Last fall hearing Bob Dylan 8217 s 1975 song Shelter From the Storm on the radio several times brought to mind a student from around that time who had written an outstanding paper with that title using the words of Dylan 8217 s song to shape an interpretation of Gnosticism So I searched for th

This book is the companion to the Discovery Channel rsquo s program ldquo The Lost Tomb of Jesus rdquo A well-written interesting often titillating account of the 1980 discovery of inscribed ossuaries from a tomb in Talpiot a suburb south of Jerusalem it reveals the names of various first-cen

For years I have stared at the five published volumes over 2 100 pages of Thomas Merton rsquo s letters arranged neatly on a shelf in my Merton collection and wondered if I would ever have time to work through them Occasionally I opened a volume to check a reference but the massive collection of

A gem among the sayings of the desert fathers has Abba Lot coming to Abba Joseph and saying As much as I am able I keep my little rule and my fast my prayer meditation my contemplative silence And as much as possible I strive to keep my thoughts clean What more should I do The elder monk ros

Christian tradition has not been kind to the Jewish claim to the land of Israel For many of the fathers of the church the fact that Rome had invaded that land and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem A D 70 seemed to be an objective marker of divine disfavor Already in the fourth century John Chr

Back in 1978 on the way to his bar mitzvah a funny thing happened to Jeffrey Goldberg now Washington correspondent for The New Yorker he started to become a passionate Zionist His assimilated secular left-wing and soon to be divorced parents thought they could avoid the predictable alrightn