“... Pentateuch must be pre-exilic because of the great interest it shows in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. This large region (later known as Samaria), originally inhabited by the sons of Joseph, became a powerful and prosperous province of the Persian Empire. Schniedewind asks why biblical editors in the post-exilic period should have written so much about the ...”

“... since 9/11 – never more flagrantly than in the current American and Israeli attempt to justify Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The great unpunished war crime of our time is a product of the war on terror; Israelis who descend from survivors of one holocaust are now creating another.Richard Beck’s Homeland supplies abundant matter for contemplation. He ...”

“... authenticity, and its origin may be traced to that codifier of male dominance in marriage, St Paul. In II Corinthians iii, Paul seeks to abolish the distinction between readers of written texts or ‘epistles of commendation’ and the writers of such texts. He asserts that ‘ye’ – the Corinthians he is addressing ...”

“... and the CIA in Afghanistan, and alleged crimes committed in Gaza and the Occupied Territories by Israel – like the US and Russia, a signatory that failed to ratify – are highly unlikely to get past a US objection. Africa has responded with no more alacrity or even-handedness than the rest of the world to its heavy caseload of egregious crimes. The ...”

“... conservatives as well as liberals at the end of Reagan’s expensive two terms in the White House, Paul Kennedy suggested that like other great powers before it, the United States was dissipating the resources that had made it great. It was in ‘imperial overstretch’. And its political system, like that of Britain earlier in the century, would make the ...”

“... is also inescapably to reject, but also because the periodic rise and fall of nations, including Israel, would have happened anyway through causes inherent in the historical process, without any need for divine control. The doctrine is therefore fiction, not merely because like all other doctrines it is a human construct, but because it is ‘untruth’. As ...”

“... years; and why American audiences flocked to see it in some places (Boston, Cleveland, Houston, St Paul, Omaha) but not in others (Los Angeles, Chicago, New York). It also caused great division among critics. The film cost more than $300,000 to make, and lost more than half that amount. Although Browning’s career never recovered from it, his reputation has ...”

“... in the local paper and half a dozen glasses raised in tribute. His relationship with his son, Paul, does seem to have been a little strained, but then again, is there a father-son relationship that isn’t? I mean – seriously – Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? Betjeman apparently enjoyed teasing Paul as a child ...”

“... Iran’s existential enemy for its support of the Shah and Saddam Hussein, and its alliance with Israel.Soleimani was born in 1957 to a poor family in rural eastern Iran. He joined the 1979 revolution as a young man, and spent much of the following decade fighting in the war with Iraq, the defining experience of his generation. Hundreds of thousands of ...”

“... private school accent (he and my grandfather were born and brought up in London, and went to St Paul’s) Robin describes the events of a May night and morning near the plantation where he was assistant manager in Kodanad, high in the mountains in what is now the state of Tamil Nadu. The previous night a leopard had killed a bullock belonging to one of the ...”

“... reduced to his status as a ‘minority’ North African Jewish writer. Memmi’s attachment to Israel is partly to blame: his failure, or refusal, to see the colonial nature of Zionism did little to raise his standing among anti-colonial intellectuals. Nor did the unforgiving tone of his writing about the post-colonial condition: like V.S. Naipaul when he ...”

“... show what a man of determination and vision could make of a lowly upbringing. The great merit of Paul Smith’s new brief study of Disraeli is that he interprets his subject as an artist who moulded both his identity and that of his political milieu until he could create a congenial political style. The first half of the book is an enjoyable and highly ...”

“... which US plans for Iraq fell apart is astonishing, but the reason is plain: the US military and Paul Bremer, the US viceroy and head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, provoked simultaneous confrontations with Iraq’s two main communities, the Shia and Sunni Arabs, who together make up 80 per cent of the population. At the end of March, Bremer decided ...”

“... they dreamed up the idea of a summer school in which young musicians from the Arab world and from Israel could play together. They hoped, Said remembered in Parallels and Paradoxes, that it ‘might be an alternative way of making peace’. It was in Weimar, he noted, that Goethe had composed ‘a fantastic collection of poems based on his enthusiasm for ...”

“... seem exercised by the Supreme Court’s pro-choice decision in Roe v. Wade, he put pressure on Israel to return land to Egypt and he was insufficiently bullish towards America’s godless Communist enemies. He even chose a humanist, Walter Mondale, as his vice-president. In the early 1970s, Christian leaders had started building the alternative networks of ...”