Re: Orthodoxy vs. Ancient Hellenic Religion?


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Posted by GS on July 20, 2001 at 03:05:41:

In Reply to: Re: Orthodoxy vs. Ancient Hellenic Religion? posted by Achilles on July 19, 2001 at 19:07:56:

OK,

i don;t think we can really get anywhere in this subject since we disagree fundamentally.

1. You seem to believe that the Byzantines were Romans, while i seem to think that the Byzantines were Greeks and Byzantium the Greek lands that were still under Roman rule though (initially).

2. You seem to believe that the Romans and the Roman Emperor enforced Christianity along their provinces. I seem to think that they had to make it a law and an official religion, because they were pressurised by the people that most of them had already embraced Christianity.

3. You cannot compare the Roman and the Turkish opression 100%, since the Romans had the same religion as the Greeks (the Dodecatheon) and they were the ones that accepted the Hellenic thoughts, culture, way of life, morals, architecture etc and they made it part of their lives and adopted it as their own, unlike the Turks.
That's were the phrase "They (the Romans) conquered as with arms and we (the Greeks) conquered them in spirit". That did not happened with the Turks.

4. Furthermore, it was not the Romans that enforced Christianity upon the Greeks since they embraced it simultaneously with the Greeks as well. ie when the first Christians appeared in the Greek Roman lands, that's exactly when they appeared in the Italian peninsula Roman lands and they were equally prosecuted by the Roman authorities at that time. And as I said above when the emperors saw that they could not opress this new religion anymore and that most of the Greeks and Latins had already embraced it, they had no other choice but make it the official religion of the then Roman empire (west and east)

Anyway, because i find many differences in our way of thought, i don't really think we will agree upon something in the end. It's been nice though sharing my thoughts in this board with you.


PS: The way that I used innacurate was indeed inacurate!! I just wanted to say that i do not agree with this phrase. It may be a fact of life but that does not mean it is correct.


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