An NBCC and National Book Awardwinning scholar of Gnosticism and early Christianity argues that the concept of Satan was central to the way apocalyptic Jews and the Christian Church saw—and treated—their enemies. When St. Paul declared that Christians were struggling with the powers of darkness and not with common flesh and blood, he was expressing an essentially cosmic attitude. Pagels (Religion/Princeton; The Gnostic Gospels, 1979, etc.) believes that this attitude led to a demonizing of human opponents and opened the door to a new kind of fanaticism and hatred. She argues that this dualistic cosmology originated with the Jewish Essene sect who pitted the ``sons of Light'' against the ``sons of Darkness.'' Pagels argues that the Gospels invoke this apocalyptic scenario against the Jews who opposed Jesus. As the Christian movement became increasingly Gentile, this demonizing came to be directed against pagan magistrates and, finally, dissident Christians. Fundamental to Pagels's argument is the thesis of many scholars that the Gospel accounts of Jesus' trial and execution, by seeming to place blame on the Jews rather than the Romans, actually reflect the situation of later decades when Christians were completely separated from Judaism and anxious not to provoke the Romans. Pagels sees the whole demonizing tendency as continuing down the centuries in anti-Semitism and in sectarian hatred generally. Her case is not entirely convincing. For instance, she seems to have forgotten that mass slaughter of enemies, e.g., the Canaanites, had already been advocated in the early Hebrew scriptures without any reference to Satan. Furthermore, her powerful quotations of Gnostic sources and the Pagan philosopher Celsus cause her to introduce theological questions that she fails to address in any depth, e.g., her assumption that orthodox Christianity was essentially dualistic and that the proscription of heresy was merely an issue of control. An attractive and scholarly, if not entirely satisfying, presentation of a stimulating thesis.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-40140-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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