The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey
Amazon Review – Five Stars, 205 people found the review helpful.
“The ‘Triumph’ of Christianity” by Taking_a_day_off
It’s not the particular beliefs the Christians espoused, or the nature of monotheism as opposed to polytheism that made the Christians a threat to freedom of thought, it was the intolerance they showed to any other religion.
It’s a common belief in modern societies that the pagan Romans persecuted the Christian martyrs. Catherine Nixey shows it’s not that simple.
The author analyzes at length correspondence between Pliny the Younger and the emperor Trajan about the way to deal with recalcitrant Christians. The emperor was willing to give Christians any excuse to practice their religion as long as they didn’t simply refuse to acknowledge the authority of the state. The author quotes Trajan: Conquirendi non sunt. “These people must not be hunted out.”
It’s ironic that barely a generation later it would be Christian Roman officials who would be investigating the thoughts and religious practices of citizens.
Some of the martyrs were would-be suicides, itinerant farm workers called circumcellions.
In AD 392 clerics in Alexandria destroyed what was considered the most beautiful building on earth—the temple of Serapis, a god that linked Egypt to Rome, thereby typifying one of the strengths of polytheism. Besides the temple, books in the Great Library were also destroyed.
Nixey analyzes the main reasons that historians have given over the centuries for why Christianity replaced the old religion.
Polytheism was just ridiculous, goes one version.
Of course people didn’t believe that stories about Zeus’s adultery and Hera’s jealousy were “true,” but doesn’t that make the old culture more sophisticated instead of less? People recognized that the meaning of Greco-Roman mythology wasn’t literal. That’s why Albert Camus was able to use the myth of Sisyphus to illustrate a philosophical idea millennia after the gods first appeared.
Statistics make Catherine Nixey doubt this, though. She estimates less than ten percent of the empire’s population were Christian when Constantine declared Rome a Christian empire. That left fifty million to be converted.
But the church wrote the histories, and therefore Christ’s victory was inevitable. However, history is never inevitable.
By the late 400s monks came out of the desert to destroy what temples were left, such as the one dedicated to Caelestis in Carthage. The Christians were proud of the destruction they committed, and of the conversions that resulted from the violence. Non-Christians pointed out that these were not true conversions, but the Christians didn’t care.
In the year 415, Hypatia, a philosopher in Alexandria who taught and tried to learn from everyone, including Christians, was taken by a Christian mob who flayed her alive, gouged out her eyes, and then burned her.
Nixey blames the disappearance of most Greek and Roman literature as much on simple ignorance as on conscious actions. For instance, St. Antony was proud that he never learned to read.
The author points out that only about one percent of Latin literature has been saved. The monks who get credit for recopying classical literature often ignored rare ancient texts and made unnecessary copies of Christian authors.
You could make a martyrology of philosophers whose actions, not just words, put them in danger.
Nixey tells the story of the philosopher Damascius, who escaped the Christian mobs in Alexandria after Hypatia’s murder and returned to Athens.
For a while, Athens was relatively safe for philosophers. Damascius became the head of the Academy, the school that had seen Plato and other brilliant minds of the ancient world. But by this time Christianity was entrenched in the empire. A law against teaching “pagan” philosophies under penalty of death drove the seven remaining Academicians briefly to Persia, but life there was no better.
They returned to the empire. Their former refuge in Athens had been turned over to Christians who beheaded the statue of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, to show the primacy faith over reason.
It would be centuries until man was again the measure of all things.
St. Augustine’s merciful savagery was complete.
4-Star Review
8 people found helpful
I guess my Memorial Day Weekend Book Purchase will be
Herod Antipas: A Contemporary of Jesus Christ by Harold Hoehner
and not The Darkening Age.
“Incredibly Complete Analysis”
Angelomorphic Christology by Charles Gieschen
“A Complex, Exquisitely Researched Book” by Stephen Bastasch
It will be a surprise to many readers that “the divine, preexistent Son” of Paul, John and the early Jewish Christians was not an uncommon conception not only in that age, but even prior to Christianity. For example, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria believed in a preexistent angelic figure whom he calls “a god” and who was instrumental in God’s creation of the world – a description that has specific echoes in Pauline and Johannine christology, as well in the Gospels’ insistence that Jesus identified himself with not only “the Son” but also the preexistent heavenly Son of Man who dwelled in the clouds of heaven.
