The first book anyone should read this year about early Christianity.
With dazzling panache, Cambridge don Hopkins takes on one of the most intriguing questions of ancient history: how did Christianity, an obscure new faith whose leader was dead, triumph in the Roman empire?
Hopkins’s analysis is largely familiar. The author makes much of himself for examining Christianity in the light of Judaism and contemporary paganism, but this “contextual” approach has long since become a no-brainer for every scholar of early Christianity worth his salt. Many of his claims, however, are shocking. Take Hopkins’s assertion that “the historical Jesus is a mirage.” The popular New Testament scholars who have been breaking their teeth trying to figure out what Jesus really said and did, in Hopkins’s view, are wasting their time. The Gospel writers altered Jesus’ sayings so extensively that it is impossible to figure out what he really said, what he was really like. And Hopkins challenges not only the Jesus Seminar, but many orthodox believers as well, with his bold claims that the Gospel writers (and the Church Fathers who participated in the process of canonization) didn’t want to make Jesus easily “understood.” The Gospels, he claims, did not ever intend to “settle the question as to who Jesus was,” but to encourage debate and inquiry, and to offer enough different portraits of Jesus—Jesus the rebel, Jesus the drunk, Jesus the rabbi, Jesus the healer—so that he could be whatever the believer wanted him to be. Most noteworthy, though, is the format Hopkins makes use of: far from offering us a dry scholarly monologue, the author intersperses straightforward academic prose with more daring, imaginative stuff—the fictional memoirs of two time-travelers who find themselves in Pompeii, for example, and interviews for a TV special about the Dead Sea Scrolls (fans of British TV will appreciate Hopkins’s hysterical rendering of a Jeremy Paxman–esque interviewer).
The first book anyone should read this year about early Christianity.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-7432-0010-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The name of C.S. Lewis will no doubt attract many readers to this volume, for he has won a splendid reputation by his brilliant writing. These sermons, however, are so abstruse, so involved and so dull that few of those who pick up the volume will finish it. There is none of the satire of the Screw Tape Letters, none of the practicality of some of his later radio addresses, none of the directness of some of his earlier theological books.
Pub Date: June 15, 1949
ISBN: 0060653205
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1949
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