Talk:Religious persecution in the Roman Empire

suggested improvements

This article can be improved simply by drawing together here material from Constantine I, Edict of Milan. Theodosian decrees, Theodosius I, Serapeum, Late Antiquity etc etc. With the assembled material as a base, and some reading, a more nuanced and accurate article could be assembled. --Wetman 21:14, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

article name

Shouldn't article this be titled "Persecution of Roman religious"? That would mesh with the style of the other articles on Template:Religious persecution. To the point, one cannot persecute religion, only religious people. — coelacan talk — 05:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

POV Problems with Hypatia Section

The section here on Hypatia suffers from POV issues. For a more balanced view see the main article Hypatia of Alexandria. It's problamatic to claim that Cyril ordered her murder,according to the preponderance of historical evidence.

Agreed.--Shtove 10:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

POV and cleanup

I'v marked this article both for POV and clean-up. The article is obviouly not to wiki standard. Much of it is very objectionnable, for instance :

-Constantius had been brought up by fanatical Christians who had free reign to indoctrinate him with their prejudices. These Christians naturally gained an inordinate amount of power that led to the implementation of their intolerant views on society.

-Julian [...], being taught by a Christian tutor, and his ideas concerning religion were therefore based on the intolerance inherent in Christianity.

-Julian did, however, forbid Christian rhetoricians and grammarians to teach unless they consented to worship the Pagan deities.He probably did this because he knew from experience that they were likely to spread intolerant ideas [...].

-...Ambrose, the narrow-minded Christian bishop of Milan. -Due to the riots caused by fanatical Christians in their attempts to destroy the temples... -[...] thanks to the fanatical Christians who did their best to destroy all works that disparaged their religion

I could go on.

There are misspellings and long paragraphs, and the whole text read more like a diatribe than an encyclopedia article. I recommend a complete rewrite.

Agreed, this article is terrible. Even if one completely believes its conclusions it is making conclusions in a way that's very unencyclopedic. (Print encyclopedias are a bit less obsessed with being neutral than Wikipedia, but I don't think any of them would go this far with villification)--T. Anthony 10:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of tags

At this point, these generic templates are next to useless for an article this evolved. If someone contests specific statements or specific sources, use the appropriate tags in the actual article:

{{fact}} produces^{[citation needed]}
{{who}} produces ^[who?]
{{vc}} produces ^{[unreliable source?]}
{{POVassertion}} produces ^{[neutrality is disputed]}
{{POV-statement}} produces ^{[neutrality is disputed]}

Sections which are totally unsourced can be pulled intact to the talk page to be discussed or re-added later. Drive-by editors slapping templates on articles are not conducive to actual progress or consensus. Rather than raging against the wiki, why not contribute to the article? - WeniWidiWiki 15:52, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

well, the entire thing reads like an essay. The individual facts mentioned may be alright, but they are not so much "mentioned" as "built up" polemically, apparently by an outraged pagan out to denounce Christianity. I mean to say, the basis of the article is fair enough, but the language and tone needs a serious effort in WP:NPOV. Just report the facts as a neutral historian would, and let the reader decide for themselves whether they want to feel outraged, don't be outraged for them. dab (𒁳) 10:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Should be rewritten

The previous poster is right that the article reads like an essay, and that the author is outraged for the reader. I'v marked several passages that are very objectionnable and I could highlight several more. I believe this article should be entierly rewritten.

What the...

This article is terrible.

The amount of text alone makes it a nightmare to rewrite, considering that this may be one of the most blatantly biased articles I've ever read. (If you've seen worse, please share for good humor).

I agree that this sounds very much like an essay.

In order to understand how Christianity was able to supplant Paganism we must go back to the time of Constantine. Prior to the time of Constantine, the Christians had simply pleaded for tolerance for their religion, but once they had won recognition they set themselves up on a Crusade to drive all other religious beliefs away. Galerius was the first emperor to issue an edict of toleration for all religious creeds including Christianity. Although Constantine was the first emperor to convert to Christianity, he never legislated against Paganism, in spite of what zealous Christian writers would have us believe. In fact, the Christian emperors down to Valentinian and Valens were not (except perhaps for Constantius) wholeheartedly devoted to the suppression of Paganism the way in which fanatical Christians would have liked them to be.

Reading that is painful to my intelligence.

I mean, l... no, just no. You already know how poor it is. It needs no elaboration.

Can most of the sources actually be verified? Additionally, notice tidbits like this, in the 'References' section:

The fanaticism of Julian led to his being criticized by Ammianus (Res Gestae 22.10.7, 25.4.20) who, like a true Pagan, believed that religion was a private matter. Eunapius, who studied under a Christian tutor in Athens, imbibed the intolerant spirit of the Christians and therefore seems to have approved of Julian’s religious policies (Eunapius Fragment 15). Zosimus, who seems to have been a true Pagan, ignored Julian’s fanatical religious policies, which he no doubt viewed as an embarrassment.

