Steefen, I actually watched the video. Look, I’m an atheist, an ex-Christian. I could bore you out of your mind detailing the liabilities of the Christian system of thought. (Although it’s hard to imagine some criticism worse than denying its truth claims.)
But the view of history expressed by this video maker is jaw-droppingly simplistic and simple-minded.
And worse, as a person who, having lived a normal life-span, will still have spent most of it in the 20th century, I get awfully nervous at talk of “the indestructible spirit of Europe” ,and hints of corrupting Middle Eastern influence.
The Cynic in me wants to know when the jackboots and jodhpurs come out?
Stephen, Jesus distanced himself from the sicarii. Despite a few verses, Jesus is seen as non-violent, victim of violence.
The way the Christians destroyed Greco-Roman civilization cannot be endorsed by the biblical Jesus. The way the rebels revolted against Rome cannot be endorsed by Jesus.
Did the Christians go to far?
Yes they did.
Bart D.E. wrote a recent post, “Did the Roman Government Become More ‘Moral’ Once It Became Christian?”
The answer is, No.
I do not see the spirit of Europe as indestructible.
What has happened to the borders in Europe?
What European country is the envy of the world?
You are using a 20th century perspective, the video is about Christians destroying Alexandria and the Ancient Roman Empire; and whatever spirit of the Ancient Greco-Roman civilization that may have survived the unChristian onslaught of the Christians.
I agree with you to fault the video for not mentioning the Visigoths contribution to the fall of Rome.
But wait…
What religion did the Visigoths practice? The Goths were originally Germanic pagans until their conversion to Arian Christianity in the 4th century. The Visigoths thus followed Arianism until their conversion to Nicene Christianity in the late 6th century, whereby they joined the Catholic Church.
Relations between the Romans and Alaric’s Visigoths varied, with the two groups making treaties when convenient, and warring with one another when not. Under Alaric, the Visigoths invaded Italy and sacked Rome in August 410.
What, 30 years after 380 CE [Edict of Thessalonica] the Visigoths attacked a Christian Roman Empire?
The way the Christians destroyed Greco-Roman civilization…
But this is the problem. This description mischaracterizes what actually happened. This makes it sound like an invasion of a foreign culture. Christianity was a legitimate expression of Hellenistic culture. Christianity is unthinkable without Greek philosophy. If it hadn’t been Jesus it would have been another divine savior. If it hadn’t been Christianity paganism would probably still have mutated into another totalizing system of thought.
And the video maker’s notion of “Europe” is completely arbitrary. Does he object to Homo Sapiens, out of Africa, supplanting the Neanderthals?
So, you’re not crediting Christianity with the Fall of the Roman Empire?
Did the Roman Empire fall? Paganism was replaced by Christianity over the course of several centuries. The Roman Empire mutated. The West became a bit of a backwater for a while. I suppose you could characterize (or caricature) this as a “Fall”, but even in the West there were centers of civilization. The problem with the Conspiracy Theory of History is that it’s simple-minded and ahistorical.
You’re saying there was no invasion of a foreign culture: Visigoths?
The point of the video-maker was that Greco-Roman civilization was destroyed by the invasion of Christianity. I am saying that “invasion” did not take place as described in the video. I’m not sure what your point is about the Visigoths.
…but his point is that Christianity itself developed within the Greco-Roman world.
Yes this seems to be an important point, not much considered on a popular level. Christianity was just as much a product of Neo-Platonism as it was of Jewish Messianism. It thrived at least in part because it effectuated tendencies implicit in paganism. For example, there was already a tendency within philosophical paganism away from polytheism towards a form of monotheism. Also there were syncretistic divine savior cults all over the Mediterranean region. Christianity succeeded in large part because it scratched some pagan itches. To think of it as a foreign “invader” is just wrong.
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I’ve been enjoying the brouhaha over the Olympic Games opening ceremony! Is any class of humankind more sensitive to slights and more prepared to play the victim than American Evangelicals? There are dozens of outraged YouTube videos! Those godless heathens! How dare they? Particularly amusing was the befuddled apology from the ceremony organizers who could have scarce understood their offence. Did they really expect Americans to have any knowledge of classical culture or the history of art?
Alright, not to waist people’s time, I went to Quora and asked Why did Rome fall?
