Nadya Williams

2 weeks ago | thebulwark.com | Nadya Williams

Religious FreedomA Conservative Primerby John D. WilseyEerdmans, 288 pp., $28.99FOR THE FIRST HALF OF THE SECOND CENTURY B.C., Rome’s leading conservative politician was Cato the Elder. While perhaps best known for his energetic demands to destroy Carthage, Cato was also a prolific writer and an unabashed eccentric. One of his surviving works is a practical manual, On Agriculture, of which the most amusing portion is a long list of cabbage recipes.

2 weeks ago | mereorthodoxy.com | Nadya Williams

Selena Wisnom. The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World. University of Chicago Press, 2025. $30.00, 400 pp. It is the dead of night, but the king cannot sleep. At last, tired of tossing and turning, he requests that a book be brought and read to him—the chronicle of his own rule. Listening to it does put him to sleep, although not before offering some productive food for thought.

2 weeks ago | nadyawilliams.substack.com | Nadya Williams

End of April means graduation season is drawing nigh! I graduated high school in 1999, college in 2002, and PhD in 2008. This means that this graduation season marks 26 years since I graduated high school, 23 years since college, and 17 since I finished my PhD (but if I got the math wrong—well, my PhD is in Classics, so…). In fact, my oldest son will turn 20 later this year. Gulp. I do have a point to make here other than publicly admitting that I am officially getting old.

3 weeks ago | mereorthodoxy.com | Nadya Williams

In the conclusion to his new book, Walking Faithfully Through Deconstruction: How to Be a Companion in a Crisis of Faith (IVP, 2025), Ian Harber powerfully and beautifully reflects: “No matter what doubts, sins, and sufferings come our way, Jesus is inviting us to come to him.

3 weeks ago | nadyawilliams.substack.com | Nadya Williams

Your name burns my lips like a Seraph’s kiss,If I forget you, Jerusalem, who are all gold. So wrote Naomi Shemer in her iconic Israeli song “Jerusalem of Gold.” Shemer originally composed this for the celebrations in honor of Israel’s nineteenth Day of Independence in May 1967. She selected Shuli Nathan to perform it first, and the recording of her performance with a simple guitar accompaniment still elicits goosebumps.