Much of what we know about Ashoka the Great is taken from the edicts of Ashoka, which were inscribed throughout his empire on boulders and on magnificent sandstone pillars. Ashoka the Great reigned from about 268 to 232 BCE. Ashoka’s empire, called the Mauryan Empire, was huge; it took in most of modern-day India and part of Bangladesh as well as portions of what is now Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. In this post I’d like to talk more about the... Read more
Now we call them the pillars of Ashoka. But for centuries no one knew who had built them or what they represented. For centuries, travelers in India noted the magnificent sandstone pillars, 40 to 50 feet high. Many were capped with elaborate carvings of animals, usually lions, but sometimes elephants or oxen or possibly horses. Many were covered with writing, but no one recognized the script. Most intriguiging, the massive monuments — which weighed up to 50 tons each —... Read more
The gorgeous images of distant space taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope put astronomy in the news. It’s well known that some religious institutions have had, shall we say, issues with astronomy. But did you know the Big Bang theory of physics about how the universe began was first proposed by a Catholic priest? Georges Lemaître (1894-1966), a native of Belgium, lived a life on two tracks, science and the Church. He received a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1920... Read more
Fake quotes are a known hazard of the Web. The Chinese philosopher Laozi (or Lao tzu) currently may be the most commonly attributed source of fake quotes on social media. I can’t verify that, but there’s no question the Web is well stocked with memes pairing him with lovely sayings he never said. It may take Laozi a while to catch up to the all-time king of fake quotes, Confucius, but give him time. Who Was Laozi? Laozi is remembered... Read more
There were liberal evangelicals? What if I told you that evangelical Christians were the original social justice warriors? Seems unlikely, I know, but keep reading. One of my favorite quotes is from a British novelist named L. P. Hartley — “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” History is full of surprises. It is not just a version of the present with strange clothes and bad technology. Cultures and institutions can sometimes change very rapidly in... Read more
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