The Great Library - Part One

The Myths of the Great Library of Alexandria - What the Great Library was (and what it was not).

[depthhistory]

This excellent channel deserves a million subscribers, but these days, university graduates are mostly woefully uneducated and uninterested in any ideas more complicated that the ones they find in Marvel and Disney movies.

[carmeloterranova]

Great video Tim, hope this channel grows, it deserves it

[wlinden]

I keep asking how, if the library was “destroyed” by nefarious Christians, it was there to be “destroyed” again by Amr. The response is resounding silence.

[michaelcooksey]

Love the discussions and thought provoking ideas said without screaming and insults.

[offcenterconcepthaus]

Keen point on Gibbon/protestants -- saw that in Schaff.

[Kuudere-Kun]

I'm glad you decided to split this one up. Both "The Library wasn't what people thought it was" and "Christians didn't destroy it" are things I agree with. But the latter is primarily what the people I wind up dealing are claiming, and so when I link them something on it but all this information is discussed first they tend to get indignant and react as if the message was "the library wasn't a big deal and so burring down was fine".

Some New Atheists do get into more niche claims then the usual great myths, and that does include accusing Christians of burning other specific libraries too, like the one in Antioch for example. And maybe some were, I have no interest in claiming Christians have never been @$$holees. But that's why I've seen less emphasis on claiming this library alone was super special but more it as the most notable example of what Christians were doing all the time.

[macroeconomics]

This was a bloody good video. Far exceeded my expectations.

[patrickbarnes]

This is excellent, Tim, thanks so much, man

[justinshadrach]

Sounds like Neros blaming the Fire of Rome on the Christians (...don't tell me that didn't happen as well, DOH!). Tom! Very much appreciate your vid and honesty despite the fact you don't agree with my religious beliefs (although my own Christian beliefs and understanding have changed over the years). But that has nothing to do with your Historical integrity. Cheers Guvnor!

[MrHazz]

I suggest you do a reply to History Buff's video on the movie Agora, it seems that video has spread this myth the most as pop history at least on YouTube.

[theotokosappreciator]

Great video but i think that music is a little bit too loud

[benthompson]

Hey Tim, I run a page on history on another platform and what wondering what books you would recommend on the so called “dark ages” or middle ages as well as some other books on this videos topic

Thanks!

[henkvandergaast]

Liked and shared. I am sure that people in general should be seeing these as well as those in the non religious "flag bearing" community

High quality shines through!

[jackcimino]

What is your opinion on Robert Spencer?

[nilsggr]

I find it interesting that this belief seems (at least to my knowledge) not to be very common in europe. The destruction beeing more of a gradual decline seems to be more common knowledge here imo.

[gentlerat]

Why would the number of recent authors matter? Weren't some of the books earlier like Homer?

[Jimmy-iypl]

Hi, Tim. Have you ever considered writing about and/or producing a video about Mohammed's historicity? It's not as common as Jesus mythicism, but Muhammad mythicism is occasionally brought up in anti-Muslim polemic by both Christians and atheists.

[nebulan]

I guess every group has the potential for conspiracy theories.

[kingalexandersgodshapedhol]

What I would like to know for sure, when Islam took over Arab nations we supposedly lost a lot of science. Is this or is this not true?

[kenhaze]

The discussion starting around 30:00 needs to be heard by a lot of new atheists.

The Bible has errors, by essentially any interpretation within the wider context of modern empirical observational and experimental methods of scholarship. I'm Catholic, but stating the claim that way isn't offensive to me (hence my saying it); it's just a statement about the nature of scripture and the nature of the extended/generalized scientific method. And science is great, I'm also defending my neuroscience dissertation in just under a month.

But on science, the Bible does not, however, have "scientific errors." It doesn't have scientific errors because there is no science in it, nor does it even purport to present or summarize scientific results, in the same way that it doesn't contain any calculus errors or computer engineering errors. It's not even possible or reasonable to judge the "scientific accuracy of the Bible."

In like manner, the claim that "the Bible was plagiarized" is contextually incoherent. I don't think the authors had registered their copyrights, after all. It's perfectly valid to assess the extent to which Biblical myth shares common origins with other traditions. And really, if it substantially does, and it certainly does to an extent, that fact alone could be used equally to justify the claims "see, it's borrowed/adapted (not plagiarized) and therefore it's false, because they just inherited earlier traditions" and "see, it's true, because the people to whom God revealed himself earlier were the ones who created the oral and physical texts that came to underlie the Hebrew Bible."

The "scientific accuracy" isn't even a meaningful notion, despite what both new atheists and young-Earth creationists believe. The presence or lack of antecedents for the Hebrew Bible in ancient Near Eastern literature certainly DOES present topics relevant to our collective history as a species, but (1) at least some major parallels are well-known, and (2) finding many more wouldn't really change anything for anyone. It'd be nice if an objective appreciation of facts could be shared by all of us, but hey, win some lose some.