But there is no reason to situate it in a Christian context. We are in a global multi religious community here. I could call your comment bad, supported by it being a trite semantic argument without relevancy for the subject. But that would do nothing to further the discussion here. Calling the library non-confucianist would be even more correct as Platonists are an important foundation for Christian thought. Though a completely useless labeling just as the pegan label.
There is a reason to situate it in a roman context. Rome eventually becomes christianized and it makes sense to talk about before and after that. Obviously the old still influences the new, its not a hard line, but it is a major change in roman society.
The relevant context is the context in which it existed--that of a Roman library in pre-Christian Rome, making it a Roman library with no context of paganism. If it were a collection specifically of pagan writings assembled and maintained after Rome's widespread conversion to Christianity, then the pagan aspect would be meaningful, as it describes the relevance of that library to the society in which it existed.
To call it a "pagan" library now fails to describe it in the context of what it was at the time as well as what it is today, and instead is needlessly and aimlessly anchoring the perspective to the Christian world. It would be as if I described the library as being a Goy library--sure, I can, and wouldn't be technically wrong, but it's a meaningless distinction, and one that's more concerned about expressing the speaker's context than the subject's context, and the speaker is not relevant.
It’s not a meaningless distinction, as it cements it rather firmly in a broad era within a specific context of thought, unlike referring to it as a Goy library. If you refer to it as a Goy library, that both brings it within a Judeo-Christian context and completely loses all meaning. However referring to it as Pagan you now are more informed of the era and schools of thought employed at the time.
I mean, part of what makes this library interesting is that nearly all of the classical Greek and Latin texts we have access to have been passed through the filter of generations of Christian monks copying those texts. Being able to see what these texts looked like without that filter is inherently interesting.
it's just that the romans themselves had an identity crisis of "pagan" vs. "monothestic". So yes, you are right to call out the fact that situating it in the christian context would be follie.
But the original point still stands. Calling it pagan is still a correct classification of the works in the library.
Wrong. This is essentially the context in which we still live today though we’ve secularized substantially over the past centuries. But Rome was on the path to Christianity at this time and later converted, so this is a very common way to understand things. Generally a work is one of a few things: Christian, Jewish, maybe Muslim depending on whom you ask, as it’s also an Abrahamic faith, or Pagan.
To be honest this feels more like you have an axe to grind with Christianity or its dominance, similar to the people pushing for “BCE/CE” over BC/AD. I don’t know why, but don’t expect the rest of the world to carry that cross for you.
> This is essentially the context in which we still live today
Who's "we"? - It doesn't apply to everyone in the world, so you're assuming some limitations in who you're referring to.
GP makes a fair point. If you mean by "pagan" simply non-Christian and non-Jewish, then to make it relevant to call it a pagan library you would need to establish that it was curated specifically to exclude Christain or Jewish themes. You might as well call it a "non-Mithraic library", if it happens to exclude mention of Mithras, which was also an up-and-coming cult among the Romans in the first century. Then it would be incorrect or presumptious to call it "non-Mithraic", unless you'd first established that it contained no mention of Mithras. And the only reason you'd do that is if Mithras held a particular parochial relevance to you. You understand that not everyone holds up an image of Mithras as a prism through which to view everything else.
OTOH, if you mean by "pagan" just that it's Roman, but from before Rome converted to Christianity, then just say it's a first century Roman library.
America, which is the center of world power and culture. You may not like that but that doesn't make it untrue. It's also where most users of this site live.
GP does not make a fair point. We're specifically talking about classical antiquity which was a fairly bounded world. Warrior god cults, like that of Mithras, didn't have a strong role in the overall state and direction of the empire. They weren't major players and it is actually perfectly fine for terminology and understanding to focus on those.
Christianity is the prism through which the Romans later viewed things and through which the heirs of classical antiquity did. This isn't parochial, this reflects your general dislike of Christianity's dominance. But I don't actually have to make a normative argument that it should be, just the positive point that it is.
"Pagan" is a widely-accepted way to refer to Rome's old polytheistic religious traditions, which existed, but not unchallenged, around the first century.
> America, which is the center of world power and culture.
Yeah, ok. So an explicitly parochial prespective. This isn't compelling from a disinterested, objective perspective.
> Warrior god cults, like that of Mithras, didn't have a strong role in the overall state and direction of the empire. They weren't major players and it is actually perfectly fine for terminology and understanding to focus on those.
That's not parochial, that's realistic. If you have an axe to grind with American dominance that's your own bias; it's a fact, not something you can argue with on objective grounds. Keep your personal anti-Americanism out of this; it's keeping you from thinking clearly.
Christianity didn't have as strong an influence there and then, but it obviously did in the course of the Roman Empire, and this was around the time it started to grow. It's obviously relevant in a way cults of Mithras or Serapis or whomever else weren't.
Thank you, that's illuminating. So it's a first century scroll, discovered in Italy, and you insist it's only true categorization is from the perspective of a present-day American Christian, while also claiming that everyone else is ideologically blinkered...