The author notes that ancient Jewish theology had a divine “hypostasis” or God-like heavenly figure who functioned as the Angel of Yahweh’s Presence, as Yahoel, who bore the divine Name and exercised divine judgment. In addition, ancient Judaism held that Yahweh appeared in human form on earth in the form of angels, and that certain human beings ascended to heaven and became angels, after which they descended back to earth entrusted with a holy mission. This is established in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where community members specialized in acquiring the names of the angels, and who claimed not only that congregants could ascend to heaven and enter “the company of the angels” but that angels came down to earth to commune with the Scroll community. In early Christian writings, Jesus himself was often conceived to be the greatest archangel, as in Justin Martyr – certainly “higher than [the rest of the angels”] but still an angel.
The idea of Jesus being an angel has been held by certain Christian sects, but this book places that notion into its original ancient context, and corrects misconceptions about the Great Angel along the way.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who takes a lively interest in early Christian christology and its roots in mystical Judaism. For me, it was a real eye-opener and I enjoyed every page (and the copious footnotes).
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Gieschen’s enthusiasm for the subject, along with the impressive erudition provided, combine to make this an engaging and valuable study.– Larry Hurtado ― Journal of Biblical Literature
An important contribution to the current debate over Angel or Angelomorphic or Angelic Christology.– Darrell D. Hannah ― Journal of Theological Studies
Michael and Christ by Darrell D. Hannah may be a better book for me.
Well, that should be enough.
Getting prepared for my upcoming season of interviews with a possible second edition of my book or a companion book to my book.
I hope to give talks at book festivals and cultural institutions. I know my coverage of Ancient Rome is nothing but Loeb Classics.
I hope the Herod Antipas book has good information about Emperor Claudius that may not be in the Robert Graves book, Claudius the God.
Yea, but be sure, people are going to expect you to be on Bart’s side or at least show you have been well exposed to his instruction.
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
on how documents of scandalous origin became part of the Bible we have today. So, that’s from Forged by Ehrman. I have zero information about Forgery and Counterforgery.
It will have to be put in my material for a second edition.
“
Well, with all the lying and deceit, there is no reconciliation that all parts of the New Testament are inspired by God. I can use that thought of mine as an on-ramp.
The writer of that review of Nixey’s terrible book is a classic example of someone who has no knowledge of a subject being spoon-fed erroneous interpretation by a biased polemicist and then, on the basis of the information they have ingested this way, declaring that the polemicist is right. People who actually know the subject and understand the period consider Nixey’s book to be utter junk. Pay attention to them, not some clueless random on Amazon.
Tim said
The writer of that review of Nixey’s terrible book is a classic example of someone who has no knowledge of a subject being spoon-fed erroneous interpretation by a biased polemicist and then, on the basis of the information they have ingested this way, declaring that the polemicist is right. People who actually know the subject and understand the period consider Nixey’s book to be utter junk. Pay attention to them, not some clueless random on Amazon.
Do you think Final Pagan Generation by Edward J. Watts is better? It is one of the 28 books in the Transformation of the Classical Heritage.
Here’s the link to its amazon page.
pf_rd_p=f8e24c42-8be0-4374-84aa-bb08fd897453&pf_rd_r=0KVGWVDEVGHJ1QATGNV4&pd_rd_r=60e4d968-bdf8-451b-9d24-ec0e3cad74aa&pd_rd_wg=lq4g9&pd_rd_i=0520379225&psc=1
= = =
The Nixey book was on a goodreads Listopia list. I had read Emperor and Galilean by Henrik Ibsen while I was taking a playwriting class, as I was writing what turned out to be a play that would take more than 2 hours to stage.
A goodreads member will have to have read my book and then add it to a Listopia list.
Anyway, I pretty much made my shopping list:
Herod Antipas: A Contemporary of Jesus Christ by Harold Hoehner
Michael and Christ: Michael Tradition and Angel Christology in Early Christianity by Darrell Hannah
These two books need to be in the library of the author who wrote my book. I also need to be prepared to let these books improve my public appearances and possible second edition.
