Our fake history
August 1, 2017 1:29 AM Subscribe
"Have you ever heard that old story about how Napoleon shot the nose off the sphinx, or that Shakespeare was an illiterate fraud, or that Queen Elizabeth was actually a man? This show explores those tall-tales and tries to figure out what’s fact, what’s fiction, and what is such a good story it simply must be told."
In this amazing and well-produced podcast, Sebastian Major sets the record straight. But wait! There are more historical myths that need debunking, so there's more inside
Could the Romans only read out aloud? Were Roman soldiers paid in salt? What actually is "salting the earth"? What about debunking the debunking? This and much more from Peter "Kiwi Hellenist" Gainsford.
In a related vein, the wonderfully acerbic Tim O'Neill mocks with historical precision all those New Atheist types whose knowledge is still stuck at the obsolete and discredited Conflict Thesis. His blog has a lot of great stuff, but the best part is his Great Myths series (to be read after you understand the basics - there was no such thing as the Dark Ages):
Could the Romans only read out aloud? Were Roman soldiers paid in salt? What actually is "salting the earth"? What about debunking the debunking? This and much more from Peter "Kiwi Hellenist" Gainsford.
In a related vein, the wonderfully acerbic Tim O'Neill mocks with historical precision all those New Atheist types whose knowledge is still stuck at the obsolete and discredited Conflict Thesis. His blog has a lot of great stuff, but the best part is his Great Myths series (to be read after you understand the basics - there was no such thing as the Dark Ages):
- The Medieval Flat Earth
- Christmas, Mithra, and Paganism
- Giordano Bruno was a martyr for science.
- Constantine, Nicaea and the Bible.
- The destruction of the great library of Alexandria.
This is great!
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:40 AM on August 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:40 AM on August 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
I was about to bloviate about debunking debunking but then I actually went through the relevant links up top and realized that it was very neatly addressed. RTFA, who knew?
Lazy, just so trivia nuggets for both history and etymology drive me nuts. Was sad not to see anything on Ring around the Rosie and its back and forth origins.
Really enjoyed this and will use it as a resource in the future.
posted by Telf at 3:09 AM on August 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
Lazy, just so trivia nuggets for both history and etymology drive me nuts. Was sad not to see anything on Ring around the Rosie and its back and forth origins.
Really enjoyed this and will use it as a resource in the future.
posted by Telf at 3:09 AM on August 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
That takedown by Tim in the there was no such thing as the Dark Ages link is epic! Be sure to read the comments for more fireworks.
posted by Pendragon at 3:49 AM on August 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Pendragon at 3:49 AM on August 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
there is plenty of stuff (e.g. burning witches) that "everyone knows" was a feature of the Middle Ages, but which actually happened in the Renaissance or Early Modern periods.
posted by thelonius at 4:39 AM on August 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 4:39 AM on August 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
I don't know; I couldn't make it all the way through the inside-baseball atheists vs. Christian apologists stuff to even get to any of the Dark Ages stuff.
posted by yhbc at 4:54 AM on August 1, 2017 [9 favorites]
posted by yhbc at 4:54 AM on August 1, 2017 [9 favorites]
Yeah it came across as agenda pushing and obnoxious, rather than informative.
posted by empath at 5:29 AM on August 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by empath at 5:29 AM on August 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
That takedown by Tim in the there was no such thing as the Dark Ages link is epic! Be sure to read the comments for more fireworks.
I've often referred people to O'Neill's review of God's Philosophers for its thorough take-down of Dark Ages myths, but I had no idea he had a History for Atheists blog. I'm delighted to know about it!
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:32 AM on August 1, 2017
I've often referred people to O'Neill's review of God's Philosophers for its thorough take-down of Dark Ages myths, but I had no idea he had a History for Atheists blog. I'm delighted to know about it!
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:32 AM on August 1, 2017
I think the dark ages 'myths' were mostly an attempt to draw continuity between current conflicts with the church with previous groups and individuals who were persecuted by the church, and whether or not the church was killing and jailing people for science or politics or heresy, the fact that the church was able to do that was a massive problem, and the myth was one of the many rhetorical strategies which led to the separation of church and state and the decline of the church's secular power which was a tremendous benefit to the world, and still today is a struggle to maintain.
posted by empath at 5:52 AM on August 1, 2017
posted by empath at 5:52 AM on August 1, 2017
All of which is to say that whatever the reason that the church jailed Galileo, it was a tremendous crime that set back human progress by however many hours he wasted trying to save his own life.
posted by empath at 5:54 AM on August 1, 2017
posted by empath at 5:54 AM on August 1, 2017
I can never wade through all the arguments about The Dark Ages. The first dark age I learned about was the Greek one, when they switched from writing on clay to writing on papyrus or its equivalent. The age is "dark" because fire destroyed the writing materials rather than preserving them, causing us to be unable to "shed light on" the era through period documents. It's a sudden blind spot in the historical record (though certainly not a complete blackout, for all sorts of reasons).
But every argument I ever see about this topic only addresses "dark" in the sense of "not very nice to live in". I was raised to believe that connotation was a joke. So yeah, count me in with another person who couldn't get through the Christianity/Atheism catfight to actually find out what the hell this has to do with a gap in the historical record.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:56 AM on August 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
But every argument I ever see about this topic only addresses "dark" in the sense of "not very nice to live in". I was raised to believe that connotation was a joke. So yeah, count me in with another person who couldn't get through the Christianity/Atheism catfight to actually find out what the hell this has to do with a gap in the historical record.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:56 AM on August 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
The first dark age I learned about was the Greek one, when they switched from writing on clay to writing on papyrus or its equivalent. The age is "dark" because fire destroyed the writing materials rather than preserving them, causing us to be unable to "shed light on" the era through period documents.
This isn't accurate. It was a dark age because of the collapse of Bronze Age culture destroyed the only literate civilization in Greece. It took a few hundred years for the Dorian's to adapt the Phoenician alphabet and start writing again, and there was an explosion of writing after that.
The papyrus theory fails because a lot of our knowledge of Ancient Greek texts isn't from originals, but from copies or quotations, often from hundreds of years later. If it was merely a matter of losing the original texts, there would still be copies and quotes and fragments elsewhere, but there is essentially nothing from Linear B until Homer was written down.
posted by empath at 6:06 AM on August 1, 2017 [11 favorites]
This isn't accurate. It was a dark age because of the collapse of Bronze Age culture destroyed the only literate civilization in Greece. It took a few hundred years for the Dorian's to adapt the Phoenician alphabet and start writing again, and there was an explosion of writing after that.
The papyrus theory fails because a lot of our knowledge of Ancient Greek texts isn't from originals, but from copies or quotations, often from hundreds of years later. If it was merely a matter of losing the original texts, there would still be copies and quotes and fragments elsewhere, but there is essentially nothing from Linear B until Homer was written down.
posted by empath at 6:06 AM on August 1, 2017 [11 favorites]
I'll admit that I'm guilty of the "Christmas is from Mithras" thing.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:11 AM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:11 AM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
Yeah it came across as agenda pushing and obnoxious, rather than informative.
MetaFilter: it came across as agenda pushing and obnoxious, rather than informative.
posted by Sangermaine at 6:14 AM on August 1, 2017 [8 favorites]
MetaFilter: it came across as agenda pushing and obnoxious, rather than informative.
posted by Sangermaine at 6:14 AM on August 1, 2017 [8 favorites]
Never heard of the "Dark Ages" going right up to the Renaissance; I only know of the reading that has them ending about 1000. It's a silly, unhelpful label (I thought everyone agreed), but in an English context at least there's no real doubt that organised government and learning took a bit of a dip somewhere between the Romans and the Normans. In broad brush terms that was surely more the fault of pagan invaders than Christian bigotry, though, with Christian copyists responsible for preserving ancient texts if anything?
