Ancient World Review

A Brief History Of Hell

The myth of Hell can be traced all the way back to the first civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, but I'm guessing that the concept of an "underworld of the dead" had its origins in the earliest funerary religions of the Stone Age. The dead were buried under the earth, so the land of the dead was also seen as being somewhere underground.

Hell wasn't called Hell in Mesopotamia and it wasn't a place of punishment for sinners. That's a much more modern idea. Originally, the place we call Hell was just a grim vision of the afterlife waiting for everyone. In other words, back around 3,000 BC or so, everybody went to "Hell" so I guess you could say that Hell was the original Heaven:

"The Sumerian afterlife was a dark, dreary cavern located deep below the ground, where inhabitants were believed to continue ^'a shadowy version of life on earth^'. This bleak domain was known as Kur, and was believed to be ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal. All souls went to the same afterlife, and a person's actions during life had no effect on how the person would be treated in the world to come." Source: Wikipedia.

Closed-captions helpful. Sort of.

The Old Testament Sheol, also known as Hades, is basically identical to the Mesopotamian Kur. According to Wikipedia, "Sheol is a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from life and from God."

The concept of an underworld where sinners are punished after death seems to have evolved in ancient Egypt and Greece, but several different versions of the myth were floating around the Near East and Mediterranean world back then.

The Greeks, for instance, had a concept of the underworld (Hades) as a "deep, gloomy place" where everyone went after death, but the element of judgment was also present in their mythology. " In the Gorgias, Plato (c. 400 BC) wrote that souls were judged after death and those who received punishment were sent to Tartarus," a pit or cave in Hades that was used as a dungeon. (Wikipedia) "Tartarus is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans."

The next clip is from the great 1997 miniseries, The Odyssey, with Armand Assante (highly recommended). It starts off with the scene where Odysseus travels to Hades to ask the blind prophet Tiresias how to get home. The Hades in this scene is more of an underworld of shades than a place of divine punishment.

Hades was not only a place, but the name of the god of the underworld. Originally, he appears to have been one of many anonymous chthonic deities and it was dangerous to mention his actual name:

"...Hades lacked a proper name; as in the case of other nameless chthonians, his anonymity was a precaution. He was referred to by descriptive circumlocutions as 'chthonian Zeus' ... 'the chthonian god,' 'king of those below,' 'Zeus of the departed' ... 'the other Zeus,' 'the god below,' or simply 'lord.' As the Lord of the Dead, he was dark and sinister, a god to be feared and kept at a distance." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised).

The history of Hell and its demons is too long and complex to describe in detail here, but our modern concept of Hell apparently originated with the Abrahamic religions, particularly Christianity. From what I've read, Judaism sees Hell as a state of shame and atonement rather than a physical place. The full-blown description of Hell as a literal pit of fire and brimstone and eternal torment seems to be an invention of the medieval Christian church. 

Interestingly enough, "[t]he Christian doctrine of hell derives from passages in the New Testament. The word hell does not appear in the Greek New Testament; instead one of three words is used: the Greek words Tartarus or Hades, or the Hebrew word Gehinnom (1)." So the Hell of the New Testament has clear roots in the underworld of the dead as described by the ancient Greeks and Mesopotamians.

(1) The word Gehinnom derives from Gehenna, a reference to the "Valley of Hinnom," a garbage dump outside of Jersualem where people burned their garbage. According to Wikipedia, "[b]odies of those deemed to have died in sin without hope of salvation (such as people who committed suicide) were thrown there to be destroyed. Gehenna is used in the New Testament as a metaphor for the final place of punishment for the wicked after the resurrection."

The valley is said to be cursed before some of the early kings of Judah sacrificed children to Moloch there.

These days, a majority of Americans still believe in Hell and a 2007 Harris poll revealed that more Americans believe in a literal Hell and Devil than they do in the theory of evolution. Some Christian denominations reject the concept of Hell altogether, while others still embrace the literal version of Hell famously described by Jonathan Edwards in his notorious 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

This is an abridged version. The original sermon is a classic well worth reading.

