Wednesday 29 July 2009

A cover-up?

Bartholomew's Notes on Religion reports that a section showing early Greek Orthodox Christian priests defacing the Parthenon has been deleted from an animated film of the Parthenon's history after the Greek Orthodox Church complained.

The Parthenon
The Parthenon
If there is historical evidence of this defacement (which certainly occurred in other cases where temples were converted to churches, such as the Pantheon in Rome, the temple of Minerva in Assisi, and the church of St Lawrence in Rome) then it should be included in the film. There is no point in trying to airbrush out events after the fact.

2 comments:

Bo said...

Pre-1052, they can't really be described as Greek *Orthodox* can they?! they were just greek.

Yewtree said...

I did think of adding that but didn't think it was particularly relevant. Modern Greek Orthodoxy is apparently trying to hide the fact that Greek priests were partly responsible for trashing the Parthenon, so they evidently regarded them as their predecessors. After all they do claim apostolic succession back to the Apostles ;)

Also, I think the Great Schism in 1052 was just the final straw that broke the camel's back.