Highly belated Club Read 2015 thread!

Well, hell, it's May and I'm just starting back. I'm a senior at a Jesuit university in California, just finishing my BA in religious studies and classics. I've been away from LT since January because of senior thesis writing, but now that I am about to graduate in a month and I've finished thesis writing, I can come back!

I usually read a lot of non-fiction, usually related to religion and history. For me, the more ancient, the better. This fall I hope to start an MA program in biblical studies so I will also be doing a lot of reading this summer to prepare for that. I also like learning ancient languages. My main two are Greek and Hebrew, but I've also done some Latin and Old English.

My 15 in 15:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/185756

January-February
1. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
2. Crito (a commentary) by Chris Emlyn-Jones
3. Crito (a commentary) by Gilbert P. Rose
4. The Athenian Constitution by Aristotle
5. Frogs by Aristophanes
6. Clouds by Aristophanes
7. Wasps by Aristophanes
8. The Religions of the Silk Road by Richard Foltz
9. The Ancestral Constitution by Moses Finley

March
9. The Begram Hoard: Indian Ivories from Afghanistan by St. John Simpson
10. A Brief Introduction to the Arabic Alphabet by John F. Healey and G. Rex Smith
11. Households and Holiness: The Religious Culture of Israelite Women by Carol Meyers
12. Euthyphro (a commentary) by Chris Emlyn-Jones
13. Euthyphro (a commentary) by John Hare
14. The Silencing of Leonardo Boff: The Vatican and the Future of World Christianity by Harvey Gallagher Cox
15. Ancient Greek Religion (Blackwell Ancient Religions) by Jon D. Mikalson
16. Manuscripts of the Bible: Greek Bibles in the British Library by T.S. Pattie
17. Fragments by Heraclitus, trans. Brooks Haxton

April
18. Iliad, Book 1 (Bk. 1) by Pamela Ann Draper
19. The Lost Letters of Pergamum: A Story from the New Testament World by Bruce W. Longenecker
20. Religions of Rome: Volume 1: A History by Mary Beard

May
21. Stories from Ancient Canaan by Michael David Coogan
22. Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor by S. R. F. Price
23. Hesiod's Theogony (Focus Classical Library) by Hesiod, trans. Richard S. Caldwell
24. The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature) by Jodi Magness
25. Works and Days: A Translation and Commentary for the Social Sciences by Hesiod
26. The Qumran Excavations, 1993-2004: A Preliminary Report by Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg
27. The Homeric Hymns: A Translation, with Introduction and Notes by Diane J. Rayor
28. The Druze by Robert Brenton Betts

June
29. Postcolonial Reconfigurations: An Alternative Way of Reading the Bible and Doing Theology by R. S. Sugirtharajah
30. The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries by R. Gordon Wasson, Carl A. P. Ruck, Albert Hoffman
31. The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
32. The Iliad by Homer, trans. Robert Fagles
33. The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts by Marvin W. Meyer
34. Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Collection of Ancient Texts by Georg Luck
35. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice by Catherine Bell
36. Orpheus and Greek Religion (Mythos Books) by William Keith Guthrie
37. Jews and Christians: Volume 6: Graeco-Roman Views (Cambridge Commentaries on Writings of the Jewish and Christian World) by Molly Whittaker
38. Paper, Wood, and Copper: Early Printed Arts in SCU Archives and Special Collections by Elizabeth Newsom
39. The New Perspective on Paul: An Introduction by Kent L. Yinger
40. Weird Al Yankovic: The Kindle Singles Interview (Kindle Single) by Mara Altman

July
41. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald
42. The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through The Maze by Mark Goodacre
43. The Orphic Hymns by Apostolos N. Athanassakis
44. The Song of Songs: A New Translation by Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch
45. Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets by Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston
46. 1-3 John: A General Reader (AGROS) by J. Klay Harrison and Chad M. Foster
47. The Gospel According to Luke, ed. Michael Patella
48. Ancient Greek Love Magic by Christopher A. Faraone
49. Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Gail Steketee and Randy O. Frost
50. The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems, 1940-1640 BC by R. B. Parkinson
51. What Does the Bible Really Teach? by Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
52. The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination: History and Techniques by Christopher De Hamel

