But no doubt the hordes of readers who devoured God: A Biography (1995) will be happy to get more of the same.
Pulitzer-winner Miles concentrates on the gospels (mostly John, supplemented by Luke and Matthew), with occasional reference to Acts and a closing look at Revelation.
Claiming to take the gospel account seriously as the story of God incarnate, the author examines Jesus’ story as a new and radical departure in the life of God—a brilliant strategy by which God escapes the consequences of his inability to keep his promises of redemption to Israel, a new paradigm of redemption itself. Claiming to offer forgiveness to his people for the evil he himself has done, God’s suffering in Jesus rather enables them to forgive him. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has successfully changed the subject, and in offering a new paradigm of redemption, he has redeemed himself. As might be expected, Miles is alive to the resonances of Old Testament themes in the New, and he has an acute ear for the ironies and allusions of the Johannine monologues and dialogues and the parables and sayings of the synoptic gospels. Less pleasing are a gratuitous examination of incarnation and sexuality and a puzzling, inconclusive discussion of Jesus’ death as the suicide of God. Here one thinks less of Miles’s critical mentor, the Shakespeare scholar A.C. Bradley, than of Ernest Jones’s hyper-Freudian Hamlet and Oedipus, which reduced Bradley’s method to absurdity. Two appendices present the theoretical underpinnings of Miles’s work, and these are in some ways more interesting than the text to which they are appended. Even those who share his conviction that the Bible is good reading for the secular-minded and that modern methods of critical study can obscure rather than illuminate its text may find his reading unconvincing—and his Jesus, in the end, too thin.
But no doubt the hordes of readers who devoured God: A Biography (1995) will be happy to get more of the same.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-40014-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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