A brief but powerful revisionist look at Jesus’ early life and times.
A radical reappraisal of the story of Jesus’ family before his ministry began.
The tree of Christianity has branched into many different denominational directions throughout history. Debut author Schulz contends that these myriad divisions are the result of faulty biblical scholarship; there are translation-related problems with various texts, he says, and the back stories of some important figures have been lost. In this book, he excavates Jesus’ complex family relations, leading up to the beginning of his ministry in his 30s. When Mary announced her immaculate pregnancy, he notes, Joseph was at first understandably skeptical, although he prudently chose not to publicly challenge her claim; Jesus’ brothers, however, rebuked the child and chose not to be among his disciples when he later began his ministry. However, Schulz writes, the family members on Mary’s side did believe her, partly because of the miraculous birth of Jesus’ first cousin, John, from an elderly mother. Jesus chose some of his apostles from that group, says Schulz; John, in particular, was exceedingly close to Jesus because he grew up with him. The author also emphasizes Jesus’ devotion to his kin; after Joseph died, he says, Jesus delayed his divine mission in order to take care of them. Overall, Schulz meticulously argues his main point: that the centrality of family to Jesus’ life should also be a central Christian teaching: “As a believer, if I can’t see the love in the Gospel, what do I have to share with non-believers?” His study is rich in iconoclastic interpretations, boldly but carefully delineated by his scholarship. At one point, for example, he asserts that Judas was influenced by his Pharisee father to betray Jesus. Sometimes the prose can be uneven, though; for instance, the final chapter, which uses a mathematical metaphor to explain humanity’s relation to Christ, is more confusing than instructive. By and large, though, this is a provocative, original contribution to biblical studies.
A brief but powerful revisionist look at Jesus’ early life and times.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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