An informative but sometimes-superficial survey of Old Testament stories.
A retired teacher offers an introduction to the major stories and themes of the Old Testament geared toward non-Christians.
As an Old Testament teacher at a tuition-free Jesuit school that had a surprisingly large non-Roman Catholic and Muslim population, debut author Walsh developed lesson plans that “all of the students could identify with regardless of their religious background.” Now retired, he has compiled his lessons into a concise overview of the Bible that targets nonreligious readers interested in better understanding the book. In the author’s view, even among the nonreligious, one must have basic biblical literacy to fully understand Western society. Biblical references, for example, abound in Western literature, art, and music, from Handel’s Messiah to the Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn.” The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful speech “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” takes an even more poignant turn when readers understand the story of Moses’ mountaintop experience in Deuteronomy. The bulk of Walsh’s work walks readers through the major stories of the Old Testament in a straightforward, non-dogmatic way while providing brief historical and literary commentary for context. He also highlights important concepts and themes that run throughout the Old Testament that could be easily overlooked by those new to the Bible. For example, his reflections on the story of Cain and Abel introduce novices to the origins of the quote “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And the author emphasizes the biblical pattern of God favoring the younger son over the older in his discussion of Abraham. But while much of Walsh’s commentary will be useful to those unfamiliar with the Bible, some of it is trivia that doesn’t advance a deeper understanding of the work, such as an entire page of famous quotations about friendship by Aesop, Ben Franklin, and others. Surprisingly, given Walsh’s Jesuit school background, he does not include the Catholic and Orthodox books removed from the Bible by Protestants. A more thorough discussion of canonization history—and how Christians selectively picked which books to include in the Bible and which to leave out—would have been extremely valuable in this introduction.
An informative but sometimes-superficial survey of Old Testament stories.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Summit Crossroads Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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