A fascinating study for anyone interested in the history of the Christian church and willing to roll up their sleeves for...
An exhaustively meticulous work of biblical exegesis has all the drama and conspiracy of a journalistic exposé.
First-time author Goudge doesn’t waste any time announcing his controversial intention to uncover a “2000-year conspiracy of silence” designed to “keep the history of Jesus’ Jewish heirs plunged in darkness.” At the personal level, the conspiracy expresses itself as an “epic struggle” between James, brother of Jesus, and Paul, author of a systematic Christian theology. At a more doctrinal level, according to the author, the ancient tug of war is between Jesus’ fundamentally Judaic mission and Paul’s tortured gentile interpretation. Paul, more apostate than apostle, is the villain of this tale, disfiguring Jesus’ pedagogic intention in such a way that permanently drives a schism between Judaism and so-called Christianity. Along the way, the author unpacks several contentious issues with scholarly curiosity and lively prose. For example, is Jesus really a pacifist? Was he genuinely born in Bethlehem? What is the true account of Jesus’ little-known childhood and questionable parentage? What are the real origins of Christmas and Halloween? Is it correct to consider Paul a true apostle? It’s impossible not to be impressed with the sheer breadth of the author’s erudition and his unrelenting interrogation of often scant evidence. However, his thesis is so wide-ranging, he sometimes makes inferences and extrapolations that go well beyond what the text provides. For example, the explanation for Paul’s perfidy is that he was a “profoundly conflicted individual, given to violence and obsessed with ambition.” Also, since the author’s objectives make it necessary for him to accept some biblical sources as canonical and others as spurious, it would have been helpful for him to articulate a set of general interpretive principles. In fairness to the author, he acknowledges these difficulties, admitting that “we have to be careful of all texts,” that “all authors have a slant” and that the texts as we find them could be corrupt or amended.
A fascinating study for anyone interested in the history of the Christian church and willing to roll up their sleeves for some fastidious scholarly analysis.Pub Date: May 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-1469787305
Page Count: 398
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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