Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

The Bible and Culture

Michael Moore, our current resident agent provocateur and gadfly is at it again, and this time he really hits you where it hurts– in the pocketbook. His bright searchlight of investigation casts it glare on the health care industry, and more specifically on the health insurance and HMO juggernaut. I have to tell you that…

I was watching the PBS special the other night in which Paul Simon was honored for a career of great song writing with the very first Gershwin Award of the Library of Congress– certainly a well deserved tribute. Of course one of his most famous songs, actually sung mainly by his partner Art Garfunkel, was…

I have always liked Bruce Willis. He was great in the 80s in the big TV hit series Moonlighting with Cybil Shepherd. In fact, he began the ‘Die Hard’ series in the middle of the Moonlighting show because Cybil became pregnant and they had to take a little hiatus. It was fortunate for Bruce, because…

You have to hand it to Pixar and Brad Bird, they are good at what they do. They have brought us so many instantly appealing CG cartoon movies (beginning with Toy Story) that they sometimes appear to have invented the genre. And in a summer of mediocre sequels its nice to finally have something new…

The town of Shanli-Urfa is an interesting one. According to Islamic tradition it is the locale of the cave of Abraham. Above you will find a picture of the entrance to the cave, followed by an overview of the citadel that towers over that part of the town, followed by the arches leading into the…

How exactly did the Roman army, in about 200 years conquer the then known Mediterranean world? Was it because they were better fighters than everyone else? Well, it seems clear that they were not usually as fierce as the Gauls, nor were they as good at cavalry and archery as the Parthians. What was it…

Arsemea was a once proud city in the kingdom of Comagene, now in Eastern Turkey. Set way up on a hill, and just on the backside of Mt. Nimrud, it overlooked a rich fertile river valley. Here Mithridates I, the other famous king of this kingdom (besides Antiochus I whom we have spoken of before)…

The beehive houses of Haran are an interesting study in ancient domiciles. In some ways living in them is like living in a cave– moderate temperature in the summer, warm in the winter without any sort of heating or cooling devices. We do not know for sure what sort of house the family of Abraham…

Kahlil Gibran was one of the great Middle Eastern poets of modern times. He was born in Lebanon in 1883, but he spent most of his life, and did most of his writing here in the U.S.A. By far his most famous and memorable book is The Prophet. Gibran was born in the Marionite Christian…

In the world of safe entertainment by means of sequels of popular films, some brands do better than others. Let’s admit from the outset that the first Fantastic Four movie while certainly fun, was not— well… fantastic. And the same can be said of the second one, though I found it a bit better than…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners