Not a substitute for the real thing.
A culminating work of the Jesus Seminar era and of others influenced by it, this collection of manuscripts serves to complete and update the standard Christian New Testament.
In addition to the established canon of New Testament books, this book includes 10 “recently discovered” works, varying greatly in form and content. The book also features extensive introductory matter written by Taussig (Union Theological Seminary; In the Beginning Was the Meal: Social Experimentation and Early Christian Identity, 2009, etc.). The work of choosing which manuscripts to include, and guidance in translation for all the texts, was accomplished by “a council of wise and nationally known spiritual leaders,” somewhat pretentiously referred to throughout the book as the New Orleans Council. While the “Council” does indeed include some well-known progressive Christian scholars—e.g., John Dominic Crossan and Barbara Brown Taylor—it also consists of several less-credentialed individuals, a charge often lobbed against the Jesus Seminar itself. It is, indeed, laudable to make any ancient manuscript more readily available for widespread study. However, what this collection attempts to do is to present these newly discovered texts as equal to established New Testament writings in virtually every way, without viewing them critically. While some texts, such as “The Acts of Paul and Thecla,” are certainly important and relevant to modern Christian study, others, such as “The Thunder: Perfect Mind” and “The Secret Revelation of John,” are simply bizarre and scream of Gnostic and mythic underpinnings. Though that does not make them without merit for study, it does mean they are not equal to the established New Testament, in that they may not even be considered “Christian” in origin.
Not a substitute for the real thing.Pub Date: March 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-79210-1
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
PROFILES
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
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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