A shot of the Mar Saba monastery near Bethlehem in Israel, perched precariously over the River Kidron, the ‘brook of Kidron’ or Cedron mentioned in the Bible. This was the monastery where St John Damascene lived in the early eighth century — he was contemporary of our own St Bede of Jarrow, and in many ways a similar figure. Like Bede, John was a gifted musician and poet, and a scholar comfortable in a wide range of subjects including mathematics and astronomy. Both sought to pass on the teachings of Scripture as they found them interpreted in the Church Fathers, acting always as faithful and thoughtful summarisers of a tradition and definitely not as peddlers of speculation and novelty.