The "Barbaricum" was the barbarian area outside the Roman Empire. The barbari, barbarians, were still living in mythological, not yet in historical, time.
In SM Stirling's Emberverse, the loss of technology returns society to mythological time. The heroic killing of a bear, a biographical event for an individual, becomes a mythological event for his society.
I think that Christianity occupies the crossroads between the cyclical, seasonal time of agricultural societies and the linear, historical time of urban civilizations. Thus, the dying and rising god is no longer a recurrent myth but a unique event and his cross symbolizes eternal-temporal intersection.
Whatever happened in Jerusalem, the Time Patrol must preserve the history of the bifurcation between Judaism and Christianity:
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And what makes Christianity unique, besides its supernatural beliefs, as recorded in the NT, was precisely because Christ became Incarnate in historical times. Not only the Apostles but non-Christian writers like Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius all wrote about Christianity less than a century after the Passion.
Ad astra! Sean
Tho' there are no -contemporary- accounts. Not least because Romans just weren't that interested in internal Jewish squabbles, and found Jewish religion passing strange to begin with.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, altho Henri Daniel-Rops, in his book JESUS AND HIS TIMES, speculated Pontius Pilate may have sent a report to Rome about the Christ affair, if only to cover his rear end because of his troubles with the Sanhedrin. Even if that was the case Pilate's report has not survived.
Ad astra! Sean
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