The Pokey Finger of God

The State Cult Hypothesis: “Christianity was primarily the result of a competition between the state cults of Diocletian and Constantine. It was the efforts of Constantine to defeat Diocletian’s Tetrarchy, co-opt the Persian cultural invasion, and subsequently unify the Roman Empire that resulted in the creation of Christianity.”
Constantine was a keen student of history, and [...]

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Here’s something I’ve enjoyed greatly this last week: Stephen Williams’ Diocletian and the Roman Recovery. This book from 1985 was apparently one of the first biographies of the man written in English.
The genius here is the clear and concise comparison between the Empire under the “Good Emperors” and the Empire under “Crisis”. Williams provides several [...]

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More speculations on history and the development of myth.
Gnostic Origins: The word ‘Gnostic’ is being phased out of my working vocabulary, as it fails to provide a consistent, definitive meaning. This word is frequently used as a wide brush to tar all manner of deviations from orthodoxy, yet the more I try to pin down [...]

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