but a straight up atheist.

>>19771384
Yet you have no way to prove how every single copy of it was literally destroyed by a christian (you think no pagan had a copy or could refrain from giving one to christians who lived in order to burn this book and therefore sought everywhere 24/7 without any other shit to do). You are delusional and I'll repeat: this is the only one you can cite and it barely fits.

>>19771393
>You are the one playing pilpul in saying a book cannot be destroyed if we know of it
I never said that. In fact my original claim was that a book that we do know of was intentionally destroyed.

>>19771424
>Yet you have no way to prove how every single copy of it was literally destroyed by a christian
This conversation obviously isn't going anywhere. Peace dude.

>>19771049
What kind of critiscms do you expect there to be?

"These christians are annoying, they are wrong, they are dumb, they are doing annoying things". ?

Or more specific things like "st______ is so annoying he walks around with a silly limp and has a lisp and I saw him eat a chicken nugget, and he can't ride a horse well"

'the owner of this church is a greedy liar conman"

All kind of stuff like that you would be hoping to find? Day to day commentary about the early christians?

From this thread I am now wondering when Christianity started becoming the state religion, what was the racial make up of Rome? And truly how popular was Christianity as a state culture among the citizens? In the years 200 -600 whenever it was, what percent of the population "dropped" their previous traditions, and started being christians?

It was all Romans? This is how Italy became catholic, roman catholic.

So italians, Romans, had all sorts of pagan activities and beliefs and festivals, and then just stopped them all?

>>19771424
Do you think there were 0 critisims of the early christians?

How many written critiscms of the christians If You Had To Geuss were written from 35 AD to 500 AD?

If the answer is: likely more than 1.

Than some % between 0 and 100 were purposefully destroyed, and some percent accidently. And some percent may be in the vatican libraries

For anyone truly interested in Paganism all you have to do is tear off a scorpions tail and dip it in a golden bowl of bull urine blessed by the priestess Shahluulah of the temple Avethious, on a hillside overlooking a creek on the third full moon after the 5th month while praising Jauchtoles and praying to Empestilon for guidance and cumming on a virgin 13 year olds ass and the dance around a pole in a sundress, and you will be told everything you need to know about the divine mysteries.

>>19771637
>35 AD to 500
An interesting thing to consider about time:
A man can live to be 100.
Let's say a man was born year 0.
To 500AD is 5 lifetimes.
From 0 to 2000AD is only 20 human lifetimes.

>>19769961
Good post. I'll read about that.

>>19771424
Please answer this please
>>19771637

>>19771019
>>19771139
For all intents and purposes, the obsessed and possessed people who champion these arguments don't exist in real life. They appear as a niche within a niche, of committed neopagans or nationalists. They mostly spend all their time in private, chasing alt-histories down the rabbit hole and driving themselves insane with their (ironically very very modernist) idols of dead tradition.
I eventually got too busy to leap into these repetitive arguments with them and just advise others to do the same. They are arguing from unfalsifiable aesthetic premises which are already dead. They peaked in the 19th century. Ignore them, or insult them if you must.

>>19771714
The modern bona-fide equivalent of paganism is exactly whatever postmodernist queer-adjacent idiocy the witch-horoscope-folksy instagram pages spit out. That's exactly how much substance ancient paganism had. It had more pedigree but it was exactly as arbitrary and schizophrenic in its symbolism. That's why it died.
Attempting to resurrect it is contradictory folly. Its only virtue is long-dead, and romanticism recapitulates it honestly and without pretense. There is no point. Frog twitter and all the neo-reactionaries are almost equally legitimate, but they undermine themselves with claims of continuity - it is a constructed tradition which is therefore somehow more perverted than the genuinely garbage new-age strain of neopagan thought.
Society wasn't destroyed because of Jewish or Christian conspiracy, it died because of secularism spawned at the end of the Middle Ages which was weaponized by Anglo-Jewish cultural tendencies in the past few centuries. Christian association with the destructive processes of our era is entirely inherited via the English civil sensibility that started in the Tudor period and irrevocably broke Western Christianity according to the whim of the baronial-bourgeois classes. Right-wing neo-pagans are missing the mark by half a millenium.

>>19769961
If you are an anti-Christian, why would you be interested in criticisms which failed, and were therefore wrong?

>>19772246
>>19771637
What is the necessary correlation between written criticisms and destroyed works? For example, what does the criticisms written in the City of God imply?

>>19769961
>AUC
based

>>19769961
Based LARPagan apologist dabbing on Christcucks

>>19769961
The Augustine stuff it's a blatanty lie. He loved pagan authors such as Plato and Cicero. He tought big brained pagans accidentally almost reached christianity out of pure intuition. Of course as they didnt know Christ their revelation was still not complete

>>19771139
>someone disagrees with me? AAAAH A DEMON
kek christniggers are on a whole other level of delusional

>>19769961
>928AUC
BASED
A E
S S
E A
DESAB

>>19772383
Christians should stop trying to understand paganism, really. It's above them. They can only call it satanism and watch Temple of Doom or such movies and feel secure and better.

>>19769110
"late pagans" based their beliefs on what Christian monks saved of ancient pagan myths

>>19769961
>Eusebius wanted to destroy all languages except Hebrew and miscegenate everyone into one single race
and destroy all manuscripts of the new testament, which were written in Greek?
larpagan please, we're not as stupid as you are, at least make some effort trying to convert people into atheism then paganism and then satanism

>>19770194
you're deranged, you're one of those pol morons who don't get the difference of a religious jew and an atheist jew even if the latter is fucking you and the religious jew with the same cock

>>19772942
>Christians should stop trying to understand paganism, really. It's above them.
it's the de facto religion of globohomo and all the societies trying to enslave people back into Atlantis dystopia
https://www.younggloballeaders.org

I bet the people calling themselves "the druid collective" aren't exactly abrahamic, same with NASA calling all their missions Greek god names (apollo for example)

>They can only call it satanism
all larpagans eventually become satanists much like all atheists become pagans

>>19771019
your posts won't be forgotten don't worry

>>19771059
>That was even a process to wrangle the barbaric infinities of pagan potential
what pagan potential? sucking each others cocks and fucking boys in temples while consuming hallucinogenic?

>>19772970
Left wing, secular Jews and right-wing, Orthodox Jews are both bad but for different reasons, the left because they're largely the people behind anti-White, anti-gun and pro-refugee movements, and the right for supporting Israel at all costs.

If anything it's Christians who don't really understand the Jews, they constantly shill the Synagogue of it Satan quote or point out how early Christians were persecuted by the Pharisees. This doesn't really prove anything though, as they thought Yeshua was a heretic and we're simply persecuting him and his followers as heretics. Christians would go on to doing the exact same
thing once they got in power, with Arianism, Pelagianism, Manichaeism, etc. It's hypocritical to criticize the Jews for persecuting heretics when you yourself are doing the same thing to heretics.

>>19772942
Temple of Doom is a good movie tho.

