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Who wrote the Bible?

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/philip-c-almond-176214">Philip C. Almond</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805">The University of Queensland</a> The Bible tells an overall story about the history of the world: creation, fall, redemption and God’s Last Judgement of the living and the dead. The Old Testament (which dates to 300 BCE) begins with the creation of the world and of Adam and Eve, their disobedience to God and their expulsion from the garden of Eden. The New Testament recounts the redemption of humanity brought about by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It finishes in the book of Revelation, with the end of history and God’s Last Judgement. During the first 400 years of Christianity, the church took its time deciding on the New Testament. Finally, in 367 CE, authorities confirmed the 27 books that make it up. But who wrote the Bible? Broadly, there are four different theories. <h2>1. God wrote the Bible</h2> All Christians agree the Bible is authoritative. Many see it as the divinely revealed word of God. But there are significant disagreements about what this means. At its most extreme, this is taken to mean the words themselves are divinely inspired – God dictated the Bible to its writers, who were merely God’s musicians playing a divine composition. As early as the second century, the <a href="https://archive.org/details/fathersofchurch0000unse/page/382/mode/2up">Christian philosopher Justin Martyr saw it</a> as only necessary for holy men "to submit their purified persons to the direction of the Holy Spirit, so that this divine plectrum from Heaven, as it were, by using them as a harp or lyre, might reveal to us divine and celestial truths." In other words, God dictated the words to the Biblical secretaries, who wrote everything down exactly. This view continued with the medieval Catholic church. Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas put it simply in the 13th century: “the author of Holy Writ is God”. He <a href="https://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FP_Q1_A10.html">qualified this</a> by saying each word in Holy Writ could have several senses – in other words, it could be variously interpreted. The religious reform movement known as Protestantism swept through Europe in the 1500s. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Reformation">A new group of churches formed</a> alongside the existing Catholic and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eastern-Orthodoxy">Eastern Orthodox</a> traditions of Christianity. Protestants emphasised the authority of “scripture alone” (“sola scriptura”), meaning the text of the Bible was the supreme authority over the church. This gave greater emphasis to the scriptures and the idea of “divine dictation” got more support. So, for example, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924029273996&seq=254">Protestant reformer John Calvin declared</a>: "[we] are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak at their own suggestion, but that, being organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned from heaven to declare." <figure class="align-left zoomable"><figcaption></figcaption></figure> “Divine dictation” was linked to the idea that the Bible was without error (inerrant) – because the words were dictated by God. Generally, over the first 1,700 years of Christian history, this was assumed, if not argued for. But from the 18th century on, both history and science began to cast doubts on the truth of the Bible. And what had once been taken as fact came to be treated as myth and legend. The impossibility of any sort of error in the scriptures became a doctrine at the forefront of the 20th-century movement known as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christian-fundamentalism">fundamentalism</a>. The <a href="https://www.apuritansmind.com/creeds-and-confessions/the-chicago-statement-on-biblical-inerrancy/">Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy in 1978</a> declared: "Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives." <h2>2. God inspired the writers: conservative</h2> An alternative to the theory of divine dictation is the divine inspiration of the writers. Here, both God and humans collaborated in the writing of the Bible. So, not the words, but the authors were inspired by God. There are two versions of this theory, dating from the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Reformation">Reformation</a>. The conservative version, favoured by Protestantism, was: though the Bible was written by humans, God was a dominant force in the partnership. Protestants believed the sovereignty of God overruled human freedom. But even the Reformers, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Luther">Martin Luther</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Calvin">John Calvin</a>, recognised variation within the Biblical stories could be put down to human agency. Catholics were more inclined to recognise human freedom above divine sovereignty. Some flirted with the idea human authorship was at play, with God only intervening to prevent mistakes. For example, in 1625, <a href="https://archive.org/details/catholictheories0000burt/page/46/mode/2up">Jacques Bonfrère said</a> the Holy Spirit acts: “not by dictating or inbreathing, but as one keeps an eye on another while he is writing, to keep him from slipping into errors”. In the early 1620s, the Archbishop of Split, Marcantonio de Dominis, went a little further. He distinguished between those parts of the Bible revealed to the writers by God and those that weren’t. In the latter, he believed, errors could occur. His view was supported some 200 years later by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-John-Henry-Newman">John Henry Newman</a>, who led the Oxford movement in the Church of England and later became a cardinal (and then a saint) in the Roman Catholic Church. Newman argued the divinely inspired books of the Bible were interspersed with human additions. In other words, the Bible was inspired in matters of faith and morals – but not, say, in matters of science and history. It was hard, at times, to distinguish this conservative