At turns tendentious and stuffy. The Messiah Myth reads like nothing more and nothing less than a promising doctoral...
Another volley in the historical Jesus game.
In The Mythic Past (1999), Thompson (Biblical Studies/Univ. of Copenhagen) argued that the Bible is not a historical account, but a collection of riveting myths and “philosophical metaphor[s].” Here, he sharpens the point, bringing his literary lens to bear on the person of Jesus. Unlike many in the historical Jesus debate, Thompson is not interested in disputing Jesus’ existence per se. Nor does he attempt to determine which statements, attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, are authentic. Rather, he aims to show how Near Eastern understandings of kingship shaped the literary figure of Jesus, and, accordingly, he sketches three ancient concepts of kingship—the good king, the protector/savior/warrior king, and the dying and rising god king. Thompson’s situating of the Gospels’ messiah alongside Egyptian and Babylonian understandings of kingship sheds light on the biblical texts, and his literary readings of the synoptic Gospels are likewise interesting. For example, his analysis of the birth narrative in the Gospel of Luke, which Thompson says is a “tour de force” (emphasis in original), repays close attention, as does his examination of the “narrative association of food to life’s victory over death.” Still, the book is too technical to appeal to most general readers, since Thompson presupposes a comfortable familiarity with Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament that most nonspecialists lack. Even the sections where he explicitly engages the academic landscape can be puzzling: in his historiographic overview, he curiously fails to discuss the work of N.T. Wright, arguably today’s most influential historian of the New Testament and a scholar whose careful historical readings of the New Testament seem an obvious point of engagement for Thompson. Finally, the production team gets demerits for the impossibly tiny print.
At turns tendentious and stuffy. The Messiah Myth reads like nothing more and nothing less than a promising doctoral dissertation.Pub Date: April 12, 2005
ISBN: 0-465-08577-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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