Ancient customs Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Tales of Times Forgotten

How Old Was Mary When She Gave Birth to Jesus?

The ages of Mary and Joseph at the time of Jesus’s birth attracted a great deal of controversy in November 2017, after the Republican Alabama State Auditor Jim Ziegler defended the Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of pursuing a sexual relationship with a fourteen-year-old girl at a time when he was thirty-two. Ziegler said:

“…take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus… There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.”

Ziegler claimed that this fact absolves Roy Moore from all blame for his alleged ephebophilia. This is, of course, preposterous. Even if what Ziegler says here were completely correct, that still would not mean it is excusable for men in their thirties today to have sexual relations with fourteen-year-olds. We live in a very different society from the one that existed in Galilee in the first century BC and, regardless of what people 2,000 years ago thought, in our society, it is completely unacceptable for a man in his early thirties to seek sexual relations with a fourteen-year-old.

If we leave aside the whole question of Roy Moore’s guilt, however, we must ask, “Is Ziegler correct about Mary’s age when she gave birth to Jesus?” In other words, was Mary really a teenager when she gave birth to Jesus? The truth is, we really do not know.

How Did People in Ancient Times Survive without Central Heating?

I’ve come across a large number of questions on Quora asking how people in ancient times managed to survive during the winter without modern central heating. It seems that many people are just outright baffled by the very idea of people living through the cold of winter without central heating.

The answer to the question of how people survived is fairly straightforward, although there are a few surprises. For instance, some people may not have known this, but there are still people living in relatively cold environments today without central heating. Also, even more surprisingly, some wealthy aristocrats in ancient Rome actually did have a kind of early form of central heating system in their villas.

Is Christianity a Mystery Cult?

Over the years, Christianity has often been compared to the mystery religions of ancient Greece and Rome, both by Christians wishing to emphasize the esoteric nature of their religion and by opponents of Christianity who claim that the resemblance between Christianity and mystery religions of antiquity proves that Christianity is not of divine origin.

Christianity certainly has many important features in common with Greco-Roman mystery religions, but there are some crucial differences between Christianity and mystery religions that really set Christianity apart. Perhaps the most notable difference between Christianity and the mystery religions is Christianity’s attitude towards proselytism.

Interestingly, it does seem that some mystery cult-like tendencies did come to dominate Christianity in late antiquity. Nonetheless, Christianity itself is not inherently a mystery religion and I don’t think anyone could accurately describe contemporary Christianity as a mystery cult.

Did Ancient “Pagans” Really Worship Nature?

If you go around and ask a bunch of people what “paganism” is, chances are, most people will tell you something like “nature worship.” It is true that some contemporary Neopagans do indeed worship nature, albeit in various forms and in various ways. Even many Neopagans who do not literally worship nature still hold nature in very high regard. This conception of “paganism” as “nature worship,” however, is, for the most part, not applicable to the ancient world.

The term “paganism” is problematic in a historical context for all kinds of reasons, but it is most often applied to the various polytheistic religions that were practiced in the greater Mediterranean region (i.e., the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe) in ancient times before Christianity. When we look at these religions, we actually find a rather startling absence of nature-worshippers.

For most people in the ancient Mediterranean world, nature was a frightening and dangerous thing that could never really be trusted. Most of the deities worshipped in ancient times by so-called “pagans” were not seen as personifications of nature or natural forces, but rather as supernatural beings governing certain areas of human endeavor. Some deities were associated with aspects of the natural world, but the deities themselves were almost always clearly distinguished from the phenomena with which they were associated. Furthermore, even those deities associated with natural phenomena were usually associated with cultural phenomena as well.

No, Groundhog Day Is Not of Ancient Pagan Origin

As you may or may not know, February 2nd is known as “Groundhog Day” in North America because there is a popular superstition that, if a groundhog comes out of his hole on February 2nd and sees his shadow because it is sunny, he will go back in his hole and there will be six more weeks of winter, but, if he does not see his shadow because it is too cloudy, he will stay out of his hole and winter will be over soon.

Every year, at the site of Gobbler’s Knob in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a widely-publicized ceremony is held in which a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil is brought forward by members of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club dressed in tuxedos and top hats.