view from “divine dictation”. <h2>3. God inspired the writers: liberal</h2> During the 19th century, in both Protestant and Catholic circles, the conservative theory was being overtaken by a more liberal view. The writers of the Bible were inspired by God, but <a href="https://archive.org/details/catholictheories0000burt/page/186/mode/2up">they were “children of their time”</a>, their writings determined by the cultural contexts in which they wrote. This view, while recognising the special status of the Bible for Christians, allowed for errors. For example, in 1860 <a href="https://archive.org/details/a578549600unknuoft/page/n359/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater&q=inspir">the Anglican theologian Benjamin Jowett declared</a>: “any true doctrine of inspiration must conform to all well-ascertained facts of history or of science”. For Jowett, to hold to the truth of the Bible against the discoveries of science or history was to do a disservice to religion. At times, though, it’s difficult to tell the difference between a liberal view of inspiration and there being no meaning to “inspiration” at all. In 1868, a conservative Catholic church pushed back against the more liberal view, declaring God’s direct authorship of the Bible. The Council of the Church known as Vatican 1 <a href="https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm.">declared</a> both the Old and New Testaments were: “written under the inspiration of the holy Spirit, they have God as their author.” <h2>4. People wrote it, with no divine help</h2> Within the most liberal Christian circles, by the end of the 19th century, the notion of the Bible as “divinely inspired” had lost any meaning. Liberal Christians could join their secular colleagues in ignoring questions of the Bible’s historical or scientific accuracy or infallibility. The idea of the Bible as a human production was now accepted. And the question of who wrote it was now comparable to questions about the authorship of any other ancient text. The simple answer to “who wrote the Bible?” became: the authors named in the Bible (for example, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – the authors of the four Gospels). But the idea of the Bible’s authorship is complex and problematic. (So are historical studies of ancient texts more generally.) This is partly because it’s hard to identify particular authors. The content of the 39 books of the Old Testament is the same as the 24 books of the Jewish <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hebrew-Bible">Hebrew Bible</a>. Within modern Old Testament studies, it’s now generally accepted that the books were not the production of a single author, but the result of long and changing histories of the stories’ transmission. The question of authorship, then, is not about an individual writer, but multiple authors, editors, scribes and redactors – along with multiple different versions of the texts. It’s much the same with the New Testament. While 13 Letters are attributed to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Paul-the-Apostle">Saint Paul</a>, there are doubts about his authorship of seven of them (Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews). There are also disputes over the traditional authorship of a number of the remaining Letters. The book of Revelation was traditionally ascribed to Jesus’s disciple John. But it is now generally agreed he was not its author. Traditionally, the authors of the four <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gospel-New-Testament">Gospels</a> were thought to be the apostles Matthew and John, Mark (the companion of Jesus’s disciple Peter), and Luke (the companion of Paul, who spread Christianity to the Greco-Roman world in the first century). But the anonymously written Gospels weren’t attributed to these figures until the second and third centuries. The dates of the Gospels’ creation also suggests they were not written by eyewitnesses to Jesus’s life. The earliest Gospel, Mark (65-70 CE) was written some 30 years after the death of Jesus (from 29-34 CE). The last Gospel, John (90-100 CE) was written some 60-90 years after the death of Jesus. It’s clear the author of the Gospel of Mark drew on traditions circulating in the early church about the life and teaching of Jesus and brought them together in the form of ancient biography. In turn, the Gospel of Mark served as the principal source for the authors of Matthew and Luke. Each of these authors had access to a common source (known as “Q”) of the sayings of Jesus, along with material unique to each of them. In short, there were many (unknown) authors of the Gospels. Interestingly, another group of texts, known as the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/apocrypha">Apocrypha</a>, were written during the time between the Old and New Testaments (400 BCE to the first century CE). The Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Christian traditions consider them part of the Bible, but Protestant churches don’t consider them authoritative. <h2>Divine or human: why does it matter?</h2> The question of who wrote the Bible matters because the Christian quarter of the world’s population believe the Bible is a not merely a human production. Divinely inspired, it has a transcendent significance. As such, it provides for Christians an ultimate understanding of how the world is, what history means and how human life should be lived. It matters because the Biblical worldview is the hidden (and often not-so-hidden) cause of economic, social and personal practices. It remains, as it has always been, a major source of both peace and conflict. It matters, too, because the Bible remains the most important collection of books in Western civilisation. Regardless of our religious beliefs, it has formed, informed and shaped all of us – whether consciously or unconsciously, for good or ill.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214849/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/philip-c-almond-176214">Philip C. Almond</a>, Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805">The University of Queensland</a> Image credits: Getty Images This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-wrote-the-bible-214849">original article</a>.

