MandM » James Hannam

Did Hannibal of Carthage Exist?

Matt — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 08:22:20 +0000

Historian James Hannam has written an entertaining article called “Satirising the Christ Myth.” The piece uses similar methods employed by those seeking to make the case for the claim that Jesus never existed to show that Hannibal of Carthage did not exist either. It is written in Hannam’s classicly witty yet accurate style;

Did Hannibal Really Exist?

To ask whether or not the great Carthaginian general Hannibal ever actually existed might seem rather pointless. It might be an exercise for a student learning about the nature of historical evidence, but not something any serious scholar would waste time on. But maybe we should not be too hasty in acquiescing with the opinion of establishment historians (in other words, there’s a plot by academics stifling debate).

In fact, although there is plenty of writing about Hannibal, none of it is contemporary and there is no archaeological evidence for him at all (not surprising given the Romans razed the city from whence he came). Furthermore he is not mentioned in any Carthaginian sources, which is incredible, given he was supposed to be their greatest leader (there are no Carthaginian sources as the Romans burnt their city down)! We find when we actually try to pin him down he tends to recede further into the mists of time. His exploits, such as leading elephants over the Alps, are clearly legendary (the skeptic pretends to be incredulous but seems happy to buy his own amazing theory) and it is not hard to find a motive for the creation of this colorful character by Roman writers (as long we can invent a motive for fabrication we can assume that fabrication exists).

Rome and Carthage were great trading rivals in the Western Mediterranean and it did not take them long to come to blows. Rome signed a peace treaty but, under the leadership of the elder Cato, desperately wanted to rid itself permanently of the competition (this is actually true and so helps to conceal the moment when we slip into fantasy). The Romans needed an excuse and the idea they developed was brilliant. Like many ancient civilizations, the Romans rewrote history as it suited them to exhibit their own prowess (a useful and exaggerated generalization). Consequently we should not be surprised to find that they invented a great enemy from Carthage to demonstrate the threat still existed and justify a further war to wipe them out.

The author of the fiction was Cato himself (we need someone to point the finger at; note also how there is no distinction made between the background material above and theorizing here), as Cato wrote the earliest Roman History (true as well, as it happens). But it was intended simply as a justification for a further war with Carthage. It contained the details of Hannibal’s alleged campaigns against the Romans, including his victories on Italian soil (Cato’s history has conveniently not survived so we can speculate freely about what it contained). Cato brilliantly combined the truth with his own anti-Carthaginian propaganda with the intention of goading Rome into another wholly unjustified war with the old enemy (give the fabricator lots of credit for his invention). Once the war was over and Carthage was razed to the ground, the Romans were able to ensure that only their version of history survived (this is important as it enables all other sources to be declared forgeries).

Therefore the myth of the great Carthaginian war leader became an accepted fact. Later Roman historians like the notoriously unreliable Livy (we have to denigrate counter sources) simply assumed Cato’s fabrications were true (because the ancients were stupid and simply could not do any research themselves).

Conclusion

The earlier parts set out in “The Christ Myth won’t die“ are also worth reading.

Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part I

Matt — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:02:38 +0000

Recently Peter Cresswell published a guest post by James Valliant, which originally appeared on SOLO. The following series is a critique of this piece.

Valliant’s basic thesis is that,

Both science and freedom came about among European Christians despite the best efforts of pious Christians to prevent their development, and only on a foundation of pagan, pre-Christian ideas, and with conservative Christians fighting each and every step of the way.

Like other Randian’s he erroneously thinks of Aristotle’s philosophy as a paradigm of the pagan ideas in question. Valliant’s post contains numerous errors. His uncritical acceptance of literal reading of Genocide passages, his claim that the Bible teaches sex is bad, his assertion that it teaches people will be tortured forever for not believing in Christ and numerous other things means there are far to many errors for me to address in a short post and this one is long enough as it is! Here I will focus on those errors most relevant to his main thesis. [I have inserted hyperlinks on the less relevant errors where I have previously blogged on the issue - also see the related posts at the end.]

