The Pokey Finger of God

According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times. Writing in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he says concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old [...]

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The Rodney Stark book had a set of maps that easily decomposed into a chart of data that I have proudly appropriated as the basis for a much larger database. Admittedly, it was in the search for much of this data that I discovered Stark’s book, so he saved me a lot of time. I [...]

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First, two biographies on the emperor Constantine. Constantine the Great: The Man and his Times, by Michael Grant, and the ingeniously named Constantine the Great, by John Holland Smith. These are followed by a review of Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome, by Rodney Stark [...]

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