A typical family in ancient Rome was strikingly similar to a typical family in our time. Families often didn’t have more than three children. A whole family would have fit nicely in a modern car. In this chapter, we will take a look at how family planning was done in ancient times.

This blog post is excerpted from Love, Marriage, and Family: Learning from the Early Christians by Erkii Koskenniemi.

This blog post is adapted from Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus.

The Book of Acts contains the prodigious account of Paul’s missionary journeys around Europe and Asia Minor. These journeys allowed Christianity to spread to places where it had never been before. After Paul’s first mission, he and Barnabas traveled to Jerusalem to speak on an issue that had been plaguing their converts. Would Gentiles, those who had not been converts to Judaism, have to be circumcised and uphold the Law of Moses be Christians?