A levelheaded, engaging reading of the Gospels and historical account that forms a solid sense of this pivotal personage and...
A literary study of the Roman governor of Judaea who condemned the prophet Jesus—reluctantly—to death.
Roman scholar Schiavone (Spartacus, 2013, etc.) reveals a deeply human story in the encounter (both historical and biblical) between a charismatic teacher denounced by the Jewish priests for fomenting “false” and dangerous preaching and the rather tone-deaf but benign Roman governor who did not care to make trouble with his Jewish constituency. In this slender, elegantly translated work geared toward lay readers, Schiavone navigates between memory—by the four writers of the Gospels, especially John, “the closest to the context of first century Palestine”—and history—Josephus and Philo of Alexandria, “two first-century intellectuals”—to help in the reconstruction of these contested events. The narrative culminates in the climax of Jesus’ preaching and testimony in Jerusalem and the trauma—the Crucifixion—that forms the Christian final sequence. Schiavone treads carefully through the narrative by the Gospel writers to get a sense of Pilate’s character and role as a governor who held his job for 10 years, which was rare—he was obviously valued by the emperor. Having arrived at the governor’s palace in Jerusalem in the early hours of the morning after being identified by one of his disciples, Judas, to the Roman authorities, Jesus was taken for interrogation by Pilate, who feared a trap by the Jewish authorities, the Sanhedrin, on this eve of the Passover. The governor could allow a criminal pardon, and he offered the assembled crowd either Barabbas, a notorious criminal, or Jesus, and the crowd still demanded the death of Jesus. Why? What had he done, Pilate wanted to know? He was declared a “sacrilegious blasphemer,” and, as the so-called King of the Jews, he was too dangerous for the community to let him live.
A levelheaded, engaging reading of the Gospels and historical account that forms a solid sense of this pivotal personage and his role on the epic stage.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63149-235-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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