>>19773000
>right-wing, orthodox jews
such a thing doesn't exist, jews are Torah-wing

>and the right for supporting Israel at all costs.
which is why orthodox rabbis are against Zionism you moron, go learn about Judaism before falling for pol propaganda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOwXMgvAocY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Stuart_Antelman

>>19771139
true. That deamon is my soul.

>>19772989
Christians are the actual satanists since yahweh is a demon
No need to reply, I know it's gonna be brainlet cope

>>19770325
larpgans are a curious thing, they want an pagan universalism that never existed while blaming Christianity for the problems that started with the decline of christianity in europe

>>19770474
>northern hoardes raping and pillaging
northern hoards of PAGAN germans, I might add, who, for some reason, centuries later, decided to larp as romans (see Hitler)

>>19770489
>priests of Cybele[93] mutilating themselves, the effeminate being consecrated, the raving fanatics cutting themselves, and whatever other cruel or shameful, or shamefully cruel or cruelly shameful, ceremony is enjoined by the ritual of such gods as these
that's peak paganism for you

>>19773060
child. jews have the identical god.

>>19772712
>accidentally almost reached christianity out of pure intuition. Of course as they didnt know Christ their revelation was still not complete
This is just conversion rhetoric aimed at people who were too educated to read the bible and agree with it, or who found the behavior of christers to be too slavish and effeminate to go along with, and had respect for the high culture of Greece and Rome.

>>19773060
even larping as a gnostic isn't too far for you people if it slanders the Bible?

>>19773220
If you can’t see the similarities between platonism and christian theology you are a peabrained retard. Or you just have no idea about either of these theologies.

>>19773220
>and had respect for the high culture of Greece and Rome.
who are you taking about? it most certainly wasn't Socrates

>>19773241
Who is saying they aren't similar? Augustine's narrative is very obviously him making a case that educated pagans had beliefs which were close to some claims made by Christianity. Why would he bother with this if not to sway people who were concerned about the lowliness of christers?

>>19773249
No, Socrates was not subject to conversion attempts by christers in the late centuries of the Roman empire

>>19773256
>Augustine's narrative is very obviously him making a case that educated pagans had beliefs which were close to some claims made by Christianity
Because it is?

>>19773256
I don’t know, maybe for the same reason why during all late antiquity through middle ages to this fucking day there are christian platonists, scholars studying both traditions in parallel?

>>19773276
I guess it's over your head that "actually it's really just Plato!" was not the original presentation of Christianity, and this doesn't show up until significant amounts of the elite, philosophically-educated population were converted instead of just slaves who wanted to be executed by magistrates so they could be exalted in the afterlife

>>19773220
>>19773256
Now that apparentlty you claim to be able to read the mind of a 1600 years old dead guy tell me: what was Augustine's favorite dish?

>>19773318
>augustine was not trying to convert people to his religion or write apologetic literature
the absolute state of you larpers

>>19773191
>Pagan universalism
What? Literally nobody wants that, paganism is inherently tribalistic and local. The Romans knew that each tribe has their own God, which is why they were so confused when Christianity declared there were no other Gods but Jehova and started accusing everyone else of being Satan worshipers.

Christianity meanwhile was just proto-globohomo, the obsession with non-Whites, slaves and the uneducated was there since the beginning. It's just more obvious now that there are more African and Latin American Christians than European Christians.

>>19773240
>larper calls other larpers
lol
Keep worshiping a demon for all I care, the only good parts of the Bible are Luke and John

>>19773293
Who’s saying that “it is actually just Plato” you nigger? I’m literally saying what has been said since the beginning: theoretical similarities.

> this doesn't show up until significant amounts of the elite, philosophically-educated population were converted instead of just slaves who wanted to be executed by magistrates so they could be exalted in the afterlife
This has absolutely nothing to do with what we’re discussing, but you know Paul was elite, right? Justin, Clement, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa were all well off and had elite education.

But this theoretical agreement with Platonism exists since Philo.

>>19773218
Yes, jews are satanists, big news faggot

>>19773240
Gnostics are the only non-larping christians.

>>19773344
>Christianity meanwhile was just proto-globohomo, the obsession with non-Whites, slaves and the uneducated was there since the beginning

Pagan Romans believed their Gods were pederasts (Ganymede and Zeus et al) considered their religion to be in the Orient, if not Africa.

>>19773326
Sure, engaging in contrived metaphysical speculations with references to pagan theories are THE way to convert people to your religion. Of course every christian wants every individual to become christian, but saying that a tome of more than a thousand pages was written to convert people instead of purely intellectual acitivity is something really dumb.
Seriously, why are neopagans so retarded?

>>19773390
Still over your head I guess. Answer me this, WHY does it matter what various pagans wrote or thought when you have le ebin word of god himself? It's because intelligent people find that argument retarded and want an intellectual framework. Plato already did this for his own religion, and the christers, who did not have this in their tradition of proclaiming the end of the world was at hand and Jesus would give his followers eternal life and incorruptible bodies, eventually absorbed enough Platonists into their ranks as to copy that framework, and they did so because the Bible doesn't work on anyone smarter than a priest.

>>19773404
What is "purely intellectual activity"? What author does not want to be read or writes for no purpose? Vicious pilpul you've got there trying to avoid owning up to the fact that the Bible wasn't good enough for the most educated persons of your religion.

Christianity is such a successful religion because it turns all arguments against it into reasons to believe through top-tier mental gymnastics.
>arguments against my faith? Must be demons trying to mislead me
>my religion is obnoxious and getting persecuted because of it? That means it's true, but when other religions get persecuted they deserve it
>someone dislikes Christianity? That actually means they know it's the truth and don't want to admit it
I wish I were capable of this level of sheer self-delusion, it would make my life so much easier.

>>19773409
Holy fucking shit look at the level of people who browse this board. Dude, go get over your boiling resentment. I’m not even a christian (I love Nietzsche), but your kind of neopagans is way worse, innaprehensibly way worse than the most slavish christcuck.

> It's because intelligent people find that argument retarded and want an intellectual framework. Plato already did this for his own religion, and the christers, who did not have this in their tradition of proclaiming the end of the world was at hand and Jesus would give his followers eternal life and incorruptible bodies, eventually absorbed enough Platonists into their ranks as to copy that framework, and they did so because the Bible doesn't work on anyone smarter than a priest.
They did because the hellenistic rational paradigm of intellectual activity spread through all north africa to western east with the hellenic conquests. Christians were not the only group to incorporate this kind of rational theology in order to systematize their doctrines, gnostics, jews, stoics, skeptics, all did it. Go read a fucking book.

If tradLARPer Christians think the decline of Europe is related to the decline of Christianity l, then why are the most Christian counties in the world all 3rd world shitholes? I never see Deus Vult fags arguing that people should move to the Congo, Niger, Ivory Coast, etc. They're too scared to even move to Eastern Europe, which despite being based Catholic or Orthodox still have no money and rampant corruption and crime. Seriously despite Germany being a pozzed US colony that's still the only European country /pol/ talks about positively.

>>19773426
Almost sounds like Freud. Imagine that. I think they have something else in common. Incidentally, check out his Moses and Monotheism.

