Beautiful Durham– Part Two

If we start with definitions the word cathedra means throne, and the building is called that because it is the seat of the bishop of the area. This is the tomb for one of my two favorite Durham bishops– J.B. Lightfoot, the greatest NT scholar of the late 19th century, whose lost manuscripts I found in the monks dormitory in a cabinet/wardrobe like the one the Narnia kids went through to get to Narnia. Notice the right side of the next picture the line of wardrobes/cabinets where I found Lightfoot’s Acts, 2 Corinthians, and 1 Peter lectures as well as numerous essays, and with the help of Todd Still and Inter-Varsity Press we got published in three volumes. This room is now the artifact museum. Let’s concentrate on the west end of the cathedral in the rest of this post. This was where the original entrance to the cathedral was overlooking the river itself, but it was closed off and turned into a lady chapel, which housed the remains of the Venerable Bede of Jarrow, the father of English Church History, who managed to mess up our calendars by following the chronology of Dionysius Exeguus, who miscalculated the timing of Jesus’ birth. Jesus was of course born while Herod the Great was...