The repercussions of the fire that burned most of Rome in 64 AD are still felt today.
The repercussions of the fire that burned most of Rome in 64 AD are still felt today.
2,164 words
Part 2 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)
The Roman-Jewish War
Nero squeezed the economy of the entire empire to rebuild Rome after the fire. One of his schemes to acquire money was to tax the treasuries of religious institutions. (more…)
The Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD changed the religious order of the Roman Empire.
The Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD changed the religious order of the Roman Empire.
3,173 words
Part 1 of 3 (Part 2 here)
Theology matters. The ideas arising from how religious thinkers have connected things in scripture drive a great deal of social policy. The outcomes of these policies can be good or bad. Societies that follow a Calvinist interpretation of Christianity, for example, tend to be wealthy. (more…)
Justus of Ghent, Saint Augustine, c. 1475
Justus of Ghent, Saint Augustine, c. 1475
4,344 words
Part 2 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)
The Emerging of a Christian Historical Consciousness
For all we have said about Greek and Roman historiography (and there were other historians, such as Suetonius, Appian, and Casius Dios), contemporary scholars invariably agree that the ancients remained a “non-historical” people. Herbert Butterfield is convinced “the Greeks did not achieve historical mindedness, and never could have achieved it, because they had the wrong view of time and the time process.” The Greeks “only knew of a comparatively short history behind them — they thought that the historical past extended back for only a very few hundred years.” (more…)
Theodoros Pelecanos, Ouroboros (1478)
Theodoros Pelecanos, Ouroboros (1478)
6,611 words
Part 1 of 7 (Part 2 here)
One of the most startling historical truths is that Europeans invented the writing of history as “a method of sorting out the true from the false,” as a conscious search for a rational explanation of the causes of events, while rendering the results of their investigations in sustained narratives of excellent prose. The other peoples of the world, including the Chinese who maintained for centuries a tradition of chronological writers, barely rose above annalistic forms of recording the deeds of rulers or the construction of genealogies devoid of reflections on historical causation. This would not have been judged a controversial view a few decades ago. (more…)
Dr. Robert M. Price
Dr. Robert M. Price
3,240 words
Dr. Robert M. Price is a prominent New Testament scholar and an eldritch mage of the Lovecraft cult. With such a range of interests, he is obviously a believer in free expression, free thought, and engagement with as many perspectives as possible. These days, such qualities are rarely found in either the academic or literary fields, and he has been “de-platformed” from time to time, most recently from two YouTube podcasts. (more…)