Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Hypatia’s most notable contributions to astronomy and science include the charting of celestial bodies and the invention of the hydrometer, used to determine the relative density and gravity of liquids. She is most well known in mathematics for her work on conic sections, introduced by Apollonius, which divided cones into different parts by a plane, which developed the ideas of hyperbolas, parabolas and ellipses. She edited the works On the Conics of Apollonius making them easy to understand, and thus allowing the work to survive the course of time.

the essence of solar religion is the worship of natural cycles

Firstly, and most importantly, they used a book containing at least seven treatises by Archimedes. These treatises are The Equilibrium of Planes, Spiral Lines, The Measurement of the Circle, Sphere and Cylinder, On Floating Bodies, The Method of Mechanical Theorems, and the Stomachion. Of these treatises, the last three are of the greatest significance to our understanding of Archimedes. While the other treatises had survived through other manuscripts, there is no other surviving copy of On Floating Bodies in Greek – the language in which Archimedes wrote, and there is no version in any language of The Method of Mechanical Theorems and of the Stomachion. The Archimedes manuscript was used for the majority of the pages of the prayer book. The Archimedes manuscript was written in the second half of the tenth century, almost certainly in Constantinople.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Clive wrote:Another question is what is a day and what happens to define the cycle of a day? Does the sun die and resurrect, or go to sleep, or go to the underworld, or continue on a path or what? Did people know the world was round and knew without putting it in words that the sun was orbiting? They knew that from the movement of the moon and the stars, why should they not have realised the sun was also going in circles?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth sets out the current Catholic apologetic view that “The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century.”

Allow me to cite a conflicting source. Former Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney in Australia, William O’Neil, was also a historian of astronomy. In his magnificent book Early Astronomy from Babylonia to Copernicus, O’Neil makes the following claim, which I am typing up because I would like to know if his allegations about Tertullian, Lactanius and Kosmas are true:

“The early Christian Fathers contributed to the decline of the Hellenistic astronomy and other branches of science in both the west and the east of the empire. After Constantine had adopted Christianity as the official religion (early fourth Century) not only was paganism discouraged, if not suppressed, as a religion, but also pagans had obstacles placed in their way in teaching or otherwise promulgating views on secular matters where these views seemed to be in conflict with the Scriptures. Extreme examples of the rejection of Hellenistic astronomy were provided by Tertullian (early third century), by Lactanius (early fourth century) and by Kosmas (sixth century). Without differentiating amongst the details of their several views it may be said that they rejected the Hellenistic notion of the sphericity of the earth and of the universe in favour of a layered, flat, square scheme as suggested in Genesis. Indeed to varying degrees they tended to support the view that the Mosaic Tabernacle represented the shape of the universe. Rather than conceding that the Sun between sunset and sunrise passed underneath a spherical earth, such thinkers argued that at sunset it fell behind a mountainous wall and after passing south behind the wall rose again in the east. They could not admit that there was a ‘beneath’ to their supposedly flat earth.”

O’Neil is incorrect in his questioning whether paganism was suppressed (it was, violently). But it is a shame he does not cite his sources more specifically than the names of the three fools. It would be very good to get a scholar of the early dark ages to indicate if these idiots actually expressed this ‘sun goes round the south’ idea. I suppose it has a logic - the sun is good, hell is evil. If hell is under the earth, then it is repugnant to all proper magical faith to assert the sun goes to hell every night where it could be influenced by Beelzebub. Far better for Tertullian to imagine the sun chucks a left at sunset and switches course to track along the southern horizon.

[Note- the above comment is from http://www.booktalk.org/post128702.html#p128702] I will follow up with some subsequent research answering some of the questions raised.

Robert Tulip wrote:Neil, unfortunately your question here (quote below) implying that Dionysus is not a solar deity is as ignorant as the comment of the early Christian apologist Arnobius in his idiotic Seven Books Against the Heathen 3.33.

This comment from Arnobius rejecting the equation of Dionysus (Bacchus) and the Sun illustrates that this belief was held. Of course Greco-Roman religion was solar, and the essence of solar religion is the worship of natural cycles, as illustrated in the death and rebirth myth of Dionysus that you quoted.

Why you would imply it was not so is a great mystery, given your abundant learning, except that you may have fallen prey to a sort of evidentiary cult whereby when dogmatists destroyed something you accept their word that it never existed.

You ask "why is this happening?" regarding your rejection of Dionysus as a solar God. It seems to be because you have some mental blockages.

Arnobius wrote:What! when you maintain that Bacchus, Apollo, the Sun, are one deity, increased in number by the use of three names, is not the number of the gods lessened, and their vaunted reputation overthrown, by your opinions? For if it is true that the sun is also Bacchus and Apollo, there can consequently be in the universe no Apollo or Bacchus; and thus, by yourselves, the son of Semele and the Pythian god are blotted out and set aside,-one the giver of drunken merriment, the other the destroyer of Sminthian mice. http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG1008/_P3.HTM

Robert Tulip wrote:Of course Greco-Roman religion was solar...

Ulan wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:Of course Greco-Roman religion was solar...

You always lose history out of your sight. Nobody denies that late Greco-Roman religion had many solar aspects. That doesn't matter for the origins of Christianity though, even if it had some influence on the late development.

Most dying and rising deities in Greek religion were of the chthonic type, not solar. Greek religion is based on Earth worship, not the sky. Roman religion is based on spirit worship, not sky. It's one of the major distinguishing traits of Greek religion how little value it placed in the sky.

The head of its pantheon is a weather god. The sun god bore the somewhat derogatory epithet "the titan". It's a sign that he belonged to the kind of worship category already the forefathers did away with.

Ulan wrote:Just to say something constructive: there were only two places in Greece where the sun god was worshiped, one of them being Corinth. Which also plays a major role in the fledgling Christian cult. I'm not aware of any connections though.