[TrapLord_Rhodo]

From the Christian, anyone who wasn't part of the Christian or Jewish faiths was considered pagan. In the first century CE, Epicureans were part of the broader category of Hellenistic pagan philosophers—which included Stoics, Platonists, and others—who were polytheistic or at least non-Christian. So since Philodemus makes up most of the library here, it's pretty safe to call it a "pagan" library.

[tokai]

But there is no reason to situate it in a Christian context. We are in a global multi religious community here. I could call your comment bad, supported by it being a trite semantic argument without relevancy for the subject. But that would do nothing to further the discussion here. Calling the library non-confucianist would be even more correct as Platonists are an important foundation for Christian thought. Though a completely useless labeling just as the pegan label.

[flir]

> Calling the library non-confucianist would be even more correct as Platonists are an important foundation for Christian thought.

Epicureans aren't Platonists. We know that the library went heavy on Epicurean texts.

The word "pagan" is still used by Classicists today.

[bawolff]

There is a reason to situate it in a roman context. Rome eventually becomes christianized and it makes sense to talk about before and after that. Obviously the old still influences the new, its not a hard line, but it is a major change in roman society.

[ysavir]

The relevant context is the context in which it existed--that of a Roman library in pre-Christian Rome, making it a Roman library with no context of paganism. If it were a collection specifically of pagan writings assembled and maintained after Rome's widespread conversion to Christianity, then the pagan aspect would be meaningful, as it describes the relevance of that library to the society in which it existed.

To call it a "pagan" library now fails to describe it in the context of what it was at the time as well as what it is today, and instead is needlessly and aimlessly anchoring the perspective to the Christian world. It would be as if I described the library as being a Goy library--sure, I can, and wouldn't be technically wrong, but it's a meaningless distinction, and one that's more concerned about expressing the speaker's context than the subject's context, and the speaker is not relevant.

[tourmalinetaco]

It’s not a meaningless distinction, as it cements it rather firmly in a broad era within a specific context of thought, unlike referring to it as a Goy library. If you refer to it as a Goy library, that both brings it within a Judeo-Christian context and completely loses all meaning. However referring to it as Pagan you now are more informed of the era and schools of thought employed at the time.

[duskwuff]

I mean, part of what makes this library interesting is that nearly all of the classical Greek and Latin texts we have access to have been passed through the filter of generations of Christian monks copying those texts. Being able to see what these texts looked like without that filter is inherently interesting.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

You are right.

it's just that the romans themselves had an identity crisis of "pagan" vs. "monothestic". So yes, you are right to call out the fact that situating it in the christian context would be follie.

But the original point still stands. Calling it pagan is still a correct classification of the works in the library.

[mattmanser]

Christianity didn't even really exist at that point, if would have been a minor cult.

So it doubly makes no sense.

It is definitely not correct, it's the equivalent of calling the ruins Italian instead of Roman.

[_bin_]

Wrong. This is essentially the context in which we still live today though we’ve secularized substantially over the past centuries. But Rome was on the path to Christianity at this time and later converted, so this is a very common way to understand things. Generally a work is one of a few things: Christian, Jewish, maybe Muslim depending on whom you ask, as it’s also an Abrahamic faith, or Pagan.

To be honest this feels more like you have an axe to grind with Christianity or its dominance, similar to the people pushing for “BCE/CE” over BC/AD. I don’t know why, but don’t expect the rest of the world to carry that cross for you.

[griffzhowl]

> This is essentially the context in which we still live today

Who's "we"? - It doesn't apply to everyone in the world, so you're assuming some limitations in who you're referring to.

GP makes a fair point. If you mean by "pagan" simply non-Christian and non-Jewish, then to make it relevant to call it a pagan library you would need to establish that it was curated specifically to exclude Christain or Jewish themes. You might as well call it a "non-Mithraic library", if it happens to exclude mention of Mithras, which was also an up-and-coming cult among the Romans in the first century. Then it would be incorrect or presumptious to call it "non-Mithraic", unless you'd first established that it contained no mention of Mithras. And the only reason you'd do that is if Mithras held a particular parochial relevance to you. You understand that not everyone holds up an image of Mithras as a prism through which to view everything else.

OTOH, if you mean by "pagan" just that it's Roman, but from before Rome converted to Christianity, then just say it's a first century Roman library.

[_bin_]

America, which is the center of world power and culture. You may not like that but that doesn't make it untrue. It's also where most users of this site live.

GP does not make a fair point. We're specifically talking about classical antiquity which was a fairly bounded world. Warrior god cults, like that of Mithras, didn't have a strong role in the overall state and direction of the empire. They weren't major players and it is actually perfectly fine for terminology and understanding to focus on those.