Back in 2018, Pope Francis created a storm of controversy when he supposedly said that Hell doesn't exist and that condemned souls just disappear, though it's possible that his actual words were misreported. If Francis doesn't believe in Hell, he apparently still believes in demons, however, because the Vatican announced in the same year that it would hold a "training course for priests in exorcism ... amid claims that demands for deliverance from demonic possession have greatly increased across the world."

Why Was The Great Sphinx Of Giza Built?

"The Great Sphinx of Giza (... English: The Terrifying One; literally: Father of Dread)... is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human. Facing directly from West to East, it stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The face of the Sphinx is generally believed to represent the Pharaoh Khafre." (Wikipedia)

The Terrifying One may have a more complicated history, however. According to Colin Reader, an English geologist, it's possible that the Sphinx wasn't originally a statue of the pharaoh at all. It may have been a lion, a representation of the sun god. The pharaoh's out-of-proportion head may have been added later, turning the statue into a sphinx.

"Colin Reader has proposed that the Sphinx was the focus of solar worship in the Early Dynastic Period, before the Giza Plateau became a necropolis in the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2134 BC). He ties this in with his conclusions that the Sphinx, the Sphinx temple, the Causeway and the Khafra mortuary temple are all part of a complex which predates Dynasty IV (c. 2613–2494 BC). The lion has long been a symbol associated with the sun in ancient Near Eastern civilizations." (Wikipedia)

"... In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx became more specifically associated with the sun god Hor-em-akhet ... or 'Horus-at-the-Horizon' ..."

Reader's controversial theories are based on the premise that the sphinx is far older than commonly believed. He apparently agrees with the water-erosion hypothesis, "a fringe claim contending that the main type of weathering evident on the enclosure walls of the Great Sphinx was caused by prolonged and extensive rainfall that would have predated the time of Djedefre and Khafre, the Pharaohs credited by most modern Egyptologists with building the Great Sphinx and Second Pyramid at Giza around 2500 BC." (Wikipedia) "Egyptologists, geologists and others have rejected the water erosion hypothesis and the idea of an older Sphinx, offering various alternative explanations for the cause and date of the erosion."

In the next video, Robert Schoch, an associate professor of Natural Sciences at Boston University, explains the water-erosion hypothesis on the Joe Rogan show.

The reason why the sphinx was built depends, in large part, on how old the statue is. Reader and Shoch's theories may be "fringe," but the truth is that we really don't know much about the sphinx to begin with:

"The Great Sphinx is one of the world's largest and oldest statues, but basic facts about it are still subject to debate, such as when it was built, by whom and for what purpose." (Wikipedia)

"... It is impossible to identify what name the creators called their statue, as the Great Sphinx does not appear in any known inscription of the Old Kingdom and there are no inscriptions anywhere describing its construction or its original purpose. In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx was revered as the solar deity Hor-em-akhet ... and the pharaoh Thutmose IV (1401–1391 or 1397–1388 BC) specifically referred to it as such in his 'Dream Stele'".

Jesus Cult Conspiracy Theories

The obscure origins of the Christian religion make it a natural subject for "hidden history" conspiracy theories. Dozens, if not hundreds of books have been written over the years, arguing, among other things, that Jesus was a magic mushroom, a solar deity, an Essene or a guerilla fighter sanitized to make him more palatable to the Romans. Some authors claim that Jesus was actually the deified Julius Caesar or that the gospels were propaganda written by the Flavian emperors to help pacify a rebellious province. Whatever the argument, the scarcity of original sources and the ambiguous nature of the evidence leave a lot of room for entertaining speculation.

Very little is known about the original Jesus cult during the first few centuries of its existence. No one really knows when the "official" canonical gospels were written, but the general consensus is that they appeared sometime after the middle to late first century, at least thirty or forty years after Jesus's death. Matthew and Luke were apparently written from an earlier account commonly referred to as the "Q document," which as far as I know has never been discovered. Its existence is assumed based on similarities in the manuscripts.

