A well-written introduction to Isaiah that carefully balances accessible writing with nuanced commentary.
A debut spiritual primer focuses on the book of Isaiah.
Growing up as a devout Christian, Montañez finally realized when he attended a seminar in biblical exegesis as an adult that he had “read and even memorized scriptures devoid of their true context.” Rather than committing himself to an in-depth study of the entire Bible, he has spent nearly a decade researching the book of Isaiah and offers readers in this volume a concise, erudite commentary. Convinced that the writings of “Yeshayahu” (a Hebrew variant of the anglicized name Isaiah) rank with the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge as a wonder of the ancient world, the author suggests that despite the book’s sustained popularity among Jews and Christians, it has too often been “misunderstood” by preachers who decontextualize its message. Divided into three parts, Montañez’s overview in the first section provides readers with a structural analysis and historical commentary on Isaiah’s canon as a seminal work in Jewish and Christian Scripture. The next two parts center on a historical and exegetical analysis of the book’s prophesies, arguing that many of Isaiah’s predictions have been fulfilled in subsequent Mesopotamian geopolitical incidents or in the coming of Jesus as the divine Messiah. Ample attention is also given to a rich examination of the Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1946 and 1947, which represents one of the most “complete ancient writings we have in our possession.” Despite this admiration, the author does not hold back his critiques, such as his acknowledgement of Isaiah’s occasional “logical blunders,” contradictions, and “blatant grammatical errors.” Written from a predominantly Christian viewpoint, Montañez’s study includes sources that reflect a sound grasp of biblical scholarship, particularly from a Protestant, evangelical perspective. Still, the author deliberately includes Jewish contextualization and commentary from writers like Josephus. But Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians may be dismayed by the work’s description of their sacred biblical texts like the book of Sirach as “apocryphal” and by a lack of engagement with the allegorical interpretation of Isaiah from the perspectives of early church scholars like Augustine.
A well-written introduction to Isaiah that carefully balances accessible writing with nuanced commentary.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-66420-192-7
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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