Christianity is the prism through which the Romans later viewed things and through which the heirs of classical antiquity did. This isn't parochial, this reflects your general dislike of Christianity's dominance. But I don't actually have to make a normative argument that it should be, just the positive point that it is.

"Pagan" is a widely-accepted way to refer to Rome's old polytheistic religious traditions, which existed, but not unchallenged, around the first century.

[griffzhowl]

> America, which is the center of world power and culture.

Yeah, ok. So an explicitly parochial prespective. This isn't compelling from a disinterested, objective perspective.

> Warrior god cults, like that of Mithras, didn't have a strong role in the overall state and direction of the empire. They weren't major players and it is actually perfectly fine for terminology and understanding to focus on those.

just like Christianity in 79AD Herculaneum

[_bin_]

That's not parochial, that's realistic. If you have an axe to grind with American dominance that's your own bias; it's a fact, not something you can argue with on objective grounds. Keep your personal anti-Americanism out of this; it's keeping you from thinking clearly.

Christianity didn't have as strong an influence there and then, but it obviously did in the course of the Roman Empire, and this was around the time it started to grow. It's obviously relevant in a way cults of Mithras or Serapis or whomever else weren't.

[tourmalinetaco]

You know what else isn’t a compelling argument? This arduous attempt to argue that Christianity, the largest religion in the world and the very one that was adopted by Rome, is somehow inconsequential to the framing of what came before it. There is no logical argument that can be made to separate the two, for experts in the field will continue to use the term Pagan to refer to Pagan Rome no matter how much it hurts your feelings. It is simply the most objective and efficient method of separating it from the other. Unless of course you know of a better method that the historians do not? I’m sure they’d love to hear it.

[griffzhowl]

> "Pagan" is a widely-accepted way to refer to Rome's old polytheistic religious traditions, which existed, but not unchallenged, around the first century.

Do you know for a fact that the library contained no mention of Jesus nor Judaism? If you don't know this, then why do you refer to it as pagan?

The point is: we have a Roman library from the first century AD. We don't know what it contains. To call it "pagan" tacitly assumes that (a) Christianity was not relevant to the collectors of the library, and (b) whether something is Christian or not is of primary interest whenever we discuss an artefact from the past.

We don't know whether (a) is true, and (b) is only true from a particularly dogmatic and insular perspective

Tbh, I'm struggling to understand what your point is apart from you're asserting that you view the world as centered on your own particular dogmatic tradition and you find it hard to understand why other's don't share that perspective

[_bin_]

No, of course not. The accuracy of the original statement isn't the point. The point is to invalidate the ideologically-motivated conniption fit some people are pitching about a framing that is meet for the topic to have.

[sanxiyn]

I don't live in USA lol

[kiba]

To be honest, adding the word "pagan" just seem needlessly divisive. When I read about the past, nobody is going out of their way to point out that it's Pagan.

[tourmalinetaco]

Do you believe that Goy/Goyim is similarly divisive? Or Kafir? And I’m not sure what books you’re reading, Pagan vs Christian Rome is a common distinction if the context hasn’t already made it obvious (such as here).

[jsnider3]

> Do you believe that Goy/Goyim is similarly divisive? Or Kafir?

Yes, which is why I don't use those words unless they are immediately relevant to the subject.

[Arainach]

When a scientist in India publishes a study, we don't call it a "pagan" study.

The word "pagan" adds nothing to the original post. "An entire library from the first century" conveys just as much information.

[_bin_]

Indian studies were not part of the world of classical antiquity and you know it. Nobody is calling them pagan. And no, stripping that descriptor removes information from the statement.

[ab5tract]

Greece had multiple colonies in India and there was significant cultural diffusion in BCE times.

[_bin_]

This isn't especially relevant. It barely covered a few scraps of northwest India. Most "Indo-Greek" civilization and culture was concentrated in Bactria and Sogdiana, not those few scraps of modern-day India, and BC Indo-Greek culture was not what we'd understand to be "Vedic Indian" so much as Persian-esque.

It also wasn't exactly part of the classical hellenistic civilization we talk about as the root of the western tradition, something of which I'm sure you're fully aware, making this a moot point.

[Arainach]

Is there evidence of a single significant Christian library from the first century?

[_bin_]

Pagan in this case would also exclude Judaism in its many different forms, which certainly had a long written tradition by that point.

[gsich]

Before Christian Era and Christian Era.

My main gripe with it is the low entropy. In BC/AD each letter is unique. Even if you only heared 1 letter you still know what was said.

