The company trip this year was a hilarious clusterfuck of west European ignorance. (Lest anyone think Americans have the monopoly on that
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My husband and I spent two weeks driving (and ferrying) around southern Greece and it was very cool. I re-learned the Greek alphabet before I went and that was helpful in sounding out the names of some places. However, all the road signs and major sites had at least a short English translation, which was VERY helpful. I think the most amazing place we went was Mycenae. Highly recommended.
Thanks for the recommendation! I just looked up Mycenae and it looks great! I'll start thinking about how i get to all these places closer to the date.
If you want a real STORY about early Christianity, I'm semi-obsessed with Constantine and the first and second Nicean Councils. The Nicean Council is where Christianity decided (in a quorum) that Christian doctrine **must** include the belief that Jesus was not just a prophet, and not just a miracle birth... but that the must be taught as the literal son of God **as well as** Corpus God, ie: God in flesh. Many early Christian sect bishops were excommunicated when their side (Jesus was a prophet, and "child of God", but not God Himself manifested in flesh) lost this debate/election and their heretical texts (book of Thomas, book of Mary Magdelene, book of Philip, etc) were popularly taught at the time but removed from the Bible officially after the first council and only resurfaced (in part) in the 1940s in Egypt, but before the archeologists could arrive to the remote village of the family that discovered them, but much of the papyri were burned for stove fuel while various universities and museums dickered about who would go and
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For me my interests lie a little earlier than this, because once Christianity got its hooks deeply into the Roman elites i feel it was somewhat of a foregone conclusion that the version Constantine converted to is the one that would eventually be declared the One True Version. We do still have some of the writings - or at least references to them - from around the time of the Nicean council, but there is no evidence that those writings used by alternate versions of Christianity went back any older than the oldest stuff we already have, which is Paul's epistles
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I love that this is one of your rabbitholes. So surprising! I know a lot of people who go to theology and divinity school aren't believers and are just fascinated by the evolution of religion as culture. Maybe you'll do that in a future chapter
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As far as I remember, in Greece every sign is written in greek and, uh, non-greek (LOL). I'm not 100% sure though, because I actually do read greek writing as I did 2 years of ancient greek at school.
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That sounds exciting! I have only been to Greece once, back when I was in high school. I would love to go back again.
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I love that this is one of your rabbitholes. So surprising! I know a lot of people who go to theology and divinity school aren't believers and are just fascinated by the evolution of religion as culture. Maybe you'll do that in a future chapter ( ... )
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We attach meaning to.... whatever we attach meaning to....
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