Academic Exercise on the Abstinence of the Early Christians from Reading Profane Books

indeed, I find that Alexandria was a place for philosophical books. However many were found there, by the mandate of the Muslim Emperor Omar ibn al-Khattab (584–644 AD) through Amr ibn al-As (c. 585–664 AD), they were distributed through the baths of the city as if they were superfluous This refers to the account that the books of the Great Library were used as fuel for heating the city's public baths.. Whoever desires to read the history of this event may consult George Abul-Faraj in his Compendious History of the Dynasties, Dynasty 9 George Abul-Faraj, also known as Bar Hebraeus, was a 13th-century scholar and bishop..

Nor did the Jews themselves, of whom we perhaps should have spoken earlier, easily admit foreign studies after Jerusalem was destroyed. The author of the Sefer Juchasin The "Book of Genealogies," a 15th-century work of Jewish history. pronounces "cursed" original: ארור the one who would teach his son the discipline of the gentiles. And according to the testimony of Hoornbeek x), it is read in the Jerusalem Talmud y) that when Rabbi Joshua was asked when one might teach his sons the Greek language, he replied: [in] that time original: ובו, that is, at a time which is neither day nor night: because

x) In the place cited before. y) In the tractate Peah, folio 15, column 3.