A thoughtful assessment that may interest readers of all religious persuasions.
A reconsideration of Jesus’ spiritual mission as he may have understood it.
According to debut author Page, a proper understanding of Jesus’ ministry must ultimately defer to Jesus’ self-interpretation. More specifically, one must figure out—on the basis of scant historical information—what Jesus thought God expected of him and of Israel. According to the author, the fact that the Jews were a chosen people meant that they were supposed to be a special example for mankind and that they were meant to invite others to believe in God. However, he contends, Israel was not honoring its commitments, so Jesus’ principal task was to show his fellow Jews the errors of their ways—and to remind them of their purpose. But although Jesus’ undertaking was a deeply Jewish one, Page says, he meant his message to spread to the rest of the world: “Jesus envisioned the mission of Israel to be that of a new Moses, leading all the nations of the world through the wilderness of separation from G-d, pausing along the way at campsites of enlightenment.” Page encourages Jewish readers to better understand the ancient Judaic traditions that Jesus was continuing while also urging Christians to “recover their Jewish roots.” Everyone, the author says, should live in a way that can serve as a model for others. Page clearly aims to wrench the historical appraisal of Jesus away from professional scholars and make it more accessible, and he impressively achieves a style that is both pellucid and “folksy,” as he intended. He concedes that the historical information available about Jesus is meager and contradictory, and he doesn’t hesitate to acknowledge the tentativeness of his conclusions. For example, it’s simply unclear if Jesus considered himself a “messiah” in the strict sense of the term, but the author provocatively suggests that it’s more edifying to see Israel’s role as messianic. Overall, Page’s exegesis is notably diligent, and he reaches beyond textual disputes to articulate broader lessons of transcendent moral import.
A thoughtful assessment that may interest readers of all religious persuasions.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-5832-0
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
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
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
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