My go-to work on, at least the early history of Israel, is Donald Redford’s Egypt, Canaan and Israel. When we look at the Israelites being dominated at that time, during their history as the dual nations of Israel and Judah, the reason is simple. They existed in a key geographical area that was a major…
Dante used many common tropes of his time when describing hell. We can look at one quickly. Why is hell underground? The idea during medieval times was that things that were dirty, that were sinful, impure, were drawn downwards. So all of the Earthly problems would be drawn downward, with the worst being in the…
Zoroastrianism is a bit difficult. We just don’t know much about the earliest formations of the religion. It most likely began with a people called the Aryans, which is where Hinduism also develops from. There are a lot of connections between Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, including a lot of similarity in the languages that composed their…
In my last post, I stated that religion, and in particular, Christianity, can have value for an atheist. This really stems from my view that Jesus can also be seen in a non-religious manner. As I mentioned before, during some of my teenage years, I was an atheist, and what I would call a militant…
This was a topic that was suggested, and one that I think is very important. I’m going to come out and say that I believe truth and morality are subjective. But I’m not married to that view. I could be wrong. That’s what I will be working through in this series. This series will be…
I think we know Jesus wasn’t white. Every once in a while, a meme like this will pop up in my feed, and I always find them interesting. My educational background is in history and religious studies. I love both subjects. But for a long time, I was on the wrong side of both, at…
I wrote a little while back on Facebook about how the older I get, the more faith becomes important for me. Some really great questions were brought up in the comments. Those questions were also answered, but nonetheless, they have been on my mind ever since. A few years ago, I wrote an article titled,…
There were many books that didn’t make the cut when it came to the Bible. And even more that never were in the running; that weren’t ever considered. In fact, even some of the books that are currently in the Bible hardly made the cut, such as Hebrews and Revelation. So why were some books…
When the abolitionist movement really began building up in the States, various ministers went to the Bible in order to show that slavery was not just unChristian, but was unBiblical. In response, those supporting slavery also went to the Bible, and what they came up with as a defense revolves around the Curse of Ham,…
There are two really friendly works that deal with this a bit, and one not so friendly work. The first is From Jesus to Christianity by Michael White. It gets you about four generations out from Jesus. So really the formation of the early church. Of probably most importance though is the split from Judaism,…