Tag: Islam

Khadijah, mother of the believers

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Bride of Muhammad

Mother of the Believers is a title Muslims give to the wives of Muhammad. It best suits his first wife, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. According to Islamic sources, Khadijah was a wealthy widow and Muhammad’s employer. Muhammad was twenty-five, and Khadijah was forty when She proposed to him. A woman proposing the marriage was odd indeed, given the time and place where it transpired. To Muslims, it is the ultimate proof that their otherwise misogynistic religion is very woman-friendly. The marriage between Khadijah and Muhammad was both happy and monogamous. When he was without Her on one of his journeys, Muhammad never had any desire for other women. They had six children, of which four daughters survived. Only after Khadijah had died did Muhammad marry other women.

Muhammad returned home shocked after the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him for the first time. He told Khadijah what had happened, trembling in all likelihood. She comforted him like a mother and supported him from then on. Khadijah’s moral support made Muhammad believe in his mission, and Her financial support was indispensable. Apart from a wife, Khadijah was thus like a mother to Muhammad, in the likeness of Eve and Adam. She was Muhammad’s boss in more than one way. Unlike the Bride of Christ, the Bride of Muhammad is in the records and hard to ignore. Women hardly ever were boss over their husbands in seventh-century Arabia. And if you see the larger picture, it is all too clear who She was.

Quran origins

The Quran lacks chronological order and repeats itself, so if you do not know its history, you might find it hard to believe that this scratchy collection of sayings is the word of God. Muslims claim the Quran was revealed to Muhammad by God, with the Archangel Gabriel being the intermediary. The first Muslims were illiterate, so they memorised the verses and did not write them down. Memorising such a lengthy text for decades is quite challenging. And the Muslims fought battles that took the lives of those who knew the verses.

The early Muslims likely split up the task of memorising the Quran and assigned multiple men to recall the same verses. How well they did that is anyone’s guess, but the outcome was what God intended, and it explains why the Quran is the way it is. Later, those who compiled the Quran did not attempt to edit or present them chronologically because humans should not distort God’s words. If only early Christians had shown that kind of respect for their scriptures, Christianity would have been an entirely different religion.

Historical analysis suggests parts of the Quran could come from Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian sources. But other parts seem original and could have been whispered by that supposed angel into Muhammad’s ear. The Quran also adds a few juicy details to existing stories the Jews have failed to mention in their Bible, for instance, King Solomon gathering an army of ghosts, men and birds, entering the valley of the ants, and ants talking to each other (Quran 27:15-18):

Indeed, We granted knowledge to David and Solomon. And they said in acknowledgement, ‘All praise is for God Who has privileged us over many of His faithful servants.’

And David was succeeded by Solomon, who said, ‘O people! We have been taught the language of birds, and been given everything we need. This is indeed a great privilege.’

Solomon’s forces of ghosts, humans, and birds were rallied for him, perfectly organised.

And when they came across a valley of ants, an ant warned, ‘O ants! Go quickly into your homes so Solomon and his armies do not crush you, unknowingly.’

In virtual reality, these things can happen. We have no evidence, but some things are more plausible than others. Talking ants is as believable as a serpent talking to Eve. Muslims claim Muhammad was the last prophet before the End Times and that the Quran corrects mistakes and omissions in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. At first glance, that is not particularly convincing, but the Quran contains a few discrepancies that may make sense in hindsight:

  • The Quran discusses Adam’s creation extensively but says little about how Eve came to be. The story of the rib is absent. Humans come from one soul, the Quran claims (Quran 39:6). The implicit assumption is this soul is Adam.
  • The Quran does not blame Eve for the Fall. One account explicitly blames Adam (Quran 20:120-121). That might be a crucial element in the original message of Christianity that is missing nowadays.
  • There is no original sin in Islam. The Quran says that Eve and Adam repented, and God forgave them (Quran 2:37, 7:23). The Quran never claims that Jesus was a redeemer for the sins of humankind.
  • The Quran names Jesus the Son of Mary and confirms the virgin birth, thereby implying that Jesus had no father, and because Christians call him the Son of God, it opens up the possibility that God’s name was Mary.
  • In the Quran, God orders the angels to prostrate before Adam, while the New Testament says that the angels must bow before Jesus, implying that Jesus could be Adam. The repeated mention could signal importance.
  • Finally, the Quran stresses the return to Paradise many times. Our return to Eden gets little attention in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The Quran mentions it so often that it could be of the utmost importance.

