Recently, a professor describing herself as “spiritual-but-not-religious” wrote about how the cultural decline of Christianity has affected religious infrastructure. It got me thinking about what’ll happen as Christianity continues to erode in America. There definitely exist both good and less-good sides to that erosion—and what this professor calls a bill Read more
In a 2025 article from Archaeology Magazine, Andrew Lawler suggests an interesting source of Jews’ cultural taboo about eating pork. He thinks it might have more to do with their hatred of the Roman Empire than anything else. The more I thought about this suggestion, the more plausible it sounded. Read more
For most of us, leprosy—better known as Hansen’s Disease—is a horrific illness that belongs in the Middle Ages. But it’s much older than that. It’s also one of the reasons why nobody should take Jesus or Christianity seriously. Today, let me show you some of the newest research about this Read more
He was at one time a god so widely respected and feared that Romans went to great lengths to escape his power. But by the first century BCE, he had fallen into such obscurity that Ovid could refer to “a shrine dedicated to Summanus, whoever
he is.” What can the followers of other gods learn from his fate?
Hi and welcome back! Now, we come to the last 1st-Century Friday post for a while. After this, we may revisit my master list as time goes on, but I think we’ve finally hit the wall on writers who were even vaguely contemporaneous with Jesus. However, I’m taking us out Read more
When we checked out Josephus recently, a contemporary of his emerged from the shadows: Justus of Tiberias. We don’t know much about him, which is strange considering what he could have had to say about the earliest Christians. So today, let’s check out Justus of Tiberias — and marvel at the mystery surrounding his absence from the record.
Needless to say, Tacitus is not even vaguely contemporary with Jesus. He wasn’t even born until 20+ years after Jesus supposedly died. By his adulthood, pretty much everyone contemporaneous with Jesus would have died already. Under that thinking, I, a Gen-Xer, could be considered contemporaneous with F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940).
Hi and welcome back! For a while now, we’ve been exploring the world of 1st-century writers in the Roman Empire. Our goal has been to see what those writers said — if anything at all — about Jesus, early Christians, or the goings-on in Judea during Jesus’ supposed lifetime. And Read more
Hi and welcome back! It’s Friday, and that means our attention turns to history. Specifically, we focus on a voice from the 1st century to see if they said anything about Jesus or Christianity during Jesus’ supposed lifetime. This time around, that voice is female. Pamphile of Epidaurus wrote some excellent Read more
Today, let’s look at what Thallus wrote — or rather, at what later Christians said Thallus wrote, and why it’s just not convincing as a source.