Antiquity

Antiquity: The Civilization of the Ancient World
© 2003 Norman F. Cantor
256 pages

Perhaps western history is all Greek to you. In that case, Norman Cantor's Antiquity may shed a little light on the subject. It is a brief work, scarcely over 200 pages,  and in it Cantor reviews the primary roots of Western civilization (Greece, Rome, and Judaism), as well as more material considerations like the role of cities.  Civilizations of the middle east also appear through the Jewish connection.  This book has a curious organization, and one of its chapters eschews narrative altogether: instead, Cantor presents the debates within early Christian thought as a lively conversation involving St. Augustine and a few others.   Although the book is intentionally pitched as a survey for the historically illiterate, Cantor doesn't shy away from probing a little more deeply when he can --  exploring the meaning behind classic architecture, for instance, the common emphasis on rationality and restraint that linked Greek aesthetics and philosophy. (Of course, they can't help but be linked, considering that aesthetics was considered one of the branches of philosophy, along with ethics and metaphysics.)   Cantor holds the Roman empire in especially high regard, declaring that it was the most harmonious and stable multiethnic society in history. 

Although I enjoyed this quick romp through the ancient and classical world well enough ,  it has its quirks -- the unusual approach to reviewing Christian thought, for instance, and the fact that Cantor believes that imperialism and  plutocracy  were passed down not by human nature, but by the classic heritage.   I'm preee-eety sure they had war and imperialism in China, Africa, and...oh, everywhere else.  Those who have a serious interest in repairing historical blind spots can probably find better works.

Fear No Evil

Fear No Evil: 
© 1988 Natan Sharansky
437  pages

Fear No Evil chronicles one man’s psychological war against the KGB and the entire Gulag system. Born a Jewish subject of the Soviet Union, Natan Sharansky wanted nothing more than to emigrate peacefully to Israel, along with his fiancé. Forcefully denied exit, Sharansky became an advocate for other ‘refusniks’, and a human rights activist in general, within the Soviet Union. Denounced as a traitorous spy in the employ of the Americans, Sharansky was arrested and thrown into the prison system of the Soviets, subjected to long periods of isolation and physical destitution which was moderated only by the Soviets’ desire to appear to be behaving. This is not a mere prison memoir, however, detailing the abuses of the Soviet state. Instead, Sharansky takes us through his campaign to maintain his character despite being in the clutches of a system that was designed precisely to erode or demolish individual spirits, leaving nothing but the New Soviet Man – an institutionalized zek, a placid cow who existed to be milked and slaughtered as the State wished.

From the beginning, Sharansky approached the KGB and the Soviet state strategically. Even while fighting against them, he did so completely in the open. He maintains that he concealed nothing, met with no one secretly, never once scurried in the dark like a criminal who had something to hid. He was a man, speaking ‘truth to power’ like a man (to borrow from King). While in interrogations, he listened between the lines, attempting to discern what sort of case they were trying to build against him. While the KGB sought to alienate him, he spent his prison hours revisiting every moment of his life, swaddling the memories of loved ones around him to remind him constantly of what he was fighting for. If the KGB wanted to divorce him from his Jewish heritage, he would be the best Jew he could by praying constantly and learning Hebrew – despite not being observant in the least in the outside world. If they wanted to threaten him with death, he would bring the subject so much that the word lost its sting. At every step, he engaged in noncooperation. He mocked the KGB relentlessly, spending day after day in solitary confinement. When threatened with the loss of ‘privileges’ for not cooperating, he deliberately broke rules to ensure that his happiness and peace of mind were never predicated on what the KGB could offer him, or could do to him. From the beginning he maintained that nothing they could do could humiliate him: only he could humiliate himself. Though he never once references Greek philosophy, Sharansky lived as a Stoic in the same way that James Stockdale did while similarly imprisoned. He used his mind to defend his character, his very person, from being broken and cast in an inferior mold.

Fear no Evil is an incredible and commendable chronicle of a man conducting himself brilliantly, who faced a system built on inhumanity and emerged triumphant. This is excellent stuff -- Arete in action.

I think it's high time I hunted down a copy of Gulag Archipelago...

The Promise

The Promise
© 1969 Chaim Potok
336 pages

Growing up is never easy, but for Orthodox boys in the mid-20th century, it's especially hard. The Jewish people are in turmoil after the horrors of the Holocaust, some pinning their hopes on Israel and others recoiling from it as anathema. The latter is true of Hasidic communities from Eastern Europe, fleeing both European and Soviet persecution, finding safe haven in the United States. The welcome American Jews might have given to their kin, however, is worn thin by the Hasids' swelling number and their fervent defense of rigid Orthodoxy.   In this setting Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter, two Orthodox boys introduced in the gripping tale of The Chosen, complete their coming of age, united in the treatment of a young boy whose genius is matched by his inexplicable rage.

In The Chosen, Danny chose to depart from his father's legacy as a Hasidic rabbi, a leader of his community. He chose instead to pursue psychology, while his more mainstream rival-turned-friend Reuven realized a call to the rabbinate.  The Promise opens with both young men engaged in their graduate studies, and both faced with shared difficulties that force them to reconsider the paths they have taken. The first challenge is a boy with a passion for astronomy, the son of a humanistic Jewish scholar who is the object of scorn to the traditionalists governing Hirsch University.  Michael is very sick, possessed by fantasies and given to episodes of rage; he exhausts therapists and seemed doomed to be institutionalized.  Both Danny and Reuven have a personal connection to the stargazer Michael, in being companions of his older cousin Rachel. Danny has an idea for how to treat Michael, but it's risky: if it fails, it may destroy the boy's psyche altogether.  Meanwhile, Reuven's position as a graduate student who must soon defend his grasp and attitude of Talmud study to a panel of elders forces him between more liberal scholars like his father and Michael's, and the traditionalist Hasids. He recoils against the 'mental ghetto' of fundamentalist Talmud studies, but is not satisfied with  answers that reduce Judaism to empty family traditions.

In The Chosen, Potok impressed me by having Danny and Reuven both embroiled in an intense and challenging relationship with Danny's father, Reb Saunders, who despaired both of Danny's interest in the outside world, and of Reuven's own father's modernist approach to Talmudic study. Although they began as antagonists, however, ultimately they arrived at mutual understanding. No one is defeated,  their differences do not cease, but they break through the arguments to re-embrace the people making them. Potok accomplishes something very like that here, in the person of Rev Kalman. Kalman survived the death camps of the Nazi state, but lost nearly everyone he knew, and when confronted with American Jews he sees challengers that threaten to complete by sophistry what Hitler began with direct industrial  murder.    Kalman stands between Reuven and ordination, and is an especially difficult antagonist given that he rails against Reuven's father in the press.  Yet Potok does not resolve the tension by having Reuven choose a prescripted side. Instead, he makes his own choice, and Kalman proves to be much like Reb Saunders:  the enmity is defeated, but not his person.