The Hidden Secret

The Quran claims that God is the greatest schemer (Quran 3:54, 7:99, 8:30, 10:21, 13:42) and capable of deception (Quran 4:88, 5:41, 11:34, 14:4). The existence of different religions and theological disputes is part of God’s plan. Otherwise, the message of Islam would have been more convincing. No one can be clever enough to uncover the underlying truth. And no one can be too dumb. After all, someone wrote the script. The Quran supposedly contains a hidden secret. Chapter 74 of the Quran is named The Hidden Secret or The Cloaked One. The cloaked man is Muhammad. The chapter further mentions that 19 angels guard hell. The conflating of cloak and hidden secret suggests a disguise. It says (Quran 74:31),

“We have made their number [that of the angels] only as a test for the disbelievers so that the People of the Book [Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians] will be certain, and the believers [Muslims] will increase in faith, and neither the People of the Book nor the believers will have any doubts, and so that those hypocrites with sickness in their hearts and the disbelievers will argue, ‘What does God mean by such a number?’ In this way, God leaves whoever He wills to stray and guides whoever He wills. And none knows the forces of your Lord except He. And this description of hell is only a reminder to humanity.”

Muslims believe it contains a clue proving the divine origin of the Quran. The verse implies that the number 19 has significance beyond the number of angels. In 1974, a guy named Rashad Khalifa claimed to have discovered a mathematical code hidden in the Quran based on the number 19. It gave rise to a numerological cult and countless films on YouTube. Numbers are usually meaningless. But the number 19 appears in the chapter named Hidden Secret. Hence, the number 19 may have significance, and the rise of the cult may not be an accident. What could the hidden secret be? Chapter 19 is named Mary, and it is about the Virgin Mary. The hidden secret may be that God’s name was Mary, something only God could know. The cloak may refer to God appearing to be a man while being a woman or the Virgin Mary being the cloak hiding the identity of God.

Virgin birth

The Quran corroborates the virgin birth of Jesus (Quran 4:171), thus implying Jesus had no father. The virgin birth is the miracle of the mother goddess. Christians might have invented that tale to refer to Adam as Eve’s son. The Quran consistently names Jesus the Son of Mary (Quran 2:87, 4:171, 61:6), while Christians call him the Son of God. The Quran claims God has no children and that Jesus was not God’s son either (Quran 6:100-102, 17:111, 18:4-5, 19:88-92). The reason likely is that the Meccan supreme deity Allah had a wife and children before God claimed this title. And the Virgin Mary was not God either. The repeating of the phrase Son of Mary suggests importance. It stresses that God is not Jesus’ father, and it may imply that God’s name was Mary.

As mentioned before, the star and crescent became the symbol of Islam. This symbol has a long history predating Islam, as it was associated with a Moon goddess. The moon represents the woman, and the star the child (Genesis 37:9). Hence, the Islamic symbol is like the Madonna with the child Jesus or the relationship between Khadijah bint Khuwaylid and Muhammad. She was fifteen years older and could have been his mother. Son of God thus means Son of Mary as Mary Magdalene was God. The picture that goes with it is the Madonna with the child, represented in the crescent with a star, the symbol of Islam.

Return to Eden

Muslims believe Jesus will return in the end times (Quran 4:159, 43:61). Even more crucial is our return to Eden, only sparsely mentioned in the Jewish Bible (Ezekiel 36:22–38) and the New Testament (Revelation 22:1-5). The Quran refers to Eden 147 times, or 3 * 7 * 7 if you’re into numbers with religious significance, using terms like Gardens and Paradise. It supposedly is the final destination of the righteous believers. It refers to Eden as the phrasing refers to providing fruits of that garden and having spouses. Genesis claims God created the woman to accompany the man and that Eve and Adam could eat all the fruits except from that one tree. For instance (Quran 2:25):

And give good tidings to those who believe and do righteous deeds that they will have gardens [in Paradise] beneath which rivers flow. Whenever they are provided with a provision of fruit from there, they will say, ‘This is what we were provided with before.’ And it is given to them in likeness. And they will have therein purified spouses, and they will abide therein eternally.

