The Great Library - Part One

[@wlinden]

I keep asking how, if the library was “destroyed” by nefarious Christians, it was there to be “destroyed” again by Amr. The response is resounding silence.

[@depthhistory]

This excellent channel deserves a million subscribers, but these days, university graduates are mostly woefully uneducated and uninterested in any ideas more complicated that the ones they find in Marvel and Disney movies.

[@historyforatheists9363]

Thanks Alex. I actually started the channel precisely because I found "young people today" (excuse the generalisation) often don't read 10,000 word articles like the ones on my blog. But it's only been going for a couple of months, so maybe I'll get to that 1 million subscribers eventually. I only have 998,743 more to go, after all.

[@invasiveinqustiorahahahhah548]

By then you probably be nearing yours 80s my friend

[@carmeloterranova517]

Great video Tim, hope this channel grows, it deserves it

[@Kuudere-Kun]

I'm glad you decided to split this one up. Both "The Library wasn't what people thought it was" and "Christians didn't destroy it" are things I agree with. But the latter is primarily what the people I wind up dealing are claiming, and so when I link them something on it but all this information is discussed first they tend to get indignant and react as if the message was "the library wasn't a big deal and so burring down was fine". Some New Atheists do get into more niche claims then the usual great myths, and that does include accusing Christians of burning other specific libraries too, like the one in Antioch for example. And maybe some were, I have no interest in claiming Christians have never been @$$holees. But that's why I've seen less emphasis on claiming this library alone was super special but more it as the most notable example of what Christians were doing all the time.

[@Kuudere-Kun]

I've started doing my own research into the claim that Jovian Destroyed the Library of Antioch and it's fascination. It seems to have the exact opposite problem as the myth about the one in Alexandria. While Alexandria's can be shown to be gone before Christians are said to have destroyed it. The Museion in Antioch still existed after the time of Jovian as it was supported by Empress Eudoxia. It was burned during the Riot of the Greens in the the early 500s.

[@offcenterconcepthaus]

Keen point on Gibbon/protestants -- saw that in Schaff.

[@michaelcooksey7232]

Love the discussions and thought provoking ideas said without screaming and insults.

[@justinshadrach829]

Sounds like Neros blaming the Fire of Rome on the Christians (...don't tell me that didn't happen as well, DOH!). Tom! Very much appreciate your vid and honesty despite the fact you don't agree with my religious beliefs (although my own Christian beliefs and understanding have changed over the years). But that has nothing to do with your Historical integrity. Cheers Guvnor!

[@patrickbarnes1963]

This is excellent, Tim, thanks so much, man

[@henkvandergaast3948]

Liked and shared. I am sure that people in general should be seeing these as well as those in the non religious "flag bearing" community High quality shines through!

[@macroeconomics101]

This was a bloody good video. Far exceeded my expectations.

[@MrHazz111]

I suggest you do a reply to History Buff's video on the movie Agora, it seems that video has spread this myth the most as pop history at least on KZbin.

[@historyforatheists9363]

I'll be covering Agora's distortions in Part Two.

[@wanderingdaedalus9331]

TED-Ed too. The channel has separate pieces on her and the Library.

[@savioblanc]

That was the video that made me unsubscribe from History Buffs years ago

[@El-Silver]

@@savioblanc to be fair in a future love stream he said it's by far his worst video

[@animatewithdermot]

great stuff as always.

[@EscepticoHumanistaUU]

Excellent video.

[@benthompson421]

Hey Tim, I run a page on history on another platform and what wondering what books you would recommend on the so called “dark ages” or middle ages as well as some other books on this videos topic Thanks!

[@historyforatheists9363]

"Books on the Middle Ages" is pretty broad. That's 1000 years of history. On what aspects? Which specific periods in that span of 1000 years? What cultures? On the topic of ancient libraries, I recommend the book I cite in the video: Lionel Casson, Libraries of the Ancient World, (Yale University Press, 2001).

[@benthompson421]

@@historyforatheists9363 that’s a good question and i’m not really sure the exact time period. i see a lot of “the church persecuted scientists” type stuff that i want to counter with academic literature. my apologies if that is also a broad question

[@historyforatheists9363]

@@benthompson421 Then I'd suggest Ronald Numbers (ed.) "Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion" (Harvard, 2009) as a starting point.

[@benthompson421]

@@historyforatheists9363 very good. thank you Tim!

[@yordannydelvalle3301]

@@benthompson421 Can I see your page? Can you send a link so I can access to it?

[@theotokosappreciator7467]

Great video but i think that music is a little bit too loud

[@historyforatheists9363]

I don't think so. And you do have a volume control that you can use.

[@facelessone86]

@@historyforatheists9363 It's too loud.

[@Feuerbringer-Magazin]

Too loud relative to the voice he means.

[@jackcimino8822]

What is your opinion on Robert Spencer?

[@historyforatheists9363]

Never heard of him.

[@jackcimino8822]

@@historyforatheists9363 Fyi, he's in charge of Jihad Watch and is a right-wing scholar whi not only attacks Islam but has denied Muhammad's existence.

[@historyforatheists9363]

@@jackcimino8822 Okay. Unless he’s also an atheist he’s not relevant here.

