Newsgroup: it.cultura.religioni
Titolo: Cristiani, la distruzione della civilta'

 
  Ricordate i taleban mussulmani e la distruzione dei Buddha giganti in
Afghanistan?
  Con lo stesso accanimento barbarico agivano i Cristiani nel 391.
  I paralleli tra le due barbare religioni sono evvidenti.
 
  The Serapeum of Alexandria
In 389, Theodosius made the pagan holidays into workdays, at least those
that had not been appropriated by the Church.
In 391, he outlawed blood sacrifice and decreed "no one is to go to the
sanctuaries, walk through the temples, or raise his eyes to statues created
by the labor of man". Not a law that the Church was to follow itself! In
Egypt, Theophilus, the bishop of Alexandria, saw the opportunity to strike
out and destroy the remaining temples.
First, he obtained legal authority, over an abandoned temple, to turn it
into a church. He stripped the pagan statues and art works and displayed
them in his new church in a mocking fashion. He was good in the role of
agent provocateur; the pagan population rose up in riots, as he may have
planned, and he laid low for awhile. The pagan defenders now withdrew into
the Serapeum, the most imposing of the city's remaining sanctuaries and
proceeded to fortify it.
The Serapeum was by all accounts a building of startling size and striking
beauty. Ptolemy lll had had it built in honor of Isis and Serapis, a
syncretistic Greek/Egyptian deity who combined aspects of Osiris, Zeus,
Pluto and the Egyptian 'Apis' bull. He was associated with both the dead and
healing.
The temple itself opened onto a courtyard surrounded by a complex of
buildings which included housing for the priests, priestesses, and people
who came for a retreat. It also housed part of the public collections of the
city's fabled Library. People came for something called incubation: they
would sleep in the temple with the intent of receiving a dream that would be
healing or direct them towards a treatment or resolution of a problem.
Sacred banquets were also given in the precincts.
The statue of the god seemed even larger than it was because it had
outstretched arms with hands that touched the walls of the temple. It was
constructed of wood, metals and stones of contrasting colors. The body was
painted dark blue, the clothing and sandals were covered with silver and
golden grain and fruit spread from his headgear (calathus).15
According to Clement of Alexandria, the sculptor had used fragments of
sapphire, hematite, emerald and topaz. There were seats by the statue where
people could sit and meditate on the god, a kind and gentle god who set
souls free according to, the pagan emperor, Julian the Transgressor. Here
Isis became associated with the Greek goddess Demeter.
The situation turned into a siege, the defenders, rallied within, included
the philosopher Olympius; troops swept the nearby streets but the complex
was well fortified and the pagans who apparently had plenty of food stores,
inside, maintained themselves.
The stand-off continued, finally the prefect and the military governor of
Egypt asked Theodosius to intervene.
The emperor pardoned the resistors but declared that the temple must be
destroyed (the evil extirpated). The support of the emperor rallied the
Christian mobs who were goaded into action by the fanatical tirades of the
bishop and in a tide-like frenzy the church mob succeeded in breaking
through the barricades and smashing down the doors and swept through the
sanctuary breaking, looting and tearing up everything they could get their
hands on.
After the Serapeum was taken, the Christians pulled down the outer walls and
sunlight fell on the interior, revealing walls covered with hieroglyphs.
Sozomen, a Christian propagandist, making out ankhs, Egyptian 'crosses',
symbolizing eternal life, declared that they had predicted the triumph of
the Christian church.
The mob halted before the awe inducing, enormous statue of Serapis, but the
bishop urged the mob on and ordered an ax taken to the statue. A soldier got
up the courage and hit the jaw with an ax, the statue, which was made from
fitted-together pieces, collapsed and rats ran out from hollowed out
sections to the glee of the Christians, according to Theodoret in the
Ecclesiastical History.
They chopped the statue up into little pieces and then, no doubt, its
precious decorations carted off to church coffers, set it on fire. A
manuscript depicts the bishop trampling on the shrine; finally, the
Patriarch directed the torching of the entire sanctuary. T
his complex of buildings which had been the central symbol of the city was
completely razed. according to Eunapius:
Men who had never heard of war boldly attacked stones and walls. They
demolished the Serapeum! ... they made war on offerings. Courageously, they
gave battle to the statues until they had vanquished and robbed them.
Their military tactics consisted of stealing without being seen.
As they could not carry away the pavement because of the weight of the
stones that could hardly be moved, when they had simultaneously overturned
everything in sight, these great and valiant warriors, whose hands though
rapacious, were not stained with blood, declared that they had triumphed
over the gods.
They gloried in their sacrilege and impiety. In these 'sacred places 'monks'
were installed, those creatures who resemble men but live like pigs.... I
n that period anyone who wore a black robe had despotic power! In the abode
and in place of the gods, henceforward worship was rendered to the skeletons
of a few wretched ex-convicts, slaves who deserved the whip: the
'martyrs'".16
The place was then covered with crosses.
Having such symbolic centrality, to so many of the inhabitants, its
destruction would have been extremely dispiriting, psychologically, leaving
the people demoralized and bound by despair.
According to historian Robert Turcan, in this depressed state, "strong-arm
monks and shock-troop Christians" terrorized many of the inhabitants into
conversion.
The Iseum in Memphis, the old capital of pharaonic Lower Egypt was closed
