A radical and powerful reappraisal of the impact ofConstantine’s adoption of Christianity on the later Roman world,and on the subsequent development both of Christianity and ofWestern civilization. When the Emperor Contstantine converted to Christianity in 368AD, he changed the course of European history in ways that continueto have repercussions to the present day. Adopting those aspects ofthe religion that suited his purposes, he turned Rome on a coursefrom the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilization ofthe Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the ruleof fixed authority, whether that of the Bible, or the writings ofPtolemy in astronomy and of Galen and Hippocrates in medicine. Onlya thousand years later, with the advent of the Renaissance and theemergence of modern science, did Europe begin to free itself fromthe effects of Constantine's decision, yet the effects of hisestablishment of Christianity as a state religion remain with us,in many respects, today. Bri
The I Ching (pronounced ee-ching) is the oldest and mostrespected oracle or divinatory system in the world. There arecurrently two translations available which offer somewhatconflicting interpretations - the popular Confucian version and anearlier Taoist version called Zhouyi. Reconstructed bytwentieth-century scholars and archaeologists, Zhouyi presents thehighly imaginative world of myth and ritual that is the hidden baseof thousands of years of Eastern thought. Now, for the first timeever, Stephen Karcher fuses these two traditions using modernscholarship and archaeological and linguistic research, along witha wide background in Eastern philosophy and comparative religion,and presents them to the modern Western reader in a comprehensiveand accessible new form. TOTAL I CHING is a complete oracle withinstruction for immediate use in all life situations, but is alsothe first translation to detail the mythology of the divinatorysystem, offering a revolutionary new approach to the world's oldestwisdom tr