Wow. Well, nothing more needs to be said about this one.

Also, what's with the bibliography? Isn't that what the 'References' section is for? --C.Logan 05:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is only one word to describe Christians - "fanatic". Have a look at Hypatia: there's a fair amount of debate on anti-christian stuff there, owing to the fact that most of the sources describing her death were pagan or part of church factions.--Shtove 22:04, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand what your point seems to be regarding this particular issue. Do the circumstances of Hypatia's death, and the subsequent Wikipedian debate somehow vindicate the article from the need to express a neutral viewpoint?

Religious adherents are imperfect, and should in no way truly represent the religion. By the way you have used such a blanket assumption, I can assume that you might feel otherwise (though I can't be sure). That sort of statement (which is untrue, unless you happen to know each member of the global Christian body, and can personally speak for them) is what generally leads to social relegation, and eventual persecution.

Mobs in general can be incited to do just about anything, regardless of religion, creed or culture. Indeed, it is expressed in an excerpt in the Hypatia article that the killing mob was composed by non-Christians as well.

However, this is not the point of my original talk post. If you read the article, regardless of the factual nature of the occurrences of persecution, it is clearly biased against Christianity, and favors the virtues of paganism. Regardless of your beliefs, it is not the author's (authors'?) job to decide for us how we should view elements of history.

This sums it up well, from Wiki's NPOV page:

Karada offered the following advice in the context of the Saddam Hussein article:

You won't even need to say he was evil. That is why the article on Hitler does not start with "Hitler was a bad man" — we don't need to, his deeds convict him a thousand times over. We just list the facts of the Holocaust dispassionately, and the voices of the dead cry out afresh in a way that makes name-calling both pointless and unnecessary. Please do the same: list Saddam's crimes, and cite your sources.

Remember that readers will probably not take kindly to moralising. If you do not allow the facts to speak for themselves you may alienate readers and turn them against your position.

There will never be a universal agreement; most Christians will always defend that such acts are not true to Christianity, while non-Christians will use it as one example of the negative effects of Christian society, now and in the past.

However, each reader will vehemently stand by his or her own belief.

Using terms like these won't "scare people away from Christianity". It will just cause them to disregard the article, which indeed hurts whatever agenda the author was trying to express.

Let the reader decide, just report the basic facts, with support from reliable sources.

--C.Logan 03:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oops! I was being too sarcastic. I agree entirely with your original point. Anti-christians use "fanatic" as automatically as the words "zealous", "devout" and "stern" are used about protestants, catholics and puritans. It's a way of dismissing the facts of an individual case without having to think about them. What's happened on Hypatia is that long blockquotes from primary sources are left in because people can't agree on a balanced summary and prefer to champion certain tabloid-style statements from sensationalising ancient writers. This article is interesting, since it is biased but also well served by inline citations. It will take a lot of effort to unpick it and make it NPOV. And the title should mention suppression rather than persecution.--Shtove 12:12, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh my... I didn't pick up on your sarcasm. I agree about the article: the article is very well sourced and probably contains many historical, verifiable facts. Too bad it's all mixed up with the author's opinions.--C.Logan 23:01, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What a nightmare...

I've spent the last hour trying to clean up this article...but it is nearly hopeless. The factual errors far outweigh the POV problems, which are really significant. I hope this wasn't an essay for a school class, cause if it was, it shoulda got a D-. This really shouldn't even be an article separate from the other related articles. For starters, the time period and persecution discussed was NOT against the Ancient Roman Religion - it was against ALL still-practicing ancient religions. Conflict between Christianity and "the pagans" started as early as 80CE, not with Constantine...who didn't "convert" until he was on his deathbed... what about Barnabus? Aristides, Clement, Hippolytus, Polycarp, Tatian and Justin the Martyr? They were all a hundred or more years before Constantine GoingGrey 17:40, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I did what I could on NPOV and fixed the prargraphing. IMHO there is nothing wrong with having an article focusing on the Roman religion being persecuted... it doesn't exclude any other religious persecutions from happening simultaneously. Constantine did not become baptized until he was on his deathbead, but could be considered or not considered a Christian since before that. (RookZERO 15:57, 5 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]

We had a similar discussion in it.wiki and our article started from a translation of this one. We discussed for a long time, and we had people writing from a neopaganic pov and from a catholic pov (and also, me, from an historical pov). I think we did a successfull job and now the italian article is ok for every one and, I think, it is quite historically accurate (with a lot of sources). If someone can read italian (I'm not so good in writing in english, I'm sorry), please have a look and see if it could be useful for you too. MM on it wiki 84.253.136.132 21:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]