The Christians threw away bad books

Richard Carrier is casting shade at Christians, as he does; this time for not preserving books as weren't theirs.

First of all, nobody should be commanded to do work he doesn't want to do. Okay, amend that: not without payment. If Christianity proved more appealing to the Roman citizenry (since Caracalla, most subjects were citizens) then that is a problem with Christianity's alternatives at the time. Maybe they just weren't that good!

... and maybe their books weren't that good, either. All those "alternative" Christianities that have been dug up here-an'-there really weren't better than what was good enough for Paul and Silas. Among the most-formidable was the religion of Science! or, as they called it, Gnosis. These depended upon geocentric celestial spheres - as Carrier is well aware. He may well also be aware that most of this stuff was done to feed the Astrology grift. How much of that did later generations need? or of alchemy?

Indeed somewhere around there we did, perhaps, need to keep more books on mathematics. I'd say medicine too but as Tannous has reported a lot of that did get translated into Syriac-Aramaic, by... Christians. ctrl-F "Syria" and I come up with one "Syrian" (sic) linguistic reference and that's related to Callimachus. That is: too early for Syriac.

A contrafactual where the old classical culture doesn't get this sharp break is, I suppose, possible. But I've already pointed out the case of Islam, which likewise pruned away Natural History. To replace it with some real mathematics.

Also to be added is that the fate of lost literature was never uncommon before the Printing Press. Xanthos wrote a history of Lydia. The Lydian language was then lost. So much for the Lydian library. Same with the Etruscans'. The Canaanites wrote reams and reams of literature, from Sidon to Carthage. Only Jews cared to keep that language alive; it's not like the pagan Romans were bothering to translate much of that (although it turns out, they did; an agricultural manual survives). Egypt? Nah brah. "Manetho" (that is, Ptolemy of Mendes) did try, for history, but the other works - the proverbs, the novels - got buried. If Carrier isn't blaming pagan Greeks and Romans for neglecting all the above, and why shouldn't they, because they were... Greeks and Romans; why blame the Christians, for not being pagans?

To sum up, Carrier is insinuating a charge against Christianity which is more a charge against the breakdown of law and health in the Mediterranean, which pushed intellectual activity into the Frankish and Syrian hinterlands. Where, I'll posit, they did the best they could. Not despite being Christian but because of it.