A helpful, informative explanation of the common ground between Judaism and Christianity.
An engaging reference explores the link between Judaism and the early Christian church.
Plant geneticist Beebe viewed faith as a crutch for those too weak to face the realities of life, until he rediscovered God through Bahá'í, a faith encompassing numerous religions. Finding his distaste for Christianity to be adverse to the Bahá'í belief that God works through all faiths, the author reexamined the Bible and the life of Jesus. After learning more about Christianity's Jewish roots, he finally came to terms with Jesus by placing Him within a historical context. This book, aimed at Christians eager to learn more about the roots of their faith, focuses on Jewish culture before and during Jesus' time. Unlike other Christian books exploring these traditions, Between the Menorah and the Cross does not cast Judaism unfavorably but instead attempts to create an accurate and unbiased depiction of Jesus by peering through a Jewish lens. For the most part, the book places a positive spin on the historical evolution of Christianity, regarding the transition from polytheism to monotheism, the new emphasis placed on ethics and the recent emphasis on individual spirituality as all parts of God's unique plan. Interspersed with short dramatizations of traditional stories from the Bible, the book explores topics such as the history of the Christian scriptures, the initial Jewish-Christian church that existed before Christianity further branched out, the emphasis placed on life after death and on the immortal soul, and the view of Jesus as an apocalyptical prophet instead of a transcendent son of God. The narrative tone is occasionally too conversational–even apologetic–which can be distracting from the provoking information contained within. Still, Beebe successfully supplies readers with a unique blend of historical information on Judaism and the early Christian church, placing familiar Christian stories such as the Good Samaritan within an insightful Jewish context.
A helpful, informative explanation of the common ground between Judaism and Christianity.Pub Date: May 27, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4257-8939-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
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 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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
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