Category: Religion
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A Fresh Look at Genesis One
In the beginning, the Bible had no chapters and verses. The creation of biblical chapters took place around the year 1227; of verses in the Hebrew Bible around 1448; and of verses in the New Testament around 1555. In other words, these internal divisions are neither original nor ‘authoritative’, though now more or less universally…
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God’s Life Story (ii)
A previous post noted that the first Israelites were Canaanites, and so their chief god was called El or Elohim (as in the name Isra-el). How many other gods and goddesses did they follow? The answer is, lots! Unsurprisingly, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t go into details, but frequently denounces Israelites who followed the weather/fertility god…
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Irony of Ironies
Who is this a statue of? It’s of George Orwell who, in his book “1984”, warned us about the abomination of total state control over the lives of its citizens; what they do from minute to minute, and what they say in any place, at any time. Such control must include language. The state decides…
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Weaponising “Offence”
In Putin’s Russia, to say the slightest thing which in any way “offends” those in power means ten years in jail. Do we want that in the UK? It’s time for people who genuinely value freedom of speech, verbal or written (provided it breaks no law) to take a stand against the ‘shut them up,…
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“For All Beings”
Here, from Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, teacher and author, is a beautiful, meaningful, moving, timelessly relevant, “if only” vision of humanity at its very best. It’s also ‘religion’ at its very best. It comes from the ‘beating heart’ of Buddhism, but surely also from that of Christianity, and all other religions worthy of the name. It…
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God’s Life Story
When people give thought to the word ‘God’, they may well have sophisticated notions about its meaning, and might use such words as infinite, eternal, all-powerful and so on. But let’s step back a bit, and focus on the Jewish-Christian God. If we journey back in time, we discover that he has a ‘life history’…
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The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible …
Apparently, there are still some people who believe that the Earth is flat and, presumably, at least some of them are not joking. Equally unreal (at least to me) is that there are also people who believe the entire Bible to be literally true and historically accurate, all without errors of any kind. It’s unquestionably…
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Jesus on the Sea of Galilee
Following on from my previous posts about the Feeding of the 5000 being a parable rather than historical, the same can be said about Jesus on the Sea of Galilee. He’s said to have instantly calmed its stormy waves – “a windstorm arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped”. Normally,…
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Food for Thought (ii)
Rather than being dismissive because of disbelief in ‘miracles’, my previous post suggested understanding gospel accounts, like the feeding of the 5000, as ‘story-parables’ rather than historical facts. But if this is a story, where might the idea originally have come from? The early followers of Jesus, being Jews, were well versed in the Hebrew…
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