As for Jesus himself, the only independent documentary evidence (from the first few centuries AD) that he even existed consists of  a handful of references in Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and a few others. Most of these references, however, are about the Christians as a group, so they don't really support the existence of a historical Jesus. As far as I can tell, the only direct references to Jesus are found in "Jewish Antiquities" by Josephus and the Annals of Tacitus, but their authenticity has been challenged and Tacitus refers to a Christus (or Chrestus in some translations) rather than a Jesus. They could be insertions made by later Christian writers -- when it comes to ancient sources, you can't take anything for granted. Classical writers weren't very reliable to begin with and the church wasn't above forging references, gospels, apocalypses, epistles and martyr stories in order to market their new religion. For an interesting and extremely detailed description of the "Christian Forgery Mill," see "Forgery In Christianity: A Documented Record Of The Foundations Of The Christian Religion," by Joseph Wheless.

Christian origins get even more complicated when you consider all the parallels that exist between Christian doctrine and various Near Eastern fertility cults, Zoroastrianism, astrology, Roman and Egyptian mystery religions and Jewish ascetic, messianic and apocalyptic groups in existence at the time. These parallels aren't very surprising because all of these different movements appeared in the same general landscape, but they provide fertile ground for alternate histories.

Almost everything we know about the rise of Christianity comes from texts and there are a lot of missing sources and "secret doctrines" so popular with conspiracy theorists. Besides the books in the "official" New Testament, there's a huge body of apocryphal literature which reflects the existence of dozens of "heretical" groups like the Gnostics which were gradually suppressed, often by violent means, as the Roman Catholic Church consolidated its control and standardized Christian dogma. More recent discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls fill in some of the historical context, but the general picture is still hazy and confused. "Suppressed gospels" and alternate histories have inspired books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the inspiration for the bestselling Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

If Jesus was a real person, he lived during an extremely turbulent period of history.  Rome conquered Judea in the first century BC, allying itself with the Maccabees and later using the Herodians as client kings. The Jews revolted in 66 AD and Jerusalem was eventually destroyed around 70 AD by the future emperor Titus, son of Vespasian. Titus took over the suppression of the Jewish revolt, a bloody conflict documented by Josephus in his classic history "The Jewish War," after Vespasian returned to Rome to stake his claim to the throne during the Year Of The Four Emperors in 69 AD.

It was a chaotic time of civil wars and bloody revolutions. The Jewish population in Jerusalem was either massacred, enslaved or scattered around the world (the Diaspora) and the temple was destroyed. The Jews (some of them, anyway) were in almost constant rebellion against the Romans and their puppet rulers in Judea during Jesus' lifetime and the desert was crawling with self-proclaimed messiahs. The idea that a religion like Christianity, preaching peace, forgiveness and universal brotherhood, would appear in this context is surprising, to say the least. "Render unto Caesar" could be seen as treason and collaboration to a population living under a brutal occupation. The Jews were waiting for a military messiah, a descendant of King David who would lead them out of bondage, not some hippy claiming to be the Son of God, which they would have considered blasphemy.

This secular background has inspired a series of books arguing that the real Jesus was actually a military messiah, a guerrilla fighting the Roman occupation. I read several of these books years ago, but I can't remember their titles. The best summation of the argument can probably be found in two chapters written by the anthropologist Marvin Harris in his book "Cows, Pigs, Wars And Witches". Both chapters ("Messiahs" and "The Secret Of The Prince Of Peace") fill in the historical context and argue that Jesus was a revolutionary transformed into a peaceful messiah by later writers in order to protect their underground resistance movement from the Romans. This is plausible enough as far as it goes, but the theory discounts the actual message of the gospels. If there's a hidden message in the New Testament, there's also a surface message which can't simply be dismissed as a kind of cover story designed to conceal an ancient conspiracy.

