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The original Easter morning changed the world. Your birth year is in direct reference to the birth year of Jesus Christ. But we wouldn’t know anything about the itinerant rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, had He not walked out of His own tomb. He would be a footnote to history.

A 1700-year-old letter that was recently discovered is said to reveal the way Christians actually lived centuries ago.230 AD The Papyrus P.Bas. 2.43 was written by a man named Arrianus to his brother Paulus, who was believed to be named after the apostle Paul. The letter has been dated to 230s AD and is thus older than all previously known Christian documentary evidence from Roman Egypt.It describes day-to-day family matters and provides insight into the world of the first Christians in the Roman Empire.“The earliest Christians in the Roman Empire are usually portrayed as eccentrics who withdrew from the world...

December 1, 2013. History, religion and archeology are all nestled in the Roman catacombs of Priscilla. One of the most recent discoveries is a fresco depicting Lazarus rising from the dead. The fresco is centuries old, but now thanks to new technology it has been restored with the use of lasers.    BARBARA MAZZEI Restorative Museum, The Catacombs of Priscilla  “In one of the areas we restored we found a representation of Lazarus rising from the dead. In addition to that, it's also interesting to see that they drew images of Peter and Paul accompanying the dead. Two martyrs of...

A heretical sect dating back to Apostolic times. Their name is derived from dokesis, "appearance" or "semblance", because they taught that Christ only "appeared" or "seemed to be a man, to have been born, to have lived and suffered. Some denied the reality of Christ's human nature altogether, some only the reality of His human body or of His birth or death. The word Docetae which is best rendered by "Illusionists", first occurs in a letter of Serapion, Bishop of Antioch (190-203) to the Church at Rhossos, where troubles had arisen about the public reading of the apocryphal Gospel of...

June 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - This article presents the Christian attitude toward abortion before the first ecumenical council, that is, until A.D. 325. Because the New Testament does not comment on the morality of abortion, this article considers the writings of the first generations of Christians after the apostles, for they indicate that opposition to abortion (1) was shared at a time when the writers — or Christians not many generations earlier — personally knew the apostles or their first disciples and thus benefited from their unwritten teachings and interpretations of Scripture, (2) comes from a date so early that...

Review: Picturing The Bible http://publicbroadcasting.net/kera/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1193639&sectionID=1 Jerome Weeks. KERA Critic at Large FORT WORTH, TX (2007-12-05) At the first Christmas, the Gospels tell us, the three wise men came from the East to adore the infant Jesus. Except the Gospels never mention their number. It says only that wise men brought three gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. So where did the three men come from? They came from early Bible illustrations and church paintings. In other words, some of what people believe about Christianity isn't derived directly from the Bible; it has been filtered through centuries of artistic interpretations. The number...

New find, old tomb, and peeks at early Christians By Ben Lynfield | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor DECIPHERED: Joe Zias sits by a cast he made of a 4th-century Greek inscription found at Absalom's Tomb. It says the site is Zacharias's Tomb. RICK BOWMER/AP JERUSALEM – For centuries it has been known as "Absalom's Tomb." People made pilgrimages to it. Jews, Christians, and Muslims would throw stones at it to punish King David's rebellious son. But now, because of an almost chance discovery, one of Jerusalem's oldest landmarks is reemerging as one of the sites of early Christianity....

JERUSALEM - For centuries it has been known as "Absalom's Tomb." People made pilgrimages to it. Jews, Christians, and Muslims would throw stones at it to punish King David's rebellious son. But now, because of an almost chance discovery, one of Jerusalem's oldest landmarks is reemerging as one of the sites of early Christianity. A recently unveiled inscription, believed to date circa AD 350, identifies the monument as the tomb of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. Scholars say it does not necessarily mean Zacharias was buried on the site and some completely discount that possibility. But the find...