Graeco-Roman

(c. 20 b.c.e.­c. 50 c.e.) philosopher and scholar The first-century c.e. Jewish author and philosopher Philo of Alexandria is an important figure for both Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity. He was born  around 20 b.c.e. in Alexandria into one of the wealthiest and most distinguished Jewish families. Alexandria  had a thriving Jewish community and was known for  its intellectual vigor. In addition to his Jewish education,  therefore, Philo received schooling in the Greek custom,  including the philosophy of Plato, Middle Platonism,  Neoplatonism, and Stoicism, as well as Greek literature and rhetoric, all of which are evident in his work.  For example, he refers to God with the Greek term logos when discussing the divine creation of the world.The influence of Greek traditions on Judaism in Philo’s  work becomes in part representative of what is generally  known as Hellenistic Judaism in distinction from Palestinian Judaism...

Where linguistic evidence can give us very little help, however, is with chronology. We know the Slavic language family emerged relatively recently, but what does that mean? Some experts argue that the split with Baltic-speakers began only in the middle of the first millennium AD, at the precise moment when Slavic-speakers begin to appear in our sources. Others would place it much earlier – by maybe even a thousand or more years. This difference of opinion matters when it comes to trying to understand the Slavicization of Europe which unfolded after c.500 AD. If we should be envisaging very few Slavic-speakers at that date because the linguistic split was just beginning, so that Europe’s Slavic-speakers may have amounted to no more than the Sclavenes and Antae of Korchak and Penkovka fame, then the broad Slavic domination of Europe achieved by c.900 AD has to be accounted for from an extremely restricted demographic base. If, on the contrary, the Slavic linguist...

Who were the Venedi? by Edward Dawson & Peter Kessler,  Updated 22 March 2019 It is a truth universally acknowledged - or at least it should be - that if you place three academics in the same room, you'll get at least four opinions. This certainly is true when it comes to the complex subject of the Belgae and, in particular, the Veneti or Venedi. The relationship between the two is uncertain and is often very murky in historical sources. It seems that no archaeological evidence exists to prove the Venedi/Belgae relationship one way or the other. Despite - or probably because - the link cannot be archaeologically proven, several schools of thought exist when it comes to pinning down the Venedi and describing their perceived origins. Unfortunately, any origins that have been produced by these disparate schools of thought are largely exclusive of one another - they cannot be combined simply because the origin theories are mutually exclusive. The main characters In the ...