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Was Christianity really popular as an underground movement before Constantine the Great or is this partly a fabrication of Christian writings from the Middle Ages? When Constantine comes to power and starts his whole Christian period, he doesn't seem to really go full into being a "Christian emperor." It doesn't seem like at that time they were a large enough force to offer legitimacy to a leader. Even before his ascension, Christians seemed like a small enough group to persecute and not worry about the ramifications. If they were the force some sources make them out to be, wouldn't the Emperors have made more deals with them? There are some scholars that claim that "Christianization" led to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire but then why did the Eastern Roman Empire survive until 1453? Was there a fundamental shift in what became Eastern Orthodoxy thinking that there wasn't in what became Western Roman Catholicism? Though the New Testament speaks mostly of peace, the Old Testament is all about war and slave owning so I never understood that theory. The Hebrews themselves were a warrior people and all the talk of beating swords into plowshares isn't until after the final Messiah comes and destroys the enemies of the Hebrews. Aside from the provisions on sex, it seemed like it would work fine and help anti-barbarian Roman propaganda.
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May 24, 2012 10:17
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Thanks guys for the info. I understand that Christianity has a lot of appeal, it still does today to the oppressed and dispossessed, but I was unsure about the sources. I remember reading and hearing from a friend of mine who is working on a doctorate in theology currently how the Roman Catholic Church just made stuff up over the years about the founding of the Church and stuff before the Dark Ages. It's kind of interesting that a lot of cults at the time were popular like Sol Invictus, Dionysus, and Mithras but Christianity was the one with the lasting appeal. It kind of has many of the common aspects but was more approachable.
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May 24, 2012 14:15
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feedmegin posted:Fun fact, the very term fascist goes back to these dudes -  It was a popular symbol until the Fascists ruined it for everyone. I actually have one of these dimes but not in that good of a state. I think it's pretty ironic that it says "In God we trust" with a picture of Mercury's head next to it. There's a lot of Roman symbolism on older US coins, still some today but not as much. Liberty was on a lot of coinage and the "Liberty nickel" has a picture of Liberty and the Roman numeral for 5 within a laurel. The US really needs to get back to its roots like the Founding Fathers intended, paying homage to Pagan deities.
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Aug 28, 2012 06:22
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House Louse posted:You mean Qin Shi Huangdi, who burnt the books, right? There are lots of obvious gaps in Chinese mythology too, where we're pretty sure stuff was censored or simply not preserved. He also buried 460 scholars alive, or so the histories claim. It's quite possible though that some of the stuff about him is untrue or exaggerated due to the tradition of subsequent dynasties to discredit their predecessors. Chinese rulers were, and still are, big on the, "You think I'm bad, look at these guys!" propaganda campaign.
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Dec 17, 2012 00:57
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Grand Fromage posted:If you want a real writing system, look no further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btn0-Vce5ug I cataloged Tibetan religious texts once and it was terrible. Without the cards that came with each bundle, the traditional Tibetan "book" is a stack of pages in a box, it was pretty hard to even romanize the characters for the reasons given in the video. I did get to meet a lama though, which was cool. He didn't speak English but I assumed he was a big hitter.
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Jul 31, 2017 00:35
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Baron Porkface posted:Why was rice so valuable in the first centuries of the American plantations? It's just grain who cares. The economy of the antebellum South made it the only viable local food source due to plantation owners destroying the region's soil with cotton.
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Aug 12, 2017 02:49
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Grand Fromage posted:I live in China right now and wouldn't say there's much of a bathing culture even today. There's a lot of influence from TCM and grandparents who grew up on the communal farm screaming at you for washing your hands in "cold" water.
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Apr 24, 2018 14:59
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SlothfulCobra posted:Wasn't there also some nationalistic angle in rejecting western medicine and science and doubling down on folk cures and random nonsense? It's CHINESE medicine and it's good for you. WESTERN medicine is all chemicals and bad for you. That's pretty much the extent to it, China=always good; Western=can/will kill you. There's a whole thing with using IV's because pills work too fast. I told my friend who is a doctor about this and he was alarmed because it's incredibly unnecessary and unsanitary. This is also in a county with Sub-Saharan African levels of AID's in most of the provinces due to unsanitary needles and blood/plasma selling.
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Apr 24, 2018 19:51
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During WWII, Gen. Tang Enbo used a corvee system to build roads in Henan but it was very unpopular. Even though it was claimed to be for the war effort, people doubted that and didn't believe it worthwhile for them to cripple themselves for a public works project.
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May 6, 2018 16:13
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P-Mack posted:China had the problem of being almost completely cut off from trade by that point so cash taxes wouldn't do much good, hence corvee and payment in rice. In Henan it resulted in a particularly nasty famine. Yeah, they actually started doing payment in kind with wheat and rice at the recommendation of the US. It helped stave off even more crushing inflation, it was already bad but nowhere near the levels of interwar Hungary or Weimar Germany, but it all came together as the perfect storm of awfulness.
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May 7, 2018 13:22
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Grand Fromage posted:It's so delightfully innocent. Those honorable Romans, never once fighting about who gets to be emperor. Every time there's inclement weather they choose a new one so I'm sure everyone gets a shot.
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Jun 2, 2018 06:11
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Samuel Clemens posted:The Egyptian royals were pretty alright with incest if Cleopatra's family tree is anything to go on. The Ptolemaic Dynasty were especially incestuous due to being ethnically Greek and were afraid that marrying into the local nobility would destroy their family.
