A brief but thorough account of St. Paul’s life and an analysis of its significance in the subsequent development of Christianity.
Paul presents a unique challenge to scholars, as he’s unusually difficult to fully understand. In this debut, Noel tackles this enigmatic figure, painstakingly assessing available historical and biblical evidence. Paul began his life as Saul and was a man of several significant identities: he was a traditional Jew who was apparently educated to become a Pharisee, a Roman citizen, and a resident of Tarsus, a city in eastern Turkey. Noel carefully weighs the competing significance of these influences and judiciously attempts to uncover a single coherent vision of Paul. He meticulously considers a totality of factors, including Paul’s character, his upbringing, his education, and his self-reliance despite considerable family wealth. The author also furnishes a synoptic account of the theological landscape into which Paul was born, defining the various sectarian schools of which he would have been aware. Although Noel predictably and sensibly assigns a central place to Paul’s well-known conversion, he also thoughtfully reflects on a subject that’s too often neglected: the reasons why Paul was such a committed persecutor of Christians in the first place. According to the author, his fury was a function of his devotion to Judaism and his opinion that Christianity was a heretical rejection of it: “In Paul’s view, the very existence of a religion that had faith in the crucifixion of the Messiah was blasphemy against his most sacred hope of salvation and the deliverance of Israel, which God promised to his forefathers.” Of course, Paul’s conversion transforms him from persecutor to persecuted, and Noel provides a detailed overview of Paul’s evangelical mission, which apparently focused on spreading Jesus’ message through densely populated urban centers. It’s remarkable how much ground the author covers in a relatively short monograph, which is largely attributable to concise, lucid prose that’s not always found in research-driven literature. One ends up wishing for more extended discussions of Paul’s letters and his theology, but this whetting of intellectual appetite is more a virtue than a vice.
An excellent single-volume introduction to Christianity’s first theologian.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5246-2345-6
Page Count: 168
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
Did you like this book?
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
Categories: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