Books

We studied the ‘bibles’ of jazz standards – and found sexism lurking in the strangest place

We are two female jazz singers, jazz researchers and lovers of jazz. And we have discovered jazz gave us another shared experience – sexism. We’d both experienced garden variety sexism. Wendy was asked by a male school principal if her recent marriage meant she would resign from teaching to start a family. Melissa received passionate advice from a male audience member to swap her comfortable outfit with a “glamorous dress” when she sang jazz. But as university music students, neither of us imagined something as innocent as a key signature in a textbook might be a symptom of gender discrimination. A <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/key-music">key</a> tells musicians which set of notes a song uses. In singing, a key affects whether the notes will be sung in the low, middle or high part of the voice. But when we looked at what keys the “bibles” of jazz standards used, we found a hidden form of sexism. <h2>The Real books</h2> This unusual story begins in 1975 at the Berklee College of Music in the United States. Two music students, tired of reading shoddy, error-filled song sheets, created The Real Book to accurately notate jazz songs. Sold illegally to avoid copyright fees, it was a phenomenal success. After years in surreptitious worldwide circulation, publisher Hal Leonard transformed The Real Book into a <a href="https://officialrealbook.com/history/">legal edition</a>. In 1988, Sher Music joined the act and produced The New Real Book. Despite similar titles, Sher’s book was unrelated but mimicked the idea of clearly notating jazz songs. Together the two books cornered the market. The real books remain the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/10/arts/pop-music-flying-below-the-radar-of-copyrights.html">bibles of jazz musicians</a> everywhere because they contain hundreds of songs called <a href="https://www.jazzstandards.com/overview.definition.htm">standards</a>. Standards are common jazz songs jazz musicians are expected to know. Knowing them is your ticket to participating in jazz ensembles, and so universities use these books to train students. However, few educators realise one decision in 1975 about notating standards cemented a practice excluding women. Jazz is valued as a “conversational” style of music where musicians express personal ideas and real stories. “Authentic” jazz singing is associated with the lower voice we use when speaking. The human voice is a <a href="https://soundbridge.io/human-voice-instruments/">biological musical instrument</a> coming in a variety of sizes, with the male larynx (or voice box) generally larger than the female. This means men generally sing (and talk) in lower pitches, and keys that sit in the middle of the male voice are usually too low for women to sing. When our Berklee students and Sher Music notated songs, they chose keys used by jazz musicians. And during that era, male instrumentalists and male singers dominated the jazz community. So, when the real books were being developed, the editors didn’t choose keys that suited female voices. <h2>What’s in a key?</h2> <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Jazz-and-Gender/Reddan-Herzig-Kahr/p/book/9780367534141">Our research</a> examined the recordings of 16 renowned female jazz vocalists, including <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ella-Fitzgerald">Ella Fitzgerald</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/search?query=sarah+vaughan">Sarah Vaughan</a>. We sampled 20 songs from The Real Book and 20 songs from The New Real Book and compared the keys in the books with the keys of the female recordings. Less than 5% of 248 recordings fully matched the printed key. If women sing songs straight from The Real Book or The New Real Book, they are likely to be singing too low for their voices. And if they shift the male key up one <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/octave-music">octave</a>, it will be too high. Consequently, female jazz vocal students are disadvantaged. If they comply with the keys of the iconic texts, they won’t sound as “authentically jazz” as male students. The male voice will produce the conversational tone we have come to expect from jazz; the female voice will be too low or too high for this conversational style. The female professional singers we studied <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposition_(music)">transposed</a> the standards to keys that suited a jazz style. But this skill takes time for students to learn. Transposing requires understanding music theory and having confidence to advocate for your needs as a singer. Experienced jazz singers inevitably acquire these skills, but what about novice female singers? For many young female singers, their introduction to jazz is coloured by keys ill-suited to their voices. Place them in a band where the instrumentalists are predominantly male with little understanding of voice production, and it is an uncomfortable situation for aspiring singers. Fortunately, technology has advanced to a point where many standards are available on phones and can be transposed instantly. But this won’t happen until music teachers and jazz musicians understand and respect female singers by using the appropriate keys. So, can a key signature be sexist? Yes, it can when it’s presented as the only choice of key for female students learning jazz standards. It’s time to update our jazz bibles with sources including keys used by Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, and acknowledge sexism has been hiding in the strangest place. Image credits: Getty Images This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-studied-the-bibles-of-jazz-standards-and-found-sexism-lurking-in-the-strangest-place-189553" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.

