On sectionalisms point about Christianity getting people to associate themselves with Israelites. Byzantines recited stories of Roman hero’s, bishops, referenced them in their speeches, and the Byzantines openly suppressed the Israelites so much they betrayed Byzantium by throwing open the gates to cities for Persian invaders (Persians who would later be killed by a blonde Christian warrior-king, Heraclius). If Christians did try this, it clearly didn’t succeed, even in the East, even where people were so rabidly Christian discussing theology (and fighting about it) was a common pastime.
Ok. Wow. My fucking google tab closed while I was 3/4 of the way done writing my comment. I'm going to explode 6 billion africans with my MIND I am so mad. New jiggers.
1. I think most of this is misunderstanding the argument. "Christianity was the ancient BLM" is not a value judgement (BLM bad, Christianity BLM, so Christianity bad) it is just a scientific assessment of what position Christians had in Romans society compared to our own society. In Roman society, being a traditionalist and a Roman and a conservative would be associated with loyalty to the Roman gods and the Roman state religion. Christians cannot be compared to foreign invaders. They cannot be compared to foreigners desecrating art even though many Christians were by happenstance non-Roman. They cannot be compared to foreigners doing a "damnatio memoriae" because they are not foreign invaders, and for the record you are wrong about that being the norm in antiquity. Because no matter who they came from, they were committing an act of revolution against their own ancestors in the hopes to create a new world order, and they were fueled by resentment of the (exaggerated) crimes the Romans had done to them. The Christians were not violent, correct, that is not an element they share with BLM (well, unless we look at the Gothic invaders of Rome. But, they would have been violent even if they weren't Christian). However, every one of these universalist mass political movements is building itself on the template of Christianity. Nothing like Christianity existed before it. Literally never in human history was there this sort of explosive rise of an "ideology" not just among the elites but among the masses. I would not call Buddhism of Confucianism similar to this because Confucianism was in many ways a justification of already preexisting tradition, and Buddhism is somewhat of an esoteric movement not entirely incompatible with Hinduism. I would consider Christians spreading through miracles rather tenuous -- even if you believe every miracle happened, they were not seen by nearly enough people to explain the rise of Christianity. I don't know about you, but I don't consider converting people to an objective religious belief system based on being hecking nicerino is particularly intellectually honest even if it is vaguely better than bribing politicians. It certainly resembles the sort of political machine strategies of the turn of the century where politicians would cajole immigrants by giving them a Christmas turkey or something like that.
Julian believing that martyrdom works is simultaneously not proof that martyrdom works (Julian was raised Christian, it's not surprising he thinks it works) and it is simultaneously evidence that Julian was not "teetering on genocide" considering that he is specifically avoiding persecution of Christians with this fear of martyrdom in mind. Julian was also not a bad emperor. He had a very good track record as Caesar before becoming full emperor. He was clearly a very well-educated and intelligent men, someone who was highly convicted to their beliefs, and who wanted to restore the Rome of old beyond the religious scope (even though his attempt at this ultimately ended in failure). The fact that Christians celebrate Julian's death to another Pagan emperor and claim that one of their own saints actually came down from heaven to kill Julian, resulting in disastrous consequences for the empire's eastern flank, is yet another demonstration of their antipathy against Caesar. And yes, Roman aggression towards Christians is heavily exaggerated. Very few emperors actually ever had policies against Christians, it was mostly provincial rulers who persecuted them.
Speaking of persecution, Julian, etc, lets talk about Christian persecution of Pagans. Many Christian emperors were not persecutory of pagans, which probably had something to do with some of them being former Pagans or having Pagans close to them. It also had to do with the political unpopularity of persecuting a majority of your population, so Constantine was not going to do it. Constantius did do it, but his decisions were reversed by Julian. It was only really under Theodosius I that paganism started being persecuted by the state, and it is only under Theodosius II in his Codex Theodosius that Pagan practices even in private settings become justification for punishment and including death. However, simply being a pagan was not illegal. Pagan sacrifice was, and Pagan temples were shut down. Rome at this point is not exactly in its glory days, so it probably wasn't too hard for people to slick by the Theodosian laws on Paganism, but nonetheless you do see that significant drop down to 4% during the reigns of Theodosius II and Honorius. Groups like the Neoplatonic School were able to survive in Athens because technically they did not break these rules. They were just theorycels, after all, they weren't sacrificing any oxen... Even though they were explaining why you should. Which you should!
