I'll post this quietly so as not to distub too much the echoes.
A couple of points;
1) I am growing more and more confident as it becomes increasingly evident that mode advocates against Christianity don’t bother to do any homework; from Murdock, to Massey, tat, Interbane, and Star Burst, you just recycle each other’s stuff.
2) It is also tempting to challenge you all, ala Murdock to prove that Hypatia ever lived. I could use the favorite, “produce one thing she wrote, in her hand writing” ya ya ya but instead I will just resort to some basic research demonstrating that she was a victim of plain old political infighting.
"415
In Alexandria, Egypt, the mob urged by the bishop Cyrillus, attacks a few days before the judaeo-christian Pascha (Pesach-Easter) and hacks to pieces the famous and beautiful philosopher Hypatia. Pieces of her body are paraded by the christian mob through the streets of Alexandria, and are finally burned together with her books in a place called Cynaron. On 30th August, new persecutions start against all the Pagan priests of North Africa, who end their lives either crucified or burned alive.
Shortly after her death, a forged letter attacking Christianity was published under her name.[32] According to Bryan J. Whitfield, the pagan historian Damascius was "anxious to exploit the scandal of Hypatia's death",[33] and laid the blame squarely on the Christians and Bishop Cyril. His account was incorporated in the Suda and so became widely known. However, Damascius is the only ancient source to say that Cyril was responsible.[34]
In the 14th century, historian Nicephorus Gregoras described Eudokia Makrembolitissa as a "second Hypatia".[24]
In the early 18th century, the deist scholar John Toland used her death as the basis for an anti-Catholic tract entitled Hypatia: Or the history of a most beautiful, most vertuous, most learned, and every way accomplish’d lady; who was torn to pieces by the clergy of Alexandria, to gratify the pride, emulation, and cruelty of their archbishop, commonly but undeservedly stil’d St. Cyril.[35] This led to a counter-claim being published by Thomas Lewis in 1721 entitled The History Of Hypatia, A most Impudent School-Mistress of Alexandria.[36]
Eventually, her story began to be infused with Christian details, as it was first substituted for the missing history of Saint Catherine of Alexandria.[37][38]
Nineteenth century
In the nineteenth century, interest in the "literary legend of Hypatia" began to rise.[24] Diodata Saluzzo Roero's 1827 Ipazia ovvero delle Filosofie suggested that Cyril had actually converted Hypatia to Christianity, and that she had been killed by a "treacherous" priest. In 1843, German authors Soldan and Heppe argued in their highly influential History of the Witchcraft Trials that Hypatia may have been, in effect, the first famous "witch" punished under Christian authority (see Witch-hunt).[39] In his 1847 Hypatie and 1857 Hypatie et Cyrille, French poet Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle portrayed Hypatia as the epitome of "vulnerable truth and beauty".[40] Charles Kingsley's 1853 novel Hypatia - or New Foes with an Old Face, which portrayed the scholar as a "helpless, pretentious, and erotic heroine",[41] recounted her conversion by a Jewish-Christian named Raphael Aben-Ezra after supposedly becoming disillusioned with Orestes.
In 1867, the early photographer Julia Margaret Cameron created a portrait of the scholar as a young woman.[42]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia#cite_note-mac-30"Review - Hypatia of Alexandria, by Maria Dzielska
Maria Dzielska's research on Hypatia of Alexandria dispels romantic illusions about the philosopher.
Hypatia of Alexandria
by Maria Dzielska
Translated by F. Lyra
Harvard University Press
1995; 157 pages.
"Well, she [Hypatia] was speaking in the square to many people,
speaking about the present God and they were listening to her in silence,
in a stupor, both followers and adversaries.
But a fanatic horde interrupted,
hands and hands came down upon her,
they tore her clothes and her flesh,
they pushed her into the church of Christ,
and there they finished her. There she died on the floor of the temple."
p. 14
Like many figures from antiquity, biographical details about Hypatia are tainted by partisan legend and speculation. In Hypatia of Alexandria, Maria Dzielska attempts to unravel layers of propaganda to reveal a core of verified or plausible truths.
Described as "the spirit of Plato and the body of Aphrodite," Hypatia was turned into a martyr immortalized when local monks stripped her alluring body and tore it to shreds. She was the last significant mathematician until the late Middle Ages. Her death marked the end of the freedom of inquiry. Hypatia stood as the leader of pagans against an oppressive Christian tyranny. She was a mathematical, astronomical, and philosophical scholar because she trained in Athens.
These are some of the myths perpetrated by the likes of heavyweights, Edward Gibbon and Voltaire, who looked at events through anti-Christian prisms, and whose accounts Dzielska counters.Biographical evidence about Hypatia of Alexandria is sparse. Most important is her contemporary, Socrates Scholasticus (c. 379-450) who devoted a chapter to her biography. Less reliable are a few sentences by another contempoary, the Arian Philostorgius of Cappadocia (born c. 368). Later, John Malatas (491-578) wrote two important sentences; Hesychius of Miletus (6th C.) wrote a biography, and chronicler John of Nikiu wrote unfavorably in the seventh century. The next major source is the tenth century Byzantine Suda.
These sources alone are inadequate for a thorough account of Hypatia's life. Fortunately, she had literate disciples, one of whom, Synesius of Cyrene, maintained correspondence with Hypatia throughout his life. Maria Dzielska was studying Bishop Synesius' writing when she became interested in Hypatia.
Among the more significant corrections Dzielska makes to the Hypatia legend is the idea that Hypatia was not "a body of Aphrodite" when she was killed. She was no longer a tantalyzing beauty when the Parabolans (not monks, but a sort of military arm of the Alexandrian patriarch whom Dzielsjka says spread lies about the philosopher's sorcery) slew her. Instead, Hypatia was about sixty years old.
A second imporant point Dzielska makes is that Hypatia did not so much stand for paganism at odds with a new Christian tyranny, but as a supporter of one Christian political faction against another. The local prefect, Orestes, whom Hypatia supported, resisted incursions into his civil sphere by the new (religious) patriarch, Cyril. Dzielska goes further to say that Hypatia barely stood up for the pagan religion. Instead, unconcerned with the religious aspect, she offered her support to various Christian students.
Hypatia of Alexandria contains four chapters and an appendix. Dzielska reviews the relatively familiar literary tradition first. In the second chapter, she describes Hypatia's circle of followers, the mysteries she taught, and the limited public nature of her teaching. The third chapter pinpoints what can be reasonably ascertained about Hypatia's birth and murder. The conclusion summarizes the differences between Dzielska's research and the common myth. An appendix provides her sources.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/library ... 71800a.htm"
The intersection of politics and religion has been problematic for all of the history of humanity. Given the above 'brief' summaries it is impossible to know what happened to Hypatia, if she ever existed at all.
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