Not surprising, a couple hundred years after the death of Christ there were different interpretations on what his life meant and what his essential message was. Christianity was becoming a hierarchical institution that understood itself as the guardian of the true faith. Beliefs and practices out...
More than once, angry crowds threatened his life, especially when he ignored fears for his own safety and publicly embraced a condemned friend, a man named Plutarch, and attended his execution. So far, Origen himself escaped arrest and interrogation, probably because Severus’s persecution had tar...
Earthquakes, plague, and outbreaks of violence convinced the “new prophets”—as they have persuaded countless others throughout two thousand years—that they were living in the last days before God’s final judgment. The revival began in the late 160s, when a Christian named Montanus began speaking ...