[@jackcimino8822]

@@historyforatheists9363 Right, he is a Melkite Catholic. There ya go

[@carsonwall2400]

He's a far-right stooge that shouldn't be treated as a reliable source.

[@nilsggr]

I find it interesting that this belief seems (at least to my knowledge) not to be very common in europe. The destruction beeing more of a gradual decline seems to be more common knowledge here imo.

[@gentlerat]

Why would the number of recent authors matter? Weren't some of the books earlier like Homer?

[@historyforatheists9363]

Some, yes. But he works from the data we know, not what we’d have to completely guess at. No matter how you cut it, the huge totals are fantasy.

[@gentlerat]

@@historyforatheists9363 I'm kind of curious how much the library wanted about new vs old books. I imagine in general there was a bit of snobbery then as now toward older books over newer ones among certain intellectuals and vice versa among others.

[@historyforatheists9363]

@@gentlerat It's very hard to know. It is likely that older works were, like those of Homer, greatly revered. But it doesn't therefore follow that there were more of them than newer texts.

[@Jimmy-iy9pl]

Hi, Tim. Have you ever considered writing about and/or producing a video about Mohammed's historicity? It's not as common as Jesus mythicism, but Muhammad mythicism is occasionally brought up in anti-Muslim polemic by both Christians and atheists.

[@historyforatheists9363]

Maybe one day. Most atheists don't bother with that route and just stick to calling him a pedophile and a warmonger. Tom Holland's podcast "The Rest is History" did a good episode on what we can know about the historical Muhammad just this week, which is worth listening to.

[@nebulan]

I guess every group has the potential for conspiracy theories.

[@McDicker96]

you need a new mic

[@historyforatheists9363]

No, I don't. I use a brand new Rode VideoMic Me-L, which does a perfectly good job. Of course, anyone videoing using an iPhone in their loungeroom is not going to get anything close to studio quality, but this is one of my hobbies, not my job.

[@kingalexandersgodshapedhol7514]

What I would like to know for sure, when Islam took over Arab nations we supposedly lost a lot of science. Is this or is this not true?

[@historyforatheists9363]

I know of no evidence to support this. “Arab nations” in this period were tribal societies - they weren’t doing much “science” to begin with. But Islam embraced the Greek proto-science of the eastern Mediterranean regions they conquered and then expanded on it and spread it. So, no.

[@kingalexandersgodshapedhol7514]

@@historyforatheists9363 thank you.

[@EllisonBallard-m4y]

Just lay person no academic background, why denigrate the ancients ? You admit we know few certainy about the past. My offer to lost knowledge is the "Antikythera" mechanism, the two 2, 700 year old magnifying glass "Nimrud lens and Egyptian lens called jewelry, nevertheless with obvious magnifying abilities. Lastly, the "Baghdad" battery said to be used in electro-platting all in ancient times probably considered to be a form of magic. Nevertheless, more than possible that within a few hundred years if the knowledge was not lost as many manuscripts are lost a real science would have been developed. All attributed to gods...or G*D !

[@Sextus666]

@@EllisonBallard-m4y No one is “denigrating the ancients”. But the claims about the Library are overblown and many of them are fantasy. It doesn’t diminish the real achievements of the ancients to note some that are attributed to them are nonsense. PS That “electroplating” claim about the so-called “Baghdad battery” has been debunked. Sorry.

[@kenhaze5230]

The discussion starting around 30:00 needs to be heard by a lot of new atheists. The Bible has errors, by essentially any interpretation within the wider context of modern empirical observational and experimental methods of scholarship. I'm Catholic, but stating the claim that way isn't offensive to me (hence my saying it); it's just a statement about the nature of scripture and the nature of the extended/generalized scientific method. And science is great, I'm also defending my neuroscience dissertation in just under a month. But on science, the Bible does not, however, have "scientific errors." It doesn't have scientific errors because there is no science in it, nor does it even purport to present or summarize scientific results, in the same way that it doesn't contain any calculus errors or computer engineering errors. It's not even possible or reasonable to judge the "scientific accuracy of the Bible." In like manner, the claim that "the Bible was plagiarized" is contextually incoherent. I don't think the authors had registered their copyrights, after all. It's perfectly valid to assess the extent to which Biblical myth shares common origins with other traditions. And really, if it substantially does, and it certainly does to an extent, that fact alone could be used equally to justify the claims "see, it's borrowed/adapted (not plagiarized) and therefore it's false, because they just inherited earlier traditions" and "see, it's true, because the people to whom God revealed himself earlier were the ones who created the oral and physical texts that came to underlie the Hebrew Bible." The "scientific accuracy" isn't even a meaningful notion, despite what both new atheists and young-Earth creationists believe. The presence or lack of antecedents for the Hebrew Bible in ancient Near Eastern literature certainly DOES present topics relevant to our collective history as a species, but (1) at least some major parallels are well-known, and (2) finding many more wouldn't really change anything for anyone. It'd be nice if an objective appreciation of facts could be shared by all of us, but hey, win some lose some.

[@jackcimino8822]

First!

[@oat5662]

Secundus