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Cover image of "The Book of Job in Wonderland: Making (Non)Sense of Job's Mediators" by Ryan M. Armstrong

Love your friend as yourself

Perhaps the most popular command in the Bible is to “love your friend”—or “neighbor,” as it’s commonly translated— “as yourself” (Lev 19:18). Less popular today are the preceding verses, which command friends to rebuke each other if one has sinned. In ancient Judaism, a good rebuke was a mark of friendship, although it had to be done the right way.

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Book cover of This Volcanic Isle by Robert Muir-Wood

Charles Darwin the geologist

Who was Charles Darwin the geologist? Was he a nephew, or maybe a cousin, of the illustrious naturalist, who first published the theory of evolution by natural selection? I know they had big families… But no, this is the one and the same. It is often forgotten that, early in his career, Charles Darwin was a ‘card-carrying’ geologist.

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Cover of "Aquinas's Summa Theologiae and Eucharistic Sacrifice in the Early Modern Period" by Reginald M. Lynch, O.P.

Scholastic textualities in early modernity

Approaching present-day Paris from the south, the ‘rue-Saint-Jacques’ passes through the Latin quarter near the Pantheon and the Sorbonne (Paris IV) on its way to the Petit Pont bridge that crosses to Île de la Cité near Notre Dame Cathedral. For many centuries, this was the avenue of approach to the city for travelers from all points south.

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What’s the matter with moral fundamentalism?

Inspired by fellow philosopher Anthony Weston, I often ask my ethics students to create a diabolical toolkit of rules that would torpedo public dialogue. The idea here, I explain, is to spell out rules that would maximize the distance between “us” and “them,” ensuring that possibilities for cooperatively setting and achieving social goals—like peace, security, justice, public health, or sustainability—go forever unnoticed. For example, consider things like “prepare your comeback instead of listening” or “be angrier and talk louder than others.”

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Racism, jazz, and James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”

Reading is good; rereading is better. I can’t say with certainty how many times—forty? fifty?—I’ve read James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” only that for more than thirty-five years I’ve been reading and teaching the story, each time with an undiminished sense of awe and appreciation for how Baldwin issues a prophetic warning about the outcome of racism while making deeply felt gestures of hope and reconciliation.

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8 must reads in sport history [reading list]

Human civilization has always celebrated movement. Whether as recreation in everyday life, or elite competition to honour the gods of Olympus, sport has been a cornerstone of human culture for both spectator and competitor since records began. From the cricket crease to the athletics track to the All England Lawn Tennis Club, discover the history of sport in 8 books and bibliographies from Oxford University Press.

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Cover of "A Mystery from the Mummy-Pits: The Amazing Journey of Ankh-Hap" by Frank L. Holt

Diary of a dead man

This blog post introduces readers to the well-traveled remains of an Egyptian mummy now residing in Houston, Texas. If old Ankh-Hap still had his original hands and an endless supply of papyrus, he might have made entries like these in a diary of his afterlife.

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Cover of “The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by Terence James Reed

Goethe in shirt-sleeves

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is Germany’s greatest poet, then and now. At the age of thirty-seven he was on the way to being the centre of a national culture, and a European celebrity.

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Rediscovering Piano Time

It’s an eventful time in the OUP Music office, as we’ve just sent to press the latest editions of the Piano Time method books by Pauline Hall. It’s always exciting to see the publication of a new title, but these books feel extra special.

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Cover of Inquiry Under Bounds by David Thorstad

Bounded rationality: Being rational while also being human

The middle of the twentieth century was an optimistic time in the study of human rationality. The newly rigorized science of economics proposed a unified decision-theoretic story of how humans ought to think and act and how humans actually think and act. For the first time, we had good scientific evidence that humans were by-and-large rational creatures.

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Israel, Palestine, and reflections on the post-9/11 War on Terror

How can the United States best help Israel defend itself against terrorist atrocity? Obviously, sustaining the alliance and friendship with the United States is vital for Israel and its security. Equally clearly, the scale and nature of Israeli violence in Gaza since October 2023 has placed new and great strain on the US relationship.

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Cover of "Human Flourishing in a Technological World: A Theological Perspective" Edited by Jens Zimmermann

Artificial Intelligence? I think not!

These days, the first thing people discuss when the question of technology comes up is AI. Equally predictable is that conversations about AI often focus on the “rise of the machines,” that is, on how computers might become sentient, or at least possess an intelligence that will outthink, outlearn, and thus ultimately outlast humanity.

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Cover image of "Life in a new Language"

Ethnographic data-sharing as community building

The open science movement has fundamentally changed how we do and evaluate research. In theory, almost everyone agrees that open research is a good thing. In reality, most researchers struggle to put theory into practice.

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