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But hasn't it been done before? Surely, some scholar of antique history has written such a work over the past 250 years or so.
I think, though, that the Crucifixion was such an integral part of the Christian story that the main elements (who, what, why, where, etc.) would have been known by the believing masses. Pontius Pilate (and the other Romans) play such a large role in the story that it would be hard for Christians not to consider it. Perhaps, though, the activities which took place in the far eastern reaches of the Roman Empire would have been viewed less as a centrally-orchestrated event and more as a local affair and less guilt-by-association.
About early Christianity, a glass plate found in Spain shows a very different ChristBeardless Jesus
The earliest image of the bearded Christ that I can think of off-hand is in a mosaic at San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, c. 504. A fourth century depiction of a beardless Christ would have been typical for its time.
I have never read Gibbon's work, but I thought I had heard that he ascribes a passive attitude to Christians in the empire, which also contributed to the fall. Is this wrong? Surely, there must have been something in his work that resulted in its characterizing as a “blame Christianity” book, even if it does discuss other reasons for the fallInterestingly, one of the most important contributors to the fall - the population drop of the empire in the first few centuries A.D. - likely would have been unknown to Gibbon.
I recently finished watching this miniseries, which is the best one I've seen on the founding of America. Here is the last line of the series (I'm guessing from one of John Adams' writings?):
Oh posterity, you will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope that you will make a good use of it, for if you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.
Do you think John Adams has reason to "repent" now that we've seen the unfolding of American history for about 200 years after his death?
Wow, you've been publishing a lot lately. You even had a book review on Amazon today, the day it was released.
Yeah, I suppose getting someone from a poorer country would have been better and more accurately reflected the stomachs of our ancestors.I recall drinking the water in Mexico years ago and returning to the U.S. with the bad results....to me, that suggests stomachs behave differently depending on quality of food.
Just a guess, but I think that the stomachs of years past would have encountered a lot more foreign things, such as undercooked/overcooked and junk meats, less processed grains, bacteria of all kinds, misc. bits and pieces (bugs, bones, etc.). Am I just imagining it, or do I recall some theory that the human appendix may have been responsible for helping humans digest things like leaves and the like?
Now that is disgusting. I wonder how much they could have learned since our contemporary digestive systems probably don't work quite as intensely as the ones of yesteryear.
Lol, I guess we should. Or at least something similar to dog years. Web sites often don't stick around forever unless they're run by some large corporation (Amazon, Yahoo, etc.).I took a look at this dog-human age charts:http://pets.webmd.com/dogs/how-to-calculate-your-dogs-ageAnd I saw that small and large breeds age differently (relative to human years). We had a small dog growing up that I think died at age 17, which would have put him in his mid-80s.
Wow, a very interesting excavation! I like how they interviewed the farmer to get his opinion about the inhabitant – and of course, he goes all in for Alexander!
Hmmm….the sentiments here so far are that Scotland will remain in the UK. Last I checked, though, the tide seemed to be inching toward independence (though I could be wrong). We'll see shortly.
I agree with you about the separation between “Islamists” and non-extremist Muslims. Maybe I'm just missing it, but I don't hear much of any push-back by any so-called mainstream Muslim groups when people kill in the name is Islam. Heck, there's an entire militarized group marching through Iraq at the moment which has the name “Islam” in its title….you'd think that there would be at least some Muslims standing up and definitively denouncing ISIS as false Muslims. I have to think that there's a conscious effort to ignore this issue on the part of the media. In America, how often have we seen the media try to infer racism in the Tea Party with the slightest of threads? And yet it seems like when groups massacre people in malls or in hotels, when they force people to recite verses from the Koran, when they force people to convert, that the media reports it and then moves on. I don't think that society needs to stand up and condemn Islam for the actions of its adherents, but society does need to tell Muslims to condemn the actions of their fellow believers.
