(November 12, 2019 at 12:51 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Here's a short video of a historian explaining why Christians killed Hypatia.
So I guess we could say that the video is divided into few parts and in each part she says:
- how library was destroyed, first by wars and then by Christians who considered it pagan and then finished off by muslims
- how there was no tension between neo platonists and Christians, that there was no religious reason for Hypatia to be killed (although historian seems to contradict herself later)
- how bishop Cyril (or should I say St. Cyril) saw that Hypatia was a popular scholar and in his jealousy decided to kill her; then historian tries to explain that Christians saw Hypatia as symbol of free thinking and they didn't want that, but that they wanted something like autocracy by bishops (so it seems there were religious reasons for her death)
- description of the process of Hypatia's killing by Christians inside that church
- how contemporaries of the time blamed Bishop Cyril for Hypatia's death and that bishop usurped violence on the streets
- how some later leaders of the Christianity referred to Hypatia as a witch
Thank you for making an effort to find the truth of this. It's sad that some people repeat an over-simple propagandistic version. And it's sad that a big-shot movie spread a fictional version.
The different factions in Alexandria in those days often settled political or power struggles through violence. This may seem primitive to us, but in fact our own country does it too -- we are just a little bit more removed from the violence. (see: current US-backed coup in Bolivia)
Christians killed Neoplatonists, Neoplatonists killed Christians. Jews weren't blameless, either. Neoplatonist teachers beside Hypatia continued working unmolested in Alexandria.
The remains of the great library were housed in the Serapeum, a temple to the creator-god Serapis. Nobody knows how many scrolls remained from the original number; they were not destroyed out of a desire to suppress knowledge.
Hypatia herself was a Neoplatonist philosopher who believed that the One (much like the Christian God) emanates the Nous, which in turn emanates the World Soul. Each of us has a miniature version of the World Soul as our own soul. Our goal is to live in such a way that the soul returns at death to the One. In other words, if she were posting on this forum several frequent posters would call her an idiot.
