Tag : Jus­tin­ian II

Sav­iour-gods Muti­lat­ed Through­out Antiquity

One of the big ques­tions nobody has asked about Mel Gib­son’s The Pas­sion Of The Christ is this : If the cru­ci­fix­ion was a his­toric event and so cen­tral to the Chris­t­ian Gospel, why is it that there is no evi­dence what­ev­er of a man on a cross in Chris­t­ian art and mon­u­ments for almost sev­en cen­turies ? Not until 692 CE, in the reign of Emper­or Jus­tin­ian II, was it decreed that hence­forth instead of a lamb (the zodi­a­cal sign of Aries) fixed on the cross, the fig­ure of Jesus be placed there instead. Anoth­er ques­tion : How is it that the ear­li­est known fig­ure of any man on a cross comes from about 300 BCE and that per­son” is not Jesus but Orpheus, a myth­i­cal Greek sun-god ?

Lat­est articles

Did al-Zuṭṭ Ride Muham­mad ? A Crit­i­cal Philo­log­i­cal Reassess­ment of a Mod­ern Anti-Islam Polemic

This study dis­man­tles the al-zuṭṭ hadith polemic through close read­ing, lex­i­cog­ra­phy, and nar­ra­tive con­trol. By restor­ing con­text to yark­abūn, exam­in­ing trans­mis­sion vari­ants, and com­par­ing Semit­ic par­al­lels, it shows how innu­en­do trans­la­tion exploits pol­y­se­my, sup­press­es clo­sure, and man­u­fac­tures scan­dal with­out his­tor­i­cal war­rant with­in dis­ci­plined philol­o­gy and sober method­olog­i­cal lim­its alone here

State of Flux : Con­test­ed Doc­trines in Ear­ly Christianity

Ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty lacked a sin­gle, uni­fied the­ol­o­gy. This arti­cle shows how lat­er ortho­doxy” emerged through his­tor­i­cal con­sol­i­da­tion rather than orig­i­nal consensus.

The Death of Muham­mad ﷺ : Poi­son, Prophet­hood, and the Mis­read­ing of Sources

The death of Muham­mad ﷺ exam­ined through Qur’anic lan­guage, hadith con­text, and his­to­ry, expos­ing how poi­son claims rely on mis­read­ing sources.