There is room for a nuanced discussion of whether Christianity sometimes took the emphasis off science a bit (is St Augustine one of the greatest scientists we never had?) but this isn't really it.
posted by Segundus at 6:42 AM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
There is room for a nuanced discussion of whether Christianity sometimes took the emphasis off science a bit (is St Augustine one of the greatest scientists we never had?) but this isn't really it.
posted by Segundus at 6:42 AM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
Lucy Worsley's series on British History's Biggest Fibs is quite good, though it's more based around historical lies that lasted.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:43 AM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by BungaDunga at 6:43 AM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
I learned one day that one of the sources of the "everyone thought the world was flat until Columbus" fallacy may have been Washington Irving, who did a biography of Christopher Columbus in the 1820s. He had a somewhat poetic view of the facts, and there were a lot of errors in his book, that one being chief among them.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:13 AM on August 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:13 AM on August 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
Our Fake History has been on my Overcast feed for a while. Check out the episode on the Phantom Time Hypothesis, which is a bit of apeshit theorizing that was totally new to me.
posted by maudlin at 7:49 AM on August 1, 2017
posted by maudlin at 7:49 AM on August 1, 2017
Lucy Worsley
...is just a treasure, omg.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:59 AM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
...is just a treasure, omg.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:59 AM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
There is a racist undertone underneath some (obviously not all) of the "The Dark Ages were a myth" stuff, because when Western Civ was going "dark", the Islamic world was going though a scientific golden age.
The logic is that: Muslims are super backward and stupid, so they couldn't have their golden age, so all the scientific progress that took place during that time was actually done by white people, during a time historians say Europe was hiding out in their castles, ergo The Dark Ages are a myth".
It's a retcon to fit the undeniable Islamic contributions to science with a racist/xenophobic worldview of "Islam is, and always was, a stain on the world".
posted by sideshow at 9:10 AM on August 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
The logic is that: Muslims are super backward and stupid, so they couldn't have their golden age, so all the scientific progress that took place during that time was actually done by white people, during a time historians say Europe was hiding out in their castles, ergo The Dark Ages are a myth".
It's a retcon to fit the undeniable Islamic contributions to science with a racist/xenophobic worldview of "Islam is, and always was, a stain on the world".
posted by sideshow at 9:10 AM on August 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
that seems like quite a stretch
posted by thelonius at 9:28 AM on August 1, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 9:28 AM on August 1, 2017 [11 favorites]
Yeah, that seems an odd take. I'm sure there's racists that use that idea, as they might anything, but laying an accusation that it is in any way *based* in racism would require a great deal more evidence.
posted by tavella at 9:41 AM on August 1, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by tavella at 9:41 AM on August 1, 2017 [6 favorites]
The version of the Dark Ages myth I keep seeing is this meme which pops up on my Facebook feed every couple of months recently. (Text: You know, there was another time when science wasn't taken seriously and religion ruled the world. The called it the Dark Ages.) That's incredibly wrong-headed. As Segundus says, Christians were working like mad to preserve texts from the Greco-Roman heights, and to whatever extent the dark ages were dark (not very), they would have been more so without the church storing and disseminating as much prior knowledge as it could. There seems to be a very widespread notion that the medieval Catholic church was actively trying to quash knowledge when just the opposite was true.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:05 AM on August 1, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:05 AM on August 1, 2017 [7 favorites]
The lack of any mention of a library is most likely explained by concluding that it was no longer there by 391 AD. Temples had begun to be starved of funds with the conversion of the emperors of Christianity and the slower but gradual conversion of many rich patrons and city benefactors.
So his argument is that the Christians didn't destroy the...(temple associated) library of Alexandria, they defunded it?
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:50 AM on August 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
So his argument is that the Christians didn't destroy the...(temple associated) library of Alexandria, they defunded it?
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:50 AM on August 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
I'll admit that I'm guilty of the "Christmas is from Mithras" thing.
Confirmation Bias -- we're all guilty.
I remind myself, before I go to sleep.
posted by philip-random at 11:10 AM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
Confirmation Bias -- we're all guilty.
I remind myself, before I go to sleep.
posted by philip-random at 11:10 AM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
Christians were working like mad to preserve texts from the Greco-Roman heights
Certain texts, mostly ones that supported a particular christian and political worldview. The vast majority of greek texts were saved by the arabs and Byzantines (who actually never experienced a dark age) and weren't translated into Latin until the 1200s(ish).
posted by empath at 11:34 AM on August 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
Certain texts, mostly ones that supported a particular christian and political worldview. The vast majority of greek texts were saved by the arabs and Byzantines (who actually never experienced a dark age) and weren't translated into Latin until the 1200s(ish).
posted by empath at 11:34 AM on August 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
Confirmation Bias -- we're all guilty.
I remind myself, before I go to sleep.
You're absolutely correct about that, but I think there's another layer too: we just don't have time to check everything we hear, so nonsense will inevitably slip through.
I'm sure I believe a bunch of stuff that would be easily debunked, but if it doesn't come up, I'll never even notice. (I figure the only defense against this is to be willing to admit mistakes and reevaluate sources as reasons to do so come up, so I try as hard as I can to be good about that.)
posted by mordax at 12:16 PM on August 1, 2017
I remind myself, before I go to sleep.
You're absolutely correct about that, but I think there's another layer too: we just don't have time to check everything we hear, so nonsense will inevitably slip through.
I'm sure I believe a bunch of stuff that would be easily debunked, but if it doesn't come up, I'll never even notice. (I figure the only defense against this is to be willing to admit mistakes and reevaluate sources as reasons to do so come up, so I try as hard as I can to be good about that.)
posted by mordax at 12:16 PM on August 1, 2017
Thanks to Pyrogenesis for posting links to some of my blog's articles and to everyone who has commented above. A few responses to those comments:
"I couldn't make it all the way through the inside-baseball atheists vs. Christian apologists stuff to even get to any of the Dark Ages stuff."
My blog is aimed at responding to erroneous claims about history made by many atheists. I found early on that if I simply said "many atheists claim x" I had other atheists saying "I've never said that so you're smearing all atheists" (despite me being an atheist myself) or some other claim that I'm making a generalisation. So I tend to start an article about a common piece of New Atheist pseudo history with an example. Sometimes it's a topical example of a New Atheist attacking me and claiming I'm wrong, as it was in that case. But this is only the jumping off point for a more detailed debunking of their position.
"it came across as agenda pushing and obnoxious, rather than informative"
What "agenda" was I "pushing", exactly? And you found no information at all in a detailed 6500 word article? I suspect you didn't read very far.
"Never heard of the "Dark Ages" going right up to the Renaissance"
Hang around on atheist fora and you won't have to wait long to hear this. It's also commonplace in most popular conceptions of the Middle Ages.
" in an English context at least there's no real doubt that organised government and learning took a bit of a dip somewhere between the Romans and the Normans."
Which I refer to in some detail in my article.
"There is room for a nuanced discussion of whether Christianity sometimes took the emphasis off science a bit (is St Augustine one of the greatest scientists we never had?) but this isn't really it."