around this time, its statues and sacred objects sent to a temple, at
Menouthis, near Alexandria for safekeeping. An old prophecy (attributed to
Hermes Trismegistus17) circulated among the broken Egyptians:
A time will come when it will seem that the Egyptians in the piety of their
hearts, have honored their gods in vain, with a devoted cult.... The gods on
leaving the earth, will return to heaven; they will abandon Egypt.... That
holy earth, land of sanctuaries and temples, will be completely covered with
coffins and corpses. O Egypt, Egypt nothing will remain of your religion but
fables, and later, your children will not even believe them! ... the people
abandoned, will all die, and then with neither gods nor men, Egypt will be
nothing but a desert. It is to you that I speak, holy river, it is to you I
announce the things to come: torrents of blood will swell your waters to
their banks ... and there will be more dead than living ; as for those who
survive, it is only by their language that they will be recognized as
Egyptian: in their manners they will seem to be men of another race."18
Of course, the unfortunate Egyptians would even lose their language.
The Christians were pleased to use this prophetic text as propaganda and
Augustine declared the prophecy was "the wild cry of the demons who foresee
the punishment that await them".19
But the river god returned as always, in 392, fertilizing the country with
his silt in the annual flooding and thereby sowing confusion among the
depressed peasants who had expected the river to fail to rise due to the
destruction of the Serapeum.
The bishop ordered more temples pillaged in both Alexandria and Canopus, the
resort city on the coast connected to Alexandria by a canal.
Although, followers of Isis and Osiris hung on in both Egypt and Rome, they
had been dealt a crippling blow.
And Alexandria, itself, was to never recover its prestige, sinking into a
sad decline, a city that for seven centuries had been one of the worlds most
important intellectual, artistic, scientific and spiritual centers, a place
where people from many cultures met and new syncretistic traditions had
emerged.
A city where Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and Latin were all spoken and famed for
its beauty, it was also associated throughout the Roman world with
homoeroticism.
With the Serapeum gone, many of the remaining intellectuals left for exile.
Olympius had left before the fall of the Serapeum, having lost his nerve. He
had claimed that the statues had lost their sacred energy, their dynamis,
and he shipped for Italy where he faded from history.
Two more of the defenders, Helladus and Ammonius emigrated to Constantinople
where they taught literature and covertly served the priesthood of Zeus and
Thoth-Hermes. Helladus had heroically killed nine of the zealot attackers,
in hand to hand combat, a feat that I doubt many philosophers today would be
capable of emulating.
A poet, who had been involved in the defense, Palladus, remained although
his stipend from the city was canceled. He wrote:
"The defuncts left the lively city
And we who continue to live bring the city to burial".20
Finally, in the figure of Hypatia (370-415), the demise of Alexandria as
city of philosophy can be said to meet its conclusion.
Hypatia was a brilliant philosopher, mathematician and astronomer and head
of the platonic school at the Library/Museum.
She was an independent woman who taught and lectured and whose life provides
a glimpse of the remarkable women, who were able to make a place for
themselves in the public sphere, in the late classical world.
But her popularity, as one of the last pagan philosophers and a woman no
less, met head on with the wrath of the intensely misogynist Patriarch Cyril
who whipped his followers up into a hysterical hatred of Hypatia.
In 415, the city was seething with discord, the Patriarch had ordered the
expulsion of all Jews from the city and the secular authority, a Roman
prefect, had tried to prevent this.
In a move cementing Christian political control of the province, Cyril
ordered his monks to murder the prefect.
On a day shortly after the assassination, Hypatia, while driving through the
city in her chariot, was set upon by a mob of Christian fanatics, who
dragged her out of the chariot and into a nearby church where with grotesque
cruelty they hacked her to pieces, with potsherds and broken glass, and
then, triumphally, paraded through the streets with the grisly remains which
they finally burned in a bonfire.
(According to some accounts in the Library).21 Tolerance had evaporated into
the desert air and the city, its famous library decimated, drifted into a
fitful sleep. Still a couple of centuries later the Islamic conqueror found
enough books (evidently mostly Christian) left to have them burned for fuel
for his hot bath.
A depressing end, for a Library that at its height is believed to have held
a million works, in many languages, and functioned as a research center
whose scientists measured with considerable accuracy (within 1%) the
circumference of the planet22 and propounded the heliocentric nature of the
solar system over 1700 years before Galileo.
Odio feroce e sanguinario contro la civilta'.
D'ora in poi la terra e' piatta, trionfa l'ignoranza.
Theophilo, vescovo di Alexandria un criminale fanatico.
Il Patriarca Cirillo un assassino sanguinario.
Theodosio l'imperatore delle stragi.
Saluti Cad Ali'
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Link
http://www.vinland.org/scamp/grove/kreich/index.html


  I paralleli tra le due barbare religioni sono evvidenti.
Io non ho una grande opinione dei Cristiani, cio' non
toglie che paragonare due fatti successi quasi a 2000 anni
di distanza l'uno dall'altro e' una stupidaggine
colossale.
        Saluti 

"SILVEA" <pap...@ddd.eee> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:H2Joe.9974$is5....@tornado.fastwebnet.it...

Pare che in 2000 anni non sia cambiato granché:
http://tinyurl.com/9omt4
http://www.greekgodslegal.co.uk/
http://agis10.tripod.com/
http://www.istillworshipzeus.com/
-- 
çau a todi,
Luç de Madora