Our return to Eden is a central theme in the Quran, while the Jewish Bible and the Gospel hardly mention it. The repeating implies importance. It concerns the nature of our journey from the Garden of Eden to the Final Gardens of Paradise. The Jews wrote most of their Jewish Bible during their exile in Babylon and shortly after. They returned and interpreted their journey from the depraved city of Babylon to God’s city of Jerusalem. The Christians took over this theme, and their Babylon became Rome. If Jesus was Adam reincarnated and is to return, our final destination could be Eden, the Final Gardens of Paradise. Perhaps Eden stands for simple living, while Babylon represents advanced civilisation rather than evil.

Latest revision: 11 November 2023

Featured image: top small written Arab phrase “Umm ul Muminin”(Mother of the believers) then in centre Big written “Khadijah” and bottom small written Arab honour phrase ‘Radhi allahu anha.’

The Last Adam

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Adam is the Son of God (Luke 3:38) and Jesus the Firstborn of all Creation (Colossians 1:15). So, was Jesus Adam reincarnated? And was Adam born? The usual interpretation of the Firstborn of All Creation is that Jesus already existed with God before creation and was not Adam. That is not what the words say. Being born is not that hard to understand. It is something different from existence before creation. And so, there may be more to it than theologians can explain. And that is not much, considering they studied God for thousands of years.

Theologians only regurgitate what was previously fed to them, which is the vomit of previous generations of theologists. After so many centuries, their menu is spoiled. It doesn’t even taste like regurgitated vomit anymore. Do theologists discuss the simulation argument? No! They occupy themselves with 2,000-year-old controversies. Why would Jesus sacrifice himself for the mistakes of Adam? A good explanation would be if Jesus believed he was Adam and would survive.

Paul compared Jesus to Adam. In Romans, he wrote, ‘Just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.’ (Romans 5:19) And in 1 Corinthians, he noted, ‘As in Adam all die, so in Christ, all will be made alive.’ Jesus thus became the redeemer for Adam’s fall. Paul called Jesus the Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45). It might be worth noting that Adam is the Son of God too. Coincidence?

Perhaps not. Paul was careful about what he told and may later have concluded he had disclosed too much by comparing Jesus to Adam. The Quran underpins the idea that Jesus could be Adam. Jesus was like Adam in the way he was created (Quran 3:59). And several Quran verses state that God ordered the angels to prostrate before Adam (Quran 2:34, 7:11, 15:28-29, 17:61, 18:50, 20:116, 38:71-74). The Quran mentions it seven times, making it appear significant. And seven times, Jesus says ‘I am’ in the Gospel of John. Why is that? Christians think only Jesus deserves the worship of the angels.

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews claims that God made Jesus, the firstborn into the world, superior to the angels and made the angels worship him (Hebrews 1:1-7). And if you assume the Quran is a message from God, that presumed guy in the sky, who has superpowers but is not Superman, and not a man either, then Jesus must be Adam. The Quran also claims that Jesus will return (Quran 43:61). If he was indeed Adam, he could. Otherwise, God might convince someone else he is the Last Adam instead of Jesus.

Latest revision: 6 November 2023

Mohammed receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel

Religious experiences and miracles

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The Jewish people still exist after 2,500 years, while they have not had a homeland for most of the time. That is a remarkable feat, most notably because the Jews are supposed to be God’s chosen people. It is also a bit of an enigma that Christianity replaced the existing religions in the Roman Empire. Somehow, the message of personal salvation through Christ caught on. A pivotal moment was the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 AD. He made Christianity the favoured religion in the Roman Empire.

A few centuries later, a small band of Arab warriors created an empire stretching from the Atlantic to India, spreading a new religion called Islam. Is it a realistic scenario that the illiterate camel driver Muhammad became a crafty statesman after seeing an angel telling him he had messages from the God of the Christians and the Jews? Historians can explain it, but it is an account of what happened rather than an explanation. The question is, could it occur without someone pulling the strings?