Christianity didn't take the emphasis off science at all. That economic and societal collapse in the centuries after the fall of the Western Empire "took the emphasis" off most aspects of learning generally, with what emphasis that survived being preserved by the Church. But in the period of recovery from the tenth to the thirteenth century we see a revival in learning, including in the natural philosophy that we sometimes call by the anachronistic short-hand "science" and then in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we see the foundations laid for the Scientific Revolution proper. The Church didn't impede this in any way.
"There is a racist undertone underneath some (obviously not all) of the "The Dark Ages were a myth" stuff, because when Western Civ was going "dark", the Islamic world was going though a scientific golden age."
I don't know anyone who argues against the common misconceptions about the so-called "Dark Ages" who aren't fully aware of the Islamic Golden Age and the role that Islamic scholars played in the twelfth century revival of ancient learning in medieval Europe. So I have no idea where this supposed "racist undertone" might be.
"So his argument is that the Christians didn't destroy the...(temple associated) library of Alexandria, they defunded it?"
"Defunded it" makes it sound as though any "defunding" was (i) deliberate and (ii) done by "the Christians". I simply note the fact that as the new faith rose in social prestige, donations that once went to temples (that occasionally also supported libraries) now want to other institutions (that also supported libraries). The largest library by far in the later Roman period was the Imperial Library in Constantinople. Funded entirely by "the Christians".
"Certain texts, mostly ones that supported a particular christian and political worldview. "
And a huge number that didn't. And which "political world view" would that be? It's not like Christian states in the period from 300-1500 had only one or there was any unity of Christian thinking on politics.
"The vast majority of greek texts were saved by the arabs and Byzantines (who actually never experienced a dark age) "
And the Byzantines were what ... Hindus? And where did the Arabs get those texts? Did they fall from the sky into their laps? ALL ancient texts that we have were preserved by a succession of Christians scholars, including the ones that the Arabs got from earlier Christian scholars so they could pass them on to still more Christian scholars in western Europe.
posted by TimONeill at 1:41 PM on August 1, 2017 [8 favorites]
"I couldn't make it all the way through the inside-baseball atheists vs. Christian apologists stuff to even get to any of the Dark Ages stuff."
My blog is aimed at responding to erroneous claims about history made by many atheists. I found early on that if I simply said "many atheists claim x" I had other atheists saying "I've never said that so you're smearing all atheists" (despite me being an atheist myself) or some other claim that I'm making a generalisation. So I tend to start an article about a common piece of New Atheist pseudo history with an example. Sometimes it's a topical example of a New Atheist attacking me and claiming I'm wrong, as it was in that case. But this is only the jumping off point for a more detailed debunking of their position.
"it came across as agenda pushing and obnoxious, rather than informative"
What "agenda" was I "pushing", exactly? And you found no information at all in a detailed 6500 word article? I suspect you didn't read very far.
"Never heard of the "Dark Ages" going right up to the Renaissance"
Hang around on atheist fora and you won't have to wait long to hear this. It's also commonplace in most popular conceptions of the Middle Ages.
" in an English context at least there's no real doubt that organised government and learning took a bit of a dip somewhere between the Romans and the Normans."
Which I refer to in some detail in my article.
"There is room for a nuanced discussion of whether Christianity sometimes took the emphasis off science a bit (is St Augustine one of the greatest scientists we never had?) but this isn't really it."
Christianity didn't take the emphasis off science at all. That economic and societal collapse in the centuries after the fall of the Western Empire "took the emphasis" off most aspects of learning generally, with what emphasis that survived being preserved by the Church. But in the period of recovery from the tenth to the thirteenth century we see a revival in learning, including in the natural philosophy that we sometimes call by the anachronistic short-hand "science" and then in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we see the foundations laid for the Scientific Revolution proper. The Church didn't impede this in any way.
"There is a racist undertone underneath some (obviously not all) of the "The Dark Ages were a myth" stuff, because when Western Civ was going "dark", the Islamic world was going though a scientific golden age."
I don't know anyone who argues against the common misconceptions about the so-called "Dark Ages" who aren't fully aware of the Islamic Golden Age and the role that Islamic scholars played in the twelfth century revival of ancient learning in medieval Europe. So I have no idea where this supposed "racist undertone" might be.
"So his argument is that the Christians didn't destroy the...(temple associated) library of Alexandria, they defunded it?"
"Defunded it" makes it sound as though any "defunding" was (i) deliberate and (ii) done by "the Christians". I simply note the fact that as the new faith rose in social prestige, donations that once went to temples (that occasionally also supported libraries) now want to other institutions (that also supported libraries). The largest library by far in the later Roman period was the Imperial Library in Constantinople. Funded entirely by "the Christians".
"Certain texts, mostly ones that supported a particular christian and political worldview. "
And a huge number that didn't. And which "political world view" would that be? It's not like Christian states in the period from 300-1500 had only one or there was any unity of Christian thinking on politics.
"The vast majority of greek texts were saved by the arabs and Byzantines (who actually never experienced a dark age) "
And the Byzantines were what ... Hindus? And where did the Arabs get those texts? Did they fall from the sky into their laps? ALL ancient texts that we have were preserved by a succession of Christians scholars, including the ones that the Arabs got from earlier Christian scholars so they could pass them on to still more Christian scholars in western Europe.
posted by TimONeill at 1:41 PM on August 1, 2017 [8 favorites]
Another place that atheists might pull the dark ages idea is a cartoon. Here's the clip from Family Guy. McFarlane is popular enough among the new atheist community (and in general) that I cannot imagine that this did not provide at least the promulgation of the idea to new New Atheists along the way.
Sorry to lower the tone of the rest of the conversation, but as long as we are looking at influences, I figure pop-culture ones should be noted as well.
posted by Hactar at 1:55 PM on August 1, 2017
Sorry to lower the tone of the rest of the conversation, but as long as we are looking at influences, I figure pop-culture ones should be noted as well.
posted by Hactar at 1:55 PM on August 1, 2017
And the Byzantines were what ... Hindus? And where did the Arabs get those texts? Did they fall from the sky into their laps? ALL ancient texts that we have were preserved by a succession of Christians scholars, including the ones that the Arabs got from earlier Christian scholars so they could pass them on to still more Christian scholars in western Europe.
Are you intentionally confusing byzantines with western europe? The 'dark ages' (however you define them) were a western european phenomenon. I don't think anybody has ever suggested that orthodox christians experienced a dark age or that they didn't preserve greek and roman texts.
posted by empath at 1:59 PM on August 1, 2017
Are you intentionally confusing byzantines with western europe? The 'dark ages' (however you define them) were a western european phenomenon. I don't think anybody has ever suggested that orthodox christians experienced a dark age or that they didn't preserve greek and roman texts.
posted by empath at 1:59 PM on August 1, 2017
"Are you intentionally confusing byzantines with western europe? "
No, but you were responding to someone who stated, correctly, "Christians were working like mad to preserve texts from the Greco-Roman heights". They did not specify "western Christians". The pseudo historical narrative of "the Dark Ages" has "the Christians" destroying and/or neglecting ancient learning until it appears again in "the Renaissance", usually thanks to "the Arabs and the Byzantines". This whole garbled story ignores the fact that "the Byzantines" were also Christians and that "the Arabs" got these texts from Christians as well - Nestorians and earlier Byzantines/Eastern Romans.
