Foundations of Faith to be strengthened at Cambridge

I’m obviously interested in seeing the foundations of faith strengthened in Cambridge in the straightforward sense of the words. But as a manuscript man I was also delighted to hear today that Cambridge University Library has announced visionary plans to become a digital library for the world – following a £1.5m lead gift pledged by Dr Leonard Polonsky.

The CUL is home to more than seven million books and some of the greatest collections in existence, including a superb science collection with papers from Newton and Darwin, Flamsteed, Halley, Clerk Maxwell and Hawking.

But its faith collections are just as breathtaking. They include

• some of the oldest and most significant Qur’ans ever to be uncovered, as well an Eighth Century copy of Surat al-Anfal.
• the world’s largest and most important collection of Jewish Genizah materials, including the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection – 193,000 fragments of manuscripts as significant as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
• an incomparable collection of Christian manuscripts including the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis (one of the most important Greek New Testament manuscripts), the Book of Deer and the Book of Cerne.

The first collections to be digitised will be therefore be entitled The Foundations of Faith and The Foundations of Science. The goal for both is that they become ‘living libraries’ with the capacity to grow and evolve.

University Librarian Anne Jarvis said: "Faith and science will be the two cornerstones of the project, both of fundamental importance in our quest to understand the world and our place in it.”

http://medievalnews.blogspot.com/2010/06/university-of-cambridge-to-create.html

Filed under: books, Cambridgeshire, faith, science

Garima Gospels

Did you know that there was such a thing as Extreme Bookbinding?

Lester Capon  writes here about a fascinating Preservation Project in Ethiopia.

It began with 8a telephone call one Thursday morning in May 2006 from James Brockman. The conversation went something like this :- J.B. – "Do you want to work in the Ethiopian mountains on a 6th. century manuscript?" L.C. – " Yes" When, some months later, I was being hoisted up a sheer rock face a stones throw from the Eritrean border, trusting my prolonged existence to an ancient leather strap and an even more ancient monk.

The library at Garima Monastery holds an ancient treasure, an illuminated copy of the Gospels that according to legend, Abbu Garima himself wrote and illuminated on 350 pages on thick goat’s vellum in the Ge’ez language. This tradition has been discounted, and the book taken to be tenth century, until recently.

But now they have been restored and redated to between 330 and 650 which means that they could be the earliest surviving illustrated Christian manuscripts. The current issue of The Art Newspaper (no. 214, June 2010, p.46) carries an article by Martin Bailey about them [not up on the online edition yet] and the Ethiopian Heritage Fund has a piece about them as well.

Picture to right: St Luke

^{Note: as we approach the 400th anniversary year of the Authorized Version in 2011 I expect to see much more material about the Bible in circulation and aim to share the best bits on this blog.}

Filed under: Bible, books

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

 

Damaris CultureWatch are keeping up good track record of releasing early comment and materials about topical books and films. Their writer Tony Watkins starts off like this about Philip Pullman’s latest book, which was allegedly written in response to Rowan Williams’ question as to why he had written about God but not Jesus:

Philip Pullman seems to enjoy stirring up controversy. He annoyed many Christians with his best-selling anti-church, anti-God trilogy His Dark Materials. And it’s evident that he was out to provoke when he made comments like, ‘my books are about killing God,’ and, ‘I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.’ He’s admitted that the latter comment, at least, was intended to wind up the reporter. Often he insists that he’s simply telling stories, not preaching an atheist message.

Still, it’s hard to think that Pullman’s new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, is merely telling a story. Even the title seems calculated to inflame Christians, and it’s surely no accident that it’s being published in Easter week. The story itself is a curious mixture of respectfully retelling some parts of the Gospel accounts while mangling others.

Read the short article and the long article on the CultureWatch website

Filed under: books, Resources

Jesus’ Day Off

I’ve just been given a copy of a book called Jesus’ Day Off by Nicholas Allan, author of such modern classics asThe Queen’s Knickers, Jesus’ Christmas Party, and Cinderella’s Bum!

He is also the author behind the award-winning CITV show Hilltop Hospital, and a former Chairman of the Society of Authors’ Children’s Group.

I’ve got a Lenten retreat week coming up so the donor’s timing was brilliant. I mustn’t spoil the story for you, but if flowers start springing up where I walk you know the therapy is working.

Filed under: books, Humour

Authentic goes south?

