One of the best ways to understand a religion is to understand what was happening around the time of it’s birth. The state of the people and politics and environment, the state of the culture and the forces around it’s development, and most especially the conflicts caused by pre-existing religions.

A new religion is generally born during a time of conflict or upheaval, when the prevailing religions are appearing to be in opposition to the people. It is during those times that people seek a leader, a voice coming out from the darkness, to shed new light and inspiration to those in want and despair.

This is not always the case, but it is often the case.

When studying religion you cannot overlook the history, culture, economics, environment, and the state of the people, surrounding it’s birth or development.

Nor can you overlook those same things at times when the religion was undergoing major changes…or during those times the religion was experiencing major events.

All these things give you a more advanced insight into the religion itself and those entrusted with it.

Knowledge is freedom…freedom is choice…without it you have neither freedom nor choice.

A man without choice has no freedom, he is locked into a world where his is the slave rather than the master…knowledge frees you…the more knowledge you have the more freedom and choice gained.

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Prior to Herodotus, who has been given the title of the Father of History, there were no historians in the manner we view them. Before Herodotus there were logographies rather than histories. Logographers wrote prose speeches for the courts, mythographies, geographies, reports on non-Greek customs, local stories, including founding legends, and chronological works like kings’ lists. No logographies have survived. We know of them through the works of others alone.

Alongside the Logographers there were the Mythographers, those such as Homer, Aristophanes, Horace, Apollodorus, Hesiod, and Sophocles among others.

Interesting Ancient Historians:

Herodotus ( circa 5th Century BC )

Julius Caesar ( circa 100 BC - 44 BC )

Titus Livius ( circa 59 BC – 17 AD )

P. Cornelius Tacitus ( circa 55 AD - 117 AD)

Diodorus of Sicily ( circa 1st Century BC )

Flavius Josephus ( circa 37 AD - 110 AD )

Manetho ( circa 3rd Century BC )

Eusebius of Caesarea ( circa 263 AD - 339 AD )

Philo of Alexandria ( 20 BC - 50 CE )

Suetonius ( circa 60 AD - 135 AD )

Saint Clement of Alexandria (circa 150 - 211/216 AD )

Dionysius of Halicarnassus ( circa 60 BC - 7 BC )

Justus of Tiberius ( 1st Century AD )

Thucydides (born c. 460-455 BC )

other historians:

Aulus Perseus,
Columella,
Dio Chrysostom,
Lucanus,
Lucius Florus,
Petronius,
Phaedrus,
Philo Judaeus,
Phlegon,
Pliny the Elder,
Pomponius Mela,
Rufus Cartius,
Quintillian,
Quintus Curtius,
Seneca,
Silius Italicus,
Statius Caelicius,
Theon of Smyrna,
Valerius Flaccus, and
Valerius Maximus.