Gloves-are-off review of New Testament authorship.
Could much of the New Testament be a forgery?
Acclaimed biblical scholar Ehrman (Religious Studies/Univ. of North Carolina; Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible, 2010, etc.) critically examines the authorship of the books of the New Testament, a debate that has continued for the past two centuries. Here the author adds a level of condemnation that past scholars have been loath to use. Calling any epistles written falsely in another’s name “forgeries,” Ehrman steps away from academic niceties and convoluted explanations. The author attacks the conventional wisdom that writing in another’s name was accepted and even seen as an honor in the ancient world. He also counters wide-spread theories used to explain differences in style and word choice, such as that of the use of secretaries. However, he is careful to separate instances of what he terms forgery from other cases in which authorship is in question, such as the four Gospels, in which authorship was ascribed by later readers and not claimed erroneously by the original writer. Ehrman also discusses elements other than the New Testament, including early letters, gospels and other writings that never made it into the Christian canon. His overarching conclusion is condemning: “There were numerous ways to lie in and through literature in antiquity, and some Christians took advantage of the full panoply in their efforts to promote their view of the faith.” Though many of Ehrman’s theories are not new, his approach will be controversial. For example, many readers will find it hard to accept the writer of Acts as being “spectacularly successful” at deception.
Gloves-are-off review of New Testament authorship.Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-201261-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
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
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