I’ve finally arrived at the Pauline portion of Tom’s opus, and something immediately struck me. I don’t know if you readers are film watchers, but you might enjoy Monuments Men, the story of the desperate attempt to rescue the art stolen by Hitler from the Louvre and elsewhere. There is a great line in the movie that goes something like this— “if you burn a person’s fields, or house, or steal their clothes, that’s one thing. They can recover from... Read more

There is a recent archaeological report about camels, or the lack thereof in the Holy Land. John Noble Wilford of the NY Times has a recent article about the findings which can be found here—-http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/science/camels-had-no-business-in-genesis.html?ref=science&_r=0″ title=”Camels”. The findings include the deduction that because evidence has not yet been found for camels in the Holy Land prior to 1,000 B.C. therefore they likely were not part of the economy in that Land before then, and also therefore, the reports in Genesis... Read more

https://wipfandstock.com/store/Ephesian_Miracle_The_Sixth_Art_West_Adventure Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more lively for Art West, he goes to Turkey to get married and all kinds of mayhem breaks loose. What is the difference between miracle and magic, and how does that difference make a difference in the life of Marissa, Art’s new bride? And did they really discover the bones of Mary in Ephesus? If so those bodily assumption traditions may turn out to be based on false assumptions. These and... Read more

It is an interesting phenomenon to have two very different presentations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his trusty sidekick John Watson on the telly at the same time. This is only possible really because one is a BBC production which gets farmed to the U.S. a season late by way of PBS, and one is the brainchild or the brain trust at CBS. When you throw in Robert Downey Jr’s. movie Sherlocks the visual arts are... Read more

Much of chapter five is spent demonstrating the evidence for and growth of the Imperial Cult during the first century A.D. Of this there is no lack of evidence. What we cannot directly tell from the archaeological remains is the effect this specific cult had on the mentality of Jews and Christians living in the Roman Empire. We know of course of the repugnance felt about what Jews and Christians called idolatry of any and all sorts. We also hear... Read more

In the wake of recent Imperial cult studies, including studies of the evidence that the NT reflects a critique of the Imperial cult (as Tom likes to put it— Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not, the latter being the parody of which Christ is the reality), Chapter Five is in some ways the most crucial chapter thus far in Tom’s first volume. It is a pity that Tom’s book went to press shortly before the appearance of Jesus is... Read more

In Chapter 4 (pp. 246-78) we have a very useful survey of what has come to be called ancient Greek and Roman religion (not to be confused with philosophy which was treated in the previous chapter). Wright is correct to stress that ancient religion was all about praxis, and very little about beliefs or believing, nor was it much about ethics either. The essence of pagan religion was priests, temples, sacrifices, festivals, calendars, auspices and the like. On this showing... Read more

The very first site Jason and I went to see upon arriving in Delhi was the brand new much publicized Hindu temple (built from 2005 to the present, to the cost of millions and millions) named Akshardham…. You are not allowed to take pictures inside the temple area, so I had to resort to taking pictures of pictures, except for this one distance shot, taken on a foggy morning. Here’ what it looks like at night (taken from an advertizing... Read more