Though initially appealing for being the further story of Danny and Reuven, Potok's skill at rendering intense debate that results in mutual understanding rather than one-sided triumphs impressed me. I imagine as a rabbi himself, Potok has spent long hours having similar heated conversations with his colleagues and academics, attempting to reconcile an ancient faith with modernity without losing the power of those values and practices to endue lives with direction and meaning.
----

I know this is English Literature month, so er...consider this a salute to Benjamin Disraeli, former Jewish prime minister of Great Britain. (It's also Passover, so..chag sameach!)

All Other Nights

All Other Nights
© 2009 Dara Horn
400 pages

Why is this night different than all other nights?  Well, for starters, Joseph Rappaport is going to poison his uncle, on suspicion that he is plotting to kill Abraham Lincoln.   That move is the beginning of Rappaport’s career as an intelligence agent, using his family connections to infiltrate a Southern spy ring.  All Other Nights  is the enthralling story that emerges as he descends deeper into the shadows, finding – even as his body collects injuries from narrow escapes – a purpose worth living for.   Although running away from an arranged marriage at his father’s hands puts Rappaport into the ranks of the Union army,   it is when he tasked with seducing and marrying a young woman undermining the Federal campaign that the story fully begins.

Romance and work are a poor mix, as Rappaport soon finds. He wins the affections of his dazzling spy-rival,  a star of the theater who excels in sleight of hand. Her theft of his heart, however, is no parlor trick. The war makes a tragedy of their love, however,  doomed as their work was toward mutual self-destruction.  Joseph is soon broken in heart and body, marooned in the Tennessee wilderness.   A chance connection leads him to realize that not all hope is lost, however, and soon he is back in Virginia,  at the side of the Confederate Secretary of State, Judah Benjamin. His masquerade is two-fold, however;  while posing as a Confederate agent and gathering information for the Union, his true purpose in returning to Richmond is to find the family he helped destroy and save them and what little he feels of his soul from further ruin.

What a fascinating novel this is!  There's a touch of small-world coincidence, but it's handled deftly enough.  Joseph’s Jewish heritage isn’t just character flavoring;  the book opens at a Passover seder, the remembrance of Hebrews escape from Egyptian bondage the call for retribution.  Most of what Rappaport does throughout the novel is escape – flee the obligations his father seeks to impose on him,  out-run the consequences of his own actions – but  once he loses an eye he begins to see his way more clearly,  embracing a new life for himself even as Richmond burns.  The story thus combines historic espionage (ciphers, messages hidden in riding crops) and agonizing soul searching. There's romance here, but unlike other authors Ms. Horn doesn't force a play-by-play on the readers. She teases, as characters gaze at one another longingly, and then discretely moves on.  It has substance, too too, for Jacob's is a love discovered accidentally and kindled slowly.  The final scene is a true finish, one that complete's Jacob's growth as a man capable of decision, not merely running or obeying masters above.

This is one of the best Civil War novels I've read in a long, long time.
 

Tevye's Daughters

Tevye and his Seven Daughters
© 1894 Sholom Aleichem
300 pages

Consider the question: is it possible to enjoy a book while having music from a movie it inspired playing incessantly in your head every time a page is turned? Well, more or less. This is has been my experience with Tevye's Daughters, a collection of short stories by Sholom Aleichem (aleichem shalom!), the basis of Fiddler on the Roof.    The stories are not all part of the same narrative; those told by Tevye the Dairyman,  Fiddler's star, comprise only a fraction of the book. The rest have other narrators, most anonymous, but all Jews living in Tsarist Russia.  There is humor here, some of it dark. Most of the entertainment value is derived from the narrators' collective gift of gab. In one, "The Man from Buenos Aires" the story consists of a businessman rambling on about his financial prowess (and his modesty). Page after page this goes on until our narrator is about to disembark when he finally asks: what is it it you do? The businessman's reply is "Well, I don't sell prayer books, that's for sure!".  There's no conventional drama-conflict-resolution scheme to these stories, and the point of quite a few slipped me entirely. The writing, though, just drew me in, and I suppose it was helped by the Russian setting, which is completely new to me. Tevye is utterly lovable, though being a man of the musical made me fond of him from the start.  Like the movie-musical,  Tevye's Daughters drifts toward the sad, ending with the expulsion of the Jews from Russia. There is a bright light at the end, however, when Tevye is restored to one of his daughters. Altogether the stories were charming enough that I'm glad I took a chance on ordering through interlibrary loan.

Originally written in Yiddish, this translation retained enough to require a glossary in the back.

Vanished World

A Vanished World: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval Spain
© 2005 Chris Lowney
320 pages

Vanished World sets medieval  Spain before the reader with the warning; we may be blessed or cursed by emulating its example. The Iberian peninsula is the very perimeter of western Europe, within a stone's throw of both the vast continent of Africa and the looming expanse of the Atlantic. Despite its apparent remoteness, Iberia was throughout the ages in the very thick of the action --  the pitch wherin civilizations clashed. In an earlier age, Rome and Carthage sparred; a thousand years later,  Visigoths and Muslims fought.  The invasion of Spain in 711 by the Umayyad caliphate made the former province of the Romans, then yet another ruin ruled by nominally Christian barbarians, into an outpost of a far larger, far more sophisticated civilization, where it enjoyed a golden age that was for Europe a preview of the Renaissance and enlightenment.  Here the gifts of the Greeks were preserved and built on; here  both Islam and Rabbinic Judaism grew in new directions.  Vanished World is a brief  and romantic history of medieval Spain, one brimming with hope that we can all just get along.

Until the triumph of Ferdinand and Isabella, who united their kingdoms and created a state commanding the peninsula, Iberia was home to a multitude of peoples and minor states. While many were drawn by commercial cross-traffic, others came to carve out kingdoms, like the Visigoths and their successors from Africa, the Umayyads. Iberia was fractured and destitute, lingering in a winter of civilization that was chased away by an eastern wind. Unlike the barely literate Goths,  the Muslim invaders were part of a vibrant, culturally rich civilization on the ascendant. Sweeping over the peninsula, they infused it with new life, creating a social order that allowed their new subjects to participate in it.  Although the calpihate would falter after the death of its leader, breaking into squabbling branches that were brushed aside by a Castillian comeback,  it reigned for several hundred years and created an environment that brought the best of human passion, creativity, and intelligence to the surface.  After an introduction which establishes an outline of Spain's political history.  most of the book is given over to sections which explore different aspects of the civilization that prevailed between the fall of the Goths and the rise of Castille.  These include chapters on the growth of science, as Muslim and Jewish scholars built upon Greek knowledge and advanced it considerably, as well as some on religious revolution; the Judeo-Muslim mystical traditions both flourished in the Iberian setting. Downey's vision for the book is made apparent in contrasting several pairs of legends. The patron saint of Spain. St. James, was remembered alternatively as either a humble and kind apostle who spread the Gospel to the furthest reaches of the continent, or as Santiago the Muslim-Slayer, who was said to have appeared and led a Christian army to victory. A similar contrast is offered by the Song of Roland, depicting Charlemagne as a Christian warrior fighting the fiendish Muslims, and the story of El Cid, who found honor and friendship among the ranks of both.   Christian and Muslim need not spar, Downey writes, offering various examples of cross-cultural pollination and episodes of historical cooperation, as when Christian and Muslim powers joined together to fight...other Muslim powers. 

