The Background to Christ’s teaching on marriage.

I don't know too much about the attitudes to marriage, sex and women in Israel at the time of Christ, but I have read Gerda Lerner on Patriarchy, and her account of the Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia outlines...

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The Monk and his Cat: an ancient Celtic poem

An ancient Celtic poem: the monk and his pet cat I and my white Pangur Have each his special art: His mind is set on hunting mice, Mine is upon my special craft. I love to rest – better than...

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Did Christ really mean whoever marries an undivorced woman commits adultery

The Church is so right and yet so wrong about marriage. I believe what philosophers call the fallacy of composition is one of the most dangerous ideas in philosophy.  It states that when we talk, for instance, of a school...

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Life in Love Lane: Roy goes to London

Me:  How did you get on in London Roy?Roy:  It were nowt.  You 'ave to pay to go in't lavs.

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Life in Love Lane: Eleanor

 Eleanor comes in to borrow some tea, brisk and businesslike as usual. She is as commanding in manner as she is inflexible in mind.  From an early age, it is evident, she has never let a new idea into...

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Will we look back with nostalgia as Edward Thomas looked back at Adlestrop?

This much loved poem was written by Edward Thomas in 1915 in the trenches, looking back to an unremarkable  incident that had happened in June 1914.   What had been a trivial event  is turned by hindsight, which then had...

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Your table is a message from God

Your table is a message from God How we know things is one of the oldest puzzles in philosophy.  When you know a table there is clearly some sense in which the table is inside your head.   But it can’t...

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A translation of Our father who art in heaven direct from the Aramaic

Words in modern western languages generally have clear, precise and well-defined meanings.   But this is not the case with ancient Semitic languages such as Aramaic or Hebrew.  In these languages a word can hold twenty or even thirty interconnected...

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Why did Jesus have to be baptised?

Why did Jesus have to be baptised? There is nothing that horrifies atheists so much as what they usually imagine are the Christian doctrines of original sin and baptism.  An innocent baby is born with a black stain of sin...

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Some homework for life

Well here we all are walking about the world.   If  we think  about ourselves and our situation - if, in other words,  we become philosophers -  then we have to start with the most basic thing we know.  What...

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