Although Galileo Galilei lived and died centuries ago, his story is more relevant to our lives than we might realize. Today we face enormous challenges such as climate change that are disregarded or questioned by those who fear that their implications will damage business profitability. Others posit a false dichotomy between religion and science in order to reject scientific evidence whose implications they fear. Galileo confronted this problem 400 years ago. His discoveries were based on observation and experiment. His telescopes revealed previously unknown planets, moons orbiting other planets, and other discoveries that essentially confirmed the Copernican universe that the Church had rejected as heretical because Church theologians insisted on a literal reading of the Bible. Even St. Augustine in the fifth century maintained that the Bible pertained to the realm of faith, not reason. But when Galileo argued essentially the same position before an ecclesiastical court in Rome, he was forbidden from publishing any more books. Livio's life of Galileo shows us how the great thinker made his discoveries about the heavens and also formulated fundamental laws of physics. As an astrophysicist, Livio brings insight into how Galileo reasoned his way to his conclusions, which we know today were accurate. Along with Newton, Galileo remains one of the two great figures at the dawn of the scientific revolution. He insisted on reaching the widest audience possible, publishing his work in Italian rather than Latin as had been the case until his time, when vernacular languages were rapidly replacing Latin throughout Europe. Galileo believed that every educated person should know science as well as literature. Did Galileo actually say at the end of his trial when he was forced to recant his discoveries, as legend has it, And still it moves, referring to the motion of the earth around the sun? Not likely, says Livio, but Galileo nonetheless remains an inspiration to scientists and those who value open-minded inquiry, which as Livio reminds us, remains threatened even today.

Note to readers: The New Testament Code Companion only contains the newly revised endnotes; original pictures, genealogical charts, and maps from Robert Eisenman's classic work. This text is designed for those who wish a side-by-side comparative experience with the end materials as they read the original text. The New Testament Code Companion is only available in print. The material in this text is contained within the eBook edition of The New Testament Code. In The New Testament Code: The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christ world-renowned scholar and bestselling author Robert Eisenman uncovers the Truth and unravels the real code behind New Testament allusions like "this is the Cup of the New Covenant in my blood" and connects them to "the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus" and "drinking the Cup of the Wrath of God" in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In doing so, Eisenman demonstrates the integral relationship of James the Brother of Jesus to the Righteous Teacher of the Dead Sea Scrolls, deciphers the way the picture of "Jesus" was put together in the Gospels, and clarifies the real history of Palestine in the first century and, as a consequence, what can be known about the real "Jesus." In paring away the traces of Greco-Roman anti-Semitism-which were deliberately introduced into "this picture" thereby tainting Western history ever since-The New Testament Code shows what happened in Palestine in that time, not what the enemies of those making war against Rome wanted people to think happened. In making these arguments and exposing these revisions, overwrites, and falsifications that were introduced into the New Testament, Eisenman also explains the esoteric meaning of many of the usages with which we are all so familiar in the Western World. In doing so, he identifies the Scrolls as the literature of 'the Messianic Movement in Palestine' and 'decodes' many well-known and beloved sayings in the Gospels such as, "Every Plant which My Heavenly Father has not planted shall be uprooted," "Do not throw Holy Things to dogs," "A man shall not be known by what goes into his mouth but, rather, by what comes out of it," and "These are the signs that the Lord did in Cana of Galilee." Offering a thorough and in-depth, point-by-point analysis of James' relationship to the Dead Sea Scrolls, he illumines such subjects as the "Pella Flight," "the Wilderness Camps," and Paul as an "Herodian," exposing Peter's true historical role as "a prototypical Essene," who was used in the Gospels and the Book of Acts as a mouthpiece for Anti-Semitism, and demonstrating how, once we have found the Historical James, we have found the Historical Jesus. He covers new archaeological discoveries along the Dead Sea, AMS radiocarbon dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the controversial almost miraculous appearance of the "James Ossuary" (which he considers having been based on his book on James) and the reasons for its being considered a fraud. A crucial new point that emerges in The New Testament Code is the identification of the document known as the MMT as a Letter from James to someone early Church Fathers call the "Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates." Readers will not be disappointed.

It's a little-known fact, but Elvis Presley - the most Christian icon of American pop culture - was Jewish. Heading the cast in a documentary about Elvis's Jewish roots are a Hasidic Jewish Elvis impersonator who performs at senior citizens homes under the stage name Schmelvis and an eccentric Orthodox rabbi named Reuben Poupko. In the book, Schmelvis: The Jewish Roots of Elvis Presley, the films producers Max Wallace and Jonathan Goldstein take the reader behind the scenes to recreate the strange adventures involved in the making of the documentary that took cast and crew to Israel and Graceland. The book includes the following discoveries about Elvis's Jewish background: Elvis always wore a Jewish Chai pendant; he put a Star of David on his mothers headstone; he spent his teenage years living in a predominantly Jewish Memphis neighborhood; cantorial records may have influenced Elvis's singing style; as a young man, he had a nose-job to reduce the prominence of his Jewish nose.

Archaeology and Bible--two simple terms, often used together, understood by everybody. But are they understood properly? If so, why are both subject to such controversy? And what can archaeology contribute to our understanding of the Bible? These are the problems addressed by Professor Dever in this book. Dever first looks at the nature and recent development of both archaeology and Biblical studies, and then lays the groundwork for a new a productive relationship between these two disciplines. His "case studies" are three eras in Israelite history: the period of settlement in Canaan, the period of the United Monarchy, and the period of religious development, chiefly during the Divided Monarchy. In each case Dever explores by means of recent discoveries what archaeology, couples with textual study, can contribute to the illumination of the life and times of ancient Israel. Given the flood of new information that has come from recent archaeological discoveries, Dever has chosen to draw evidence largely from excavations and surveys done in Israel in the last ten years--many still unpublished--concerning archaeology and the Old Testament. Dever's work not only brings the reader up to date on recent archaeological discoveries as they pertain to the Hebrew Bible, but indeed goes further in offering an original interpretation of the relationship between the study of the Bible and the uncovering of the material culture of the ancient Near East. Extensive notes, plus the use of much new and/or unpublished data, will make the volume useful to graduate students and professors in the fields of Biblical studies and Syro-Palestinian archaeology, and the seminarians, pastors, rabbis, and others. This book provides stimulating, provocative, and often controversial reading as well as a compendium of valuable insights and marginalia that symbolizes the state of the art of Biblical archaeology today.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the pueblos of the Southwest frequently inspired Anglo-American visitors to express their sense of wonder and enchantment in biblical references. Frank Hamilton Cushing's first account of Zuni pueblo described a setting that looked like "The Pools of Palestine." Drawn to the Southwest, Mabel Dodge imagined "a garden of Eden, inhabited by an unfallen tribe of men and women." There she was attracted to Tony Luhan, a Taos Indian who looked "like a Biblical figure." When historian Jerold Auerbach first saw Edward S. Curtis's early twentieth-century photograph Taos Water Girls , he realized that "here, indeed, was the biblical Rebecca, relocated to New Mexico from ancient Haran, where Abraham's faithful servant had journeyed to find a suitable wife for Isaac. Rebecca with her water pitcher is as familiar a biblical icon as Noah and his ark or Moses with the stone tablets. Curtis had recast her as the archetypal Pueblo maiden." Explorers in Eden uncovers an intriguing array of diaries, letters, memoirs, photographs, paintings, postcards, advertisements, anthropological field studies, and scholarly monographs. They reveal how Anglo-Americans disenchanted with modern urban industrial society developed a deep and rich fascination with pueblo culture through their biblical associations.