Mix Harold Bloom with Stephen Jay Gould, and you’ll get something like Kass. A wonderfully intelligent reading of...
A learned and fluent, delightfully overstuffed stroll through the Gates of Eden.
“It was all because of Darwin,” writes Kass (Committee on Social Thought/Univ. of Chicago), that he came to study the biblical book of Genesis, in which the earth is created, populated, depopulated, and scourged in various awful ways. Blending science with philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, and other disciplines—but with only a smattering of theology as such—Kass turns to some of the big questions that science cannot or does not care to answer, as well as to a few ticklish other matters: “How, we wonder, does the speaker know what he is talking about? Why should we believe him? . . . On the basis of what other than prejudice—prejudgment—can we decide whether the text is speaking truly?” Kass provides no firm answers (how could he?), but he grapples nobly with the notoriously difficult text from first words (“In beginning,” he translates, eschewing the definite article, “God [’elohim] created the heavens and the earth”) to last (“the very last word of Genesis is ‘in Egypt’ [bemitsrayim]”), commenting, elucidating, and arguing along the way. Kass, now chairman of the President’s Bioethics Committee, is inclined to a generous view of human and divine nature, though his Garden—a place that appeals to “beings with an uncomplicated, innocent attachment to their own survival and ease”—conceals plenty of Darwinian thorns. On the matter of Cain and Abel, for example, he ventures, “readers recoil from considering the possibility that enmity—yes, enmity to the point of fratricide—might be the natural condition of brothers,” while among the other matters Jacob must wrestle with, Kass has it, is “nature’s indifference to human merit.” But all those big questions and problems, Kass concludes, resolve into an overarching one, the real subject of Genesis: “Is it possible to find, institute, and preserve a way of life that accords with man’s true standing in the world and that serves to perfect his godlike abilities?” Hmmm.
Mix Harold Bloom with Stephen Jay Gould, and you’ll get something like Kass. A wonderfully intelligent reading of Genesis—and surely worthy of sequels, a fat volume for each branch of the Pentateuch.Pub Date: May 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-4299-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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