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SAINT SAUL

Name: SAINT SAUL
Author: Donald Harman Akenson
ISBN: 0-19-514157-1

A SKELETON KEY TO THE HISTORICAL JESUS

by Donald Harman Akenson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2000

Although told with great panache, this is a story that we have heard before.

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An absorbing, if conventional, look at the latest "Quest for the Historical Jesus" through the letters of the apostle Paul.

Akenson (Surpassing Wonder, 1998) concentrates on the Jesus tradition as it first shows itself in the letters of Paul, the oldest portion of the New Testament and the only part of it that predates the destruction of Herod's Temple by the Romans in 70 a.d. The events of that year brought the rich and diverse traditions of Judaism to an end, leaving only two survivors, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, and the documents that were written after those events reflect a radically different world than that in which Jesus lived. The first three chapters set Paul and Jesus in their first-century context, amid the "Judahisms" that flourished inside and outside the Land of Israel in the first centuries of Christianity. Two chapters critically and amusingly examine the methods and presuppositions of the latest Jesus-quest, with particularly trenchant attention to the work of Helmut Koester and his followers in the Jesus Seminar. Six chapters then look at Paul, his life and letters, his missionary career, the Jesus who emerges from his letters, the relation of Paul's Jesus to the Jesus of the gospels, and the place of Jesus in the spirituality of Saul. Appendices cast a cold eye on the methodology of the Jesus Seminar and the ongoing reconstruction of the hypothetical "sayings gospel" (known as Q). Much of the material here, although argued in greater detail, will be familiar to the readers of Akenson's earlier book. His learning in a field outside his academic specialty is immense, his style (terminological eccentricities and the occasional joke aside) is lively and inviting, and he has a great regard for Paul as a literary and religious genius. But he exaggerates the novelty of his enterprise, and the historical facts that emerge here are not much different from those that other liberal Jesus-questors have found.

Although told with great panache, this is a story that we have heard before.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-19-514157-1

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
SURPASSING WONDER
by Donald Harman Akenson

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CONOR
by Donald Harman Akenson

- BOOK REVIEW
GOD'S PEOPLES
by Donald Harman Akenson

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New York Times Bestseller

Pulitzer Prize Finalist

WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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Awards & Accolades

Likes

18

Our Verdict

GET IT

Google Rating

Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2016

New York Times Bestseller

Pulitzer Prize Finalist

A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)