Judeo-Christianity: Heresy of Postmodernism (II)
As I announced in the previous post, I will make a brief excursus to comment Agora , Alejandro Amenabar's film, because although this is not the subject of this article, when it leads to an explanation of its central thesis.
films, and irrespective of historical licenses that can allow a script, the film in question bittersweet. On the one hand, is thankful that a English film is out of the ordinary, ie: prostitutes, nuns transsexual folleteo and civil war-they-good and bad-we-. Have a good photo and special effects, costumes and sets an acceptable addition, it is not misinterpreted although I must admit a soft spot for Rachel Weisz, the actress who plays Jewish hero and scientific philosopher Hypatia. But, however, on the other hand, is a movie pace is too slow, too predictable plot development, and above all, and what matters most to us here, which gives off a whiff of thinly veiled anti-Christian. A message, more or less subtle (in the double wave pestiñazo of The Da Vinci Code) which is also anti-paganism, it shows them as a decadent idolaters. Even the Jews have their share of moralizing.
We must admit that Agora does not get over the reality that surrounded early Christianity in its early centuries of training, but you have to keep in mind is that this reality, as it is historically limited to a very space and time concrete. Clearly, however, that the film aims to convey a particular idea is generalizing about Christianity itself, and no other idea. Can distort the truth in a thousand ways, but it is always more effective handling something lying by omission, which is very common in advertising, and, by extension, in today's cinema, literature, historiography, etc. .. What is not spoken there. The plot, very well-ordered is conditioning the viewer to ultimately create what some were already predisposed to believe the movies: the intrinsic evil of religion in general and Christianity in particular. In fact, Agora Reason succeeds only stop idealized Hypatia, real character of the historians, however, we know much less than in the movie it gives him. The Alexandrian philosopher killed by a mob of Christian fanatics, leaving the final moral of the film on a silver platter that you want to catch.
question arises why not tell other facts, why not make other films, or written other books that present the real and noble side of Christianity, or having the persecution that Christians have suffered over twenty centuries, from Nero to Stalin. Or further, why do not they denounce religious extremism macroproducciones much more real, current and constant over time as a Muslim, for example. Amenábar Would he have dared to make a film about the invasion and conquest of Alexandria itself Islamic (or Spain), three centuries later, presenting the Muslims as crazy fanatics, enemies of knowledge and reason?, Ie " Amenábar dared to make a film that portrays the Muslims as they were in the Middle Ages, as expanded by half the world, and as not a few of them remain today?. Obviously not. Roland Emerich nor dared to destroy any Muslim landmark building in 2012 macrodesastre , but did so with the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, which has plummeted, with the Christ of Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro , which ended in tatters, with Buddhist temples, which came and went through the valleys of the Himalayas floating in the waves, and even with the Capitol in Washington, which also receives its own. No, for official intelligentsia only Christianity there is a dark, irrational, genocidal and inquisitorial, and Islam cultured, refined and tolerant, as we saw in the swill that Ridley Scott became The Kingdom of Heaven whose postproduccción, which was carried out in September 2001, half the film doctored "so as not to create controversy." Nothing like a couple of skyscrapers down or cut a couple of heads to be enforced, which, of course, Christians do not for a few centuries, and yet, still we always appearing as the eternal and exclusive bad history.
Y Speaking of history, go into it.
Since its inception, and as was forming, Christianity had to be a gap between the huge pot of religions practiced in the Roman Empire. This naturally led to confrontations with other communities among those who wanted to proselytize Christians, for their place of formation, mainly Jewish and Greco-Roman pagans. However, as recognized by one of the leading English experts in the field, Javier Arce, in the foreword of the book The conflict between paganism and Christianity in the fourth century (Alianza, 1989) "this conflict between two ways of understanding human relationships and life, between two forms of religion, not acquire more than rarely and under very precise character of violence." Thus, although, as we said, there is no denying that the historical context in which the plot unfolds Agora is quite real, the Alexandria of the late fourth century is, in all cases we can find historical sources, without doubt, the most extreme case of rivalry between pagans and Christians in Antiquity. Discounted anti-Christian persecutions of Nero and Diocletian, it is normal that the confrontation between the two Other discussions were reduced to theological and philosophical fields, not so popular, and almost always had a real background politically motivated rather than purely religious. In fact, the bloodiest riots starring Christian were to come and dogmatic grounds would specifically among communities of believers from different theological schools in Constantinople and other cities of the eastern Mediterranean.