Tim O’Neill
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Twenty plus years of study various aspects of Roman history, particularly the Roman Army, Roman interaction with the Germanic tribes, the later Roman Empire and the fall of the Western Empire in the Fifth Century.10y
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What brought about the downfall of Rome?
It was the Western Roman Empire that collapsed, while the Eastern Empire continued for another 1000 years – it even expanded at a couple of points after the fall of the West, So the key to the “downfall of Rome” lies in looking at what was different between the Eastern and Western Empires:
1. Economics – The east was always the economic powerhouse of the Empire. It was vastly more populous, had more resources, was more heavily urbanised and had a larger taxable population base. That was fine for as long as the Empire was one entity ruled from Rome. But by the later Fourth Century a purely administrative division of long standing, whereby two emperors ruled in the east and the west, hardened into a permanent division into two separate competing (and occasionally warring) political entities.
Once that happened, the West was always going to be the economic poor relation. It was lumbered with half of the very large and very expensive later Roman Army and with long and difficult borders to defend and yet had to do it with a smaller population, less resources, more poorer provinces to support and defend and a smaller taxable base. Even without its other problems (see below), this was going to be a struggle.
2. Internal Divisions – The West’s economic woes were greatly worsened by internal conflicts both within the Western Empire and between it and its Eastern counterpart. Between 316 and its end in 476 AD the Western Empire saw no less than six major civil wars, with usurpers challenging Emperors, Emperors being deposed and murdered and generals carrying out wars against each other. In addition, the West periodically tried to pursue an aggressive policy against its supposed Eastern partner, including several incursions into the Eastern Empire by the Western general Stilicho. In turn, the East often deflected barbarian armies by encouraging them to head west to afflict the Western Empire instead.
All this infighting drained the already over-stretched economic resources of the weaker of the two Empires, with the defence of the borders against barbarians often taking a back seat to the defeat of usurpers and rebel generals. This in turn made some of the West’s provinces feel the administration did not care about their security and they turned to local leaders for defence. Thus the West was further afflicted by bandit armies of bacaudae rebels and several provinces, such as northern Gaul and Dalmatia, simply detached themselves from the Empire and settled their own affairs.
The East, by contrast, managed to contain or avoid these kinds of crippling civil conflicts. For various reasons, the Eastern Empire never allowed military power to be concentrated in one person, as happened with the magistri militum in the West. Even the weaker eastern emperors were dominated by a number of civil advisors, which meant a single military-backed “power behind the throne” tended not to be a target for military rivals, as happened repeatedly in the West.
3. External Threats – Modern historians have generally overturned the Nineteenth Century idea of a militarily soft and degenerate later Empire being overrun by vast hordes of vigorous barbarians. The later Roman Army remained a highly flexible, elite and well-trained and equipped force virtually to the end. The army that defended the West was the same in training, arms and armour and tactics as that of the East, so clearly it was not any decline in the army that caused the collapse.
This is borne out by looking at the track record of Roman troops in the period: almost without exception, when a Roman force met a barbarian army in battle, the Romans won the day. But the constant attrition of both wars with invading warbands and, more importantly, civil wars within the Empire, wore down the cash-strapped Western Empire and made it harder and harder to field and sustain the levels of troop numbers required. It was cheaper and easier to pay barbarian warbands to fight for Rome and supplement the regular army, but this had significant consequences in the longer run.
The numbers of the barbarians were never great (and are regularly hugely exaggerated by the Roman sources). The problem was that the Empire was crumbling at the edges and civil conflicts meant it eventually began to collapse around the Army. Almost all of the successful barbarian incursions were in the face of minimal or even no resistance from the Army at all, since it was usually occupied elsewhere with some other incursion or, more regularly, with the latest internecine conflict.
If there was one event that spelled the inevitable collapse of the Western Empire, it was the loss of north Africa to the Vandals in 439 AD. This was the richest province of the Empire and the breadbasket whose grain sustained much of the West’s economic life. The Vandals had crossed the Rhine unopposed back in 406 AD when the Romans had been distracted by the latest civil war. They had been brought into submission and settled in Spain, but never fully brought under control. One account has them entering Africa at the invitation of the local military ruler Bonifacius to support him against the generalissimo Aetius in yet another civil conflict. The Vandals stayed and ruled the province for the next century.
