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Comment by wannabe44 | Hacker News Reader

> The de facto equation of ‘ancient history’ with ancient Mediterranean history, at least in most of the Anglosphere, has endured for many generations. But we are on the cusp of a dramatic shift in perspective that is producing a much bigger, broader and more exciting view of ‘the ancient world’.

Archeology is more difficult than reading. The civilizations which left a literary corpus (oral or written) will have more to speak about than those who didn't.

Archeology also tells us only of what metals people used, what animals they had and what they ate. Whereas literature speaks much more - of the values of those people, which makes it a more attractive target to study.

Finally, even from an archaeological perspective, trade is less interesting than war. So warlike civilizations generate more interest than trade-dominated ones.

Of course this is excluding the fact that christianity made greco-roman culture relatable to most of the west.

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>> christianity made greco-roman culture relatable to most of the west.

I find this statement confusing. Hellenistic culture was the West. All Western culture since, including Rome, has imitated it. Christianity didn't make Greco-Roman culture accessible to the West. It made monotheistic, Hebrew/Judean culture accessible to Rome (primarily by making it less harsh and less monotheistic), and then spread onward to the Germanic tribes, Celts, Slavs, Dacians, and others who came into Rome's former orbit.

Could you expand on why you think Christianity made Hebrew/Judean culture less monotheistic?

Also, surely you would concede that scholars who sought to rediscover ancient greek/roman literature through a Christian lens in the 15th/16th centuries played a big role in making it accessible to the Christian world?

I'd say Christianity ended up as a less fundamentalistic take on Old Testament. But one has to take into account the whole development of Christianity at least up to say 10th century. It's not like there was the only and one version of it.

> Could you expand on why you think Christianity made Hebrew/Judean culture less monotheistic?

Well, the very strong devotion to saints IMO comes from a polytheistic approach rather than a monotheistic one, where you just have an invisible god you are not even permitted to draw or paint.

Catholic and Orthodox churches have a large body of saints each of which is associated with domains of life, people make offerings to the saints idols (paintings and statues) as you would in a polytheistic culture, small golden and silver trinkets usually. These practices were originally polytheistic practices that merely switched context with minimal changes.

Of course sacrifices which was both a Judaic and typical polytheistic ritual was dropped from both Hebrew and Christian practice.

Oaths is another one, oaths are a very polytheistic tradition, you swear to do something with the gods as the arbiter and the judge of you actions. I don't believe Hebrew tradition is very big on taking oaths, I think they actually forbid it, I may be wrong.

As another example the Pope is a pontiff, that is a roman religious office predating Christianity.

Point is when Christianity spread in the empire it evolved to include a lot of the religious practice of the people of the empire.

Edit: Although if you think about it holy communion is very sacrifice like in its mechanics.

Typically in a Greek sacrifice a food item I think typically some sort of animal protein was dedicated to the gods cooked on site and then split amongst the attendees, the gods are satisfied with the smoke as far as I understand.

Holy communion has very similar mechanics, food item then a ritual involving god, and then communally consumed.

Christianity is more idolatrous than the ancient Vedic religion, and practically polytheistic due to the veneration of Christ's mother and saints. I find this parallel amusing. Christianity made of Judaism and old testment exactly what Hinduism made of the Vedas.

Other posters' comments about saints slotting into the places of pagan deities are right. But even more fundamentally, from a Jewish (or, in fact, Muslim) perspective, the Trinity is a form of polytheism, and depictions of Jesus amount to idol worship. Both of those things made Christianity far more appealing and familiar to the Romans than the original desert religion it sprang from, with one invisible abstract God represented by an unspeakable word.

There were also empires like Persia who had most of their written history deliberately destroyed by conquerors, like the Arabs or Mongols.

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