Before the two constitutions, the Ottoman Sultan was an absolute monarch along with being the Caliph. With the constitutional monarchy in place, how exactly could the Ottoman Parliament stop the Sultan from exercising his powers as Caliph to overrule them?

So in Timothy Paul forbids female headship at the church of Ephesus, but are there historical records of women leading christian communities in the centuries prior to the Great Schism? I've been told that in the early church, while women sometimes were church leaders and organizers, they never consecrated bread and wine. Is it historically accurate? Were women within christian communities treated differently than they were in other societies from that time? B. Ehrman says that Mary Magdalene played an important role in the spreading of Christianity in the 1st century. Why, then, we never hear about "early church mothers"?

And regarding Paul's letter to Timothy: New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says that the prohibition of female leadership aimed to solve a specific problem regarding gnostic heresies and syncretism with pagan greek cults in the church of Ephesus. Wright seems to be respected within historians, so is that view consistent with historical evidence? I've done some research in this subreddit but couldn't find specific informations.

Thanks a lot for your time.

As a veteran of both World of Tanks and War Thunder, popular online tank sims, as well as a fan of a certain class of 1960s WWII movie, it seems to me like the Panzer VI Tiger has quite the mythos about it. People in both games complain about its vulnerability (given that between the two, only one has a map which actually allows the Tiger to play to its historic strengths, this is hardly surprising,) and seem to be under the impression that it should utterly dominate the battlefield regardless of circumstances.

My question is, did this mythos exist in WWII? And did it extend to the German side? Do we know of any cases of Tiger crews "going rambo" and hurling themselves into the teeth of Allied tanks? As a corollary, did they ever have any success with this 'tactic'?

I remember learning somewhere that after the US Civil War (or perhaps the War of 1812) that people started saying "the United States is" instead of "the United States are" as a result of the new unity proven in the defense against secession (or the British). I haven't seen this factoid since though. Is there any truth to the statement, is it feelgood propaganda pushed by contemporary media or modern textbooks, or is it my own creation?

My understanding is that they actually didn't have a very large occupation force, and were rather unprepared for the rebellion, and that the rebels capitalized on this by overwhelming the increasingly isolated French outposts over time, with the outcome of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu being the end result. Despite the lack of a real investment of forces that seems to indicate they managed to hold onto it from the mid-19th century until after World War II except for the Japanese occupation, though. Why is that?

Additional questions: Did the Angles and Saxons attempt to band together to stop the Vikings in any way? How did they react?

I know this is broad, but hopefully someone can help me out!

Inspired to ask this question by a current top post about why Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich isn't highly regarded by historians. Adie is a BBC journalist who's beat is in conflicts. Does she fall to the same problems as Adie?

In westerns, the only drink that I've ever seen anyone get in a bar is "whiskey". I can understand that they mightn't have had beer or wine readily available, but was there anything else on offer?

in 1812, British and American troops were shooting at each other. (About) hundred years later America was supplying England with weapons to fight the Germans.

When did they kiss and make up? Was it a gradual thaw or was there some particular instance where things were patched up?

I was recently watching "Surviving the Cut" about ranger school, sniper school and others, and I was wondering if it has always been that harsh for military training throughout modern times. I realize this may be a stupid question, obviously military training has never been easy, but have they always had to do such terrifying stunts as highrises, freezing water, dives, 22hr days with limited calories and sleep in order to weed out weaker men. Has it always been this way, or is this kind of hardcore training a new development.

P.S. I realize that what I am describing refers specifically to special forces, but the question still stands for basic Army training etc. Was it always as hard as it is?

P.P.S. Also let me know if it's actually easier today haha

I recently went to a talk by Mary Beard, the Professor of Classics at Cambridge. In the course of her talk she mentioned that the subject of weather Jesus laughed or not was very controversial in the Early Church. Apparently this was because if Jesus laughed then he was human, and thus not fully God. As someone who is not well versed in the early church wranglings over the trinity, could someone with more knowledge explain to me what conclusion the early church fathers came to?

My fiancee and I were watching Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and in the song where Joseph explains the Pharoah's dreams there is the line "...all these things you saw in your pyjamas..." when referring to his dreams. Which led us to wonder how it was that the Pharoah would have slept.

Would the Pharoah have slept in a bed? What would it be made out of? Would they have worn bedclothes? Would they have needed to sleep under blankets?

When I say "modern police force", I mean a group of specialized individuals who work with the public enforcing day-to-day law and performing investigations within their municipality with the authority to detain individuals involved in crime.

For example, I've heard that the ancient Romans had something akin to a police force but not quite.

If so, did this tradition of glasses being available or in demand only by the scholarly also crop up in East Asia, as the stereotype of the "intelligent" or "nerdy" bespectacled man or woman also seems to have heavily pervaded those cultures as well. Or is this simply a modern bleed from Western culture?

When taught about the American Civil War, we were told it was very "brother against brother" and generally clean and fair. How accurate is this viewpoint of the war? Were any massacres or inhumanities committed similar to the atrocities in other civil wars throughout the world (El Salvador, USSR, Afghanistan, Mexico)? Also, how much more complex was the civil war than simple fighting about slavery, were there further ethnic or political disputes, did these lead to any dehumanization that resulted in brutality? In short, how clean was the American civil war in comparison to those in other parts of the world?