Religion, features and articles | Educational Science

Jun 2, 2021

20 of the most bizarre stories from the bible

From a talking donkey to a man being eaten by a giant fish, the Bible has no shortage of strange stories. In her new book A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible (Oxford University Press, 2021), Kristin Swenson, an associate professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth...

Nov 19, 2021

When was Jesus born?

The birth of Jesus Christ is commemorated by millions of people around the world with Christmas celebrations on Dec. 25. Yet, most scholars agree that he wasn't born on that day, or even in the year A.D. 1. Why is Jesus' birthday celebrated on December 25?Researchers have speculated that the...

Dec 3, 2021

Is this really the biblical city where Jesus walked on water?

The biblical city where the Gospels tell of Jesus performing some of his most famous miracles is now a source of debate among archaeologists. The New Testament mentions the town, called Bethsaida, as the location where Jesus, who is thought to have been born around 4 B.C., restored the sight...

Feb 23, 2022

What is the Ark of the Covenant?

The Ark of the Covenant is a chest that is supposed to have held tablets engraved with the Ten Commandments, engraved by God for Moses on Mount Sinai, according to the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and Christian Old Testament. According to the Hebrew Bible, the Ark was constructed by the Israelites...

Mar 28, 2022

The apostles: How Jesus' followers founded Christianity

The apostles were 12 of the disciples of Jesus who went on to spread his message and found the early Christian church. After the crucifixion of Jesus in the 1st century, they split up and began to proselytize both the message of Jesus and the concept that he was the...

Jul 28, 2022

Cremated Remains of the 'Buddha' Discovered in Chinese Village

The cremated remains of what an inscription says is the Buddha, also called Siddhārtha Gautama, have been discovered in a box in Jingchuan County, China, along with more than 260 Buddhist statues. The translated inscription on the box reads: The monks Yunjiang and Zhiming of the Lotus School, who belonged...

Jul 28, 2022

Ancient Shrine That May Hold Buddha's Skull Bone Found in Crypt

Archaeologists have discovered what may be a skull bone from the revered Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. The bone was hidden inside a model of a stupa, or a Buddhist shrine used for meditation. The research team found the 1,000-year-old model within a stone chest in a crypt beneath a Buddhist temple...

Jul 28, 2022

Photos: Ancient Stupa Holding Bone of Buddha Discovered

Model of Stupa - 1 (Image credit: Photo courtesy of Chinese Cultural Relics)Archaeologists excavating a crypt beneath Grand Bao'en Temple in Nanjing, China, have discovered a model of a stupa — a place used for meditation. Made of sandalwood, silver and gold the model dates back 1,000 years and stands...

Jul 28, 2022

Ancient Statue Reveals Prince Who Would Become Buddha

In the ruins of a Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan, archaeologists have uncovered a stone statue that seems to depict the prince Siddhartha before he founded Buddhism. The stone statue, or stele, was discovered at the Mes Aynak site in a ruined monastery in 2010, but it wasn't until now that...

Jul 29, 2022

Why does Christianity have so many denominations?

Followers of Jesus span the globe. But the global body of more than 2 billion Christians is separated into thousands of denominations. Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Apostolic, Methodist — the list goes on. Estimations show there are more than 200 Christian denominations in the U.S. and a staggering 45,000 globally,...

Aug 1, 2022

The Buddha: History, meditation, religion and images

Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, was a philosopher and spiritual teacher who lived sometime during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. in India. He is credited with founding Buddhism — now the world's fourth largest religion with an estimated 500 million adherents — and teaching such concepts as...

Aug 4, 2022

New Surprising Results on Abortion and Religiosity

Editor's note: As of August 4, 2022, the constitutional right to abortion has been eliminated in the U.S., following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. The following article was published on June 1, 2009, and therefore any legal information is no longer accurate....

Aug 5, 2022

The Maya: History, civilization & gods

The term Maya refers to both a modern-day group of people who live across the globe and their ancestors who built an ancient civilization that stretched across much of Central America. The Maya civilization reached its peak during the first millennium A.D., and Maya ruins can still be seen across...

Aug 9, 2022

What is genocide?

Acts of genocide — trying to partially or completely destroy an entire people or group — have been committed countless times in prehistory, and numerous times since. For example, Egyptian hieroglyphs on a memorial stone from the late 13th century B.C. give what may be the earliest-known mention of the...

Oct 14, 2022

Americans Muddled on Obama's Religion

Only about a third of Americans know what religion Barack Obama practices, a new survey finds. In a new poll by Gallup, 34 percent of Americans correctly pegged the president's faith as Christian. Eleven percent said he is Muslim, and 44 percent said they didn't know. (Another 8 percent said...