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…
The resurrection of Jesus as written in the gospel narratives is arguably the major key belief in Christianity. So let’s take a look at what the famous second century pagan philosopher Celsus had to say on the crucifixion and the Christian claim of Christ’s resurrection from the grave. Celsus was a strong critic of Christianity in an age when this…
By the time of the official end of the Western Roman Empire in 476CE, most of mainland southern Europe and France and England had been converted to Christianity. And because the Germanic tribes that migrated into the territory of the Romans – and who would form the new kingdoms that replaced the empire had been converted as they crossed the…
One of the most famous pagan holy sites in what is now Germany during the early Medieval age was a sacred grove in the region of Hesse in which stood a very large and majestic oak tree. A contemporary account calls it ‘a certain oak of extraordinary size called in the old tongue of the pagans the Oak of Jupiter.’…
Julian the apostate, the last Roman Pagan Emperor had a short reign of less than two years but he made a big splash and is arguably the most well known Emperor of the late Roman period. But various Christian theologians, chroniclers and thinkers would be highly critical of him and his championing of paganism after his death. So this article…
