An accessible, but serious new contribution to biblical studies.
A debut volume delivers a provocative reconsideration of the book of Genesis in light of modern science.
Torrid debates regarding the compatibility of science and religion today often seem intractable because the two sides are speaking disparate languages. In this work, however, Quatro attempts to bridge the gap between the two by offering a fresh reinterpretation of the book of Genesis. Much of the difficulty of biblical interpretation, he argues, seems to be twofold; first, imprecise translations introduce all manner of exegetical missteps. Second, an unscholarly neglect of historical context, especially competing religious traditions, also contributes a layer of obfuscation. The author carefully considers many terminological ambiguities; for example, are “Adam” and “Eve” really best understood as individual proper names? Also, on the basis of an analysis of both Sumerian and Babylonian traditions, he argues for the factual basis of the story of the flood. Quatro never dismisses the allegorical dimension of the Bible; quite the opposite, he consistently treats it as a “literary masterpiece,” designed as a reflection on the human condition. But he believes the tension between the Bible and science is both a function of faulty biblical scholarship and an unempirical reading of science. The author is also sensitive to the distance that remains between the Bible and the findings of evolutionary theory: “Problems arise when one tries to force fit the biblical record into the evolutionary model. One such scheme attempts to stretch creation week into the geologic evolutionary time scales.” Quatro’s argument is presented in pellucid prose, and the book specifically courts the intellectually curious layperson. The virtue of this approach is readability, and a lack of cumbersome academic references. But this tactic also robs the author of the space to make his unconventional positions more forcefully persuasive. This volume is best understood as a stimulus to further study, and a thoughtful chastening of the facile belief that religion and science are diametrically opposed. As an introduction to that philosophical possibility, this is an intriguing, lively effort.
An accessible, but serious new contribution to biblical studies.Pub Date: May 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4958-1022-0
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Infinity Publishers
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2016
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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