✪ 1 Maccabees 15:20-24 records a treaty between Rome and the high priest in which Rome gave the high priest right of extradition in religious cases only. Both Julius Caesar and Caesar Agustus granted the high priest and Sanhedrin were granted religious jurisdiction over Jews living in foreign cities. Ref-0100, Tape 9:B.
✪ "Hippolytus (ca. 170-ca/ 236), a disciple of Irenaeus who served as a presbyter of the church at Rome in the early third century, wrote his Commentary on the Prophet Daniel in which he clearly espoused a premillennial prophetic outlook (as did Irenaeus) . . . This is the first known extant commentary on Daniel. Hippolytus’s view of Daniel 9:24-27 is also quoted later by Jerome. Hippolytus equated the beast of Revelation 13 and the “little horn” of Daniel 7 with the future Antichrist, who will rule for three and a half years, while he expected the “ten horns” of Daniel 7 to arise out of the Roman Empire of his day. Hippolytus saw the seventy-weeks prophecy as taking place in three periods. The first seven weeks were the forty nine years before Joshua, the high priest. This was followed by sixty-two weeks (434 years) from Joshua/Zerubbabel/Ezra until Jesus Christ. (This is a puzzling assertion since Joshua and Ezra were separated by quite a few years.) This sixty-two weeks would then be followed by a “gap” of time before the final “week.” During this final week (a future period of seven years in which the Antichrist will come to power), Elijah and Enoch will appear as the two witnesses (Rev. 11). The “anointing of the most holy” in Daniel 9:24 refers to the anointing of Christ in His first coming (a view common among the early church fathers). The halting of sacrifice mentioned in verse 27 is taken in a spiritual sense rather than in reference to literal sacrifices. . . Although Hippolytus said the occurrence of מָשִׁיַה in verse 25 refers to Joshua, the high priest, at the time of the return from the Babylonian Captivity, he said the second reference to מִשִׁיַה is to Jesus Christ." J. Paul Tanner, Is Daniel’s Seventy-Weeks Prophecy Messianic? Part 1 Ref-0200, Vol. 166 No. 662 April-June 2009, 181:200, pp. 188-189.
✪ "This Hippolytus, a famed church father, was a disciple of Irenaeus, who was in turn a follower of Polycarp, the personal disciple of John the Apostle." Ref-0049, p. 133.
✪ "Christianity is the only major faith built entirely around a single historical claim. It is, however, a claim quite unlike any other ever made, as any perceptive and scrupulous historian must recognize. Certainly it bears no resemblance to the vague fantasies of witless enthusiasts or to the cunning machinations of opportunistic charlatans. It is the report of men and women who had suffered the devastating defeat of their beloved master's death, but who in a very short time were proclaiming an immediate experience of his living presence beyond the tomb, and who were, it seems, willing to suffer privation, imprisonment, torture, and death rather than deny that experience. And it is the report of a man who had never known Jesus before the crucifixion, and who had once persecuted Jesus's followers, but who also believed that he had experienced the risen Christ with such shattering power that he too preferred death to apostasy. And it is the report of countless others who have believed that they also-in a quite irreducibly personal way-have known the risen Christ." Ref-1290, p. 11. "The Bible’s accuracy in describing past events, places and people continually demonstrates its historical veracity. Rather than being “shackled [to myths and stories],” Scripture is anchored to history, and ought not to be passed off as mere faith fables. Both shackles and anchors use chains; but where one enslaves, the other grounds and p;rotects." Bryan Windle, Shackled or Anchored?, Ref-0066 29.3 (2016), 99-104, p. 99.
✪ "Will Durant, who was trained in the discipline of historical investigation and spent his life analyzing records of antiquity writes: . . . ‘That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man." Ref-0077, p. 54.
✪ "Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, -- a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extingct at this day." Ref-0026, XVIII 3:3. "This is a translation of the text of this passage as it has come down to us, and we know that it was the same in the time of Eusebius (about A.D. 263-339), who quotes it tice." Ref-0122, p. 266.
