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Tag: Romans

How Many Guards at the Tomb? A series of essays and ebook.

howmanyguardsEbookI have a post, simply titled “How many guards at Jesus’ tomb?” that has proved to be one of the most popular ones on this blog, drawing ten thousand visitors or so each year.  The bulk of these come during the Easter season.  I suspect that there are a lot of churches putting on Passion plays and they’re looking for some guidance on this topic (eg, how many costumes should they make for the guards, and should they be Roman costumes, or Jewish temple guard costumes?)

This year, to enhance the service that this post has evidently provided, … continue reading...

Guards at the Tomb: The Discipline of the Roman Soldier

howmanyguardsEbook(this is the continuation of a series of essays discussing the number and make-up of the guards at Jesus’ tomb.  It can be purchased as an ebook, cover to the right.    Main essay | Previous section | Next section: The Romans and Jews:  So (un)Happy Together )

The Discipline of the Roman Soldier

Most acknowledge that the Roman military was very good at what it did without really looking at the details.  The concession is made easily enough because most of us learned in history class that the Romans conquered a great deal of territory, and we infer, without … continue reading...

Easter is no Legend, the Resurrection is no mere myth: Myth Made Fact is a Different Story

It is that time of year again, when skeptics begin leveling their claims that Christianity is just a re-packaged bit of borrowed paganism and [insert your conspiracy theory here].  For the sake of this post, let’s merely concede that there are similarities to ancient myths and train our minds on the critical distinction:  none of them are set against a historical backdrop as fleshed out as Christianity.  In other words, it may be absolutely true that Christianity is ‘borrowed’ but the fact that the resurrection actually happened, nonetheless, only means looking with less skeptical eyes on the ‘ancient myths.’  For … continue reading...