>>19773417
> What is "purely intellectual activity"? What author does not want to be read or writes for no purpose?
Something people have been doing before christianity existed, during the very christian period where everyone was christian, to this day, you fucking retard?

>>19773433
All christian 3rd world countries were colonized during an era of an already decline of christianity, they were founded on unchristian principles, mercantilism, imperialism, etc. does this sound like a christian foundation?

>>19773450
>real Christianity has never been tried

>>19773432
>Christians were not the only group to incorporate this kind of rational theology in order to systematize their doctrines
This is exactly my point—they were part of a syncretic slop of ideas bouncing around the margins of the Roman empire and they started to incorporate higher prestige forms of thought and literature as they took over more and more of the culture. Christian Platonism therefore represents an attempt to convert elite or educated people to the christer cult, one that ultimately succeeded with state patronage and the efforts of writers like Augustine, who as I am sure we are aware was also a bishop and educated man. I am not the one with ressentiment here, if you read your Nietzsche you'd know exactly which group of world-deniers deserves the scorn of a Roman. I am simply pointing out who those are.

>>19773461
Have you ever heard of european middle ages aka peak of humanity?

>>19773439
You're losing me here if you think Augustine was uninterested in advocating for Christianity and writing a defense of it for the benefit of his correligionists. That's a ridiculous position to have, and to argue against what exactly?

>>19773470
>the best time to live was when i wasn't born

>>19773470
>european middle ages aka peak of humanity
OH NO NO NO

>>19773464
>syncretic
The form is not the content, dumbfuck. Anyhow, you know greek literature/philosophy incorprated A LOT from the east, right? Pythagoras/Plato from phoenicians and egyptians, greek myth and poetry from mesopotamia, etc etc. Read a book, please.

>if you read your nietzsche
And I recommend you the same and you’ll see even him knew platonism and christianity were basically the same… Which is the fucking point of the discussion which you are moving the goalposts insanely.

>>19773464
bruh you're seething, my good man. 'christer' is nothing but your personal projection: y u no understand that beneath the surface of what we know as historical Christianity is a boundless depths of difference? are you saying that great mystics and all that spiritual might is merely 'christ-cuckoids being world deniers'? it is real weak to hit the matter with such a board strokes.

>>19773477
>>19773479
Yeah, peak of poetry and literature, peak of architecture, peak of painting, peak of state organization, peak of warrior class, peak of fertility… want me to go on?

>>19773450
Countries are great or terrible because if their people, not religion. Europe was great before Christianity and during. China and Japan have had both successes and failures despite Christianity never being popular there. And most of Africa is shit regardless of religion, whether it be Christianity or Islam.

>>19773484
I'm not preaching a pure incorrupt divine doctrine handed down by the volcano god; yes I am aware Platonism is not some purely Greek product. Perhaps you are the one moving the goalposts

>>19773479
>Middle Ages le smelly
it cannot be proven, it is a phantasm: some feel affinity with it -- horses, noble maidens, Grail, and knights -- others simply do not feel it.

>>19773491
No you don't need to go on, you can't go on since you are so entirely committed to the notion that the past is superior. It would be nothing but cruelty for you to persist. Alas there is none who would martyr you, too icky of a job

>>19770676
>Does that mean owed by the Treasury or owed to the Treasury?
'Owed the treasury' means 'owed to the treasury'.

>>19773485
No I just use that term for the guaranteed replies. Call someone a christer and they freak out, same behavior as needing to cloak the Bible in Platonism, they are embarassed. Own it. Own that yes you are a christer and maybe you won't be called one

>>19773494
>I'm not preaching a pure incorrupt divine doctrine handed down by the volcano god;
But this is a fact. Hint: revelation of scapegoat mechanism.

You are retarded because you take the form over the content and keep moving the goalposts.

Lol

>>19773519
>this is a fact

>>19773506
Proving me right, the post. Thanks.

>>19773525
You can be wrong or you can keep being a nihilist. Up to you

>>19773491
For me, it's antiquity.
>>19773499
Boring.

>>19773524
>he had to ignore the justification for such a fact because he is too dumb to understand it and confirmed his retardation with wojak tier refutations

>>19773529
>y-you are a nihilist!
Lmao how pathetic you people are. You know the guy who fought against nihilists liked the middle ages right? Of course you dont.

>>19773532
>antiquity
On a par with it, certainly. Ancient greece before cucked philosophy was fucking brutal.

>>19773533
There is no justification for divine revelation. It's literally an anti-justification, that you don't need to make a case for anything you say after it except insofar as you can relate your claims to scripture. And this was so obviously dumb that educated Romans needed to have it lubricated with Platonism before going along with it in order to keep their titles and jobs in the late empire

>>19773539
There is a world of difference between admiring a period and saying it was the "peak of humanity," which means you will never overcome it and are doomed to an inferior state, a stone's throw from being suicidal

>>19773532
>Boring.
thank you for proving my point: it is about particular soul signatures. Europeans have Medieval code in their cultural and ethnic dna.

>>19773557
Well now they have corn syrup and coronavirus in their dna

>>19773518
what? you radiate strong gender-dysmorphic pneuma.
it doesn't really matter what name one chooses to call himself, what is important is the texture of energy one produces. you fight windmills of le christers to confirm your vane and fragile ego like a true last man. it is resentment based on a greedy need to feel superior, vulgar understanding of the will to power.

>>19773547
Hey you illiterate retard, you know there is a whole tradition of anthropological critique showing the revelation of christianity (and therefore its truth) too besides the rational metaphysical one. This is what I implied in my last post. But you are dumb as fuck and can’t even engage with what I write.

>>19773565
>im going to call you a tranny but don't you dare insult me or my rabbi ever again
kek

>>19773545
The Middle Ages lack mystique. Antiquity was the age of mystery, there was an effervescence, the Middle Ages are not as interesting.
>>19773557
I am European and the Middle Ages are the least interesting historical period to me. You just have a Christian bias.

>>19773570
>there is a whole tradition of anthropological critique showing the revelation of christianity
Are you the "epistemological weight of miracles" poster?

>>19773579
>Middle Ages are the least interesting historical period to me
>thinking it has something to do with 'historical period' ngmi

>>19773587
I know exactly what you're talking about, don't be a pedantic faggot

It wasn't really necessary for Christians to go and actively destroy any books in order for them to be lost to us. It's not like we have first editions of Augustine or Origen. We don't even have any manuscripts of the gospels from the third century.
The versions we have of the early Church fathers are medieval copies. If no one was interested in copying your work in medieval times, it's probably gone.

>>19773603
I doubt that.
the topos of the Middle Ages is Alchemy but your kind decides to to see things through a lens of 'he is bad, so I am good', hence all this lame anti-christcuck seething.

>>19773574
sneed, bussy.

>>19773579
What you even mean by mystique? If anything Middle Ages was mysterious as fuck in and their own way.

>>19773582
No

>>19773627
>Alchemy
Again: I know what you're talking about, your condescension does nothing to me. I'm not particularly interested in medieval spiritual alchemy, again: I prefer the hermetic traditions of antiquity, the mystery cults, and so on.
>>19773639
It's a different kind. Antiquity was an age of effervescent spiritual "mingling", see Alexandria for example. The Middle Ages, less so.
Also, I don't like it aesthetically.