Although the subject is fascinating and I wanted badly to like it, in truth the book is limited. Downey is a very casual historian,  chatty and informal.  That can work to a degree, but sometimes retards a reader's ability to take the text seriously. Assuming one is completely oblivious to intellectual life in the medieval epoch, Vanished World will be quite exciting. Personally, Spangenburg and Moser's history of science covered this ground too well for me to take much here, though I did find the bits about Sufism and Kabbalah of interest.  The history is also heavily sanitized in view of Downey's objection. It's a laudable goal, of course, and he does mention a few trifling incidents of unpleasantness, but haranguing Christians for the Crusades is hardly fair when no mention of the Battle of Tours is made.   Sixty years after the conquest of Spain by Moorish armies, the Umayyads advanced on France itself, meeting defeat scarcely 150 miles from Paris.  Humans will never cease to war with one another, though, regardless of religion; Christians may fight Muslims, but as this and countless other books demonstrate, they will happily dig into one another as well. We're a hot-blooded species given to destruction.  That considering, it's nice to review the many ways we are capable of working together, as Downey does here,  touching on science, art, medicine, and even the invention of cowboys.                

Look for a future comparison to Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. 

  

                                               

I Am Forbidden

I Am Forbidden
© 2012 Anouk Markovits
302 pages

Darkness grips Eastern Europe in the 1940s as war devours millions and the hopes of generations. Jewish residents of Romania are especially hard-pressed; already viewing themselves as a people in exile, they are dispersed further afield as they flee persecution. I Am Forbidden follows the family of a Jewish scholar who rescues two orphans and raises them with his own children,  first in Paris and then in England. Sadly, not only war threatens their peace,  as two daughters growing up in an archly traditional sect of Judaism struggle to find their role within it. I Am Forbidden is a heartbreaking story of lives ruined by secrets and scrupulosity, of hardened hearts sinking any hopes for happiness.  In using  the coming-of-age of two friends (here sisters) to explore the tensions between Hasidim and modernity, I Am Forbidden is rather like The Chosen; but where the latter offered a hopeful conclusion,  this leaves the reader in despair.  There is interest here, of course, the insight given here about Hasidism -- but the utter absence of mercy makes it an artfully written but distressingly sad tale.

Related:
The Chosen, Chaim Potok

A Year of Living Prayerfully

A Year of Living Prayerfully
© 2015 Jared Brock
352 pages

Emotionally weary from his fight against human trafficking, Jared Brock and his wife sought refreshment in prayer. A yearlong traveling retreat would immerse them in the prayer traditions of Orthodox Judaism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Protestant sects. Although a passionate Christian for most of his life, Brock's status as a thoroughly modern evangelical allows him to discover these traditions for the first time, and take lessons from them even as he retains his own convictions. Alternately reverent and cheeky, Brock is a comic but earnest guide to man's intense desire to touch the divine.  For the devout Christian, his thoughtful analysis of what he gleans from this yearlong study will no doubt be fruitful;  for instance, the importance of "kingdom-minded prayer" in which the seeker prays not for God to simply rescue him or do something for him, but attempts to surrender himself before the will of God in his own life, to abide in the presence of God and act not for reasons of self-will, but out of genuine love for one another. There are some dodgy moments, though -- Brock's wife jumping into a cold pond au naturale after saying various Jewish prayers, because they wanted to experience the ritual baptism and surprisingly no Orthodox Jews were open to having some evangelical woman "playing temple".  Brock purposely seeks out the bizarre -- the Westboro cult, Christian nudists, people walks on coals --  and these are included more for entertainment value than anything else. The early parts of the book, however, in  which Brock visits Israel and walks a pilgrimage route in Spain, even meeting Pope Francis, offer far more substance, like Brock's thoughtful dismay at the crass commercialization of Jerusalem.  The bizaare aspects make the work somewhat attractive to secular audiences, however.

Related:
And then There Were Nuns, Jane Christmas. One woman's exploration of the contemplative life.
A Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs, of which this is a fairly transparent imitation

The Chosen

The Chosen
© 1967 Chaim Potok
288 pages

Danny and Reuven are two Orthodox Jewish boys who take one thing very seriously: baseball.  When their rival schools meet on the baseball diamond, religious passion turns play to war, and an accident hospitalizes Reuven. Thus is born an unexpected friendship, one that matures throughout their adolescence.  The two come of age in a difficult era; the book begins in World War 2, and takes them through the discovery of the Holocaust, and the turmoil that surrounded Israel's creation. Making matters still more interesting is the boys' religious identities and their respective desires:  Danny is a Hasidic Jew being groomed to succeed his father, while Reuven's dad is a somewhat more secular professor.  Both boys are intellectually-oriented themselves, serious students of both their tradition and respective interests:  one is fascinated by logic, the other by Freud.  Their passion frequently causes them to bump heads with one another, and not necessarily over religious matters. Reuven's rationalism threatens not Danny's religion, but his passion of Freudian psychology.  Their most serious break has nothing to do with either of them, but with their fathers' respective politics: the professor is a passionate supporter of the nascent Israeli state, while the rabbi believes an Israel led by secular Jews is an obscenity, utter anathema to any devout follower of Torah.  This is mid-20th century America, a place utterly recognizable...but many of the characters live within a culture that is utterly exotic to the American mainstream, and The Chosen is simultaneously the story of boys becoming men and an education in Hasidic Judaism. There are five principle characters in this novel: the boys, their fathers, and the Talmud. Thousands of years of Jewish practice and biblical commentary are contained in its various volumes, and its demands and wisdom both guide our characters and fill their lives with reverent dread.  The Chosen is utterly fascinating with a strong redemptive finish.

Between the Testaments

Between the Testaments
© 1960 D.S. Russell
176 pages

            The sudden eruption of Christianity from Judaism is inexplicable when considering only the Protestant Bible.  From nowhere burst the Trinity, Satan as a rebel, and an obsession with the afterlife. But Christianity’s birth is less miraculous than it seems, and Between the Testaments demonstrates the birds and the bees. A short review of  Jewish history, material and cultural, establishes the background for the rise of Christianity. Scholarly without being cerebral, D.T. Russell’s survey draws on Josephus’ History as well as Jewish writings not collected in Judaism's official canon.  Russell’s review includes a history of  cultural conflict between the Jews and Hellenism, an outline of the Jewish sects that developed within that conflict (Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, etc), and a review of the Jewish works aforementioned. Of particular interest to me was the influence of Zoroastrian dualism and the Apocalyptic tradition, which established the yearning for a Messiah who would conclude the raging battle between good and evil with a decisive victory for the Good. Even if Christians choose to regard the deuterocanonicals as 'less' than inspired, the extent to which they are quoted by New Testament authors begs consideration. In addition, Russell's history covers Judaism's shift from focus on the Temple to focus on the Torah;  thus here we see not only the metaphysical framework that Christianity will eventually build on, but the origin of contemporary Judaism,  a liturgical religion led by rabbis instead of a ritual one led by priests.  Between the Testaments is particularly strong as a reference source because it's more of a review than a presented argument. The facts are given, and conclusions left to the reader's drawing.

