by Nick
Coming June 2017 The complete and utter history of the Reformation – always informative, frequently funny and up the Pope 100% true.* Did Henry VIII outlaw Catholicism just to get a quickie divorce? Did Luther really nail his 95 Theses to a church door? Was the Pope really Catholic? Can you actually exist on a […]
Categories: Front page books
by Nick
The Dark Night of the Shed is a book about Men, the midlife crisis, spirituality and sheds. There comes a point in life when men realise that things have changed. They have spent years climbing the corporate ladder only to find it was leaning against the wrong wall. The odds of being chosen as the […]
Categories: Front page books
by Nick
Heaven, hell, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and why the end of the world never does turn up when it’s supposed to. If you’re reading this, we’re still alive. The end of the world has not occurred. But it can’t be long now, can it? For two thousand years, the Book of Revelation has […]
Categories: Front page books
by Nick
He never ran a country, led an army, or wrote a book. He lived and died in a geographic backwater. But today two billion people round the world claim to follow him. Yet for someone who has had so great an impact on history and human civilization, who Jesus Christ was and what was his […]
Categories: Front page books
by Nick
Fascinating story on the BBC website about using infrared light and multi-spectral imaging to read scrolls from Herculaneum. The scrolls were carbonised by the heat from the Vesuvius eruption, but scientists have found ways to read them. I’ve often wondered if someone, somewhere in Herculaneum had a copy of the gospels in a box…
Categories: Stuff
by Nick
Accessible, informative, provocative and very, very funny, A Nearly Infallible History of Christianity is a history of the church for the rest of us. Why do Christians believe the things they do? Who wrote all those creeds? Who invented excommunication? Why is Christmas on the 25th December? What does the invention of trousers have to […]
Categories: Front page books
by Nick
Two recent discoveries in Israel. In Galilee, researchers from Reading University have discovered the possible site of Dalmanutha, mentioned in the New Testament. Jesus stopped here after the feeding of the 4,000. It’s close to the site of Migdal, which would place it on the western shore of Galilee. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, archaeologists have been […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Bible
by Nick
Monday 15th July is the 9th of Ab in the Jewish calendar, the date on which the Jews mourn the loss of the Temple in the First Jewish revolt. Josephus records how during the revolt many Jews took refuge in underground hiding places: So now the last hope… was in the caves and caverns under […]
Categories: Uncategorized
by Nick
Instant Experts are a series of short, small-format books covering the core religious issues of the day. Each book is designed to give the reader all the essential information they need in an hour’s read. Instant Expert: The Bible explains all you need to know to pass as an immediate expert on the Bible: What […]
Categories: Front page books
by Nick
Animal Figurines Found in Ancient Israel Temple – Yahoo! News. Interesting find at a place called Tel Motza, not far from Jerusalem – a cache of vessels and figurines inside a 2,750-year-old temple. At that time, this would have been part of the kingdom of Judea. According to the director: “The finds recently discovered at Tel […]
Categories: Uncategorized
by Nick
On December 8th Claire and I will be going for a swim. Outdoors. In an unheated pool. We’ll be taking part in the OSS December Dip at Parliament Hills Lido. The water temperature will be anything between 6 degrees and 0.1 degrees. We are already in training, taking an ice cold shower every […]
Categories: Uncategorized
by Nick
Israeli paleographer Ada Yardeni has recently identified 50 Dead Sea scrolls found near Qumran in Israel as having been penned by the same scribe. What is more work by the same scribe was also found at the Herodian mountain-top fortress of Masada, where Jewish rebel zealots made their last suicidal stand against the Romans. The […]
Categories: Bible
by Nick
A team of archaeologists from Tel Aviv University has unearthed ruins of a 3,100-year-old temple at the site of Tel Beth-Shemesh. According to the story, the archaeologists, “This temple complex is unparalleled, possibly connected to an early Israelite cult – and provides remarkable new evidence of the deliberate desecration of a sacred site.” The desecration in […]
Categories: Bible, Uncategorized
by Nick
Retronaut has wonderful photos of the Middle East taken by Félix Bonfils in the late nineteenth century. Below, a fab panorama of Jerusalem. And there are photos of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, complete with ladder (which is still standing there today). And I love this one of the road to Bethlehem from the Jaffa gate. […]
Categories: Uncategorized
by Nick
Sounds like the Brazilian football team of the 80s, but we’re talking a wall painting in Pompeii. Painted some time before 79 AD (the date when Pompeii had that little run-in with Vesuvius) the painting is the earliest known painting of a biblical scene, and it shows Solomon sitting in judgment. But according to this […]
Categories: Stuff
by Nick
I first encountered Ray Bradbury when I was fifteen, in a copy of The Illustrated Man which I bought, I think, through some kind of book club arrangement at school. It was nothing like anything I had ever read before. There were two things that stood out. First was the sheer breadth of imagination. The […]
Categories: Writing & writers
by Nick
Just added a whole heap of pages (well 4) containing all the resources to accompany Kingdom of Fools. Chief among these is a free, downloadable discussion guide to accompany all the videos. The guide is perfect for homegroups, Bible study groups, or small, clandestine meetings of subversive organisations. or all three. Oh, and churches as well. And […]
Categories: Kingdom of Fools, Stuff
by Nick
In Acts 10 Peter converts the centurion Cornelius. But would he have been allowed to keep his job? What did the early church think of warfare? The final installment in a series of four videos to accompany the book Kingdom of Fools. See more at the Kingdom of Fools Vimeo Channel. This is possibly the […]
Categories: Bible, Kingdom of Fools
by Nick
When Paul went to Philippi he converted a woman called Lydia, who was involved in the luxury clothing business. But what did the early church think of such things? Why was purple so expensive? And what does this have to do with people who call their daughters ‘Chelsea’? The third in a series of four […]
Categories: Kingdom of Fools
by Nick
Today is Whitsunday, or Pentecost, to give it its biblical name. It commemorates that moment when the Holy Spirit descended on the first followers of Jesus, turning them from a group of somewhat bewildered disciples into the movement that was to change the world. This, then, is the birthday of ‘the church’. So here’s a […]
Categories: Bible, God, Kingdom of Fools