>>19773605
Do you know what a palimpsest is?

>>19773651
>Also, I don't like it aesthetically.
What exactly you do not like contrasting it with the Antiquity?

>>19773644
well feel free to present your evidence, I suppose it won't be worse than "it has to be true because otherwise it wouldn't be believed"

>>19773669
Courtly love, the consolidation of the feudal structure, castles, pre-Renaissance Christian art, the disappearance of mystery cults and esotericism or their syncretic assimilation by Christian "esotericism", etc.

>>19773692
lol. seriously, what is wrong with castles and courtly love?

>>19772942
This sentiment would make more sense in a thread which didn't get started by some fucking obsessed sperg causally using AUC dating
It's perfectly easy to understand what the motives are here

>>19773700
Must be some kind of serfcel who hates encastellation

>>19773700
Don't like 'em
>>19773711
Cope

>>19773705
AUC>AD>CE

>>19773671
Dude, read a book for once in your life. The whole discussion with you has been dumb, you can barely understand what I post

>>19773714
We all get it anon, Rome Total War was a pretty great game. But it's time to move on.
This is an intervention, you have to move on for your own good

>>19773721
Ok redditor

>>19773720
>>19773721
>'my opinion good, your opinion bad' is only legitimate when i say it
cope some more christers

>>19773692
There were mystery cults in the middle ages. Templars, cathars/heretic cults, the gottenfreunde, etc. but yeah antiquity had some interesting esoteric cults too

>>19773738
Literally answered all your retarded questions with historical and theoretical points. All you did was to say your opinions about how christianity had to get things from platonists or whatever. You are dumb.

>>19773749
>christianity had to get things from platonists
It did though, the original religion was a death cult for slaves and women. It got so big that grifters got involved, elites, etc. Finally it adopted platonism as a theoretical framework to give it some substance beyond "do what the magician says and get super powers."

>>19773651
You don’t like gothic architecture? Well you have shit plebeian taste. But this is what it ends up being: a question of uncultured taste.

About spiritual fertility, the middle ages don’t stand so far behind. If you only consider the hermetic cults and the order of templars you get to the most inscrutable mystery cults in world history.

>>19773759
Ah yeah death cult how original as if there was not a single death cult in eleusinian mysteries, in literal platonic dialogues saying you never die, that you need to die before dying, that life is death and death life, etc.
Anyhow I responded all of this with historical facts about the form of speech and systematization in late antiquity.
>platonism as a theoretical framework
As a form of presentation of christian framework. You are just repeating yourself.

>>19773777
I haven't denied any of these similarities nor do they change anything about the fact that later apologetic literature attempted to present Christianity as a more correct version of those.

Hey guys, OP here. This thread has gotten way off topic. There has been no discussion of actual literature and your arguments are just a bunch of gay insults. I'm gonna delete the thread now. (if I can)

>>19773795
>you cannot delete a post this old
Fuck.

>>19773795
Don't you see OP, the christers didn't destroy anti-Christian polemics because they were actually Platonists all along, and were in fact highly conservative of pagan culture.

>>19773793
You could barely understand the matter of the hellenistic influence over all near east and with this a change in the presentation of religious doctrines.

>>19773741
They were too centralized around Christianity for my taste.

>>19773820
I entirely agree that Christianity is hellenized Judaism if that is the point you are making, that Jesus is kind of dionysus-osiris figure, etc. But the loftier identification of Yahweh with the Platonic One—never with a profane Zeus or Jupiter, those were idols to be smashed into rubble—comes later when christers are trying to convert the educated, having already won over their slaves, merchants, and soldiers.

>>19773764
kek, you have pedestrian taste and call me a pleb. Nothing beats Hellenic architecture.

>>19772688
>What is the necessary correlation between written criticisms and destroyed works?

What? I asked specific questions. One must assume there were a number of criticisms, one must assume it is possible that when those who become into great power may have a natural desire to censor critisizm of them, especially in such a precarious and tumultuous time and place.
>For example, what does the criticisms written in the City of God imply?

Ok how many criticisms are responded to in that book, can someone post some of them?

>>19772942
>stop trying to understand paganism, really. It's above them.
Can you tell us a little about it?

I get that your positive views of it likely boil down to being 'community strengthening and bonding customs', nature worship, idea of medicine man and shamans? Myths, superstitions, holydays

>>19773738
"my opinion good your opinion bad" is only legitimate when I say it because my opinion still exists and your opinion is a sham LARP recreation spawned from an earlier phase of everything you hate and are "reacting" against

>>19773892
>you have pedestrian taste
>nothing beats hellenic architecture
look up the word pedestrian lmao

Not a pagan, atheist or abrahamist but its pretty telling what Christianity is when you read much of the ancient literature.

>>19773943
>spawned from an earlier phase of everything you hate and are "reacting" against
This is the origin of your own religion, by the way, an inversion of Egyptian polytheism. Start with the Assmann, egyptologist Jan Assmann.

>>19773885
>I entirely agree that Christianity is hellenized Judaism if that is the point you are making, that Jesus is kind of dionysus-osiris figure, etc
lmao holy shit, this is not my point at all, if anything the opposite. holy shit you are dumb as fuck, incredible how each post you make you reveal yourself even dumber.

>But the loftier identification of Yahweh with the Platonic One, comes later when christers are trying to convert the educated, having already won over their slaves, merchants, and soldiers.
I AM THAT I AM preceeded Plato.

>>19772997
Exactly, I didn't mean to imply 'porential' to mean good things, I meant infinite things, to wrangle in the potential to worship and do anything, in to a more orderly and controllable system, to not have all these cliques and niches and groups in society running around doing crazy weird shit. You assumed infinite potential meant good potential, I meant infinite potential to mean making up infinite arbitrary rules and codyfying it as a particular way of life of a particular cult.... ure

>>19773803
Christians are Hellenic Israelites and Jews are Persianate Israelites
Thanks for playing

>>19773954
3rd time i have seen you anon
Keep up the work

>>19773904
What is the correlation between a criticism of christianity and its necessary destruction by reason of its very existence? See how retarded it is: how many criticisms of paganism were written between 50 AD to 450 AD? If the answer is more than 1 than... yeah many purposefully destroyed.

>>19773958
If it is not your point that Christianity adopted Hellenistic influences then really you are just being an ahistorical true believer, like those Muslims who say Islam was the first religion to have ever existed. Which I kind of suspected you were doing but was willing to entertain anyway.

>>19773945
Not an argument medievalnigger

>>19773967
Today I shall remind them!

>>19773954
Jews and "european hebrew israelites" usually lie about ancient egypt. Why should this assman be any different? Its better to ignore heebs altogether.

>>19773989
it is an argument, you employed a word that is much more fitting for hellenistic architecture than fucking gothic.

