As debate over this issue rages, the very fact that such questions continue to be raised highlights how little unambiguous evidence there is for reconstructing the life and times of the man believed to be Israel’s most powerful monarch. In the midst of this uncertainty, Steven Weitzman, a professor of Jewish culture and religion at Stanford, has produced an “unauthorized biography” of the king entitled Solomon: The Lure of Wisdom. http://www.jidaily.com/zurU1/e Read more

Andrew Roberts – Wall Street Journal Joseph Lelyveld has written a ­generally admiring book about ­Mohandas Gandhi, the man credited with leading India to independence from Britain in 1947. Yet “Great Soul” also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive ­intellectual, professing his love for ­mankind as a concept... Read more

David Mills The response varies to the news that you do something still considered, even by some conservative Christians, odd, eccentric, and possibly subversive. Some suddenly furrow their brows and purse their lips and declare their concerns about homeschooling, less often about the quality of the education as about the children’s (meaning, in context, our children’s, which is, you know, really rude) “socialization.” I sometimes feel I must surrounded by fascists, such is their apparent concern for making sure our... Read more

I’ve been reporting in the Palestinian territories for many years, and the responses I recorded today in Shchem (Nablus) really surprised me. http://www.jidaily.com/NKp/e Read more

Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe LAST WEEKEND in Itamar, an Israeli settlement in the Samarian hills, terrorists infiltrated the home of Udi and Ruth Fogel and perpetrated a massacre of the innocents. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/03/16/massacre_of_the_innocents/?s_campaign=8315 Read more

The battle between Meliorists and Traditionists to define evangelicalism Gerald McDermott 6 COMMENTS » Most evangelicals believe that they are bound by the Word of God understood as a transcendent, authoritative revelation. But not all are so convinced, and therein lies a problem for the future of evangelical theology and the future of evangelicalism. The rising generation of evangelicals is not as socially or theologically liberal as has been thought (See Byron Johnson, “The Good News About Evangelicalism,” FT, February),... Read more

Rare artifacts have now resurfaced 35 years after they were excavated from the Sinai by Israeli archeologists and handed over to Egypt. http://www.jidaily.com/7U8W/e Read more

By Bret Stephens Wall Street Journal A few years ago, British poet and Oxford don Tom Paulin offered a view on what should be done to certain Jewish settlers. “[They] should be shot dead,” he told Al-Ahram Weekly. “I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them.” As for Israel itself, it was, he said, “an historical obscenity.” http://www.jidaily.com/q2Fxm/e Read more

By Uwe Siemon-Netto Second of two parts. Occasionally when I am in Paris I chance upon taxis driven by women of dark complexion. They often speak a remarkably educated French and turn out to be university students or young professionals of North African descent. It has also happened to me that one of these cabbies admitted to being bi-religious: Muslim on Friday so as not to upset her family living in one of the grim housing estates at the rim... Read more

Friends: This is different from a previous version. Read on. Gerald McDermott Just after my wife and I watched the new hit movie, “The King’s Speech,” a friend asked me if I enjoyed it. “No, I suffered through it. But it was a great movie.” I have been a stutterer since the age of six. Every time King George VI puffed his cheeks helplessly as he tried to get out a word, I felt the frustration and pain. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/03/god-the-devil-and-the-kingrsquos-speech Read more