1. Valliant appears to accept the now discredited conflict thesis. He states that the Church “imprisoned scientists” for challenging its authority and that that “Western science only got going again following the rediscovery of pre-Christian Greek ideas, starting with Aristotle’s.” Valliant cites Copernicus as an example, claiming that he “got his ideas about the earth and the sun from an ancient, pagan source, one that he suppressed upon publication.” This is all questionable at best, as James Hannam’s recent study shows, “During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church actively supported a great deal of science.” Hannam goes on to document that, contrary to popular belief, the Church, “never supported the idea that the earth was flat, never banned human dissection, never banned zero and certainly never burnt anyone at the stake for scientific ideas.” The one exception to this, he notes, is the case of Galileo in the 17^th century, who was placed under house arrest for teaching Copernican cosmology as true (as opposed to a hypothesis).[1] The Catholic Church’s opposition to Copernicus, of course, is the sole case Valliant alludes to but a single case does not substantiate a trend.

Valliant’s allusion to the views of Copernicus is similarly questionable. Copernicus’ heliocentric cosmology constituted a rejection of the standard Aristotelian cosmology accepted by the ancient Greeks. Stillman Drake notes that Galileo’s strongest opponents were supporters of Aristotle and it was more his calling into question Aristotle and the pressure by Aristotelians to silence him, that lead to his condemnation from the church than merely interpreting a psalm figuratively.[2] Nor is it correct to suggest that Copernicus got his “ideas about the earth” from suppressed Greek scientists. In fact, the thesis that the earth moves had already been suggested by 14th century theologians Jean Buridan and Nicole d’Oresme and had been openly discussed in medieval universities for centuries prior to Copernicus. Edward Grant notes the positions of Buridan and d’Oresme were based in part on Theological condemnations of Aristotelian Philosophy that had occurred in the 13 century.[3] The Copernican position then was already being debated openly in theological circles before Copernicus and was a repudiation of Greek cosmology motivated, in part, by theological concerns about God’s sovereignty.

2. Valliant makes the historical claim that “The burning of thousands and thousands at the stake for no reason other than their heretical faith, the torturing of thousands and thousands more in order to get them to confess to any deviation from the Bible … is all a matter of historical record.” He asks,

If Christians, in the name of their faith, did horrible things in the more remote past, had they simply misunderstood the Bible that they were poring over in such detail and with such devotion? Did they finally get clear on the meaning of their true doctrine only after the better part of two millennia?. No, it was the horrible institution of Christian persecution, century after century, which inspired sensitive minds to first consider the idea of freedom of conscience, and, again, only with a good deal of philosophical help from those ancient, pagan sources, from Aristotle to Cicero.” [Emphasis added]

Valliant appears to think that religious persecution as existed in the Inquisition was due to Christian theology and that the notion of freedom of conscience was the result of pagan ideas. The facts, however, are not so simple. Valliant’s argument contains several false assumptions.

First, Valliant is mistaken that Christians for the better part of two millennia both engaged in and supported the activities he refers too. In fact, for the first four hundred years of Christian history, the Church fathers supported and defended a right to freedom of conscience; it was only in the 5th century, due to the influence of Augustine, that suppression of heresy was supported. Even in this instance there was not unanimity. Many theologians such as Ambrose and Pope Siricius protested heresy executions in the late Roman Empire. Forced baptisms did occur under Charlemagne in the 8^th century but were criticised by leading theologians of the time such as Alcurin. From Charlemagne till the 12th century, some 400 years, there were no inquisitions.[4] The Inquisition arose in Western Europe in the 12th century in response to a particular political crisis.

Interestingly both Canon Law and Medieval Theology developed a notion of freedom of conscience in the Middle Ages, drawing from earlier patristic sources and exegesis of Paul’s comments on freedom of conscience in Romans 14.[5] In fact, the defences of religious tolerance, proposed by enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Pierre Bayle and James Madison are often simply repetitions of the arguments of early Christian theologians such as Lactantius and Tertullian, which had been known to Christian theologians for over a thousand years. These facts also show that is mistaken to suggest defences of freedom of conscience were only developed after hundreds of years of Christian persecution.