Music

How the Bible helped shape Australian culture

Did you know the anti-Christian slang, “Bible-bashers,” was coined by Australians? Or that the largest crowd ever to gather at the Melbourne Cricket Ground was for Billy Graham in 1959? There were an estimated 143,750 people in attendance. These are just a couple of the historical gems waiting to be discovered in Meredith Lake’s book, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History. Lake draws on an astonishing range of sources to craft a narrative about the complex and nuanced place the Bible has held in Australian culture since hundreds of copies arrived with the First Fleet in 1787. She argues the Bible has mattered deeply in forming Australian culture, but never in a simple way. Time and time again, Lake traces the multiplicity of biblical interpretations and applications to show that throughout Australian history, the Bible has been used by those asserting colonial power and those subverting it as a tool of oppression and an instrument of justice. In doing so, Lake shatters the dominant competing myths that Australia is either a “doggedly secular society” or a “straightforwardly Christian nation.” We are neither, although both claims continue to rear their heads. The book is organised in four parts, each covering a major period of post-invasion Australian history: colonialisation; missionary expansion and immigration; federation and war; and the 20th century’s turn towards secularism. In each of these periods, Lake highlights the “three main guises” in which the Bible has appeared – “the globalising Bible, the cultural Bible and the theological Bible.” The globalising force of the Bible is one that connects people across geographical and cultural boundaries, and is thus marked by adaptation. By 1904, the Bible had been translated into 378 languages, with a global distribution of over 186 million. In Australia, the Bible’s arrival was accompanied by a prevailing European cultural heritage with linear ideas about time, entrenched concepts of government (and imperialism) and a language already shaped by biblical literature. All of which stood in stark contrast to Indigenous Australian culture. As a cultural force, the Bible was a central point of reference for Christians and atheists alike, particularly in the 19th century. It was associated with civilisation (acknowledging the problematic use of that term in British colonial history), with a rich literary and artistic tradition, and as the core text for determining morality and ethics, even by those who were not Christian. As the English agnostic Thomas Huxley wrote in 1870, “there still remains in this old literature a vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur.” The “theological Bible” is a term Lake uses to describe biblical interpretation that is intimately connected with faith. This type of interpretation considers the Bible the sacred “word of God”: one that is efficacious in continuing to communicate God’s will as revealed in the Bible and to transform lives. Lake acknowledges that this aspect of the Bible in history is the hardest to understand for people who do not share a faith perspective. Yet, she writes, “history always requires openness and imagination” and Lake’s use of these theological sources is sympathetic, accepting them on their own terms. That the Bible can be used in diverse ways is a thread that runs through this book. Christians interpreted the Bible through the lens of a theology of creation and providence to justify colonisation, the notion of terra nullius, and Australia’s White Australia Policy. But as has so often been the case, the same text was used to subvert these claims. From the very earliest phases of colonisation, convicts identified their gaolers as “Pharisees,” thus identifying themselves as Jesus-like innocent victims. Convict John Hawes, Lake records, mimetically referenced <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+23%3A34&version=NIV">Luke’s crucifixion</a> of Jesus as he prepared for the noose saying, “I forgive all my oppressors.” Indigenous Australians would also, paradoxically, find liberation in the very text that was so often used to oppress them. William Cooper, a Yorta Yorta man, applied what he learned on Maloga Mission to make biblical arguments for Indigenous land tenure and organise a Day of Mourning on 26 January 1938. “In Cooper’s hands, the Bible not only sharpened his critique of colonialism, it nourished his vision for a more truly Christian community.” Cooper reminded white politicians that all humans were created by God and of equal value in “the sight of God”. Several implications emerge from reading Lake’s book, but here