This text takes the story from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Each chapter focuses on a particular god and recounts the tales of that deity, not as they appear in classical literature but as they were re-created by artists like Botticelli, Titian, Poussin and Rembrandt.
By the end of the 15th century, the remains of the ancient gods littered the landscape of Western Europe. Christianity had erased the religions of ancient Greece and Rome and most Europeans believed the destruction of classical art was God's judgment on the pagan deities. How, then, didEuropean artists during the next three centuries create such monumental works as Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and Raphael's Parnassus? In The Mirror of the Gods, Malcolm Bull tells the revolutionary story of how the great artists of Western Europe--from Botticelli and Leonardo to Titian and Rubens--revived the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. Each chapter focuses on a different deity and sheds dazzling new light on suchfamiliar figures as Venus, Hercules, and Bacchus. Bull draws on hundreds of illustrations to illuminate the ancient myths through the eyes of Renaissance and Baroque artists, not as they appear in classical literature. When the wealthy and powerful princes of Christian Europe began to identify withthe pagan gods, myth became the artist's medium for telling the story of his own time. The Mirror of the Gods is the fascinating and extraordinary story of how Renaissance artists combined mythological imagery and artistic virtuosity to change the course of western art. The Mirror of the Gods profoundly deepens our understanding of some of the greatest and most subversive artwork in European history. This delightfully told, lavishly illustrated, and extraordinary book amply rewards our ongoing fascination with classical myth and Renaissance art.
God created us in his image. It is a truth as old as Genesis. Why does that concept confound us so? We look at our personal failings and the wickedness around us and realize how far removed we are from living as he intended for us to live. What exactly does it mean to be created in the image of God? How do we reflect God in a lost world? The answer is not cloaked in tedious theology, but in the simple declaration of Jesus. "If you have seen me, you've seen the Father. I and my Father are one." There it is. To live as the image of God means living like Christ. In this creative blend of biblical truth and inspiration, award-winning author Kirk Lewis explores the character traits of Jesus as he lived and walked on earth. Lewis' gift of storytelling and biblical insight into the character of Jesus turn scripture we take for granted into a living, breathing reality that jumps off the page and straight into your heart. ..".I plan to put this book by Dr. Lewis on the table by my favorite chair and pause more often with a trusted friend to celebrate the presence of a restoring God." -Ray Woodard, Send City Missionary, Vancouver, British Columbia ..".Lewis brings scripture to life with his self-examining applications and a creative style reminiscent of Max Lucado." -Dan Curry, former Pastor, South Oaks Church, Arlington, TX, and Area Representative, Baptist General Convention of Texas
The Mirror of God's Word A Biblical View of Physical Beauty Surgery to remove a brain tumor resulted in a change to Robin's facial features, causing her to take a deep look into the mirror of God's Word to find the answers to questions many of us have asked. "Why did God create me as He did when He is certainly capable of creating so much beauty?" "If beauty brings honor and glory to God, how can I possibly do so in my current physical condition?" "Is it possible for me to be content with my appearance?" "Will I ever be able to focus on others without thinking about how I look?" "How important is physical beauty to God anyway?" These are just some of the questions Robin seeks to answer in this six-week Bible study. The lessons contained herein do not focus on the subject of "inner beauty," although that is important to God. Instead, they are designed to help us transform our thinking by giving us God's viewpoint on this all-too-often misunderstood subject of physical beauty.
Sharp and funny, K.D. Keenan has inherited the mantle of stalwarts Patricia Briggs and Kim Harrison, and The Obsidian Mirror is a masterpiece of thrills for every fantasy reader. When Sierra Carter, an out-of-work PR executive, receives a call from Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent god of the Aztecs, she suddenly has more problems on her plate than unemployment. Saving the whole planet, for example. Sierra discovers that her former employer’s semiconductors are in reality a means of spreading a deadly evil around the world. Necocyaotl, Aztec god of death and destruction, has imbued his essence within every device, causing people to place their self-interest and selfish desires above all else. Sierra is called upon to stop him. With his request, Quetzalcoatl offers strange and gifted assistants, Coyotl the trickster, otherwise known as Chaco, a handsome shape-shifting avatar; and Fred, a diminutive and mischievous mannegishi. Although Sierra is skeptical, the revelation of a previously unknown world and its attendants is undeniable. As is the peril Necocyaotl’s return to power promises. Entering the fray with avatars and mythological creatures alongside her, Sierra will discover there are incalculable wonders—and dangers—within the new Old World.
