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 vowed that if he should return safely to his kingdom, he would make a pilgrimage to St Peter’s, Rome. When he returned and was crowned at Winchester in 1042, he found it impossible to leave his subjects. The Pope released him from his vow on [more...]

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 written about the life of Jesus after the crucifixion. From the second century onward almost 5 000 pieces of manuscripts have been found – mostly discovered during the 20th century – that beckoned to be included in the New Testament. Since none of the original New [more...]

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? The layman imagines that a historian of religions must be equally at home with the Greek or the Egyptian mythology, with the authentic teaching of the Buddha, the Taoist mysteries or the secret rites of initiation in archaic societies. Perhaps laymen are not altogether wrong in [more...]

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 faith but that this same message also needs to be liberated from sexist interpretations which continue to dominate our thoughts and actions. This small book was a “premature” guide to feminist interpretation of the Bible. 1 As the contributions to feminist interpretation have continued to [more...]

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 are among among the world’s most valuable books. The national libraries of France and Britain and the US Library of Congress hold complete sets of it.
The first English Bible
The first translation of the Bible into English was initiated by The Venerable Bede toward the end [more...]