Second, Valliant’s attempt to equate religious tolerance with pagan antiquity is equally dubious. The pre-Christian Athenian democracy Valliant champions executed Socrates for heresy, around 400 years before Christ. Plato and Aristotle also experienced periods of exile from Athens – Aristotle fled precisely to avoid sharing Socrates fate. Greek Philosophers, including Plato, defended censorship of religious books and execution of those who denied the existence of the gods. For 300 years prior to the Christianisation of Europe the roman state persecuted and executed Christian believers. Eusebius records that thousands of men, women and children – sometimes whole towns – were martyred by Rome for their beliefs.[6] David Lindberg sums the evidence up,

Intolerance is and was (and is) a widely cultivated trait, shared about equally by pagans and Christians. Moreover, each party was capable of employing coercive measures when it gained the political power to do so; Christians, in fact appear to have done so less often than Pagans.[7]

Valliant’s contention that “freedom” was based on “pre-Christian” Aristotelian ideas “with conservative Christians fighting each and every step of the way” also ignores the obvious fact that the Inquisition came into Europe around the same time as the rise of Aristotelianism and was in fact defended and carried out by the Dominican order – the very same order that promoted and defended Aristotle in European universities. The facts, therefore, do not fit the generalised picture Valliant paints.

Third, Valliant’s comments appear to assume that the torture and execution of heretics was justified solely by an appeal to the Bible. However, nowhere does the Bible mention executing or torturing heretics nor was it typically taken to teach this. Christopher Eberle and Terence Cuneo note that suppression of heresy was frequently punished, not on religious grounds per se, but on broader secular grounds,

Religious believers have employed coercive power to violate the right to religious freedom, they themselves rarely have done so in a way that violates the [Doctrine of Religious Restraint] … when such rights have been violated, the justifications offered, even by religious believers, appeal to alleged requirements for social order, such as the need for uniformity of belief on basic normative issues. One theological apologist for religious repression, for example, writes this: ‘The king punishes heretics as enemies, as extremely wicked rebels, who endanger the peace of the kingdom, which cannot be maintained without the unity of the faith. That is why they are burnt in Spain’. [8]

Régine Pernoud points out that reason heretics were burnt or tortured is because the 12th century saw the revival of Roman law which allowed torture to gain a confession and punish treason with burning.[9] Hence contrary to Valliant, the torture and burning of heretics had as much to do with ancient pagan roman legal customs as it did with biblical exegesis. In fact, the evidence suggests that unlike secular courts, the Inquisition used torture sparingly, more moderately and rarely executed those who came before it, suggesting that it in fact moderated and softened the harshness of roman practice.[10]

In my next post in this series, Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part II, I address Valliant’s claims that the writers of the Declaration of Independence were not influenced by Christianity and his claims around freedom and slavery.

In the meantime see this update: The Theological Foundations of the Enlightenment Philosophers

[1] James Hannam God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science (London: Icon books, 2009) 2-3.
[2] Stillman Drake Galileo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
[3] Edward Grant “Science and Theology in the Middle Ages” in David C Linberg and Ronald L Numbers eds God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Religion and Science (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986) 49-75.
[4] Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000) 120.
[5] See Joseph Lecler Toleration and the Reformation trans. by TL Weslow (New York: Association Press, 1960).
[6] Eusebius Ecclesiastical History.
[7] David Lindberg “Science and the Early Church” in David C Linberg and Ronald L Numbers eds God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Religion and Science (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986) 22.
[8] Christopher Eberle and Terence Cuneo “Religion and Political Theory” (2008) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[9] Pernoud, above n 4, 128-129.
[10] See, for example, Edward Peters Inquisition (London: Collier Macmillan, 1981); also Henry Kamen The Spanish Inquisition: A Revisionist History (New Haven Conn: Yale University Press, 1998).

Guest Post: Dan Brown’s History of Science

Matt — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:02:20 +0000

This guest post was submitted by Dr James Hannam. Dr Hannam is a UK based historian with degrees in physics and history from the Universities of Oxford and London and a PhD in the history of science from the University of Cambridge. He blogs at Quodlibeta.

The film adaptation of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons was released this year and, on top of Brown’s new novel, appears to have done a roaring trade. Reports suggest that this is a better effort by director Ron Howard than his The Da Vinci Code, although most critics would feel that making a worse film would have been a stiffer test.

For those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the book, Angels and Demons is set in Rome where hunky Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks, is trying to prevent the Illuminati from detonating an anti-matter bomb. According to Dan Brown’s alternative view of history, the Illuminati are a secret society of scientists (Copernicus and Galileo were, of course, members) who were persecuted by the Catholic Church. After a great purge in the seventeenth century, we learn, the society went underground and plotted revenge. For some reason, it has taken them over three hundred years to get their act together.