Related:

• Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Brad Pitre
• The Book of Wisdom, New English Bible
• Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, Bart Ehrman

Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist

Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist
© 2011 Brad Pitre
240 pages

Communion, the eating of bread and wine regarded as the body and blood of Jesus, is the heart of liturgical worship. Its place in Christian history holds such awe that even the most anarchic Protestant sect pays homage to it, if only once a year.  Where did it come from? What could have possessed a group of first century Jews into organizing an elaborate ritual around small fragments of bread, and regarding its consumption as the key to eternal life, as Paul wrote?  Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Christian Eucharist examine ‘the great Thanksgiving’ in the light of Passover. The work of a Notre Dame religious scholar, it draws not only from the Bible but from the broader Jewish religious tradition to place the Eucharist firmly within it.

Although Christianity and Judaism have grown far apart over the millennia, in the beginning this was not so.  The breaches between the two religions, so exaggerated now, are bridged when first-century Judaism is delved into fully. While modern Jews hold that the Messiah is an earthly king, come to establish a temporal kingdom, rabbinic commentators within the Mishna and Midrash were looking for a successor to Moses; a prophet who would lead another exodus, this one spiritual, and establish a new covenant. It is the legacy of Moses that much of the book is built on;  the exodus he led and the tradition he founded.

The first Exodus was lead by Moses, after a series of plagues delivered against the land of Egypt convinced its Pharaoh that releasing the Hebrews from slavery might be the wisest course of action. Though bothered before by p boils, locusts,  bloody rivers, and dead cows, the coup de grâce came in the form of an angel of death that slew every first-born son in the land, including the Pharaoh's own boy. The night the angel was at work, the Hebrews engaged in a ritual dinner that was instituted as their salvation.  Shortly after the Hebrews had left Egypt and received the Law of Moses, they were ordered to reenact that ritual dinner every year thereafter.  Passover, that reenactment, the yearly remembering of their rescue from slavery, is the origin of the Eucharist, its antecedent. The Eucharist is in fact the new passover; just as the first provided rescue from physical bondage, the second offered redemption from spiritual bondage and death.

Belief in the power of the Eucharist is not required to appreciate Pitre's argument, which demonstrates how the central Christian practice has well-established Jewish antecedents. Among them:  widespread belief in the eventual establishing of a new covenant, installed in blood, one in which the chosen people would feast on the presence of God, not ordinary food; a corresponding belief that the manna which fell from heaven during the Exodus was a sample of that extraordinary food;  the veneration of that manna, accomplished by its presence in the Ark, and the regular use of unleavened bread in Jewish sacrifices. Kept in the tabernacle, and referred to as the Bread of the Presence, it symbolized God's abiding with the people of Israel.  and finally, the Christian retelling of the Last Supper -- the first communion -- in which the fourth ritual cup of wine,  'the cup of salvation', is not consumed within the Upper Room -- but is referred to during the Passion when Jesus pleads to let 'this cup' pass from him, and later consumes wine on the Cross.   This last one is is somewhat stretched, but altogether it's a compelling case that the Gospel authors believed this, that they structured their telling of the Last Supper to connect it with the Passover, to link Jesus' life with Moses. Even if one regards Jesus as nothing but a apocalyptic prophet, the argument is no less compelling because it demonstrates what  the early church made of Jesus' life as they struggled to find meaning in it, increasingly removed from that promise that the end of days was imminent.  At the very least, the ritual consumption of bread and wine in celebration of the presence of God is made a common bond between Temple Judaism and Christianity, the unbroken thread.

There are still some minor quibbles; varying gospels place the execution of Jesus at different spots during Passover, some after the sacrifice of the lamb and some during it; obviously, the connective imagery is most strong if one regards Jesus as being crucified at the same hour that lambs were being  roasted crossways on spits.  The objection Jews would have against drinking blood and eating 'human flesh' is noted, and Pitre points out that many of Jesus' followers simply couldn't take it. The rest were swayed by the notion that they weren't eating fleshy flesh, they were partaking in a resurrected body, a 'glorified' one, and it wasn't the same. It's a hard sell ("a hard saying", to quote their biblical reaction).  The Jewish Roots of the Eucharist is altogether a most effective revealing of how Christian traditions simply grew intact from older Jewish ones.  It's not a novel idea; Christians from churches high and low consider Passover and Eucharist linked, but Pitre demonstrates the depth of their connection and makes plain that Christianity's Jewishness runs deep.


Related:
The Crucified Rabbi, Taylor Marshall. This also examines Judaism's role in shaping Christian (specifically Catholic) spirituality, though it's more of a general survey and not nearly as powerfully argued.
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, Bart Ehrman. Though I haven't reviewed it here, dualism is an important piece of the puzzle that is Christianity's origin.

The Crucified Rabbi

The Crucified Rabbi: Judaism and the Origins of Catholic Christianity
© 2009 Taylor Marshall
236 pages

Take for granted Christianity’s inseparable connection to Judaism, but what does it mean, beyond knowing that Jesus was Jewish and died during Passover?  The Crucified Rabbi is the first volume of a Catholic history trilogy, and examines the close links between the early Christian church and those of Judaism.  That they abound shouldn't be surprising, given that the early Christians were Jewish. I had no idea, however, how much Jewish heritage had been passed through the Catholic tradition.

Taylor Marshall opens with the obvious, Christianity’s central claim that Jesus was the Jewish messiah.  His arguments probably won’t turn any practicing Jews into Messianics but after that things get more interesting. Subsequent chapters address shared elements of the two religions. Some ties are easier to see than others, like related holidays, prayer hours, and vestments. Others will be a harder  sell for the author, though his arguments are certainly interesting. Take for instance the idea that Jews were predisposed to Marian worship because of traditional devotion to the Queen Mother; this strikes me as problematic given that 1st century Jews were long removed from their monarchy.  In the same vein is the teaching that the Ark of the Covenant was a antecedent to Marian worship, because Mary like the Ark hosted the spirit of God. 

In addition to examining their shared religious history, Marshall reviews the political relationship between the Catholic church and the Jewish people;  things were not always so cozy. Though Catholic scholars have a long history of appreciating the Torah, the Church and its people have branded themselves with the mark of Cain many times, especially during the Crusades.  I did not realize how aggressively John Paul II pushed for reconciliation with Jews, I suspect the book is written in the same spirit. Though heavily footnoted with biblical and Vatican references, the book is on the light side, but an easy introduction to how much of early Christianity was simply Judaism in an altered context. 

Related:

• The Misunderstood Jew: the Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine
• Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline, Laura Winner;  a work on how Jewish spiriutality can inform others, especially Christian. 

