2015-02-17

The past is a foreign country

While reading online over the weekend, I saw this post come up at the TOFSpot.

It's part of a series of articles on Hypatia, philosopher and social leader of Alexandria during the 4th Century.

Reading the careful review of original sources, and the historical narrative, reminded me yet again: the past is a foreign country.

Especially the past of Egypt, during late-Roman times.

The story of Hypatia is strange an interesting.

It is also a story that seems ripe to be embellished into an anti-Christian story. (Or anti-Catholic story, for those who don't recall that Alexandria was part of the Orthodox, and later Coptic, branches of Christianity.)

Mike Flynn does his best to demolish the simplistic, anti-Christian story about Hypatia. It's an interesting story, even for those people who are only dimly aware of Hypatia, or of the history of Eastern Christianity.

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