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Andrew Harry Parker (born February 1942) is a British biblical scholar and social activist. Andrew Harry Parker (born February 1942) is a British biblical scholar and social activist.

Early Life and Education:


 * Born in 1942 in Calcutta    India, youngest child of Tom and Barbara Gordon Parker. The family     returned to England at the end of the Raj when Andrew was three and a half     and settled in Wilmslow Cheshire.


 * Attended Heronwater School in    North Wales (1949-55), under the headmastership of Keith Gaskell.

Other old boys include Tim Stead MBE, sculptor and furniture maker, one of the five master craftsmen who made the Millenium clock tower which stands in the National Museum of Scotland. (Is this necessary? If you want to include another old boy then why not use Francis Kuipers (see wiki) since we were then best friends)


 * Marlborough College  (1955    – 60)


 * University of St Andrews (1960 – 1964) Studied physics and Geology as    well as a first-year course in Biblical Studies because of an interest in the Bible first     kindled by his mother.
 * New College, The University    of Edinburgh (1964     – 1968) Studied Divinity following in the footsteps of his maternal great,     grandfather, Robert Rainey.

Working Life:


 * Ordained as assistant minister of Dunfermline Abbey (1967 – 8) but concluded he    needed to put his understanding of what the Bible was all about into     practice to verify and complete it.
 * In 1968 he went to France to join    the French Protestant Industrial Mission working first in     Nemours     where he earned a living as a builders’ labourer, and then in Paris     Montmartre, where he worked as a silk screen press operator printing     motorway signs.
 * In 1972 he was put in charge    of the centre in Nemours, which had become vacant, working two days in the     Sorbonne university in Paris to finance the centre’s activities.
 * Eventually he was joined by    a group of young men and women both Protestants and Maoists and together     they started conducting grass-roots political activities using the parish     magazine ‘Notre Foyer’ to give a voice to the voiceless within the community.


 * This greatly irritated the local authorities    and in the spring 1973, as the editor of the parish magazine, he was     attacked by the mayor who then took legal measures against him. So, for a     few months, he and his centre became a cause célèbre as the news media,     first in France and then also in England and Scotland, started reporting     what he and his team had been up to.
 * Finally,    in the autumn of 1973 he was expelled from France ‘for political activities     unbecoming in a foreigner' … an expulsion later rescinded in 1976 by the Conseil     d’Etat.


 * After his expulsion he took a year off living with his    parents writing for his own benefit an unpublished work Grassroots King     in which he attempted to review the whole Bible from his own socialist     perspective, culminating in Jesus’ life and work.
 * In 1975 he teamed up with Revd John Miller (who was minister of Castlemilk East Church) and his wife, Mary Miller to work together with them as ‘bottom up’ community    activists eschewing committee structures since these function in a top     down’ fashion.
 * At first, he earned a living    as a garage mechanic, then later as a porter in Leverndale hospital where     his mates persuaded him to become their shop steward.
 * Here he developed the    technique of communicating using cartoons for his workmates would not read     the reports he wrote concerning his negotiations on their behalf with     management. The change was dramatic not only did his mates now read his reports,     but they also shared them with the staff and patients on the wards… much     to the fury of management.
 * This success made him think    he should use cartoons to share his understanding of the Bible and so he produced     two rough works Digging up Parables 1 and 2 to try out on others.
 * Having mastered the    technique to his own satisfaction he then in 1980 wrote his first cartoon     book on the life of Jesus Political Parables which can be found on     his webpage: bibleincartoons.com.
 * However, the absolute    clarity demanded by his cartoon approach simply served to expose the     inadequacy of the socialist worldview he was using to understand the texts.     For while it proved perfectly possible to portray John the Baptist as a     socialist revolutionary it simply did not work with Jesus (as he explains     in the book’s prologue).
 * In 1981 he and his wife    moved to the east end of London where he decided to cease his community     activities so as to concentrate on his biblical research… though he     continued earning a living as a hospital porter in St. Pancras Hospital.


 * He quickly realised that to properly investigate    the intentions of the biblical authors it was necessary to adopt a     scientific, evidence-based approach. This meant setting aside his own theological     and political beliefs which he knew would make it unlikely others would be     prepared to follow him but as he saw it there was no other way.
 * Since he had already done a    lot of work on the parables he chose this as his entry point into the     Biblical material and in 1996 he wrote his first book Painfully Clear     the Parables of Jesus published by Sheffield Academic Press. In this     he showed that Jesus had adopted a reactive approach helping people see     things for themselves rather than proactively telling them what they     should do and believe as everyone else does.
 * He then set out to find from    where Jesus had got this extraordinary reactive approach discovering it in     Second Isaiah (quoted by Jesus) who saw Israel as ‘the light to lighten     the Gentiles’. He then traced the idea back further still to its origins in     the Exodus texts where Moses is described as discovering Yahweh as the god     of the Hebrews who, as marginals, had no proactive clout making it     necessary for them to change society in the only way they could: by putting     on a shaming demonstration. He wrote all of this up in two books: Light     Denied: A Challenge to Scholars and God of the Marginals which     he self-published on his webpage since SAP had found it impossible to sell     his first book.
 * In 2010    he started his magnum opus: a series of eight adult cartoon books covering     both the     Old and New Testaments, completed in 2020, which take the     form of an extended Socratic dialogue with an old religious friend John     Rowe. They set out his own scientific and strictly evidenced-based     understanding of the political movement (the Mosaic Covenant), which the     biblical writers were involved in either for, as with the prophets or     against as with Ezekiel and his priestly followers. The books end by     showing how Jesus fulfilled the Covenant both by correcting the prophets angry-god     nonsense (falling into the superstition trap) and by braving the     wrath of the Jerusalem priests a display which almost immediately set     his followers alight. Thinking about the Bible: Part 1 Ancient Man.

Thinking about the Bible: Part 2 The Mesopotamian Myths.

God of the Marginals: Part 1 The Myth Cycle.

God of the Marginals: Part 2 The Patriarchal cycle and Exodus stories.

Politics Before and After the Exile: Part 1 Kingship.

Politics Before and After the Exile: Part 2 Revolutionary Prophets and Revisionist Priests.

The Gospels as Political Good News: Part 1 Overcoming Common Misunderstandings.

The Gospels as Political Good News: Part 2 The Historical Jesus.


 * These works were all    published by Blurb books and can also be downloaded from his website.     http://bibleincartoons.co.uk

I can give you information on my expulsion when we are able to meet since I have all the newspaper cuttings.

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 * Has written blog articles (1) for PCN Britain on subjects such as XXX


 * Written two published books

- Painfully Clear: the Parables of Jesus (Sheffield Academic Press 1996)

- The Bible as Politics: The Rape of Dinah and Other Stories (Circle Books 2013)


 * Three unpublished books

- Searing Light: Parables for Preachers

   -  Light Denied: A Challenge to Scholars

   - God of the Marginals: The Ideology Demonstrated by Jesus which outlines his thesis and his responses to the writings of popular theologians such as


 * Published website


 * Completed a    four-volume series of cartoons on the Bible, published on Blurb books and     which can be downloaded from his website.

(1) https://www.pcnbritain.org.uk/blog/authors/andrew-parker  Andrew Harry Parker (born February 1942) is a British biblical scholar and social activist.

(1)  https://www.pcnbritain.org.uk/blog/authors/andrew-parker