You know what else isn’t a compelling argument? This arduous attempt to argue that Christianity, the largest religion in the world and the very one that was adopted by Rome, is somehow inconsequential to the framing of what came before it. There is no logical argument that can be made to separate the two, for experts in the field will continue to use the term Pagan to refer to Pagan Rome no matter how much it hurts your feelings. It is simply the most objective and efficient method of separating it from the other. Unless of course you know of a better method that the historians do not? I’m sure they’d love to hear it.
> "Pagan" is a widely-accepted way to refer to Rome's old polytheistic religious traditions, which existed, but not unchallenged, around the first century.
Do you know for a fact that the library contained no mention of Jesus nor Judaism? If you don't know this, then why do you refer to it as pagan?
The point is: we have a Roman library from the first century AD. We don't know what it contains. To call it "pagan" tacitly assumes that (a) Christianity was not relevant to the collectors of the library, and (b) whether something is Christian or not is of primary interest whenever we discuss an artefact from the past.
We don't know whether (a) is true, and (b) is only true from a particularly dogmatic and insular perspective
Tbh, I'm struggling to understand what your point is apart from you're asserting that you view the world as centered on your own particular dogmatic tradition and you find it hard to understand why other's don't share that perspective
No, of course not. The accuracy of the original statement isn't the point. The point is to invalidate the ideologically-motivated conniption fit some people are pitching about a framing that is meet for the topic to have.
To be honest, adding the word "pagan" just seem needlessly divisive. When I read about the past, nobody is going out of their way to point out that it's Pagan.
Do you believe that Goy/Goyim is similarly divisive? Or Kafir? And I’m not sure what books you’re reading, Pagan vs Christian Rome is a common distinction if the context hasn’t already made it obvious (such as here).
Indian studies were not part of the world of classical antiquity and you know it. Nobody is calling them pagan. And no, stripping that descriptor removes information from the statement.
This isn't especially relevant. It barely covered a few scraps of northwest India. Most "Indo-Greek" civilization and culture was concentrated in Bactria and Sogdiana, not those few scraps of modern-day India, and BC Indo-Greek culture was not what we'd understand to be "Vedic Indian" so much as Persian-esque.
It also wasn't exactly part of the classical hellenistic civilization we talk about as the root of the western tradition, something of which I'm sure you're fully aware, making this a moot point.
Seems like we could be using BCE/AV (for Anno Vulgi). This would be cromulent with how the BC/AD pair is half English and half Latin. And then for convenience and compatibility, shorten BCE to BC.
Firstly, most people either don't know or don't regularly consider what BC and AD mean. No more than they remember i.e. stands for "id est" or know what the Latin means. These are basically opaque wrappers where there's no particular Christian subtext in their use. Or there wasn't until a bunch of people who really just hate Christianity started trying to expurgate every trace of it from our culture.
Do you understand why the phrase "Christian BS", aside from not really being much of an argument, ensures probably nine people in ten will immediately close off to what you say and refuse to take you seriously?
Do you understand that the majority of the world is not Christian?
Why do you think one should get away with trying to rewrite the very acronym that exists to not reference a religion into being a direct reference to a religion?
The alternative acronyms are neologisms created specifically out of anti-Christian sentiment.
If y'all were operating in good faith, these would catch the same level of attention:
- Sabbatical, originating from Sabbath, a Judeo-Christian day of rest,
- The use of "karma", "zen", and "avatar" as terms and concepts, which come mostly from eastern religion,
- The use of "kosher", "mazel tov", and "golem" outside religious contexts due to their Judaic roots,
- and the use of "assassin", from a group of Shiite militants during the Crusades.
Of course, none of these catch the sort of attention that BC and AD do, because this is an example of explicitly anti-Christian thought, word, and deed. If you are particularly averse to it as opposed to other religions, that is your personal bigotry to work through, not ours to placate.
Attacking something over its Christian roots that is no longer generally understood to be Christian is, in fact, anti-Christian bigotry. There is no policy of attacking things with any religious roots, just ours.
It say AD "was conceived around the year 525 by the Christian monk Dionysius Exiguus. He did this to replace the then dominant Era of Martyrs system, because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians." So AD itself was a neologism to avoid mentioning something offensive (or someone offensive, Diocletian).
It's probably related to the pushiness of the religion. Like, something similar might happen with Islam, or Hinduism these days. But probably not Zoroastrianism or animism. On the other hand I think it's silly and resembles damnatio memoriae.
You’re not separating what you call “pushiness” from mere presence. Notice how you picked two minuscule religions with tiny numbers of believers, and therefore very little community, worldwide?
This is about mindshare, or brand awareness. I removed the branding from a garment. Does that mean I took a dislike to the brand? Yes, because I thought about the vibes it gave off (it brought to mind sticky, crunchy dancefloors) and decided I didn't want to promote it. But this was the brand's fault for trying to use me as walking billboard in the first place, which forced me to pick a side on a matter I wouldn't otherwise have thought about. If I'd decided I liked it, I would have worn it proudly! If you're lucky enough to have mere presence, which means you're embedded in the culture in names and phrases and clothes and statues, some people are going to opt to convert that into your mere absence, and the correct response is not we are being picked on but fair enough, can't win them all.
I say correct, this of course depends on how embattled you are, how unfair it all is, and on the general moral situation.