✪ "Many of today's most obstreperous critics of Christianity know nothing more of Christendom's two millennia than a few childish images of bloodthirsty crusaders and sadistic inquisitors, a few damning facts, and a great number of even more damning legends; to such critics, obviously, Christians ought not to surrender the past but should instead deepen their own collective memory of what the gospel has been in human history." Ref-1290, p. 17. "Perhaps more crucially, they ought not to surrender the future to those who know so little of human nature as to imagine that a society "liberated" from Christ would love justice, or truth, or beauty, or compassion, or even life." Ref-1290, p. 17. "Once upon a time, it went, Western humanity was the cosseted and incurious ward of Mother Church; during this, the age of faith, culture stagnated, science languished, wars of religion were routinely waged, witches were burned by inquisitors, and Western humanity labored in brutish subjugation to dogma, superstition, and the unholy alliance of church and state. Withering blasts of fanaticism and fideism had long since scorched away the last remnants of classical learning; inquiry was stifled; the literary remains of classical antiquity had long ago been consigned to the fires of faith, and even the great achievements of "Greek science" were forgotten till Islamic civilization restored them to the West. All was darkness. Then, in the wake of the "wars of religion" that had torn Christendom apart, came the full flowering of the Enlightenment and with it the reign of reason and progress, the riches of scientific achievement and political liberty, and a new and revolutionary sense of human dignity. The secular nation-state arose, reduced religion to an establishment of the state or, in the course of time, to something altogether separate from the state, and thereby rescued Western humanity from the blood-steeped intolerance of religion. Now, at last, Western humanity has left its nonage and attained to its majority, in science, politics, and ethics. The story of the travails of Galileo almost invariably occupies an honored place in this narrative, as exemplary of the natural relation between "faith" and "reason" and as an exquisite epitome of scientific reason's mighty struggle during the early modern period to free itself from the tyranny of religion. This is, as I say, a simple and enchanting tale, easily followed and utterly captivating in its explanatory tidiness; its sole defect is that it happens to be false in every identifiable detail." Ref-1290, pp. 33-34. "Part of this "story of the modern world," in one of its more venerable variants, is that the "faith" that modern "reason" superseded was uniquely irrational, and unprecedentedly hostile to the appeals of rationality; that, in fact, this faith had barbarously purged Western culture of the high attainments of the classical world-had burned its books, abandoned its science, forsaken its "pluralism"-and had plunged the Western world into a millennium of mental squalor. Christianity, so the tale goes, induced the so-called Dark Ages by actively destroying the achievements of Roman culture. Here the ghastly light of a thousand inane legends burns with an almost inextinguishable incandescence." Ref-1290, p. 36.
✪ "to live entirely in the present, without any of the wisdom that a broad perspective upon the past provides, is to live a life of idiocy and vapid distraction and ingratitude." Ref-1290, p. xiv "The most important function of historical reflection is to wake us from too complacent a forgetfulness and to recall us to a knowledge of things that should never be lost to memory." Ref-1290, p. xiv ". . . given Christianity’s status as a historical religion, with roots deeply entwined in the recorded past, one would think that Christians would possess a relatively high degree of historical awareness. Certainly, one might expect that a Christian, who looks for salvation in God’s self-revelation in history would place a relatively higher premium on getting history straight than, say, a Buddhist, who searches for salvation within a timeless sphere. One would think this . . . however, I don’t think there is evidence that such is the case. In my experience, Christians care about national and world history about as much or as little as their neighboring Buddhists or Hindus--no more, no less. . . . why is that when it comes to “sacred events” (call it the “history of Israel” or the “human history of the kingdom of God”), it is almost a mark of piety not to know about precise dates and times? Why is it considered in so many circles almost a matter of true spirituality not only not to know the historical facts but also not to care? It is an odd state of affairs but it is a dynamic which I think can hardly be denied in the contemporary church." Ref-1307, pp. xxi-xxii "We will never learn anything from sages of the past unless we get over our naive assumption that the most recently popular modes of thought are the best." Ref-1348, p. 503.
✪ "Church history is invaluable to the preacher. It is not the preserve of the academics. I would say that Church history is one of the most essential studies for the preacher were it merely to show him this terrible danger of slipping into heresy, or into error, without realising that anything has happened to him." Ref-1369, p. 117. "There is no better tonic in such a condition than to familiarise yourselves with previous eras in the history of the Church which have been similar, and how God has dealt with them. The preacher is a man-I hope to deal with this in a subsequent lecture-who is attacked on many sides, and perhaps his greatest danger is the danger of becoming discouraged and depressed, and of feeling that he cannot go on any longer. Church history, and especially the history of Revivals is one of the best antidotes to that." Ref-1369, p. 118.
✪ The secular cosmology offers the following timeline of historic events from years past: "1) 13.5 billion - Mattter and energy appear, Beginning of physics. Atoms and molecules appear. Beginning of chemistry. 2) 4.5 billion - Formation of planet earth. 3) 3.8 billion - Emergence of organisms. Beginning of biology. 4) 6 million - Last common grandmother of humans and chimpanzees. 5) 2.5 million - Evolution of the genus Homo in Africa. First stone tools. 6) 2 million - Humans spread from Africa to Eurasia. Evolution of different human species. 7) 500,000 - Neanderthals evolve in Europe and the Middle East. 8) 300,000 - Daily usage of fire. 9) 200,000 - Homo sapiens evolves in East Africa. 10) 70,000 - The Cognitive Revolution. Emergence of fictive language. Beginning of history. Sapiens spread out of Africa. 11) 45,000 - Sapiens settle Australia. Extinction of Australian megafauna. 12) 30,000 - Extinction of Neanderthals. 13) 16,000 - Sapiens settle America. Extinction of American megafauna. 14) 13,000 - Extinction of Homo floresiensis. Homo sapiens the only surviving human species. 15) 12,000 - The Agricultural Revolution. Domestication of plants and animals. Permanent settlements." -- Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind