Free Republic

The inscription, “Christ born of Mary.” Photo: Tzachi Lang, Israel Antiquities Authority ======================================================= JERUSALEM, Israel – Israeli authorities excavating in the Jezreel Valley have unearthed a 1,500-year-old inscription dedicated to Jesus. Excavators found the Greek inscription while digging in the village of et-Taiyiba. The inscription was engraved in stone in what is believed by researchers to be the remains of a Byzantine-era church. The inscription reads: “Christ, born of Mary. This work of the most God-fearing and pious bishop [Theodo]sius and the miserable Th[omas] was built from the foundation...Whoever enters should pray for them.” According to Dr. Leah Di-Segni, a...

A seemingly dull marble slab, used for 10 years as a stepping stone in an English garden, is actually a rare ancient Roman engraving, a new analysis finds. The discovery surprised its owner, who learned that the 25-inch-long (63 centimeters) slab — a stone she had previously used as a stair while mounting her horse — dated to the second century A.D. and was worth about $20,400 (£15,000). However, no one knows how the marble masterpiece ended up in England. It was likely carved in Greece or Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), according to a statement from Woolley and Wallis, a...

Ostracism was a political process used in 5th-century BCE Athens whereby those individuals considered too powerful or dangerous to the city were exiled for 10 years by popular vote. Some of the greatest names in Greek history fell victim to the process, although, as the votes were often not personal but based on policies, many were able to resume politics after they had served the statuary 10 years away from their home city. Nevertheless, ostracism was the supreme example of the power of the ordinary people, the demos, to combat abuses of power in the Athenian democracy.

Israel-born actress Gal Gadot announced Sunday that she would team up again with “Wonder Woman” director Patty Jenkins in a new film about the legendary Egyptian Queen Cleopatra. The film will be produced by Paramount and written by Laeta Kalogridis in a retelling of the epic tale made famous by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 classic. The announcement drew criticism, with some railing against the casting of an Israeli as the Queen of Egypt... “Which Hollywood dumba** thought it would be a good idea to cast an Israeli actress as Cleopatra...instead of a stunning Arab actress like Nadine Njeim?” tweeted...

INTERNATIONAL | President Recep Tayyip Erdogan works to Islamize Christian sites TURKEY: The Turkish Islamic Foundation destroyed the historic St. Georgios Greek Orthodox Church in Bursa on Wednesday, seven years after local officials transferred the property to the group’s control. Authorities emptied Bursa of its Greek Orthodox population a century ago, and the church became a mosque in the 1920s. But in 2006 it was restored and for years served as a focal point for Greek-Turkish exchange and reconciliation, then was closed and lapsed into disrepair once the foundation took over. It follows a campaign by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan...

A priest on the Greek island of Kalymnos was arrested on Saturday after a citizen made a complaint about the priest’s message on social media calling for the faithful to not wear masks in church on the feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos. The priest was apprehended by police, accused of spreading fake news that endangers public health, according to Greek Reporter. “No one should wear a mask on the Feast of the Panagia!!! We should not hurt our Lady the Theotokos. Our Mother wants to see our faces. She wants to see our faith!!!! She wants...

Archaeologists from the Deultum-Debelt National Archaeological Reserve near Bulgaria's Burgas have discovered the first written evidence that the Roman colony Deultum had a port, BGNES reported. The inscription was found on limestone sarcophagus, dating from the II-III century AD. Experts say that the inscription, which is in Greek, proves that today's Debelt was a port town. Deultum is the oldest Roman colony in the Bulgarian lands. It was established in the 1st century AD, immediately after the Jewish-Roman War and is located at the mouth of today's river Sredetska, which flows into the Burgas Bay. The port town was of...

Round the Clock Diner made waves this week after the owner reopened the restaurant’s locations in Manchester and Springettsbury 'for dine-in' services, in contravention to the governor’s stay-at-home order.....the yellow phase of reopening does not allow restaurants to operate dine-in services. Despite that, Sacarellos is charging ahead. I think I just follow what’s right,” Sacarellos, who has been in the business for 52 years, said they are keeping the restaurant “very clean” and taking safety protocols, like seating patrons at every other table. Urging Wolf to “let the people open up ,Forget the politics.” “I didn’t back down. I’m still...

Our great American experiment was inspired by the ideas about liberty, self-government, and the rule of law that traced their roots to ancient Greece. On Greek Independence Day, we commemorate the rich history shared between the United States and Greece, which is fortified by our love of freedom and commitment to democratic institutions. We join the Greek people in celebrating another year of independence and unity.The great thinkers of ancient Greece stoked the American quest for freedom and a republic founded on the fundamental truth that people have rights that cannot be denied. Decades later, the same values that catalyzed...

His Eminence Metropolitan Seraphim of Kythira of the Greek Orthodox Church was arrested on Friday, March 20, for defying the government’s order and continuing to celebrate the Divine services. The Holy Synod of the Greek Church earlier announced that it would reduce its parishes’ schedules to just one-hour Liturgies on Sunday, though the state then overruled the hierarchs and ordered that all services be canceled until March 30 in an effort to contain the coronavirus. According to the Greek newspaper Lifo.gr, the Metropolitan was arrested after celebrating the Divine Liturgy in the Holy Cross Cathedral in defiance of the state’s...

