Uncategorized Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

Was Jesus a Historical Figure?

NOTE: I originally published this article on March 10, 2018, at which time I was still a senior in high school. Since then, this article has come under extremely heavy criticism. I could probably write this article better if I were writing it today, but I will leave this article as it is as a record of what I originally wrote.

No other figure has attracted nearly as much controversy as Jesus of Nazareth… but was he a historical figure? Well, people on the internet seem to say otherwise: these self-appointed debunkers (who are almost exclusively historically illiterate bloggers with no background in ancient history, or any history for that matter) have taken it upon themselves to demonstrate that Jesus is just a fictional character invented out of whole cloth by early Christians. Virtually all professional scholars who have studied the ancient world universally agree that Jesus of Nazareth was a real, historical Jewish teacher who lived in the first century AD and was crucified under the orders of Pontius Pilate. Here is an extremely abbreviated explanation of why they have come to that conclusion:

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The Evolution of Cupid

Around this time year, we always see images of Cupid showing up all over the place. In modern culture, Cupid is always portrayed as a rascally infant armed with a bow and quiver of arrows, but this has not always been how he has been imagined. In fact, his original portrayal was much, much darker…

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Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part Seven: Letters from the Afterlife

According to Pliny the Elder, the Greek philosopher Dionysodoros of Melos was renowned throughout the Hellenistic world for being a great geometrician. He lived to an astoundingly old age and, after his death, his female heirs led a funeral procession in his honor. After bearing his corpse to the tomb, they discovered a mysterious letter sitting in the crypt. They opened it up and found, to their astonishment, that it was written in Dionysodoros’s own handwriting and that it had his signature at the bottom.

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The Ancient Greeks’ Surprising Views on Weapons Regulation

After the tragic mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, there has been a renewal in discussion over the possibility that Congress might enact some kind of regulation on firearms to (hopefully) reduce the chances of another such shooting taking place. Obviously, the ancient Greeks did not have guns, so they could not have had “gun control” in the modern sense. Nonetheless, some people may find it surprising that the ancient Greeks actually had shockingly strict (some might even say “draconian”) restrictions on citizens bearing arms.

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How the Days of the Week Received Their Names

We have all doubtlessly wondered at some point how the days of the week received their names. Most of us probably have some vague recollection that the names have something to do with ancient Germanic deities. That is true, but the origins of the names for the days of the week actually go back even further than that. As a bizarre as it may sound, the story actually begins with ancient Babylonian astrologers.

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Pliny the Elder’s Bizarre Sea Creatures

In classical literature, we often stumble across unusual or amusing anecdotes. Sometimes, however, we find stories that are downright bizarre. For instance, in his Natural History 9.4.9-11, Pliny the Elder describes a bizarre assortment of otherworldly sightings of supernatural sea creatures, including mermaids, mermen, and gigantic sea monsters.

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The Eclipse of Thales and the Battle of Halys

Today everyone was excited about the total solar eclipse (near-total in some places) that occurred this afternoon over the continental United States. We all knew that the eclipse was going to happen decades in advance due to modern astronomical calculations, but, in ancient times, there was no sound way of predicting when an eclipse would occur… until Thales of Miletos came along.

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Ovid’s Worst Lines

In his Controversiae 2.2.12, the Roman writer Seneca the Elder tells the story of how the poet Ovid once told all his friends that each of them could choose three lines they disliked from any of his poems, promising that, whichever lines they chose, he would remove.

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Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part Six: The Hero of Temesa

In Book Six of The Guide to Greece, the ancient Greek travel writer Pausanias tells the story of the ghost of a stoned rapist who terrorized the city of Temesa until it was driven out by the Olympic boxer Euthymos.

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Betsy Ross Did Not Design the First American Flag

Everyone has heard the beautiful, heart-warming tale of how, in 1776, General George Washington, George Ross, and Robert Morris personally visited the humble Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross and showed her a rough sketch for the first flag of the United States of America, to which she made a few minor alterations before sewing it. It is a good story, which is why we tell it. Unfortunately, it is also completely apocryphal; there is no solid historical evidence linking Betsy Ross to the first American flag aside from a highly implausible story told by her grandson nearly a century later.

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