Also, I hope you don't actually believe that garbage about St. Catherine. It is impossible to win a 1v50 debate, debates are won by the mood of the room and when 50 people agree with each other the mood of the room is always on their side. What is perfectly possible is to walk out of a debate imagining that whichever side you like won, which is what most people do, and over time this probably got exaggerated into saying Catherine started converting swathes of Pagan intellectuals after a single debate (again, you've been online for long enough. You know this doesn't happen).
You are correct that Pagan religions were not as zealous as Christianity (why should they be?) but the idea that people were just venerating historical figures is nonsense. I hope you aren't one of those euhemerist types, because all of that is bullshit. The ancients pretty obviously believed in the gods and believed that certain heroic ancestors had been deified, judging by their patterns of worship. We don't sacrifice pigs to Thomas Jefferson and then examine the innards of the pig to see what Jefferson is trying to tell us. Oh yeah -- speaking of which, that is what was going on at the Blots. It was a divinatory practice. And splattering of blood is not "satanic", anointing people with the blood of ritually slaughtered animals is literally something that happens in the old testament. Blots were animal sacrifices, I don't think there is much evidence that human beings were divined in the same way animals were, although there are other recorded ways they were sacrificed. If you want evidence of there being a degree of Pagan zealotry, look no further than the (sham) trial of Socrates. Although Socrates in reality was a pious pagan, the fact that he was executed for supposedly not being one and convincing the city's youths not to be pious demonstrates that the ancients actually did take this stuff quite seriously.
Saying pagans never received the harsh treatment from Christian rulers even early in the conversion process is pretty unfair imo. The Theodosian laws are well known.
FYI, there is a famous Scythian who got Hellenized and became a philosopher. Forget his name, he's like the first of the skeptics I think. Well, he want back to scythia to share the new ways and his own brother killed him for being apostate. Zealotry was present in paganism, it just wasn't... Well zealotry for an Abrahamic god. What is a berserk if not a zealot? What is a druid leading a rebellion if not a zealot?
To say that pagans werent zealots or that they just faded out of history because Christians were tolerant is silly. But good article anyways, I hope to see more rebuttals from both of you
How much of the zealotry around being pagan was just due to the pantheon being an extension of the will and spirit of the people? That’s different than the way Christians are zealots despite there being obvious overlap.
Also, I do think (especially for the ancient world) the Christians were quite tolerant. You should read Dr Stark’s book that I paraphrased for that bit and see what you think
I think the pagans were pretty tolerant too, all things considered. I know that you view the brutality of the past differently though! There are some fun stories about Saxons thinking Jesus was a god of mercy and putting a cross in a hof next to their idols of Wotan. But you have to understand, most of Europe was not like Rome and wasn't used to having new (and foreign) religions thrust on them from outside. It would, reasonably, be seen as an attack.
The question about zealotry is interesting and I don't have a good answer. I will have to think about it. A part of me thinks the zealotry is an extension of the divine power they are in concert with. I just know that there are examples of pagans being real pious and zealotrous, which is not what Christians tend to think concerning these ancient "demon worshippers". Most Christians associate ancient pagans with modern secularism, which makes them associate paganism with agnostics and atheists. These ancient pagans truly believed what they preached, especially if they were living in isolation from other tribes. Many of them viewed their gods as ancestral to them, such as the Celtic tribes, who often utilized this as a cry for patriotism which you noted. I don't think you see the issue here. Paganism produced a form of patriotism that was religious in nature. This is no different than the jewish zealots refusing to bend the knee to foreign Rome and her ways. Zealots of Israel were straight up religious patriots.
I think Judaism is a folk religion for jews. Christianity is universalist and therefore not adequate for any single race. European paganism provides us with our own folk religion. Something that makes us religious about our nation and people. My 2 cents.
