It is not true that Christian practices are mostly pagan in origin. You do not need to look far to find the origin of the vast majority of what you would have seen in a medieval church service. You can see the common origin if you compare and contrast an Orthodox Jewish synagogue service with an Orthodox Christian liturgy. The first half of the Divine Liturgy and the synagogue service are virtually the same even in terms of the motions — the Torah scroll is replaced with the gospel book. Christianity owes far more to second-temple Jewish practices than it does to anything pagan.
It’s worth noting that “monotheism” is a modern word. It was not a word used by theologians of the pre-modern era. The Bible is insistent that God is in some sense “one” or “alone,” and that you don’t offer sacrifices to other gods. People just thought that other gods were demons. It made a big difference to this point of view whether a sailor was asking St. Nicholas to help him get home safely or asking a demon for help, in the same way it makes a big difference whether you call the local mob or the municipal police when you have a problem. The latter are quite analogous to an angel/saint because police don’t have power or make laws in their own right, they are just servants of a higher authority (ultimately, the constitution). The mob, like the demon in the Christian point of view, are in disobedience to that higher authority or in direct competition/rebellion against it. There’s a really big difference even if both paths end with armed men with guns coming to solve my problem.
Judiasm is monotheistic, Christianity, if you ask anyone besides a christian, is polytheistic, you have The Father (1), The Son (Jesus is also God, or A God, 2), and The Holy Ghost (3). There was a big, big brouhaha about this, the Nicene Creed is a core part of protestant religions to help remind everyone that they're technically a monotheist religion and somehow Jesus is a Flavor of God and not separate despite most of the new testament has him as a fully separate person with his own separate agenda. Even if you discount The Father as a legal entity only you still end up with a polytheistic religion. Writing Jesus into the canon 2000 years later as a seperate but equal entity was bound to be fraught with continuity issues.
The other reply offered a perfectly good set of corrections but I want to add my own clarifications.
One point I wanted to make in my original comment was that monotheism vs polytheism is not a helpful object category when talking about 2000 year old religions as their adherents understood it. This analytic category is a fairly recent invention. You can make this distinction if you want, but it will be of precious little use for actually understanding the people of the past.
It’s also not helpful to back-project contemporary understandings of Judaism back into the religious context of the 1st century. The idea that the messiah would be in some sense divine, or even that he would be YHWH Himself, is not purely an invention of the Christians, but was present in Jewish groups prior to Jesus. I would argue this has not even been entirely purged from all strands of modern Orthodox Judaism. This doesn’t even get into stuff like the Zohar/Jewish mysticism where you have 12+ special flavors of God.
All of these groups would have insisted that there’s one true God, but they would also have insisted that he had more than one hypostasis.” Romans at the time also believed that a single God could have different hypostases.* Nevertheless despite this agreement they accused the Christians not of being monotheists but of being atheists because the Christians alone refused to pay respect to any of the hypostases of any of the recognized gods.
The idea that Jesus is depicted as having some kind of separate agenda from His Father is also a very bizarre reading of the New Testament. Jesus’ relationship with The Father seems to be much more complex than that since he says The Son can do nothing Himself and that He only does what the Father is doing, that He and the Father are one, etc.
There nonetheless seems to be some kind of distinction between Them, hence the two thousand years of theological debate. If you want some sources on this type of thought prior to and parallel to Christianity, you can read the book Two Powers in Heaven.
> ... most of the new testament has him [Jesus] as a fully separate person with his own separate agenda ...
Just want to correct a couple errors of fact here, by quoting from the sources that you're misunderstanding.
"And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, 'Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.'" - Luke 22:41-42 (copied from https://biblehub.com/esv/luke/22.htm)
He doesn't want to suffer and die on the cross. Yet he chooses to serve the Father's agenda, not his own.
And note that, if you read just a few more sentences, you discover that this statement caused the Jews listening to him to pick up stones to stone him (for anyone who doesn't know, stoning was a method of execution: they intended to kill him). He asks (verse 32) why they want to stone him, and they reply (verse 33) that it's for blasphemy — "because you, being a man, make yourself God."
Finally, I want to address one other point in what you said:
> Christianity, if you ask anyone besides a christian, is polytheistic.
It's true that if you ask most people who are not Christians, most (not all, but most) will tell you that Christians worship three gods. But consider this: if you want to find out about Buddhist teaching, who would be a better source for explaining it to you correctly, a Buddhist, or a non-Buddhist? If you want to find out about Jewish teaching, who would be more informed about it, a religious Jew, or a non-Jew? (The word "Jew" is ambiguous, referring to both a religion and an ethnicity — so I use the term "religious Jew" to distinguish people who follow the religion from people who are ethnically Jewish but don't follow the Jewish religion). If you want to be well-informed about Islam, who would explain it to you better, a Muslim, or a non-Muslim? And if you want to understand what Christianity actually teaches, who's more likely to be correct about it, a Christian or a non-Christian?