We only know this world, so we cannot answer that question. Proselytising religions like Christianity and Islam have a built-in inclination to grow. That may not be a comprehensive answer. Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same deity. Our universe could be a simulation, and God might be the explanation. But who is to say it cannot happen otherwise?

When Islam arrived on the scene, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians in the area already believed in an all-powerful creator. Muhammad had met them on his travels, so he was familiar with these religions. Before that, Christianity had faced an uphill struggle. While the Roman state suppressed this religion, pagans left their gods behind and accepted the Christian God as the only true God. And they did so in large numbers.

That begs for an explanation, even though the conversion to Christianity was a gradual process that took centuries. The number of Christians increased 2-3% per year between 30 AD and 400 AD. Each Christian may have converted just one or two persons on average. Over time, exponential growth made Christianity grow from perhaps 100 followers in 30 AD to 30 million in 400 AD. Most people lived miserable lives, and the promise of an eternal blissful existence in the afterlife may have been too tempting to resist. But the most often cited reason for conversions were stories about miracles Christians did.1

An early miracle was Jesus appearing to a few followers after his crucifixion. The New Testament tells of miracles the disciples allegedly performed. These stories may be fabricated or exaggerated, but miracles are a consistent theme in Christianity until today. The Roman Catholic Church has a rich folklore with relics that supposedly have magical properties because Jesus has touched them. The most famous relics are the Crown of Thorns in Paris, the mysterious Holy Grail, the chalice from which Jesus drank, and the Shroud of Turin, a piece of linen cloth with the supposed image of Jesus’ face.

Many of the miracles attributed to these relics are unverifiable or can have other causes like luck, but a few cannot explained away that easily. The Roman Catholic Church keeps a record of them. On message boards, people tell stories about prayers heard and miraculous healings. Many of these stories might result from chance or other causes like a misdiagnosis or lying to get attention, but that is not always the case. And so, there may be more to it than science can explain. Some Muslims also venerate relics. Istanbul houses several relics of the Prophet Muhammad, such as a tooth, a footprint, dust from his tomb, and swords. His beard is in a Turkish museum. However, Muslims don’t have the degree of reverence for those relics as Roman Catholics.

A recurring event is the appearance of the Virgin Mary and other miracles related to her. Thousands of people have seen her. For instance, she appeared several times in Venezuela. She showed herself to Maria Esperanza Medrano de Bianchini in 1976, who received exceptional powers. She could tell the future, levitate, and heal the sick. In Egypt, Mary appeared at a Coptic Church between 1983 and 1986. Muslims also have seen her there. There have been many more Virgin Mary appearances. The most notable sequence occurred in Portugal at Fatima between 13 May and 13 October 1917.

On 13 October 1917 was the grand finale when the sun spun wildly and tumbled down to earth before stopping and returning to its normal position, radiating in indescribable beautiful colours. More than 50,000 people witnessed the show. They had gathered because of a prophecy made by three shepherd children that the Virgin Mary would appear there and perform miracles on that date. Faking this seemed hard to do, considering the technology available in 1917. A lack of holographic equipment would have made the effort challenging.

Jesus also appeared a few times, but less frequently than the Virgin Mary. An intriguing account comes from Kenneth Logie, a preacher of the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Oakland, California, in the 1950s. In April 1954, Logie was preaching at an evening service. During the sermon, the church door opened. Jesus came walking in, smiling to the left and the right. He walked right through the pulpit. Then he placed his hand on Logie’s shoulder. Jesus spoke to him in a foreign tongue. Fifty people witnessed the event.

Five years later, a woman gave testimony when she suddenly disappeared, and Jesus took her place. He wore sandals and a glistering white robe. He had nail marks on his hands, which were dripping with oil. After several minutes, Jesus disappeared, and the woman reappeared. Two hundred people have seen it. It was on film as Logie had installed film equipment because strange things were happening.2

One can imagine such events convince people the message of Christianity, even though most peculiar, is correct as Zeus and Thor failed to show up and do some tricks. It is also notable that the Virgin Mary did the most miracles. The explanation might be that God is a Mother, Jesus was the Son of God, and she was the birth mother of Jesus. The Virgin Mary replaced God as a Mother when God became a Father. In this way, she became the surrogate for God, appearing to have a power greater than Jesus.