Speaking of conspiracies, Joseph Atwill's book "Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy To Invent Jesus" argues that Christianity was actually the invention of the Flavian Emperors -- Vespasian, Titus and Domitian -- the same Romans who crushed the Jewish rebellion. Faced with the problem of Jewish resistance in the province, the Flavian court (which included the turncoat Josephus) invented the story of a "peaceful messiah" as a form of counter-propaganda to the more militant religious doctrines causing so much trouble in Judea. According to Atwill, the gospels also include a coded message which reveals that the figure of Jesus in the New Testament is actually Titus -- a kind of Roman inside joke. This hidden message can supposedly be unraveled by reading the gospels together with Josephus' account of the war and deciphering the parallels. Atwill's book makes an interesting read and I particularly like his idea that the gospels were a form of early propaganda designed to pacify a rebellious population. Unfortunately, his argument depends on the numerous parallels which are supposed to exist between the gospels and Josephus and these are obscure, to say the least.

"Jesus Was Caesar" by Franceso Carotta also uses parallels to make its argument that Jesus Christ is actually "the historical manifestation of Divus Julius," i.e., the Divine Julius Caesar. I couldn't finish this monstrous tome, but the basic idea is that the Christian religion is a modified version of the cult of the Divine Caesar and that the gospels are a mythologized biography of Caesar from the time of the Roman Civil War to his assassination. In other words, the gospels are seen once again as a kind of code which can only be interpreted by reading them in conjunction with other books. Caesar was made an Imperial God after his death, but his cult disappeared around the time that Christianity emerged. "On the one hand, an actual historical figure missing his cult, on the other, a cult missing its actual historical figure: intriguing mirror images." Intriguing, yes, but is it actually true? Who knows? Like Atwill's book, whether you accept it or not depends on how strong these "mirror images" actually are.

"The Sacred Mushroom And The Cross" by John Allegro takes a different approach. This is a fascinating, scholarly and difficult book. Allegro believes that Christianity (through Judaism) originated in a very ancient Near Eastern fertility cult centered around the use of the hallucinogenic mushroom amanita muscaria. If I understand Allegro's argument correctly, Christianity evolved out of Judaism, which was invented as a "false front" to protect the truth about the cult and its practices from the Romans, and the sacred texts of both religions are supposed to be full of references to the magic mushroom. Once again, Christianity is seen as a code to be deciphered, an esoteric, multi-layered conspiracy. This is an excellent book, but Allegro bases his theory almost entirely on linguistic arguments, "deciphering the names of gods, mythological characters...and plant names..." by tracing them back to their Sumerian roots, and the average reader will have a hard time verifying or even following his arguments. Still, if there's nothing to this, how do you explain the mushrooms in Christian iconography? The photograph in this paragraph, for example, shows Adam and Eve standing next to a giant mushroom on a fresco in the Chapel of Plaincourault, France.

Hidden Christian history covers a huge amount of territory. I've only summarized three books, but there are literally hundreds of them available and I've only scratched the surface. For example, "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold" by Acharya S argues that Christianity was "created by members of various secret societies, mystery schools and religions in order to unify the Roman Empire under one state religion." Her book "Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled" explores the use of solar symbolism in world religions, arguing that Jesus is actually a sun deity. Whether you buy any of these various theories is irrelevant. The whole period is so interesting that they're worth reading just for their wealth of background information.

Trying to separate truth from fiction in these theories is an almost impossible task unless you want to spend the rest of your life tracking down sources and doing your own research. The problem comes when you step back and look at all the books that are out there -- all the different theories. One book, taken by itself, can be very convincing, but when you take them all together, it's obvious that they contradict each other in hundreds of different ways and the net effect is literary white noise -- a flood of information, speculation, questionable evidence and mutually exclusive conclusions. In this sense, the hidden history of Christianity is like the JFK assassination: an intractable mystery. The record's too sketchy and complex to come to any solid conclusions, but it doesn't really matter. Most people, as usual, will end up believing exactly what they want to believe and what they were raised to believe.

Still, you've got to wonder--what is that mushroom doing on a church fresco in France?

4000-Year-Old Vishnu Statue Found In Vietnam (2016)

Video from 2019. Vishnu statues discovered in Vietnam are used here to argue against the Aryan Invasion Theory.

