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In this week's lecture in our Old Testament course, Professor Christine Hayes examines 'the tension between covenant theology, emphasizing the conditional Mosaic convenant from Mt. Sinai, and royal theology, emphasizing the unconditional covenant with David in his palace on Mt. Zion. Following Solomon's death, the united kingdom separated into a northern and a southern kingdom (named Israel and Judah respectively), the former falling to the Assyrians in 722 and the latter to the Babylonians in 586. Analysis of the Deuteronomistic School's response to these historical crises and subsequent exile to Babylonia is evidenced through redaction criticism.'

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Pope Benedict is facing unprecedented scutiny following allegations that he is personally implicated in the Catholic Church's mishandling of child abuse reports. This week alone, three bishops have resigned as a consequence of their roles in the crisis. In Ireland, five bishops have resigned in the past year in the wake of state enquiries into the church's mismanagement of abuse allegations. To say the least, these are uncharted waters for the Catholic church.

Tonight, Radio 4 'investigates the Pope's track record in dealing with paedophile priests. When he was elected, Pope Benedict XVI promised to rid his Church of "filth", but he now stands accused of covering up abuse and failing to protect children from paedophile priests. In The Report this week, that the Pope mishandled two key cases - the first during his time as Archbishop of Munich and the second while leading the .' You can listen to The Report on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 tonight at 8.30 pm (and listen to the podcast here).

And tomorrow night, on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One Northern Ireland, I report for Spotlight on the crisis that threatens to overwhelm Ireland's Catholic primate, Cardinal Sean Brady.

The Daily Telegraph has whose leaked email has Some Vatican sources are even questioning whether the papal visit to Britain will still go ahead in September. That the Pope would cancel a state visit on the basis of a junior official's misjudged correspondence seems fanciful to say the least, but there is no doubt that Britain's relationship with the Holy See is currently experiencing some diplomatic strain.

There has been some discussion on the blog of the case of Lady Hope, who famously alleged that Charles Darwin had a deathbed religious conversion -- a claim that has been comprehensively challenged by Darwin scholars, such as , and . The recent death of Antony Flew -- who did have a conversion, of sorts, but well ahead of his deathbed -- has prompted .

On last Sunday's programme, I explained that I interviewed Antony Flew in 2005, not long after he announced that he was no longer an atheist. We recorded a twenty-minute interview. Professor Flew, who was then 82, struggled to understand my questions, his answers were mostly befuddled, confused and incoherent, and, in the end, my producer and I agreed -- out of respect to this once great intellect -- that it would be inappropriate to broadcast the interview.

How should a society organise itself? Should leaders be elected? Should they be selected because of their military prowess or their charismatic personalities? Or should one family be allowed to govern a society as a "divine right"? These are questions faced by every society in the history of the world, and the biblical world was no different. In this next lecture from Yale professor Christine Hayes, we explore Israel's transition from a tribal society under the leadership of elders and eventually charismatic "judges" to a nation under a monarch. The focus is on the books of Judges and 1 and 2 Samuel. Early stories of local heroes are woven together into a larger history that conforms to the exilic perspectives of the Deuteronomistic School. An extended look at representations of Saul and David (including God's covenant with David) reveal historical shifts and some ambivalence about monarchy and the ideal form of leadership.

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The Catholic abuse crisis is producing new stories and updates on an almost-daily basis. Here are some of the latest:

about the abuse crisis following an "" with victims and survivors. He pledges action by the church to deal with abusers and protect children, but does not elaborate further on the steps to be taken.

, addressed to the Pope and written by an expert on paedophilia who explains that paedophiles are incorrigibly recidivist and recommends their total removal from the priesthood. Some critics say this new letter contradicts church claims that their were in the dark in the 1960s, 70s and 80s about the nature of paedophilia and how best to deal with it.

is expected to express his sorrow at the "terrible crimes" against children perpetrated by some priests. Archbishop Vincent Nichols is also likely to make reference to the "inadequate response by some church leaders". In a letter to be sent to all parishes in England and Wales, the archbishop will say, "We ask their pardon, and the pardon of God for these terrible deeds done in our midst. There can be no excuses."

to the Pope after facing allegations that he hit children during the 1970s and 1980s.

Organisers of a major Latin Mass event in the United States, announce that the cardinal who wrote to a bishop congratulating him for not reporting an abusive priest to the police will .

It is only a matter of time before someone, somewhere, will offer a moral or metaphysical explanation for the Icelandic volcano. If you come across any commentator suggesting that volcanoes are the judgement of God, a consequence of sin, or an uncomplimentary comment on human affairs by one supreme being or another, do send me the link. In the meantime, here's a non-scientific .

