Creative History

  “And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward Heaven that there may be darkness over the land…even darkness which may be felt.”  EXODUS 10: 21 KJV “The sun gave forth its light without any brightness, like the moon, during the whole year.” So goes the account, not from the Plagues of Egypt as recounted in the Biblical Book of Exodus , but from the personal correspondence of the famed 6th century Byzantine Historian Procopius. Procopius was the right hand man to the Emperor Justinian.  He was the principal historian for all of Byzantium in the early middle ages, known for his erudition, learning and literary style.  Today, Procopius is most famous for his work entitled History of the Wars which is a voluminous series of histories that deals primarily with Byzantium’s struggles against the neighboring Sassanid Persian Empire. When Procopius gave his account of the darkened sun he was writing specifically about the year 536 A.D.  The year 5...

          Hundreds of hulking wooden slave-driven galleys appear on the horizon.  Tens of thousands of oars move in unison and drive the fleet steadily into the Bosporus Strait.  The line of warships seems endless. It is the year 672 and the Arab fleet of the Umayyad Caliphate has come to the Sea of Marmara to besiege, destroy and ultimately conquer the Christian city of Constantinope--the largest and wealthiest city in all of Christendom. Islam is a new faith and it is spreading like wildfire.  The Umayyad clan has consolidated all of the middle east and Asia Minor under the banner of Islam, and now with unchecked proselytizing zeal, they are seeking to move the faith of the Prophet Mohammed westward into eastern Europe and beyond. All that stands in their way is the ancient Roman city of Byzantium--renamed Constantinope in the 4th century after the Emperor Constantine who officially made the Roman Empire Catholic and then divided it i...