An Officer and a Spy

An Officer and a Spy
© 2013 Robert Harris
496 pages 

  In the late 19th century, the Dreyfuss Affair shook France when one Captain Alfred Dreyfuss, accused of selling French military secrets to the Germany General Staff.  Declared guilty, publicly disgraced, and dramatically exiled, Dreyfuss’ name became a lightning rod of controversy. On trial, more than Dreyfuss himself, was the pride of the army and the Jewish question. Could a Jew  be a loyal citizen of the Republic?   An Officer and a Spy is a history of the affair in novel form, from the perspective of Colonel Marie-Georges Picquart, who observed the trial in its entirety and who, upon becoming an intelligence master,  began to realize that something was amiss. Though Picquart begins as hostile to Dreyfuss, his investigation of ongoing security concerns reveals that not only is there a spy still operating within the General Staff, but the case against Dreyfuss was based on ‘evidence’ too flimsy to be respectable. When he attempts to call his superiors’ attention to this miscarriage of justice and take down the real spy, however, Pichquart becomes another target of an entrenched institution desperate to save face: the French army.

            Robert Harris has displayed his strengths as a writer of fiction, with books as diverse as political thrillers set in ancient Rome  to modern science-fiction thrillers set in financial markets. After books like The Fear Index and The Ghost, An Officer and a Spy is a return to the genre in which Harris proved his writing mettle: historical fiction.  Its integration of source material and narrative is impressive, drawing extensively on Dreyfusses' letters but never obtrusively. Trials are a mainstay here, as not only Dreyfuss but various suspects are dragged before courts-martial and forced to defend themselves. Picquart himself is never officially tried, but when his associates are he might as well be, for he is exiled to Africa and given a pointless and likely suicidal mission.  Being a few years removed from my French history courses, I don't know how the development of Picquart's case aligns with reality, but it's excellent fiction. I suspect Harris stays close to the facts, because certain characters, like the 'real' spy, aren't as overblown as they might be in a purely fictional novel:  the real spy isn't particularly sinister, but in pure fiction he could have been developed as a mastermind. Because in reality he managed to stay hidden accidentally, the true villain of the piece is the French army's distrust of Jews and their obsession with protecting themselves from additional controversy.  Considering how rich in detail this book is about life during the 'beautiful epoch', before the great war, and about the craft of intelligence in particular,  it's an attractive historical piece while doubling as a fascinating political and legal thriller.

Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Blacks Rednecks and White Liberals
© 2005 Thomas Sowell
360 pages

Thomas Sowell's provocatively-titled Black Rednecks and White Liberals casts a critical eye toward  conventional understandings of race, class, and history, collecting a half-dozen extensive essays in one volume. Although each essay is written as a standalone piece, some concern common subjects and refer to one another.  Sowell principally writes on African-Americans and Jews here, aside from an apologia written on Germany.  His central argument essentially blames the welfare state for the continuing degradation of black Americans, by way of historical arguments, one of them deliciously twisted -- the title essay.

"Black Rednecks and White Liberals" sets the stage by contending that the woeful culture of poverty keeping urban blacks in a despairing state is not one which they created themselves, but one inherited from poor whites, and specifically the poor whites who emigrated from a border region of Scotland during a specific timeframe in which Scottish 'crackers' of the area were slobbering savages, having not yet been tamed by the graces of English civilization. The poor whites of this ‘cracker culture’  exhibited the same self-defeating behaviors lamented over in the ghetto today; a disdain for education and work, a painfully abbreviated approach to the English language,  wanton sexuality,  and a gleeful embrace of violence, along with an ‘honor’ system that promoted the use of such violence.   It is Sowell’s opinion that southern blacks were acculturated into the behaviors of the ‘white trash’ and dragged it around the country with them. Given its self-defeating nature, Sowell comments that this cracker culture largely died out among the poor whites, and even the first waves of southern blacks who carried it around the country – but after the 1960s, when the welfare state  sprang into being,  those behaviors were propped up – being no longer culled by the scythe of sheer necessity.  After arguing for this, Sowell later builds off it in an essay on education, and again in his final essay on the historical perspective, condemning modern approaches as too forgiving, too soft:  blacks and whites who lifted themselves up out of poverty and despair did so not by accepting substandard English as their cultural heritage, nor by taking self-esteem classes, but by acknowledging the relative inferioty of their station in life to others:. The Scots became intellectual titans after abandoning Gaelic for English, and consequently gaining access to the English literary world, and the Japanese adopted western means of science, government, and economics to catapult from feudal island to global power in the Meiji revolution. In putting aside defensive pride and setting a superior standards for themselves, they both catapulted themselves from backwards hinterlands to first-world countries who would be active players in shaping world history..

Thomas Sowell, it should be noted, is black himself, and is a product of this process of enlightenment, having been reared in the kind of schools he now advocates,  having set for himself superior standards.  To multicultural sensibilities, he may seem like a self-loathing black man at times, for all the abuse he heaps on poor blacks and whites and for all he waxes poetic about the glorious intellectual and moral history of the west, problematic as it was. Were he white, Sowell would almost certainly be condemned as a racist, and a cavalier of western chauvinism.  His entire argument is simultaneously thought-provoking and problematic. Some is straightforward history, like his account of slavery or the reactions of northerners to white southern emigrants, which as they are quoted sound exactly like what you might expect to hear of those participating in 'white flight' decades later.  It's not surprising that long-term residents of an area would react with hostility toward the sudden intrusion of poor immigrants, flooding into areas the residents rightfully considered their own.  Sowell's belief that the culture of contemporary 'ghetto blacks' was one passed down directly by 'crackers' is a much harder sell. Given that slaves were owned not by 'white trash', but by the plantation elite, would they really have spent enough time around the 'crackers' to acquire the values? And why would they adopted those values, considering that impoverished white sharecroppers were just as economically miserable as themselves, and loathed the former slaves to boot?  The statistics Sowell quotes to demonstrate that the black story of the 20th century is sometimes one of regress are damning: even if a reader doesn't accept his condemnation of welfare as causing the erosion of black family life, and stymieing the natural processes that would reverse self-destructive behaviors,  the  analysis is staggering in its implications.  This isn't exactly a national secret -- Bill Cosby has written books despairing about the woeful condition of black family life and communities in the latter half of the 20th century -- but Sowell's  work puts the decline into sharp focus.

Although I find Sowell's contempt for the poor, self-defeating they may be, highly uncomfortable -- especially his frequent brandishment of 'cracker', which in certain counties of the Deep South is a pejorative on the level of kike or wop -- I appreciated various elements of this collection. The almost tributary history to Germany's ancient cultural heritage, for instance, was a relief compared to the  Omnipresent Nazi approach to German history, and the statistical work offers data that can be considered regardless of one's opinion on the unintended consequences of particular welfare policies. I'm increasingly sympathetic to the idea that improperly-designed welfare can exacerbate social problems, but think it more likely that certain destructive behaviors are endemic to the human experience, rather than being the legacy of Scottish emigrants to urban ghettos. Not for nothing have humans created so many religions, philosophies, and institutions to curb the worse of our instincts. Though readers will find a lot of food for thought in this collection, it has a sometimes bitter edge. 

Things that Matter

Things that Matter: Three Decades of Passion, Pastimes, and Politics
© 2013 Charles Krauthammer
400 pages

Things that Matter collects articles spanning at three decades, largely culled from The New Republic, giving voice to psychologist-turned-cultural observer and journalist Charles Krauthammer as he watches the ebb and flow of America’s fortunes at home and on the global scene.  Although he opens with essays of a more personal note (commenting on the pleasures of ‘taking in’ baseball, especially when rooting for a perennially losing team), politics undergirds most of the collection. He describes himself as a conservative, though one whom today's standards would judge a centrist, and the body of articles bears that judgment out.

