Interesting, but not insightful.
A quirky, ultimately unsatisfying investigation of religious belief.
Journalist Hallman (The Chess Artist, 2003) set out to get at the essence of religious commitment by exploring communities that inhabit the “fringe” of America’s faith landscape, from Druids to the monks of New Skete. He lunched with one of the nation’s leading Satanists, and with members of the evangelical Christian Wrestling Federation. He joined a group of Michigan-based atheists in their Godless March. While hanging out with Wiccans, he discovered some contradictions in this Goddess-worshipping, earth-friendly spirituality: Though ostensibly feminist and green, modern-day Wicca was founded by men and flourishes in cities. William James’s 1902 study The Varieties of Religious Experience guides this inquiry. Indeed, the great fin-de-siècle psychologist becomes the author’s spiritual doktorvater, and woven throughout these reports from the religious front are reflections on James’s life and thought. Sometimes the forays into his writing are illuminating: Hallman’s description of the monks of New Skete, who breed and write books about dogs, is enriched by James’s observations about the relationship between dogs and their owners. But often such asides are more distracting than instructive, and at times—when, for example, the author detours from a Wiccan conference in Seattle to a paragraph about James’s distaste for the Emerald City—they seem no more than an elaborate game of association. Hallman’s reporting is vivid, his prose sure and clear. But the book has a voyeuristic tone; both intrigued and repelled by his subject, the author trades in spectacle. He asks incidental ironies to do too much work, as when he hears a Satanist sneeze and says, “Bless you!” Hallman fails, finally, to offer enough analysis. The trip into Wicca, Satanism, canine monasticism and devout atheism has been fun, but what are we to make of it?
Interesting, but not insightful.Pub Date: May 23, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6172-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The most thorough and authoritative of the flood of new books occasioned by the full release of the Dead Sea Scrolls between 1991 and 1993. Schiffman (Near Eastern Studies/New York Univ.), a Hebrew and Judaic studies expert who now serves on the editorial team that is publishing the scrolls, clearly presents what scholars know and, equally important, what they don't know about the documents that many would agree constitute the greatest archaeological find of the century. He describes in considerable detail the contents and the political and religious historical context of the scrolls, produced between 150 bce and 70 ce during the Greek and Roman conquests of Palestine. But Schiffman also makes the case for a paradigm shift in the manner in which the scrolls should be viewed and interpreted. As he notes: ``The first generation of scroll scholars, primarily Christians interested in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament, did not understand the scrolls for what they were: documents illuminating the history of Second Temple Judaism...What resulted therefore, was a Christianized version of the scrolls.'' Schiffman, in contrast, views the scrolls as Jewish texts. He rejects earlier theories, such as that the scrolls were written by the ascetic sect of Essenes, and makes the case for many of the scrolls being of Sadducee origin (the Sadducees were an anti-Rabbinic group that had links to the priestly class). An updated tale of the discovery, acquisition, and deciphering of the Dead Sea Scrolls would make a great narrative. But this is not Schiffman's aim. For now, Edmund Wilson's 1954 The Dead Sea Scrolls, based on his New Yorker reportage, remains the classic page-turner about the scrolls. Schiffman's scholarly presentation is plodding, but his arguments and conclusions are well reasoned and reliable. (For more on the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Neil Asher Silberman, The Hidden Scrolls, p. TK.) Scholars in religious studies, seasoned scroll amateurs, and newcomers to this fascinating subject can all benefit from immersion in this welcome volume. (40 photos) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8276-0530-7
Page Count: 520
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
International intrigue, scholarly arrogance, and eccentric personalities populate this examination of what the Dead Sea Scrolls really tell us. Since their discovery by Bedouins in the 1940s, the scrolls have been variously used as a springboard for academic careers, patriotic propaganda for the modern state of Israel, and material for the spinning of ancient conspiracy theories. Silberman (A Prophet from Amongst You, 1993, etc.) presents both a stunning indictment of the small cadre of scholars who controlled access to the scrolls for decades and a marvelous revisionist reconstruction of the ancient community that produced the scrolls. He argues convincingly that the cloistered, middle-class scholars who transcribed the scrolls and exclusively published their contents at a glacial pace until a series of highly publicized recent actions were blind to what the scrolls revealed. Rather than the quietist religious community living in the desert before the first century ce that has been standard fare since the earliest publications of the scrolls, Silberman provides a commanding defense of the oft-maligned theory that the Qumran community lived and wrote as an underground anti-imperial revolutionary group during the same period that produced Christianity. Silberman's careful laying out of evidence should create a reasonable doubt in most readers' minds that the circumstances described in the scrolls make much more sense in a first century ce context than in the earlier period previously accepted. And his presentation of early Christians as a group from the same milieu, but who abandoned militancy and nationalism in favor of a message of love that was tolerable to the Roman colonizers, equally undermines what he sees as an unwarranted implication of the superiority of Christianity over Judaism in scrolls research. (For more on the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. TK.) Silberman takes sides, but he comes across as fair and judicious. His depiction of the interplay between ancient history and its manipulation by nations, quacks, and petty academics is terrific.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1994
ISBN: 0-399-13982-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
