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Qoheleth Resources
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‘Qoheleth’ is the narrator of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. This Hebrew name is often translated ‘Teacher’ or ‘Preacher’, and originally referred to someone who gathered a congregation together in order to speak to them. His most famous catchphrase was ‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!’ |
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G.K. Chesterton wrote in his autobiography, ‘my birth… is an incident which I accept, like some poor ignorant peasant, only because it has been handed down to me by oral tradition.’ I quite agree! I was born (I am reliably informed) in Croydon, where I grew up. I have always answered to the rather inaccurate name ‘Richard Johnson’ – Richard means ‘a hard ruler’ in Anglo-Saxon, and my father was not named John. Never mind. I studied geography at university, although ‘studied’ may also be a rather inaccurate verb; ‘scraped through’ might be better. After selling books for a while I really did study for 4 years at London Bible College. I then worked for almost twenty years at Redcliffe College, as the Head of Biblical Studies and as the librarian, I was made redundant in 2009, a couple of weeks after my 50th birthday. As Bilbo (who was himself 50 at the beginning of ‘The Hobbit’) would have said, it was clearly ‘time for a new adventure’! It reminded me that in ancient Israel there was the following command for the Levites: ‘from the age of fifty years they shall withdraw from the duty of the service and serve no more’ (Num 8:25). Although I’m neither a hobbit nor a Levite, it was encouraging that I was not alone in facing major changes at the age of fifty. I decided to become self-employed, and to set up a small home-based company. Other pages of the website will give you an indication of the sort of things I do; but feel free to consult me if there is anything else you think I ought to be able to do that might also, as a useful spinoff, help to pay the mortgage and bring up two teenage daughters… Oh, and if you got to this page by accident and you were really looking for a counsellor in Lincolnshire, please do visit my wife’s website. |
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