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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
The author of the Wallander series, was on board the convoy heading to Gaza. This is his record of events. And something of an alternative account here.
‘Is Amazon building a superkindle?’ The New York Times reckons Amazon has bought up a small touch-screen company and will build a ‘Superkindle’ – a rival version of the iPad, with built in applications. Well, they’re bound to launch a colour reader. But as to adding applications, I doubt Amazon could rival the iPad for [...]
There’s an excellent and thought-provoking exchange of letters on the Christianity Today website about the current conflict in Lebanon. The two correspondents — Dr. Martin Accad and Professor David P. Gushee — are eloquent, gracious and perceptive. A couple of quotes from both correspondents: Because the Bible says so, I believe that one day Christ [...]
In January I had the privilege of visiting Jerusalem and I was completely overwhelmed by the city. I had hopes that through my writing I could encourage other people to visit Israel — and to talk to people on both sides of the conflict. Now those hopes seem naive to say the least. The Palestinians [...]
As a writer, I’m always interested in the inventive use of language, and no-one is better at this that the US military. These are the people who brought you ‘friendly fire’ (i.e. being killed by people on your side) and ‘collateral damage’ (i.e. all those civilians who are silly enough to get in the way [...]
Rob’s funeral yesterday. Very sad, very moving, but really positive as well. He knew where he was going. He’d run the race. He’ll be really missed, but, clichéd as it sounds, he’s in a far better place. One of the amazing things about yesterday was catching up with people who I hadn’t seen for 20 [...]