Introduction The gospels are the foundation of Christianity and by extension of Western society. In his book “New Testament History and Literature”, Dale B. Martin argues that although the New Testament is considered a “foundational document” for Western civilisation, that statement doesn’t really mean much as many of “the most culturally significant things about the New…
The progression from physical to cerebral creation stories in particular really seemed to spark conversation during the last post-tour social that we had for Faith to Faithless. I have therefore reproduced the 4 texts which I spoke of below. The Hymn to Atum/Amun-Ra (24th-22nd century BCE) The Hymn to Ptah (22nd-20th century BCE Genesis 2:4…
Jamaica is a beautiful island that happens to be the place most of my forebears are from. Since the age of 3, I have been exposed to the Jamaican languages due to being partially raised by my grandmother after the death of my mother in 1987. Jamaica has 4 main languages, two of which exist…
Branko Milanovic has revived interest in an older post of mine about the Polish language. From Twitter it appears that the tidbit from that post which has been most remarked about is the fact that the Polish word for Italy is Włochy (related to Gaul, Wales, Wallachia, Galatia, and Vlachs). That inspires this rambling.
Following the successful tour of the Natural History Museum on Saturday the 24th, I’m launching a series of blog posts entitled “Evidence for Common Descent”, which will help many newly freed ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses and others to understand various aspects of the compelling evidence for common descent and by extension evidence for evolution by natural selection.…
Following the success of the “Biblical and Qur’anic History” tour of the British Museum, I’d like to present this blog post about the history of Satan. Satan the Devil has been a feature of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (known in those faiths as “ha-satan”, “Satan”, “Devil”, “al-Shaitan” or “Iblis”) for over 2000 years. He is…
Job in English is the equivalent to: Modern Hebrew: Iyyov Mesoretic Herbrew: ʾIyyôḇ Qu’ranic Arabic: Ayyūb The Ludlul-Bel-Nimeqi is a Babylonian poem which chronicles the lament of a good man suffering undeservedly. Also known as `The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer’, the title translates as “I will praise the Lord of Wisdom”. In the poem,…
This summer Brighton hosted Europe’s first ever trans pride march as part of its second annual Trans Pride weekend. Traditional pride events encompass transgender people by default under the LGBT umbrella. However, there has been a growing frustration that at such celebrations, the T – as well as coming last in the acronym – is…
This article is going to be quite heavy going as it involves looking at ancient astronomical observations and correlating them with star charts. I have to thank my friend Chris Owens aka. “Londo Mollari”, because the majority of the research comes from his articles (which I’ve reproduced without changes here) and from his brilliant video…
The ancient Babylonians have been one of the most influential cultures in history. They gave us the concept of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day, they developed the first mathematics and astronomy and are responsible for the fact that there are 360 degrees in a circle…
This series of blog posts was posted by Londo Mollari in 2014 (his amazing YouTube channel is here). His website is no longer active, so, with his permission, I have reproduced his commentary on VAT 4956 here: VAT 4956: Observations from Lines 1 & 2 August 2, 2015 Londo 607, VAT 4956 No comments Perhaps you are reading this…
I was really happy that 32 people turned up to the British Museum tour yesterday. It was the biggest tour group ever. Alison Boniface posted a picture of the event on Facebook: Among many other fascinating artefacts, we looked at a marvellous clay tablet which has a map of the world on it. It is…
Halley’s Comet comes round every 75.32 years, it last graced the skies of Earth in 1986 and will next be seen by human eyes in 2061. The comet was named after Sir Edmond Halley (to rhyme with ‘valley’, not with ‘daily’) because he was the first person to notice the periodicity of the comet, and…
The cockneys. Who are they and why do they speak so weirdly? The term cockney has had several distinct geographical, social, and linguistic associations. Originally a pejorative term applied to all city-dwellers, it was eventually restricted to Londoners and particularly to the “Bow-bell Cockneys”: those born within earshot of Bow Bells, the bells of St Mary-le-Bow Church in the Cheapside district of the City of London. More…
News of the release of Pokémon Go has been dominating social media and the mainstream media alike recently. Those born earlier than the 90s likely remember the phenomenon surrounding the Pokémon franchise in the late ’90s with the GameBoy games, TV show, trading card game that got loads of people obsessed with catching them all.…
aperi mentis 