[card_zero]

Seems like we could be using BCE/AV (for Anno Vulgi). This would be cromulent with how the BC/AD pair is half English and half Latin. And then for convenience and compatibility, shorten BCE to BC.

[philosophty]

These people were non-Christian the same way they were non-Scientologists. They were unaware of Christianity and it had little to no impact on elite Romans by 79 AD.

"So since Philodemus makes up most of the library here, it's pretty safe to call it a "pagan" library."

You're confusing the tiny number of scrolls which have been preserved with what was likely in the complete library.

The complete library was much larger and likely contained the typical mix of philosophy, drama, poetry, and speeches copied over centuries from all over the Roman and Greek world.

[JoBrad]

So is the “pagan” moniker a way of dating the work to before the rise of Christianity with the Roman Empire?

[colechristensen]

To put it simply, "pagan" was a Christian insult towards non-Christians. It is not a reasonable description for anything unless you're in a very Christian context, and even then viewing it from a modern context "pagan" is a bit of a slur.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

it was not an insult. They called themselves pagans. There was a civil war or two in rome with Pagans on one side, and monotheism on the other. They used the term pagan, as in the "old ways". Many people died to decide the fact of whether "Rome" was going to continue as pagan, or convert to monotheism under the Kai Row.

[colechristensen]

>They used the term pagan, as in the "old ways"

That's not what the latin origin of pagan ever meant, it meant peasant or rural usually in the negative connotation common for city folks referring to people who lived outside of cities\. Were there ever any recorded instances of Romans referring to themselves as "pagan" as a group? Maybe one.

>"Rome"

Weird usage of scare quotes, especially in the time frame you are referring to, the name of the empire or the city was never ambiguous.

[pizzafeelsright]

I wouldn't say it's an insult so much as a catch all. Romans could worship any and many gods. Rome being a hub also included foreign religions.

[colechristensen]

Romans were polytheistic and didn't really have a name for their religion, nor did they think of it collectively as one thing separate from other religions, though very occasionally a set of practices might be referred to as what translates to "the Roman religion". Separate religions is really more of a monotheism thing. "Pagan" wasn't ever a self-identifying thing until well after the Christians took over and called them that for a long time.

"Foreign religions" weren't really much of a thing either, there were lots of gods and each village and city (and family really) would have their own versions of gods. Sometimes when you'd conquer a city you'd go to the most prominent temple and steal the statue or alter or whatever and bring it back to Rome with the vibe that you were stealing the god of the place you conquered.

[mkoubaa]

Just because a slur happens to be the same word as a technical term doesn't mean it can't be used as a technical term anymore. Anyone working in the field or had awareness of it knows the appropriate connotation.

It causes me physical pain when scientists change their practice to appease pearl clutching amateurs

[colechristensen]

It's not a technical term, calling things that aren't Christian "pagan" especially from before Christianity was prominent is silly and inaccurate.

[mkoubaa]

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=%22...

[tourmalinetaco]

Very commonly yes.

[wood_spirit]

Christianity had a really transformative impact on the Roman world so it makes sense to classify texts as pre and post Christianity. The date - literally BC and AD - don’t work so scholars have for a very long time clarified by calling the pre-Christian “pagan”.

[lazide]

In the first century CE, Christianity was barely on anyone’s radar. It’s indeed very odd to frame it this way?

[permo-w]

it isn't. besides this library and a few a few texts that survived via the East, almost every Roman text that has survived to today has survived through being copied by Christians, and stored in a Christian library. the word pagan perhaps has negative connotations, but it's a very relevant distinction

[detourdog]

Would monotheistic be a more appropriate description of non-pagers?

I don’t know anything about paganism but it seems like if the grouping excludes Jews and Christians non-Christian describes Jews and pagans.

[wizzwizz4]

Abrahamic (= worshipping the God of Abraham) is the word I've most often seen used.

[detourdog]

That works for me but I'm still curious what a pagan is.

[wizzwizz4]

Anyone who disobeys Abrahamic "ten" commandments 0, 1 and/or 2 (depending how you count them) – that is, anyone who does not worship the Abrahamic God as the first and foremost deity.

I'm not sure whether atheists count as pagans. (Buddhists probably are…? But really, the term was designed for the religious practices of southern and (north-)western Europe that the early-ish Christian church wanted to wipe out.)

[detourdog]

Thank you. This is a nice concise answer. The best part is geo-location of the term.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

yes, it would. Monotheistic would be a much better term as that's how the people at the time viewed the divide.

[mensetmanusman]

Also, Christians were accused and publicly executed for being atheists, since they didn’t believe in the various polytheistic Gods.