The Author

Laurentius Paulus

Lauri (Daniel) Paavola · b. 1975

Laurentius Paulus is Lauri (Daniel) Paavola’s name in Latin, as those taking part in public discussion once wrote theirs. He spent his childhood in the late 1970s in Tiberias and Jerusalem and returned to Jerusalem as a teenager, when his closest friends were both Jewish and Palestinian.

He studied philosophy of religion at the University of Helsinki and media journalism at a university of applied sciences. His master’s thesis on the seventh chapter of Romans was left unfinished in 2012, because he noticed that he stood in the same continuum as the text and could not get outside it. This book continues where it stopped.

He is the maker of A Tale of a New Era, a research project and documentary film to which this book belongs. He has also long worked with young people: in youth work, child welfare and confirmation camps. He lives at Woodslope Cabin near Porvoo, Finland, and the book was written there, in dialogue with a language model.