>>19773954
Imagine invoking a modern conspiracy theory 3000 years separate from its subject
(and repudiated by its author btw, Assmann revoked it) to "no u" an accusation of being a modernist hack with no perspective
I also never again want to hear the "uuh christers can only go n-no u" accusation after this embarrassing comment of yours

>>19773984
I have told you this like four or five times. FORM IS DIFFERENT FROM CONTENT, you absolute imbecile. see, impossible to talk rationally to a larper like you.

>>19774031
>modernism is le bad
Sorry to hear you've lost your throne padre.

>>19774034
Says who? You? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I am willing to assume it partakes of the form duck. Maybe it's not the duck of ducks, but certainly in the pond

>>19774042
sham LARPer confirmed beyond all words
stop playing at paganism and buy funko pops like the rest of the rootless goyim

>>19774063
The only sham is larping as a thomist on 4channel. Thanks for playing, christer

>>19774093
You have me confused with someone else
the pagantranny projects their synthetic uniformity in all cases and cannot understand their enemies are normal people and not abominable aesthetic-golems
>ywnbap

>>19774123
"Normal people" are atheists/materialists/agnostics/deists, at least in western public facing culture.

>>19774022
Nah

>>19774145
Sure, but not what I meant and not relevant
Normal people hold opinions on a range between stupid-blind-partisan and informed-introspective, but in all cases they don't have some sort of hyperidealized epiphany and then become enthusiasts of ancient conspiracy theories in order to defend it retroactively

>>19773958
>lmao holy shit, this is not my point at all, if anything the opposite. holy shit you are dumb as fuck, incredible how each post you make you reveal yourself even dumber.
Then state your point clearly dummy, instead of the ad hominems. I am not that poster but both your points are hard to grasp what you are even arguing about.

>>19773966
>Christians are Hellenic Israelites and Jews are Persianate Israelites
And Catholics are Hellenized Romans?

>>19774211
>ancient conspiracy theory
I mean that IS what these religions are if you are not a true believer. Or are you going to produce for me some sort of academic consensus that a given religion is "true," because apparently you have such high standards for theories about them being other than true

>>19774233
He's a true believer so it is impossible to discuss any sort of textual criticism or historical analysis or theories of religion. And his opponents are just stinky dumb-dumb gentiles. In a way he proves my entire point just by arguing with me

>>19773665
Yes. Are you under some retarded impression that everything written in antiquity survives somewhere in palimpsest form?

>>19773978
Isnt the total sum of Christianity, criticism against all paganism?

Also if your main point may be: the difficulty of pieces of paper surviving 1500 years than maybe yeah.

Alas I don't know what is being discussed or argued. I geuss it is possible that there was no written critiscms of the christians (besides what was recorded and responded to by Augustine)(which I would be interested to know and see how many there are of that case).

I can only assume the anon who believes there must have been criticisms feels so because of the rich history of philosophy and criticism and recording of things on that time period. Philosophy dialogues and pretty detailed descriptions of histories and battles and emperor's courts and dramas.

How many criticisms does Augustine record, roughly?

Can anyone post some?
And are they weight strawmen
Or are they challenging, cutting, scathing and deep?

>>19774263
No the point is that books were lost throughout the Middle Ages at the whim of whoever had the parchment and needed it for another copy of the Gospels. It's a form of destruction that only requires one prefer one book to the another.

>>19774046
Ok to mediate between you two.

I think they are poorly trying to communicate that the content of Christianity is so different, that it doesn't matter the style it is written in:

It asks you to believe in miracles and resurrection and to worship a man god that wants you to be good to each other

Maybe there were cults and religions like it, but this one was making a push to rule all

>>19774249
My standard of expectation for how people should act towards other religions is honest exasperation at worst. Hatred is understandable, baseless slander is stupid, but the worst thing of all is jumping in to very obnoxiously fight long-lost battles on behalf of dead cultures purely because one is so assblasted about some current state of affairs. Not that they could, but I wouldn't wish for nonarguments like that to prevail against my worst enemy, the entire method of discourse is a cancerous Reddit-tier pseud seethe
Thankfully the very public Christ mythicism meme died but I still have to suffer neopagans and gnostics and that weird Shankara shitfight that pops up on here every so often, who all claim to have retroactively won in the past outing themselves as angry manlets above all

>>19774334
>the very public Christ mythicism meme died
Which was what exactly? If it's what it sounds like, that Christianity is a mythology, then I don't see how that would be objectionable to a non-believer or some other dispassionate observer.

>>19769961
Based post beyond measure

>>19774357
No, that Christ was a completely fictional figure who was cynically invented by powerhungry cultists and never existed in any sense

>>19774334
>Thankfully the very public Christ mythicism meme died but I still have to suffer neopagans and gnostics and that weird Shankara shitfight that pops up on here every so often, who all claim to have retroactively won in the past outing themselves as angry manlets above all
Ok your main concern is what appears on your screen, so you really have no problem with or nothing to say to individuals that want to build a temple and worship the sun god and the moon god and the tree god, but you may start to have problems if more and more people started doing this, to the point where it was gaining traction in society at large?

Well the again there is the whole freedom of religion in America thing

What do you think of mormans?
Rastafarians?
Zoastorologists?

>>19774399
"Completely fictional" is a conjecture on par with resurrection, so if that's the claim it can be dismissed as such. For Jesus to be a complete fiction down to having never even lived at all would mean many other historical persons must not have existed either

>>19774302
>I think they are poorly trying to communicate that the content of Christianity is so different, that it doesn't matter the style it is written in:
>It asks you to believe in miracles and resurrection and to worship a man god that wants you to be good to each other
>Maybe there were cults and religions like it, but this one was making a push to rule all
The other is saying, that the core idea as such was gaining traction, but that the core idea needed some fancy garments and ornaments to convince and please the citizens of the population on higher and higher rungs of the socio economic intellectual ladder.

Still I don't know what is being argued really, maybe the apologist only wants to believe all if Augustine's writing was inspired by the one true God and so he didn't borrow or feel the need to shoehorn existing pagan ideas or styles.

Idk

>>19774473
>the core idea needed some fancy garments and ornaments to convince and please the citizens of the population on higher and higher rungs of the socio economic intellectual ladder
This is true even today. Look at how the passive aggressive ideology of demanding society give you extra resources because of your victimized identity becomes sublimated into a doctrine of "Diversity and Inclusion" in the hands of higher status non-victimized persons and institutions looking to ingratiate themselves to a popular pressure without appearing entirely ridiculous. One can imagine the high status Roman who found himself beset on all sides by the new cult and decided it was time to join them, but he wasn't about to join them as member of the rabble and cast off his titles and resources. He was going to join them as a thought leader and try to keep as much of what he actually believed or preferred as possible within the limits set.

>>19774302
>>19774473
It is simple: the pagantard argued that christian theologians had to adopt platonism in order to convert people, when I showed that this is absurd for 1) the hellenistic form was one of historical influence from without not within, 2) metaphysical speculations are not written to make people get into your religion and were written therefore because there was a genuine intellectual engagement with the doctrines
Then the idiot started to screech and move the goalposts

>>19774357
You can literally just search "Christ mythicism" on google and find out what it is.

Lahontan's New Voyages to North America: Volume II

It contains a dialogue between a Jesuit and a Native American who completely demolishes the Jesuit's attempt to convert him, using straightforward logic and reasoning.

