The new age of science, nationalism, missionary zeal, and, above all, economic desire for world trade routes, came together on the scores of ships embarking from Spanish and Portuguese ports. The explorers and traders pressed further out into the Atlantic, up to Greenland, and down the coast of Africa, trying to find a trade route […]
This chronology of the western religious experience is approaching familiar ground. Names, dates, and events of the Renaissance along with the courage, tenacity, and audacity of the great explorers are drilled into our youth. With familiarity and hindsight, it is easy to project modern preconceptions into the past, making the outcome of historical events look […]
Throughout the ages, people have looked back on their “golden age” of faith, be it ten years or a thousand years earlier, and idealize it as a better time—a more pure and true time. If ever there was a golden age for Christianity it occurred during the Middle Ages, in a time where the heart […]
The intellectual alliance of Athens with Rome panned the spotlight of Western history from Greece to the Roman world. The radiance of Hellenistic culture was passing, but many felt its powerful influence as it illuminated cultures fromSpaintoChina. Social strata sharply divided the Roman republic’s people, as the abundant use of money in commerce enabled people […]
The Old World, a world in which a few distinctive civilizations existed autonomously in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Crete, sounded the first crescendo in the rhythm of civilization, but by the beginning of the first millennium BC the world was entering a new stanza. Increasing prosperity made people aware of more desires. Instead of working to […]
From the turmoil of Akkadian-occupied Sumeria departed a Semitic tribe of Jews who, a millennia later, became a minor power in ancient Palestine. But those Jewish religious seeds would grow to become the most important religious, moral, and philosophic influence in western civilization. Previous religions added and deleted gods into and from their pantheon to […]
Out of the banks of the riverNilerose a civilization descending from none other nor fathering none later, but exhibiting an endurance never since repeated. The 600-mile long Nile river in northern Africa was isolated enough from the civilizations ofMesopotamiato develop its own unique culture and religion. Egyptians built a profoundly religious civilization that would last […]
Approximately 6000 years ago, people living in clay-walled cities along the banks of the southern end of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers established the first society to progress beyond the Stone Age. They formed the first empire. A number of times before this, civilizations in other parts of the world may have briefly flourished and […]