The Da Vinci Code launched the literary careers of a whole faculty previously-obscure professors of New Testament Studies. Admittedly, they had good reason for wanting to put the record straight about Brown’s distortions of early Christian history. This time, it’s historians of science who might be upset by Brown’s misrepresentation. Because his contention that the Catholic Church has spent the last two millennia holding back the advance of science is as wrongheaded as the story that Mrs Jesus retired to the south of France with her kids.

Of course, it’s not just Dan Brown who believes in the battle between science and religion. While few people think that the Illuminati really were a group of scientists suppressed by the Church, the perception of an eternal conflict between reason and faith is widespread. It’s true that the Church did make a single significant mistake in 1616, when it banned Copernicus’s opinion that the earth orbits the sun. But the subsequent trial of Galileo over the issue had more to do with papal self-esteem than astronomy. And even in this case, the Catholic Church was siding with the scientific consensus of the time. Still, you can’t manufacture an eternal conflict from a single example, so proponents of the hypothesis have had to resort to a different strategy – inventing the evidence.

For example, in the book of Angels and Demons, Brown alleges that the Church had Copernicus murdered for his heliocentric model. While this is a more extreme allegation, there is a general belief that Copernicus feared persecution for his ideas. It’s widely thought that he refrained from publishing them until he was on his deathbed. In fact, he had circulated a pamphlet outlining his theory decades before he died. This was favourably received by senior churchmen and he was urged to publish by a cardinal. He even dedicated his great book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, to the Pope.

Alas, as long as the likes of Dan Brown sell far more books than historians of science, this is a myth that is unlikely to go away.

James Hannam’s book God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science is published by Icon. The best price we could find for it from a New Zealand bookseller, with free delivery, was through The Nile Online Bookstore at the above link. International readers can buy it through Amazon. As I have previously stated elsewhere, it would make a good Christmas gift…

More on the “Dark Ages” and Other Propaganda

Matt — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:26:00 +0000

Those of you who have followed my discussions with Peter Cresswell on the history of Christianity and the relationship between faith and reason in the middle ages may find this abridged article by Dr James Hannam interesting. Dr Hannam has recently completed his PhD on the History of Science at the University of Cambridge.

UPDATE:
Dr Hannam emailed me to advise that this article is no longer available online (it had to be removed at his publishers insistence) but is available in full in the book, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, which is apparently now available in New Zealand. Bethyada will be interested to hear, “as one of the comments on your blog asked, I have included a discussion of the trebuchet and other weapons developed in the Middle Ages.”

Some reviews:

“A spirited jaunt through centuries of scientific development… captures the wonder of the medieval world: its inspirational curiosity and its engaging strangeness.” Sunday Times

“This book contains much valuable material summarised with commendable no-nonsense clarity… James Hannam has done a fine job of knocking down an old caricature.” Sunday Telegraph

Guess what I’m adding to my Christmas list? …Madeleine…

God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science

Rethinking Science in the Middle Ages
The most famous remark Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) made is, “If I have seen a little further then it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” What most of us assume he meant is that his scientific achievements were built on the discoveries of his predecessors. In the same passage, he alludes to René Descartes (1596 – 1650), the French philosopher and mathematician, so presumably this is one of those whom he meant. Few people realise, however, that Newton’s aphorism was first coined in the twelfth century by the theologian Bernard of Chartres (d. c. 1130). Even fewer are aware that Newton’s science also has its roots embedded firmly in the Middle Ages.

This book will show just how much of the science and technology that we take for granted today has medieval origins.

….

During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church actively supported a great deal of science, which it also kept control of when speculation could impinge on theology. Ironically, by keeping philosophers focused on nature instead of metaphysics, even the limitations that the Church set may have benefited science in the long term. Furthermore and contrary to popular belief, the Church never supported the idea that the earth was flat, never banned human dissection, never banned zero and certainly never burnt anyone at the stake for scientific ideas. The most famous clash between science and religion was the trial of Galileo (1564 – 1642) in 1633. Academic historians are now convinced that this had as much to do with politics and the Pope’s ego as it did with science. I will examine the trial fully in the last chapter of this book when I will also explain how much Galileo himself owed to his medieval predecessors.

….

Popular opinion, journalistic cliché and misinformed historians notwithstanding, recent research has shown that the Middle Ages were a period of enormous advances in science, technology and culture. The compass, paper, printing, stirrups and gunpowder all appeared in Western Europe between AD500 and AD1500.

