In celebration of Women’s History Month, we offer here an updated list of our blog posts about women, goddesses, goddess worship and female imagery. Enjoy! Posts since late March 2021: Rounding Out Women’s History Month: Current Women Leaders around the World Current Research on Pompeii, Part I: Archaeology Current Research on Pompeii, Part II: Paul’s […]
As we have seen in past posts, the early Jesus movement – which ultimately became Christianity – originated in a polytheistic environment: people of the Roman Empire worshiped multiple female and male deities. This means that Jesus himself, his earliest followers and those who later identified as Christians lived and worked among devotees of Aphrodite/Venus, […]
Election Day 2022 – the midterms – is now history, although many votes are still being counted. Fortunately, casting ballots across our country generally appears to have gone quite smoothly (although some voters did experience intimidation in some areas). Given the fact that the Georgia Senate election will go into a runoff and the long […]
Thank you for your interest in these blog posts! Here is a listing by topic for posts since October 2021. (Some topics overlap.) Social and Racial Justice, Diversity Honoring the Wampanoags Today and Moving Toward a More Perfect Union, November 26, 2021 Suggested Readings for Black History Month: The Self-Education of White Americans, February […]
In our previous post, we examined the pagan backgrounds of Christian practices that take place most often in Sunday worship services. Here we will look at special liturgies of the Christian church and miscellaneous Christian practices that have roots in the goddess and god cults of antiquity. Special liturgies Weddings and marriage. According to the […]
As we have noted on several occasions, Western civilization as we know it emerged in a polytheistic (multi-deity) environment from the earliest times. The beginnings of the West as we know it today can be traced to the Middle East. The Jewish man Jesus of Nazareth lived from about 4 BCE (Before the Common Era) […]
As we have recently commemorated the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, we have been reminded once again of the horror of that day, the lives tragically lost, and the aftermath of the attacks – psychologically, socially, politically, legally and with regard to health concerns of those who worked for months and […]
We have been through an unprecedented and, frankly, horrifying time in our nation’s history. We have seen mobs of pro-Trump rioters storm the Capitol (at Trump’s instigation), cause the work of the Congress to grind to a halt, bring about injury and death to fellow Americans, the calling up of the National Guard, the second […]
In Part I, we presented an overview of the legendary correspondence between King Abgar of Edessa and Jesus, noting its popularity and how it was preserved in both literary and archaeological sources. Here we will look specifically at the archaeological sample found at Philippi in northern Greece. As we have noted elsewhere, Philippi is important […]
Sometime in antiquity, a story developed that King Abgar V of Edessa, a Syrian city located in Mesopotamia, became ill, perhaps with leprosy, and wrote to Jesus of Nazareth to ask for a cure. In the correspondence, Abgar invited Jesus to come to Edessa to escape persecution. Jesus, according to the legend, replied in writing, […]