[lbo-talk] mass dementia

[c b]

Yes, them. They were one of the last pagan cults, hidden in a corner,
obscured by a dialect. But the whole thrust of Murray's view is that
Christianity had been demonizing pagan gods ever since they got into
power. We don't have any documents for ancient history or the middle
ages. But I assume Ginzberg presumes it worked the same way then. That
seems to be what he's suggesting in the introduction. Of course, we
can't find evidence for what happened in earlier times. We're lucky we
found this evidence. We're lucky it survived in one (or two) corners
into recent enough times that documents survive. But if someone now
wants to assert this isn't what happened in earlier times, he would
have to come up with an alternate theory of how the 99% of other pagan
belief was stamped out *without* being demonized. I don't see why
someone would want to when this explanation is so satisfying. And then
they'd be at square one when we're at square 2. They'd have zero
evidence where we've got this.

Michael

^^^^^
CB: I haven't followed every detail of this interesting , scholarly
thread, so I'm not sure that this is on point,  but there is the First
Commandment on having only one God, so did Constantine start
demonizing pagan Gods ? He and following Christian Princes must have
done something to dislodge the Roman religions.