A simplification of the Bible that needs a thorough edit.
Falade makes the heterodox argument that the Bible as most Christians know it requires a severe redaction.
The author maintains that the only reliable verses of the Bible are quotations from Jesus Christ and verses pertaining to his life and teachings. Here he presents his own re-created scriptural text, preceded by lengthy introductory materials. Falade basically discounts the majority of the Old Testament, maintaining the veracity of only those few verses that either portend the coming of Christ or are directly connected to the teachings of Jesus. Likewise, large portions of the New Testament are discounted. Though he has admiration for those who passed Scriptures down through the centuries, he believes scholars and church leaders unnecessarily added to an otherwise perfect collection of “Canonicity,” as he puts it, which he refers to as “the Bible Jesus used.” He goes on to claim that he is “perfecting” the Bible in his efforts: “Perfecting means ridding the texts of attributes that are not consistent with the divine nature of the Christ.” Falade cites hundreds of verses and statements that he considers inconsistencies. (For instance, in Matthew and Luke, Jesus says he came to bring not peace, but a sword; yet in John, Jesus says “In me you have peace.”) This revised version includes a variety of quotes from and references to the Old Testament and to the sayings and actions of Jesus. The final product, according to the author, is shorter than the original four Gospels, and only 2 percent of it is based on the Old Testament. Falade’s verbiage is highly cluttered and hard to follow, and a thorough edit of his introductory pages would make his subsequent material much easier to understand. Though other modern scholars have attempted to identify “the historical Jesus” or a core of authentic Bible verses (e.g., The Jesus Seminar), Falade’s own methodology for saving certain portions of Scripture and discarding others is simply unclear, opening him up to criticism by academics and lay readers alike. Nevertheless, the author has labored through an extremely close reading of the Scriptures and displays a high level of knowledge regarding the intricacies of Jesus’ teachings and the Bible as a whole.
A simplification of the Bible that needs a thorough edit.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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