Interview with Catherine Nixey on The Darkening Age

Source: www.tttpodcast.com/season-02/...
In this episode of Travels Through Time, Catherine Nixey, author of the international bestseller The Darkening Age, guides Violet Moller back to the ancient city of Alexandria in the year 415. They talk about the simmering tensions between Christians, Jews and Pagans at that time. Among the characters they meet is the gifted, beautiful and powerful Hypatia of Alexandria.
~
Hypatia of Alexandria has always been a compelling figure. Her glittering life and brutal death have inspired writers, poets and film makers for centuries. But what lies behind the myth and speculation?
Hypatia’s murder was a particularly horrific episode in the gradual triumph of Christianity over classical culture, a slow and painful process that was played out across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. In this episode Catherine Nixey isolates and analyses 415, one dramatic year in this complex story.
Catherine Nixey is a journalist and author. The Darkening Age won an award from the Royal Society of Literature and was an international bestseller. Her journalism has appeared in The Economist, The Financial Times, The Times and The New York Times.
The Darkening Age is available from MacMillan now.
Show notes:
Scene 1: Cyril becomes Bishop of Alexandria and begins to impose his policy on the city. He regulates theatrical entertainment and the Jews react, killing a Christian in the process.
Scene 2: Cyril orders his followers to attack the synagogues and seize Jewish property. Orestes, secular ruler of the city, is attacked by Christians (even though he is one himself) but manages to escape.
Scene 3: The violence escalates. Hypatia is rumoured to have cast a spell on Orestes, public feeling against her is stirred up. She is pulled from her coach and murdered.
Memento: One of Hypatia's astrolabes.
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Interview: Violet Moller
Guest: Catherine Nixey
Producer: Maria Nolan
Titles: Jon O

[@pimwiersinga8822]

What a riveting conversation, Violet and Catherine!

[@Gorboduc]

Christianity was the Burn Loot Murder of late antiquity.

[@Anon1gh3]

love the londoner accent.

[@lazmotron]

In the author's research did she ever come across the idea that Christianity was created by a group of Alexandrian Jews?

[@kevinhowe3280]

Is that even controversial?

[@RohitSharma-mi8gt]

Not for a millennium anything approached this library - Nalanda, Taxila, Kyoto etc !

[@WhiteBraveheart1]

And, what has Christianity produced?

[@Artha.]

meeks

[@mattcovington218]

Genocide destroy entire cultures

[@followtheciaence]

cuckolds

[@melissajensen4901]

So it seems that the interview with Marcus du Sautoy never happened?

[@tinewordsmith126]

I love how Christians trash this book calling it "anti-christian" and "bias" 😂 🤣🔥

[@topologyrob]

Not only Christians see its bias - it's very clearly written with an anti-Christian agenda and distorts history quite badly.

[@channeler231]

@@topologyrob Get real and stop with your self delusional lies about christianity ok.

[@FERGUSARYAN]

Well Tine, I expect you do love that. If you had read the extensive critical review in Amazon by atheist scholars you would see the the most trenchant criticism of Nixey’s bias comes for her fellow atheists who are true scholars in the field of history. Do you ‘love’ that too or have you some more constructive observation other than that you despise Christianity?

[@Artha.]

@Sanjeev Das Based? 😳

[@Artha.]

@Sanjeev Das 😈🙏

[@lemsip207]

I read this book recently and found it to be eye opening and informative but was expecting a section on the spread of Christianity through Europe. Maybe in a second volume. At 31.20 is this apostle Julia Julian of Norwich? I found it was strange that a woman would be called Julian but was told that Julian was a female name back then. I see giving girls boys' names at birth is a way of telling them that they cannot get on in life without pretending to be male and that female dominated occupations have little value.

[@SagesseNoir]

She's a good writer.

[@tahoeclimber]

Christians we’re a rival Jewish sect. Were the Christians that killed Hypatia ethnic Jews or converts?

[@kevinhowe3280]

They were spiritual jews

[@lemsip207]

Watch the promo videos for Jesus He Knows Me by Genesis made in 1992, Catholic School Girls rule by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and then Rosenrot by Rammstein made more recently. They all expose the absurdity, hypocrisy and control involved with Christianity. The former American TV evangelism and the latter Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity in Eastern Europe with the monks whipping themselves until they bleed after one of them tries to seduce an underage girl. Also there are three tracks on the Neon Bible album by Arcade Fire, released in 2007) which criticise Christianity; Intervention, Neon Bible and Antichrist Television Blues.

[@melissajensen4901]

I bet you would like _Pope Rap_ by Trevor Moore

[@lemsip207]

@@melissajensen4901 XTC also had a single called Dear God.

