by Andy Roland | May 29, 2022 | Bible
Sapiens In his magisterial book ‘Sapiens’ (2011) the Israeli historian Harari sets out to cover the whole of human history. The crucial period was the Cognitive Revolution of 70,000 to 30,000 BCE. Suddenly (in a geological sense) Homo Sapiens was able to...
by Andy Roland | Apr 19, 2022 | Bible, Easter, Jesus
THE SOURCES The story of Easter is well-known: the empty tomb, Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene in the garden, and later to his disciples. There are five sources for the story, the four gospels and Paul’ s letter to Christians in Corinth. The...
by Andy Roland | Mar 17, 2022 | Bible, Jesus, Post-modern times
THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST In 2010 Philip Pullman published his novel about Jesus. The original back cover had the sublimely simple message “This is a story.” The novel is a strange mixture of complete imagination and biblical accuracy. ...
by Andy Roland | Mar 4, 2022 | Bible
SELLING BOOKS As usual, I was late in getting my books out there. ‘Journey through Lent with Jesus’ appeared a week after all the reviews of Lent books. Ah well. So I did my best to sell books in person, with some success. On Tuesday/Wednesday...
by Andy Roland | Feb 21, 2022 | Bible, Holy Week, Jesus
INTRODUCTION On September 24th 2020 I started writing my historical novel ‘Jesus the Troublemaker’ and published it a year ago. It did not make my fortune! However, I learnt more about Jesus during Holy Week through writing a fictional account than I had...
by Andy Roland | Jan 20, 2022 | Bible, Epiphany
WHAT IS EPIPHANY? There is a story of a new curate who was discussing church services with his vicar shortly before Christmas. The vicar noticed a slight shadow crossed the young curate’ face when he talked about January services and mentioned Epiphany....