Oxford University has shocked classics students by proposing to drop two of the most important texts from its syllabus. Virgil's Aeneid and Homer's Iliad may be made optional in an attempt to modernise the degree course, amid a drop in schools teaching Latin and Greek. But undergraduates say the works are vital to understanding the subject. Jan Preiss, a second-year at New College and president of the Oxford Latinitas Project, has started a petition to keep the texts. 'Removing Homer and Virgil would be a terrible and fatal mistake,' he said.

This year will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. His death on April 4, 1968, found my country in the midst of one of its darkest hours, as the one year anniversary of an oppressive military dictatorship neared. With my fellow citizens living under military rule and deprived of the very basic freedoms, I was inspired by the people of Birmingham, Ala., of Memphis and Atlanta, who, in a most dignified way, poured into the streets, standing up for what was rightly theirs. Across the Atlantic, the civil-rights movement reached us in the clarion...

“Le grand absent—c’est l’Empire” C. Dufour, Constantinople Imaginaire Everywhere Western man longs for Constantinople and nowhere has he any idea how to find her. To do so is to reclaim, at last, the meaning of an empire that once defined a hierarchy of imagination long ago abandoned by our civilization; of an eleven-century political, religious and cultural struggle that sought to reconcile Christianity and Antiquity, transforming the Western spirit into a brilliant battleground between Latin and Greek, Augustus and Basileus, reason and faith, ancient and modern. Yet to unearth this Byzantium, this “heaven of the human mind”, as Yeats dreamed...

On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide, which saw approximately 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Following the 405-11 vote, the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star, 39 — who has proudly embraced her Armenian heritage — praised the government for its decision in a post on her Instagram. “Yesterday was such a huge victory for the Armenian people when the US House Of Representatives acknowledged the Armenian Genocide!” Kim’s ties to Armenia has been especially evident as of late. Earlier this month, her family traveled to...

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on Tuesday refused to support a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, saying it was important first to condemn the preceding "mass slaughter" of "hundreds of millions of indigenous people," as well as the "transatlantic slave trade." Omar, in a statement explaining her vote of "present" on the resolution, seemingly suggested that the century-old mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks may not have occurred at all.

DELAWARE COUNTY, Pa. (CBS) — A Delaware County man faces several charges after he allegedly posed as a “Good Morning America” producer and a New York Times reporter. District Attorney Kat Copeland made the announcement on Wednesday morning. Copeland said Nikolaos Tzima Hatziefstathiou, also known as “Nik the Hat,” has been charged with creating a false, racist government email, identity theft and tampering. Hatziefstathiou claimed he was the editor in chief for YC News. Copeland said it was all in an effort to obtain government documents. “From April 23 to April 25, Nik Hatziefstathiou, after creating fake email accounts posing...

More than 4,000 years ago builders carved out the entire surface of a naturally pyramid-shaped promontory on the Greek island of Keros. They shaped it into terraces covered with 1,000 tonnes of specially imported gleaming white stone to give it the appearance of a giant stepped pyramid rising from the Aegean: the most imposing manmade structure in all the Cyclades archipelago... Archaeologists from three different countries involved in an ongoing excavation have found evidence of a complex of drainage tunnels -- constructed 1,000 years before the famous indoor plumbing of the Minoan palace of Knossos on Crete -- and traces...

Unlike its larger, postcard-perfect neighbors in the Aegean Sea, Keros is a tiny rocky dump inhabited by a single goatherd... more than half of all documented Cycladic figurines in museums and collections worldwide were found on Keros. Now, excavations by a Greek-British archaeology team have unearthed a cache of prehistoric statues -- all deliberately broken -- that they hope will help solve the Keros riddle... British excavation leader Colin Renfrew now believes Keros was a hugely important religious site where the smashed artwork was ceremoniously deposited.

CONSTANTINOPLE – Archbishop Demetrios of America has given his resignation in writing to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. The official announcement of the Ecumenical Patriarchate has as follows: “Ecumenical Patriarchate Communique Herein it is announced that today, Saturday May 4, 2019, His All-Holiness received in audience His Eminence Geron Archbishop Demetrios of America, who informed Him of various matters involving his God-saved Eparchy. Furthermore, His Eminence the Archbishop submitted his written resignation from the throne of the Holy Archdiocese of America, which he shepherded with godly love for twenty years. The Patriarch will bring the resignation before the Holy and Sacred Synod...

The most stunning artifact recovered beneath Gosposvetska Street was a transparent blue glass bowl found next to the woman’s body... This exquisite drinking bowl could have been used in both regular daily life as well as for burial ceremonies, and an analysis of its chemical composition points to its manufacture somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean region. The grapevine decorations have their role in the Christian Eucharist and Communion, but have their origins in motifs associated with Dionysus, the pagan god of wine and ecstasy. Archaeologists are also interested in how the woman’s tomb developed over time. It seems that possibly...