Seeing my old oomfies going gyatt for gyatt got me going rizz for rizz 😔✊🏻
On sectionalisms point about Christianity getting people to associate themselves with Israelites. Byzantines recited stories of Roman hero’s, bishops, referenced them in their speeches, and the Byzantines openly suppressed the Israelites so much they betrayed Byzantium by throwing open the gates to cities for Persian invaders (Persians who would later be killed by a blonde Christian warrior-king, Heraclius). If Christians did try this, it clearly didn’t succeed, even in the East, even where people were so rabidly Christian discussing theology (and fighting about it) was a common pastime.
Ok. Wow. My fucking google tab closed while I was 3/4 of the way done writing my comment. I'm going to explode 6 billion africans with my MIND I am so mad. New jiggers.
1. I think most of this is misunderstanding the argument. "Christianity was the ancient BLM" is not a value judgement (BLM bad, Christianity BLM, so Christianity bad) it is just a scientific assessment of what position Christians had in Romans society compared to our own society. In Roman society, being a traditionalist and a Roman and a conservative would be associated with loyalty to the Roman gods and the Roman state religion. Christians cannot be compared to foreign invaders. They cannot be compared to foreigners desecrating art even though many Christians were by happenstance non-Roman. They cannot be compared to foreigners doing a "damnatio memoriae" because they are not foreign invaders, and for the record you are wrong about that being the norm in antiquity. Because no matter who they came from, they were committing an act of revolution against their own ancestors in the hopes to create a new world order, and they were fueled by resentment of the (exaggerated) crimes the Romans had done to them. The Christians were not violent, correct, that is not an element they share with BLM (well, unless we look at the Gothic invaders of Rome. But, they would have been violent even if they weren't Christian). However, every one of these universalist mass political movements is building itself on the template of Christianity. Nothing like Christianity existed before it. Literally never in human history was there this sort of explosive rise of an "ideology" not just among the elites but among the masses. I would not call Buddhism of Confucianism similar to this because Confucianism was in many ways a justification of already preexisting tradition, and Buddhism is somewhat of an esoteric movement not entirely incompatible with Hinduism. I would consider Christians spreading through miracles rather tenuous -- even if you believe every miracle happened, they were not seen by nearly enough people to explain the rise of Christianity. I don't know about you, but I don't consider converting people to an objective religious belief system based on being hecking nicerino is particularly intellectually honest even if it is vaguely better than bribing politicians. It certainly resembles the sort of political machine strategies of the turn of the century where politicians would cajole immigrants by giving them a Christmas turkey or something like that.
Julian believing that martyrdom works is simultaneously not proof that martyrdom works (Julian was raised Christian, it's not surprising he thinks it works) and it is simultaneously evidence that Julian was not "teetering on genocide" considering that he is specifically avoiding persecution of Christians with this fear of martyrdom in mind. Julian was also not a bad emperor. He had a very good track record as Caesar before becoming full emperor. He was clearly a very well-educated and intelligent men, someone who was highly convicted to their beliefs, and who wanted to restore the Rome of old beyond the religious scope (even though his attempt at this ultimately ended in failure). The fact that Christians celebrate Julian's death to another Pagan emperor and claim that one of their own saints actually came down from heaven to kill Julian, resulting in disastrous consequences for the empire's eastern flank, is yet another demonstration of their antipathy against Caesar. And yes, Roman aggression towards Christians is heavily exaggerated. Very few emperors actually ever had policies against Christians, it was mostly provincial rulers who persecuted them.
Speaking of persecution, Julian, etc, lets talk about Christian persecution of Pagans. Many Christian emperors were not persecutory of pagans, which probably had something to do with some of them being former Pagans or having Pagans close to them. It also had to do with the political unpopularity of persecuting a majority of your population, so Constantine was not going to do it. Constantius did do it, but his decisions were reversed by Julian. It was only really under Theodosius I that paganism started being persecuted by the state, and it is only under Theodosius II in his Codex Theodosius that Pagan practices even in private settings become justification for punishment and including death. However, simply being a pagan was not illegal. Pagan sacrifice was, and Pagan temples were shut down. Rome at this point is not exactly in its glory days, so it probably wasn't too hard for people to slick by the Theodosian laws on Paganism, but nonetheless you do see that significant drop down to 4% during the reigns of Theodosius II and Honorius. Groups like the Neoplatonic School were able to survive in Athens because technically they did not break these rules. They were just theorycels, after all, they weren't sacrificing any oxen... Even though they were explaining why you should. Which you should!
