Before the advent of printing, breviaries were written by hand and were often richly decorated with initials and miniature illustrations telling stories in the lives of Christ or the saints, or stories from the Bible.

Before the advent of rock and roll, concept albums had their original heyday in jazz of the early to mid ' 50s with artists such as Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra, the latter of whom would record numerous concept albums for Capitol throughout the last half of the ' 50s such as In the Wee Small Hours, Come Fly with Me, Where Are You?

Before the advent of fast computing machines, solving a dynamical system required sophisticated mathematical techniques and could be accomplished only for a small class of dynamical systems.

Before the advent of government-funded public schools, the primary mode of education for those of the lower classes was the charity school, pioneered during the 19th century by Protestant organizations and adapted for use by the Roman Catholic Church and governmental bodies.

Before the advent of computer filter synthesis tools, graphical tools such as Bode plots and Nyquist plots were extensively used as design tools.

Before the advent of machine tools, metal was worked manually using the basic hand tools of hammers, files, scrapers, saws and chisels.

Before the advent of modern computers numerical methods often depended on hand interpolation in large printed tables.

Before the advent of copyright, anonymous and pseudonymous publication was a common practice in the sixteenth century publishing world, and a passage in the Arte of English Poesie ( 1589 ), the leading work of literary criticism of the Elizabethan period and an anonymously published work itself, mentions in passing that literary figures in the court who wrote " commendably well " circulated their poetry only among their friends, " as if it were a discredit for a gentleman to seem learned " ( Book 1, Chapter 8 ).

Before the advent of wax candles in the 14th century, this office was said in the dark or with minimal lighting ; and monks were expected to memorise everything.

Before the advent of direct-dialed long distance calls, a subscriber would need to contact the long-distance operator in order to place a toll call.

Before the advent of the pocket calculator, it was the most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering.

Before the advent of the British, no empire based in mainland India had controlled any part of what now makes up the country's Northeast, part of the reason for the ongoing insurgency in Northeast India.

Before the advent of modern antibiotics, oil of thyme was used to medicate bandages.

Before the advent of the touchpad, small trackballs were common on portable computers, where there may be no desk space on which to run a mouse.

" Before the advent of Islam, the city was known as Yathrib but was personally renamed by Muhammad.

Before the advent of the CCD beam profiler, the beam width was estimated using the knife-edge technique: slice a laser beam with a razor and measure the power of the clipped beam as a function of the razor position.

Before the advent of DVD and Blu-ray, the Video CD ( abbreviated as VCD, and also known as View CD, Compact Disc digital video ) became the first format for distributing films on standard 120 mm optical discs.

Before the advent of artificial refrigeration, Madeira wine was particularly prized in areas where it was impractical to construct wine cellars ( as in parts of the southern United States ) because, unlike many other fine wines, it could survive being stored over hot summers without significant damage.

Before the advent of anesthesia, surgery was a traumatically painful procedure and surgeons were encouraged to be as swift as possible to minimize patient suffering.

Before the advent of VLSI devices, TTL integrated circuits were a standard method of construction for the processors of mini-computer and mainframe processors ; such as the DEC VAX and Data General Eclipse, and for equipment such as machine tool numerical controls, printers and video display terminals.

Before the advent of modern pipes, water was brought from an outdoor source such as wells, pumps or springs.

Before the advent of disk operating systems and the ability to record large data files, core dumps were paper printouts of the contents of memory, typically arranged in columns of octal or hexadecimal numbers ( a " hex dump "), sometimes accompanied by their interpretations as machine language instructions, text strings, or decimal or floating-point numbers ( cf.

Before the advent of the modern critical edition of historical Roman works, AUC was indiscriminately added to them by earlier editors, making it appear more widely used than it actually was.

Before the advent of the codex ( book ), Latin and Greek script was written on scrolls.

Before the advent of radio, carrier pigeons were frequently used on the battlefield as a means for a mobile force to communicate with a stationary headquarters.

Due to the Gregorian calendar's obvious connotations of Western Christianity, non-Christians and even some Christians sometimes replace the traditional era notations " AD " and " BC " (" Anno Domini " and " Before Christ ") with " CE " and " BCE " (" Common Era " and " Before Common Era ").

The Mistake of Christendom ; or, Jesus and His Gospel Before Paul and Christianity.

Before going to Germany, Evans continued her interest in theological work with a translation of Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, and while abroad she wrote essays and worked on her translation of Baruch Spinoza's Ethics, which she completed in 1856, but which was not published in her lifetime.

Before the rise of Christianity, the pseudepigrapha of Enochic Judaism, which enjoyed much popularity during the Second Temple period, gave Satan an expanded role.

Before the Great Schism, mainstream Christianity confessed " one holy catholic and apostolic church ", in the words of the Nicene Creed.

Before his conversion he had been adamant about not converting from his pagan religion to Christianity.

Before or during this civil war, Fritigern converted to (" Arian ") Christianity.

Before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, local Christians were being persecuted by the Romans.

Before their attempted conversion to Christianity, the Sioux used Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka to refer to an organization of sacred entities whose ways were mysterious: thus, " The Great Mystery ".

Before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire during the reign of the Emperor Constantine I, Diocletian and Maximian passed strict anti-polygamy laws in 285 that mandated monogamy was the only form of legal marital configuration, as had traditionally been the case in classical Greece and Rome themselves.

Before converting to Christianity, the inhabitants used to burn their dead and erect kurgan-like embankments over them.

Before his ascension, he was reported by French missionaries in a report to the French government as having praised the Japanese for having expelled and eradicated Christianity from their country.

Before Christianity, women in Scandinavia had a relatively free and independent position.

Before the conversion to Christianity, the king of Taravai was a vassal to the king of Rikitea in Mangareva.

Before the discovery of so-called Gnostic texts ( such as the Nag Hammadi library ), scholars had to rely solely on the reports of proto-Nicenian church fathers for their understanding of alternative approaches to understanding Christianity.

The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors ( or Christianity Before Christ ) is an 1875 book written by Kersey Graves.

Before he turned to occultism, Guido List had written articles for German nationalist newspapers in Austria, as well as four historical novels and three plays, some of which were " set in tribal Germany " before the advent of Christianity He also had written an anti-semitic essay in 1895.

Before the arrival of Christianity and European culture, Fijian names were often based on circumstances or events surrounding the birth of the child, as well as other aspects.

Before Christianity, Muron was reserved solely for the enthroning of royalty and for very special events.

Before the advent of Christianity the Netherlands were populated by Celtic tribes in the South, which adhered to Celtic polytheism and Germanic tribes in the North, which adhered to Germanic paganism.

Before the introduction of Christianity in the 16th Century, like many other African groups, the Itsekiris largely followed a traditional form of religion known as Ebura-tsitse ( based on ancestral worship ) which has become embedded in modern day traditional Itsekiri culture.

Before the adaption of Christianity, Poland was a pagan country.

* A. C. Moule, Christianity in China Before the Year 1550, ( 1930 ) London.