"The Central Committee of Communist Party of Vietnam (CPVCC) has claimed finding of a Vishnu sculpture, describing it as 'Vishnu stone head from OcEo culture, dating back 4,000-3,500 years.' Of late the Government of Vietnam, despite its official Communist doctrine, has developed many programs and projects highlighting Vietnam’s ancient religious heritage. Its scholarly and archeological research and investigations are legitimate and its conclusions are authoritative." Source: India Post (2016).

Note: Oc Eco is an archaeological site in Vietnam. According to Wikipedia, "Excavation at Óc Eo began on February 10, 1942, after French archaeologists had discovered the site through the use of aerial photography. The first excavations were led by Louis Malleret, who identified the place as the Cattigara of Roman merchants in the first centuries of the Roman empire."

If Oc Eo is Kattigara, this shows the incredible reach of the Roman trading network. Vietnam is almost 6000 miles by air from Italy.

Dead Sea Scrolls At Museum Of Bible Are All(?) Forgeries

"They were the crown jewel of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.: 16 fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient manuscripts that contain the earliest known Hebrew copies of biblical texts, which the institution’s founders are rumored to have acquired for more than $1 million. But on Friday, independent researchers funded by the museum to investigate the authenticity of the fragments announced that months of testing has determined that all 16 pieces are forgeries." Source: Art News.

Note: According to CBS News, "some" of the fragments on display at the museum are fakes, but according to other sources I've seen (including the Art News article quoted above) they're all forgeries. Some of the fragments were identified as forgeries a while ago -- I ran a story about it here, but can't track it down -- and at the time I commended the museum for its professionalism. This was an expensive error for them and it shows the kind of profit that can be made by forging ancient documents and artifacts. All museums have this problem, not just the Museum of the Bible:

"When a museum acquires a large collection of donated antiquities it is not unusual for curators to find that at least a few of them are fake. While the forgery of artifacts is commonplace there are some forgeries that have become extremely famous, often because their authenticity would have had history-changing results." -- Six Archaeological Forgeries That Could Have Changed History, Live Science (2015).

Video from 2019.

Were The Vandals The Victims Of Bad Press?

"The name of the Vandals is synonymous today with wanton violence and destruction. But it seems to me that, just like the Vikings, the Vandals have suffered from a bad press. The surviving accounts of their sack of Rome in AD 455, of their further piratical raids around the Mediterranean, and of their persecution of the Catholic inhabitants of North Africa are all presented through the eyes of their enemies and opponents: the Roman and Byzantine Empire and the established Church. Clearly, the Vandals were regarded as the ‘bad guys’ of the day and we too have been led into thinking of them as wild barbarians, intent on the destruction of Rome and its civilization." Source: The British Museum Blog.

Comment: The Vandals weren't exactly choir boys, but as far as I can tell they weren't all that different from everyone else back then. They were looking for land and wanted to form their own kingdoms, just like every other tribe fighting over the remains of the western Roman empire, an empire which was itself originally formed by conquering its neighbors.

The Vandals were a Germanic people or confederation of peoples who may have originated in the Iron Age Przeworsk culture (3rd century BC - 5th century AD) in what is now modern Poland, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). By 200 AD "they were already divided into at least two groups: Hasdings and Silings." According to the OCD, they "seem to have played no major role in the 3rd cent. invasions [of Rome], although contact with the Roman empire was plentiful."

That changed on Dec. 31, 406 AD, when the Vandals crossed the Rhine with two other barbarian tribes, the Alans and Suebi. (OCD) "After three years of widespread devastation in Gaul, they moved over the Pyrenees, and in 411 the invaders divided the Spanish provinces between them." The history here is complex, but the Vandals eventually crossed into Africa, captured Roman Carthage and established their own Vandal kingdom which was eventually conquered by the Byzantines.

The Vandals' methods were brutal and destructive -- they didn't get their name for no reason -- but so were the methods used by the Byzantine Christians and it's easy to forget that the Vandals were Christians themselves: Arian Christians. They persecuted the Catholics in North Africa, but the Catholics persecuted Arianism as well, so I don't see what the church has to complain about.