Latest revision: 29 March 2024

Feature image: Mohammad receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel. Miniature illustration on vellum from the book Jami’ al-Tawarikh, by Rashid al-Din, published in Tabriz, Persia, 1307 AD. Public Domain.

1. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. Bart Ehrman. Simon & Schuster (2018).
2. How Jesus Became God The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee. Bart Ehrman. HarperCollins Publishers (2015).

Lucretia Garfield. Library Of Congres

The identity of God

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We live inside a virtual reality created by an advanced civilisation to entertain an individual we call God. That could be the purpose of our existence. The advanced civilisation probably is humanoid, which means God is much like us, with human imaginations and desires. The programme runs a script, so thinking of us as mere worms would be a delusion of grandeur. Real worms decide for themselves how they grovel and when. Welcome to the Theatre of the Absurd, where we are actors on a stage, and no one thinks. You might believe conspiracy theorists are nutters, and many of them indeed are, but apart from that, they are not paranoid enough by far. They are part of the plan, even if they do not want to. And they cannot escape their fate, not even by suicide.

So what about René Descartes, that world-famous fellow who once said, ‘I think, therefore I exist.’ Was he wrong? He begins with an assumption, ‘I think.’ He then arrives at a logical conclusion, ‘Therefore I exist.’ And so, he stamped a realness certificate on his person. But did Descartes really think? Even if he did not, he might still have an existence. Only that is dubious. Do Spike and Suzy exist? They are comic characters created by Willy Vandersteen, who does not exist anymore if he had ever done so because he stopped breathing. If you go down that road, everything you imagine exists. I just imagined a unicorn. Do unicorns exist?

Philosophers might discuss such questions for centuries, but scientists agree that merely thinking of a unicorn does not make it real. So, if God exists, we do not. We are imagined beings like unicorns. The God we imagine also does not exist because the things we imagine do not exist. There is only the God that exists in reality. But who is God? If we are here to entertain God, what is the fun of standing at the sideline? Why not take part yourself? We cannot know God. But if God plays roles and becomes one of us, we might identify some of those persons. The starting point could be Jesus, as there is a good chance he knew God as a person.

The gospels tell us that Jesus called God his Father as if it was a close personal relationship. And all four official Gospels infer Jesus was the bridegroom but do not mention the bride. The Church tells us that Jesus married the Church. But the Church did not exist when Jesus lived. A historian would call it an anachronism. An example of an anachronism is that the Roman Emperor Caesar took an aeroplane to Egypt to spend his holidays. There were no aeroplanes in the Roman Empire. And the Gospels do not say Jesus married the Church. Why should the Church lie about Jesus’ marriage? Is there something we are not allowed to know? Christians believe God is love.

The Bride of Christ probably was God in the person of Mary Magdalene. She made Jesus believe he was Adam reincarnated and that She was Eve reincarnated, that Eve did not come from Adam’s rib but that Eve gave birth to Adam, and that they were an eternal couple living from the beginning of Creation until the End of Times. Jesus was God’s son because Adam was. Hence, Adam is the Son of God (Luke 3:38), Jesus is the Firstborn of all Creation (Colossians 1:15), and Christians are born of God the ‘Father’ (John 1:13). Muhammad probably also married God in the person of Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, but unlike Jesus, he did not know.

Jesus and Muhammad have lived. The accounts of their lives may not be accurate because they date from decades after they died, but the early history of the Jews in the Jewish Bible – the Jews call it Tanakh – is mythical. Archaeological evidence does not support it. Moses never brought the Jews from Egypt into the Promised Land. Still, this story likely has a historical origin. Around the time Moses supposedly lived, the Egyptians who governed Canaan left, giving the Israelites a victory for which they had not fought. They might have seen it as a miracle, and the Israelites came to suspect that their favourite Canaanite deity, Yahweh, had something to do with it. Stories retold in evenings at campfires grow more sensational over time. Eventually, God split the Red Sea, drowned the Egyptian army and let the Israelites escape.

