A wonderful book to confirm the beliefs of the faithful, to strengthen those whose faith begs for more information and to...
Translator and Jerusalem Post contributor Hoffman (And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, 2010) explains biblical stories by revealing lost passages, making them more understandable and plausible to modern readers.
The author’s knowledge of ancient languages shows early on, and he demonstrates how easily words can be mistranslated and entire meanings altered. Furthermore, a translator might alter a passage to make it more politically appropriate or relevant to the times. As Hoffman notes, there are anywhere from 33 to 78 books that could have been included in the Bible (“The Bible you usually read is an abridged version…culled from a much larger selection of holy scriptures when new realities forced religions leaders to discard some of their most cherished and sacred books”). All of them ask timeless questions and offer different insightful answers about good and evil and the human condition. The author explores the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2,000-year-old documents discovered in a cave by goatherds in 1947; the Septuagint, a translation from Hebrew to Greek ordered by Ptolemy II in the third century B.C.; and the A.D. first century writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. Hoffman examines not only where they agree and where they vary from our modern Bible, but also the wealth of material that was left out. This is where the author shines as he explains that the Tower of Babel was built to protect against another great flood and gives the truth about Herod and Pilate. During the upheavals of the first century, many groups struggled to make sense of the changing times, and Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism are among those systems of belief that endured.
A wonderful book to confirm the beliefs of the faithful, to strengthen those whose faith begs for more information and to enlighten those who reject the stories of the Bible as mere fiction.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-04796-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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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