Click here for quick and easy voting.* I’m honored that Bible Babel is in the company of excellent nonfiction books short-listed for the Library of Virginia’s 14th annual “People’s Choice” literary award. Thank you for following the link to cast your ballot. Please tell your friends and family, too! Each year the Library of Virginia recognizes authors from the state …
“It’s one thing to read the Bible, quite another to appreciate the historical context in which its various books were written, the different translations and versions that have emerged over the centuries and the indelible impact the book continues to have on our culture. With her new book ‘Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most …
“Did you know,” a bright-eyed young woman breathlessly exclaimed to me, “that when King James wrote the Bible, he didn’t actually put everything in?!” I was riding the DC Metro a few weeks ago when she sat down beside me with this information. Since people don’t normally talk on the train (unless it’s a first …
Had a great time at Chop Suey Tuey bookstore in Richmond’s Carytown yesterday for Bible Babel‘s paperback debut. In the midst of the excitement of VCU’s big basketball game (on to the Final Four! wow) and the ever-amazing French Film Festival at the historic Byrd Theater, just across the street from Chop Suey Tuey, we filled the …
“What does your book say about evil?,” an attendee posed to panelists at the VA Fest of the Book event that I moderated. It was a lively event, not least because the composition of the panel led inevitably to passionate disagreement. As the psychiatrist who wrote of religion as a product purely of human physiology …
Stephen Dunn, poet extraordinaire. Among my favorites, a riff on the Leviticus scapegoat. It’s a prose poem in which God sympathizes with the goat and calls this method of atonement yet another human sin. I’d love to write it out for you here but haven’t asked permission. Do check it out yourself (I bought What Goes On, …
When Republicans opened the 112th Congress with a reading of the Constitution, they faced a challenge that threatened to undermine the whole purpose of the reading, to demonstrate adherence to the original document. The trouble, you see, is that the times they’ve gone a-changing… For one thing, blacks actually count today not as three-fifths of a person …
Flexibility in What Is Fixed — Constitution and the Bible Read More »
Contemplating the beginnings of the Persian empire, I’m intrigued by Cassandane and Atossa, who seem to be respectively the wife and daughter of Cyrus II. Were they the means by which these first Persian emperors were identified as Achaemenid?, an i.d. of some pride that is still to describe those kings. It appears to be a family line that …
It seems that among the least religious are people in European countries that have a religious affiliation. If you’re Swedish, you’re Lutheran… in word, anyway. Last night, I watched the film version of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Intense. I’ve heard quite a bit about it, read more, but I don’t remember anyone mentioning that a key clue to unravelling the …
And tomorrow, a TV interview for KARE-11… all in Minneapolis. I’m visiting MN during one of the year’s most beautiful times in the “land of 10,000 lakes.” Believe it or not, this place — so far from the desert wilderness of Israel is hosting an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This afternoon, my whole Minnesota family will check it out. My St. …
