BF2S Forums Religions of the world Thread

the early church developed between byzantium and rome. that's exactly what we're talking about. talking about the christian religion as being synonymous with or 'mainly' rome is ignoring a huge chunk of the early development of the religion. most of the system of christianity accepted by rome was a greek-hellenistic import. again, if you have even a basic acquaintance with plato's metaphysics or aristotle's work, it is inarguable that christianity's metaphysics, i.e. that outside of its ethics and everyday teachings, is just translated greek philosophy.

to separate off 'modern turkey and africa' and talk about them as if they're strange outlier zones and not representative of christianity is silly. the vast majority of the apostles themselves were from small churches around the levant, greece or anatolia (he was called Paul of Tarsus, you know). the ones who ended up in italy went to former greek settlements there or stayed in hellenistic communities in rome, etc.

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-04 03:26:38)

If in what is today considered the west knowledge of ancient greek was entirely lost and it took until Aquinas and later to rediscover most of those teachings, it is a rather indirect connection. That other parts of the church, which separated in the great schism anyway, were based in greek philosophy doesn't help that fact.

And beyond the church fathers it took several centuries more for this intellectual and cultural history to be picked up on and claimed by the rest of society. That movement - which you call fashion - is probably even more important to the now commonly accepted claim of greek and roman history as totally ours. Many of us were the same vandals, celts, germanic tribes etc. that dismantled the roman empire and burned their libraries to begin with.

One copy of Timaeus and a transmission through time of some hellinistic-inspired theological teachings to recipients unaware of that basis don't really indicate a strong linear tradition of claiming greek history uziq.

There was also a lot of burning of heretics and persecuting of cats during the dark ages, couldn't we have gone straight from Aristotle to the enlightenment?
Judaism might have fizzled out by now, Catholicism and Islam might never have existed

This looks like a conversation I should be a part of. I really don't have time to go into detail about a lot of the points covered since work starts soon and I need to put the plants outside and water them. I'm a florist who owns a small business in Little Italy.


Anyway, however you feel about the church you need to recognize the impressive fact that they managed to create a hierarchical/regulated institution across the entirety of Europe during the Dark Ages. That feat of organization across borders, languages, cultures, etc. was something only the Romans ever managed up until maybe Napoleon? I think that fact is too often ignored and instead focus/shame is put on things like the Crusades. No one ever marvels at the fact that the Catholic Church managed to organize a coalition of French, Iberians, Germans, English etc. to go and do something in the service of something greater than their individual interest. Again, when did that ever happen until maybe the European Union?

Good Lord who thinks any girl they would meet has been with over a hundred men? And who would think that they personally would be better than all 100? So many questions.

I google searched stuff I thought dilbert might like and that came up.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

This looks like a conversation I should be a part of. I really don't have time to go into detail about a lot of the points covered since work starts soon and I need to put the plants outside and water them. I'm a florist who owns a small business in Little Italy.


Anyway, however you feel about the church you need to recognize the impressive fact that they managed to create a hierarchical/regulated institution across the entirety of Europe during the Dark Ages. That feat of organization across borders, languages, cultures, etc. was something only the Romans ever managed up until maybe Napoleon? I think that fact is too often ignored and instead focus/shame is put on things like the Crusades. No one ever marvels at the fact that the Catholic Church managed to organize a coalition of French, Iberians, Germans, English etc. to go and do something in the service of something greater than their individual interest. Again, when did that ever happen until maybe the European Union?

So to summarise:

Aristotle

2000 years

Oh wow Aristotle!

I feel there's a part we could have skipped.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-11-05 00:48:45)

I'm sure the various religions have done nothing but fine tune their medieval outfits.



In 2000 years I'm sure the hasidim will still be wearing 18th century costume.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-11-05 01:02:44)

When I was picking what school to do my MA in I considered a local Catholic college. I was accepted too but the tuition was eyewatering so I decided to do a state school. During the tour of the college they showed us the bursar's office and on the wall they had black and white pictures of all of the priest who ever ran the school I guess.

And I wondered how many of those priest were pedophiles. And does the whole college exist solely to service these robed pedophiles?

