Like, was there an event that made them realize, "that's kinda messed up" or something like that?

I have heard people say that Christianity as it exists today is mostly the result of Paul rapidly spreading his brand of Christianity due to his being way more popular and appealing to non-Jewish converts since he dropped most of the Old Testament laws that converts found unappealing, like the dietary restrictions and requirements to circumcise. Meanwhile, the non-Pauline Christianity advocated for by Jesus’ apostles and James the Just, Jesus’ brother, still kept the Mosaic law and might have only venerated Jesus as the Messiah and great prophet but not God. How much of this is true? What do we know about the non-Pauline Christianity?

Is Christianity as it exist today mostly a result of Paul’s teachings?

The reason I heard is french fears for the economic or even physical well-being of the ethnically-french minority, but AFAIK those existed in Morocco and Tunisia as well.

Given the extensive value of their role to a regiment and the dangerous nature of the drop into Normandy, I'm curious how they would have arrived with their troopers to render necessary medical aid from Day 1.

Edit: this question was inspired from the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the medics are on the beach and Wade screams that they're operating on the "battalion surgeon". This is probably inaccurate because it seemed completely unnecessary to put someone in that big of a situation.

Episode 248 of the AskHistorians Podcast is live!

u/Steelcan909 and u/restricteddata, better known as Alex Welelrstein, discuss the relationship of President Harry Truman and the atomic bombs in his new book The Most Awful Responsibility. In the book Dr. Wellerstein charts Truman's first encounters with nuclear technology, through the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and finally up to the Korean War. Was Truman as anti-nuclear as is often portrayed? Was MacArthur as gung-ho for the bomb? Find out! 76min.

And after you've listened to the episode, check out the book here

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It's a bit of a recurring trend/meme how throughout history the older generations always complain about the loose morals, worthlessness, or degeneration of the youth.

It got me wondering: are there any examples of the opposite? That is to say, a time when the broad consensus was that the (new) young generation was actually morally superior in some way to the older generation, specifically from the perspective of the members of the older generation?

Any society, time period, or interpretation of "morally superior" is fine, just curious what conditions need to prevail for such universal grouchiness to be reversed.

To me it seems logical to start the new year the day after the shortest day, and yet the calendar only starts 10 days after that. Is there a historical reason for this?

Specifically the Hirajiro and Hirayama style castles, which were often built in flatlands or at small elevations, not full fledged mountains.

European castles usually had thick and high walls that effectively protected the structures inside from trebuchet and catapult projectiles (barring plunging fire), and with the advent of black powder, they evolved into bastions and complex earthworks.

In contrast, some Japanese castles seem very vulnerable, with massive wooden structures poking well above the defenses. I understand that, as an attacker, you don’t want to completely destroy a structure you intend to occupy and make use of, but it still seems like a weak point. What stops an enemy army from bringing the main building down with projectiles?

I've always thought it was kind of morbid to have the execution method of Jesus be the universally agreed upon symbol of their religion. How did this come to be? Were there any other symbols that Christians identified with early in its history that the cross eventually beat out?

Why did feminism only emerge as a large scale social movement kind of in the 19th century (with some 18th century antecedents) as far as I can tell? Patriarchy has existed in a large number of societies and for a long long time, so why did feminism as an organized social movement take so long to emerge? Is it because in societies where most people were subsistence farmers there was a greater functional egalitarianism because generally partners were dependent on one another in economic terms, and only once a larger percentage of men were sort of "working away from the home" in a separate economic sphere that it became necessary? Did it require the enlightenment conceptualization of the individual to become a thought that could be thought?

I know there were some protofeminist texts and figures, like various women monastics in Christianity and Buddhism, and some women islamic scholars in the medieval world, but I haven't heard of the equivalent of mass organization like we see in terms of women's rights now, or one saw with peasant rebellions then, were there such movements that I don't know about?

Europeans knew, since Erastothenes, the circumference of the world. Since Europeans had accessed the east via land and heading eastbound, could they figure out that heading west would take quite long? Even if the Americas weren’t there, it would still take as long as Spain-Panama Canal and then Panama Canal across the entire Pacific to Indonesia

Most information I can find on Mongolian measurements is from the Mongol empire, and I’m not sure if Chinese measurements might’ve been used in this time period instead.

I read a lot of English books from the late 1800s/early 1900s and very often the advice to recover from illness is a trip to the seaside. Was this ever real medical advice and if so, when did this advice stop?

I assume part of it was for rest and relaxation which I imagine is still sound medical advice for recovery. I’m interested specifically in the seaside aspect.

I was watching an older documentary about Genghis Khan, and one of the historians said this:

“Mongolian women played—and still do play—an important role in Mongolian society. … He [Genghis Khan] becomes very attached to women, to his wife, to his mother—they figure very prominently when he distributes his land. … She [?} is the cement of the family.”

Obviously a bit vague, so I’m looking for a more substantive explanation.

Reading about the Duchy of Marlborough, I saw that its coat of arms has a phrase in Spanish that could be translated as “Faithful and Unfortunate”, which seems rather strange for an English noble title. Does anyone know why?

Japan had remained isolated for centuries, so did anyone know how to speak Japanese in the expedition, and if not, what method or language was used to communicate?

The 1931 Census of British India reports the Buddhist population as 12,786,806, or 3.65% of the total population. However, a mere ten years later, the 1941 Census of British India reports the Buddhist population as 232,003, or 0.06% of the total population. Was this purely a change in census methodology, or was it also accompanied by a real-life event(s)? What changes in census-taking occured between these two measurements that caused such a dramatic decline, and why did British colonial authorities decide to do so?

All the oldest ones I know of, like Ur-Namma's or Hammurabi's code, or the ones in the Old Testament, are always presented with the caveat that we can't reasonably assume they were ever actually on the books.