by Josiah Nichols ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 11, 2017
A spirited Christian interpretation that branches out from one specific passage of the Old Testament.
A beginners’ guide focuses on the use of scrupulous literary analysis to illuminate Christian Scripture.
In his debut book, Nichols relates the simplest and most direct reason that someone would take up the area of study called hermeneutics, which he defines as “the science of interpretation of literature”: to know which Bible interpretations to trust and why. His embrace of the hermeneutical approach has been lifelong, and in his manual he seems to cede it pride of place, even over the personal inspiration that guides scores of contemporary Christian leaders. “Many people claim to teach the Bible,” he writes, “but when they violate the rules of interpretation, they do not have God’s Word but man’s word.” Yet it quickly becomes apparent in his work that he intends his hermeneutics to be a servant of his apologetics—or, as he puts it, “good hermeneutics is reading the Bible the way God wanted his people to read it.” In Nichols’ view, this type of hermeneutics is not arduous because the Bible text itself is not difficult. Translators or interpreters who throw up obstacles to its clarity are doing so “because they are liars, and they cannot accept the truth, and they belong to Satan.” Accordingly, Nichols deftly examines one biblical passage: Exodus 21:28-32, which lays out the various penalties for the owner of an ox that gores neighbors. In vigorously discussing it, he veers immediately from hermeneutics to preaching. The passage in Exodus is straightforwardly demotic: it is a set of legal instructions. But for Nichols, “Jesus is seen in objects in the Old Testament—in the temple, the ark of the covenant, and even in the altar.” His fellow Christian faithful will encounter no actual hermeneutics in these pages, but they’ll find a great deal of energetic scriptural exhortation written in an engaging style.
A spirited Christian interpretation that branches out from one specific passage of the Old Testament.Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-8254-7
Page Count: 118
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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