It’s the Way You Tell It

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

Is there a harder text to translate than the Bible? Its scores of books were written in ancient languages, different literary styles, distinct historical settings and varying geographical locations. Its contents date from the beginning of the tenth century BC to the beginning of the second century AD, and it contains archaic genres such as […]

Graven in Stone

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

This hefty book – two inches thick and weighing something over two kilograms – fills a big gap. Indeed, it fills it handsomely, authoritatively and on a grander scale than I would have thought possible in today’s publishing climate. Its subject is one of this country’s greatest but least appreciated and most widely dispersed treasures: […]

Onward Christian Emperors

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

Has it ever occurred to you that the last millennium and a half of Western civilisation could have easily been pagan? Or Manichaean? Or Muslim? Or that, even if it were Christian, it could have involved a very different form of Christianity – Gnostic or Cathar, for example? We tend to see history as a […]

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