"The Perniciously Persistent Myths of Hypatia and the Great Library" by David Bentley Hart in the journal First Things claims that while Hypatia was indeed murdered by a mob of angry Christians, this doesn't really reflect on the Christian culture of the time so much as it does on the class-segregated culture of classical Alexandria and the brutality of the lower classes at the time.
...some of the savages of the lower city decided to take matters into their own hands....
...the true story of Hypatia... [tells] us a great deal about social class in the late Hellenistic world.
Think of it as an ideal Marxist allegory. It may seem unimaginable to us now that Christians from the lower classes in late antique Alexandria could have conspired in the horrific assassination of an unarmed woman and a respected scholar, but, as it happens, that was how Alexandria was often governed at street level, by every sect and persuasion.
In the royal quarter, pagans, Christians, and Jews generally studied together, shared a common intellectual culture, collaborated in scientific endeavor, and attended one another’s lectures. In the lower city, however, religious allegiance was often no more than a matter of tribal identity, and the various tribes often slaughtered one another with gay abandon.
Is this characterization of ancient Alexandria accurate?