If we can read any of the corpus of ancient Greek or Roman writers, we have a succession of Christian and Muslim scholars, translators and copyists to thank for the privilege.
posted by TimONeill at 2:14 PM on August 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
No, but you were responding to someone who stated, correctly, "Christians were working like mad to preserve texts from the Greco-Roman heights". They did not specify "western Christians". The pseudo historical narrative of "the Dark Ages" has "the Christians" destroying and/or neglecting ancient learning until it appears again in "the Renaissance", usually thanks to "the Arabs and the Byzantines". This whole garbled story ignores the fact that "the Byzantines" were also Christians and that "the Arabs" got these texts from Christians as well - Nestorians and earlier Byzantines/Eastern Romans.
If we can read any of the corpus of ancient Greek or Roman writers, we have a succession of Christian and Muslim scholars, translators and copyists to thank for the privilege.
posted by TimONeill at 2:14 PM on August 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
Sorry to lower the tone of the rest of the conversation, but as long as we are looking at influences, I figure pop-culture ones should be noted as well.
Most people get their ideas about history from popular culture rather than from historians. The "dark ages" myths, complete with "medieval witch burnings", science-condemned-as-sorcery and the Inquisition as some kind of Europe-wide theocratic Gestapo has appeared in everything from Twain's Connecticut Yankee to virtually every Hollywood depiction of the Medieval Period ever. The Medieval Flat Earth myth is largely due to a novel by Washington Irving. Many modern misconceptions about the Galileo case can be traced to Bertolt Brecht's play The Life of Galileo. The modern misconception of Pius XII as some kind of passive semi-sympathiser of the Nazis has its origin substantially in Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy. And most of the persistent myths about the Great Library of Alexandria and Hypatia come, directly or indirectly, from Carl Sagan's accounts in the TV series Cosmos.
I consistently find these myths either have their origin in some popular culture portrayal or have been boosted by one. We humans like neat stories, but complex historical analysis is a bit hard.
posted by TimONeill at 2:23 PM on August 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
Most people get their ideas about history from popular culture rather than from historians. The "dark ages" myths, complete with "medieval witch burnings", science-condemned-as-sorcery and the Inquisition as some kind of Europe-wide theocratic Gestapo has appeared in everything from Twain's Connecticut Yankee to virtually every Hollywood depiction of the Medieval Period ever. The Medieval Flat Earth myth is largely due to a novel by Washington Irving. Many modern misconceptions about the Galileo case can be traced to Bertolt Brecht's play The Life of Galileo. The modern misconception of Pius XII as some kind of passive semi-sympathiser of the Nazis has its origin substantially in Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy. And most of the persistent myths about the Great Library of Alexandria and Hypatia come, directly or indirectly, from Carl Sagan's accounts in the TV series Cosmos.
I consistently find these myths either have their origin in some popular culture portrayal or have been boosted by one. We humans like neat stories, but complex historical analysis is a bit hard.
posted by TimONeill at 2:23 PM on August 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
I have just read, and loved, the Kiwi Hellenist blog entry on the Library of Alexandria.
I was interested in the idea that some books disappeared because they weren't popular, like the second volume of Aristotle's poetics:
There are books by famous writers published within the last 150 years that are almost impossible to find, because they were not successful or popular. This blog post points out that the ancient texts that have survived have done so, in nearly all cases, because they were popular or important enough to be reproduced in new forms, or at least in new copies, so that the text itself has a longer life than the fragile papyrus it was written on. This remains true. Not the papyrus part, but that a book--a print book--survives not because the copies of the first edition do, but because it is reprinted as time passes.
posted by Orlop at 5:44 PM on August 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
I was interested in the idea that some books disappeared because they weren't popular, like the second volume of Aristotle's poetics:
Not a single ancient writer ever cites book 2 of Aristotle's Poetics, other than Aristotle himself: it was never as popular as the similar material in his On poets (also lost), which was intended for a wider audience, and about which we hear a great deal. Poetics book 2 may well have disappeared within a century of being written.And also the idea that many books on scrolls were lost in part because they failed to be copied to codices before libraries stopped storing scrolls:
The 2nd-3rd centuries were also the time of a massive technical migration: from scroll to codex. ('Codex' is the word for a modern-style book, with pages sewn together at the spine.) The very biggest hurdle for the survival of books is nothing to do with libraries burning, or fictional stories about religious zealots destroying pagan books. It's about a format shift.I'm always interested in things like this, because these are also issues contemporary to us. Preserving digital data through a series of format shifts, for instance. Or the loss of music made only a few decades ago, which is not available now because it only existed on cassette and LP, and has not been digitized.
*snip*
A format shift doesn't only attach an extra cost to the survival of any text, it also attaches a time-limit. If the storage units in your library are armaria for codices, scrolls that haven't been transferred by the deadline will simply not get stored in the library.
There are books by famous writers published within the last 150 years that are almost impossible to find, because they were not successful or popular. This blog post points out that the ancient texts that have survived have done so, in nearly all cases, because they were popular or important enough to be reproduced in new forms, or at least in new copies, so that the text itself has a longer life than the fragile papyrus it was written on. This remains true. Not the papyrus part, but that a book--a print book--survives not because the copies of the first edition do, but because it is reprinted as time passes.
posted by Orlop at 5:44 PM on August 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
Anecdata, but while I don't know anybody who straight up says "Muslims didn't invent anything", I do know there are a lot of people who casually think "nothing happened anywhere in the world during the Dark Ages". If you've ever seen the movie "Hard To Be A God" then that's what a lot of people think the entire world was like. I don't so much think this is a deliberate conspiracy but rather a result of a lot of pop-culture whitewashing and a lot of "we had to struggle to make it out from the Dark Ages!" narratives.
posted by gucci mane at 7:06 PM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by gucci mane at 7:06 PM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
Thank you. I didn't realize how badly I wanted to get into this subject until presented with the opportunity.
posted by she's not there at 8:05 PM on August 1, 2017
posted by she's not there at 8:05 PM on August 1, 2017
The dark ages were mostly only "dark" for Anglophones, because we have no textual sources from England between roughly 420 and 530 AD.
Reading aloud, for the Romans, was primarily a performative act, with religious connotations: recitatio.
"Salting the earth" was mostly a symbolic act.
Sol Invictus is the reason for the season.
Salt would have been issued to the legions as rations, along with things like grain, meat, oil, and vinegar. It was vitally important to any kind of physical labour, and as a commodity, its production would have been controlled in various ways by the Imperial bureaucracy, either through taxation, or tax relief, or through the issuing of monopolies, or a combination of those things. In many areas, this persisted into the Medieval period, with salt production being an important prerogative of various kings. In fact, salt production was an important aspect of the British economy during the Roman period, which was almost wholly dependent on military expenditure.
Feudalism had less to do with the stirrup, which appeared in western Europe around the same time as Salic law, but was not a necessary condition for heavy cavalry, and more to do with Diocletian's reforms tying the coloni to the lands they worked.
Witches in early modern England were mostly hanged. Heretics were burned.
Gin was originally invented by the Dutch. Called jenever, it was originally a catch-all term for grain spirits, and came to be flavored with juniper. Later, oude and jonge varieties came to be distinguished by the quality of distillation involved.
London Dry Gin, of which I have had quite a bit tonight, is an almost neutral grain spirit that is usually macerated with various aromatics (said to be reminiscent of the spices monopolized by the British East India Company) soon after distillation.
The "Internet" is a term that is now used primarily to refer to the World Wide Web, itself coined by Tim Berners-Lee in 1993 in connection with his development of HTTP. It is also seriously pissing me off right now.
