Also if I could suggest, Agamemnon, forget about the background of the name and just think about how it sounds, say it 10 times in a row and I’m sure you’ll agree that Agamemnon Osborne is the way to go..

If not try some Shakespearean characters:
Mercutio
Oephelia
Viola
Beatrice

Or go completely off the wall (as these weren’t!?!) and go for peanut and butter!

Hmm.. I think Adam and Eve is my fav so far but I also think things that should be in thye running are:

Emma and Duncan
Charlotte and Duncan
Ireland and Republic
Ruth and Boaz
Obed and Edom
Fred and Ginger
Fred and Wilma
Tamar and Amnon

The first option would be my preference of course!

My guide was the Pastor of the All Souls Church of Cape Coast, the church started by the British Abolitionist Society after Wilberforce finally succeeded in abolishing slave trade in British Dominions. As i walked thru at age 28 , I imagined myself as John Neuton. the young entreprenure and buyer of black flesh for his sexual gratification . Who knows what were the devils’ delights at sea.

Murder, torture, and rape were the diversions and tools of control for slave merchants.

After his ship nearly sunk in a great storm enroute to England, that leg of the three way trade which transported American tobbaco and cotton, Neuton came to fear of the Lord. He began to admit his toils and snares were sin. Yet, for a season he continued in the flesh trade attempting to curb his ans his crew’s murders, tortures and rapes. He lead bible studies for his crews.

He finally quit the trade.

Lord, send more storms upon the flesh traders and labor exploiters.

If we decide that what the Israelites did in killing many people while entering Canaan can’t really have been God because that doesn’t fit with our understanding, then why should a recording of Jesus’ life and words be any more accurate?

To be honest, I’m sure there are many parts of the bible that are not ‘factually accurate’ – take different gospel accounts on the same event for instance. I find it hard to know where to draw the line – what is incidental and doesn’t matter, and what really does matter if it isn’t true/something different happened? I just wonder whether we are happy to accept things unless they make us feel uncomfortable or don’t fit with our understanding – in which case we try to work out what they ‘really meant’. We often seem to start from our feelings about something, rather than being a bit more objective.

Pete: //Why not question 1 John 4 in the light of Joshua – after all Joshua was written first!//
One good reason is that Jesus said ‘You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies…’ Unfolding revelation works forwards not backwards.

//The difficulty I have with ‘unfolding revelation’ is not in the idea itself; but in using it to argue that parts of the bible are wrong. The language used in Joshua is not particularly ambiguous – God specifically commands them a number of times to kill lots of people. //
If that is how you take the Bible. Or should we read that kind of passage as being the record that the people made for themselves, for their own cultural/historical purposes, of their understanding of their history and God’s dealings with them? They may have accurately recorded their wrong understanding of events.

One question that keeps nagging away at me is how historically accurate are the stories in Joshua? And what, if anything does this matter for our understanding of them?

[My own reading has led me to believe that they haven't got much credibility as historic events, many think Jericho wasn't even inhabited at the time...but I'm open to persuasion]

“I did not know that true inward justice wehich judges not by custom but by the most righteous law of almight God. By this law, the moral customs of different regions and periods were adapted to their places and times, while that law itself remins unaltered everywhere and always. It is not one thing at one place or time, another thing at another. Accordingly Abraham and Issac and Jacob and Moses and David, and all those praised by the mouth of God were righteous. When untrained minds judge them wicked they judge ‘by man’s day’ (1Corinthians 4:3) and assess the customs of the entire race by the criterion of their own moral code. It is as if a man, ignorant of which piece of armour is designed for which piece of the body, should want to cover the ehad with a greave or put on his leg a helmet, and then complain that it is not a good fit. [...] Oras if in a house one sees something being touched with the hands by a particular slave, which the waiter who serves the wine cups is not allowed to do [...] and a man is indignant on the ground that, though it is one house and one family, the same liberties are not given to all memebers to do what they please anywhere they like.
This is the style of those who are irate when they hear that something was allowed to the just in that age which is not granted to the just now, and that God gave one command to the former and another to the latter for reasons of a change in historical circumstances, though both ancient and modern people are bound to submit to the same justice. Yet in one and the same person on a single day and in the same house they may see one action fitting for one memeber to perform, another action fitting for another. [...] An act allowed or commanded in one corner is forbidden and subject to punishment if done in an adjacent corner. Does that mean that justice is ‘liable to variation and change’? No. he times that it rules over are not identical, for the simple reason that they are times. But the grasp of human beings, ‘whose life on earth is short’ (Wisdom 15:9), is not competent to harmonise cause and effect valid in earlier ages and among other nations of which they have no experience, in relation to the times and peoples of whom they have direct knowledge.’

[From St. Augustine Confessions; Book Three; vii (13)]

So I think he’s making the same point maybe about not being able to judge past times because wre don’t have a grasp on them. That we are still under the same law of justice but we shouldn’t assume that means the same actions apply. Or something like that. But more elegantly put.