From the origins and exodus to the restoration and new hope, Kingdom of Priests offers a comprehensive introduction to the history of Old Testament Israel. Merrill explores the history of ancient Israel not only from Old Testament texts but also from the literary and archeological sources of the ancient Near East. After selling more than 30,000 copies, the book has now been updated and revised. The second edition addresses and interacts with current debates in the history of ancient Israel, offering an up-to-date articulation of a conservative evangelical position on historical matters. The text is accented with nearly twenty maps and charts.
This special 16-book bundle collects fearless investigations into the paranormal from the pens of Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe, who for several decades been researching and writing about ancient and eternal mysteries. Their entertaining and thought-provoking works span numerous topics, from numerology, freemasonry, voodoo, satanism and witchcraft to the very nature of death and time. Additionally, they have produced numerous volumes examining the great unexplained mysteries and places of history, including The Bible, European castles, strange murders, arcane objects of power, the mysterious depths of the sea and remarkable people. Take a strange and beautiful trip to the mystical side of life in this special set! Includes Death Mysteries and Secrets of Numerology Mysteries and Secrets of the Masons Mysteries and Secrets of the Templars Mysteries and Secrets of Time Mysteries and Secrets of Voodoo, Santeria, and Obeah Satanism and Demonology Secrets of the World’s Undiscovered Treasures The Big Book of Mysteries The Oak Island Mystery The World’s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries The World’s Most Mysterious Castles The World’s Most Mysterious Murders The World’s Most Mysterious Objects The World’s Most Mysterious People Unsolved Mysteries of the Sea
For the past thirty years, David Mamet has been a controversial and defining force in theater and film, championing the most cherished liberal values. In some of the great movies and plays of our time, his characters have explored the ethics of the business world, embodied the struggles of the oppressed, and faced the flaws of the capitalist system. But in recent years Mamet has had a change of heart. He realized that the so-called main-stream media outlets were irredeemably biased, peddling a hypocritical, suborned, and deeply flawed worldview. Now he employs his trademark intellectual force and vigor to take on all the key political and cultural issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming. -- Back cover.
The true key to unlocking the secret of the Bible, according to author E. James Dickey, is found in biography. Some people would approach the Bible from a doctrinal, sacramental, historical, and archaeological point of view. Valid as these ways of understanding this magnificent treasure known as the Bible are, any or all of these measures fall far short of encompassing the whole content of the Bible. The way to embrace the totality of scripture and unlock the mystery therein is through biography, according to the author. No other spiritual or religious documents in the world have this element to it. Instead, dictums, commandments, sayings, maxims and axioms dominate such writings. Valid as they are, the truly human element is missing. Moreover, the relationship with the one, true God and with one another is dictated by those wordsbe they inspired, revealed, or fashioned. So, any relationship tends to become subservient to the statements themselves. Thus, freedom is thwarted and throttled at its very roots. It is true that biography often is somewhat sketchy throughout the scriptures, but enough elements are there to portray a real picture of the people involved. To look at the Bible from the primary relationship with the one, true God of the whole universe and with live human beings is the key to the scriptures. When sincere, it will produce fruits beyond compare.
Raised like sisters, Mariamne and Salome are indulged with riches, position, and learning-a rare thing for females in Jerusalem. But Mariamne has a further gift: an illness has left her with visions; she has the power of prophecy. It is her prophesying that drives the two girls to flee to Egypt, where they study philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy in the Great Library of Alexandria. After seven years they return to a Judaea where many now believe John the Baptizer is the messiah. Salome too begins to believe, but Mariamne, now called Magdalene, is drawn to his cousin, Yeshu’a, a man touched by the divine in the same way she was during her days of illness. Together they speak of sharing their direct experience of God; but Yeshu’a unexpectedly gains a reputation as a healer, and as the ill and the troubled flock to him, he and Magdalene are forced to make a terrible decision. This radical retelling of the greatest story ever told brings Mary Magdalene to life-not as a prostitute or demon-possessed-but as an educated woman who was truly the “apostle to the apostles.”