 Although Krauthammer's  opinions fall within a broad enough spectrum that he can't be dismissed as an ideologue or a reactionary (he is baffled by resistance to gay marriage, for instance, and derides Social Security as a Ponzi scheme even while proposing a way to make it financially stable),  he's liable to take the most flak for his acceptance of the notion of American Empire, and his approving attitude toward interventionist schemes in other countries. Of course, he writes, they could have been better managed --  we're always so wise after the lives and money have been wasted, aren't we? Of note is Krauthammer's various pieces concerning Jews and Israel; he sees the tiny nation-state as Jewry's best hope, but says this with a hint of anxiety, for it seems to him of his fellow Jews' putting all their eggs in one vulnerable basket. With the abiding hope of Jews for centuries past now realized,  what will the Jewish people make of their future? Will Israel sustain them, and their identity, or will some future crisis  ravage them again...perhaps permanently? It has happened before, he says, reminding readers not versed in biblical history that once there were two Hebrew kingdoms, Israel and Judah, and Israel was destroyed, its people scattered to the winds:  the children of Judah, now gathered as Israel, can be broken again.   Aside from his attitude toward war, Krauthammer is never politically obnoxious, and in fact frowns on the nature of politics today. In going negative, he offers:

      Delta Airlines, you might have noticed ,does not run negative TV ads about USAir. It does not show pictures of the crash of USAir Flight 427, with a voice-over saying "USAir, airline of death. Going to Pittsburgh? Fly Delta instead."
     And McDonalds, you might also have noticed, does not run ads reminding viewers that Jack in the Box hamburgers once killed two customers. Why? Because Delta and McDonalds know that if the airline and fast-food industries put on that kind of advertising, America would soon be riding trains and eating box-lunch tuna sandwiches.
      Yet every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practicioner in the country -- and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians."

Things that Matter is an interesting, thoughtful collection of miscellaneous pieces,  presumably of interest to Americans who have heard of him. (I hadn't, but have a weakness for reflective essay collections.) 

The Origin of Satan

The Origin of Satan: How Christianity Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics
© 1996 Elaine Pagels
240 pages

Although Christianity sprang from Judaism, the two religions have sharply different conceptions of Satan. Christians view him as the prince of evil, the enemy of all that is good and holy. Jews, however, see him as a faithful servant of God: the Almighty's quality-control agent who tests the faithful's integrity by opposing them. We can plainly see that there were once Jews who held a view similar to the Christians: Jesus, his disciples, and followers like Paul saw Satan as a wretched foe. How was Satan transformed from servant to foe of God? The root lies in the influence of Apocalyptic dualism, but Elaine Pagels sees Satan's descent into evil as inspired by the desire of some Jews and the Christians to literally demonize their opponents. In elaborating upon this she delivers a fascinating partial history of late-Temple Judaism and early Christianity as one transformed into another, and Satan fell from light into darkness.

It began with the Greeks, those venerable fathers of western civilization who seduced the Jews with their philosophy, gymnasiums, and three orders of pillars. While the Jews had fallen under the control of various powers before -- the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Persians before Alexander and his generals bought Hellenic culture and rule to Palestine -- never before had the people of Moses been so open to assimilation.  They began avoiding circumcision and nibbling on pork, to the horror of traditionalists. The increasingly-Hellenized Jews, in rejecting their cultures' norms and embracing those of the Greeks, were seen as even worse than old-time idolaters: they were race-traitors, and the direct agents of Satan.

Historically, Satan's role was to oppose the chosen people, either to force them to prove their worth, or to hinder them from really making a mess of things.As the Jewish people became increasingly divided  between their own ways and the Greek, his resistance gained an edge, and stories emerged in which his motives were changed. Satan was increasingly believed to oppose the Jews not for the greater good, but to spite God. Pagels details the various narratives that were co-opted or created to establish his going into business as CEO of Evil, Inc. The story of Babylon's fall -- its description as Venus/Lucifer,  Star of the Morning, attempting to surpass God/the Sun's glory and being crushed -- is turned into the story of a rebellious angel. Satan's origin also appears in texts not accepted by the Christians, wherein he and other angels are introduce to Adam and Eve and told to worship them. Upon refusal, they were exiled.  The common thread in these origin tales and another is that of disobedience, and since the Hellenized Jews were no longer obeying the rules  regarding pork and circumcision, they were Of the Devil.   The early Christ-followers later turned the table on the traditionalists by accusing them of not obeying God through his messiah/incarnation,, and thus being agents of Satan if not demon possessed. This same belief was targeted against pagans who would not convert, as well as against Christians who had slightly different views on issues from the fundamental to the seemingly esoteric.  The book ends with a hopeful plea that disagreeing with someone need not mean accusing them of being worse than Hitler.

The Origin of Satan is an interesting book, though not very true to its title. Pagels never mentions the influence of dualism and apocalypticism altogether, with the effect that she addresses Satan's flowering as the prince of darkness, not the origins, the seed, of his evil. On the other hand, Origin covers the tension between the Jews in this period of cultural conflict quite well, and the strength of the book is its history of Judeo-Christianity in transition, with Satan's own transformation being used as the lens. On the whole, Pagels has thus produced a fascinating work, but if you were really interested in the history of Satan, it's not quite comprehensive.

Mudhouse Sabbath

Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline 
© 2008 Laura Winner
162 pages

Increasingly, Christian religious scholars are examining Jesus in the context of his Jewish roots. While the works I'm familiar with have done this primarily to understand his teachings as portrayed in the New Testament,  Laura Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath asks: how can Jesus' Jewishiness inform contemporary Christian spirituality? In Mudhouse Sabbath, she examines eleven aspects of Jewish spirituality and discusses how they can be applied more broadly. While her intended audience is Christians,  this slender work can be of some use to any person with a 'spiritual' bent.

Winner is in a unique place to write this book, because despite being Jewish and raised in the conservative tradition, somehow while  studying in England she became an Anglican priest. She writes in her introduction that upon conversion, she at first did away with all of the elements of her Jewish roots -- the practices and tools of her childhood faith -- but then realized she felt as though she was missing something. Restoring those practices in a new context  made sense to her after she realized that since Jesus was Jewish,  taking inspiration from practices that might have been his, even if the contemporary Christian faith has forgotten them,  would mean being more like Jesus.  In this slender little work she addresses the sabbath,  keeping kosher, mourning, hospitality, prayer, body image, fasting, aging, candle-lighting, weddings, and doorposts. Some elements are distinct to Judaism (Shabbat and nailing mini-Torahs to doorposts) while the majority address a given issue in a Jewish context.