The truth is, when you banish the gods from the world, they eventually come back—with a vengeance. In the near future, Justin March lives in exile from the Republic of United North America. After failing in his job as an investigator of religious groups and supernatural claims, Justin is surprised when he is sent back with a peculiar assignment—to solve a string of ritualistic murders steeped in seemingly unexplainable phenomena. Justin’s return comes with an even bigger shock: His new partner and bodyguard, Mae Koskinen, is a prætorian, one of the Republic’s technologically enhanced supersoldiers. Mae’s inexplicable beauty and aristocratic upbringing attract Justin’s curiosity and desire, but her true nature holds more danger than anyone realizes. As their investigation unfolds, Justin and Mae find themselves in the crosshairs of mysterious enemies. Powers greater than they can imagine have started to assemble in the shadows, preparing to reclaim a world that has renounced religion and where humans are merely gamepieces on their board.
With her repulsive face and head full of living, venomous snakes, Medusa is petrifying—quite literally, since looking directly at her turned people to stone. Ever since Perseus cut off her head and presented it to Athena, she has been a woman of many forms: a dangerous female monster that had to be destroyed, an erotic power that could annihilate men, and, thanks to Freud, a woman whose hair was a nest of terrifying penises that signaled castration. She has been immortalized by artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Salvador Dalí and was the emblem of the Jacobins after the French Revolution. Today, she’s viewed by feminists as a noble victim of patriarchy and used by Versace in the designer’s logo for men’s underwear, haute couture, and exotic dinnerware. She even gives her name to a sushi roll on a Disney resort menu. Why does Medusa continue to have this power to transfix us? David Leeming seeks to answer this question in Medusa, a biography of the mythical creature. Searching for the origins of Medusa’s myth in cultures that predate ancient Greece, Leeming explores how and why the mythical figure of the gorgon has become one of the most important and enduring ideas in human history. From an oil painting by Caravaggio to Clash of the Titans and Dungeons and Dragons, he delves into the many depictions of Medusa, ultimately revealing that her story is a cultural dream that continues to change and develop with each new era. Asking what the evolution of the Medusa myth discloses about our culture and ourselves, this book paints an illuminating portrait of a woman who has never ceased to enthrall.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Scopes Trial and the battle over evolution and creation in America's schools In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the setting for one of the twentieth century's most contentious courtroom dramas, pitting William Jennings Bryan and the anti-Darwinists against a teacher named John Scopes, represented by Clarence Darrow and the ACLU, in a famous debate over science, religion, and their place in public education. That trial marked the start of a battle that continues to this day-in cities and states throughout the country. Edward Larson's classic Summer for the Gods -- winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History -- is the single most authoritative account of this pivotal event. An afterword assesses the state of the battle between creationism and evolution, and points the way to how it might potentially be resolved.
TV presenter Graham Hancock's multi-million bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods remains an astonishing, deeply controversial, wide-ranging investigation of the mysteries of our past and the evidence for Earth's lost civilization. Twenty years on, Hancock returns with a book filled with completely new, scientific and archaeological evidence, which has only recently come to light... The evidence revealed in this book shows beyond reasonable doubt that an advanced civilization that flourished during the Ice Age was destroyed in the global cataclysms between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago. Near the end of the last Ice Age 12,800 years ago, a giant comet that had entered the solar system from deep space thousands of years earlier, broke into multiple fragments. Some of these struck the Earth causing a global cataclysm on a scale unseen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. At least eight of the fragments hit the North American ice cap, while further fragments hit the northern European ice cap. The impacts, from comet fragments a mile wide approaching at more than 60,000 miles an hour, generated huge amounts of heat which instantly liquidized millions of square kilometres of ice, destabilizing the Earth's crust and causing the global Deluge that is remembered in myths all around the world. A second series of impacts, equally devastating, causing further cataclysmic flooding, occurred 11,600 years ago, the exact date that Plato gives for the destruction and submergence of Atlantis. But there were survivors - known to later cultures by names such as 'the Sages', 'the Magicians', 'the Shining Ones', and 'the Mystery Teachers of Heaven'. They travelled the world in their great ships doing all in their power to keep the spark of civilization burning. They settled at key locations - Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, Baalbek in the Lebanon, Giza in Egypt, ancient Sumer, Mexico, Peru and across the Pacific where a huge pyramid has recently been discovered in Indonesia. Everywhere they went these 'Magicians of the Gods' brought with them the memory of a time when mankind had fallen out of harmony with the universe and paid a heavy price. A memory and a warning to the future... For the comet that wrought such destruction between 12,800 and 11,600 years may not be done with us yet. Astronomers believe that a 20-mile wide 'dark' fragment of the original giant comet remains hidden within its debris stream and threatens the Earth. An astronomical message encoded at Gobekli Tepe, and in the Sphinx and the pyramids of Egypt,warns that the 'Great Return' will occur in our time...