I will focus on three. Firstly, Lake implicitly reminds us that the Bible’s chequered history in this country must be acknowledged in order for reconciliation to continue. History serves as a warning to any Christian that biblical interpretation requires care and responsible practice. Simultaneously, her work reveals the constancy with which the life-giving potential of this text rises to subvert injustice and oppressive power. Religious education The second issue relates to the place of the Bible in the Australian education system. The first schools in Australia were denominational; church schools that emerged to serve local populations. Understandably, the Bible was core curriculum in these schools where it was both prayed, preached, and taught in class. In the early 1900s, these schools were subsidised by the state but “without interference” in terms of doctrine or curriculum. By the mid-19th century, education was highly contested in terms of accessibility for rural and underprivileged children. In this context, the first government schools emerged. Famously, education was declared “free, compulsory and secular” in the Public Instruction Acts of the 1870s and 80s. As Lake writes, “secular, on this view, meant rejecting sectarian division in favour of common Christianity as a basis for citizenship.” While not denominational, most of these schools (except in Victoria) continued to teach the Bible, emphasising its ethical aspects as a common good for shaping citizens and society. Today, most Australian high school students will, at some point in their education, encounter Shakespeare, but not the Bible. This is despite the fact the Bible’s cultural force and historic import arguably outweighs that of Shakespeare. As I write, The University of Melbourne commendably offers subjects in Islamic studies (including the Qur’an) and Judaic studies, but nothing on the history of Christianity nor the Bible. While there is increasing recognition that the study of world religions (and their sacred texts) contributes to political and socio-cultural understanding, the historical privileging of Christianity has ironically meant its exclusion from a humanities curriculum in most places. Monash University offers a more rounded religious studies curriculum, with a “Biblical Texts and Contexts” unit. The University of Sydney offers a fuller program again. Despite these latter examples, Australia lags well behind global trends when it comes to our universities offering academic study of religion. The Bible is studied in theological schools and seminaries, too often divorced from a wider curriculum or rigorous critique. How do we expect the next generation to navigate the complexities of the current world without robust, academic religious education that includes Christian sources? Pluralism The third challenge Lake issues relates to pluralism and the kind of country we want to be. Lake argues that to “restrict or exclude religious voices, or to treat religious texts as illegitimate reference points in public conversation, runs counter to the ideal of a plural but inclusive polity and society.” She strongly challenges, rightly so in my opinion, the notion that Christianity or the Bible be given any “particular privilege” in a pluralistic society, but also asserts that “robust pluralism” cannot exclude the religious. This relates to but extends the point above: to have nuanced conversation and public debate, particularly about ethical and moral issues, requires some historical and cultural understanding of the role religion and religious texts have and continue to play in our society. We saw the importance of navigating these texts in last year’s debates about marriage equality and voluntary assisted dying. In the Australian context, a degree of biblical literacy remains essential, not least to mitigate against fundamentalism or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1988/04/09/theologians-cite-bible-against-apartheid/c77614b4-cc0a-4db0-99b3-1f4b75f28f2d/?utm_term=.f2150d83f2b4">poor biblical interpretation</a>. I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking to understand more fully the role of the Bible in Australian history as well as in contemporary culture and public debate. It is delightful and informative to read, and will provide much food for thought.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96265/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> Written by Robyn J. Whitaker, Bromby Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies, Trinity College, University of Divinity. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-bible-helped-shape-australian-culture-96265">The Conversation</a>.