The Catholic Church makes a big deal about the way their brand of Christianity has been persecuted over the years, but the modern church is at least aware enough to recognize that it can be accused of "inconsistency" in the matter. The church tries to defend its own history -- the Inquisition, religious wars, etc -- by saying that its past intolerance wasn't the same as persecution because it was acting under a "lawful" mandate from God. Apparently, it isn't persecution if it involves "lawful coercion" by an "infallible" authority like the Catholic church:

"Such intolerance, however, is not the same as persecution, by which we understand the unlawful exercise of coercion. Every corporation lawfully constituted has the right to coerce its subjects within due limits. And though the Church exercises that right for the most part by spiritual sanctions, she has never relinquished the right to use other means." Source: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. [Emphasis added]

The legalistic handwaving on display here is truly mind-boggling, to say the least, but it's typical of the kind of propaganda states have always put out to justify their wars and violent suppression of "heresies" of one kind or another. Apparently, the Catholics regard the use of torture to force confessions, burning witches at the stake and massacring heretics to be coercion "within due limits." With this kind of record, you have to wonder what the church considers to be out of bounds when it comes to the use of force.

If the Vandals were notorious for their violence, it's because they were better at it than other groups. Unfortunately for them, they weren't good enough to consolidate their successes and hold their new African kingdom for very long. The winners write the history, so we remember the Vandals as brutal barbarians. That's the way it goes.

The Teutonic Knights - Founding, Organization, Differences With Other Medieval Military Orders

"The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem ...  commonly the Teutonic Order ... is a Catholic religious order founded as a military order c. 1190 in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem." (Wikipedia)

"The Teutonic Order was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals. Its members have commonly been known as the Teutonic Knights, having a small voluntary and mercenary military membership, serving as a crusading military order for protection of Christians in the Holy Land and the Baltics during the Middle Ages."

Related: The Early Years of the Teutonic Order.

"The order was led by a Grand Master ... who was chosen by an electoral college and who was expected to consult his senior officers and commanders. In the 15th century CE, there was a second master in Livonia who became increasingly independent from the order based at its then headquarters in Prussia. It did sometimes happen that a master was ousted by his officers, indeed there was one case of murder of a particularly unpopular master. The order controlled many lands across Europe and the Middle East, the territories split into administrative provinces or balleien, each governed by a landmeister." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.

All videos from the excellent Real Crusades History channel.

Note: The Teutonic Order still exists, though it has been purely religious since the early 1900s, I think. They have a website (German only).

Related: Ten Interesting Things You Should Know About The Teutonic Order.

The Statutes Of The Teutonic Knights: A Study In Religious Chivalry (PDF).

The Malleus Maleficarum

"The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for 'The Hammer of Witches', or 'Hexenhammer' in German) is one of the most famous medieval treatises on witches. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, and was first published in Germany in 1487. Its main purpose was to challenge all arguments against the existence of witchcraft and to instruct magistrates on how to identify, interrogate and convict witches." Source: The Malleus Maleficarum.

"Some modern scholars believe that Jacob Sprenger contributed little if anything to the work besides his name, but the evidence to support this is weak. Both men were members of the Dominican Order and Inquisitors for the Catholic Church. They submitted the Malleus Maleficarum to the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Theology on May 9, 1487, seeking its endorsement."

According to some sources I've seen, the Malleus Maleficarum was banned by the church, but apparently this wasn't the case:

"While general consensus is that The Catholic Church banned the book in 1490 by placing it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ('List of Prohibited Books'), the first Index was, in fact, produced in 1559 under the direction of Pope Paul IV. Therefore such claims are dubious, at best." (Ibid)

Note: "The Malleus recommended not only torture but also deception in order to obtain confessions: 'And when the implements of torture have been prepared, the judge, both in person and through other good men zealous in the faith, tries to persuade the prisoner to confess the truth freely; but, if he will not confess, he bid attendants make the prisoner fast to the strappado or some other implement of torture. The attendants obey forthwith, yet with feigned agitation. Then, at the prayer of some of those present, the prisoner is loosed again and is taken aside and once more persuaded to confess, being led to believe that he will in that case not be put to death." (Wikipedia)

Comment: The Malleus has been called one of the most evil books of all time, but I'd love to have a copy of one of the early editions. These old books are beautiful and they're worth a fair amount of money.