Also, I hope you don't actually believe that garbage about St. Catherine. It is impossible to win a 1v50 debate, debates are won by the mood of the room and when 50 people agree with each other the mood of the room is always on their side. What is perfectly possible is to walk out of a debate imagining that whichever side you like won, which is what most people do, and over time this probably got exaggerated into saying Catherine started converting swathes of Pagan intellectuals after a single debate (again, you've been online for long enough. You know this doesn't happen).
You are correct that Pagan religions were not as zealous as Christianity (why should they be?) but the idea that people were just venerating historical figures is nonsense. I hope you aren't one of those euhemerist types, because all of that is bullshit. The ancients pretty obviously believed in the gods and believed that certain heroic ancestors had been deified, judging by their patterns of worship. We don't sacrifice pigs to Thomas Jefferson and then examine the innards of the pig to see what Jefferson is trying to tell us. Oh yeah -- speaking of which, that is what was going on at the Blots. It was a divinatory practice. And splattering of blood is not "satanic", anointing people with the blood of ritually slaughtered animals is literally something that happens in the old testament. Blots were animal sacrifices, I don't think there is much evidence that human beings were divined in the same way animals were, although there are other recorded ways they were sacrificed. If you want evidence of there being a degree of Pagan zealotry, look no further than the (sham) trial of Socrates. Although Socrates in reality was a pious pagan, the fact that he was executed for supposedly not being one and convincing the city's youths not to be pious demonstrates that the ancients actually did take this stuff quite seriously.
Saying pagans never received the harsh treatment from Christian rulers even early in the conversion process is pretty unfair imo. The Theodosian laws are well known.
I didn’t say they never did, just that the poor treatment they received never equaled the inverse situation
Fuck that we can go rizz for rizz
FYI, there is a famous Scythian who got Hellenized and became a philosopher. Forget his name, he's like the first of the skeptics I think. Well, he want back to scythia to share the new ways and his own brother killed him for being apostate. Zealotry was present in paganism, it just wasn't... Well zealotry for an Abrahamic god. What is a berserk if not a zealot? What is a druid leading a rebellion if not a zealot?
To say that pagans werent zealots or that they just faded out of history because Christians were tolerant is silly. But good article anyways, I hope to see more rebuttals from both of you
How much of the zealotry around being pagan was just due to the pantheon being an extension of the will and spirit of the people? That’s different than the way Christians are zealots despite there being obvious overlap.
Also, I do think (especially for the ancient world) the Christians were quite tolerant. You should read Dr Stark’s book that I paraphrased for that bit and see what you think
I think the pagans were pretty tolerant too, all things considered. I know that you view the brutality of the past differently though! There are some fun stories about Saxons thinking Jesus was a god of mercy and putting a cross in a hof next to their idols of Wotan. But you have to understand, most of Europe was not like Rome and wasn't used to having new (and foreign) religions thrust on them from outside. It would, reasonably, be seen as an attack.
The question about zealotry is interesting and I don't have a good answer. I will have to think about it. A part of me thinks the zealotry is an extension of the divine power they are in concert with. I just know that there are examples of pagans being real pious and zealotrous, which is not what Christians tend to think concerning these ancient "demon worshippers". Most Christians associate ancient pagans with modern secularism, which makes them associate paganism with agnostics and atheists. These ancient pagans truly believed what they preached, especially if they were living in isolation from other tribes. Many of them viewed their gods as ancestral to them, such as the Celtic tribes, who often utilized this as a cry for patriotism which you noted. I don't think you see the issue here. Paganism produced a form of patriotism that was religious in nature. This is no different than the jewish zealots refusing to bend the knee to foreign Rome and her ways. Zealots of Israel were straight up religious patriots.
I think Judaism is a folk religion for jews. Christianity is universalist and therefore not adequate for any single race. European paganism provides us with our own folk religion. Something that makes us religious about our nation and people. My 2 cents.