True, these inventions originated in the Far East, but Europeans developed them to a far higher degree than had happened elsewhere.

….

The development of printing and paper meant that an incredible 20 million books were produced in the first fifty years after Johann Gutenberg had published his printed Bible in 1455. This dwarfed the literary output of the ancient world. Printing probably had an even greater effect than gunpowder, which, like the stirrup before it, revolutionised warfare and allowed Europeans to dominate the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, the people of medieval Europe invented spectacles, the mechanical clock, the windmill and the blast furnace by themselves. Lenses and cameras, almost all kinds of machinery, and the industrial revolution itself all owe their origins to the forgotten inventors of the Middle Ages. Just because we don’t know their names, does not mean that we should not recognise their achievements.

They lived much tougher lives than we do and we are the ones reaping the rewards for their hard work.

Most significantly, the Middle Ages laid the foundation for the greatest achievement of western civilisation, modern science. It is simply untrue to say that there was no science before the ‘Renaissance’. Once medieval scholars got their hands on the work of classical Greeks, they developed systems of thought that allowed science to travel far further than it had in the ancient world. Universities, where academic freedom was guarded against all comers, were first founded in the twelfth century. These institutions have always provided scientific research with a safe home. Even Christian theology turned out to be uniquely suited to encouraging the study of the natural world because it was believed to be God’s creation. Thus, my own research over the last decade has led me to believe that it is a gross injustice to label the Middle Ages as ‘stagnant’, ‘barbaric’, or ‘uncivilised’.

….

Watermills had existed in the ancient world but the Greeks and Romans never adopted them in large numbers. In the Early Middle Ages, they became increasingly common and the Domesday Book lists over 5,000. Tidal mills were adopted on suitable estuaries where a dam harnessed the high tide and released it through a channel containing a watermill. Finally, the first recorded European windmill sprouted in Yorkshire during the twelfth century and the idea quickly spread all over those parts of northern Europe where suitable rivers or estuaries were not available.
Taken together, these improvements in agriculture led to a population explosion. Estimates for the population of France and the Low Countries rise from three million in 650AD to 19 million just before the arrival of the Black Death in 1350AD. For the British Isles, the equivalent figures are 500,000 people and five million. In Europe as a whole, the population increased from less than 20 million to almost 75 million. These figures must be estimates, if not guesstimates, but the upward trend is clear. For comparison, at the height of the Roman Empire about 33 million people lived in Europe. Well before 1000AD, the population far exceeded what is was when the continent was ruled by Rome and remained above that level even after the Black Death had killed a third of the inhabitants of Europe in the fourteenth century.

….

In some ways, the medieval worldview was closer to ours than we sometimes imagine. For example, Gerbert and all his fellow men and women of any education in 1000AD were perfectly well aware that the Earth was a sphere. They also knew that the universe was very large compared to the Earth. As Boethius wrote in his Consolation of Philosophy:
It is well known and you have seen it demonstrated by the astronomers, that in comparison to the extent of the heavens, the circumference of the earth has the size of a point. That means that, compared to the heavenly sphere, the earth may be thought of as having no size at all.
Comments we hear today about people in the Middle Ages inhabiting a ‘poky little universe’ or believing that the Earth is flat are born of modern rather than medieval ignorance.

….

Another modern misconception about the medieval worldview is that people thought the central position of the Earth meant that it was somehow exulted. In fact, to the medieval mind, the reverse was the case. The universe was a hierarchy and the further from the Earth you got, the closer to Heaven you came. At the centre, underneath our feet, the Christian tradition placed Hell. Then, second worse only to the infernal pit was our Earth of change and decay. Above us, acting as a boundary between the earthly and the heavenly, was the sphere of the Moon. This marked the dividing line between the perfect unchanging heavens and the transient sub-lunar region containing ourselves, doomed to die. Next, there were the crystalline spheres of the seven planets – the Moon, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – eternally orbiting with uniform circular motion. The spheres were thought to be made of a transparent and imperishable fifth element called ether or quintessence. Above them were the fixed stars whose positions relative to each other never appeared to change. Above even them was the firmament and beyond that, Christians like Gerbert imagined, was the realm of God. This hierarchical system gave people absolute directions of up and down, one towards the heavens and one down to Earth at the bottom of the celestial ladder. To move the Earth away from the centre of the universe was not to downgrade its importance but to raise it up towards the stars.