Mudhouse Sabbath leaves me with mixed feelings: Christians should explore Jewish spirituality. They should explore Muslim and Buddhist spirituality, too,  and the reverse is the same. No religion, philosophy, or worldview on Earth has a monopoly on truth, and  few are entirely bereft of it. Our minds find strength in exploring diverse pools of thought: homogeneity is stagnation and death.  Mudhouse Sabbath focuses more on what Christians can learn from Jews, but the value of certain practices transcends all boundaries. I'm particularly partial to the idea of sabbaths, for instance, as an affirmation of human dignity. In the United States, we are feverish with activity -- working long hours, then filling our leisure time with scheduled activities. We are constantly "connected" to the larger world, never free to just rest.  I like the idea of people declaring: Enough!.

The slenderness of the volume prevents Winner from developing her ideas, though. She offers sparks of potential insight rather than a roaring fire of enlightenment. Take the chapter on kashrut, or keeping kosher. She doesn't advocate that Christians or anyone else start keeping two separate sets of cookware because pots that have contained milk can never, ever contain milk; instead, she looks at the broader application of food mindfulness, and her example is the value of eating seasonally instead of letting the supermarket fool us into thinking that tomatoes in January are perfectly appropriate. A more salient example would be that of over-consumption -- or more pointedly, a  given company's sanitary standards or labor practices, both of which are in dire shape in the United States.


Although Winner didn't flesh out her ideas as expansively as I would have liked, it may be enough that she prompts Christians to draw inspiration from a broader source, especially given that Christianity tends to be dominated by beliefs instead of practices, and Winner principally addresses ways of working spiritual themes, like awareness, into the fabric of everyday lives.  Actions are more substantial than beliefs and ideas; as Epictetus groused in his handbook, what we intend matters little. ("Your dumbbells are your own affair, O slave; show me your muscles!")

So, may Winner's sparks be enough to ignite a few ideas in those who read his.


Related:

• The Misunderstood Jew: the Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Amy Jill-Levine
• Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, John Shelby Spong
• The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Miracle, Shane Claiborne

The Misunderstood Jew

The Misunderstood Jew: the Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus
© 2007 Amy-Jill Levine
250 pages

 Amy-Jill Levine is a Jew for Jesus. No, not that kind of Jew -- she's happily Orthodox, thank you very much. But she grew up with Christian friends and developed an interest in Christian culture to the point that as a child, her Barbie and Ken dolls took celebrated Eucharist with one another -- and as an adult, she teaches on the New Testament at a largely Protestant divinity school. As someone who cherishes both religious traditions, she writes to help Christians and Jews understand one another, and believes that such an understanding may and must be rooted on the fact that Jesus, the inspiration of Christianity, was thoroughly Jewish. He is neither a heretical figure Jews should distance themselves from, nor a theological revolutionary who rendered Judaism irrelevant to those who followed him.


The first chapter covers material which I expected to be the whole of the book; using the gospel accounts  to establish that Jesus was a Jew in practice, beliefs, manners, and dress. Some of this is open to interpretation -- Levine believes that Jesus simply taught the heart of Judaism without answering to particularly restrictive schools of it and emphasizes that the Christian perception of Jewish orthodoxy is somewhat skewed given that the Pharisees of the bible are written as villains.   After this she devotes a chapter to the growth of the Christian church  from a small community of Jews to a network of communities spread out around the Mediterranean basin, dominated by 'Gentiles'.  As the church moves further away from Judaism, hostility between the two now-divergent faiths increases, and this leads into several chapters on anti-Semitism. First, Levine examines claims that the New Testament is explicitly anti-Jewish. She doesn't believe so, but allows that it CAN be used in an anti-Jewish fashion,  and this is a source of agitation for her throughout the book. She even devotes a chapter ("With Friends Like These...") to attacking liberal theologians who see Christ as rescuing spirituality from religion...because, since the religion in question is Judaism, they must not think very much of it. This chapter bothered me, for Levine seems overly sensitive. Criticizing the perceived excesses of first-century Judaism is no more anti-Jewish than criticizing the abuses of the Israeli state is anti-Semitic. Excesses are excesses regardless of who perpetuates them.  Unfortunately, Levine doesn't seem to keen on the idea of admitting that there were excesses at the time, when surely there must have been -- when has an institution with the power of religion never been abused?

The final chapter, however, ends things on a high note. In "Distinct Canons; Distinct Practices", Levine drives home the point that Judaism and Christianity are different religions: Jewish theology and Christian theology aren't the same. The best example is that of original sin and the fall from grace. It is Paul who invents the idea that Jesus died as a sacrifice to redeem people, and it is Christians who are obsessed with the idea of sin and it keeping them from the afterlife. Judaism isn't about the afterlife. 

While the book has its merits, I left ultimately disappointed. I think more space should have been devoted to first-century Judaism to more fully establish the context of Jesus' life, especially since first-century Judaism and modern Orthodox Judaism are as different as first-century Christianity and its modern forms. Jesus' Jewish audience shares ideas with him that no modern Jew would profess -- belief in Satan as a villain, for instance,  seen as an evil dragon.  They're also obsessed by the end of the world; that apocalyptic fire is now largely dead. The Misunderstood Jew should still be of use to Christians who are utterly oblivious about Judaism, but I think the the audience it would best serve are Jews who are leery of both Jesus and the New Testament, for Levine does establish that Jesus and the gospel accounts are firmly rooted in Jewish culture and not hostile to it. 

Related:

• Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible through Jewish Eyes, John Shelby Spong
• Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, Bart Ehrman

I haven't read either of these, but I'm fans of both of the authors and look forward to experiencing the books at some point. 

God is Not One

God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Rule the World and Why Their Differences Matter

© 2010 Stephen Prothero

400 pages

Despite the promises of modernity to drive religion out of the human mind, the New York City skyline bears witness to its continuing relevance. While religion can serve as a force for good,  it’s a master at nurturing the darker sides of human nature, and the good religions have achieved is often a testament to the moral courage of humans who have fought to push these systems of thought beyond their origins.  Some have gone so far as to say that the differences between religions are unimportant, that they are merely different paths up the same broad mountain which arrive at the same place. Stephen Prothero says different.  None of this tearing-down-the-walls-that-divide-us nonsense for Prothero, he intends to prove that religions are all rigidly disconnected boxes, and that while we may choose to shake hands with or shake fists at the fellows in the other boxes, we can only do it through tight little windows.

I looked forward to grappling with this book, largely because my own mind is so divided on the subject: while I believe that all religions were created by human beings to understand the world and perhaps to better themselves,  I also know that some religions are so defined by their aggressive assertions that they cannot easily find peace with other.  I found God is not One to be an unsatisfactory sparring partner, however, being  frustratingly simplistic, and ultimately disappointing.  In the first eight chapters, Prothero analyzes eight  of the the world’s major religion’s through  four-points:

• a problem
• a solution
• a technique
• an exemplar

He believes each of these religions (Islam, Confucianism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Yoruba, Taoism, Hinduism) attempts to address one of eight different problems in human nature, and offers eight fundamentally different approaches to life based on that problem.  This analysis is entirely too simplistic for the problem at hand, however. While it’s possible to identify characteristics within a religion that make them unique, those characteristics do not constitute the religion. This eight religions, eight boxes organization ignores the more fundamental similarities religions might have:  the constant cycle of life/death/rebirth in Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, and the hateful split between the material and spiritual worlds that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are so keen on convincing us of.

