by Shimon Gibson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2009
Engaging, but doesn’t meet the expectations it raises. More archaeology, please.
An attempt to add archaeology’s voice more forcefully to the conversation about who Christ was and how he came to be crucified.
Gibson (Archaeology/Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte), a research fellow at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, argues that “archaeology tends to play second fiddle” in efforts to discover the historical Jesus. He calls upon scholars to turn toward archaeological evidence in addition to relying on textual and literary criticism. Though replete with interesting tidbits and archaeological tales, his book does not entirely fulfill its potential. Gibson begins by examining the routes Jesus would have taken toward Jerusalem and then discusses his dealings at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus in nearby Bethany. The author’s tortured attempt to explain the raising of Lazarus (“he must have been in a trance or a state of catalepsy”) is not particularly convincing. Gibson goes on to describe the rituals of cleansing and foot washing as practiced and understood in first-century Jerusalem. He’s at his best when attempting to pinpoint the locations of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion, an effort in which archaeological evidence plays a crucial role. Material on the practice of crucifixion is riveting and horrifying, giving readers a grim understanding of the agony such a punishment inflicted. Finally, Gibson discusses burial practices at the time and surmises what sort of tomb Joseph of Arimathea would have owned. Gibson takes for granted many modern heterodox views: that Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist and that supernatural claims are generally invalid, for example. Yet he also asserts that Jesus may have had healing powers and even allows that resurrection could be a tenable explanation for the empty tomb. Overall, despite his exhortations for new methods of scholarship, the author leans upon prior literary criticism and fills his book with too many of other people’s ideas.
Engaging, but doesn’t meet the expectations it raises. More archaeology, please.Pub Date: March 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-145848-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2009
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
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
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