HISTORICAL CONTEXT | 2005-11-10
Mohammed was born in 570 or 571 AD. He did not begin his preaching until he was in his forties.
That means that Islam did not exist for the first six centuries in which Christianity developed.
For fourteen centuries Christians have looked at their world as divided into Christian Europe and teh Moslem World, which controls he Holy Land.
But the point I want to make is the usual Bob Point. It so obvious it is ignored:
The world in which Christianity developed did not have a single Moslem in it.
Obviously you cannot have the slightest idea of how Christianity developed unless you know who WAS in that pre-Moslem world.
It was world of two superpowers: Rome and Iran.
When I refer to "Rome" I am referring to a people who did not know they had Fallen.
What wee call the Fall of Rome was when the City of Rome was conquered by the barbarians, meaning us.
When "Rome fell" to us barbarians, the Roman Empire which had been moved to Constantinople long since considered it a great loss.
But our history says that that was "The Fall of Rome." In our history the day that the City of Rome fell the Roman Empire ceased to exist.
When Mexico lost the Mexican War in 1848 it lost half its territory to the United States. They didn't like it. They thought it was a disaster. But you would have had a little trouble explaining to the Mexicans that, after 1848, Mexico ceased to exist.
So when the city of Rome fell, the Roman Empire was not aware that it had ceased to exist.
Our history says that the Roman Empire ended when the city of Rome fell. There was still what we call the Byzantine Empire, but Rome was gone.
But the Roman Empire still considered itself the Roamn Empire, just as Mexico still insisted it was Mexico after 1848.
In fact the world in which Christianiy developed paid very little attention to The Fall of Rome.
What they DID pay attention to was the two superpowers of their time, the Roman Empire and Iran.
No Moslems. The struggle for the world was between the Roman Empire and Iran.
In fact, the Roman Empire and Iran agreed that what happened out in the barbarian wilds of Britain or Gaul or Italy was not important.
It uis easy to explain to modern theologians that "Byzantium," which still insisted it not only existed but was still the Roman Empire, was not that inerested in what happened among the barbarians.
What they CANNOT realize is that the Roman Empire back then described the two superpowers, Iran and their Roman Empire, as "the two eyes of civilization." They lived in a world of two civilized empires, Rome and Iran.
Iran, remember, was still white.
No historian of Christianity is capable of realizing that Iran was the other superpower of the time.
Iran's religion was Zoroastrianism, which was a religion entirely restricted to members of the Aryan race. By the time Islam began, Zoroastrianism was eighteen centuries old.
So Cyrus "did the world of God" in the Old Testament, the only non-Jew so described.
So the Magi, who were Iranian Zoroastrians, accepted Christ.
It means little today that Jesus was described as the Savior of both Persia and Rome. It meant a LOT then.
In their desperation to avoid real history, we have made the Magi into nothing but roaming "wise men."
In the time the Book of Matthew was written the Magi represented half of the civilized world.
How can you even discuss the history of Christianity if you aren't fully aware of that?