By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible is well-known: God destroyed those two cities for their ‘sin’ of homosexuality. Or did he? What’s wrong with talking about ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ as a pair of cities in this way, and what exactly was the sin committed by the inhabitants of these places?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
According to Oscar Wilde, ‘The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations.’ But as with many stories from the Bible, there are many things we get wrong about that ‘man and woman in a garden’, Adam and Eve.
Where was the Garden of Eden? And was Eden the name of the garden of merely the location of it? What did the serpent represent, and what was the forbidden fruit hanging from the Tree of Knowledge?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The story of the fiery furnace from the Book of Daniel is a memorable episode in the Old Testament. In summary, Nebuchadnezzar condemns three Jewish men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be burned alive by being thrown into a fiery furnace.