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
With healthy skepticism and heavy-handed irony, Washington chronicles the tortuous history of the Theosophic movement. Madame Blavatsky differed from other late 19th century mediums in that, while she used parlor tricks as demonstrations of her mystical abilities, she also created a fecund pseudo-philosophy, drawing partially on Eastern religions, in a book, The Secret Doctrine. Her thick and inconsistent tomes were required reading for the Theosophical Society, which she and a partner formed in America and which, while never large, has had an incongruously pervasive influence. Washington (Literary Theory and the End of English, not reviewed) provides a perceptive intellectual background of 18th- and 19th-century occultism. The Society became a modest success but attracted more than its share of bizarre con men and converts, like the mystic flaneur G.I. Gurdjieff and the utopian Rudolf Steiner. Despite its subtitle, however, this history is mainly concerned with European Theosophy and its sects as the nexus of ``western gurus,'' even though the US was generally more receptive to Asian religious philosophy and charlatan gurus. Although the Society's leaders get full billing, and their numerous sectarian branches and infighting are chronicled, the great figures who were attracted to Theosophy—W.B. Yeats, G.B. Shaw, T.S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Frank Lloyd Wright, and others—are treated peripherally, with little insight into either their drives or what it was about the Secret Doctrine that appealed to them. The exception is a chapter on the wartime exiles in Hollywood, such as Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood, and the US career of Krishnamurti, an Indian of obscure origins whom the Theosophists adopted (and manipulated) as the messianic ``World Teacher.'' A plain history that doesn't take up the social and intellectual issues that drew so many to Theosophy and continue to draw people to its descendant—the New Age movement. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8052-4125-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
A timely history of the American politicians and publicists who have appealed to ``the people.'' Kazin (History/American Univ.; Barons of Labor, not reviewed) shows how populist language has a complicated history, full of irony, paradox, and at times menace. As an academic historian, Kazin shares the disquiet that many of his colleagues have felt in defining populism. On the one hand, there is sympathy for the liberal and inclusive attack on corporate interests and closed government that characterized the great People's Party of the 1890s, the most sustained attack on the two-party system since the Civil War. On the other hand, Kazin recognizes that populist rhetoric, whether liberal or conservative, has often constructed ``the people'' as a group of white males, leaving out women, new immigrants, and African-Americans. Furthermore, there has been a tendency for populists of both the right and the left to engage in conspiracy theories that victimize vulnerable minorities. After setting out the broad emergence of a populist style based on a 19th-century reading of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, Kazin shows how this subtle and flexible language was appropriated by one political movement after another: the People's Party, the Anti- Saloon League, the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Communist Party, and Father Coughlin. Finally, he chronicles the capture of populist language by conservatives, whether Cold Warriors and segregationists like George Wallace, or the Republican right of Goldwater and, later, Reagan and his would-be heirs. Kazin laments the elitism of postNew Deal liberalism, which opened the way, he believes, for a conservative appropriation of populist argument. A solid historical view, slightly deflated by Kazin's muddled speculation on the need for new, inclusive social movements that incorporate the historic language of populism.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-03793-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
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