Ancient Civilizations

Under Persia’s Achaemenid dynasty, before Darius, temples had appeared for the first time. Related to the Aryans who had invaded India, or a least having a language closely related to the Aryans, the Persians had gods similar to those found in the sacred Hindu Vedas. Among the Persians were a people called Medes, and a [...]

The word Hebrew has been associated with the word Hiberu and Apiru, described in Wikipedia as ” the name given by various Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Mitanni, and Ugaritic sources (dated, roughly, from before 2000 BC to around 1200 BC) to a group of people living as nomadic invaders in areas of the Fertile Crescent [...]

Writing and Religion By 7000 BCE, in what is called the Fertile Crescent, in West Asia where hunter-gatherers had roamed, planting had grown into the major source of food. There true farming had begun, and farming required permanent settlement. By 4500 BCE people archaeologists would call Ubaidians were living in towns in West Asia, in [...]

Fall of Assyria’s Empire and Rise of the Moses Legend Assyria’s great empire lasted no longer than would the empires that began in the late nineteenth century — about seventy-five years. Assyria weakened itself economically by continuous wars to maintain its empire, including defending against invasions by an Indo-European tribal people, the Cimmerians, who came [...]

Manichaeism, a Universalist Faith An artist’s concept of Mani the Prophet from Wikimedia Commons The Prophet Mani Persia was between India and the Roman Empire, and the Silk Road ran through it, making Persia a crossroad of ideas. It had Jews who had had fled from their homeland. After the Jews came Christians. Buddhist ideas [...]

Question: What does the Qur’an say about Christians? Answer: In the Qur’an, Christians are often referred to as among the “People of the Book,” i.e. people who have received and believed in previous revelation from God’s prophets. There are verses that highlight the commonalities between Christians and Muslims, and other verses that warn Christians against [...]