An unconventional view of biblical prophecies that reveals surprising, albeit not wholly convincing, insights.
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
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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