Codex 632

Author: José Rodrigues dos Santos
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061173193
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
Who was the enigma the world knows as Christopher Columbus . . . and why has his true identity been covered up for centuries? When an aged scholar is found mysteriously dead in his hotel room, Thomas Noronha, expert cryptographer and professor of history, is called upon to finish the man's unresolved investigation. In the course of unraveling the puzzles and cryptograms shrouding his late predecessor's work, Thomas discovers a code that will set him on a breathtaking race across the globe—from Lisbon to Rio to New York and Jerusalem—as he is drawn into one of the greatest mysteries of all time, a shocking revelation that will alter everything we've always believed about one of the world's most celebrated adventurers.

Codex 632

Author: José Rodrigues dos Santos
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
When Thomas Noronha, a professor of history and an expert cryptographer, is called upon to finish an unresolved investigation involving an aged scholar who is found mysteriously dead in his hotel room, his life takes several unexpected and dramatic turns. As Thomas slowly begins to unravel the cryptograms and enigmas that shroud the old professor's work, he finds a code that could possibly change the course of historical scholarship: Moloc Ninundia Omastoos In his quest to decipher this mysterious code, Thomas travels around the world from Lisbon to Rio, New York, and Jerusalem. He quickly immerses himself in the fascinating history of the discovery of the Americas, and the one enigma that no historian has ever been able to solve: the true identity of Christopher Columbus. Mesmerizing in the way in which it reinterprets history most have come to regard as fact, Codex 632 reveals what could be one of the greatest historical misinterpretations of all time.

The Einstein Enigma

Author: José Rodrigues dos Santos
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780061719318
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Princeton, New Jersey, 1951: As a CIA operative watches from the shadows, two old men—Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion and world-renowned scientist Albert Einstein—enter Einstein’s home to speak privately about nuclear weapons and the existence of God. Present Day Cairo, Egypt: Over lunch in the Muslim quarter, world-famous cryptanalyst Thomas Noronha is hired by a beautiful dark-haired woman, Ariana Pakravan, to decipher a cryptogram hidden in a recently discovered secret document under heavy security in Tehran. A manuscript penned by Albert Einstein, it is titled Die Gottesformel: The God Formula. So begins a remarkable adventure that spans the world, as Thomas and Ariana pursue the dangerous truth behind an incredible document. The Einstein Enigma is a breathtaking fusion of science, thriller, and religion, a mind-bending trip to the source of time, the essence of the universe, and the meaning of life itself.

City of God

Author: Paulo Lins
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 155584684X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 556

Book Description
The searing novel on which the internationally acclaimed hit film was based. “A Scarface-like urban epic . . . punctuated with lyricism and longing” (Publishers Weekly). City of God is a gritty, gorgeous tour de force from one of Brazil’s most notorious slums. Cidade de Deus: a place where the streets are awash with narcotics, where violence can erupt at any moment over drugs, money, and love—but also a place where the samba beat rocks till dawn, where the women are the most beautiful on earth, and where one young man wants to escape his background and become a photographer. When City of God erupted on screens worldwide, it became one of the most critically and commercially successful foreign films of recent years. But few were aware of the story behind the film. Written by Paulo Lins, who grew up in the favela (shantytown) Cidade de Deus in Rio de Janeiro and who spent years researching its gang history, City of God began life as a coruscating, harrowing novelistic account of twenty years in the illicit pursuits of the youth gangs born from the favela. “With plot devices sometimes as minimal as the dawning of a new day, City of God seems more like a mosaic than a novel, but it’s a mosaic with unforgettably vibrant colors.” —Booklist

Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts

Author: Christopher de Hamel
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698163389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 642

