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THE BLOOD AND THE SHROUD

NEW EVIDENCE THAT THE WORLD'S MOST SACRED RELIC IS REAL

A stubborn but unconvincing apologia for the author’s persistent belief that the Shroud of Turin is the actual burial shroud of Jesus. Wilson has penned two other defenses of the shroud (The Turin Shroud, 1978, and The Evidence of the Shroud, 1986), but both of those books were published before 1988, when scientists determined through radiocarbon dating that the shroud was made from 14th-century linen and so could not be Jesus— burial clothing. After a decade of reformulating his theory, Wilson is back, as vociferous as ever. This book is testimony not so much to the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin but to the veracity of Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance: When presented with evidence that their beliefs are impossible or their predictions unrealizable, individuals will cling to their long-cherished convictions that much more tenaciously rather than relinquish them. Wilson just refuses to let this issue die, attempting instead to cast doubt on the scientific procedures that first declared the shroud to be spurious. Any imagination utilized in this book is reserved for the subject matter, not the writing style. Most chapters have rhetorical questions as titles: —Cunning Painting—or Genuine Gravecloth?— (Genuine.) Or: —Carbon Dating, Right or Wrong?— (Dead wrong.) Wilson is particularly interested in the imprint of Jesus on the shroud, which he claims is —a 2000-year old photograph of him as he lay in death.— Despite his own intense certitude, Wilson tries to be evenhanded, never openly excoriating those who hold other views. In the last chapter, he invites readers to examine their own hearts on the matter, and raises a far more interesting question than that of the shroud’s authenticity: Why should we care? The book is unlikely to persuade the skeptics Wilson is clearly trying to reach, but never fear; he will almost certainly write more on the subject. (illustrations)

Pub Date: June 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-684-85359-0

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Free Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998

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THE FOUR LOVES

The ever-popular and highly readable C.S. Lewis has "done it again." This time with a book beginning with the premise "God is Love" and analyzing the four loves man knows well, but often understands little, Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity, exploring along the way the threads of Need-Love and Gift-Love that run through all. It is written with a deep perception of human beings and a background of excellent scholarship. Lewis proposes that all loves are a search for, perhaps a conflict with, and sometimes a denial of, love of God. "Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?" To relate the human activities called loves to the Love which is God, Lewis cites three graces as parts of Charity: Divine Gift-Love, a supernatural Need-love of Himself and a supernatural Need-love of one another, to which God gives a third, "He can awake in man, towards Himself a supernatural Appreciative love. This of all gifts is the most to be desired. Here, not in our natural loves, nor even in ethics, lies the true center of all human and angelic life. With this all things are possible." From a reading of this book laymen and clergy alike will reap great rewards: a deeper knowledge of an insight into human loves, and, indeed, humans, offered with beauty and humor and a soaring description of man's search for God through Love.

Pub Date: July 27, 1960

ISBN: 0156329301

Page Count: 144

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

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THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS

A fine thematic introduction to gnosticism, concentrating on the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi (Upper Egypt) in 1945. Pagels teaches the history of religion at Barnard, and she has spent practically all of her young academic life working with the Nag Hammadi manuscripts in one way or another. She brings her considerable competence to bear on the subject without overwhelming the reader with scholarly minutiae. Pagels sees in gnosticism a "powerful alternative to. . . orthodox Christian tradition," an alternative she clearly finds attractive. Gnostics treated Christ's resurrection as a symbolic rather than a corporeal event. They rejected the authoritarian, bishop-dominated structure of the orthodox church. They looked beyond the masculine imagery of the patriarchal God to various concepts of a feminine or bisexual divinity. They avoided the excesses of the martyrdom cult and its apotheosis of the suffering Jesus. In surprisingly modern fashion, they cultivated a religion that stressed personal enlightenment over corporate belonging, insisting that "the psyche bears within itself the potential for liberation or destruction." These and other gnostic tenets were repressed by mainstream Christianity because, Pagels claims, they constituted a political threat to the hierarchy. In the calmer, freer atmosphere of contemporary Christianity, they can better be appreciated for their intrinsic richness. Pagels' advocacy of gnosticism is restrained and responsible—she admits, for example, that its elitist, intellectualist qualities made it ill-suited as a faith for the masses—but this partisanship, plus the absence of solid explanation of the movement's historical roots, may create a misleading picture of it as a sort of heroic prototype of liberal Protestantism. Otherwise a clear, reliable, richly documented guide.

Pub Date: Nov. 26, 1979

ISBN: 0394502787

Page Count: 229

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1979

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