I don't know where I'm going with this.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:06 PM on August 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
Reading aloud, for the Romans, was primarily a performative act, with religious connotations: recitatio.
"Salting the earth" was mostly a symbolic act.
Sol Invictus is the reason for the season.
Salt would have been issued to the legions as rations, along with things like grain, meat, oil, and vinegar. It was vitally important to any kind of physical labour, and as a commodity, its production would have been controlled in various ways by the Imperial bureaucracy, either through taxation, or tax relief, or through the issuing of monopolies, or a combination of those things. In many areas, this persisted into the Medieval period, with salt production being an important prerogative of various kings. In fact, salt production was an important aspect of the British economy during the Roman period, which was almost wholly dependent on military expenditure.
Feudalism had less to do with the stirrup, which appeared in western Europe around the same time as Salic law, but was not a necessary condition for heavy cavalry, and more to do with Diocletian's reforms tying the coloni to the lands they worked.
Witches in early modern England were mostly hanged. Heretics were burned.
Gin was originally invented by the Dutch. Called jenever, it was originally a catch-all term for grain spirits, and came to be flavored with juniper. Later, oude and jonge varieties came to be distinguished by the quality of distillation involved.
London Dry Gin, of which I have had quite a bit tonight, is an almost neutral grain spirit that is usually macerated with various aromatics (said to be reminiscent of the spices monopolized by the British East India Company) soon after distillation.
The "Internet" is a term that is now used primarily to refer to the World Wide Web, itself coined by Tim Berners-Lee in 1993 in connection with his development of HTTP. It is also seriously pissing me off right now.
I don't know where I'm going with this.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:06 PM on August 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
@Orlop - The Kiwi Hellenist blog article is very good, though I feel it lets Sagan off far too lightly. His whole segement on the Library and Hypatia was riddled with howlers, which have unfortunately now become lodged in popular consciousness as "facts".
I think it might also be overemphasising the transition from scrolls to codices as a reason for information loss. THis statement - "If the storage units in your library are armaria for codices, scrolls that haven't been transferred by the deadline will simply not get stored in the library" - is far too simplistic and emphatic. Does he think people just threw out scrolls because their library had made some kind of overnight transition to armaria to store codices? That's pretty absurd. And an armarium is simply a box - you can store a bundle of scrolls in it just as easily as a row of bound books.
But yes, the chances of a work surviving was, in large part, a function of how popular and widely read it was. In a pre-printing era, that was the main determiner of how many copies there were in existence in the first place, which (pure luck aside) usually determined whether a work survived the centuries. Very popular and therefore very widely copied works like the works of Homer or the Biblical texts therefore had a very good survival rate. Technical works of philosophy, mathematics or proto-science, on the other hand, had a much more specialised audience and so there were always far fewer copies in existence. The main reason we actually have as much of that material as we do is, in fact (contra the usual myths), Christian scholars favoured that material greatly and copied it far more than, say, trashy Roman novels or pagan ritual guides.
Language also made a difference. The poems of Sappho were popular in their time but they were written in Aeolic Greek. This meant that while everyone agreed they were great and worthy, fewer people were able to read them easily as time went on. This meant copies became progressively fewer in number and so, as a result, we only have fragments of them today. The same thing would happen if only a few people who could read Old English or Middle English were making hand copies of Beowulf or the works of Chaucer. Everyone might agree they were great works, but it would not be hard for all full copies of them to disappear if this was the only way they could be preserved.
The same thing happened in western Europe as the Western Roman Empire collapsed. Literacy in Greek had been a marker of a proper aristocratic education for much of Roman history, but by the third century Greek literacy in the west declined sharply. This was partly because of the economic and political disruptions of the "Military Chaos" of that period but also because in that century and the ones that followed, the governing of the Empire became increasingly militarised and administrative and educational priorities shifted. This means that when the Western Empire collapsed, levels of literacy in Greek in the west were already very low and quickly began to fall to almost zero. So copies of books which were only in Greek were soon neglected and it wasn't long before those works, including much of the corpus of Greek mathematics, philosophy and proto-science, were lost in the west.
Again, contra the myths, it was churchmen who maintained what they could of the Roman world's literary legacy, but this was largely the Latin cprpus and those works or summaries of works which had been translated from Greek into Latin before the collapse became catastrophic. These kept things alive in the following centuries until the interface between Christian, Muslim and Jewish scholars in Spain and Sicily provided the nexus by which the lost Greek material could find its way back into the western European sphere via translations from Arabic and Hebrew.
posted by TimONeill at 9:20 PM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
I think it might also be overemphasising the transition from scrolls to codices as a reason for information loss. THis statement - "If the storage units in your library are armaria for codices, scrolls that haven't been transferred by the deadline will simply not get stored in the library" - is far too simplistic and emphatic. Does he think people just threw out scrolls because their library had made some kind of overnight transition to armaria to store codices? That's pretty absurd. And an armarium is simply a box - you can store a bundle of scrolls in it just as easily as a row of bound books.
But yes, the chances of a work surviving was, in large part, a function of how popular and widely read it was. In a pre-printing era, that was the main determiner of how many copies there were in existence in the first place, which (pure luck aside) usually determined whether a work survived the centuries. Very popular and therefore very widely copied works like the works of Homer or the Biblical texts therefore had a very good survival rate. Technical works of philosophy, mathematics or proto-science, on the other hand, had a much more specialised audience and so there were always far fewer copies in existence. The main reason we actually have as much of that material as we do is, in fact (contra the usual myths), Christian scholars favoured that material greatly and copied it far more than, say, trashy Roman novels or pagan ritual guides.
Language also made a difference. The poems of Sappho were popular in their time but they were written in Aeolic Greek. This meant that while everyone agreed they were great and worthy, fewer people were able to read them easily as time went on. This meant copies became progressively fewer in number and so, as a result, we only have fragments of them today. The same thing would happen if only a few people who could read Old English or Middle English were making hand copies of Beowulf or the works of Chaucer. Everyone might agree they were great works, but it would not be hard for all full copies of them to disappear if this was the only way they could be preserved.
The same thing happened in western Europe as the Western Roman Empire collapsed. Literacy in Greek had been a marker of a proper aristocratic education for much of Roman history, but by the third century Greek literacy in the west declined sharply. This was partly because of the economic and political disruptions of the "Military Chaos" of that period but also because in that century and the ones that followed, the governing of the Empire became increasingly militarised and administrative and educational priorities shifted. This means that when the Western Empire collapsed, levels of literacy in Greek in the west were already very low and quickly began to fall to almost zero. So copies of books which were only in Greek were soon neglected and it wasn't long before those works, including much of the corpus of Greek mathematics, philosophy and proto-science, were lost in the west.
Again, contra the myths, it was churchmen who maintained what they could of the Roman world's literary legacy, but this was largely the Latin cprpus and those works or summaries of works which had been translated from Greek into Latin before the collapse became catastrophic. These kept things alive in the following centuries until the interface between Christian, Muslim and Jewish scholars in Spain and Sicily provided the nexus by which the lost Greek material could find its way back into the western European sphere via translations from Arabic and Hebrew.
posted by TimONeill at 9:20 PM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
"Sol Invictus is the reason for the season."