Books

The perfect pound cake

Pound cake is a simple recipe, and it is loved by many for its ability to be dressed up or down, for any event, in any setting. It’s a delicious snack, a sweet start to the morning or a little teaser before dinner. Although pound cake seems easy to wrap your head around – it’s even better with a few slight adjustments to get the creamiest, buttery and smooth tasting home-baked cake. This recipe is one by Rose Levy Beranbaum in her cookbook <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cake-Bible-Rose-Beranbaum-1988-09-20/dp/B01K3NO8LU">The Cake Bible.</a> The chef’s recipe is a lot like the traditional method, however, uses milk, lots of extra butter and a little amount of baking powder. In result, a fluffy, buttery and creamy pound cake should be the turn out. “This cake not only has a silky-smooth dissolving texture similar to the famous Sara Lee pound cake but also the incomparable moist, butter flavour of a home-baked cake. It’s excellent keeping qualities make it ideal for slicing ahead and bringing on picnics,” she wrote. See the recipe below: Servings: 8 Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 50 minutes Total Time: 1 hour 5 mnutes Ingredients 3 tblsps milk (skim, low fat, or whole) 3 large eggs 1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract 1-1/3 cups cake flour, spooned into measuring cup and levelled with a straight edge 3/4 cup sugar 3/4 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 13 tblsps unsalted butter, softened (no need to cut it in pieces) Method 1, Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius and lightly grease an 8x4-inch loaf pan with butter or non-stick cooking spray. 2. Dust the pan with flour and shake off excess. 3. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk milk, eggs, vanilla until combined. 4. With a hand mixer (alternatively you can use electric mixer with a paddled attachment), place flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl before mixing on low speed until blended. 5. Add butter and only half of the egg mixture and mix on low speed until all the dry ingredients have moistened. 6. Increase the mixture to medium speed (high speed if using hand mixer) and beat for one minute. Scrape down sides of the bowl and add in the remaining egg mixture, in two separate additions, until completely combined. 7. Do not over-mix the combination, ensure the batter has a slightly curdled or grainy appearance. 8. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth top with spatula. Bake for 50-55 minutes or until cake is golden brown. 9. Allow cake to cool for 10 minutes on rack. 10. Wrap the cooled cake in plastic wrap or sealable plastic bag Notes The wrapped pound cake will stay edible for one week when refrigerated. Alternatively, the cake can be frozen for two months.

Food & Wine

3 bold new fashion trends for over-60s to try now

Dorrie Jacobson, 81, an internationally recognised expert on ageing stylishly, writes for her popular website <a href="http://www.seniorstylebible.com/" target="_blank">Senior Style Bible</a>, which celebrates stylish older women who are embracing their mature beauty. Here, Dorrie outlines three bold new trends to try this season. 1. Sequins Sequins are a shimmery, beautiful danger zone; a fashion faux pas just waiting to happen, so I tackled this look with more than a little trepidation. I have been noticing a lot of sequined pieces on the runway and wanted to style my “shimmer” in an edgy, modern way. I think the secret to styling sequins is to keep it simple. The best way I know how to do that is to pair them with a knit. For a dressed down look, mixing a sequined pant or skirt with a chunky knit sweater and boots is a great way to incorporate a bit of glam into a daytime outfit. For evening, pairing sequins with a more sophisticated cashmere top, like my poncho from Minnie Rose, creates a more sophisticated vibe. Keeping it clean and simple is a guaranteed to make you shimmer like a diamond. A real diamond, rather than a cheap plastic one. 2. Black and gold I think the trick to styling black well is focusing on the details. I look for pieces that have a beautiful, unusual cut and accessorize them with shoes and bags that add some dramatic flair. Sometimes the best thing you can do for an outfit is to let the accessories do the talking. Gold does that. When I saw these shoes (pictured) I thought, “Yes, they’re perfect. They have a little bit of glitz and a little bit of glam, and just a touch of Studio 54.” Sometimes all a basic look really needs is a sprinkling of disco. 3. Sheer styling It’s never a god idea to expose too much skin, at any age. So to make sheer pieces work, it’s essential to find the right garments wear underneath them. I’m a big fan of body suits and tank tops that have stretch to them, so they give you coverage as well as support. I always make an effort to match my under garment to the colour of the sheer piece, so it blends together and looks as though it could be one piece. In this case, I paired it with an old, Donna Karan body suit, so that it gave me a smooth line under the top and didn’t bunch up around the middle. Did any of these trends inspire you? Let us know in the comments below. For more of Dorrie Jacobson, please visit <a href="http://www.seniorstylebible.com/" target="_blank">Senior Style Bible</a> or her <a href="https://www.instagram.com/seniorstylebible/?hl=en" target="_blank">popular Instagram here.</a> Related links: <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/07/rules-for-wearing-sparkle-during-the-day/">Rules for wearing sparkle during the day</a> <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/06/15-stylish-seniors/">15 stylish seniors you will love</a> <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/07/how-to-wear-the-oversized-style/">How to wear the “oversized” style</a>

