Despite over 1500 years of political and cultural dominance in the West, it continues to astound me the number of people who insist that Christians in the West today suffer from any sort of minority persecution. The "True Believer Is the Victim" ploy plays as well in Peoria as in LA, so why not make hay while the sun shines, right?

This Statesman ( Read more... )

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Zoe associates all storms as having been initiated by Zeus. She asked me in the car recently why Zeus would create damaging storms when he had the power to just make pleasant storms all the time ( Read more... )

The AP wire had a positive, freak-free article about pagans this morning. What a delightful surprise.

By specifically including pagans, Marshall is taking an important step toward recognizing the validity of their beliefs, said Jason Pitzl-Waters, an authority on paganism who edits the Wild Hunt Web site, a blog about religion, politics and ( Read more... )

Early Christianity and Greek Paideia by Werner Jaeger

( book review )

1. Who wrote the Bible?
   1. George Cluney
   2. Abraham Lincoln
   3. Billy Graham
   4. Albert Einstein

Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not ( Read more... )

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Who knows good stuff about Mandaeism, its history, its precepts, etc.? General Parthania, Medes, or Persian, etc. references also of interest. Please don't direct me to wikipedia, but to books, sites, authors, etc. who have illustrated this corner of Mesopotamia. Thanks, etc.

Another one of those questions that got me started as a child, was "How did Christianity get to be so popular?" The more I learned about it, the less I liked it, and I couldn't get over the fact that the Roman persecution should have driven the whole thing out of existence very early on ( Read more... )