August
53. Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America by Charles Prebish
54. The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy Seal by Eric Greitens
55. The Icon in the Life of the Church: Doctrine-Liturgy-Devotion by George Galavaris
56. The Greeks and the Irrational by E. R. Dodds

September 2015
57. Comprehending Cults: The Sociology of New Religious Movements by Lorne L. Dawson
58. How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill
59. Understanding the Alphabet of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Development, Chronology, Dating by Ada Yardeni
60. The Serekh Texts (Companion to the Qumran Scrolls) by Sarianna Metso
61. The Damascus Texts (Companion to the Qumran Scrolls) by Charlotte Hempel
62. A Social History of Hebrew: Its Origins Through the Rabbinic Period by William M. Schniedewind
63. Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective by Amina Wadud
64. Envisioning the Book of Judith: How Art Illuminates Minor Characters by Andrea M. Sheaffer
65. Jesus in the Talmud by Peter Schäfer

October 2015
66. The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters by R. S. Sugirtharajah
67. The Emergence of Islam: Classical Traditions in Contemporary Perspective by Gabriel Said Reynolds
68. The Im-possibility of Interreligious Dialogue by Catherine Cornille
70. Doing the Bible Better: The Bible Challenge and the Transformation of the Episcopal Church by Marek P. Zabriskie

November 2015
71. Toward Our Mutual Flourishing: The Episcopal Church, Interreligious Relations, and Theologies of Religious Manyness by Lucinda Allen Mosher
72. Understanding Other Religious Worlds: A Guide for Interreligious Education by Judith Berling
73. No Religion is an Island: The Nostra Aetate Dialogues edited by Edward J. Bristow
74. Has anti-Semitism roots in Christianity? by Jules Isaac
75. In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad by Tariq Ramadan
76. Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman by William Montgomery Watt

December 2015
77. Eric Gill : Further Thoughts by an Apprentice by David Kindersley
78. Islam and Belief: At Home with Religious Freedom by Abdullah Saeed
79. Qur'ans: Books of Divine Encounter by Keith E. Small
80. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity by Nabeel Qureshi
81. The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner
82. The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens by Eva C. Keuls
83. Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Jon D. Levenson
84. Poetics by Aristotle

Welcome back!

A few brief notes:

1. The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Brilliant, entrancing read, by a man who faced more challenges than I will ever comprehend. Still, I'm not sure I would have wanted to have lunch with the man.

2. Crito (a commentary) by Chris Emlyn-Jones
3. Crito (a commentary) by Gilbert P. Rose

Both to be reviewed on my blog soon... these were intermediate Greek readers used in my Plato course.

4. The Athenian Constitution by Aristotle

Used for a course in Athenian democracy. Aristotle provides a history of the political and legal institutions of Athens. Very illuminating.

5. Frogs by Aristophanes
6. Clouds by Aristophanes
7. Wasps by Aristophanes

As usual, satirical and scatological and brilliant. The best part was how we broke down the jokes in class to see how Aristophanes was responding to his context.

8. The Religions of the Silk Road by Richard Foltz

Foltz, a scholar of Iranian religion, gives an popular overview of the religious traditions of the Silk Road in 200 pages. That’s a lot to bite off in such a short book, and I don’t think he pulled it off very well. There was a lot of interesting stuff in here but it was very hard to keep track of names and dates. The book needed more maps and visuals. It doesn’t help Foltz much that many of the groups he discussed have had little scholarship devoted to them in the first place — a popular survey like this can only build on the devoted research of specialists. I was most interested in the Manichaeans, whom I hadn’t known about before.

9. The Ancestral Constitution by Moses Finley

A small book(let) of a lecture given by the author discussing the question of “returning to the constitution” in several different societies’ times of trouble, particularly ancient Athens. A bit dated (1960s).

2. Crito (a commentary) by Chris Emlyn-Jones
3. Crito (a commentary) by Gilbert P. Rose

12. Euthyphro (a commentary) by Chris Emlyn-Jones
13. Euthyphro (a commentary) by John Hare

Reviewed all of these on my blog:

http://jdhomie.com/2015/05/15/review-commentaries-on-platos-crito-and-euthyphro/

16. Manuscripts of the Bible: Greek Bibles in the British Library by T. S. Pattie

Only 47 pages. Not the most exciting book, and definitely not useful as a scholarly source, but has several nice illustrations.

