Up to the fall of the Western Roman Empire
A new Moses One of the more fascinating tales from the late Roman Empire is about a man called Moses of Crete who declared himself to be the Messiah that the Jews had always been waiting for. He was, he told his fellow Jews, a reincarnation of his Old Testament namesake and promised them an even more spectacular miracle than…
Arnobius, the 4th Century Christian scholar on the issue. Why did Jesus – if we assume that he was divine for argument’s sake – come when he did and not earlier? This was a popular critique of Christianity by pagans during the Roman period and it’s a question not only early Christians struggled to answer but Christian apologists right up…
Slavery, an accepted practice by Christians and Jews The regulation of slavery in the Old Testament and the implicit acceptance of the practice in the New Testament is arguably the most contentious issue in the Bible. You would think Jesus, supposedly God incarnate and who grew up studying the Jewish scriptures, would condemn the practice of slavery outright and in…
Christians had been wrestling with the numerous weaknesses and problems in the Genesis story ever since the beginnings of Christianity. And these flaws and improbabilities in Genesis were ridiculed by prominent pagan polemicists like Celsus, Porphyry and others. So naturally many Christian thinkers and theologians for their part defended the Genesis story. Cosmas Indicopleustes, one of the most well travelled…
The fall of the city On the 24th of August 410CE Rome fell to the Goths led by KIng Alaric and the city was sacked for the first time in eight hundred years. So who was to blame for this disaster – the pagans or the Christians ? Well the pagans of the time blamed the rise of Christianity and…
It’s common knowledge that Constantine was the first Christian Emperor of the Roman Empire. And it’s fairly well known that he began a crack down on pagan worship and belief while simultaneously promoting Christianity and the Christian church opening up the state treasuries for the building of numerous churches and basilicas around the empire. But there’s much less information on…
