martyrs | Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History

St George the Dragon Slayer, From the Golden Legend and Butler’s Lives of the Saints

05/23/2025 Bruce Strom 0

Dacian then sought to trick St George with persuasion, and our saint played along. St George was led into a pagan temple where the people expected he would sacrifice to the gods. “But instead of sacrificing, St George knelt and prayed for the Lord to destroy the temple and all its idols, and destroy it so completely that, for the glory of God and the conversion of the people, absolutely nothing was to be left. At once fire fell from heaven and burnt the temple, its idols and priests, to a cinder, and the earth gaped open and swallowed up the remains.” […]

Book Reviews: Golden Legend, Butler’s, OCA, and Pope Benedict XVI’s Lives of Saints

05/23/2025 Bruce Strom 1

The compiler of the Golden Legend was the Dominican friar Jacobus de Voragine. The Dominicans historically have been concerned about historical accuracy to guard the faith against heresy. He lists as his three primary sources the lives from Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius, bishop and advisor to Emperor Constantine; the Tripartite History by Cassiodorus; and the Scholastic History by Peter Comestor. In addition, he refers to more than 120 other sources. He was also influenced by earlier collections of lives of the saints by two other Dominican scholars. When his sources were apocryphal and not trustworthy, he points this out. When possible, he tries to reconcile dates and details, but is more concerned with the spiritual lessons than historical accuracy. […]

AntiSemitism

Book Reviews for Blogs On How Christians Coped Under Fascist Regimes

08/19/2020 1

Many of the books I have consulted for my blogs on how Christians cope under Fascist regimes have interesting histories of their own, some even have these histories on their own Wikipedia pages. […]

Book Reviews and Miscellaneous

On Learning Attic and Koine Greek, Classical Latin, and Biblical Hebrew

03/02/2022 0

You would only want to learn these ancient languages if you are truly a serious student, and want to read the Scriptures and classics in their original language, and so you will not miss the word plays and puns that you can only catch in the original language. When reading epic poems of Homer and the Greek playwrights, or the Psalms in Old Testament, or the elegant works of Cicero, you can experience the rhymes and rhythms of the original language, as poetry can be incredibly difficult to translate. When we cut the video for a play by Aeschylus on the Battle of Salamis in the Persian Wars, the various translations we encountered were RADICALLY different. Personally, I am tempted not to read any more Greek plays until I learn how to read Attic Greek. […]

Book Reviews and Miscellaneous

Book and DVD Reviews on the Ten Commandments, or Decalogue

07/08/2022 0

These are book reviews on the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments. Our first sources are the Lutheran and Catholic Catechisms, they discuss each of the Ten Commandments. Pope Benedict, aka Cardinal Ratzinger when footnotes for the sources used in the Catechism between the eastern and western church fathers, which means that this is an excellent study program for the writings of the Church Fathers for both the Catholic and Orthodox religious traditions. […]

Book Reviews and Miscellaneous

Book Reviews on Apostolic and Early Church Fathers

04/04/2022 0

These quick book reviews include links to our YouTube videos and blogs on the Apostolic and Early Church Fathers, plus related topics. We will also discuss how to read ancient works, and the problems scholars face when translating ancient works, and the 38-volume set of the writings of the Ante-Nicene, ante meaning before, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Church Fathers, translated into English. […]

Biblical Interpretation

Book Review: Early Church Fathers Library – 38 Volumes in 3 Series

11/18/2017 3

This 38-volume library of the works of the Early Church Fathers in the first few centuries of the Church is an invaluable resource for the serious student of Theology, and the Scriptures also, since many of the writings of the early Church Fathers are Biblical commentaries. Although this collection was compiled in the late 1800’s by Protestant scholars, it is still a primary English source for many of these works for scholars of all denominations. […]

Book Reviews and Miscellaneous

Book Reviews, Reform Councils of Trent and Vatican II, and Vatican I

03/21/2022 6

IMHO, you cannot truly understand the modern Catholic Church without reading William O’Malley’s histories of Trent and Vatican II. O’Malley argues that Vatican II restated the theology of Trent, countering the notion that Trent was a reactionary rather than a reforming council. This polemic view of Trent was influenced by the fact that the Vatican had closed the archives of the Trent Council until early in the twentieth century. […]

Book Reviews and Miscellaneous

Book Reviews, Commentaries of Torah and Talmud, Medieval Rabbis and Modern Rabbis and Scholars

03/14/2022 3

We encourage Christians to study the moral lessons of the Torah, we do not hold to the dual-covenant belief that the laws in the Torah have been superseded. St Irenaeus in his influential work, On Heresies, teaches us that the moral laws of the Torah are still binding on Christians, and that the dietary and festival laws that have been superseded can be read as teaching moral lessons allegorically. […]