10. A Brief Introduction to the Arabic Alphabet by John F. Healey and G. Rex Smith

Reviewed this on my blog as well:

http://jdhomie.com/2015/03/27/review-a-brief-introduction-to-the-arabic-alphabet...

Nice to see you back.

Better later than never! It's great to see you back. Would you consider posting your reviews here as a well as on your blog?

> 9

Rebecca -- I have been too lazy to copy and paste the formatting over! But I'll do it for the next one. My blog is focused on ancient languages and cultures so not much of what I read I actually review over there anyway. :)

9. The Begram Hoard: Indian Ivories from Afghanistan by St. John Simpson
A short, well-illustrated book on a collection of royal ivory decorations found in Bactria. Back from when I was really into Gandharan art. A nice afternoon read.

11. Households and Holiness: The Religious Culture of Israelite Women by Carol Meyers

Meyers, a well-known biblical archaeologist, surveys in 73 pages the state of research on womens’ religion in ancient Israel. This material has been ignored, she argues, because it does not conform with the male-dominated world of the temple so idolized in the Hebrew Bible. She finds instead private, household-oriented practices of fertility and health rituals, which we can find slight traces of in the scriptures of Israel. Νot a very rigorous book, but opened me up to a field of investigation I had known nothing about.

14. The Silencing of Leonardo Boff: The Vatican and the Future of World Christianity by Harvey Gallagher Cox

Tells the story of Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff and his silencing by the Vatican, and what this means for the future of global Catholicism. I’m not Catholic, but I study religion at a Catholic, Jesuit university, so I am attuned to many of the questions Cox asks. His takeaway problem: it’s not just a conflict of orthodoxy vs. heresy, but a question of enculturation and the extent to which the church is willing to temper its Eurocentrism. Cox surmises that the European-trained theologians at the Vatican (in this case Ratzinger) simply don’t understand the South American context.

15. Ancient Greek Religion (Blackwell Ancient Religions) by Jon D. Mikalson

Jon Mikalson is a well-known scholar of ancient Greek religion, and here he provides a survey of how Greek religion was lived and practiced. A nice counterpoint to the literary, mythological focus we get so much of as a classics major. Read this for a reading course on Greco-Roman religion.

20. Religions of Rome: Volume 1: A History by Mary Beard

A magisterial, definitive survey of the subject. Beard, along with her co-authors John North and Simon Price, move chronologically through Roman religion from its beginnings shrouded in mythology, through Republican Rome and the empire, to the early Christianization of the empire. One thing I like about this book is that the authors discuss not only the evidence, but also bad theories they think should be discarded. The second volume is a source book containing many of the documents discussed in the history. I read this for a reading course in Greco-Roman religion.

22. Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor by S. R. F. Price

Price’s 1984 work on the worship of the Roman emperor in Asia Minor is still a must-read classic in Roman religion. He argues that rituals of imperial worship were cultural responses to the kind of power the emperor represented. So emperor worship, at least in Asia Minor and other eastern provinces of the empire, was not some kind of political manipulation imposed by Rome, a theory popular when Price wrote. Nor was it a dull formality. Price argues that imperial worship was meaningful to those in Asia Minor and other eastern provinces, just as meaningful as the traditional cults of the Greek gods. Understanding the imperial cult is key because its imagery and rhetoric are critiqued by and subsumed into early Christianity. I also read this for a reading course in Greco-Roman religions.

A question for my fellow LTers:

I have a reading list I intend to get through this summer for graduate school. What software do you use to track reading progress?

Jonathan, what's your take on Reza Aslan? I just posted on his book, Zealot.

re: 14. The Silencing of Leonardo Boff: The Vatican and the Future of World Christianity by Harvey Gallagher Cox -- Pope Francis must be turning this viewpoint upside down.