Phil Groom has posted breaking news on his blog that Wesley Owen staff have been told that the retail operation is in administration, with new owners for 14 of the shops, but no arrangements stated for the 26 others. STL Distribution has been purchased by Scottish book wholesaler John Ritchie, though it is not clear how much of the business will be preserved as a going concern. Kingsway are said to be taking over the music publishing, and the Australian firm Koorong the rest of the Authentic book publishing business (as well as some of the shops).

Koorong is new to me as it will be most of us in the UK. Its current business is bookselling rather than publishing if its Wikipedia entry is accurate.

Meanwhile our thoughts and prayers remain with the staff involved, especially those who, Groom reports, found out at 5.35pm by email on the last Friday before Christmas (or open the email on Monday morning) that their shops were in the hands of the administrators.

Filed under: books, Christianity

STL

The Church Mouse and others have already blogged about the break-up of the IBS-STL conglomerate, which includes the Wesley Owen bookshops, Authentic publishing, and STL distribution.

STL are based in Carlisle, where I was Archdeacon for seven years, and Authentic are my publishers, so I happen to know rather a large number of the people involved.

My wife was working for SPCK at the time of their meltdown so we know a bit of what it feels like – and the purpose of this post is simply to say how much I and many thousands of others value the work and ministry of the IBS-STL staff, and to assure them that many will be praying for them and doing what they can to ensure a smooth transition to successor companies in due course. We will all be the poorer if that can’t be achieved.

Filed under: books, Christianity, Current affairs

Fish & Fishermen in English Medieval Church Wall Paintings

 

That’s the title of a new book by Frederick Buller, a Pike fisherman and historian, which includes two Cambridgeshire Churches.

Filed under: books

With Eagleton’s eyes

I’ve just finished reading Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. It’s a superb book, devastatingly critical of the conflate he calls Ditchkins, and equally sharp about the catastrophic castration of Christianity from revolutionary creed to religious conservatism.

I’m picking up on Eagleton’s shoot-from-the-hips style. If ever he needs a break from being one of our top literary critics, he could make a superb speech-writer for Colonel Gaddafi, producing time-limit busting communist diatribes that were actually worth listening to.

And what makes the book especially good from a bishop’s point of view is that Eagleton is no mean theologian too.

Here are some favourite quotes:

• The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don’t end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do.
• As the first truly global mass movement in human history, Christianity finds in what it sees as the coming kingdom of God a condition of justice, fellowship, and self-fulfillment far beyond anything that might normally be considered possible or even desirable in the more well-heeled quarters of Oxford and Washington.
• At the peak of his assurance, Enlightenment Man finds himself frighteningly alone in the universe, with nothing to authenticate himself but himself. His dominion is therefore shot through with a sickening sense of arbitrariness and contingency, which will grow more acute as the modern age unfolds.
• However hard one tries, one simply cannot shake off the primitive conviction that this is not how it is supposed to be, however much we are conscious that this seeing the world in the light of Judgment Day, as Walter Benjamin might put it, is folly to the financiers and a stumbling block to stockbrokers.
• Modern market societies tend to be secular, relativist, pragmatic, and materialistic. They are this by virtue of what they do, not just of what they believe. As far as these attitudes go, they do not have much of choice. The problem is that this cultural climate also tends to undermine the metaphysical values on which political authority in par depends. Capitalism can neither easily dispense with those metaphysical values nor take them all the seriously. As President Eisenhower once announced in Groucho Marx style: “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious belief – and I don’t care what it is.”

Filed under: books

Theos news

It’s that time of the month, and news updates are flooding into my inbox. The latest is from Theos, who are flagging up their next publication God and Government to be launched on 22 October. It is

a series of essays which explore what the proper function of government is. The book does not tell readers what to do, still less whom to vote for. It seeks, rather, to equip people to consider what they should be attempting to achieve in their roles as ‘political Christians’, that is, Christians employed, engaged or simply interested in politics. The writers, all highly respected theological thinkers, are Philip Booth, Andrew Bradstock, Jonathan Chaplin, David McIlroy, Clifford Longley, Julian Rivers, Nick Spencer,  Nicholas Townsend, Nigel G. Wright,  and Tom Wright.

The book retails at £9.99 and is available for purchase here.

Filed under: books

Buy Cambridge Books?

Cambridge University Press email to say that they have launched an  online version of their 2009 history catalogue.

Filed under: books, History, Resources