R. G. Price - On the Mythic Jesus

[coffeeveritas]

Are you talking about the destruction of the Serapeum? Because there were no books destroyed in that fire.

I assumed he was talking about the library at Alexandria. It was either ransacked or burned or both thanks to religious chaos between Christians and Pagans.

The famous Library of Alexandria was destroyed by accident by Julius Caesar in 48 BC, and again by Aurelian sometime in the 3rd Century. There was no religious chaos between Christians and Pagans in either of those cases; they were both Roman military actions. The “backup” library in Alexandria was located in a pagan temple and it was called the “Serapeum.” (See Min’s post I quoted below.) The temple which was part of the same complex as the library was ordered destroyed by the Bishop of Alexandria. It was ordered destroyed after a series of conflicts between Christians and Pagans over the issue of the discovery of a number of human skulls found in an abandoned pagan temple. The conflict had escalated to a full scale riot, and the pagans present took a number of Christians hostage and locked themselves in the Serapeum temple. They ultimately executed the hostages and were arrested. The bishop then made a public display of the superstitions associated with the worship of the pagan gods in the city and the pagans attacked the gathered Christians and killed as many as they could. At this point the Bishop of Alexandria asked the emperor for permission to destroy all the pagan temples, which included the Serapeum. We do not have any indication that the library at the periphery of the temple was ordered destroyed, or that it was still there at the time. It is important to note that the target of the destruction was not the library, but the temple of Serapis, and we have evidence that the Christians in Alexandria actually had a tradition of valuing the books of the library rather highly.

I wasn’t sure which library you meant when you said “library at Alexandria” since there were two main ones, so I talked about both.

The Serapaeum was the last refuge of the Library of Alexandria which had been severely damaged....possibly in an earthquake...in the previous century. What was salvaged was moved to the Serapaeum as a kind of second-string "library."

in which the Serapeum was vandalized and its library destroyed, is dated about 391.

Your source here seems to be indicating that we have evidence that the library was destroyed along with the temple, but we don’t. There is no specific mention of a library or of any scrolls destroyed in any of the accounts of the destruction of the Temple of Serapis, not even in pagan sources, and the historian Ammianus Marcellinus writing before the destruction of the temple refers to its library in the past tense, indicating that the library had been moved. The one account we have of any scrolls being lost is from Orosius, who either speaking of men of his age or Christians, says that people had taken scrolls from temples. He makes no specific reference to the Serapeum, and he is talking about people stealing scrolls, not destroying them.

The xtian emperor Jovian ordered the burning of the library of Antioch in 364.
The library at Ephesos was damaged by the Goths so it looks like xtians can't be blamed for that one.
Xtian crusaders burned the library of Constantinople during the 4th crusade showing that the propensity for destruction had not been bred out of ignorant xtians even by the 13th century.

Ok, that’s what I’m talking about. Whenever I ask for accounts of book burning all I ever get is people saying “Christians destroyed the Library of Alexandria” by which they mean the Serapeum (though some actually think it was the famous library that was destroyed). This is good stuff; I’ll have to read those stories. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction Min!

Xtians were not under suspicion for being xtians....the Romans tolerated all sorts of crazy shit under the guise of religion. They were suspected of sedition because they purportedly would not swear allegiance to Roman gods ( including by this time, the Emperor himself). Both Trajan and PLiny indicate that those who did so swear were pardoned.

We have evidence (from various apologia) that Christians had no problems swearing allegiance to the Roman Emperor, but they refused to worship him. That was why they were classified as an illegal religious group. It’s pretty clear in the account of Pliny that what people were being charged with was "being Christian." He says, “I asked them whether they were Christians; if they admitted it, I repeated the question twice, and threatened them with punishment; if they persisted, I ordered them to be at once punished.” The only thing that Pliny needed to know to punish them was whether or not they were Christians. They didn’t swear allegiance to the emperor to be pardoned, they had to worship him. Pliny says the of the ones he pardoned, “They repeated after me an invocation to the gods, and offered religious rites with wine and incense before your statue (which for that purpose I had ordered to be brought, together with those of the gods), and even reviled the name of Christ.” There was no oath of allegiance in there anywhere but “religious rites” and “an invocation to the gods.”

But again, you are getting way off the original point which, back in post #16 you said that jesus was well located historically and I challenged you for those historical locations and reminded you that Suetonius and Tacitus were 2d century. Suetonius' comments are insignificant enough to be dismissed but Tacitus is another story. [You go on to argue that Tacitus is not a valid source and was interpolated later]

The people I mentioned for my historical proof were the apostle Paul, the writers of the gospels, the writers of the rest of the NT, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, and Clement of Rome. It seems we have different views on their historical reliability. If any of them were at all historically reliable it would be hard to argue that Christianity wasn’t a fairly widespread movement by the 60’s CE or at very lest the 90’s, and it also would be hard to argue that there wasn’t a person named Jesus who was a teacher in Palestine in the first century.

Your comments have been enormously helpful for me Min, I feel like I understand the debate between the “Historical Jesus” and “Mythic Jesus” camps very clearly now. It seems that those scholars who view the aforementioned authors as reliable sources are in the “Historical Jesus” camp, and those scholars who view the aforementioned authors as unreliable sources are in the “Mythic Jesus” camp. I have a little chart of the basic positions of both sides in my head now, which is good because a visual will help me remember all of this. In the process I also freshened up on my scholarship in the area and even found leads on good book burning accounts. Very profitable indeed!