Celsus

Celsus on the ‘resurrection’

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…

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Northern Crusades, Northern Europe

Paganism in 12th century Europe

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…

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Late Antiquity

Cosmas the Monk on Genesis

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…

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Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Northern Europe

The Tree of Thor

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.’…

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