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Jul 11, 2018 20:31
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P-Mack posted:From what I remember it was pretty much already gone well before that. Yeah, they were pretty much gone by the 14th century and never really came to much prominence. Outside of Islam, since it was introduced to China, and Protestantism, today, most foreign religions, outside of Buddhism, don't really get much prominence in Chinese society. The wars, natural disasters, and purges by rulers looking for scapegoats usually kept their numbers down or decimated the communities. The decline of the Church in the East in Persia, the rise of Islam, and Roman Catholicism coming into China didn't help Chinese Nestorianism either. The Mongols and Han didn't seem to differentiate between Christians so usually when the Catholics caused problems, half the time from infighting, everyone reaped the consequences.
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Jan 15, 2019 05:28
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Hentai Jihadist posted:wondering if anyone knows about ancient chinese history, im wondering about emperor names. basically what they were actually called by people at the time. I could be off, Ancient China was not my specialty, but this is my understanding of it. Ancient Chinese naming conventions are odd and they kind of stay odd until the end of the Qing Dynasty in terms of given names, courtesy names, literary names, and so on. The Emperor would generally be known as the Emperor in discourse and the reign name, Wu, would be used for the recording of the date since the recording of the years is based on the reign of the emperor. If it was a history, they would be referred to by the reign name and I believe usually in decrees and directives, they would be stamped with the seal of the Emperor. All other names are not relevant to the rest of society and would only be used by close family. It worked very similarly to the modern Japanese system, mostly because it's based on the Chinese imperial system.
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Jun 24, 2019 19:22
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Koramei posted:In Joseon, lesbian sex was "a sharing of energy." "We are merely exchanging energy. If you can think of a simpler way I'd like to hear it." Arglebargle III posted:Oh riight, I remember some of that from "why did I even take this" classes in college. Chinese sex mysticism was all about managing your sexual energy in a healthy way. According to their yin-yang concept you would swap energy (which of course was bad for the man, because you didn't want to lose your male energy) but for two women there would be no net change. I kind of got the impression from reading extensively about China too that as long as the person did their filial duties and didn't conduct themselves in a shameful way in relation to their homosexual dalliances, it was acceptable. I would imagine there would be a similar mindset with Korea as well but I could be wrong. There aren't a lot of serious repercussions as long as Confucian principles are observed or paid lip service to. Japan was alternatively kind of the wildcard where you have things like shudo, where there was a mentor/mentee homosexual relationship similar to Greek paiderastia, but it couldn't be continued beyond or outside of that. Adult males had to be dominant partner and the younger male the submissive partner and it was seen as a symbol of devotion, not love in the traditional sense. There's also debate about how prevalent this practice was too but it seems like it was common.
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Dec 20, 2019 15:22
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Typo posted:
Slavery did exist in Qin China and was used to build the wall but it was a type of punishment in a fashion similar to how slavery was a punishment for crimes in Rome. Corvee-style labor though was more common and also used to build the Great Wall during that period. I imagine more of the conscripted laborers died due to their greater numbers and not being the property of the Emperor or his court. Slavery did exist throughout Imperial China but it differed from dynasty to dynasty and would often be reduced but then reinstated to the previous level or increased all the time based on the whims of leaders. It's not really an analog to modern European/American systems of chattel slavery and seemed to most often be a punishment for crimes, although entire families could remain in bondage for generations. Corvee-style taxation was much more common and used up until the Republican period. Several generals would use corvee laborers for infrastructure projects during the Second Sino-Japanese War and this was considered pretty normal, although obviously unpopular.
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Sep 10, 2020 16:09
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Stringent posted:Would it have been analogous to how prisoners in the US are used for fire fighting or road cleanup, etc? Or was it a lifelong condition? Slavery or corvee? The conditions of slavery differed from dynasty but in the Qin Dynasty it could have lasted up to 15 years the Qin Dynasty didn't last long. The Han Dynasty would do a lot of manumission but would keep slavery as a limited time punishment in lieu of forfeiture of family or property. It changed a good deal but the Mongols were fans of it and slavery was big in the Yuan Dynasty but kind of "equal opportunity" despite the ethnic stratification of society. In the Qing Dynasty the Yongzheng Emperor emancipated most of the slaves in China, they still existed around the time of the Taiping Rebellion, but would still keep slavery to serve as labor for frontier garrisons or to exile people from their communities, especially if they were Mongols or another ethnicity barred from freely traveling the empire. The length of time of bondage tended to last based on the crime or the situation. Young girls could also be sold into bondage by their parents and would become maids or concubines. Corvee differed depending on the dynasty from for a project, a month, the season, or some other length of time essentially using conscripted labor in place of paying a tax or in a fashion similar to military conscription as a duty to the empire. This website seems to have a good overview of it in Ancient China. http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Terms/yaoyi.html In modern China it was more analogous to US prison labor in that they would be doing public works projects for no pay. I was trying to find the instance of an NRA/warlord general doing it during the Second Sino-Japanese War but it was road work he was demanding to have done and Chiang wouldn't spare the troops to do the job and they had no real money to use due to hyperinflation and generals being corrupt. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 03:23
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Nessus posted:That is Gavin Menzies' theory which I gather is not attested to by actual facts of any kind. Unless that's about the Polynesians in which case yeah I believe they did hit South America. Just for clarification Menzie's theory was that Zheng He traveled all over the pacific, including Australia and the Americas, and left behind colonists but this is all based on conjecture and outright lies that has been debunked by every Chinese history and archeology specialist in the world. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Nov 21, 2020 |
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Nov 21, 2020 17:23
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