by David Rosenberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 30, 2006
For lay readers and scholars, a valuable exploration of how Abraham and his biographers fit into the larger scheme of Jewish...
Innovative look at the patriarch by biblical scholar Rosenberg (Dreams of Being Eaten Alive, 2000, etc.).
The author begins by asserting that Abraham was indeed a real person, not a character of myth. As such, his life can be fleshed out by an examination of archeological evidence from his birthplace, Sumerian Ur. Using cuneiform texts found mainly in the last several decades, Rosenberg attempts to shed light on how Abraham was educated, what his father’s work was, even what his family life was like. In his portrait, Abraham is a man of great learning and social status, interested in preserving not only himself and his bloodline, but also his Sumerian culture. Rosenberg implies that Abraham actually gave birth to the new Hebrew culture. He also presents a very different view of Abraham’s relationship to Yahweh, asserting that he would have first viewed Yahweh as a household god, thus making their relationship an intimate one from the outset. Rosenberg breathes life not only into Abraham but also into his early biographers, especially the biblical writer he profiled with Harold Bloom in The Book of J (1990). (An unfortunately brief chapter on the biblical author X is also notable.) Examples of the texts from which he draws inferences about Abraham’s life and upbringing would have strengthened this intriguing work.
For lay readers and scholars, a valuable exploration of how Abraham and his biographers fit into the larger scheme of Jewish cultural and religious history.Pub Date: April 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-465-07094-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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edited by David Rosenberg
by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
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by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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