>>19774570
https://archive.org/details/newvoyagestonort02laho/page/584/mode/2up

>>19774534
>metaphysical speculations are not written to make people get into your religion
Of course they are written to convert people. Was The City of God Against the Pagans just Augustine's diary desu? Is that really your argument, that arguments for Christianity aren't actually arguments?

>>19774420
>Ok your main concern is what appears on your screen, so you really have no problem with or nothing to say to individuals that want to build a temple and worship the sun god and the moon god and the tree god, but you may start to have problems if more and more people started doing this, to the point where it was gaining traction in society at large?
Sure, those people would be my opponents still, but more respectable by a long way. I still think New Age sects are LARPers but an honest nature worship raises the bar significantly as far as neopaganism is concerned. The LARP mainly then arises from the fact that contemporary urbanites (most neopagans) must necessarily idolize nature in an othering way, not in an integrative way as purported or as the ancients did. They worship a tame destroyed nature and 99% shy away from the troublesome parts.
Mormons are broadly bad, they fall within the realm of a Christian heresy so I can point to many items which are objectionable for settled reasons, and there is evidence of their religion really being a powergrab; OTOH in terms of lifestyle they live in a pretty restrained and family-centered way, besides building up giant water-wasting cities in Utah.
Rastas, same as above but black hippies instead of white-collar whites, less cynical in origin. From what I understand they're basically stoner ascetics and all ascetics are somewhat respectable though obviously I can't take black nationalism that seriously.
Zoroastrians are very interesting with a respectable literary canon and incredibly complex historical context, and I regret that Muslims replaced them so completely, though at the time it was really us or them regarding the Muslim conquests so it could've been worse.
Ultimately, I want an Orthodox Christian planet and I will not shy away from that. But almost all cultures have some admirable folk component and for ethnographic reasons many other religions are respectable

>>19774570
The Jesuits would later go on to completely demolish the Native Americans

>>19774584
Might makes right, eh? How barbarous.

>>19774583
>there is evidence of their religion really being a powergrab
Hmmmm. I guess success breeds jealousy. It would be hard to read early church history as anything other than power grabs by bishops and their, uh, flocks, at the expense of other competing religious and civil authorities. Christianity didn't succeed by renouncing the exercise of power, it created a power from slavery just as Islam created a power from brigandage.

>>19774570
>>19774578
>literally the founding example of the Noble Savage trope in a fictionalized account
>its not an Indian and a Jesuit but an Indian and the French aristocrat self-insert narrator
>90% of the passage is a general lamentation of French immorality with Christianity only referenced as the hypocritical ideal they're undermining
>reddit tier dialogue overall
wholesome chungus 100 brother! respect!!

I don't get how the people pretending to be crusaders or the lost tribe of Israel on an online Mongolian basket-weaving forum have the audacity to call any other religion "LARPers."

>>19774609
Have you actually read it or did you just hastily google for a criticism that you could copypaste as your own?

>>19774582
Yeah a thousand pages book was written to convert the illiterate people of rome in 400AD. Guess all of Plato’s writings were just his attempt to proselytize his new pseudo-religion. See, you have the brain of a retarded nigger.

>>19774601
> mormons
> success
LOL
> the rest of this
It took hundreds of years before Christian bishops wielded any real power, unlike the Mormons, whose leadership profiteered and politicked from the start. The Apostles mostly came to gristly ends. Later, many bishops came straight from monastic practice, and were clerics before they were secular leaders or elders with such privileges. In Islam and Mormonism and even in the West the secular rewards were far greater.
Of course the religion was organized, and I made no claims that this would be a bad thing.

>>19774610
I was born into a religious war in the Balkans you projecting tranny

>>19774627
I read the posted archive page, yes

>>19774643
To modulate my statement: I read the whole passage of the Native chief, identified the blatant Noble Savage trope, and the only thing I looked up was the identity of the author and his context for writing

>>19774639
Along with other apologetic works, it was written for a more educated audience familiar with Hellenistic philosophy. Clearly you would not have been part of that audience had you been alive at the time, probably busy fetching ice from the cellar for someone who looked like Danny DeVito

>>19774643
>whose leadership profiteered and politicked from the start
Mormons have their own persecution narrative just like the other christers. They are somewhat unlucky that we have too much historical record in the 19th century as opposed to the 1st with which to check their cult-produced literary sources

>>19774643
>I read the posted archive page, yes
You read 33 pages in 8 minutes?

>>19774665
>it was written for a more educated audience familiar with Hellenistic philosophy.
Like all philosophy were?

>>19774712
Yes, because those people would not be converted by promises of superpowers made by a magician they never met.

>>19774711
I read 4 pages in as many minutes before commenting, and now just for you, I've skimmed another few dozen.
My characterization remains accurate.

>>19774297
Oh, OK, I see your point.

>>19774718
>Yes
Thank you for finally agreeing with me and admitting you were wrong

>>19774682
It's far simpler than that. The Mormons participated in the newest fashion of Great Awakening mass politics, and the historical record matches this perspective, and the rascally actions that were suspected of such movements. Meanwhile the Christian manner of living lines up to descriptions of local mystical traditions like the Essenes or Jewish asceticism in that period, and we have no reason to think of them in any other way.

>>19774780
Ah. So christers did adapt elements of platonic philosophy as a conversion method to convince elite audiences that they were not just a weird provincial cult from Judaea after all. In fact, the wisest of the pagans were nearly followers of this religion! Yes, how convenient very good.

>>19774786
>we have no reason to think of them in any other way
If you take their word for it, the Roman authorities were constantly executing them for the sake of being cartoon villains. It seems like there are pieces of this story that aren't available anymore.

>>19774793
>he goes in loops
They had to adapt to the form in the same way one needs to adapt what one wants to express in another language to a foreign audience. Again, this was what Philo did because of political, geopolitical circumstances.

>>19774799
That's very simply explained by the known persecutions being overblown in the Christian consciousness, which is very typical for any group which gets targeted like this.
And the known persecutions were happening because Christians were attacking the underpinning of Roman society and the divine state. They were refusing to recognize or partake in the religious ceremonies deemed necessary to ensure peace and order in the realm. This made them a target.
This is a simpler explanation than your understanding whereby they really were oppressed as much as they say, but it was actually reasonable for some reason which is now lost. Which has only ever happened in the past few hundred years with the rise of retard-tier mass politics.

>>19774534
>the pagantard argued that christian theologians had to adopt platonism in order to convert people, when I showed that this is absurd for 1

Is there any hint of platonism in Christianity? If so, how did it get there and why?

>>19774822
So you agree. What was your objection, that you actually believe the pseudo-platonic pilpul as opposed to seeing it for what it is, a means of avoiding the embarassment of directly agreeing with the Bible?

>>19774829
So they were not merely ascetics retired from worldly concerns to a life of mystical contemplation, they were actively confronting the civil and religious authorities and inciting their followers to do the same. You can't have it both ways.