Not according to Neil Addison, the barrister I interviewed on Sunday, who summarizes his opinion . Similar reasoning is , who lectures in Public International Law at Oxford. Both lawyers argue that Pope Benedict enjoys sovereign immunity under British law because he is recognized as a head of state by the UK government. Under the provisions of the UK's , heads of state are granted the same protection as diplomats and the question of whether any territory is recognized as a state is conclusively resolved by section 21 of that Act as follows:

"A certificate by or on behalf of the Secretary of State shall be conclusive evidence on any question--

(a) whether any country is a State for the purposes of Part I of this Act, whether any territory is a constituent territory of a federal State for those purposes or as to the person or persons to be regarded for those purposes as the head or government of a State; . . ."

In other words, as long as the UK's Foreign Secretary is satisfied that the is a state, the Pope, as the undisputed legal Sovereign of that state, enjoys diplomatic protection.

When, then, is the view of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office? According to the on the FCO website:

"The Holy See is recognised, both in state practice and in modern legal scholarship, as a subject of public international law, with rights and duties analogous to those of States. The Holy See is also recognised by the United Nations as an Observer State in the UN system (UNGA Resolution 58/314 of 16 July 2004). The Holy See possesses full legal personality in international law by the fact that it maintains diplomatic relations with 178 states, that it is a member state in various intergovernmental international organisations, and that it is: respected by the international community of sovereign States and treated as a subject of international law, having the capacity to engage in diplomatic relations and to enter into binding agreements with one, several, or many states under international law that are largely geared to establish and preserving peace in the world."

In short, the arrest of Pope Benedict while on an official visit to the UK might make for a thrilling storyline in a new novel by Dan Brown, but any time soon.

I've copied, below the fold, the Open Letter to Catholic Bishops by the theologian Fr Hans Küng, which was published in last Friday's Irish Times. of the letter claims that Hans Küng accuses Pope Benedict of direct responsibilty for "engineering the global cover-up of child rape perpetrated by priests". You can decide for yourself, from the text, if that is a colourful overstatement or a fair reading of the theologian's letter. I last spoke, on the telephone, to Professor Küng a couple of weeks ago and he was unwilling to be interviewed at the time but explained that he was planning a number of interventions in the current debate about the Pope's handling of the clerical abuse crisis. Küng and Ratzinger, as he then was, were young theologians at the Second Vatican Council, and are former academic colleagues at Tübingen University. Their paths have taken dramatically different turns since then: Ratzinger became a bishop, a cardinal, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then Pope; Küng became the church's most famous dissident theologian, challenging the doctrine of papal infallibility and other traditional beliefs, and was disciplined by Pope John Paul, who removed his license to teach as a Catholic professor.

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I was saddened to learn of the death, at the age of 87, of the philosopher , who was one of the 20th century's most significant contributors to the philosophical debate about belief in God. Flew was remarkably productive as a scholar. He wrote books as often as others wrote essays; he published papers as often as others wrote reviews. I saw him lecture a few times in the late 90s and he was one of the most engaging and animated speakers I've ever heard. He loved to do battle over ideas, and his training as an analytic philosopher sharpened his natural abilities as a reasoner to a razor's edge. In his hay-day, he was widely seen as the philosophical heir to Bertrand Russell as the country's leading public atheist. He attended C.S. Lewis's Socratic Club at Oxford, and was impressed by Lewis as a thinker but unpersuaded by his apologetics. His books God and Philosophy (1966) and The Presumption of Atheism (1976) made the case, now followed by today's new atheists, that atheism should be the intelligent person's default position until well-established evidence to the contrary arises.

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It's election time for our course on Old Testament studies. "Election" meaning the biblical concept of choice -- God's choice of Israel in particular. Israel is said to be holy, in the sense of "separated" from the other nations for a special divine purpose. In this lecture, Professor Christine Hayes continues to explore the concept of election as she moves from the Pentateuch to Joshua, the first of the so-called "former prophets". The conquest of Canaan is discussed with reference to recent archaeological finds. Did the conquest of Canaan take place as it is described in the Bible, as part of a military invasion and battle, or was the demographic transformation of that region the result of various waves of migration? There are plainly problems to be confronted in advancing the historicity of the biblical account: (1) the problem of matching this account with extra-biblical evidence pointing to migration rather than invasion, and (2) the ethical problem we encounter in a text which, in the judgment of some readers, presents a divinely-sanctioned act of genocide against the Canaanites. How should we read the Bible's account of the journey of the Hebrew people in to the land of Canaan?

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On tomorrow's Sunday Sequence, we'll be investigating what an "ethical" election might look like. is probably best described as a "public philosopher", and we'll be asking him to perform a public service of sorts by advising us on how to detect the presence of a hand trying to pull the rhetorical wool over our eyes. He's the author of Do They Think You're Stupid?: 100 Ways of Spotting Spin and Nonsense from the Media, Celebrities and Politicians. So what does spin look like during elections? Also on the programme: Jonathan Bartley from Ekklesia, the public theology think tank, has been about an 'ethics election'. I'll ask him to outline his ethics agenda for Election 2010. And we're joined by , CARE in Northern Ireland's new Assembly and Development Officer: what are the issues he would like the new class of public representatives to place high on their agenda when they are elected in May?

