Just love this woman - inspires generations to love roman history -thank you mary beard for your knowledge! !! Dont ever let those of much lower intellect upset you-thier comments sày more àbout them than they do àbout you!
I have said it many times... Mary Beard is a true inspiration. I love listening to her, I love watching her, she is mesmerising in her approach to classic history. Ignore the negative comments from the “Erks” in society..... they are just jealous of your success 💕
We should all be pleased Mary got a degree. She is brilliant. Just listened to a debate between Mary and Boris Johnson re whether Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome contributed more to modern life. Mary argued for Rome and won. Brilliant debate. She deserved to win, though more than half of the voters in the audience expected Boris to win. Both Boris and Mary were great, but Mary beat Boris. What impressed me was how friendly they were and how much each enjoyed the barbs cast by the other.
Mary declined to have a young chap punished, who had behaved very badly to her on line; because she didnt want to ruin his career. I always enjoyed her programmes anyway. She went even higher in my estimation. That is class.
“It's the mark of a great spirit to regard wrongs as beneath contempt: that the offender appear unworthy of having vengeance exacted from him is the most insulting sort of vengeance.” -Seneca
Delightful conversation covering some of the problems of how we read history (and how it reads us) along with perhaps the most scathing indictment of Cicero as someone who would have been very good at Twitter. Thanks for sharing this.
The interviewer knows more about christianity than Mary and sees the difference between religion of the early church and the radical Christians that spread Christ's teaching.
Mary, "Religions aren't toxic by nature, they're only made toxic by people that choose to use them in that way." People invent religions. Sometimes toxic people invent religions. So, the nature of a religion is toxic, or not, both in its origins, its nature, and in how it is continued, promoted, furthered, by generations, and sects. A common modern pseudo-feminist defence of Islam goes, "It's not Islam, it's toxic masculinity." Well, yes, and no. It's toxic masculinity that started the toxic misogynistic aspects of the religion, and it's that toxic misogynistic dogma that the religion perpetuates into the present so that women in Iran are oppressed by the religion. That toxic masculinity is baked into the religion, and, if anything, it's thanks to many decent Muslims that it's not consistently applied. Decent Muslims have to act in opposition to elements of the perfect word of God in the Quran to avoid doing some pretty horrific stuff, while Humanists have to act in opposition to the Humanist Manifesto to do bad. Religious dogmas are inherently, by nature. toxic, in a fair bit of their content.
The tradition of interpretation of the Quran (and Bible, and Torah, and every other religious text) goes back to the foundation of the religion. Interpretations can be in line with modern ethics or not - they're all interpretations. As is "humanism"
You are not looking at yourself through history. Looking at roman women, modern women are not looking at themselves. When we look back at people of the past, they were shaped by different cultures, customs, beliefs, traditions, ethics, stresses and experiences.
I think you should be first among equals in control of Great Britain for life. Appointing an air of you judgement. With historical repeating the philosophical judgement is infinitely more intuitive than corruption as of late. Not enough open judgement of performance in politics. To call GB democracy. Your Great well done 👏
It's very annoying when a host jumps in and makes things unclear. At 17:40, what is Mary trying to say about common sense? If anyone can jump in and let me know, I would appreciate it! I am a native English speaker but I'm lost with understanding this bit. I can't imagine how confused non-natives must be. Thanks in advance!
Wow. Talk about punching above your weight class. This guy is an undereducated besotted True Believer in love with the sound of his own voice. He kept interrupting her and, ffs, *touching* her in the manner of a 1950’s TV host. I would have slapped his hand away.
Not only the communication, but the state support, is what made Christianity grow. Constantine is crucial, not only for legalising Christianity, but for his part in knocking Christian heads together at Nicea to create some semblance of consistency to the fantasy. And why, Giles, the complain of appropriation? I thought a big point of the message of Jesus was to open the religion to the world. It seems only Jews, his own people rejected it. What evidence is there at all about the actual words of Jesus? Did Jesus even know he was creating a religion? There are so many ways of twisting a fantasy story it seems ironic to complain that some imagined enemy messed it up, distorted it, appropriated it.
Is it Mary's 'obsession' with the Classical World which seems to make her think that Christians are unaware that their religion is thoroughly Roman? Has she not heard of the HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE? This was consciously created in recognition of that fact. From your comments about the lack of any mention of Jesus' TEACHINGS in the Creed of Nicaea, it would appear you have been reading Richard Rohr, Giles! But, what emerges plainly from this discussion is Mary Beard's complete and utter addiction to relativism. She also, plainly, loathes the Church, and shapes her discourse around that. She is a clever acolyte of Richard Dawkins. I hope that you are being polite, Giles, in just letting her get on with it: and that you do possess the intellectual tools to unpick her argument. You might start with the larger 'revelatory picture' (way beyond the Classical World) which encompasses the 'decision' to create, then to have a relationship with the Jews, which culminates in the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth, progressing through his resurrection, to Paul's realisation that the Risen Christ was of import beyond the world of Jewry, to the continuing revelation today! The miracle is in the loving process.
