A decent resource, but several authors, from Karen Armstrong to Bart Ehrman, have provided better sources for curious...
Retelling of modern views and scholarship on the Bible.
Smoley (Supernatural: Writings on an Unknown History, 2013, etc.) offers a systematic tour of modern secular scholarship regarding the Jewish and Christian concept of God. The ground he covers, however, has been well-worn in recent years, and Smoley offers little new insight. The author too often engages his readers with the condescending view that he knows a secret of which they are not yet aware: that by and large what is written in the Bible isn’t true. Nowhere is this clearer than in his chapter on the birth of Jesus, in which he compares his role as spoiler to the boy who told him years before that Santa Claus didn’t exist. Smoley follows this odd comparison with the statement, “another little-known fact: scholars believe that none of the Nativity story is true. None—zero.” Throughout the book, the author makes blanket statements about how certain unnamed “scholars” believe this or that. Those scholars he does mention by name are often on the outskirts of mainline research—e.g., John Dominic Crossan or the group known as the Jesus Seminar. By sensationalizing modern research and focusing on nontraditional authors, Smoley ostracizes many readers. In particular, he often refers to people who believe in orthodoxy as “fundamentalists,” and scholarship by people of faith is mostly absent in his work. Smoley does provide casual readers with ample background for understanding many of the arguments set forth in recent decades (and indeed, recent centuries) concerning the authorship of books of the Bible, the role of ancient Israel in history, the identity of Jesus Christ, and other topics. The author’s experience as a student of mysticism is evident throughout his work, and he ends the book with a highly heterodox personal statement about the identity of God and the origins of humanity.
A decent resource, but several authors, from Karen Armstrong to Bart Ehrman, have provided better sources for curious readers.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18555-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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
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
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