religion

religion

Victor Davis Hanson was a Manichaean

a scroll with a Chinese painting of a man sitting cross-legged on a giant flower and surrounded by an aura
This Chinese scroll from the Ming Dynasty shows the Prophet Mani. Mani’s teachings survived in China and central Asia after their followers were persecuted out of the Persian empire and the Roman empire and the House of Islam. Photo from Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Icon_of_Mani_2.jpg

Victor Davis Hanson can be a scholar when he wants to be, although since 2004 that has just been a hobby while he focused on punditry. Many people who have read his books and articles on antiquity are confused at the positions he takes, where Spartans can be admirable defenders of Freedom in the pass at Thermopylae, but despicable slave-holders at Leuctra (and there were helots at Thermopylae, and Hanson was not one of the radicals who teach that the Sparta we think we know emerged after the death of Leonidas). I know a bit about ancient Persian religion so this was always easy for me to understand. This week I have written up the way I explain it when it comes up in conversation ever since a much younger self was reading one of his trade books at the Greater Victoria Public Library Central Branch.

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