Thanks for posting this. In essence, this part of church history is what converted me years ago. I’ve never been a fan of the blue-eyed blonde, effeminate Christ that a lot of our popular mythology ascribes to our Lord. I still find it repellent.
The more you learn about Christ and early church history, the more you recognize what a bunch of tough cookies they were. These were the type of folks I could look up to.
These tough cookies dominated the church and defined Christianity until the start of the Muslim invasion. Over a period of less than 100 years the ancient church was destroyed by Muslim invading forces. (See ancient history database)It has never regained its former power and influence. Even the Crusades were a blip historically and were extremely limited to forcing Muslim hoardes out of a few ancient Christian (and Jewish) cities. Of more than 500 major insurgencies by Muslims into Europe less than a dozen battles were fought to rid Christian sites of Muslim domination.
Wasn’t this a big deal between the Pharisees and the Sadducees?