is undeniable that Christianity throughout its history, and especially in the early centuries of its formation, has been among the faithful a good percentage of extremists intransigent, including more than a Roman emperor (as Theodosius or Jovian) whose laws are truly frightening to any lover of the classical world, accounted for the irreparable loss of much of the ancient cultural heritage. But neither can deny that the not inconsiderable part of this historical legacy, philosophical, literary and scientific it has survived to this day, she did not so much by Arab-Muslim culture and nineteenth-century romantic legend says, but in spite of and thanks to the monks clerks of the monasteries and abbeys, Byzantine and Western Christian. These in a work of centuries cared, protected, conserved, restored and copied in their scriptoria a thousand times hundreds of ancient manuscripts (many openly pagan content.) From the thirteenth century hundreds of these monks and thousands of civilians Orthodox Christians began arriving in western Europe (via Venice) fleeing the Ottoman advance in the East, bringing the classics that had been preserved in their monasteries and their libraries for over a thousand years. This allowed and conditioned the European cultural renaissance that began in the XIV-XV, which arises our world, a phenomenon that has not experienced any other civilization throughout history. Squillace monasteries like or are Studion paradigm of true love that many Christians have professed classical learning and evidence that the obscurantism of the Church is more a myth, which is made credible by the blindness of a minority prelate, a historical reality and absolute.
Instead of transmitting ideas in Amenábar's Agora Christians were enemies of classical learning and rational thought old, and symbolizes this bigotry in the destruction by them of the great Alexandrian Library (quite reduced in size in the film). However, it does not count, nor will ever another movie, is, in fact, the library of Alexandria, surely the most important library of antiquity, was sacked for the first time in the time of Julius Caesar, "a Gentile, was a second assault, not destruction, in times of the Christian emperor Theodosius (just in the context of confrontation that narrates the film) but it was in the seventh century when, having been gradually regaining its volume and its funds, was finally dismantled by the famous Muslim tolerance of the Caliph Omar, who, when asked of their military commander on what to do with the writings found in it during the invasion of Egypt, said that of "if they are works that contradict the Quran, destroy them as blasphemous, and if they are satisfied with the Koran, destroy them as superfluous ". A great example of love to knowledge and culture that has historically professed Islam.
Another of the ideas present in Agora is a decadent Roman society drastically cut in pagan and Christian. In contrast, we know that the historical reality is very different and less bipolar, for, unless extreme cases, all Christians and pagans, were considered above all Roman citizens. As an example, Constantius II, emperor between 337 and 361, son of Constantine the Great, was a Christian and very pious, however, had no problem in being surrounded by pagans in his court, including his own eulogist, Themistius.
Indeed, in the Late Antiquity most socio-religious friction did not occur between Christians and pagans, but between groups of Christians themselves. Sometimes these battles were given for the attempt to impose the supremacy of a particular diocese, such as Antioch and Alexandria, oldest Episcopal headquarters of the imperial capital of the East, did not accept the preponderance of the new episcopal Constantinople. In other cases were purely theological conflicts between different schools or heresies: well, one of the most serious incidents occurred at the end of the fourth century when Christianity four Arian Goths were burned alive inside an Orthodox Church of Constantinople. Soon after, in 403 a group of Roman citizens who were to convert to Christianity, receiving first communion, refused to do so because the facilities of the Senate had been burned and the fire had destroyed numerous "classic statues," which considered sacrilege. Conflicts between Christians and the pagans they became more frequent over the centuries V and VI, with increasing the population of the Eastern cities. Nevertheless, in the late fourth century rural areas remained firmly clinging to paganism, even in the East.
Mozarabivs
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BITIBAjK Soothsayer
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