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy (Which sad calamity has caused God to turn His face away?)
Tim said
The writer of that review of Nixey’s terrible book is a classic example of someone who has no knowledge of a subject being spoon-fed erroneous interpretation by a biased polemicist and then, on the basis of the information they have ingested this way, declaring that the polemicist is right. People who actually know the subject and understand the period consider Nixey’s book to be utter junk. Pay attention to them, not some clueless random on Amazon.
“There is no crime for those who have Christ,” claimed a fifth-century zealot, neatly expressing the belief of religious extremists that righteous zeal for God trumps worldly law. This book provides an in-depth and penetrating look at religious violence and the attitudes that drove it in the Christian Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries, a unique period shaped by the marriage of Christian ideology and Roman imperial power. Drawing together materials spanning a wide chronological and geographical range, Gaddis asks what religious conflict meant to those involved, both perpetrators and victims, and how violence was experienced, represented, justified, or contested. His innovative analysis reveals how various groups employed the language of religious violence to construct their own identities, to undermine the legitimacy of their rivals, and to advance themselves in the competitive and high-stakes process of Christianizing the Roman Empire.
Gaddis pursues case studies and themes including martyrdom and persecution, the Donatist controversy and other sectarian conflicts, zealous monks’ assaults on pagan temples, the tyrannical behavior of powerful bishops, and the intrigues of church councils. In addition to illuminating a core issue of late antiquity, this book also sheds light on thematic and comparative dimensions of religious violence in other times, including our own.
There is no crime for those who have Christ by Michael Gaddis
Did you review this book also?
Steefen said
Tim said
The writer of that review of Nixey’s terrible book is a classic example of someone who has no knowledge of a subject being spoon-fed erroneous interpretation by a biased polemicist and then, on the basis of the information they have ingested this way, declaring that the polemicist is right. People who actually know the subject and understand the period consider Nixey’s book to be utter junk. Pay attention to them, not some clueless random on Amazon.
Do you think Final Pagan Generation by Edward J. Watts is better?
It’s infinitely better. That’s because it’s by an actual historian who is a leading expert in Late Antiquity and not a journalist who just happens to be something of an anti-Christian zealot. That’s why I refer to Watts several times when debunking Nixey ** you do not have permission to see this link **. Reading Watts’ account of the gradual transition from a pagan Empire to a Christian one, minus much conflict or violence or suppression of ideas at all, it’s like he’s talking about an alternative universe to the one described by Nixey. That’s because Watt’s is a balanced and careful historian and Nixey is a biased polemicist who wants to sell books.
Steefen said
Did you review this book also?
No, but Gaddis’ book is a proper academic study of when and why Christians in this period did use and justify violence. No-one is claiming that they didn’t do so sometimes. It’s just that Nixey’s book and those like it over-emphasise and exaggerate its use and pretend it was regularly used against pagans. It wasn’t. If you look at Gaddis’ book, most of the examples are of Christians being violent against other Christians.
Tim said
Steefen said
Tim said
The writer of that review of Nixey’s terrible book is a classic example of someone who has no knowledge of a subject being spoon-fed erroneous interpretation by a biased polemicist and then, on the basis of the information they have ingested this way, declaring that the polemicist is right. People who actually know the subject and understand the period consider Nixey’s book to be utter junk. Pay attention to them, not some clueless random on Amazon.
Do you think Final Pagan Generation by Edward J. Watts is better?
It’s infinitely better. That’s because it’s by an actual historian who is a leading expert in Late Antiquity and not a journalist who just happens to be something of an anti-Christian zealot. That’s why I refer to Watts several times when debunking Nixey ** you do not have permission to see this link **. Reading Watts’ account of the gradual transition from a pagan Empire to a Christian one, minus much conflict or violence or suppression of ideas at all, it’s like he’s talking about an alternative universe to the one described by Nixey. That’s because Watt’s is a balanced and careful historian and Nixey is a biased polemicist who wants to sell books.
Nixey probably is not an excellent journalist, given your critique.
