Honing The Sword

The story of the Bamburgh Sword – one of the finest swords ever forged. In 2000, archaeologist Paul Gething rediscovered a sword. An unprepossessing length of rusty metal, it had been left in a suitcase for thirty years. But Paul had a suspicion that the sword had more to tell than appeared, so he sent it for specialist tests. When the results came back, he realised that what he had in his possession was possibly the finest, and certainly the most complex, sword ever made, which had been forged in seventh-century Northumberland by an anonymous swordsmith. This is the story of the Bamburgh Sword – of how and why it was made, who made it and what it meant to the warriors and kings who wielded it over three centuries. It is also the remarkable story of the archaeologists and swordsmiths who found, studied and attempted to recreate the weapon using only the materials and technologies available to the original smith.

In the late 5th century, a young man in northern Britain is called upon to defend local Britains and Picts against maurading Anglo-Saxons. It is his victories that propel him to become the legendary Arthur.

A modern spiritual liberation pathway. A spiritual traveler like no one else. The Journey is the process of returning to the original simplicity, nothingness, and it. By moving through mountains, one shall witness the vast flatland. By traversing over the sky, one shall witness the boundaryless space. And, by cutting off excesses, one shall witness the fundamental core. This is not a reassertion of ancient paths but a futuristic way of spiritual liberation.

This is a story of Jeremiah’s rescue of the last Judean king’s daughters. It has elements of espionage, action and adventure. It may read like a modern thriller, but it is based on the life of the biblical Jeremiah and the histories and traditions of other nations. It operates on the assumption that Jeremiah did exactly what God told him that he would do. God told Jeremiah that he would see the destruction of his nation but also the replanting and rebuilding in a different land that he did not know. The history uses modern dates. There are many espionage characteristics because while he loudly proclaimed Gods message of the consequences to his nation of their choices, he also had to use secrecy. The survival of the culture in the captives taken to Babylonia depended on it. Finally, he would use secrecy to protect the last descendants of King David. The main characters in this story besides Jeremiah are his partner, Baruch, a black royal guard captain, Ebed-Meleck and of course, the king’s daughters. It does not conflict with the Bible, but get ready to be entertained, enlightened and inspired.

The Eighth Sword follows The Swords of Athos. It begins when a young merchant, Adrian, is captured by Genghis Lin to steal the magical sword of Ibernia from his cousin, Antoine. Genghis can’t defeat his arch enemy, King Leopold, unless this sword is disabled. After refusing, Adrian is saved by the mythical gods and sent with Antoine to find the magical sword of Amazonia, an eighth world that has just been discovered and is threatened by the evil wizard Xena. Things immediately go awry, forcing the gods to summon all the keepers of the swords. Join these heroic men on their adventurous quest to keep peace in the worlds.

Three hundred Jewish tales in this extraordinary volume span three continents and four millennia. Culled from traditional sources—the Bible, Talmud, Midrash, hasidic texts, and oral folklore—and retold in modern English by Ellen Frankel, these stories represent the brightest jewels in the vast treasure chest of Jewish lore. Beautifully clothed in contemporary language, these classic tales sparkle with the gentle and insightful humor of the Jewish folk imagination. And like so much of Jewish literature, these stories abound in allusions to classic Jewish texts. Biblical cadences, phrases from the prayer book, and ideas from Jewish proverbs and heroic legends resonate in the air when these tales are read or told aloud. In The Classic Tales, history sheds its dust to become as intimate as family memory. While the breadth and depth of this book make it completely unique, three special features also help distinguish it: God appears without gender (though certainly not without personality); women characters, so often nameless in the original biblical text, wear their midrashic names (e.g., Noah's wife Naamah, Abraham's mother Amitlai, Lot's wife Edith); and many tales of Sephardic origin have been included to correct the common American bias toward Eastern European sources. What's more, this volume has been uniquely designed to be of use to educators, rabbis, parents, and students. It features a chronological table of contents as well as six separate indexes?arranged by Jewish holidays, Torah and Haftorah readings, character types, symbols, topics, and proper names and places—to make the tales easily referenced in a wide variety of ways. Anyone who needs a story to inspire a child, to illustrate a point, to develop a sermon, or just to uplift his or her own thirsting soul will find just the right one in The Classic Tales.