I found this a fascinating article - mystery story, dectective story, discovery story all rolled into one. The ironic twist in the fact that scientific principles were used to win out over the barbaric obliteration of the original manuscript in the end, was worthy of any modern thriller.

However, the paucity of finds such as this highlights the fact that each time "ignorant armies clash" the world loses so much more than peace. I often muse over what irreplacable relics are, even now, being lost to the future in the current battle grounds.

Some of Archimedes'work was preserved,inadvertedly, for the wrong reasons by the wilfully ignorant. We should be grateful to those scientist martyrs who helped the West emerge from the long dark night of Christian barbarism and ignorance, perhaps a thousand years of civilisation was lost under the rule of the theocrats.

Most interesting article.. and not a small amount of Greek cultural flag waving one might add.

Mac says:

<<We should be grateful to those scientist martyrs who helped the West emerge from the long dark night of Christian barbarism and ignorance, perhaps a thousand years of civilisation was lost under the rule of the theocrats.>>

I'd rephrase that Mac.. a few changes are in order....

"the long dark night of misapplied Christianity, by ignorant people who clearly did not know the one from whom they took their name"

"the rule of those who failed to grasp that Jesus did not come to establish an earthly kingdom" rather than 'theocrats'

It' not hard to get it right..and doing do make a big difference to the level of anti Christian hatred, bias and bigotry which feeds on this kind of misprepresentation in the popular media.

So..I hope all will work toward this end of firstly understanding the true message of our Lord, and secondly.. even though they might not personally subscribe to it, at least use terminology which more accurately describes the situation.

The most obvious mountain of misinformation in the article is the implication that the Roman Empire was suddenly 'forced to convert' when Constantine supposedly became Christian.

Anyone who knows even a shred of history of that time knows full well that the Church did not need Constantine to help it along..it had survived vicious persecution.. and without wars or weapons..had grown by the simple power of the message to the point where not to recognize is as the major ideological force in the Roman Empire would have been totally stupid.

Sadly....in recognizing this, Constantine used methods from the dark side rather than the light.. and brough the church into that dark age referred to by the author.

Christianity has nothing to fear from genuine science.

Polycarp,

I'll leave the theology and Church history to you and accept your argument that the theocrats were not true Christians, however that's not the point. The danger is from religious institutions subverting the secular state, not necessarily religion itself. Communism is another example of a humane ideology that, when applied, produced the worst tyranny in history. In reference to the author's theme,the pagan Roman Empire was conservative,with little technical innovation compared to the much-maligned "Christian" Medieval period. Although the theocrats destroyed much of classical civilisation they can't be blamed for the Romans failure to industrialise.

Who's being a revisionist now, eh Poly?

Funny stuff.

No, no Bugsy,

that's just the application of the "shred of knowledge of history" he possesses.