Psalms

We have the solution to Wordle on February 17, as well as some helpful hints to help you figure out the answer yourself, right here. We’ve placed the answer at the bottom of the page, so we don’t ruin the surprise before you’ve had a chance to work through the clues. So let’s dive in, starting with a reminder of yesterday’s answer. Yesterday’s Wordle answer Let’s start by first reminding ourselves of yesterday’s Wordle answer for those new to the game or who don’t play it daily, which was “STASH.” So we can say that…

The recent excavation at Hyrcania in the Judean Desert by Hebrew University archaeologists led to significant discoveries, including a Byzantine Greek inscription and a gold ring with Arabic script, revealing insights into the site’s historical significance as a desert fortress and Christian monastery. Above is an inscription in Koine Greek from the Book of Psalms, found at the Hyrcania Fortress in the Judean Desert. Credit: The Hebrew University of JerusalemArchaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem initiate…

In 2018, Paul Simon retired from performing. So Seven Psalms, a 33-minute work of seven interlinked movements, arrives both as a surprise and a revelation. Coming to Simon in a series of dreams, Seven Psalms finds this revered singer-songwriter approaching the big questions in a manner that recalls the seeking of the late Leonard Cohen, another great pop metaphysician raised originally in the Jewish faith. “This whole piece is really an argument I’m having with myself about belief, or not,” Simon notes in the album’s…

“Such things should never happen,” intones Nick Cave gravely, “but they do.” His most recent LPs, Ghosteen (2019) and Carnage (2021), were recorded in the aftermath of the death of his teenage son in 2015; another son, 31-year-old Jethro Lazenby, has since died. Seven Psalms, a short album of spoken word accompanied by Warren Ellis’s incidental music, is one more work thrown out by the centrifugal force of Cave’s grief; a bijou religious artefact on 10in vinyl available from his ephemera emporium, Cave Things.Curiously,…

Two years ago, at the height of lockdown, a fan wrote to Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files website asking his opinions about prayer. As usual on a website where anyone is invited to ask Cave anything, his answer was long and thoughtful. “Prayer is not dependent on the existence of a subject,” he said. “You need not pray to anyone. It is just as valuable to pray into your disbelief, as it is to pray into your belief, for prayer is not an encounter with an external agent, rather it is an encounter with oneself.”Clearly, this was a…