P.S. To explain just a little further, the teaching of the Trinity is indeed one of the most complex teachings of Christianity to fully grasp, and there have been countless arguments and debates about it over the centuries. The council at Nicaea in AD 325, which formalized the Nicene Creed, did not completely settle that — some people continued to argue over the doctrine later — but it pretty well cemented the official church position. That the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ("Holy Ghost" in older English texts, but "Holy Spirit" in modern English) are both three and one. The modern English translation of the Nicene Creed is probably worth quoting here (at least the relevant bits) so people can see what the actual teaching is:
"I believe in one God, the Father almighty ... I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial [which means "of one being, of one nature"] with the Father ... I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified ..." (Source: https://www.usccb.org/prayers/nicene-creed, though there are multiple translations, e.g. the translation I'm most familiar with says "of one being with the Father" rather than "consubstantial with the Father").
And before I quit writing this P.S., I want to mention one kind of awesome story about the council of Nicaea. Which is the story about what St. Nicholas allegedly did there. (Yes, the St. Nicholas whose life inspired the story of Santa Claus). Sadly, the story is probably not true, since Nicholas's name does not appear in any of the lists of attendees that have survived... but it's an awesome story anyway. The story goes that Arius was standing in front of the council arguing his position, which was that Jesus had not existed eternally, but was created by God the Father at one point. (The famous phrase is "There was a time when he was not".) That part is certainly historically true. What is likely not historical is the rest of the story: that Nicholas got so mad at Arius's denial of the divinity of Jesus that he got up and slapped (some sources say "punched") Arius in the face.
Which leads to this historical-humor variation on a famous American Christmas carol:
He knows when you are sleeping,
He knows when you're awake,
He knows when you've denied the divinity of Christ,
So if you're an Arian, DUCK!
P.P.S. One last note. My intention here is not to argue, but to explain. I am happy to argue/debate with anyone who wants to discuss further, but HN is not the right place for literal religious debate. If you want to argue or debate about Christian teaching, feel free to contact me at (my HN username) at pobox dot com. (And if you just write a note here that you've done so, that will avoid the possibility of my missing your email: my pobox address gets a lot of email).
I'd call judaisim pagan too as it was originally polytheistic little different than the rest of middle eastern paganism, until it became a cult of yahweh that rejected the rest of the proto canaanite pantheon. So that tracks with my interpretation of "nothing new in christianity" really.
If second-temple era Jews are “pagan” then the term “pagan” has been expanded such as to denude it of all meaning, even if we assume this evolutionary view of Jewish religion, which is actually a very questionable view.
There are plenty of unique Christian traditions too that didn’t come from surrounding culture. The veneration of relics and body parts of saints in particular was considered grossly alien and offensive to the pagans of the time. It was deeply countercultural to have such veneration for pieces of a dead body and to go so far as to build your places of worship around them, to kiss them, etc. And as far as we know the Christians didn’t get this idea from contact with anyone else, they came up with it themselves. It’s deeply myopic to treat ancient people as devoid of creativity or agency.
Even then, they only claimed Yahweh as their God (of the Jews), not the one god of everybody. Things have certainly changed with the ascendance of Christianity though.
Can you elaborate? It’s “implicitly implied” by your code? How is that “exposing it fully” except in the sense that speculative execution is “implicitly implied” in all code targeting the relevant hardware?
This passage lists a lot of names repeatedly, and Jacob is in the genealogy of Jesus. Genealogies also list a lot of names. So perhaps somehow it’s jumping from Jesus to Jacob?
In theory only and all Catholics recognize the authority of the pope. In practice it’s a mess as far as I understand, with a bunch of American catholic groups who rejected church reforms that happened during the 20th century, resulting in people calling themselves catholic who do not actually believe that the Catholic Church has authority over their religion.
Add to that the fact that the pope has a cultural influence that goes further than only the catholic audience (lots of Protestant see the pope as important even if that’s not something dictated by Protestantism, a bunch of not really religious people see him as a sort of spiritual leader, etc)
I'm not aware of any Protestants that see the Pope as important except in a very negative way - that's practically the defining feature of Protestantism and one of the few things all the Protestant denominations have in common, whether "low church" or "high church".
Heck, it's a struggle to convince many of them that Catholics are Christian at all, and "the Pope is the antichrist" used to be a normal, mainstream comment in American newspapers.
It is somewhat a piece of irony that the Pope generally holds a more favorable reputation in the minds of the irreligious in America than the religious. Even the average Catholic likely does not have as much respect for the Pope as some of the commenters here.
This is not very common in Continental European protestants, it is more something American protestants inherited from British protestants, that had some peculiar reasons to turn the dial on papal hate to the 11.
Any serious Protestant (mainline and knowledgeable) listen and give weight when the Pope speaks. They would certainly refuse the Pope authority and inerrancy ex Cathedra but not necessarily disagree with him. Theologically there's much less division between Protestants and Catholics today than in XVI. A large share of disagreeements are due to residual historical animosity.
