Saturday 5 June 2010

Seraphis Ephesus Turkey, and Alexandria Egypt (modern parallels with islam)


"This temple was built for the Egyptian merchants. It was located on the Commercial Agora near the western gate. There is also another entrance into the temple from the south-west corner of the Agora through stairs.
There are certain indications that suggest the temple was never finished fully. It is estimated that the construction of the temple was started in the 2nd century A.D.
There is a statue found inside the temple made by using the Egyptian granite. Also some inscriptions found inside the temple indicate that the temple was constructed for those who believe in Serapis. In Ephesus Museum there is a monument on which the main Goddess of Ephesians, Artemis, and the principal god of Egypt, Serapis, take place together with garland as a symbol of peace.
It is well documented fact that Ephesus had a very strong commercial link with the influential port city of Egypt, Alexandria. During these ancient times Egypt was the biggest producer of wheat. They exchanged wheat with other commercial items from Ephesus and other Ionian cities.
It was converted to a church during the following Christian period. ..." - link. With many articles on places in ancient Ephesus.

391 ad-ce, distruction of the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria, Egypt.
"
The Serapeum in Alexandra was destroyed by a Christian crowd in 391. Two conflicting accounts for the context of the destruction of the Serapeum exist.
According to early Christian sources,[clarification needed] bishop Theophilus of Alexandria was Nicene patriarch when the decrees of emperor Theodosius I forbade public observances of any rites but Christian. Theodosius I had progressively made the sacred feasts of other faiths into workdays (389 ad-ce), forbidden public sacrifices, closed temples, and colluded in acts of local violence by Christians against major cult sites. The decree promulgated in 391 ad-ce that "no one is to go to the sanctuaries, [or] walk through the temples" resulted in the abandonment of many temples throughout the Empire, which set the stage for widespread practice of converting or replacing these sites with Christian churches.

In Alexandria, Bishop Theophilus obtained legal authority over one such forcibly abandoned temple of Dionysus, which he intended to turn into a church. During the renovations, the contents of subterranean spaces ("secret caverns" in the Christian sources) were uncovered and profaned, which allegedly incited crowds of non-Christians to seek revenge. The Christians retaliated, as Theophilus withdrew, causing the pagans to retreat into the Serapeum, still the most imposing of the city's remaining sanctuaries, and to barricade themselves inside, taking captured Christians with them.
These sources report that the captives were forced to offer sacrifices to the banned deities, and that those who refused were tortured (their shins broken) and ultimately cast into caves that had been built for blood sacrifices. The trapped pagans plundered the Serapeum (Rufinus & MacMullen 1984).

A letter was sent by Theodosius to Theophilus, asking him to grant the offending pagans pardon and calling for the destruction of all pagan images, suggesting that these were at the origin of the commotion. Consequently, the Serapeum was levelled by Roman soldiers and monks called in from the desert, as were the buildings dedicated to the Egyptian god Canopus. The wave of destruction of non-Christian idols spread throughout Egypt in the following weeks, as documented by a marginal illustration on papyrus from a world chronicle written in Alexandria in the early 5th century, which shows Theophilus in triumph (illustration, above right); the cult image of Serapis, crowned with the modius, is visible within the temple at the bottom (MacMullen 1984).
A slightly different version[clarification needed] of this account of the destruction of the Serapeum begins with bishop Theophilus closing down a Mithraeum, rather than the temple of Dionysus, but details of the ensuing profanation and insinuation of human sacrifices substantially agree.

A second account of the incident is found in writings by Eunapius, the pagan historian of later Neoplatonism. Here, an unprovoked Christian mob successfully used military-like tactics to destroy the Serapeum and steal anything that may have survived the attack. According to Eunapius, the remains of criminals and slaves, who had been occupying the Serapeum at the time of the attack, were appropriated by non-Christians, placed in (surviving) pagan temples, and venerated as martyrs (Turcan, 1996).
Whichever the incidental cause, the destruction of the Serapeum described by Christian writers Tyrannius Rufinus and Sozomen was but the most spectacular of such occasions, according to Peter Brown.[6] While several ancient and modern authors have interpreted the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria as representative of the triumph of Christianity and an example of the attitude of the Christians towards pagans, Brown frames it against a backdrop of frequent mob violence in the city, where the Greek and Jewish quarters had fought since the first century BCE.[7] Indeed, Eusebius of Caesarea mentions street-fighting in Alexandria between Christians and non-Christians occurring as early as 249 CE, and there is evidence that non-Christians had taken part in citywide struggles pro and against Athanasius in 341 and 356 CE. Similar accounts are found in the writings of Socrates of Constantinople. R. McMullan further reports that, in 363, Bishop George was killed for his repeated acts of pointed outrage, insult, and pillage of the most sacred treasures of the city.[8" - wiki data as at.

 Islamization of UK proceeding very well. (some crazed blogger with nothing better to do than post to a blog...how tiresome....) Something seems wrong with the 2004 figure.
The 2001 Census has a total of 1,591,000 Muslims in the UK, while the above figure of 1,087,000 for 2004 is much smaller."..The comments are good.
 Conservative blogger. ;
"The future governance of a multicultural Europe, creating domains of private activity justified by rights, cannot withstand such violence and will continue to suffer at the hands of Islam, effectively making the rightful citizens of the United Kingdom homeless within their own homes. The Western European polity, its cultural way of life, its historic religious grounding in Christianity, is, without a shadow of a doubt, fundamentally different from that order created under Islam. [!] The treatment of Islam in modern society has been, in spite of many complaints of political correctness, radically different. It might be thought that we could ignore the differences between Christianity, underpinning the Western way of life, and Islam, and instead, concentrate on their similarities. " 
...ahh similarities, ahh yess! Good old dionysus! Jesus was a socialist, Saint Peter a communist. humm. They have no Venus.
American Smokescreen, New York. Meaningful care by the who-cares? veiled hysteria... how very appropriate!
SIOE. dire twists and turns of the worms. lowest forms support israel? hights of [forgotten wisdom] take on the negative? where is the porn? Diana Diana Diana (and her dogs). The gods would protect cities, they did in a way.

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