The inside story, told by excavators of the extraordinary discovery of the world’s oldest papyri, revealing how Egyptian King Khufu’s men built the Great Pyramid at Giza. Pierre Tallet’s discovery of the Red Sea Scrolls—the world’s oldest surviving written documents—in 2013 was one of the most remarkable moments in the history of Egyptology. These papyri, written some 4,600 years ago, and combined with Mark Lehner’s research, changed what we thought we knew about the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Here, for the first time, the world-renowned Egyptologists Tallet and Lehner give us the definitive account of this astounding discovery. The story begins with Tallet’s hunt for hieroglyphic rock inscriptions in the Sinai Peninsula and leads up to the discovery of the papyri, the diary of Inspector Merer, who oversaw workers in the reign of Pharaoh Khufu in Wadi el-Jarf, the site of an ancient harbor on the Red Sea. The translation of the papyri reveals how the stones of the Great Pyramid ended up in Giza. Combined with Lehner’s excavations of the harbor at the pyramid construction site the Red Sea Papyri have greatly advanced our understanding of how the ancient Egyptians were able to build monuments that survive to this day. Tallet and Lehner narrate this thrilling discovery and explore how the building of the pyramids helped create a unified state, propelling Egyptian civilization forward. This lavishly illustrated book captures the excitement and significance of these seminal findings, conveying above all how astonishing it is to discover a contemporary eyewitness testimony to the creation of the only remaining Wonder of the Ancient World.
Manly Palmer Hall was a writer, lecturer, mystic philosopher, founder of the Philosophical Research Society, an expert in tarot readings, and a Freemason. He wrote a series of occult books that became famous due to the author’s breadth of knowledge. Among his books, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry and The Secret Teachings of All Time: An Encyclopedic Exposition of Hermetic, Kabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolic Philosophy are best known. His books are primarily informational and contain numerous illustrations and original texts describing mystical components: Freemasonry symbols, Rosicrucians’ documents, recipes by alchemists, and Kabbalistic rules. The Lost Keys of Freemasonry The Secret Teachings of All Ages
NUMEROUS volumes have been written as commentaries upon the secret systems of philosophy existing in the ancient world, but the ageless truths of life, like many of the earth's greatest thinkers, have usually been clothed in shabby garments. The present work is an attempt to supply a tome worthy of those seers and sages whose thoughts are the substance of its pages. To bring about this coalescence of Beauty and Truth has proved most costly, but I believe that the result will produce an effect upon the mind of the reader which will more than justify the expenditure. Work upon the text of this volume was begun the first day of January, 1926, and has continued almost uninterruptedly for over two years. The greater part of the research work, however, was carried on prior to the writing of the manuscript. The collection of reference material was begun in 1921, and three years later the plans for the book took definite form. For the sake of clarity, all footnotes were eliminated, the various quotations and references to other authors being embodied in the text in their logical order. The bibliography is appended primarily to assist those interested in selecting for future study the most authoritative and important items dealing with philosophy and symbolism. To make readily accessible the abstruse information contained in the book, an elaborate topical cross index is included. I make no claim for either the infallibility or the originality of any statement herein contained. I have studied the fragmentary writings of the ancients sufficiently to realize that dogmatic utterances concerning their tenets are worse than foolhardy. Traditionalism is the curse of modern philosophy, particularly that of the European schools. While many of the statements contained in this treatise may appear at first wildly fantastic, I have sincerely endeavored to refrain from haphazard metaphysical speculation, presenting the material as far as possible in the spirit rather than the letter of the original authors. By assuming responsibility only for the mistakes which may' appear herein, I hope to escape the accusation of plagiarism which has been directed against nearly every writer on the subject of mystical philosophy. Having no particular ism of my own to promulgate, I have not attempted to twist the original writings to substantiate preconceived notions, nor have I distorted doctrines in any effort to reconcile the irreconcilable differences present in the various systems of religio-philosophic thought. The entire theory of the book is diametrically opposed to the modern method of thinking, for it is concerned with subjects openly ridiculed by the sophists of the twentieth century. Its true purpose is to introduce the mind of the reader to a hypothesis of living wholly beyond the pale of materialistic theology, philosophy, or science. The mass of abstruse material between its covers is not susceptible to perfect organization, but so far as possible related topics have been grouped together.
