Ian & Jocelyn Barker

A couple of weeks ago I read a book called “Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome” by Steven Saylor, an historical fiction book that spans 1000 years. It started at the creation of Rome and finished with the assassination of Julius Caesar. It was an interesting read but made me realize how little I know about Roman history. (Note: The book is sexually explicit in areas.) Not that I need to know much about Roman history, but, being the history buff that I am, this bothers me.

So I got a book from the library called “The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome” by Susan Wise Bauer, and it is brilliant. Even more brilliant is the fact that she is a homeschooling mom who just happens to be writing a four-volume set on world history. She has a blog and it is very interesting as she chronicles the writing of the project. She’s on volume 2. Another note is that her husband is a pastor.

Don’t be alarmed, I’m not going to blog my way through an history of the ancient world. I’m only writing this to tell you what I’m reading and thinking about. Why am I reading about this? Mostly because I want to have a greater perspective of the nations that were alive in the Old Testament years of Israel and to see how the different empires rose and fell according to God’s decrees (Dan. 2:21). Furthermore, I want to see what the pagan nations were like that God continually warned against and see what Rome, the nation that had a hand in killing the Christ, was like.

A further thing that has intrigued me of late is what the patrolling men of Zechariah 1 meant when they reported that the earth was “peaceful and quiet” (Zech. 1:11). I don’t think this is a good kind of peace but relates to how the nations of the earth were treating Jerusalem as she was rebuilt and reestablished as the city of God. What was happening in the earth?

The book is incredibly easy to read and I would highly recommend it to you.