Other interesting note, the tuition for the college was $500 or so when my dad attended it in the 80's. Today undergraduate is $37,660 per year. Graduate tuition is $1,132 per credit. State school is only $755.55.

I don't even understand why you insist on this detour to focus on the few specific individuals in the early middle ages who had some knowledge on those works. I stated that when people think of western civilisation that they reference aristotle, socrates and plato, which by no means were household names or common knowledge in Europe at all for a long time. I mean for christ sake it's a known fact that after the fall of the western roman empire knowledge of ancient greek more or less vanished from large parts of the continent for hundreds of years, and that only some translated works in latin were in circulation which yes depended greatly on boethius - who's considered a roman as he was born directly after the fall of the empire in the west and who didn't at all translate anywhere near the complete works about/by these people. There's a huge gap after him, not to mention, again, that nobody knew greek. The recovery of aristotle and the greek classics in general isn't some figment of the imagination. It may have been a long time that I've sat through the depressingly boring slog that was medieval history in uni, but I quite distinctly remember reading and being lectured on this. The popular association of the west with greek antiquity isn't this linear passing down of a long tradition of 'western civilisation' that neatly started in Greek antiquity to now. That was my entire point. Stop making it about a handful of theologians because it suits your argument.

most of europe wasn't literate for the middle ages, i mean what is your point? my argument is that there is a direct line of continuity from the socratics through church-scholasticism and into the renaissance. you're making out that socrates/plato/aristotle were 'lost' to the west essentially for 1200 or 1400 years. that is arrant nonsense. anybody who went to a medieval university in europe or embarked on any sort of formal education would be familiar with the names of the socratics and a few other names from antiquity. you claimed that the renaissance 'imagined' a connection to ancient greek. this is patently incorrect. the texts of the socratics were in constant translation, reproduction, commentary, etc. the church developed aristotelean logic and platonic metaphysics over the course of 1000 years.

i don't know where you're getting this weird impression from that the west only had 1 of plato's dialogues for all of 1200 years, and even then it was only kept to a few irrelevant, minor scholars living in remote areas ('a handful of theologians' ... 'north africa, modern day turkey', etc). that's just not the case. three of the most influential philosophers in the entire history of the christian church – augustine, boethius, and aristotle himself – were all intimately familiar with that socratic tradition. it's really that simple.

the organised body of knowledge and the western 'system of thought' was not widely accessible to all, of course, during the middle ages. nobody is talking about that. i never claimed that plato was a household name for a bog-peat farmer in sixth century ireland. but formal education, written and transmitted knowledge, universities and monasteries/seminaries, etc, were all familiar with the socratics. the hellenistic philosophies were just as important as the hebrew-biblical corpus.

this is why i said you are 'mischaracterising the renaissance'. those big three names were not 'recovered' by the renaissance at all. thinkers from across the christian, islamic and jewish world were all commenting on and developing their thought as a standard part of their training and profession. in the 12th to 14th centuries, clearly before your 'renaissance recovery', you have aquinas, averroes and maimonides who were all fucking experts on the socratics! averroes entire philosophical project tried to reconcile the hellenistic school with islamic theology!

and for what it's worth, it's not like the renaissance made socrates, plato and aristotle 'household' names, either. you're acting like it was only for theologians and philosophers in seclusion from 'western culture' in some strange way from 400AD-1500AD, after which there's widespread hellenism. the overwhelming majority of people in renaissance city-states were illiterate workers or an artisan class. the rise of 'renaissance humanism' was still a development largely confined to the church (and latterly to an increasingly secular academe).

as i said repeatedly, the 'recoveries' of translation (and print publication) in the renaissance were mostly of the pagan or non-christian texts, or of presenting writers from the church-latin tradition in vernaculars such as tuscan (in the case of florence, for e.g.). the renaissance was not about the west magically rediscovering plato's dialogues or the metaphysics of aristotle. that had been the underpinning of western philosophy and culture already for 1000 years! it was more about writers like cicero, ovid, virgil, etc. with them, you can credibly say that many renaissance thinkers 'revived' or 'recovered' them: petrarch for cicero, for example.

do a research.