Reading Time: 7 minutes This time, our focus centers on some names that often get included in such lists, but maybe shouldn’t be on them. These writers either didn’t write anything that even vaguely touched on religious or philosophical topics, or didn’t write anything that survived. Today, let’s look at some of them: Phaedrus, Columella, and Marcus Servilius Nonianus. And I’ll show you why they don’t make my cut.
Roman Empire
Posted inHistory, Religion
The Silence of Velleius Paterculus (1st-Century Fridays #5)
Reading Time: 9 minutes Hi, y’all! Welcome back. It being Friday again, let us turn our attention to another 1st-century writer. This time, our subject is Marcus Velleius Paterculus (19 BCE – 31 CE). This Roman historian lived through the wildest years of the early Roman Empire. Thus, he wrote during those critical years (from our perspective) of 1-35 […]
Posted inHistory
Meet Titus Livius, AKA Livy (1st-Century Fridays #3)
Reading Time: 7 minutes Today, we’ll see what Livy wrote — or rather, didn’t — about the wild-eyed rock star apocalypse-huckster supposedly stirring things up in Jerusalem.
Posted inHistory, Religion
How My Faith in Biblical Literalism Died (1st-Century Fridays #1)
Reading Time: 7 minutes We’re about to start a new topic that I expect to last a while: 1st-century writers. First, though, let me show you why this topic is so important to me. See, these 1st-century writers’ utter silence about one particular subject rattled my faith in Christianity in a way that I would never recover.
Posted inReligion
How Augustine Changed the Hell Game (Journey Into Hell #10)
Reading Time: 8 minutes Hi and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been talking about how the idea of Hell began and how it changed in early Christianity. We’re now up to the momentous 4th century, when Christianity underwent a whole lot of big shifts. Today, let me introduce you to Augustine of Hippo — and show you how he completely changed the […]
Posted inReligion
The Myth of Original Christianity in ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience’
Reading Time: 9 minutes Ronald J. Sider really truly believes in a myth that has destroyed evangelicals’ chances of success: the myth of Original Christianity. As long as that vision clouds his mind, he won’t be able to perceive the real problem — much less suggest a workable solution for it.
Posted inReligion
Lost Coercion: The Center of Christianity’s Current Decline
Reading Time: 10 minutes That cultural change was and is a loss of Christians’ onetime powers of coercion. Today, I’ll show you why it spells the absolute end of their domination everywhere it spreads.
Posted inReligion
That Time My Boyfriend Pulled a Sword on My Best Friend During the Christmas Pageant.
Reading Time: 13 minutes I wanted to give you the best Christmas present I could–and it’s one I’ve kept under my scarlet-red cowboy hat for four solid years and can’t keep there another moment. Today I want to give you the story of a Christmas pageant like none you’ve likely ever heard of.
Posted inHistory
Christian Coercion: From Tolerated to Dominant
Reading Time: 10 minutes We’ve been talking lately about the early history of Christianity and how different it is from the history offered up by most Christian apologists and leaders. This definitely is not a history I learned growing up Catholic or as a fundamentalist lass! If anything, it’s even more fascinating to me than the fictionalized version–and shows me […]
Posted inReligion
From Tolerated to Dominant.
Reading Time: 10 minutes We’ve been talking lately about the early history of Christianity and how different it is from the history offered up by most Christian apologists and leaders. This definitely is not a history I learned growing up Catholic or as a fundamentalist lass!