• Ancient Western Civilization,  Biblical History

    📜Jesus vs. Rome📜

    Now and again, I come across some variation of this question: “If Jesus existed, why wasn’t he mentioned in the Roman records?” After all, just about everything that happened in Rome was written down, right? Well, not really. Romans were obsessed about record-keeping. The Senate kept an extensive law library. Merchants kept records of their inventory, dealings and expenses. Many wealthy individuals wanted to be remembered, so they would have stelae engraved with their accomplishments and placed in some prominent spot. Emperors and military generals and other important people had secretaries and chroniclers to write their life stories and record their great deeds (that’s why we know so much about…

  • Ancient Western Civilization

    Herodotus the Chauvinist

    The famous Greek historian Herodotus was the 5th century BC version of a foreign correspondent. He traveled extensively, interviewed hundreds of people in many different fields, and wrote about them. In the world Herodotus lived in, women were hardly given a second thought. In all the countries he visited, women stayed home, kept house and raised children. They never went anywhere alone. When in public, they interacted only with male relatives and other women. They stayed in the background. They had almost no legal rights. So much for Greek democracy; that only applied to men. Then Herodotus visited Egypt. He was scandalized. Egyptian women had all the same legal rights…