A scholarly yet accessible introduction to Gnosticism.
Sunderland (The Obelisk and the Cross, 2016) analyzes the central divisions between orthodox and gnostic interpretations of the life and meaning of Jesus Christ.
The orthodox, or traditional, version of Christianity’s Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) is the foundation of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant denominations. However, the Judaic and Messianic narrative promoted by these books faced competition from a rival set of scriptures, which were largely lost to history until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945. The Gospels of Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdalene, and others provided early Christians—particularly those in the vicinity of Alexandria, Egypt—with an alternate story of Jesus Christ, Creation, and the entire spiritual order. This book first deftly notes their differences from traditional Christian writings, then examines attempts by orthodox Christians and Gnostics to find a “middle path” to reconcile the two sides: The Apostle Paul does this in his epistles by reaching out to gentiles who’d be alienated by an overemphasis on a Judaic Messiah; Gnostic theologian Valentinus does it by acknowledging the supreme deity as “Father.” However, by the year 325, orthodox Christians had successfully linked their interpretation with Emperor Constantine, officially canonized Scripture that aligned with that interpretation, and denounced Gnosticism as heresy. The book’s final third argues for the continued relevancy of Gnosticism in our postmodern world, which values tenets that Gnostics promoted—individualism, self-discovery, and self-fulfillment. Overall, non-Catholic readers may find the author’s relative dismissal of distinctive Protestant theology to be off-putting. Indeed, by lumping Protestants into the same “orthodox” category as Catholics, the author misses potential opportunities to explore some similarities between Protestant ideas and Gnosticism, such as the Quakers’ emphasis on “inner light.” These criticisms notwithstanding, the author writes in clear, concise prose that effectively explains the complex and varied theologies of Gnosticism for a general audience while also maintaining an academic tone and providing a solid foundation of research.
A scholarly yet accessible introduction to Gnosticism.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-925590-48-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Vivid Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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