This is actually very unclertain and probably not true. See History for Atheists - The Great Myths 2: Christmas, Mithras and Paganism:
"[T]he evidence for any kind of Sol Invictus festival on December 25 is actually quite thin. It rests mainly on one slightly ambiguous entry in the so-called “Calendar of Philocalus”, which was an almanac and list of significant dates and events dated to 354 AD. For December 25 the calendrical part of this document has the entry “N.INVICTI.CM.XXX.” which is generally transcribed as “N = Natalis (“birthday/nativity”) INVICTI = “Of the unconquered one” CM = circenses missus (“games ordered”). XXX = 30″ or “Thirty games were ordered for the birthday of the unconquered one”. Which “unconquered one”? It is generally thought that this title refers to the sun god Sol Invictus, the “Unconquered Sun”, though this is not definite given that the same document also refers to other feasts of the Sun more explicitly (e.g. SOLIS·ET·LVNAE·CM·XXIIII (August 28th) and LVDI·SOLIS (October 19-22). A much later source, the twelfth century Christian Syriac scholiast on Dionysius Bar Salibi, did record that “the pagans were wont to celebrate the birthday of Sol on December 25” and so attributed the date of Christmas to this, but it is not clear where he – centuries later – got this information."
As I go on to detail, the December 25 date actually seems to have derived from the Jewish idea that a prophet died on the date of his conception. Since Christians had determined that Jesus had been crucified on 14 Nisan on the Jewish calendar, that would make his death and his conception on March 25. And nine months after March 25 is December 25.
posted by TimONeill at 9:29 PM on August 1, 2017
This is actually very unclertain and probably not true. See History for Atheists - The Great Myths 2: Christmas, Mithras and Paganism:
"[T]he evidence for any kind of Sol Invictus festival on December 25 is actually quite thin. It rests mainly on one slightly ambiguous entry in the so-called “Calendar of Philocalus”, which was an almanac and list of significant dates and events dated to 354 AD. For December 25 the calendrical part of this document has the entry “N.INVICTI.CM.XXX.” which is generally transcribed as “N = Natalis (“birthday/nativity”) INVICTI = “Of the unconquered one” CM = circenses missus (“games ordered”). XXX = 30″ or “Thirty games were ordered for the birthday of the unconquered one”. Which “unconquered one”? It is generally thought that this title refers to the sun god Sol Invictus, the “Unconquered Sun”, though this is not definite given that the same document also refers to other feasts of the Sun more explicitly (e.g. SOLIS·ET·LVNAE·CM·XXIIII (August 28th) and LVDI·SOLIS (October 19-22). A much later source, the twelfth century Christian Syriac scholiast on Dionysius Bar Salibi, did record that “the pagans were wont to celebrate the birthday of Sol on December 25” and so attributed the date of Christmas to this, but it is not clear where he – centuries later – got this information."
As I go on to detail, the December 25 date actually seems to have derived from the Jewish idea that a prophet died on the date of his conception. Since Christians had determined that Jesus had been crucified on 14 Nisan on the Jewish calendar, that would make his death and his conception on March 25. And nine months after March 25 is December 25.
posted by TimONeill at 9:29 PM on August 1, 2017
I'm not aware of a Jewish idea that prophets die on the date of their conception. You're almost certainly misremembering the Jewish idea that a person who dies on their birthday has symbolically demonstrated that their life's task was completed.
Also, you can't tie any particular Jewish lunisolar date to a solar date, unless they happen to lie 19 years apart - and depending on the calendar, not always then.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:58 PM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
Also, you can't tie any particular Jewish lunisolar date to a solar date, unless they happen to lie 19 years apart - and depending on the calendar, not always then.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:58 PM on August 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
Since Christians had determined that Jesus had been crucified on 14 Nisan on the Jewish calendar, that would make his death and his conception on March 25. And nine months after March 25 is December 25.
Complication: Jews used a lunar calendar which more or less tied Nisan to "spring" via leap months once in a while as the council saw fit. Passover was Nisan 15, the full moon in the middle of the lunar month, and it was scheduled to fall around or after the spring equinox. This ended up as the Christian calculation of Easter which is a bit more complicated but still is the linchpin of the movable feasts in the lithurgical calendar.
The Julian calendar was solar and March 25 and December 25 tied to the spring equinox and winter solstice back then. Specifically, the bruma or celebration of the shortest day of the year fell on VIII kalendae ianuariae = 25 Dec even if the date of the actual astronomical solstice was off. VIII kalendae ianuariae was the birth of the sun and so the logical date for dies natalis Solis Invicti.
So IMO the reason for 25Dec seems to be exclusively a solar cult one (and it doesn't really matter if that means brumalia/ saturnalia, sol invictus or Mithras specifically) from the Roman solar calendar, with very little to tie it with the Jewish lunar calendar. Else it would have been tied to the movable date of Easter, like Pentecost/Whitsunday or Ascension.
Anyway, the story of Christmas in Luke with the shepherds minding the young lambs implies that it takes place in spring, not midwinter, because that's lambing season, so it would be closer to the spring equinox than the winter solstice. But that's another discussion.
posted by sukeban at 2:05 AM on August 2, 2017
Complication: Jews used a lunar calendar which more or less tied Nisan to "spring" via leap months once in a while as the council saw fit. Passover was Nisan 15, the full moon in the middle of the lunar month, and it was scheduled to fall around or after the spring equinox. This ended up as the Christian calculation of Easter which is a bit more complicated but still is the linchpin of the movable feasts in the lithurgical calendar.
The Julian calendar was solar and March 25 and December 25 tied to the spring equinox and winter solstice back then. Specifically, the bruma or celebration of the shortest day of the year fell on VIII kalendae ianuariae = 25 Dec even if the date of the actual astronomical solstice was off. VIII kalendae ianuariae was the birth of the sun and so the logical date for dies natalis Solis Invicti.
So IMO the reason for 25Dec seems to be exclusively a solar cult one (and it doesn't really matter if that means brumalia/ saturnalia, sol invictus or Mithras specifically) from the Roman solar calendar, with very little to tie it with the Jewish lunar calendar. Else it would have been tied to the movable date of Easter, like Pentecost/Whitsunday or Ascension.
Anyway, the story of Christmas in Luke with the shepherds minding the young lambs implies that it takes place in spring, not midwinter, because that's lambing season, so it would be closer to the spring equinox than the winter solstice. But that's another discussion.
posted by sukeban at 2:05 AM on August 2, 2017
"I'm not aware of a Jewish idea that prophets die on the date of their conception. "
It's a Talmudic tradition, though it can be either the date of their conception or of their birthday. b. Kiddushin 39a interprets Deut. 31:2 as Moses dying on his birthday. Rosh Hashanah 1 repeats the same idea and seems to also apply it to Abraham.
"Also, you can't tie any particular Jewish lunisolar date to a solar date"
Whether you can do so reasonably or not is beside the point. The fact is that early Christian writers thought they could. Around 200 AD Tertullian reported, working from gJohn, that 14 Nisan was the date of Jesus' execution and that this was the equivalent of March 25 in the solar calendar. In the fourth century an anonymous Christian calendrical treatise states explicitly that "Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered." Augustine says the same ( De Trinitate IV.9).
Some Eastern traditions made the same calculation, but from a different starting date. So working from 14 Artemisios (April 6) as the conception/death date, they arrived at Jan 6 as the date of his birth; the date of Christmas in the Armenian Church to this day.
posted by TimONeill at 2:51 AM on August 2, 2017
It's a Talmudic tradition, though it can be either the date of their conception or of their birthday. b. Kiddushin 39a interprets Deut. 31:2 as Moses dying on his birthday. Rosh Hashanah 1 repeats the same idea and seems to also apply it to Abraham.
