Perpetual ignorance about Perpetua

I watched The Story of All of Us on History Channel and was stunned at what I heard in a couple places.  History is a field where one should have a huge command of details in order to get the story right.  Most of us, myself included, don’t have such skill so they write popularizations for the rest of us.  Story tries to do world history in about 4 hours of documentary, picking and choosing events that seem to capture the times.  In the episode covering the first millennium, they chose a story about Perpetua, a young woman who left a diary in the early third century about her martyrdom. The documentary actually told the story fairly well and swiftly, though they left out the fact that her father was an important official in Carthage.  He pleaded with Perpetua to renounce her Christian faith and avoid the death penalty.  Then the governor, Hilarianus, pleaded with her as well.  But Perpetua remained true blue to her Christian faith and was “condemned to the beasts” of the games, “and we returned to prison in high spirits” at being able to stand for their Lord.  But then the documentary  pronounces that of course Christians could not capitulate “because they would then know that they would go to hell.” 

            I nearly choked.  Fear of Hell is not what motivates Christians.  Loyalty to the One who has saved you from Hell and your sin is what kept Perpetua from ‘pouring out the libations’.  (A toast to the emperor that acknowledges him as a god)  Indeed, Simon Peter denied Jesus and Jesus chose him as the leading disciple.  Fear of Hell is what motivates Muslims to do suicide bombings.  But not Chistians.  I found myself taken aback that the authors of the documentary didn’t know this simple fact about Christianity. Were there no Christians on their staff?  You don’t even have to be orthodox, just born again. Barna says 43% of Americans are born-agains.

            And then the secular liberalism became quite apparent.  Cordoba and Jerusalem were labeled wondrous places of tolerance and peace were it not for Christians trying to re-take them from the Muslims. I find myself amused that among the 138 acts of jihad recognized by the Muslim scholars is one called Promoting the Myth of Andalusia.  Jihad simply means advancing the faith of Islam and not all jihads are violent.  Some can be simply arguing with a Jew or Christian.  Muslims recognize that Westerners have built up a myth of tolerant Andalusia.  But like all Muslim kingdoms it had a prohibitive 20% dhimmi tax on Christians and Jews as an attempt to try to force them to convert.  This is prescribed by the Koran.  

            And where, they opined, would we be without Muslim engineering, science and mathematics?!  Where would we be without the zero? Indeed, I find myself laughing again. Because most historians agree that Islam merely collected technology and managed not to burn quite all of the library of Alexandria.  And those famous Arabic characters and zero were borrowed from India.  They did faithfully preserve things.  What else do you do when an army of a few fanatics conquer a much larger population?

Then Tom Brokaw intones that, of all his vast learning, the Crusades stand out as singular in their senseless violence.  Gosh, I didn’t know Tom Brokaw was that intellectual.  Perhaps he didn’t realize that massacres of entire cities, as a shock-and-awe tactic of the ancients, was done by just about all peoples.  Thus the Assyrians massacred Lacish of the Hebrews—40,000 people.  Genghis Khan and the Muslim, Tamerlane were the worst.  Tamerlane wiped out one city of 150,000, just to show the world how useless it was to resist. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD and killed about 1 million Jews in Palestine.  They also wiped Carthage off the map.  And of course the Barbarians returned the favor to the Roman Empire. What is singular about the Crusades is that widespread massacres by Christians occurred, a practice that is more than forbidden by the faith.  “Turn the other cheek”, Jesus said.  “Love your enemies. Do good to those who curse you.”

Maybe we could take up a collection to buy a Bible to send to the History Channel.