Gods on Earth
I posted recently on the Greek empires that arose in the centuries following Alexander the Great, like the Ptolemaic regime in Egypt, and the Syrian-based Seleucid Empire. Specifically, I suggested...
View ArticleRestoring the Kingdom
When the Risen Jesus appears to the apostles, they have a vital question for him: “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” Given the thrust of the gospels as we have them,...
View ArticleReading Josephus
I have been working on the two or three centuries before the start of the Christian era, a time of epochal transformations in the Jewish world, and the essential prehistory of the early Church. One of...
View ArticleThe Age of Tyrants
Josephus recorded the history of the Jewish people in the last two centuries before the Christian Era. Reading that story today must many of our assumptions about the world we know from the New...
View ArticleBlows Against the Empire
People in the modern West are properly critical of the whole idea of imperialism, and suspicious of its rhetoric. That approach naturally influences religious thinkers, and there is no shortage of...
View ArticleThe Other Tyre
I say this with some nervousness, but I think I have a minor discovery to report, involving one of the most puzzling passages of the Bible. I’ll wait for experts to look at the idea and tell me if I...
View ArticleHanukkah and National Myths
I posted about the gospel passage concerning Jesus and the feast of Hanukkah, which is no longer a Christian celebration. Its origins were however recorded in the first Book of Maccabees, which remains...
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