"Also, you can't tie any particular Jewish lunisolar date to a solar date"
Whether you can do so reasonably or not is beside the point. The fact is that early Christian writers thought they could. Around 200 AD Tertullian reported, working from gJohn, that 14 Nisan was the date of Jesus' execution and that this was the equivalent of March 25 in the solar calendar. In the fourth century an anonymous Christian calendrical treatise states explicitly that "Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered." Augustine says the same ( De Trinitate IV.9).
Some Eastern traditions made the same calculation, but from a different starting date. So working from 14 Artemisios (April 6) as the conception/death date, they arrived at Jan 6 as the date of his birth; the date of Christmas in the Armenian Church to this day.
posted by TimONeill at 2:51 AM on August 2, 2017
So IMO the reason for 25Dec seems to be exclusively a solar cult one (and it doesn't really matter if that means brumalia/ saturnalia, sol invictus or Mithras specifically) from the Roman solar calendar, with very little to tie it with the Jewish lunar calendar.
See my response above - the early Christians disagreed with you.
"Anyway, the story of Christmas in Luke with the shepherds minding the young lambs implies that it takes place in spring, not midwinter"
Pretty much nothing in the largely theological infancy narratives can be taken as historical.
posted by TimONeill at 2:53 AM on August 2, 2017
See my response above - the early Christians disagreed with you.
"Anyway, the story of Christmas in Luke with the shepherds minding the young lambs implies that it takes place in spring, not midwinter"
Pretty much nothing in the largely theological infancy narratives can be taken as historical.
posted by TimONeill at 2:53 AM on August 2, 2017
See my response above - the early Christians disagreed with you.
For values of early Christians = Tertullian and that famous blockbuster author, Anonymous. And feasts that hinge on the date of Easter are movable on the liturgical calendar, or we would have fixed dates in the solar calendar for Pentecost too.
posted by sukeban at 2:57 AM on August 2, 2017
For values of early Christians = Tertullian and that famous blockbuster author, Anonymous. And feasts that hinge on the date of Easter are movable on the liturgical calendar, or we would have fixed dates in the solar calendar for Pentecost too.
posted by sukeban at 2:57 AM on August 2, 2017
I mean, isn't this a case of special pleading? Equating the death of Jesus on March 25 so you can celebrate his birth on Dec 25, but not for the date of Easter itself or the feasts that happen x days after Easter? Why this exception, if it's not just an excuse to celebrate the birth of Jesus at the time the other people celebrate the birth of the sun?
posted by sukeban at 3:01 AM on August 2, 2017
posted by sukeban at 3:01 AM on August 2, 2017
"For values of early Christians = Tertullian and that famous blockbuster author, Anonymous."
And Augustine. Sorry, but they felt they could read 14 Nisan as March 25 and so they did so. Here's Augustine making it all pretty clear what they thought:
"For [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th."
"And feasts that hinge on the date of Easter are movable on the liturgical calendar, or we would have fixed dates in the solar calendar for Pentecost too."
Relevance?
posted by TimONeill at 3:04 AM on August 2, 2017
And Augustine. Sorry, but they felt they could read 14 Nisan as March 25 and so they did so. Here's Augustine making it all pretty clear what they thought:
"For [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th."
"And feasts that hinge on the date of Easter are movable on the liturgical calendar, or we would have fixed dates in the solar calendar for Pentecost too."
Relevance?
posted by TimONeill at 3:04 AM on August 2, 2017
"I mean, isn't this a case of special pleading?"
Feel free to jump in your time machine and go argue with them.
"Why this exception, if it's not just an excuse to celebrate the birth of Jesus at the time the other people celebrate the birth of the sun?"
Because the tradition of celebrating his birth on Dec 25th pre-dates any period when Christianity had any incentive to co-opt pagan festivals. For them to be doing so from the fourth century makes sense, but for them to be doing so while they were still an illegal and occasionally persecuted sect does not.
posted by TimONeill at 3:07 AM on August 2, 2017
Feel free to jump in your time machine and go argue with them.
"Why this exception, if it's not just an excuse to celebrate the birth of Jesus at the time the other people celebrate the birth of the sun?"
Because the tradition of celebrating his birth on Dec 25th pre-dates any period when Christianity had any incentive to co-opt pagan festivals. For them to be doing so from the fourth century makes sense, but for them to be doing so while they were still an illegal and occasionally persecuted sect does not.
posted by TimONeill at 3:07 AM on August 2, 2017
It would have been so much simpler for everyone if they just celebrated Easter on March 25. Why should they tie Christmas to Dec 25 ~but only for Christmas and Christmas only~ and not for Easter itself or the festivities that happen 40/ 50 days after Easter?
posted by sukeban at 3:09 AM on August 2, 2017
posted by sukeban at 3:09 AM on August 2, 2017
It's almost as if the point was to tie the festivity to the solar calendar. It is a mystery.
posted by sukeban at 3:10 AM on August 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by sukeban at 3:10 AM on August 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
"It would have been so much simpler for everyone if they just celebrated Easter on March 25. "
Perhaps you aren't familiar with the arguments that raged about why the date of Easter "had" to be moveable. The problem was they wanted to make sure it always fell on a Sunday.
"It's almost as if the point was to tie the festivity to the solar calendar. It is a mystery."
No it isn't. See above.
posted by TimONeill at 3:20 AM on August 2, 2017
Perhaps you aren't familiar with the arguments that raged about why the date of Easter "had" to be moveable. The problem was they wanted to make sure it always fell on a Sunday.
"It's almost as if the point was to tie the festivity to the solar calendar. It is a mystery."
No it isn't. See above.
posted by TimONeill at 3:20 AM on August 2, 2017
The problem was they wanted to make sure it always fell on a Sunday.
If you're saying that the process of establishing dates for feasts was a total mess, I agree with you. But at the time Pope Soter was changing Easter so it fell on Sunday, Clement of Alexandria was like totally
So, eh, all over the place. Total mess.
If you're saying that the process of establishing dates for feasts was a total mess, I agree with you. But at the time Pope Soter was changing Easter so it fell on Sunday, Clement of Alexandria was like totally
And there are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord's birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus, and in the twenty-fifth day of Pachon. And the followers of Basilides hold the day of his baptism as a festival, spending the night before in readings.(here, crtl+f "pachon". Pachon 25 = May 20, Tubi 15 = Jan 11)
And they say that it was the fifteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar, the fifteenth day of the month Tubi; and some that it was the eleventh of the same month. And treating of His passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the sixteenth year of Tiberius, on the twenty-fifth of Phamenoth; and others the twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi and others say that on the nineteenth of Pharmuthi the Saviour suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi.
So, eh, all over the place. Total mess.
The first evidence of the feast is from Egypt. About A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria (Stromata I.21) says that certain Egyptian theologians "over curiously" assign, not the year alone, but the day of Christ's birth, placing it on 25 Pachon (20 May) in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus. [Ideler (Chron., II, 397, n.) thought they did this believing that the ninth month, in which Christ was born, was the ninth of their own calendar.] Others reached the date of 24 or 25 Pharmuthi (19 or 20 April). With Clement's evidence may be mentioned the "De paschæ computus", written in 243 and falsely ascribed to Cyprian (P.L., IV, 963 sqq.), which places Christ's birth on 28 March, because on that day the material sun was created. But Lupi has shown (Zaccaria, Dissertazioni ecc. del p. A.M. Lupi, Faenza, 1785, p. 219) that there is no month in the year to which respectable authorities have not assigned Christ's birth. Clement, however, also tells us that the Basilidians celebrated the Epiphany, and with it, probably, the Nativity, on 15 or 11 Tybi (10 or 6 January).posted by sukeban at 3:39 AM on August 2, 2017
It's a Talmudic tradition, though it can be either the date of their conception or of their birthday.
