askhistorians

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Considering crucifixion victims were executed without clothing, did early crucifixes of Christ depict him without the loin cloth? If so, when was the loin cloth introduced?	163
From a purely academic vantage is the Quran's depiction of Jesus as historically accurate as the Gospels - would a historian factor in the Quran when trying to investigate the "historical Jesus"?	57
In the movie The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus is seen making crosses for Roman crucifixions - did Romans task peasant carpenters with this type of work? What work did a first century Palestinian carpenter engage in?	38
The Catholic Church claims the papacy was a facet of the early Church, with Peter chief among the apostles, and that apostolic succession set forth a lineage of popes, bishops, and priests tracing back to the early apostles - how much of this is verifiable historical fact?	32
Is there any truth to the claim that Christianity introduced charity as a virtue, whereas the Hellenistic world saw it as a weakness?	21
How seriously is the mythicist position of the existence of Christ taken in scholarly circles?	15
In a culture which arranged marriages for Jewish men at around 18 years of age, was it considered abnormal for Jesus to have lived 30 years or so without marrying and raising a family?	14
My former professor once said that, prior to colonization, Native Americans had no sense of private property and believed all tribes collectively owned their homeland--to what extent is this true?	10
Paul mentions that he met with Peter and James the brother of Jesus in Jerusalem - was this a fabrication Paul used to bolster his status in the early Church or is there good reason to believe he directly knew Jesus's immediate disciples?	9
Do we know what happened to Mary after Jesus's execution and during the rise of the early Christian church?	6

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