While looking through the Radio Times I came across a picture of the lovely Bettany Hughes, who is presenting a TV programme on More4 tonight. Judging from reactions online, a lot of people will be watching just because she’s presenting it.
What’s it about? Oh, some nonsense about the history of Alexandria, I believe. I didn’t get the impression from comments like “Bettany on a horse! Yum!” that this subject was absolutely critical to the viewing figures…
Returning to seriousness for a moment, I hope that we don’t get too many references to literary texts which we can’t identify. There’s nothing more frustrating than listening to some programme on the ancient world, hearing a really interesting statement about antiquity, and then being quite unable to work out what it is based on.
I haven’t seen it, but I bet they have represented SS. Theophilus, Cyril I, and Dioscorus as anti-philosophy, mind and progress. They most probably have focused on Hypatia, and again abused her story to attack the Church of Alexandria and Christianity as a whole. Bettany Hughes will not be riding a horse as much as the liberals and atheists.
I didn’t get that far. The programme seemed really boring, and I turned off after a while.
I was astonished to hear her say that St Mark visited Alexandra ‘a few years after Christ’s resurrection’! How can a historian treat the supernatural as an historical event?
Perhaps because it was?
Your own religious position makes you disbelieve in what 90% of the world believe. But that religious position has no rational basis; it’s usually adopted as a consequence of selfishness. To demand that the rest of us should live and write as if we accept your position, to pretend that it alone is rational, involves a dogmatism that the most extreme believer would hardly profess. Your view is just one of those held in the world today, and not a widely held one. More tolerance, please.
I’ve nothing against religious belief – but why didn’t she say ‘after Christ’s crucifixion?’ – which is a statement of fact nobody could quarrel with
Hardly any point — because there are people who will then say “but Jesus never existed, so that’s religious bias”.
Not many people would say that. The evidence that Jesus lived and was crucified is firm and uncontroversial. Nobody inventing a new religion would give their founder a degrading and shocking death.
I too switched off early.
After sixteen minutes I’d seen and listened to her and hadn’t seen more than ten seconds of Alexandria. A couple of pillars only.
Why do some presenters think we tuned in to see them?
I think I lost interest when they went into the Serapeum at Saqqara. That’s all very well but (a) I have been there and (b) it had little to do with Alexandria.
I suspect the problem is the lack of much real material at Alexandria itself.