Every mainline Protestant denomination was basically founded on the idea that they shouldn’t have to listen to the Pope at all. And that was before Papal infallibility was enshrined, which actually didn’t take place until the late 1800s.
In America, anti-Catholic sentiment was extremely strong until relatively recently, and then only because religiosity (and thus the reason for it) has declined. All the theological division still exists, it’s just less striking in a world that’s much more irreligious and in countries where vastly different religions (Muslim or Hindu) are present now in real numbers.
Practically all the pro-Pope sentiment I’ve seen in my lifetime has been from various flavors of atheists, agnostics, and other areligious types. Catholics themselves generally hold more respect for the office than the person, and Protestants are almost uniformly negative on both.
Vatican II started a major and ongoing reconciliation process leading to things like the "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification" (1999, quietly resolving the core issues of the reformation) and Pope Francis commemorating the 500th anniversary of the reformation at a Lutheran church in Sweden (2016):
I think attitudes vary regionally and by congregation and an ecumenical focus doesn't necessarily translate to a positive perception of the pope but it can and not just all that recently.
This is not a very historically informed comment. This didn’t take place during the “dark ages,” for one, but in a Christian monastery in Islamic Sinai if the timing of the article is correct. It’s a shame that some of these discoveries were overwritten but this was a common practice in any culture because paper was so expensive.
The writings of St. John Climacus were also far more useful and interesting to people at the time since they dealt with what for them were practical matters of how to lead the life of their community. This isn’t because they were narrow-mindlessly religious. Monks also had to busy themselves with calendrical calculations — and therefore astronomy. These were works of what we would call practical philosophy or ethics, like the famous Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. It would also have been tragic to potentially lose those culturally significant writings in favor of astronomical or mathematical texts.
Also, to add to this - the "dark ages" were kind of a misnomer. The center of culture and science in the West packed up and moved from Rome to Constantinople. What we think of as the "dark ages" were really the "barbarian" tribes of Europe (starting with the Franks), slowly becoming educated and cultured within the shadow of the old Roman empire.
Also, the monks and scribes creating palimpsest were not thoughtless. In the West we enjoy a very wide collection of ancient texts specifically through the diligent work of making and distributing copies. They were remarkably literate and intentional in their work.
A lot of these palimpsest were not entire books, but fragments or loose pages that had built up over centuries and then bound and repurposed. They were not any more sentimental with them than you would be with a pile of old journals from a thrift shop. A collection of celestial observations done by the eye were certainly not of particular interest to them.
Well 7-9th centuries were relatively dark in Constantinople as well, it took quite a while to recover from the Islamic invasions. It was just not a good period for Europe and the Mediterranean economically, demographically and politically.
And St Catherine's is a fortress in the middle of the desert so who knows what it's status was, it was an interesting time (beginning of Islamic conquests).
What if Hipparchus originally charted stars that no longer exist in our sky, due to having gone supernova hundreds of year ago? A thousand year time difference is roughly 1/3rd of a complete equinox precession, which would also be interesting to compare against our modern day observations.
All of this is valuable, both the cultural knowledge and the scientific. I doubt the monks realized the gravity of their choice so long ago.
Okay just kidding, but also people stealing what they think are good ideas, discarding the rest, and passing off what is passed along as their own? Everyone does that. Anyone who says different is blind to their own behavior.
> I doubt the monks realized the gravity of their choice so long ago.
I mean, the star chart was probably something equivalent to a text book for us. Many texts were uniquely preserved at St. Catherine's since they had Mohammed's letter of protection not to mention being a fortress in the middle of a desert.
At the time the monks probably thought it was a common enough text to not worry about.
A chatbot can’t be empathetic. They don’t feel what you feel. They don’t feel anything. They’re not any more empathetic than my imaginary friend that goes to another school.
Empathy is a highly variable trait in humans, both from one person to the next as well as within the same person depending on their mental state and the people and situation they are dealing with, so I'd bet that most of the time you're not going to get genuine empathy from people either. They may say empathetic sounding things but I doubt there will be any actual feeling behind it. I'm not even sure doctors could function in their jobs if they weren't able to distance themselves from deeply empathizing with their patients, it would just be one heart wracking tragedy after another if you fully immersed yourself in how each patient was feeling when they're at their worst.
Except that they can talk with you, at length, and seem empathetic, even if they're totally unconscious.
Which, you know, humans can also do, including when they're not actually empathizing with you. It's often called lying. In some fields it's called a bedside manner.
An imaginary friend is just your own brain. LLMs are something much more.
I use Fossil extensively for all my personal projects and find it superior for the general case. As others said it’s more suited for small projects.
I also use Fossil for lots of weird things. I created a forum game using Fossil’s ticket and forum features because it’s so easy to spin up and for my friends to sign in to.
At work we ended up using Fossil in production to manage configuration and deployment in a highly locked down customer environment where its ability to run as a single static binary, talk over HTTP without external dependencies, etc. was essential. It was a poor man’s deployment tool, but it performed admirably.
That’s the whole idea though:
“God became man so that men might become gods,” -St. Athanasius
reply