A laborious intellectual history of the origin and interpretation of the Gospels. New Testament scholar Dungan (Religious Studies/Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville) here traces the history of the synoptic problem from the 1st century to the 20th. One part of the problem refers to the priority of Mark’s gospel (generally thought to be written around 70 c.e., before Matthew or Luke). Dungan questions the conventional wisdom that Mark had to be written first because it’s the most sparse of the three, with no original resurrection account and terribly written Greek. Elsewhere, Dungan challenges scholars’ theory of “Q,” the hypothetical source which, in addition to Mark, allegedly formed the basis for Matthew and Luke (materials found in the latter two gospels that are not present in Mark have long been imagined to trace back to a lost gospel source named Q). These renegade arguments are very promising, but it takes Dungan nearly 350 pages to actually get to them. The preceding sections develop an overly lengthy and tedious history of gospel interpretation through the centuries. Dungan’s writing style is unimaginative, essentially following an annotated outline complete with bullets and ubiquitous subheadings. His constant use of ordinal numbers is confusing (“Part Two concludes with . . . the fourth component of the Third Form of the Synoptic Problem,” he writes, in a hopeless attempt to clarify the course of his argument). That said, one gets the sense that Dungan’s heart is in the right place; he asks provocative questions of the text and, more importantly, his fellow critics. He is quite rightly convinced that biblical scholarship has been mired in a Euro-American, white male paradigm for far too long and that there is no such thing as value-neutral textual criticism. Fellow biblical scholars may appreciate the first 350 pages, but general readers who were not aware that the synoptic “problem” was indeed a problem will only gain insights from the last section, if at all.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-47192-0
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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