New York City is the most linguistically and religiously diverse city in the world. The 8.4 million inhabitants communicate in some 800 different languages across the five boroughs – the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. New York is also a religious city: 83% of New Yorkers are affiliated to some organized religion. This [...]
Category: religion
In a 1631 edition of the King James Bible – in Exodus 20 verse 14 – the word “not” was left out. This changed the 7th commandment to read – “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Most of the copies were recalled immediately and destroyed on the orders of Charles I. But there are 11 copies still [...]
One of the greatest achievements of Edward the Confessor, who ruled England from 1042 to 1066, was the construction of Westminster Abbey. Born the son of King Ethelred the Unready and Emmaat at Islip in Oxfordshire, Edward was driven from England by the Danes and spent his exile in Normandy. The story goes that Edward [...]
Dan Brown’s 2003 historical novel The Da Vinci Code provided some food for thought… or was it just gooyie gum with an odd taste? Take a bite! Long before Dan Brown put pen to paper the concept of Jesus having been (happily) married and “moving on” (to southern France – in Brown’s scenarios) much was [...]
THE PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY OF RELIGIONS: Symbolism of the “Center” Many laymen envy the vocation of the historian of religions. What nobler or more rewarding occupation could there be than to frequent the great mystics of all the religions, to live among symbols and mysteries, to read and understand the myths of all the nations? [...]
Introduction: Liberating the Word In 1976 The Liberating Word: A Guide to Nonsexist Interpretation of the Bible was published by a small NCCC Task Force on Sexism in the Bible. In the introduction to that book I wrote that the message of the Bible can become a liberating word for those who hear and act [...]
In 1454 in Germany – Johannes Gutenberg printed the famous 42-line Bible – the first printed Bible in the world. Printed in Latin – it is known as the 42-line Bible because most of its pages are 42 lines long. It was printed in 3 volumes. Only 40 copies of the 42-line Bible survived. They [...]
The Bible has 66 books, divided into 1,189 chapters consisting of 31,173 verses. The Bible was divided into chapters by Stephen Langton at about 1228. The Old Testament was divided into verses by R. Nathan in 1448 and the New Testament by Robert Stephanus in 1551. The first printed Bible divided into verses was an [...]
The ancient Anglo-Saxons celebrated the return of spring with a carnival commemorating their goddess of offspring and of springtime, Eostre. The word carnival possibly originated from the Latin ‘carne vale’ meaning “flesh, farewell” or “meat, farewell.” The offerings were rabbits and coloured eggs, bidding an end to winter. As it happened, the pagan festival of [...]