On the other hand…
“Nixey paints with a wide brush . . . A fine history that is surely controversial in its view of how victims become victimizers and how professions of love turn to terror.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Nixey clearly but untendentiously summarizes phenomena that led up to the elimination of classical polytheism.”—Booklist
“The Darkening Age by Catherine Nixey looks at the rise of Christianity, showing how its early radical followers ravaged vast swaths of classical culture, sending the West into an era of dogma and intellectual decline.” —Publishers Weekly, “Spring 2018 Announcements: History”
CATHERINE NIXEY is a journalist and a classicist. Her mother was a nun, her father was a monk, and she was brought up Catholic. She studied classics at Cambridge and taught the subject for several years before becoming a journalist on the arts desk at the Times (UK), where she still works. Author of The Darkening Age, which won the Jerwood Award from the Royal Society of Literature, she lives in London with her husband (the journalist and author Tom Whipple) and their two children.
Steefen said
Nixey probably is not an excellent journalist, given your critique.
On the other hand…
“Nixey paints with a wide brush . . . A fine history that is surely controversial in its view of how victims become victimizers and how professions of love turn to terror.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Nixey clearly but untendentiously summarizes phenomena that led up to the elimination of classical polytheism.”—Booklist
“The Darkening Age by Catherine Nixey looks at the rise of Christianity, showing how its early radical followers ravaged vast swaths of classical culture, sending the West into an era of dogma and intellectual decline.” —Publishers Weekly, “Spring 2018 Announcements: History”
CATHERINE NIXEY is a journalist and a classicist. Her mother was a nun, her father was a monk, and she was brought up Catholic. She studied classics at Cambridge and taught the subject for several years before becoming a journalist on the arts desk at the Times (UK), where she still works. Author of The Darkening Age, which won the Jerwood Award from the Royal Society of Literature, she lives in London with her husband (the journalist and author Tom Whipple) and their two children.
The issue is not whether she is a good journalist. The issue is that she is not a trained historian and so does not write balanced and objective analysis. And those reviews are not by people who have expertise in the relevant period and subjects, and so are of no value on the key question – is Nixey’s analysis accurate?
Professor Averil Cameron: “Hearts will sink among historians of early Christianity and late antiquity, as well as medievalists and, needless to say, Byzantinists, when they see the title of this pugnacious and energetically written book…The words ‘darkening age’ evoke everything they have been trying for years to overturn, implying as they do the notion of the ‘dark ages’, when the glories of classical civilisation were supposedly obliterated for centuries, until the Renaissance and the Enlightenment made possible the triumph of Western European liberalism and secularism.”
Professor J. van Oort: “Nixey overwhelms her hand with her fierce tone and gross exaggeration…Nixey’s book lacks any historical structure and thus becomes, chapter after chapter, a long, but random (and ultimately exhausting), requisition against Christianity.”
Professor Josh Herring: “[Nixey’s] arguments, however, are not sound. She bases her conclusions on faulty premises which illustrate a lack of awareness in three areas: Christianity, history, and logic…The scholars she assembles are uniformly opposed to Christianity, presenting it as a destructive force that ended the “merry, jolly days” of pagan festivity. The prose she uses is filled with judgmental adjectives, indicating that she does not trust readers to draw their conclusion from the evidence; we must be told how to feel about the person she describes. Her book was several years in the making, but it does not reflect a clear understanding of Christianity, the complexities of Late Antiquity, or the nuances of historical craft. While this book is sold under the guise of popular history, treat it instead as an insight into how a secular journalist views Christianity.”
Professor Peter Thonemann:“Like every good polemic, The Darkening Age is sardonic, well-informed and quite properly lacking in sympathy for its hapless target. But the argument depends on quite a bit of nifty footwork. Nixey vividly evokes the fundamentalist bonfires that ‘blazed across the empire as outlawed books went up in flames.’ Inconveniently, we have no evidence for a single poem by Ovid or Catullus having been put to the flames: Christian book-burning was always directed at heretical Christian literature or ‘magical’ writings.”
Pay attention to the experts, not to someone whose job it is to review any book that comes across their desk. I have no idea why you keep trying to defend this book. It’s crap.
Tim
I have no idea why you keep trying to defend this book.