The president of the Inner Circle then pretends to listen to Punxsutawney Phil, who allegedly tells him in a language that only the president can understand known as “Groundhogese” whether or not he has seen his shadow. The president of the Inner Circle makes a pronouncement of whether there will be an early spring or six more weeks of winter. It’s all a very silly affair and very few people, if any, actually think the groundhog can predict the weather.

Naturally, there are people insisting that Groundhog Day is of ancient pagan origin. This is, of course, entirely wrong; there’s really nothing ancient or pagan about Groundhog Day as we know it today. Nonetheless, people today are obsessed with trying to connect all modern holiday customs back to ancient paganism. People like to believe that the traditions we have today are ancient. In reality, though, most modern holidays customs are products of only the past few centuries.

Here’s Where Some Famous Rulers from Ancient Times Were Buried

I am frequently asked the question of where famous people from the ancient world were buried. In most cases, we have no idea where the remains of famous people from the ancient world were originally deposited. Nonetheless, when it comes to famous rulers from the ancient Mediterranean world, we often have a great deal more information about where they were buried than we do for ordinary people.

For instance, we actually do have some information about where famous leaders such as Perikles, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and Augustus’s remains were deposited. Unfortunately, even when we do know the exact location of a person’s original burial, it is exceedingly rare for their remains to have survived to the present day. None of the bodies of any of the rulers I have mentioned have ever been identified by archaeologists.

Burial practices in the ancient world varied considerably from one culture to the next. The ancient Romans traditionally cremated their dead. The ancient Greeks traditionally buried their dead in the ground uncremated and unembalmed with grave markers to show where the person was buried. The ancient Egyptians traditionally embalmed their dead and placed their embalmed bodies in tombs with extensive grave goods.

Just How Pagan Is Christmas Really?

The Christmas season is upon us and, if there’s one thing I know I’m going to get for Christmas, it’s spurious claims about modern Christmas traditions supposedly having ancient “pagan” origins. Most of my readers are probably already familiar with the sorts of claims I am referring to; it is popularly believed that Christmas is really an ancient “pagan” holiday that was hijacked by early Christians and that modern, twenty-first-century, secular American Christmas traditions are actually of ancient “pagan” origin.

Well, I’m here to tell you that, although there was a time when Christmas did indeed incorporate some pre-Christian traditions, virtually none of the traditions associated with Christmas in the United States today are actually of ancient pre-Christian origin. In fact, virtually all of the Christmas traditions that you usually hear people going around claiming are “pagan” are actually traditions that only arose within the past two hundred years or so, within a Christian cultural context.

The Motivations behind Human Sacrifice

For people today, the fact that so many peoples throughout history have practiced human sacrifice seems absolutely baffling and horrifying. We tend to think of human sacrifice as the ultimate act of barbarism, an act that epitomizes everything savage and uncivilized about our species. Nonetheless, it is important for us to understand why people have historically engaged in this practice.

Human sacrifice has occurred in virtually every part of the world at some point in time and has occurred in some part of the world during every historical time period. Thus, whether we like it or not, understanding the motivations behind human sacrifice is a part of understanding what it means to be human.

Did Abolitionism Exist in Ancient Greece and Rome?

The prevailing attitude towards slavery throughout the ancient Mediterranean world was essentially that being a slave was horrible and unpleasant, but that that was just the way things were and the way things always would be. As far as we can tell from the surviving sources, the idea that slavery even could be abolished does not seem to have occurred to most people.

There were apparently a few people in ancient Greece and Rome who thought that slavery was immoral, but these people seem to have been extremely rare, since they only appear briefly in the sources. Furthermore, we have absolutely no documentation of the existence of any large-scale, organized movement to abolish slavery in ancient Greece or Rome. Some people did criticize slavery extensively and there were probably people who wished slavery didn’t exist, but no one seems to have ever developed any realistic plans to abolish it.

Ancient Greek Murder Mysteries

Murder mysteries are always a subject of popular fascination. From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories to modern CSI television shows, everybody loves a good whodunit. Today, we are going to be looking at three famous murder trials from ancient Athens. We do not know the outcomes of any of these trials, which means that, from our perspective, you could classify these murders as technically “unsolved.”