> 14

Hi Dan! I first encountered Aslan through his popular book introducing Islam, which I thought was really good. I've also seen him live twice. He is an alum of my university and gets invited back to be a poster child for us and give talks. What's more, we had the same first-year Greek professor, so you might say I am two degrees away from him!

I didn't read Zealot, but I saw him give a lecture and Q&A on it, with two of my professors asking him the questions. One of them, a New Testament scholar, found him dodging her tough questions, and told me privately she stopped asking him questions because he just didn't seem to engage. Like you, I get the sense that his argument was rather flimsy.

I also didn't care much for all the posturing he did -- "LOOK AT ME I'M A REAL NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLAR, I HAVE ADVANCED DEGREES IN NEW TESTAMENT AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY!" -- when in fact he has a BA in religious studies, some knowledge of Greek, and a Master's in Theological Studies. His PhD is in sociology. These are all fine and valuable subjects, but he is not a biblical scholar, and even most biblical scholars are not experts on the historical Jesus. Nor do I know of him publishing any of his research in a peer-reviewed venue to demonstrate that the guild of historical Jesus scholars sees his ideas as credible. He strikes me as self-promotional and a bit polemical. That alone makes me take his work with a grain of salt.

But as I said, I really liked his book on Islam, No God but God.

So glad i asked you. That is all really interesting. It sounds like he pulled that off writing a "scholarly" book without peer review. I'll keep in book on Islam in mind.

Nice to catch up with your reading, Jonathan.

Nice to see you back!

I'll be interested to see what others' say about reading software. I use plain ole Excel, since I can make (and sort) whatever columns I want. Or I add a new collection here on LT. :-)

21. Stories from Ancient Canaan by Michael David Coogan

Coogan gathers here several stories discovered on 14th-century BCE clay tablets in cuneiform from Ugarit. These stories tell us about the slaughter of Aqhat, King Danel’s son, at the hands of Anat, the goddess of love and war; King Kirta’s need to sire a son and the challenge his son later offers to his kingship; and the infamous Baal’s quest to become king of the gods over El. Coogan translated these stories as a teaching text, so his introductions to each story really helped me understand the opaque cultural references and fill in some of the gaps of missing text from lost portions of each story. Coogan is himself a biblical scholar, and his notes constantly make reference to biblical parallels.

A few things I got out of these stories:

There are many literary techniques in common between ancient Israelite and ancient Canaanite writings. Most important is parallelism, in which “a single idea is expressed in units of two or three lines … by repetition, synonyms, or antonyms” (15). Some of the symbolic numbers in these stories, such as seven as a unit of time, also appear in biblical literature.

Reading Canaanite literature helps us better understand some of the references to God in the Hebrew Bible. Many of the titles for God in Israel were borrowed from Canaan. For example, the title “El Shaddai,” which Coogan takes to mean “God of the mountain,” makes sense because the Canaanite El lived on a mountain.

There are a lot of interesting thematic parallels regarding kingship between Israelite, Canaanite, and Greco-Roman literature. For example, the storm-god Baal conquering the sky-god El and taking his primary position in the pantheon is similar to Zeus’ takeover of his father Kronos’ position as head god. On the human level, King Kirta’s son Yassib challenged his father’s right to rule, claiming that he was incompetent and should step down. This is similar to David’s sons Absalom and Adonijah trying to take over their father’s reign before his death. This does not necessarily indicate direct literary borrowing, but points to common problems in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean in monarchy and succession. Different cultures struggling with similar problems of power might come up with similar literary themes.
Reading this Canaanite literature gives us a glimpse of Baal, El, and Asherah, so maligned in the Bible, on their own terms. Plus the stories are just really cool.

Review here:

http://jdhomie.com/2015/05/24/moving-forward-into-ancient-canaan/

I just put that on my wishlist.

Hi! I'm relatively new to the group so I don't think we have met, but I'm happy to meet you and I look forward to hearing about your reads!

Regarding Aslan, I saw an interview where he was attacked by a TV show host who questioned his right to write about Jesus, simply on the ground that he is a Muslim. So in this context, his insistence on his scholarly credentials is understandable. But I didn't read Zealot and I'm not sure I will.

>20 JDHomrighausen: That sounds great! I'll put it on my wishlist.

