An erudite exploration of the Bible’s first man.
An exploration of the portrayal of Adam throughout Christian history.
Former evangelical Christian Giberson (Science and Religion/Stonehill Coll.; Seven Glorious Days: A Scientist Retells the Genesis Creation Story, 2012, etc.) takes readers on an intriguing journey through the role and importance of the biblical Adam since the inception of Christianity. The author begins by explaining his own abandonment of the classic creation story as literal history, and his work is made to stand, mildly, against evangelical or fundamentalist teachings in this area. He explains that the Christian writer Paul was the man responsible for changing Adam from a character in Jewish lore to a central figure in Christian theology. “Paul’s Adam wrecked the world,” writes Giberson. If Paul placed Adam center stage, however, it was Augustine of Hippo who defined him for the remainder of history. Augustine’s concept of original sin, laid squarely on Adam’s shoulders, would color the West’s understanding of humanity from the fourth century onward. Whereas the world’s evils were once blamed on demons or the devil, after Augustine they would be blamed on humankind’s sinful and broken nature. Even as science began to assert its position in Western thinking, Adam’s role remained unchanged and unchallenged. Discussing the Middle Ages, Giberson writes, “one listens in vain for a whisper that Adam may not have been a real, flesh-and-blood character.” Of course, the age of Darwin and of biblical criticism began to change the thinking. Nevertheless, Christianity enters the 21st century with a largely unbroken literal view of Adam and his role as cause of the fall of humankind. Giberson provides a well-constructed survey of books throughout Western history, some famous, others obscure, and his fascinating historical account is brief yet comprehensive. His contribution to the modern faith vs. science debate is less certain.
An erudite exploration of the Bible’s first man.Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1251-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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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