One of my colleagues asked me to read this book along with him to help him prepare a presentation for his religions and sociology course, and I wanted to like it, for his sake and my own, but I was hands-down the absolute worst audience for this book. This is a volume for someone who’s coming in with no prior knowledge, or knows a little bit about a lot of different religions. I unfortunately know an iceberg’s worth of information on my own religion, and […]
If Suppiluliuma were here, I wonder what he’d make of the Arab Spring.
In many ways, “the world” of 3200 years ago was vastly different from today. The Torah (or “Hebrew Bible”, if you’re so inclined) wouldn’t be written for another 600 years. If Homer existed, he wouldn’t be born for another 300 years (give or take). Elsewhere in the world, the ancient Puebloans of the American Southwest first formed. The 12th century BCE is as far removed from the formation of the Roman Empire as we are from the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. In short, […]