A fringe and fanciful view of the creation of the Christian faith.
A debut alternative history book explores the origins of Christianity.
Davis begins by offering the rare argument that “the Jesus described in the Gospels” did not exist. In fact, the author asserts, Christianity was a fabrication that postdated the Roman-Jewish wars of the first century. Working off the conclusions of other writers, such as Joseph Atwill, Davis weaves a detailed yet speculative explanation for how the New Testament and the Christian faith came into existence. He points to Arrius Piso, a contemporary and rival of Nero, as the originating genius behind the New Testament scheme. According to the author, Piso and his closest friends and family believed that by creating a new, peace-centered religion out of Jewish concepts, Rome could effectively counter Jewish rebellion across the empire. Beyond this, the new faith could serve as a Roman-centered religion and be used as a source of power for the Piso family and the empire itself. In this ambitious book, Davis attempts to prove his theory by using “the parallels discovered by independent scholar Joseph Atwill” between the New Testament and the works of Flavius Josephus (who the author maintains was the pen name for Piso). For instance, Davis argues that Jesus’ statement “I will make you fishers of men” is actually about a ship battle against the Jews in which many men were shot at or run down while trying not to drown. In addition, the story of the good Samaritan is about an attack on a Roman Legion by Jewish rebels, causing the soldiers to recuperate in Samaria. But these and many other such “parallels” are far from self-evident. Using the new religion to take the reins of power, Piso became St. Peter, the first pope; Pliny the Younger succeeded him as St. Linus, the second pope; and so on, the author claims. He tells readers: “Piso chose the name ‘Peter’ as his alias name of the founder of the Christian religion, because he was the ‘father’ (‘pater’) of the Christian religion.” Davis is painstaking in his research and provides ample textual evidence. Nevertheless, his highly unusual conclusions will likely find a skeptical reception from many believers and scholars.
A fringe and fanciful view of the creation of the Christian faith.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78926-557-6
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Independent Publishing Network
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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