It’s Never That Simple
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The Story of Imperial Rome The Rise of the Roman imperial order, amidst the ruin of its republican counterpart defined the context in which Christianity came to the forefront in late antiquity. The course of the Roman Empire’s success as a civilization has been a source of constant discussion since Polybius’ speculations as detailed in…
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Due to a number of on-going delays and life events I will need more time between essays for the next few months. It is presently unclear exactly how long this will take but it may be an other couple of weeks before I can reasonably be posting regularly again, if I were to guess. I…
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…In examining the past we must ask ourselves, given similar circumstances in different cultures spatially or temporally, and without the benefit of a different moral or ethical understanding than the subject, how would we fair differently? We may indeed do better, or we may fair worse it is not a trivial question…
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The heroes of one age may turn out to be monsters and some of the the monsters may be heroes, but simply because this is sometimes the case does not mean it is always the case and it may not always be that simple.
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THE GREAT MAN THEORY AND BYZANTIUM In times not too long ago how the public was taught about the roman empire during the imperial period is focused almost exclusively on the military exploits of the emperors. There are certain consequences of this framework. It lays sole responsibility for the flourishing of the state in the…
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NARRATIVE AND MYTHOLOGY The teaching of history is where the importance of narrative arises. We can call this narrative, big “M” Mythology, as its importance to a culture, is primarily tied up in how a people sees itself and the world around it. Big “M” Mythology is differentiated from small “m” mythology, by the way…
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Linking this groundwork together, we begin to form a more comprehensive approximation of what has happened. In seeking, we can begin to see more clearly why our world looks the way it does today and perhaps how we can learn from the wisdom and folly of our collective pasts and build a better future.
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In short, if an author from the past says something, there are a few considerations that are needed to find out what they were really trying to say. 1. What is the genre 2. What is their motive 3. What is the historical contextual 4. What is their understanding of the subject?
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So with all of this in mind the best principles in seeking are curiosity, because we wish to know, and humility, because we know that that we do not know.
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The structure will be centered on 5 categories: 1) Ground Work: A contextualization for the history segments 2) Era I: The Imperial Church under Rome and Constantinople 3) Era II: The Medieval Church 4) Era III: The Protestant/Catholic conflicts 5) Era IV: The Modern Church
Of Kings And Clergy 