Beauty & Style

Rules for wearing sparkle during the day

Dorrie Jacobson, 81, an internationally recognised expert on ageing stylishly, writes for her popular website <a href="http://www.seniorstylebible.com/" target="_blank">Senior Style Bible</a>, which celebrates stylish older women who are embracing their mature beauty. To me daytime means simplicity, and that rarely includes anything that sparkles. However, quite recently I found myself invited to an afternoon soiree to celebrate a friend’s 70th birthday and I needed to wear something dressy, but with a relaxed vibe to it. Here are two ways to make your day sparkle a little, without being over the top. Scroll through the gallery above for images. 1. Sequined pieces I’ve been noticing sequined pieces mixed and matched in a variety of different ways this season, and thought this would be a great opportunity to test drive that trend. A few weeks ago I explored sequined styling for an evening out on the strip, but that look felt a bit too much for an afternoon affair. So I opted for a more informal style, pairing slouchy sequined trousers with a sheer blouse, both from H&M. Daytime sparkles are a great way to inject a bit of fun into an outfit. It’s not my new every day look, but I definitely enjoyed the extra dose of glam for an afternoon. 2. Metallic accents Metallic accents seem to be one of the consistent trends that continue to pop up on the runway every season. They give a basic outfit a modern edge, although it’s important to remember that moderation is key, especially when infusing a look with more than one metallic element at a time. Keeping it simple will assure that you look like a fashion forward fashionista rather than a wanna-be hip hop artist. I think one of the main reasons that metallics never really go out of style is because they’re so versatile. They go with absolutely everything and can be styled in a number of different ways. Here I paired my gold shoe boots by Zara with a pair of flared Celine trousers with gold stitching for a sophisticated evening look, although they can just as easily be styled with jeans and a leather jacket for a more casual vibe. Last year I did a blog post that featured a gold bomber jacket by DKNY. However shiny gold jackets aren’t for everyone, which is why metallic accessories are a great way to incorporate the trend into your wardrobe in a subtler way. A metallic shoe or bag is an easy way to instantly elevate a nondescript ensemble to something rather special. Are you game enough to try adding sequins to your wardrobe? Let us know in the comments below. For more of Dorrie Jacobson, please visit <a href="http://www.seniorstylebible.com/" target="_blank">Senior Style Bible</a> or her <a href="https://www.instagram.com/seniorstylebible/?hl=en" target="_blank">popular Instagram here.</a> Related links: <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/06/hair-care-secrets-from-an-81-year-old-fashion-blogger/">Hair care secrets from an 81-year-old fashion blogger</a> <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/06/the-rules-with-wearing-metallic-make-up/">The rules with wearing metallic make-up</a> <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/04/5-tips-for-creating-the-perfect-wardrobe/">5 tips for creating the perfect wardrobe</a>