[@dhurjati1387]

44:48

[@fergusryan3395]

Nixey’s vituperous hatred of Christianity, sheer bias and ignorance of antiquity is identified by secular historians and philosophers including many who are themselves atheists. It seems remarkable that so little critical inquiry is brought to bear on her awful ‘Darkness’ book. It was primarily Christians who preserved the Latin and Greek classical texts, including both the Irish scholars and the Byzantine Syriac monks from who the Muslims gratefully received the copied and preserved Greek texts. Nixey repeats the nonsense that Christians burnt down the library at Alexandria, for which there is no record whatever, and was an invention of anti-Christian animus from writers like Gibbon. Nixey might just as well have written a book called I Hate Christianity while having almost no understanding whatever of its basic tenets. At least great atheists like Hume and Nietzsche had the manners to understand what it was they were against, in Nietzsche’s case the fact the Christians, almost uniquely in antiquity, cared for the marginalised, and thus, for Nietzsche, held up the development of the Übermensch. That Christians reached the masses as well as the educated is retranslated by Nixey’s hatred as people too stupid to use a ladder. The atheist historian Tom Holland wipes out the sheer screed of Nixey’s book, whose bias is gratefully received by others who have no wish to find the reality that it was largely Christians who preserved the classic texts, an historical reality biased populist journalists like Nixey would find contrary to what they hoped had happened. There were no ‘dark ages’ other than those which pagans brought on the Western Empire, destroying its learning, which admittedly was already in decline from the Empire’s drift far from Christian values. Read the reviews on Amazon from scholars such as Paul Krause, and discover a very different world of antiquity from that painted in Nixey’s garish colours.

[@xiuhcoatl4830]

That's a quite dumb argument. There wouldn't have need for preserving the old culture if it hadn't been destroyed by christians in the first place.

[@FERGUSARYAN]

@@xiuhcoatl4830 There are many reasons why cultures are destroyed. If Christians were actively engaged in preserving Greek literature (Syriac monks especially) it does not mean that Christians (or only Christians) were responsible for destroying them in the first place. I mentioned that academic historians who are themselves atheists are highly critical of Nixey’s claims. Perhaps anyone who doesn’t share the beliefs you have chosen is ‘dumb’, but I often respect the beliefs of others with whom I happen to disagree.

[@FERGUSARYAN]

@@xiuhcoatl4830 Why would Syriac and Irish Christians be actively preserving Greek Classical texts if they were trying to destroy them? Are you unaware that Christians in Alexandria attended the schools of philosophers and vice versa, and often admired each other ? Do you know about the 2C Christian philosopher Justin Martyr who actively engaged with Greek philosophy, and who regarded Plato and Aristotle as ‘Christians before Christ?’ Have you no sense of the murderous horrors perpetrated by pagan empires like Rome against Christians? Or how pagan hordes destroyed Rome itself and many of its treasures? Did you not spot that Nixey’s report that Christians burnt down the library at Alexandria is completely without historical record, or did you not know that? History isn’t one simple story that all the bad things were caused by people who followed the One who said ‘Love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you?’ Did you not know that it was only Christians who cared for the infants thrown away by pagans? Many objects were indeed destroyed, not because they were ‘art’ but because they were associated with various evils. Are you aware of Paul’s visit to Athens to debate with the philosophers of Athens, in which he affirmatively referenced the pagan poet Epimenides and also referred positively to then monument to the unknown God? The entire intellectual tradition of Christianity doesn’t amount to a group of people who were simply ‘dumb’ (though I myself may disagree with figures like Augustine). Nixey’s early chapters betray a simple hatred for Christians (‘idiots’). Criticism of her by atheist academics is unrelated to the truth or falsity of Christianity, only to Nixey’s bias in how she reports on the events she describes. Maybe they’re dumb too and would benefit from your engagement with their criticisms of Nixey. I happen to believe that the basic Christian message coheres with reality, but I wouldn’t waste a moment defending what various groups who identified as Christians may have done. But I may defend them if they are falsely accused of things they never did.

[@xiuhcoatl4830]

@@FERGUSARYAN Except they were, wether by the roman christians actively destroying heritage, or by the christianized germanic and gothic tribes sacking the classical world

[@willagnes8376]

God doesn't exist, your life is a lie

[@topologyrob]

This seems a very unreliable book, cherry picking all over the place and seems to have a huge agenda. “As a result of recent work, it can be stated with confidence that temples were neither widely converted into churches nor widely demolished in Late Antiquity. …. In his Empire-wide study, Bayliss located only 43 cases [of desacralisation or active architectural destruction of temples] of which a mere 4 were archaeologically confirmed.” (Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Toward a New Narrative?” in Lavan and Mulryan, The Archaeology of Late Antique 'Paganism', p. xxiv)

[@kanankapoor5036]

Oh yeah? I suppose all the Pagans of the world just decided to buy themselves a one way ticket to Hell. They were headed there anyway, why prolong the inevitable -- they thought. Glad they saw the errors of their ways and peacefully decided to remove themselves out of the way.

[@Rob84164]

This argument is not conclusive because, as Bryan Ward Perkins would say, very often remains of a temple appear that are not sufficiently well preserved to provide reliable evidence as to whether the temple was simply closed or destroyed, for example in the case of cities that survived into the 6th and 7th centuries, such as most Roman cities, abandoned temples became an important source of cheap stone and ended up being systematically dismantled down to their foundations and even below them, thus losing any precise indication of when and how they were abandoned, to trace archaeologically the abandonment of the original function of a building requires clear and datable data, something for which all too often there is no or ambiguous evidence. Let us not forget the ideological element in this matter. For the Christians of the 4th-5th centuries, the destruction of a temple was the prelude to the Christianization of the pagans of the place, who were thus uprooted from their ancestral beliefs by the lack of the geographical element of reference of their cult.

[@refreshrateyes]

what a treat!