With Africa gone, the collapse of the Western Empire accelerated, with more and more territory slipping from the control of the weakening and bankrupt central administration. Territories in Gaul and Spain fell under barbarian control not by way of invasion and conquest, but because the locals turned to the nearest military leader to protect them from other threats – many of these leaders happened to be barbarian foederati.
So the traditional idea of Rome collapsing under the weight of either its own “corruption” or masses of northern barbarians, or both, is not correct. The main issues were internal conflicts (which the East managed to contain or avoid) and economic poverty (which the East simply did not have). Far from being weak or outdated, the Roman Army remained effective almost to the end. And rather than being the cause of the collapse of the Empire, the barbarians were more of a symptom of deeper systemic weaknesses.
Did Edward Gibbon have anything to do about it?
Edward Gibbon (/ˈɡɪbən/; 8 May 1737 – 16 January 1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. The Decline and Fall is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its open criticism of organized religion.
So, his book, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire< is partly responsible:
Many scholars argue that Gibbon did not in fact blame Christianity for the empire’s fall, rather attributing its decline to the effects of luxury and the consequent erosion of its martial character. Such a view echoes the outlook of the Greek historian Polybius, who similarly explained the decadent Greek world’s eclipse by the ascendant Roman Republic in Mediterranean affairs. In this understanding of Gibbon, the process of Rome’s decay was well underway before Christian adherents numbered a large proportion of the empire. Hence, although Gibbon might have seen Christianity as hastening Rome’s fall, he did not consider it as the root cause.
Edward Gibbon’s central thesis in his explanation of how the Roman Empire fell, that it was due to embracing Christianity, is not widely accepted by scholars today. Gibbon argued that with the empire’s new Christian character, large sums of wealth that would have otherwise been used in secular affairs in promoting the state were transferred to promoting the activities of the Church.
The above ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Stephen
However, the pre-Christian empire also spent large financial sums on religion and it is unclear whether or not the change of religion increased the amount of resources the empire spent on it. Gibbon further argued that new attitudes in Christianity caused many Christians of wealth to renounce their lifestyles and enter a monastic lifestyle, and so stop participating in the support of the empire. However, while many Christians of wealth did become monastics, this paled in comparison to the participants in the imperial bureaucracy. Although Gibbon further pointed out that the importance Christianity placed on peace caused a decline in the number of people serving the military, the decline was so small as to be negligible for the army’s effectiveness.[18][19]
And here, Stephen V V V V V
Historian S. P. Foster says that Gibbon “blamed the otherworldly preoccupations of Christianity for the decline of the Roman empire, heaped scorn and abuse on the church, and sneered at the entirety of monasticism as a dreary, superstition-ridden enterprise”.[24]
Gibbon challenged Church history by estimating far smaller numbers of Christian martyrs than had been traditionally accepted. The Church’s version of its early history had rarely been questioned before. Gibbon, however, said that modern Church writings were secondary sources, and he shunned them in favour of primary sources.[23]
Tim O’Neill provides some nuance to the discussion.
Steefen, every age provides commentary on its predecessors. It was a conceit of Enlightenment thinking that Christianity was a long sleep from which they had awakened. As usual that wasn’t the whole story. Contemporary historians have presented us with a rather more nuanced view of the Medieval world.
Well, I’m not going to get into
the thousand years of Jesus’ reign in Revelation: 476 to 1476 [the Dark Ages].
Hahahahaha ROFL.
Pathetic: the Messiah got killed, caused so many Jews to lose their religion with the Jewish Civil War and the Jewish Revolt, let God’s Temple get disrespected by bandits occupying the Temple which brought the Romans there to fight them, got Herod the Great’s beautiful, amazing renovation of the Temple get torn down; and after 300 years or so, had his thousand years reign known as the Middle Ages / Dark Ages.
Cheer for Jesus.
Jesus was known to be educated enough to read.
His age ended not too long after 1440 when the Gutenberg press allowed people to read the Synoptic Gospels inconsistent with the Gospel of John.
What? 3 gospels have no idea Jesus raised Lazarus but the Gospel of John added that day in the ministry of Jesus.
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