>>19774835
If you start reading the Fathers and the platonists you’ll see there are many common elements. As to how it get there there are many possible accounts, Hebrew influence on Plato, Christian and gnostic influence on neoplatonists and gnostic influence on christianity, sharing common concepts.

>>19774847
>he still can’t understand the distinction between form and content
And I recommend you reading any thing from any Father and you’d see Bible is quoted all the time in every page.

>>19774859
> You can't have it both ways.
Yes you can, because firstly the movement was diluted from its first inception with more popular adoption, and only then started to have problems. And secondly, when a double-digit percentage of the population starts to NOT do something they can passively provoke the ire of the authorities without having done much wrong.
We all know the government does immoral things with our tax money but do you think they'd tolerate 10% of the population not paying their taxes?

>>19774882
>read these bible passages that agree with Plato
is very different from
>read these bible passages
And there is a reason for presenting it that way.

>>19774883
Are you trying to tell me Christianity is just tax evasion?

>>19774954
They show some are not different from what Plato conceived. And I literally gave you an example of a Bible passage that agrees with it.

>>19775002
Yes you can frantically comb the bible for points of agreement and present that to late Roman elites as evidence that Christianity isn't just anti-gentile wokeism.

>>19775002
>>19774954
>>19774883
>>19774873
Also it has to be considered and contemplated how different all this academic activity occuring then in 40ad to 400ad was more and less done by men who were not Jesus and not the 12 apostles.

They were compelled by the news, the story, the zeitgeist,nyhe gossip, the gospel, and they added their own thoughts ideas and feelings onto it?

The new testament is largely purely written work of the apostles?

But church fathers were needed to explain all of the meaning and intricacies to others, and convince them of it's validity.

So Christianity is something of a lower classes revolt in regards to the nature of the social order and laws, and unwritten laws etc.

And then all sorts of rules and customs and pagentry and symbols and rituals are developed, and this maybe relates to the split between the Roman Catholic church and christians.

The Romans craved the pomp and circumstance and grandeur because those qualities were religions of their blood, and so as the religion become upperclassified, and time passed eventually the same scenario arose where the lower classes needed to revolt again, but now it needed to revolt against the church it self

The very thing their hierarchial ancestors attempted to establish as their saviour

>>19774883
>>19775002
>>19775038
Also as was mentioned as part of the argument last night and related to Op topic:

How many criticisms of Christianity are explicitly copied and listed in Augustine's book?

Any examples someone can post?

Did he grapple with harsh criticism in his text?

Or generally simple strawmen?

I am now curious in relation to OP just what these criticisms are like in his text.

But I ain't gonna comb through all that

pagans are like niggers and liberals while christians are like european apologists, the former argues with victimization while the latter tries to argue that it wasn't as bad as their propaganda says

>>19769961
absolute mental retardation

Hilarious how much seething a basic thread on late antiquity literature can create.

Christians should first remove the beam of cringe from their own minds before they start responding to /lit/ threads.

>ctrl+f Shikand-gumanig Vizar
>0 results
No one on this board reads

>>19774786
>participated in the newest fashion of Great Awakening mass politics
And? Your Joel Osteen Prosperity Gospel is a creation of the same period.

>>19775096
>Or generally simple strawmen?
Basically this. At one point he tips his fedora by pointing out that the Romans didn't know how many Gods could wield lightning. This is of course wrong because the answer is "all of them", Jupiter gave the thunderbolt out freely, and knew well the distinction between the Novensiles (nine Etruscan deities that held joint-custody of lightning) and Jupiter's thunder-monarchy (the Etruscan priesthood would outlast Augustine by a few centuries).

Most of Augustine's criticisms come from him not actually knowing the answer to something and then assuming that there is none. In Archaic Roman Religion Dumezil goes over a few more of these.

>>19775619
Why is Dumezil so out of print in English? I guess I can add that to my list of authors I'd need to learn French for

>>19775597
I am Eastern Orthodox
>inb4 le convert larp
I'm eastern european and 100% legit (as if not all EOs are equally heckin valid bigot)

>>19775619
There is no answer because normative statements about pre-Christian pagan religions are incredibly difficult to make.
You would get different answers depending on who you asked in Italy, in the East, in Africa, and so forth. You think the Etruscan priesthood mattered to the worshipers of the syncretized Zeus Ammon?
No, but surely you know better than the contemporary Augustine did. You are certainly not more objective. Regarding your source, Dumezil's whole era of research has been criticized for making normative statements with much too great a certainty on matters like these.

>>19775737
What are some criticisms of Christianity that Augustine grapples with in the book?

>>19775737
>criticized for making normative statements with much too great a certainty
Kind of funny for a christer to resort to post-modernist critique to attack theories of historical pagan theology. You're also up on that chopping block

>>19775737
>You would get different answers depending on who you asked in Italy, in the East, in Africa, and so forth
This doesn't seem to be a big deal:
There are different dialectics from place to place
Different ways of making pizza
Different denominations of Christianity
What is the point of this discussion?
What is being discussed and argued here?

>>19775646
Other than being the single most important thinker to anyone who wants to conserve literally anything in a time of radical upheaval and dissolution AND being a man who wrote pro-Nazi screeds under a pseudonym? Because everything he wrote is dense linguistic and mythocultural theorizing. On top of that, it's in French. There's some works that are in Spanish that aren't in English, though (Los dioses de germanos, for example).

>>19775737
Except there are answers. Christians believe that everything is wishy-washy relative and everyone gets to make up their own special snowflake denomination, but the Pagans of Augustine's day absolutely rejected that idea. The very fact that you're getting upset at normative statements about fucking historical linguistics is a testament to this.

>>19775790
There's a lot of that all over his works.
There was a common pagan critique that the Christianization ruined the fortunes of the Empire by spurning its patron deities and turning to a foreign bizarre god who could not care nor help about the Empire.
So, in City of God, one chapter is dedicated to a meandering discourse listing off different Roman patron deities and questioning which would be responsible for the Empire's success. He proceeds to show that no single deity is inarguably responsible, that no subset of deities cannot be expanded further, and that an adequate description of such a patron deity would have to approximate the Christian God and his total dominion of all existence. No pagan deity can hold the same status because they were all considered to inhabit images around the empire, in a manner implying limitation. The God of scripture was not bound by these limits and unlike any of the pagan deities, was actually involved in a covenant guaranteeing the prosperity of the faithful state; so the pagan criticism was attacked from all angles to exonerate Christianity of the Empire's fall. (Which was later borne out by the great continued success of the Christian East.)
Generally Augustine acts to defend Christian theology against accusations and to address pagan theological stances, weaving from polemics to high theology.

>>19775803
The postmodernists apply this manner of critique to everything, but the consensus that paganism collapsed because of its inability to present a unified front long precedes postmodernism. Julian himself diagnosed this as being their problem. Philosophers had already attacked the multifarious pantheon and its literal existence for decades by the time Christianity emerged, and centuries by the time it started spreading.