Have you any citation supporting your view that it can relate to the date of conception?
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:03 AM on August 2, 2017
Have you any citation supporting your view that it can relate to the date of conception?
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:03 AM on August 2, 2017
"Have you any citation supporting your view that it can relate to the date of conception?"
Actually, the Jewish material that I can find only seems to support the idea of it relating to the date of their birth. It's the Christian traditions that are taking it from his conception.
posted by TimONeill at 4:25 AM on August 2, 2017
Actually, the Jewish material that I can find only seems to support the idea of it relating to the date of their birth. It's the Christian traditions that are taking it from his conception.
posted by TimONeill at 4:25 AM on August 2, 2017
That does seem more likely to me. It might be down to a theological difference: the date of Jesus' conception is important for Christianity because it marks the beginning of the Incarnation (at least for some churches). In contrast, the Jewish scriptures refer many times to significant births, but conception is treated as a mere prelude.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:34 AM on August 2, 2017
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:34 AM on August 2, 2017
Because the tradition of celebrating his birth on Dec 25th pre-dates any period when Christianity had any incentive to co-opt pagan festivals.
This is nonsense. Lots of religious minorities *today* emphasize holidays that happen to fall on popular local festivals. There's no need assume they're trying to co-opt it, just not wanting to be left out while everyone else is celebrating.
posted by empath at 6:42 AM on August 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
This is nonsense. Lots of religious minorities *today* emphasize holidays that happen to fall on popular local festivals. There's no need assume they're trying to co-opt it, just not wanting to be left out while everyone else is celebrating.
posted by empath at 6:42 AM on August 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
"This is nonsense. Lots of religious minorities *today* emphasize holidays that happen to fall on popular local festivals. There's no need assume they're trying to co-opt it, just not wanting to be left out while everyone else is celebrating."
So you have some evidence that this was what was happening? Because you will need to explain why they emphasised the specific date of Dec 25 and not the Saturnalian period that ended on Dec 23rd. As I've noted, Dec 25 doesn't have any firm evidence associating it with any pagan feast at all.
posted by TimONeill at 2:23 PM on August 2, 2017
So you have some evidence that this was what was happening? Because you will need to explain why they emphasised the specific date of Dec 25 and not the Saturnalian period that ended on Dec 23rd. As I've noted, Dec 25 doesn't have any firm evidence associating it with any pagan feast at all.
posted by TimONeill at 2:23 PM on August 2, 2017
Because you will need to explain why they emphasised the specific date of Dec 25 and not the Saturnalian period that ended on Dec 23rd. As I've noted, Dec 25 doesn't have any firm evidence associating it with any pagan feast at all.
VIII Kal. Ian., that is, December 25, was the date associated with the winter solstice/ shortest day of the year despite not actually coinciding with the astronomical date of the solstice, as I said. Quotes from Varro, Pliny & the gang in the link.
By the way, since I'm replying anyway: the quote by Tertullian way up above has been bugging me half the day, because he just can't have gotten March 25 for the crucifixion since Passover is tied to the lunar calendar so he **needed to know the year** Jesus was crucified to be able to reach a result. And since nobody in antiquity had a better idea than "some time in the reign of Augustus/ Tiberius" for the dates of Jesus' birth and death, knowing the year Jesus died would have been a **big deal** that Tertullian decided to not tell us about.
That, or he just pulled March 25 from his ass so 3/4 of the year later would coincide with the traditional Roman date for the winter solstice. Whatevs.
posted by sukeban at 3:11 PM on August 2, 2017
VIII Kal. Ian., that is, December 25, was the date associated with the winter solstice/ shortest day of the year despite not actually coinciding with the astronomical date of the solstice, as I said. Quotes from Varro, Pliny & the gang in the link.
By the way, since I'm replying anyway: the quote by Tertullian way up above has been bugging me half the day, because he just can't have gotten March 25 for the crucifixion since Passover is tied to the lunar calendar so he **needed to know the year** Jesus was crucified to be able to reach a result. And since nobody in antiquity had a better idea than "some time in the reign of Augustus/ Tiberius" for the dates of Jesus' birth and death, knowing the year Jesus died would have been a **big deal** that Tertullian decided to not tell us about.
That, or he just pulled March 25 from his ass so 3/4 of the year later would coincide with the traditional Roman date for the winter solstice. Whatevs.
posted by sukeban at 3:11 PM on August 2, 2017
(The funniest part is that the redactor of the article of the Catholic Encyclopedia from 1908 about the dating of Christmas that I linked as "total mess" above has as conclusion: "The present writer in inclined to think that, be the origin of the feast in East or West, and though the abundance of analogous midwinter festivals may indefinitely have helped the choice of the December date, the same instinct which set Natalis Invicti at the winter solstice will have sufficed, apart from deliberate adaptation or curious calculation, to set the Christian feast there too." Much edgy, very reddit atheist.)
posted by sukeban at 3:22 PM on August 2, 2017
posted by sukeban at 3:22 PM on August 2, 2017
"VIII Kal. Ian., that is, December 25, was the date associated with the winter solstice/ shortest day of the year despite not actually coinciding with the astronomical date of the solstice, as I said. Quotes from Varro, Pliny & the gang in the link."
Okay - I hadn't read that article by Roger Pearse, who I know and who is almost always a very fair and thorough researcher. Thanks.
"because he just can't have gotten March 25 for the crucifixion since Passover is tied to the lunar calendar so he **needed to know the year** "
He thought he did know the year and he worked from that.
We also still have the fact that the Armenian tradition preserves an eastern iteraton of the conception/death idea to go from a crucifixion on April 6 and his birth on January 6. Which still makes me feel this was the motivation for the March 25/Dec 25 western tradition and that the fact it had Christmas fall on the traditional "solstice" was more happy coincidence than the intention.
posted by TimONeill at 4:21 PM on August 2, 2017
Okay - I hadn't read that article by Roger Pearse, who I know and who is almost always a very fair and thorough researcher. Thanks.
"because he just can't have gotten March 25 for the crucifixion since Passover is tied to the lunar calendar so he **needed to know the year** "
He thought he did know the year and he worked from that.
We also still have the fact that the Armenian tradition preserves an eastern iteraton of the conception/death idea to go from a crucifixion on April 6 and his birth on January 6. Which still makes me feel this was the motivation for the March 25/Dec 25 western tradition and that the fact it had Christmas fall on the traditional "solstice" was more happy coincidence than the intention.
posted by TimONeill at 4:21 PM on August 2, 2017
Hi Tim, thanks for dropping by. There's one post which I should have linked but didn't because of the general mythbusting tone of my post. It's this one, which has the closest original Giordano Bruno condemnation text in English for the first time. This is why I appreciate your stuff, and similarly the Kiwi Hellenist blog: it's not just general argument about history etc. It's that you actually show things in the original. Few people other than historians do that nowadays. And because of your blog, Tim, I recently read the entire Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the original. It's probably the most unique and rather strange text that I've ever read. But it did give me a new appreciation about what historians do daily as their work. So, thanks, I appreciate what you do.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 1:03 PM on August 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 1:03 PM on August 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
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