We're almost at the half-way point in our series of lectures on the Hebrew Bible. This week, Yale University professor Christine Hayes takes a look at Moses's final address to the Israelites and transfer of authority to Joshua, and examines the claim that Moses is the paradigmatic leader of biblical tradition. The structure of Deuteronomy is then outlined. Attention is given to updated and revised laws within Deuteronomy which exemplify the activity of adaptive interpretation of earlier tradition. The main themes of Deuteronomy are presented and include the notion of God's chosen people and chosen city, social justice, covenantal love and the centralization of cultic worship.

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This is Shirley Chaplin, holding the cross at the centre of the latest row about . Mrs Chaplin, who is due to retire later this year, has been wearing her cross on a necklace for three decades but, in the summer of 2009, she was asked by hospital managers at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital to remove it because, they claimed, it was inconsistent with their health and safety policy. After a risk assessment, managers determined that the necklace could be pulled by one of the patients in Mrs Chaplin's care. Managers also emphasise that their concerns are with the necklace, rather than the crucifix attached to it.

Shirley Chaplin maintains that the cross is a visible express of her personal faith and claims that the hospital policy is discriminatory. She also points out that Muslim staff at the hospital are permitted to wear religious headscarves, and regards the whole matter as an assault on her religious freedom.

Dr Taj Hargey, chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, with her, as do a number of Church of England priests and bishops (including, ). But is persuaded that this is a clear case of religious persecution.

This week, : it held that the managers' decision was based on a health and safety policy, rather than any concerns about religious expression. The tribunal also noted that the hospital had similarly required Hindu and Muslim staff to remove any items of clothing, religious or otherwise, that could be pulled on by patients in clinical situations. Mrs Chaplin is now planning an appeal.

So, what is really at issue in this case? Is this what religious persecution looks like in 21st century Britain? Is it merely "wooden-headed bureaucratic silliness", as Rowan Williams claims? Or is it an over-egged public debate which could now encourage a persecution complex on the part of some Christians?

I don't often post an open thread, but some of you tell me it's a good idea because it lets you get stuff off your chest without throwing the direction of other threads. It also permits you to make suggestions about subjects we might give some more substantial space to on Will & Testament. Let's see. Expatiate at will (sorry about the pun). Keep it legal. The house rules still apply.

Look at the eyes of Jesus in this portrayal by Hieronymus Bosch. His tormentors mock him with loose smiles and focused contempt, but Jesus looks at us, to us, as if to invite us in -- as if to question our status as viewers, as innocent bystanders.

One of the tormentors wears a dog collar, but we know that those who abuse the vulnerable are not always so obviously savage. The were themselves children, and their stories are interwoven with our society's story. It may be morally convenient to see the tormentors of Jesus as grotesque figures, but the truth is always messier. The American soldiers who had stories too, and loved ones, and families who were shocked by their inexplicable behaviour.

Stanley Milgram's suggests that many "normal", "ordinary" people -- people like you an me -- may be prepared to do similar things in similar circumstances given the right context. And the right context could simply be a perceived sense of permission, the nod from an authority figure. We prize our right to act in accordance with our personal conscience, but just how malleable that conscience may prove to be in morally fraught circumstances is a discomfiting question.

Then look at the figure in red on the left, his head-dress bearing the religious symbols of Islam and Judaism -- the crescent moon and the star of David. There were no Muslims when Jesus was mocked on the way to the cross, and the figure at the centre of the mockery was himself a Jew. Bosch's Jesus looks like a dislocated alien, when in truth, he was amongst his own. When we tell and re-tell the story of the crucifixion, we always layer the portrayal with our own perceptions, our own prejudices, our own place in space and time. To some extent, that is unavoidable. But if those portrayals indict others and leave ourselves as innocent bystanders, they become another kind of mockery.

The biblical account of what happened to Jesus, on a cross in April of AD 33, narrates both a particular crime and a universal dilemma. He was murdered because he got in the way of the powerful players of his day. He died because he refused to be less than he was. He was not prepared to compromise on his sense of identity or on the implications of his convictions. The religious and political elite did him in because he said the wrong things, he raised the wrong kinds of hopes, and the following he was gaining was a threat to the balance of power.

Ask enough questions about the structures of power in many societies today and you might find fellow-cause with Jesus. That is the dilemma we all face, and it is a moral dilemma: when to speak out for the rights of another, when to stand up in defence of the downtrodden, when to refuse to co-operate with a system that hurts people we hardly know, when to question the official justifications, when to look the powerful in the eye. Because had it : "There is no such thing as an innocent bystander. If you are a bystander, you are not innocent."

Picture: Christ Mocked (The Crowning with Thorns) c. 1490-1500, Hieronymus Bosch, The National Gallery, London.

The next lecture in our Yale University course, Professor Christine Hayes turns to the topic of biblical law "in a comparative approach that identifies similarities and differences between Israelite law and other Ancient Near Eastern legal traditions, such as the Code of Hammurabi."

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