Church of the Holy Sepulchre

According to Christian tradition, Jesus was executed in AD 33 just outside the walls of Jerusalem on a hill called Golgotha (Greek) or Calvary (Latin).

In 135 Hadrian, Roman ruler and devout Olympian that he was, had a temple dedicated to Jupiter built on the site of the old Jewish temple and a temple dedicated to Venus built on Golgotha. To provide an adequately strong and flat foundation for the temple on hilly Golgotha, and to thoroughly cover any visual reminders of Christian significance, Hadrian had tons of rock and dirt brought to the site.

Temple Mount

In 1921 BC Yahweh called Abraham to move from Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan. In 1896 Abraham's wife Sarah gave birth to their only child Isaac. In 1871 Yahweh tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac on a mountain in the land of Moriah (Genesis 22:2). Tradition identifies the site of this testing as Mount Moriah in what is now Jerusalem.

Expansion of the Caliphate (634-732)

The advance of Muslim armies from the southern Levantian city of Medina completely surprised the two Olympian superpowers of the time: the Roman and Persian empires. In December 634 Muslim armies captured the Roman city of Damascus, in 636 they defeated the Persians and took control of Mesopotamia, and by 637 they had taken control of the eastern Mediterranean coast from the Romans and so controlled all of the geocultural province of Levantia.

Jerome (ca 345-420)

Olympian childhood and youth (345-365)

Jerome (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus) was born around 345 in the town of Stridon about 150 miles (94 km) northeast of the coastal city of Trieste in Alpinia (see Glossary). He went to Rome around 360 to study philosophy and rhetoric. Only then did he learn Latin and some Greek.

As a student, he would joined his colleagues in drinking and having casual sexual intercourse. Then, tormented by guilt, on Sundays he would enter the dark catacombs filled with the bones of early Christians and feel terrified by the sense of Hell he experienced.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

Augustine was born in 354 in the town of Tagaste about 155 miles (250 km) west of Carthage. His parents were Latin-speaking Berbers but his father was an Olympian while Monica, his mother, was a Christian. They sent him to a nearby boarding school in 365 where he studied Latin literature. As a teenager he developed an interest in philosophy after reading Cicero.

James Joyce (1882-1941)

James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, into a middle-class family living in Dublin, Ireland. He was the oldest of ten surviving children. When he was five years old he was bitten by a dog and had an intense if understandable fear of them after that. At this time his aunt also vividly described how God used bolts of lightning to punish wicked boys and he developed an intense if understandable fear of them too.

The Roman Empire Faces Unprecedented Vicissitudes (AD 400-700)

The Roman Empire: Hellenia, Anatolia, Levantia, Egypt (395)

Theodosius was the last person to rule both western and eastern halves of the Roman state. He also established Trinitarian Christianity as its sole official religion. Following his death in 395, various Germanian groups took control of the geocultural provinces of what had been the western half of the Roman Empire by 476. The eastern half, however, ruled from Constantinople, remained intact.