A straightforward biography that thankfully avoids preaching. Readers curious about Judas’ broad effect on world history...
A biography of one of the most reviled men in history, a perpetual scapegoat representing the deepest root of anti-Semitism and, in medieval times, usury.
Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph senior features writer Stanford (Catholicism: A Complete Introduction, 2015, etc.) sees Judas at the heart of the embattled early church. The Pauline believers thought Christianity was a new religion altogether, led by St. Paul’s writings. Then there were those who felt this doctrine was a new part of the Jewish religion. The latter was reawakened with the 2006 National Geographic film revealing the Gospel of Judas. This gospel was written in Greek at the end of the second century long after the synoptic and more historically reliable Gospels of Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John. Judas’ gospel was written about Jesus as seen by him in the last three days of his life, adding nothing to detail or defend Judas’ life. While the author does not give many details of the gospel, Jesus comes across as more human than divine. He is short-tempered and generally disagreeable, and he mocks his inner circle and dismisses the Eucharist. In the late fourth century, Pauline orthodoxy really began to grow, and the beliefs and texts of the Gnostics and Judas were dismissed and destroyed. The author argues that the Gospels should be taken seriously, but not literally, accepting Judas as a true figure rather than a manufactured scapegoat. He sees the Judas of the four Gospels as too inconsistent, too human, and too unpredictable to be a mere device. There are still those who wonder whether Judas was doomed or damned. Was he truly a money-grabbing traitor, or was he part of the entire divine plan?
A straightforward biography that thankfully avoids preaching. Readers curious about Judas’ broad effect on world history will welcome this book.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61902-709-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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