by Simcha Jacobovici Barrie A. Wilson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2014
This intriguing ancient text deserves a solid academic study by serious scholars. Unfortunately, this book is not it.
Exploration of a long-forgotten text.
Filmmaker Jacobovici (co-author: The Jesus Discovery: The Resurrection Tomb that Reveals the Birth of Christianity, 2012, etc.) and researcher Wilson (Humanities and Religious Studies/York Univ.; How Jesus Became Christian, 2008, etc.) collaborate to popularize a little-known sixth-century text known as Joseph and Aseneth. The story, ostensibly about the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, was originally known to be written in Greek but now survives, in its oldest form, translated into Syriac. The authors dedicate a sizable portion of the book to a new English translation of the text, along with notes. They argue that the strange and anachronistic story is in fact a hidden Gnostic Gospel, which, when properly decoded, provides a wealth of detail about the life of Jesus and his wife, who the authors claim is Mary Magdalene. The authors argue that past interpreters ignored the early church’s trend toward typological analysis of the Old Testament, through which Christian motifs were located within the Hebrew Scriptures. Instead, they claim that Joseph and Aseneth should be read as a “disguised historical narrative.” The authors argue this “gospel” gives details of the personal life of Jesus: “It tells the story of how Jesus met his wife, how they married, and how they had children.” However, many readers will find Joseph and Aseneth allegorical at best, hopelessly mysterious at worst. It is only through what appears as speculation that Jacobovici and Wilson piece together a fantastical tale of love, intrigue and, of course, sex, around Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Wrapped in the modern trend to discount New Testament writings and push forward even the most tenuous Gnostic texts, the authors write that “[w]hat seemed like fantasy is actually history, and what seems like history turns out to be carefully edited spin.” Yet the authors’ subjective tone, dramatic language and willingness to stretch logic leave readers skeptical from the first page.
This intriguing ancient text deserves a solid academic study by serious scholars. Unfortunately, this book is not it.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60598-610-4
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
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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 Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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