An impressively succinct biblical overview for Christian readers, written with warmth and concise insight.
A book that attempts to summarize the Bible from the Garden of Eden to the first church.
Betz, working from a 13-page document her mother created called “The Bible Overview,” tries to help readers understand the basic structure of the Scriptures and explain how she sees Jesus Christ as the link between its many sections. She begins by addressing what the Bible is, how it was written, and why, expanding on scriptural notions of divine inspiration and God’s connection with mankind. From there, she begins to build the “skeleton” of the Bible. She divides it into 12 historical periods and finds that most of its books fit into one of three categories: history, poetry, or prophecy. While sketching out these huge time spans, Betz summarizes the histories of biblical figures such as Noah, Moses, David, and her main focus, Jesus. After providing essential details, she returns to each section to “strengthen the structure by adding detail or meat to each historical period.” She also cites biblical or historical scholars, particularly when addressing the gap of time between the Old Testament and the New Testament and the life of Jesus, for which she provides the most detail. The appendix’s helpful charts and graphs offer biblical histories and lineages at a glance. For the most part, Betz fleshes out each section with her own interpretations and understandings: “The story of Samson,” she writes, “teaches us that God recognizes that we will fail. What is important to Him is how we choose to react to our failure.” The majority of her conclusions seem meant to provide brief, inspiring insights, not in-depth analysis. Many Christian readers will find Betz’s humor and relaxed tone to be personable and relatable, and they’ll identify with her conclusions and thoughts. Although this isn’t a rigorous historical study, Betz does offer up an easy, enjoyable way for Christians to reacquaint themselves with the basics of the Bible.
An impressively succinct biblical overview for Christian readers, written with warmth and concise insight.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4908-8642-8
Page Count: 142
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Reality and imagination infuse a probing memoir.
A writer’s journey to find himself.
In January 2015, French novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and memoirist Carrère began a 10-day meditation retreat in the Morvan forest of central France. For 10 hours per day, he practiced Vipassana, “the commando training of meditation,” hoping for both self-awareness and material for a book. “I’m under cover,” he confesses, planning to rely on memory rather than break the center’s rule forbidding note taking. Long a practitioner of tai chi, the author saw yoga, too, as a means of “curtailing your ego, your greed, your thirst for competition and conquest, about educating your conscience to allow it unfiltered access to reality, to things as they are.” Harsh reality, however, ended his stay after four days: A friend had been killed in a brutal attack at the magazine Charlie Hebdo, and he was asked to speak at his funeral. Carrère’s vivid memoir, translated by Lambert—and, Carrère admits, partly fictionalized—covers four tumultuous years, weaving “seemingly disparate” experiences into an intimate chronicle punctuated by loss, desperation, and trauma. Besides reflecting on yoga, he reveals the recurring depression and “erratic, disconnected, unrelenting” thoughts that led to an unexpected diagnosis; his four-month hospitalization in a psychiatric ward, during which he received electroshock therapy; his motivation for, and process of, writing; a stay on the Greek island of Leros, where he taught writing to teenage refugees, whose fraught journeys and quiet dreams he portrays with warmth and compassion; his recollection of a tsunami in Sri Lanka, which he wrote about in Lives Other Than My Own; an intense love affair; and, at last, a revival of happiness. Carrère had planned to call his yoga book Exhaling, which could serve for this memoir as well: There is a sense of relief and release in his effort to make sense of his evolving self.
Reality and imagination infuse a probing memoir.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-60494-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
An erudite guide to the biblical world.
Revelations from the Old Testament.
“The Bible has no rivals when it comes to the art of omission, of not saying what everyone would like to know,” observes Calasso (1941-2021), the acclaimed Italian publisher, translator, and explorer of myth, gods, and sacred ritual. In this probing inquiry into biblical mysteries, the author meditates on the complexities and contradictions of key events and figures. He examines the “enigmatic nature” of original sin in Genesis, an anomaly occurring in no other creation myth; God’s mandate of circumcision for all Jewish men; and theomorphism in the form of Adam: a man created in the image of the god who made him. Among the individuals Calasso attends to in an abundantly populated volume are Saul, the first king of Israel; the handsome shepherd David, his successor; David’s son Solomon, whose relatively peaceful reign allowed him “to look at the world and study it”; Moses, steeped in “law and vengeance,” who incited the slaughter of firstborn sons; and powerful women, including the Queen of Sheba (“very beautiful and probably a witch”), Jezebel, and the “prophetess” Miriam, Moses’ sister. Raging throughout is Yahweh, a vengeful God who demands unquestioned obedience to his commandments. “Yahweh was a god who wanted to defeat other gods,” Calasso writes. “I am a jealous God,” Yahweh proclaims, “who punishes the children for the sins of their fathers, as far as the third and fourth generations.” Conflicts seemed endless: During the reigns of Saul and David, “war was constant, war without and war within.” Terse exchanges between David and Yahweh were, above all, “military decisions.” David’s 40-year reign was “harrowing and glorious,” marked by recurring battles with the Philistines. Calasso makes palpable schisms and rivalries, persecutions and retributions, holocausts and sacrifices as tribal groups battled one another to form “a single entity”—the people of Israel.
An erudite guide to the biblical world.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-60189-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
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