The new atheists and The war on History

[VyckRo]

Obviously we can't. We have no idea how the library was destroyed. It is a mystery. We do know that there was a library. We do know that Christians did not like the melting pot of religion that was Alexandria. We also know that other conflicts could have led to its destruction. Another thing we know, the building may have survived and then been hidden or destroyed by a natural disaster, which destroyed other landmarks of Alexandria.

"We have no idea how the library was destroyed" therefore we assume that they were Christians!
Though here, we speak of the Byzantine empire, that kept all the knowledge of antiques that we do have, in reality all the parents of the eastern church, as
Basil the Great or John Chrysostom were scholars in Greek philosophy.
In this time in the west, the classical culture disappears from most places. But not because Christians wanted to destroy the ancient culture

In ancient Rome all intelligentsia knew Greek, but once with the disappearance of the traditional patrician elite,with the collapse of the West Roman Empire, the Greek knowledge is lost.
In ancient Rome Greek was the language of intellectuals, as French would be later for Russians, and there was no need for translations of classical works from Greek in to Latin, therefore the Greek tests become unusable, from the moment of the disappearance of that intellectual elite that was able to understand them
So at the moment the great schism, for example, the Catholics messengers were not even able to communicate with the patriarch of Constantinople,in Greek..
And that because for centuries for the vast majority of the Westerners, their entire knowledge of the Greek literature originated only from four works:

1) Macrobius' Commentary upon Scipio's Dream
2) On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury by Martianus Felix Capella
3) the translation and comments of Plato's Timaeus from Greek into Latin made by Calcidius
4) Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

But the Byzantine philosophy, developed quite early the concept that a philosophy can be understood only by itself. Therefore scholars as Michael Psellos and John Italos recommended that the study of Greek philosophy to start only from the original works, and this study to be done, even with the risks, of contradicting the Christian dogma.

In the Byzantine Empire 9th and 10th centuries a work begins of recovery and transcribing old manuscripts, Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos provides a personal support for the salvation of the pagan literature.
Was enough that some literary sources to be classified as "traditionally sources" to be treated with utmost respect, and to be considered above any controversy.
These works became "cultural goods,of the Greek nation" and any criticism of them was regarded as a proof of barbarism.

"Christians did not like the melting pot of religion that was Alexandria"
of course ... that is why all the great eastern theologians and Patriarchs were educated in Alexandria

quod erat demonstrandum

We observe, the following atheist myths:
Christians as destroyers of ancient culture
Christians as destroyers of library in Alexandria


sources for the above
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Byzance by Michel Kaplan
Byzantinisches Erotikon by Hans-Georg.
La philosophie byzantine - Basile N. Tatakis
Theologie Und Philosophie In Byzanz By Gerhard Podskalsky
Aristote au mont Saint-Michel by Sylvain Gouguenheim
Byzantine Theology by john Meyendorff