‘…cursed is the ground in your labours. In toil you shall eat from it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you…’ (Gen 3:17f) The significance of these words, addressed to the original couple shortly before their departure from the Garden, goes far beyond difficulties faced by farmers. The first man had […]
Read more‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall be on guard against his heel.’ (Gen 3:16) Overwhelmingly, the tradition sees these words as referring to the work of Christ. Irenaeus: ‘He who would be born of a Virgin, after the likeness of Adam, would […]
Read moreThere’s a lot to enjoy in detective stories. I have pounded the mean pavements of Chicago with the ill-organised V. I. Warshawski, marvelled at the low-life losers who hang out with Kinky Friedman, admired the technological acumen of Liz Carlyle, and laughed out loud at the failure of the Feng Shui detective, speaker of a learned but not idiomatic form of English, […]
Read moreWhat seems to be the oldest account of the institution of the Eucharist occurs in a letter of St Paul, where Christ’s words are given in the form ‘Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of me…This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do, as often as you drink it, […]
Read more‘Then the Lord God built the rib he took from Adam into a woman, and brought her to him.’ (Gen 2:22) The creation of the woman from the side of the man suggested to the Fathers the creation of the Church. ‘Adam’s sleep was a mystical foreshadowing of Christ’s death, and when his dead body on the cross was pierced […]
Read moreThe coming of the piano was one of the great leaps forward in western music. There was now a keyboard instrument capable of long legato passages, of crescendo and diminuendo, and of the sustained notes, whether or not prolonged by the use of a pedal, that make the Moonlight Sonata so beautiful. Already employed to good effect by Haydn and Mozart, […]
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