>>19775884
Anon said that Augustine was wrong to claim that the pagans didn't know who was the chief of lightning, or how many of them there were, because a schema did exist.
And I responded that it might as well have not existed, because the Hellenistic world was centralizing philosophically such that a variety of regional opinions did not satisfy intellectuals or the burgeoning Christian movement regarding standards for theology.
In fact, when faced with different regional dialectics of Christianity, Christians of that time subsequently responded with asserting uniformity or else proclaiming heresy and then battling with as much fervor as they had against pagans.

>>19775992
>except there are answers
No, there are no hard answers. This is why paganism died. The fact that you are projecting fucking Protestant tendencies (which share this problem really) onto the CHRISTIAN side of Classical Antiquity is incredibly embarrassing. You presentist fools posture and masturbate without any regard for the historical facts of the matter, you stunted spawn of the 2000s.
It was a syncretistic cosmopolitan religious world which fell apart under rigorous examination. That's it.

>>19775992
Well if Deleuze cites him he has to be a certified anti-fascist. That's pilpul I'll allow.

>>19776039
>This is why paganism died
"Paganism" isn't dead. Greeks to this day invoke Athena daily and ask Poseidon for aid before stepping into a puddle. In rural Sweden they pray to Odin in Christian churches.

No one is going to read the rest of your LARP.

>>19776047
Dumezil wrote pro-Nazi screeds and only stopped after they kicked him out of France for being too Far Right. Deleuze (and Guattari) aren't Marxists in any way that matters. Their own personal definition, alongside that of Foucault, who was a student of Dumezil's interestingly enough, was that "Marxism" was a placeholder for "actually thinking about the world and engaging with it". It's like how half of the people on here call themselves "Nazis" because actually describing their beliefs takes up too much time. Let's remember that the end-state of the society that A Thousand Plateaus advocates is essentially global Aryan Jihad aboard the iron chariots of Dyeus Phter and Hewsos. These men's philosophical careers were based on weaponizing schizophrenia against the Frankfurt School.

Someone is going to ask about Dumezil and Foucault, no, I have no fucking clue. I'm reading a paper (in Spanish) on this right now.

>>19776039
>paganism collapsed because of its inability to present a unified front
That's not the same as not being able to make any normative statement. And needing to have a unified front is only a problem created by christers in the first place, so it's no surprise their opponents couldn't quite respond to it effectively. Never before was there a sustained revolutionary movement to cancel every single god except for some rando, with its adherents willing to goad the authorities into executing them for that god's greater glory. How would you fight people that want you to kill them? The Romans never really solved this

>>19776079
>"Paganism" isn't dead. Greeks to this day invoke Athena daily and ask Poseidon for aid before stepping into a puddle. In rural Sweden they pray to Odin in Christian churches.

>>19776106
rich coming from the guy who e-converted to romanian orthodoxy lmfao

>>19776079
>"Marxism" was a placeholder for "actually thinking about the world and engaging with it"
That was my impression as well. And if you read the earlier solo stuff (without Guattari), the references to Marx or marxist concepts in between discussions of Nietzsche or Plato or Leibniz seem to be a matter of ticking boxes—French intellectuals wouldn't have read it otherwise. A kind of scholasticism in a way

>>19776113
I'm Serbian

>>19776099
>That's not the same as not being able to make any normative statement.
It is, if the reason is that there is no uniformity of doctrine.
>And needing to have a unified front is only a problem created by christers in the first place
You describe the rest of the dilemma well. It was a paradigm shift to which pre-Christian Rome failed to adapt, and which was vital enough to establish its own order after the fact.

Why people are still insisting in treating "paganism" one single religion ?

>>19776175
>there is no uniformity of doctrine
Because it's not a religion of revelatory texts. You have oracles, priests, rites, temples, etc., not a uniform set of scriptures negating all the other religions. That is the normative statement, that it was highly localized and followed broad patterns—and this is something that became increasingly recognized in the Hellenistic period especially as the interpretatio graeca. Sometimes this could be pretty thin, like ancient sources claiming the Indians actually worshiped Dionysus and Heracles since before Alexander. But many cross-identifications were more straightforward and represented similarities between different pantheons of more proximate neighboring peoples. And as history played out, these localisms were no match for a more authoritarian god.

>>19776223
>these localisms were no match for a more authoritarian god.
*for an authoritarian state
note that as soon as the stater stop enforcing an official doctrine Christianity start to break apart in a ton of denomination and localisms, each with their own set of doctrines and interpretations

>>19776298
it literally took a thousand years for the Catholics to lose their grip even after the state was gone, and the east had more problems with the state than without it

>>19776298
Agree there's not one without the other.

>>19776207
because pagans want to sell the fairy tale immge of european paganism while ignoring african paganism or child/human sacrifice in pagan religions on europe, hence we talk about that imaginary construct

>>19776318
Certainly the eastern churches could rely on the eastern states to exterminate infidels and heretics. Other problems are just that, other problems than what is being considered.

>>19776318
>a thousand of years
you know that the catholic doctrine was still enforced after the fall of rome and it only stop being enforced after the protestant reformation, right ?

>>19776334
which pagans ? and why european (neo)pagans would care about african paganism, a complete different and unrelated religion ?

>>19776334
You probably do belong in a wickerman

>>19776318
>Eventually, the church owned about one third of the land in Western Europe. Because the church was considered independent, they did not have to pay the king any tax for their land. Leaders of the church became rich and powerful. Many nobles became leaders such as abbots or bishops in the church.

Would it be fair to say Rome never "fell" it just became the church? Rome rebranded. And pretty much was Mafia?

>>19776334
Did christians and Catholics consider things in the old testament to be 'pagan' and barbaric?

>>19776365
Even in China, monasteries were run in a remarkably similar fashion, as tax shelters for the aristocracy, whose second sons became the not-landlords of these not-fiefs that had not-serfs working them for not-produce that could be sold for not-profit. All glory to god, buddha, etc.

>>19776365
Instead of warrior conquest this was monetary, legal, real estate conquest?

>>19776408
Nah Rome fell so hard the rulers of most of Italy would have Germanic surnames until the Normans conquered the south. But the Norman kingdom was inherited by the German emperor in a few generations.

>>19776439
>Nah Rome fell so hard the rulers of most of Italy would have Germanic surnames until the Normans conquered the south.
But the Church only ever gained power after the fall? Culminating in:>>19776365
Owning 1/3rd the land of western Europe?

They had German surnames due to strategic diplomatic marriages? The church was an escape pod to flee the sinking ship of Rome as Titanic, but it can hardly be considered a dingy if it only ever gained power from that point to owning 1/3rd the land of Europe?

>>19776465
No there was literally a migration of tens of thousands of conquering peoples south into Italy every few generations until the Lombards shut the doors behind them. That gave some respite, but even Thomas Aquinas, in the 1200s, is of Germanic stock; father's name is Landulf. The "church" that owned all that land did not own it as directly as you might own land today.

>>19776507
It says everyone had to pay a 1/10 tithe to the church?

>>19776603
Not denying it was wealthy or powerful. But the idea that it was the continuity of Rome is spurious when you consider how it was the second sons of a rather Germanic aristocracy avoiding taxes

>>19776617
A germanic aristocracy that was assimilated to roman culture and went out of its way to larp as roman or at least the roman successors or inheritors in every opportunity they had