A retelling of the events of Genesis with an eye toward Revelation.
Adam, Eve and the Tree of Knowledge; Cain and Abel; Noah and the Great Flood—the names and stories of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, have become embedded in Western mythology. Devillier’s book combines the traditional Genesis account with stories of angels—including Satan, aka Lucifer, an angel who opposed God’s plans for humanity and was thus forcefully cast out of heaven—to provide a perspective on Genesis that overlays the angel myths onto the Genesis account, providing an insider’s view of the arguments that may have taken place in heaven while events in Eden and elsewhere were unfolding. Though the narrative begins in Genesis, it doesn’t end there; instead, Devillier links the accounts of humanity’s origin with predictions given in Revelation about humanity’s eventual end, including the rise of the Antichrist and the second coming of Jesus. While the book’s premise is intriguing and its source material has proven itself to be some of the richest in Western literature, this take suffers from an overabundance of telling rather than showing: “Satan commanded Baal to take a few hundred of the angels to go study Cain and Abel. He told Baal that if anything looked to be intimidating, come back with details.” Elsewhere, the dialogue merely falls flat. Even when the angels take up arms against one another and even against their offspring, there’s little sense of adventure or risk, making the book’s ultimate predictions—as dire as they sound—seem of little consequence. The narrative ends up suspended somewhere between a novel and an essay, draining the central themes of struggle and redemption of most of their power. Though it sheds light on ancient texts, the message behind the story’s focus on the ongoing struggle for the soul of humanity is hindered, not helped, by its unbalanced format.
An unconventional view of biblical prophecies that reveals surprising, albeit not wholly convincing, insights.Pub Date: May 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482636123
Page Count: 194
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
Did you like this book?
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 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
Did you like this book?
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
Categories: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