Book Description
An extraordinary and beautifully illustrated exploration of the medieval world through twelve manuscripts, from one of the world's leading experts. Winner of The Wolfson History Prize and The Duff Cooper Prize. A San Francisco Chronicle Holiday Book Gift Guide Pick! Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is a captivating examination of twelve illuminated manuscripts from the medieval period. Noted authority Christopher de Hamel invites the reader into intimate conversations with these texts to explore what they tell us about nearly a thousand years of medieval history - and about the modern world, too. In so doing, de Hamel introduces us to kings, queens, saints, scribes, artists, librarians, thieves, dealers, and collectors. He traces the elaborate journeys that these exceptionally precious artifacts have made through time and shows us how they have been copied, how they have been embroiled in politics, how they have been regarded as objects of supreme beauty and as symbols of national identity, and who has owned them or lusted after them (and how we can tell). From the earliest book in medieval England to the incomparable Book of Kells to the oldest manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, these encounters tell a narrative of intellectual culture and art over the course of a millennium. Two of the manuscripts visited are now in libraries of North America, the Morgan Library in New York and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Part travel book, part detective story, part conversation with the reader, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts allows us to experience some of the greatest works of art in our culture to give us a different perspective on history and on how we come by knowledge.

The Codex Amiatinus and its “Sister” Bibles: Scripture, Liturgy, and Art in the Milieu of the Venerable Bede

Author: Celia Chazelle
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004391320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 662

Book Description
The Codex Amiatinus and its “Sister” Bibles examines the full Bibles (Bibles containing every scriptural text that producers deemed canonical) made at the northern English monastery of Wearmouth–Jarrow under Abbot Ceolfrith (d. 716) and the Venerable Bede (d. 735), and the religious, cultural, and intellectual circumstances of their production. The key manuscript witness of this monastery’s Bible-making enterprise is the Codex Amiatinus, a massive illustrated volume sent toward Rome in June 716, as a gift to St. Peter. Amiatinus is the oldest extant, largely intact Latin full Bible. Its survival is the critical reason that Ceolfrith’s Wearmouth–Jarrow has long been recognized as a pivotal center in the evolution of the design, structure, and contents of medieval biblical codices. See inside the book.

The Catholic Encyclopedia

Author: Charles George Herbermann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Languages : en
Pages : 974

Book Description

The Origins of the Koran

Author: Ibn Warraq
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 161592146X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
Scholars of Islam are familiar with the Koran's many errors and contradictions, but these have rarely been revealed to a wider public. THE ORIGINS OF THE KORAN is an attempt to remedy this deficiency by bringing together classic critical essays which raise key issues surrounding Islam's holy book. Indispensable to scholars and all those interested in the textual underpinning of one of the fastest growing religions in the world.

Scribal Harmonization in the Synoptic Gospels

Author: Cambry Pardee
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004391819
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 508

Book Description
In Scribal Harmonization Cambry G. Pardee examines the earliest Greek manuscripts of the Synoptic Gospels for evidence that scribes altered the text of the Gospels—either deliberately or inadvertently—in ways that eliminated discrepancies between them. The phenomenon of harmonization demonstrates that a scribe’s memories of previous experiences with gospel traditions could have a powerful effect on the manuscripts that they produced. This book assembles for the first time a catalogue of harmonizing variants from every manuscript of Matthew, Mark, and Luke from the fourth century and earlier. Far from reducing the unique voices of the individual evangelists to a single melody, the earliest scribes contributed new tones, innovative strains, and fascinating harmonies to the four-fold gospel tradition.

The Aleppo Codex

Author: Matti Friedman
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 161620270X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Winner of the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature A thousand years ago, the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible was written. It was kept safe through one upheaval after another in the Middle East, and by the 1940s it was housed in a dark grotto in Aleppo, Syria, and had become known around the world as the Aleppo Codex. Journalist Matti Friedman’s true-life detective story traces how this precious manuscript was smuggled from its hiding place in Syria into the newly founded state of Israel and how and why many of its most sacred and valuable pages went missing. It’s a tale that involves grizzled secret agents, pious clergymen, shrewd antiquities collectors, and highly placed national figures who, as it turns out, would do anything to get their hands on an ancient, decaying book. What it reveals are uncomfortable truths about greed, state cover-ups, and the fascinating role of historical treasures in creating a national identity.