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”So then, King Agrippa . . . I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen—that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles”. At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defence. “You are out of your mind, Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning is driving you insane”. “I am not insane, most e...

In 1963, as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I wrote a master's thesis on the antecedents of 1921 Kongo prophetism (ngunzisme, after the KiKongo for prophet, ngunza; "Kimbanguism," after the name of the most prominentfprophet, Simon Kimbangu). The thesis pieced together accounts of traditional and new urban cults which sought, through purification and initiation, to fashion an i...

The insistence that the prophets of Hebrew Bible were “forthtellers, not foretellers” is ubiquitous in academic, liberal Christian, and even secular circles. It categorically denies ancient Israel predicted future characterizes them instead as voices social critique. This article explains origins phrase, its philosophical religious underpinnings Protestant, Enlightenment, Romantic, “scientific”...

This article contains the reasons for the establishment of sacred trees in Israel based on a field study. It includes 97 interviews with Muslim and Druze informants. While Muslims (Arabs and Bedouins) consider sacred trees especially as an abode of righteous figures' (Wellis') souls or as having a connection to their graves, the Druze relate sacred trees especially to the events or deeds in the...