A second problem with this is one Prothero tip-toes around: although the eight religions he identifies here do have many varied differences, they are not necessarily hostile.  Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism have all existed in China together for centuries, for instance: they each have different offerings, and people happily sample beliefs and practices from each table, cafeteria-style, arriving at a worldview that meets their needs. Prothero speaks of religions ruling the world like hostile nation-states, but not all religions are as imperialistic (and therefore, conflict-prone) as the dominant forms of Christianity and Islam.  The Asian triplets point out the greatest problem with this book, Prothero’s sinister attitude about the relationship between humans and religion.  He would have us owned by religion, forced to live within that particular religion’s box. In the beginning, he snorts that attempts at interfaith dialogue which ignore the walls of differences are “disrespectful” of religion. I say poppycock. Why should we be respectful of religion and let it lie like a dusty rug? We should pick it up, bring it into the sunlight, and then beat it vigorously until all the dirt has fallen away and nothing but beauty remains. Why should we, the living, be content to breathe the dust of our ancestors?

Although Prothero’s thesis never grows legs to stand on here, the book may have some use for those interested in learning about other religions. He shows no bias toward one religion over another, though I advise nonreligious readers to steer well clear. He is bizarrely hostile toward humanists and atheists, dedicating an entire chapter to calling the ‘New Atheism’  a religion and its advocates hypocrites and plagiarists. This is stupidity, of course: religions are organized systems of beliefs, while atheism is a single belief -- and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are no more plagiarists for making the same criticisms of religious assertions that Bertrand Russell did than is the second man in the crowd who dared to say the emperor had no clothes on.

I’m ultimately disappointed with this book: while it has its uses for comparative religion readers, there are assuredly superior books out there on that subject. I daresay even The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religion or some similar work would be better. I despise the spirit that sees the maintenance of religions as more important than the good we might do by overcoming our differences.

Source

Related:

• The Evolution of God, Robert Wright
• A History of God, Karen Armstrong
• The Faith Club,  Ranya Indliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner
• The Great Transformation: the Beginnings of our Religious Traditions, Karen Armstrong

The Book of Wisdom

The Book of Wisdom, or The Wisdom of Solomon
from the New English Bible, © 1970 Cambridge and Oxford University Press

Christian personification of Wisdom

My favorite book in the Judeo-Christian bible is that of Ecclesiastes,  in which a man known as 'the preacher' or 'the teacher'  engages in a search for the meaning of life, exploring both the 'low road' of exulting in pleasure and the 'higher' road of seeking wisdom and religious discipline. He finds that the best approach may be one of moderation, as neither hedonism nor obsessive scrupulosity create happiness over the long run. I think Ecclesiastes a humble and pragmatic book, and so when Isaac Asimov mentioned that a book of the original Jewish and Catholic bibles called The Book of Wisdom was similar to Ecclesiastes in genre, I determined that I had to read it.

Wisdom shines bright and never fades; she is easily discerned by those who love her, and by those who seek her she is found. She is quick to make herself known to those who desire knowledge of her; the man who rises early in search of her will not grow weary in the quest, for he will find her seated at his door. To set all one's thoughts on her is prudence in its perfect shape, and to lie wakeful in her cause is the short way to peace of mind. For she herself ranges in search of those who are worthy of her; on their daily path she appears with kindly intent, and in all their purposes meets them half-way. (6: 12-17)

The Book of Wisdom is not really a book of wisdom  in the same sense that Ecclesiastes and Proverbs are, though it does praise wisdom lavishly.  Proverbs refers to wisdom as a woman at least once, and the Book of Wisdom takes that personification and runs with it for page after page. I took perverse pleasure in reading these sections of the text as though they were a poem in praise of Athena, although the Christian personification of wisdom is referred to as Sophia. The prose or this translation thereof is beautiful and stylish. I relished reading the text aloud, although the viciousness of some of it amused me.  While the author doesn't tell you what qualifies as wisdom, he is quick to tell you it is the path to God, the path to both peace on earth and immortality. The godless who reject it are treated with as much hate as the author can muster, which I thought somewhat comical. The lack of wisdom is its own punishment, just as virtue is its own reward.

Protestants may not have heard of the Book of Wisdom because it -- along with books like Tobit, Judas, the Maccabees, and additions to Daniel and Easter -- were dropped by various Protestant denominations preparing their own bibles. These books were included in the original Jewish canon, the Septuagint, and would have been read by Paul, Jesus, and the other apostles. A later Jewish canon, compiled  around the turning of the second century, threw out those books which were written in Greek*. The Christian church didn't, though. The devotional poetry to wisdom aside, this book makes for interesting reading. It's not a very Jewish book, at least not by the standards of modern Jewish orthodoxy. Christianity and Islam have a completely different notion of Satan than Judaism does: the Christians turn a loyal servant of God who tests people and gives them opportunities to strengthen themselves by triumphing over temptation into a pathetic rebel who attacks people just to be a dick, but whose attacks are co-opted by God into use as trials.  In the Book of Wisdom, though, he is mentioned as spiteful, which seems a hint to me that the author shared the same villainous perception of Satan that some Jews around the turn of the century did -- Jesus refers to him as a roaring lion trying to eat people, and (I think) as a foul Dragon.  I don't know what happened to that train of thought within Judaism, but I think they're better for having lost it.

"But the souls of the just are in God's hand and torment shall not touch them. In the eyes of foolish men they seemed to be dead; their departure was reckoned as defeat, and their going from us as disaster. But they are at peace, for though in the sight of men they may be punished, they have a sure hope of immortality; and after a little chastisement they will receive great blessings, because God has tested them and found them worthy to be his."  (3: 1-9)

Protestants often attack the Catholic idea of Purgatory as unbiblical, and they're sort of right -- because they removed the parts of the Bible which refer to Purgatory from their own canon. It would be as if I held up the Jefferson Bible and said, "The idea that Jesus worked miracles is unbiblical!", or tore out Genesis from the Torah and said "The idea of a Great Flood is unbiblical!".   The Book of Wisdom specifically mentions that even the good who die must endure 'some chastisement', which sounds like the Catholic idea of purgatory as it has been explained to me by three sources -- two books and a deacon.  I'd be very much interested in finding out when this book was written, and in what part of the world, because the author is obsessed with bastards. He devotes several 'paragraphs'  to attacking people born out of wedlock, leading me to believe that there's some 'illegitimately-born' monarch or warlord somewhere that he's taking aim at. There's also a section that celebrates a martyr for wisdom, which probably also has a real-world inspiration.

If you're looking for wisdom literature, this isn't it -- but if you want to find a lovely poem about wisdom, or gain some insights into the evolution of Jewish and Christian thinking, I would suggest tracking this down.  The Oxford/Cambridge translation is very readable

* I think this may have had something to do with the fact that the Temple had just been destroyed by Rome (Year 70)  in retaliation for the Jewish revolt, which was prompted by the attempted installment of a statue inside the Temple to honor the emperor as god. Hatred of all things Greco-Roman may have prompted the dumping of these Jewish texts written in Greek.