Search
-
Recent Posts
- Ideology is reliably replicable 07/11/2025
- My books on the cheap! 05/11/2025
- There are only two truths 03/11/2025
- Researching the rise of Pentecostalism in the UK 31/10/2025
- A time for everything 26/10/2025
Recent Comments
- Jon Garvey on Surreality and Messianism
- Levi on Surreality and Messianism
- Jon Garvey on A time for everything
- Jon Garvey on Hitting the Books
- Peter Hickman on Hitting the Books
Post Archive
Category Archives: History
Old churches and the numinous
My pastor took an excellent line for his teaching on Pentecost Sunday last week. His main thrust was how the glory of God filled the completed Tabernacle in Exodus, and likewise the completed Solomonic temple, in 1 Kings, but after its judgemental departure (“Ichabod”) before the temple’s destruction by the Babylonians, it is not mentioned as filling the second temple built after the return from captivity. Instead, in fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel, at Pentecost God’s glory (later termed the shekinah) came to dwell within every believer born again in Christ. God is no longer represented in a sacred place, but in his sacred people.
Posted in History, Philosophy, Theology
Leave a comment
Luke’s gospel – some new thoughts
An ossuary discovered in Jerusalem a couple of decades ago once contained the bones of Joanna, daughter of John and granddaughter of Theophilus, high priest from 37-42AD, who was a son of Annas, and brother-in-law of Caiaphas, both implicated in the trial of Jesus. The discovery has led one apologist, Shane Rosenthal, to suggest that this Joanna might, in fact, be the same Joanna mentioned in Luke’s gospel, and only in Luke’s gospel, as a witness to the resurrection.
Posted in History, Theology
Leave a comment
The new importance of Josephus to Christian faith
In complete contrast, both in subject and mood, to Debbie Lerman’s book, which I reviewed in my last post, my other recent reading has been a new monograph by T. C. Schmidt on the passage in Josephus’s Antiquities about Jesus Christ. Published by Oxford University, in an incredibly enlightened gesture Josephus and Jesus – New Evidence for the One Called Christ is available for free download here. Presumably it is thought to be of interest only to nerdy academics. Maybe that’s me.
Posted in History, Theology
Leave a comment
Tying a few (or a lot of) COVID loose ends
I’m reading Debbie Lerman’s The Deep State Goes Viral. It is deeply satisfying as it explains almost without remainder, with as much documentation as one is likely to get, all the nonsense of COVID, on which I wrote tens of thousands of frustrated words.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology
2 Comments
Goodbye, Old Stick
The day before yesterday I lost Uncle Ralph’s stick, whilst we were on holiday in Cornwall. A small, but significant, bereavement for me. Either I left it behind after the excitement of seeing a chough on the coast-path near Porthleven, or less plausibly someone nicked it from the open back of the car outside where we were staying. Either way, it’s drawn a sharp line under an eighty five year old story, and Uncle Ralph, aka Ralph Hopper, deserves to have his unsung death in World War 2 told, I think. As there is no longer an artifact to hang the tale on, I guess the web will have to … Continue reading
Posted in History
Leave a comment
More on Christian music and church music
Thanks to those wonderful YouTube chaps, I’ve just discovered the fascinating and surprisingly contemporary-sounding music of Pérotin, the thirteenth century composer of Notre Dame, Paris, who was the first to write choral music for four parts, eight centuries ago. I’m tempted to say I’ve developed Pérotinitis, as it’s such good stuff.
Posted in History, Music, Theology
Leave a comment
Societal revival
My last blog picked up on the widespread talk of Christian revival in this country, and discussed how true revival is far broader than the usually-held idea, recalling the Great Awakening, of big meetings accompanied by spectacular spiritual and/or psychological phenomena. As was actually true in the eighteenth century too, the key thing was a general realisation that the current religion was failing, and a God-given hunger directed at biblical salvation in Jesus. The rest was contingent detail.
Posted in History, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology
Leave a comment
Revival v. Revivalism
In the past I’ve expressed scepticism about the whole concept of Christian “revival,” suggesting that this non-biblical word became fixed in the Evangelical mindset in a particular form through the atypical spiritual, sociological and psychological example of the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century. I wrote about this in Prophecy Today in 2003, in two articles which I later re-posted on The Hump, here and here.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
1 Comment
The blood is the life thereof
To follow on from my recent piece on the Mosaic Law, I got to thinking about the way that the apostles and elders recommended (rather than imposing!) some minimal parts of the Jewish law on their gentile brethren at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. Given that the contentious issue was a keystone of the Old Covenant, circumcision, these stipulations were not the most obvious components of the torah to retain. You will remember that the stipulations were these:
Posted in History, Theology
Leave a comment