Ioannis Bekos: St John Damascene’s Sacra Parallela as a Christian faith-checking resource and prototype of modern fact-checking resources

This paper distinguishes St. John Damascene’s Sacra Parallela from the various patristics florilegia and challenges Richard (1964)’s widely reproduced distinction. It supports that Sacra Parallela is not a florilegium to the extent that it goes beyond a didactic, ethical or encyclopedic purpose by claiming originality due to authorial intervention on the treatment of the authoritative sources. St John Damascene’s work can be considered as a resource that serves the purpose of checking and distinguishing of what is Christian and what is not. Particularly, it is argued that the structure and purpose of Sacra Parallela resembles modern digital resources of fact-checking, as the reader of the patristic text starts from a statement ─ not just a title─, continues with a process of verification and finishes with the justification of the statement. Beyond that, the parallel discussion of Sacra Parallela with the postmodern development of fact-checking resources makes evident that ‘sacro’ or ‘profane’ endeavors for checking what is truth (Christian or secular) or what is a lie are not only based on data and metadata but also on the beliefs and the assumptions of the reader. This new reading of Sacra Parallela sheds more light on the understanding of its structure and purpose and reveals unconsidered aspects of current efforts for the control of the spread of fake news.