Sold into Freedom’s hero is Quintus, a military tribune. In Rome’s earliest history, all Roman citizens were contained in three tribes organized by Romulus (8th century BC). Each tribe was headed by a tribune. There was no standing army, so each tribe sent one commander when an army was mustered. In Imperial times, military tribunes were the six most senior …
So Falls the World
One of the most iconic symbols of Rome is the Colosseum–a huge amphitheater in the center of Rome that could hold 50- 80,000 spectators who came to watch sporting events and games, including gladiatorial battles, mock sea battles, animal hunts, dramas, re-enactments of famous battles, and executions. Seats were arranged in tiers that reflected the status levels of Roman society. …
Please Wait, Wait a Minute, Mister Postman
The Apostle Paul wrote almost half the New Testament—all in the form of letters. (Although volume-wise, his beloved physician Luke wrote more.) We might imagine a thoughtful Paul sitting in a chair at a table in a darkened room. A single candle illuminates his workspace, a quill is posed over a piece of parchment. But that’s not exactly the way …
All Roads Really Did Lead to Rome
One of the reasons Christianity spread so quickly in the first centuries after Jesus’s death and resurrection was the sophisticated and extensive Roman road system. Copies of the gospels as well as Paul’s letters—later to become Holy Scripture—were carried throughout the Empire on these roads. They were built to serve the military. As the famed Roman legions conquered new regions, …
Ancient Words, Ancient Bibles
What image comes to mind when I say “book”? If you’re like most people, you think of separate pages bound together, with a cover. Known as the “codex,” this has been the most common form of a book for the past two millennia. The codex is a book constructed of a number of sheets of paper, vellum, papyrus, or similar …
What do Thyatira, Tyre, and Tiberius have in common?
A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one who worshiped God, heard us; whose heart the Lord opened to listen to the things which were spoken by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and …
“If you must break the law, do it to seize power.”
The above words were uttered by Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome for just one year before being assassinated. His very name has become a synonym for “ruler” or “king.” Rome had many levels and types of rulers, depending on location and purpose. The duoviri, Latin for “two men” and known in English as the duumvirs were the highest joint magistrates of the cities and …
Meet Quin and Tia
Elantia is Sold into Freedom’s heroine. She’s from southwest Britannia, the area that is now Devon and Kent. Her father is the chief of their small village, which is part of the Dumnonii tribe. Britannia was inhabited by the people we now call Celtics, though they weren’t known by that name until the 17th century. They were actually many disparate …
Join Me in Philippi
I’ve been AWOL for about six weeks now. It’s been an incredibly busy 6 weeks, bookwise, on top of two birthdays and Christmas in the same week. I think I’m almost recovered. On the 15th I submitted my manuscript for Guideposts’ upcoming series “Ordinary Women of the Bible.” My book is about Jochebed, Moses’s birth mother. It was one of the …
Meet Sextus
The hero of Deep Calling Deep is Sextus Afranius Burrus. Sextus was a real person, born around born AD 1 in Vasio, Gallia Narbonensis (now southern France). By all accounts, Sextus was an honorable man. In 51 AD, Nero’s mother Agrippina, then married to Claudius, chose him to be the sole Praetorian Prefect, going against the tradition of having two people fill the most important …