Beauty & Style

How to wear the “oversized” style

Dorrie Jacobson, 81, an internationally recognised expert on ageing stylishly, writes for her popular website <a href="http://www.seniorstylebible.com/" target="_blank">Senior Style Bible</a>, which celebrates stylish older women who are embracing their mature beauty. As we age, women tend to get a little thicker around the middle and gravitate towards tops that are a bit more forgiving. Oversized tops can hide a multitude of sins, but can also make us appear bulky and shapeless if not styled correctly. The secret to wearing them is getting the proportion right. The basic rule of thumb when wearing any oversized piece, is to compliment it with a fitted one. Skinny jeans, long tube skirts, pencil skirts and slim cut trousers all work really well under oversized tops and capes. I also like to keep the bottom half monochromatic by matching my jeans and boots, which slims and elongates my legs. For quite a few years now, the legging has been growing in popularity and is quite commonly paired with oversized tops. Every top designer produces them and I see young, hip things running all over town in them, but for older women, I prefer a slightly more sophisticated version of that look. So, I’m going to suggest replacing your leggings with stretch skinny jeans. The look is the same, but the fabric is thicker and actually more flattering as it disguises any bumps or bulges, which leggings generally do not. Remember the recent uproar over lululemon leggings that were sheer in the rear? I don’t know about you, but my tush isn’t ready for that kind of exposure! Even though many oversized tops cover the derrier, it’s still important to consider pairing them with bottoms that provide ample and flattering coverage. Do you like this particular way of dressing? Let us know in the comments below. For more of Dorrie Jacobson, please visit <a href="http://www.seniorstylebible.com/" target="_blank">Senior Style Bible</a> or her <a href="https://www.instagram.com/seniorstylebible/?hl=en" target="_blank">popular Instagram here.</a> Related links: <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/06/80s-fashion-trends-making-a-comeback/">15 fashion trends from the 80s that are making a comeback</a> <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/06/new-trends-to-try-this-winter/">3 new fashion trends to try this winter</a> <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/06/fashion-tips-for-flattering-the-neck/">Fashion tips for flattering the neck</a>

Beauty & Style

Hair care secrets from an 81-year-old fashion blogger

Dorrie Jacobson, 81, an internationally recognised expert on ageing stylishly, writes for her popular website <a href="http://www.seniorstylebible.com/" target="_blank">Senior Style Bible</a>, which celebrates stylish older women who are embracing their mature beauty. Nothing can change your appearance more (for better or worse) than you hair. Style, cut and colour can add or subtract years from your looks. How long has it been since you changed the style of your hair? How long have you been going to the same hair stylist? Perhaps it is time for a change. As we age, it’s important to take a realistic look at our hair style to determine if it’s still current and flattering. It’s a sad fact that as we get older, our hair becomes thinner, the texture changes and it becomes drier and less luminous, so it requires more care. Although long hair can be very pretty, shorter styles tend to give the appearance of thicker, healthier hair. So if you are ready to make a change, it’s best to make the investment and seek out the advice of a really good hair stylist who can suggest what cuts and colours will best suit you. While a good cut is essential, changing the colour of your hair can also make a dramatic difference. For some reason (convenience I suppose) most women tend to lighten their hair colour as they begin to go grey. The result being that most mature women tend to have either grey or blond hair, leaving the days of being a brunette or a redhead behind them. <img width="465" height="462" src="http://www.seniorstylebible.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Dorrie-Jacobson-Head-shot1-e1423087600619.png" alt="Dorrie-Jacobson-Head-shot1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-220" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/> I was also going that route. I began adding blond highlights to camouflage my grey, but over time it morphed into a shade that really did not flatter my olive skin tone, so I decided to go back to my natural colour which is a dark rich red/brown. Wow. What a change! The darker hair colour and new spiky pixie cut took years off my face… and just flew away! Do you have any hair transformation stories? Share your experience in the comments below. For more of Dorrie Jacobson, please visit <a href="http://www.seniorstylebible.com/" target="_blank">Senior Style Bible</a> or her <a href="https://www.instagram.com/seniorstylebible/?hl=en" target="_blank">popular Instagram here.</a> Related links: <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/04/5-tips-for-creating-the-perfect-wardrobe/">5 tips for creating the perfect wardrobe</a> <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/04/ways-to-use-vaseline-in-your-beauty-routine/">6 surprising ways to use Vaseline in your beauty routine</a> <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/04/things-to-do-with-shampoo/">9 surprising things you can do with shampoo</a>

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