The Jews gradually formed a nation after the Egyptians had left. The Jewish Bible, the Tanakh, calls it the Era of the Judges. Local tribal leaders organised warfare and settled disputes. Thus, they were judges. As the Tanakh tells us, these judges had nationwide authority, but that probably was not the case. The oldest source of the entire Tanakh is the Song of Deborah. Historians think this song dates from shortly after the Egyptians left. Such a song likely did not pop up out of nowhere. Deborah brought victory to one of the local tribes that later became part of the Jewish nation. Deborah attributed that victory to their God, Yahweh. Deborah, also called the Mother of Israel, could be the earliest historical figure in the Tanakh and the founder of the Jewish nation. And so, She could have been God Herself.

The God of Abraham, known as Yahweh, the Father, and Allah, thus is a veil behind which the owner of this universe has operated so far. She only revealed Herself to Jesus. It made Jesus a unique prophet who developed grandiose views about himself as the Son of God who lived eternally from Creation to the End Times. No evidence suggests Jesus was indeed Adam. God made him believe he was. If so, he likely will not return, and we should expect a stand-in.

Jesus’ followers knew God married Jesus, but the Gospels don’t mention that essential fact. Scholars might have asked themselves why there are no eyewitness accounts or why Paul remained silent about what had transpired. Here is your answer. But why did the early leaders of the Church do it? To Jews, it was blasphemous to say God was a woman who married Jesus. Christianity had Jewish followers who had heard of the miracles Jesus did but did not know about his marriage to God. Non-Jewish converts had fewer issues with a goddess marrying a godlike human who lived eternally. Romans, Greeks and Egyptians all had myths about goddesses, godlike humans and gods having sex with humans. To them, it was business as usual, thus not particularly exciting.

Obfuscating the marriage, changing God’s gender, and introducing a virginity cult surrounding Jesus’s mother might have been the elected solution to resolve a controversy that tore the early Church apart. The leaders of the early Church probably felt uncomfortable about what they did, and some words in the Gospel of John suggest so. The compromise resolved the controversy and became Christianity as we know it.

God has a peculiar sense of humour. That can hurt your feelings. Try to understand the spectacle from God’s perspective. She lives eternally, or at least thousands of years, and uses us to pass Her time. And we are less than worms in God’s eyes. Those who anticipate the End Times expect them to be epic. That might still come to pass. The lyric Gimme The Prize by Queen could be a prophecy in disguise. It says, ‘I am the God of kingdom come,’ thus implying that the God of the coming kingdom will be a Queen.

That is a queer pun, also because Freddy Mercury was the performing artist. Queen also made a song named I Want to Break Free. In the accompanying video clip, Mercury dressed as a drag queen. Here in Western Europe, we found his performance funny, including Mercury’s gayish manners, and we had a good laugh. That was quite different elsewhere, for instance, in the United States. And now, it seems that early Christians have performed a gender change on God. This one is for the haters of the community of LGBT, and all those other letters and the plus-sign they added to make it even more inclusive, ‘Another one bites the dust.’ The leaders of this world are put on notice, ‘Give me your kings, let me squeeze them in my hands.’ And the battle is fought and won.

Lack of humour also plagues Muslims. Many are easily insulted. A Mohammed-drawing contest organised by the Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders angered Muslims in Pakistan. A Pakistani cricket player offered money to assassinate Wilders. But God doesn’t care. God even made Wilders do it. You can slit as many throats as you like, but humour will never die. If the nature of the relationship between God and Muhammad becomes public, it could alter gender relations within the Islamic community, and Pakistan will never be the same. Islam is one of God’s pranks. And so is Christianity.

The meddling of the Church Fathers with the relationship between God and Jesus gave Christianity its unique and baffling theology. Drinking Christ’s blood, eating his body, and the resurrection of the dead could be good ingredients for a motion picture called Zombie Apocalypse. Indeed, some of the Roman persecutions of Christians were due to a moral panic caused by a belief that Christians were a cannibalistic sect eating human bodies and drinking human blood. That is what they say about Satanists nowadays. But the outlandishness of Christianity begins with the idea that we are all cursed because Eve and Adam sinned. And then came Jesus, who sacrificed himself for our sins so you can save yourself by following him. There could be a silver lining to it. The belief in a Messiah might save humanity from destroying itself. And perhaps that was God’s plan all along.

Latest revision: 6 April 2024

Featured image: Lucretia Garfield