Cardinal John Dew says the New Zealand Bible Society’s (BSNZ) recent survey is “fascinating”. It shows the interest people have in the Bible and why they are attracted to it. Dew, who is the New Zealand president of the Bible Society, said he found the various reasons people identified as barriers to reading the Bible Read more
It’s a scene you can imagine happening at any backyard barbecue in Australia: three mates having a friendly discussion about same-sex marriage over a beer. Not much to get wound up about, right? Bible Society Australia has teamed up with Coopers Premium Light to produce a video an openly gay agnostic, and a Christian conservative, debate Read more
Consult your Bible as often as your cellphone. The Pope urged crowds at St Peter’s Square to give the Bible the same place in their daily life as cellphones. He asked them: “What would happen if we turned back when we forget it, if we opened it more times a day, if we read the Read more
The success of Bible Society New Zealand’s recently released Big Little Bible app and book has been largely credited to Catholic illustrator Meesh Holswich who played a significant part in its creation. Meesh’s art style means the pencil never leaves the page and actually dovetails in with the overall message of the Bible. “One line, Read more
If you’re my age, you’ll remember the Flat Earth Society. It was a New Zealand off-shoot of a group in England that sincerely believed the earth was flat because the Bible said so. They had many scriptural references, including sayings of Jesus, and they considered the notion of a round planet to be the work Read more
More than 40 years ago, archaeologists discovered what appeared to be a hunk of scroll at the site of En-Gedi, an ancient Jewish community in modern-day Israel. The fragment was charred and crushed, and every touch seemed to hasten its disintegration. The Israel Antiquities Authority, which houses many artifacts from the region, locked the scroll Read more
The Bible is not a handbook on parenthood, or morality, or any number of other things for which handbooks are perfectly suitable. The Bible is a written testimony to the persistence of God’s grace throughout centuries as experienced by a particular people, in particular times and places. Scripture presents ancient families doing things that ancient Read more
The Bible has been translated into every imaginable language for centuries, but this seems to be a first: a complete King James Version Bible, Genesis through Revelations, all using emoji. The book “Bible Emoji: Scripture 4 Millennials”came out on iTunes’s Books app on last week. Can you decipher these verses from the new book? Click Read more
TEL AVIV — Eliashib, the quartermaster of the remote desert fortress, received his instructions in writing — notes inscribed in ink on pottery asking for provisions to be sent to forces in the ancient kingdom of Judah. The requests for wine, flour and oil read like mundane, if ancient, shopping lists. But a new analysis Read more
Even if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, it is unlikely a second Jesus was sent to save them, a Vatican astronomer says. Astronomers at the Vatican Observatory in Rome have said discoveries of new Earth-like planets have strengthened their belief that there could be life elsewhere in the universe. Fr Jose Funes, director Read more