DDickey

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I need some cash, so I'm selling some books on eBay: They can be found here, if anyone is interested: Items for sale. I am willing to take less than the Buy It Now prices, which is why I have the best offer option on there. Thanks.

Columbia Pictures has bought an adaptation of Anabasis, a memoir by Xenophon, a Greek soldier who was amongst a group of mercenaries hired by Persian Prince Cyrus the Younger to fight his brother Artaxerxes II for the throne of Persia. What are everyones thoughts on this? Prediction: Hollywood will butcher it and mutilate ancient history--as per usual with good ol' Hollywood.

Thanks! I'd been looking for some decent pictures.

From Reuters: No photographs accompanied the article. And:

I'd recommend History of the Roman World: 753 to 146 BC and From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 BC to AD 68 by HH Scullard. They're both fairly straightforward reads; definitely worth your time, I think.

From the BBC

I actually got giddy when I saw that Bill Thayer posted here. Does that make me a huge nerd? Welcome Mr. Thayer!

Since the bible contains invented prose anyway, it isn't hard to believe the crucifixion of Jesus is also fictional. By that I mean the various miracles attributed to Jesus, which are also found in Indian and Egyptian mythos of the time. In other words, the story is embellished to portray Jesus as divine. That doesn't cover the point however. There is a strong possibility that Jesus was indeed nailed up - we just don't have any positive proof of that and there is a contemporary tomb in northern India that is named as the tomb of Jesus, who spent his later years living there according to the locals. Don't dismiss that out of hand, there is a case to answer. After all, the sect of Saint Thomas was discovered in India by Portuguese explorers in the 16th century. Now as to why Jesus's followers would spread stories of crucifixion we enter the realm of hypothesis. I could certainly attempt a few alternatives, but without any stronger historical connection, it wouldn't have any validity. That however is the problem with the bible. It's a story rewritten to give Jesus the status of a demigod, to make him the figurehead of a religion. Notice the bible is split into two. The Old Testament, an embellished account of Jewish history, and the New testament, a portrayal of Jesus. Although the bible is our primary source for the life of Jesus (as indeed it was always intended to be) it remains a biased and suspect work. Well, I don't think anyone will disagree that the Bible is a biased work. But bias is accounted for in the three criteria historians use in an attempt to smoke out, so to speak, information about the historical Jesus. As I mentioned before, the major criteria are: Multiple attestation, Dissimilarity, and Contextual credibility. When one employs these criteria, one can discover certain probabilities. Dissimilarity can help in seeing through biases. As far as Jesus in India: We know that India had trade in the ancient world with Asia Minor and the Mediterranean world. It

I agree. Caesar's invasion interests me, but beyond that it doesn't really do anything for me.

Okay, friends, I need some more recommendations. I'm looking for some authoritative--yet affordable--books on the division of Alexander the Great's kingdom on his death. I'm ill-informed on this period and would like to correct that. Is scholarship on this period plentiful?

Does anyone know of a book or biography of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and his rule? I can't seem to find anything dedicated to him.

Thanks everyone! I came across a few of the titles mentioned here, but right now they're out of my price range. A few of these, though, I should be able to track down. I really do appreciate the help, and if anyone has any more suggestions, please don't hesitate. I've become extremely fascinated with the period of the Maccabees and I'll never fully understand it if I can't wrap my head around Antiochus. I do own Cambridge Ancient History v. IX and there is an excellent essay in there about the Jews under Hasmonean rule. So that does help.

That is fantastic! Do you mind if I steal--er, use it?

Sounds interesting. Please let me know what you thought about it when you finish. I, over the past couple months, have been interested in Judaea from Alexander the Great to the destruction of the Temple, and, a little later, the Bar Kochba revolt. Right now I'm reading From the Maccabees to the Mishnah by Shaye J.D. Cohen, and when I finish that I plan on reading, Heritage and Hellenism: the Reinvention of Jewish Tradition by Erich S. Gruen, a name familiar to some, if not most, on this board.

Please do! It will be greatly appreciated.

I'm 3/4 of the way through a book right now, entitled, "From the Maccabees to the Mishnah," which you might like. It details Judaism in the Second Temple period, including practices, beliefs, institutions, etc. An amazing and enlightening read; definitely worth checking out. If you haven't read Eusebius, I'd recommend checking him out, too. Pengiun has published a multi-volume history of the church, Volume 1 might interest you. Hope that helps!

Of course they put that 'fualt' in there on purpose, so you suckers for this kind of 'personality tests' can feel very smug and 'analytical'. Ouch. That's harsh. I didn't take this test seriously; I was bored, at work, and thought, 'what the hell. I have nothing better to do.'

In the research I've done, the Greek word used in the New Testament, lestai, means insurrectionists. It's typically translated into English as Thieves or Bandits to illustrate that Jesus was Crucified among the lowest of the low. Insurrectionists has led some scholars to speculate that those crucified alongside him were his conspirators in whatever "real" reason he was crucified. I'm not sure I buy that--because it's pure speculation--but it is interesting. Another quote I found reads as follows: lestai is a "Greek word that could mean 'freedom fighter/insurgent/zealot' to the Jews under occupation but 'bandit/terrorist' to the occupiers."

This is interesting. I found this in the book, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome by Donald G. Kyle, pgs. 168-169

Then, I'm willing to agree that we disagree. I disagree. Just kidding. I'll agree to that.

As I have already noted, this story was reported by three independent and regularly used classical sources, two of them regularly considered as particularly reliable. With all due respect, this story performs far better on this count than Jesus' crucifixion. BTW, it is exactly because it wasn't state-sanctioned that this crucifixion is so relevant for this discussion. The major question is: Was it independently attested, or did the authors use a common source? That aside, on its face, the story is suspect: It

I'd considered mentioning it the other day, but didn't think it was relevant to the conversation we were having. It's possible the story is apocryphal. If not, this certainly isn't a case of state-sanctioned crucifixion, so I excluded it from the discussion. I do, however, find this point interesting.

Mine was: The Oracle 0% Extroversion, 100% Intuition, 0% Emotiveness, 67% Perceptiveness Heuristic, detached, and analytical to a fualt, you are most like The Oracle. You are able to tackle any subject with a fine toothed comb, and you possess an ability to pinpoint nuances and shades of meaning that other people do not have and cannot understand. Accomplishment and realization of ideas are, for you, secondary to the rigorous exploration of ideas and questions -- you are, first and foremost, a theorist. You hate authority, convention, tradition, and under no circumstances do you accept a leadership role (although, you will gladly advise leadership when they're going astray, whether they want you to or not). Abstraction and generalities are your interests, details and particulars are usually inconsequential and uninteresting. You excel at language, mathematics and philosophy. You are typically easy-going and non-confrontational until someone violates one of the very few principles that you deem sacred, at which point you can fly into a rage. Although you possess a much greater understanding of process and systems than the people around you, you are always conscious of the possibility that you've missed something or made a mistake. You don't tend to become attached to particular theories, and will immediately discard mistaken notions once they're revealed to be incorrect (but you don't tolerate iconoclasts who try to discredit validated theories through the use of fallacies and bad data). Despite being outwardly humble, you probably think of yourself as being smarter than most other people. That's because you are. In fact, in your dealings with people your understanding of their motives is so expansive that you know what they're going to say before they say it, and in world affairs, you usually know what is going to take place before it actually does. This ability would make you unbeatable in debates if only you were a little less pensive about your own conclusions, and a little more outgoing. Famous people like you: Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, John McWhorter, Ramanujan, Marie Curie, Kurt Godel Stay clear of: Apollo, Icarus, Hermes, Aphrodite Seek out: Atlas, Prometheus, Daedalus It's funny that, in the first sentence, it says I'm analytic to a fault. And, scanning over it, I noticed--and scoffed--that fault was spelled incorrectly.