Video from Jan. 2020.

The Original Witches Were Men

Open Yale Courses, 2011.

"The now all-too-familiar figure of the ‘witch’ – that frightening old hag with warts on her nose and curses at her fingertips – didn’t appear until the 15th century. Despite being dubbed ‘The Renaissance’ and ‘The Age of Discovery’, the centuries that followed [the Renaissance lasted from the 14th to the 17th century] were witness not only to ruthless witch-hunts, but also to a new belief in the reality of magic." Source: The Conversation.

"In the Middle Ages [see note below], the practice of magic was not yet imagined to be essentially ‘female’. In fact, according to court records from the first half of the 14th century, the majority of those tried for maleficium (meaning sorcery, or dark magic) were men. [Emphasis added] That was because the most troubling form of magic – necromancy – required not only skill, learning and preparation, but above all education, which was less readily available to women. Necromancy involved conjuring the dead and making them perform feats of transportation or illusion, or asking them to reveal the secrets of the universe. Because many books describing necromancy were Latin translations, anyone wanting to practise the craft would need a good working knowledge of Latin."

"It wasn’t until the publication of Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum (or, Hammer of Witches) in 1487 that the specific connection between women and satanic magic became widespread. Kramer warned that 'women’s spiritual weakness' and 'natural proclivity for evil' made them particularly susceptible to the temptations of the devil. He believed that 'all witchcraft comes from carnal lust', and that women’s 'uncontrolled' sexuality made them the likely culprits of any sinister occurrence."

Comment: Heinrich Kramer (1430 - 1505 AD) was a German churchman and inquisitor. If he was alive today, the Catholic Church would defrock him for slut-shaming and general misogyny and he would be attacked by every paper and liberal group in the western world. Ironically, the medieval inquisitor would fall victim to modern inquisitors who would probably try to burn him at the stake.

Kramer's views seem to have been considered extreme, or at least doctrinally incorrect, even during his time. According to Wikipedia, "Kramer failed in his attempt to obtain endorsement for [the Malleus Maleficarum] from the top theologians of the Inquisition at the Faculty of Cologne, and they condemned the book as recommending unethical and illegal procedures, as well as being inconsistent with Catholic doctrines of demonology."

Note: Despite popular misconceptions, the church didn't conduct witch hunts during most of the medieval period. According to Wikipedia, "[t]hroughout the medieval era mainstream Christian teaching had denied the existence of witches and witchcraft, condemning it as pagan superstition." The persecution of witches didn't really start until the Reformation and Renaissance periods:

"The prosecution of witchcraft generally became more prominent throughout the late medieval and Renaissance era, perhaps driven partly by the upheavals of the era – the Black Death, Hundred Years' War, and a gradual cooling of the climate that modern scientists call the Little Ice Age (between about the 15th and 19th centuries). Witches were sometimes blamed. Since the years of most intense witch-hunting largely coincide with the age of the Reformation [emphasis added], some historians point to the influence of the Reformation on the European witch-hunt." (Wikipedia)

Rome Unveils Tomb Dedicated To Its Founder, Romulus

"An ancient tomb thought to belong to Rome's founder Romulus was presented to the world on Friday, after months of investigation by history sleuths." Source: AFP (Fri. Feb. 21, 2020).

"The 6th century BC stone sarcophagus, with an accompanying circular altar, was discovered under the Forum in the heart of Italy's capital over a century ago -- but experts could not agree on whether or not it belonged to the fabled figure."

Note: According to Live Science, "Ancient Romans believed the tomb held the remains of their city's founder, but the stone sarcophagus that archaeologists just found inside the tomb is empty.

"The underground temple — called a 'hypogeum' in Greek — contains a votive altar that was dedicated to Romulus, said Alfonsina Russo, the director of the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo, which oversees the city's ancient ruins."