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy
Because there IS something darkening about the creation and emergence of Christianity and the Judeo-Christian notion of a monotheistic God who saved Isaac from Abraham but sacrificed his son/angel not because Jesus was some soldier who died in battle or a firefighter who died in a fire but because the innocent has to take responsibility and lose his life for the sins of other people, some of whom are thankless and not rehabilitated from sin and crime — and the sins, crimes psychopathy/sociopathy continue.
Read my paperback book, Tim. Review it.
1) The towering of Christianity is indeed a sad calamity.
2) Christianity has for thousands of years have misled people from historical truth.
Christianity is at its theological core a darkening influence due to its untruths and misperceptions at the logical conclusions.
Steefen said
TimI have no idea why you keep trying to defend this book.
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy
Because there IS something darkening about the creation and emergence of Christianity and the Judeo-Christian notion of a monotheistic God who saved Isaac from Abraham but sacrificed his son/angel not because Jesus was some soldier who died in battle or a firefighter who died in a fire but because the innocent has to take responsibility and lose his life for the sins of other people, some of whom are thankless and not rehabilitated from sin and crime — and the sins, crimes psychopathy/sociopathy continue.
Whatever. You’re hardly the first person to have a beef with Christianity and so concentrate on its darker side. That doesn’t change the fact that Nixey’s book, as history, is garbage. And no, I have no interest in reading your self-published book, let alone reviewing it. I just read a summary of it on Goodreads and it sounds like utter nonsense.
Tim
Whatever.
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy
You had no idea why I keep trying to defend this book.
I gave you an idea. You do not care.
Tim
You’re hardly the first person to have a beef with Christianity and so concentrate on its darker side.
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy
I know I am not the first.
Second, I concentrate on Christianity objectively. After 17 years of writing my book, I have reached conclusions, yes.
Tim
That doesn’t change the fact that Nixey’s book, as history, is garbage.
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy
We heard you the first time. We also see on Wikipedia how it was received negatively, which is another reason any repeating on your part is ignored.
On the other hand, the title of her book resonates with people: the people who put her book on Listopia, the people who added their votes to her book being on Listopia, the people who gave her four and five stars on amazon, looks like for multiple translations of her book.
The Darkening Age was chosen as one of The New York Times’ “Notable Books” for 2018 and was listed on “book of the year” lists by The Telegraph, The Spectator, The Observer, and BBC History.
Tim
And no, I have no interest in reading your self-published book, let alone reviewing it. I just read a summary of it on Goodreads and it sounds like utter nonsense.
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy (Which Sad Calamity Has Caused God to Turn His Face Away?)
You have no interest in reading or reviewing my self-published manuscript, the second edition of a manuscript I wrote in 2010.
You think the summary of the book is utter nonsense. The conclusions of your consideration are erroneous or useless. The book follows a chronological path. Authoritative evidence abounds. The authors delineates between facts and contextual information letting readers know what archaeology and scholars can substantiate.
Tim, an accurate reminder that our perceptions of the past are often at odds with the reality. I’m currently reading Joel Harrington’s intellectual biography of ** you do not have permission to see this link ** and of course a huge component of the study in the 14th century academy was Aristotle and Plato.
That said the centuries where the Pastoral Epistles and the Book of Hebrews were meticulously copied while the work of Sapho and majority of the plays of Sophocles rotted on the shelves seem dark enough.
You don’t have to have genocidal waves of violence to change the course of history through violence. Just kill the leadership and destroy the libraries and architecture that supports that style of life. See also ISIS, the Taliban, and Yahwists in the Dtr History. Also in common here is that while Christian violence was often against other Christians (that being seen as a redemptive quality is a subject for morality and ethics) ISIS, the Taliban, and Yahwists killed their closest (disobedient) kin first.
I agree that monotheism itself can destroy polytheism through completely peaceful means, and probably did so for 300 years within the Empire, based on a faith that better met the needs of the people than polytheism. Once that faith was married to power, for whatever reason, violence and the ending of paganism as well as rival christianities seemed to be ultimate goal.
Remember, Claudius feared the power of conversion of Judeanism, so it clearly had a nonviolent conversion power.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
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Robert