Hot as it is, summer in Israel sees an increase in archaeological activity, not least because it’s a great opportunity for students on break to get course credit volunteering at one of the many fascinating dig sites. At Tel es-Safi, archaeologists believe they’ve uncovered the ancient Philistine city of Gath, complete with a pillared temple — …
Biblical imagery draws richly from the world of the ancient Middle East, including its hills, waters, arid stretches, and wildly diverse animals — domestic and not. Trees “clap their hands” and the beloved is likened to a swift, graceful gazelle. These days, as I wander out to examine my new garden, trying to diagnose yellowing …
By collecting the wise words, beautiful and true, of all sorts of people from any time or place, and then packaging them in a way transparently “biblical,” the atheist philosopher A. C. Grayling reveals not only an indebtedness to religion but also a propensity to trip in the same pitfalls as the religious people he so doggedly criticizes. That’s …
Despite a common assumption that the Bible is all sweetness and light, filled with upstanding moral models for individuals today, it doesn’t always translate so neatly. After Adam, the next father is one who murdered his brother. There’s Noah’s drunken nakedness whose story involving his sons ended up endorsing the slavery of Africans, Abraham’s near sacrifice of …
Alternatively: “On Not Reading the Bible”; but then I must hastily add that I’m not against reading the Bible… not exactly. But when it comes to the Bible, reading and knowing about it can be quite different things. Some time ago (if you read here regularly, you may remember), I was a bit put off …
The eunuchs especially got my attention this time — a little plump, double-chinned, and very dignified in their ancient, stone-carved representation. I’ve visited the Oriental Institute in the past but am each time struck by something different. What a gem — a small museum in a beautiful old building on a tree-lined street in Chicago’s South Side, it houses …
“The mother of all living,” a slave-mother who despairs of saving her son, a mother who unapologetically favors one son over the other, a mother-in-law more beloved than her daughter-in-law’s own people, old mothers, young mothers, and a mother who conceives by the Holy Spirit — for as little as we know about them, the Bible’s …
Mothers of Old and Mothers Today, Happy Mothers’ Day! Read More »