24. The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature) by Jodi Magness

Magness is one of the world experts on the archaeology of Qumran and Roman Judea in general. In this book, she lays out the archaeology of Qumran and argues for the consensus view that Qumran was an Essene site. This is the view adopted by Roland De Vaux, the original excavator, but now challenged by scholars who claim Qumran was a Judeo-Roman villa or agricultural site.

In chapters examining the pottery, architecture, toilet, eating area, ritual baths, and cemetery at Qumran, Magness critiques the villa view and argues for the Essene hypothesis. One of her major arguments is that in every area of the site, there are strong correspondences between the practices of those who lived at Qumran and contemporary descriptions of Essenes in Josephus, Philo, and Pliny the Elder. For example, the many ritual baths (miqva'ot) indicate a strong emphasis on ritual purity at the Qumran site. It seems unlikely that there were women at the site, further indicating a male celibate community rather than a villa where there would be women. The idiosyncratic architecture and lack of aristocratic decorations such as mosaics further point away from the villa hypothesis.

Archaeology can be a dense field, but I like how Magness made it accessible in this popular introduction. Rather than cluttering the book with footnotes, she puts references for each chapter at the end of the chapter in an annotated bibliography. The formatting would have been better if the images were integrated into the text rather than set off so I had to flip around the book repeatedly to look at images, charts, and maps. Also this book is from 2002, so it might be dated now.

>23 JDHomrighausen: Very interesting review.

21> This sounds really intriguing -- I think the Canaanites have gotten a bad rap throughout Western history. Just as an aside, are you familiar with Bertolt Brecht's early play Baal -- nowhere near authentic history -- but an interesting early Modern take on the myth.

> 21

Jane, I am not. Another one for the list!

Just stopping by to wave hello. So good to see you back!

>23 JDHomrighausen:: Do you know if this is still debated? I have never heard of the villa hypothesis, but the Qumran sect idea is often cited as if it's a no-doubt thing.

> 23

I honestly don't know. I get the impression that most scholars still stick to the Essene hypothesis. Those scrolls are pretty hard to argue against. However, there are no scrolls or papyrus fragments found in the site itself. The anti-Essene hypothesis scholars I'm reading often deny the connection between the site and the nearby caves where the scrolls were found.

The villa hypothesis comes from team Robert Donceel and Pauline Donceel-Voute, as well as Yizhar Hirschfeld.

26. The Qumran Excavations, 1993-2004: A Preliminary Report by Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg

Magen and Peleg, currently (as I gather) the official excavators with the Israel Antiquities authority, collect here their preliminary data that (they say) refutes the current theory that the Qumran site was an Essene settlement. Finding evidence of mass-scale pottery production, and finding some rather big holes in the Essene hypothesis, they argue that Qumran was a Hasmonean fort, and later a Herodian pottery production site and trade center. They argue the scrolls have no relation to the site, and were left by a different group entirely. I never thought reading an archaeological field report could be so interesting, but this was fun.

(Dan, did you see Qumran when you went to Jerusalem a few years back?)

Not the site, only the scrolls in the Jerusalem museum. At one point, on our way to Masada, the location was pointed out as we sped by. I couldn't tell you what it looked like.

So, who do you side with, Magen & Peleg or Magness?

Well, in the absence of all the evidence, I can't say I am too sure about any position. But there are some major holes and flaws in the Essene hypothesis. I'm really doubtful it is correct. For example, the Essene hypothesis doesn't explain where the community actually lived, as Magness says they didn't seem to live on the site.

However, I suspect it is very good for Israeli tourism to call Qumran a religious site, so even if discredited in time, the theory will die a slow death.

25. Works and Days: A Translation and Commentary for the Social Sciences by Hesiod

My summer reading list to prepare for the biblical studies M.A. spans everything from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Qur’an. To make some order out of the madness, I’m moving from one culture to the next. Somewhat arbitrarily I’ve started with the Greeks. Side benefit: this is also a great way to fill in the gaps in my classics reading; after all, I’m just about to graduate with a classics degree, so I should have read my Hesiod, Virgil, and Ovid!

I’ve already written about Hesiod’s Theogony. As I mentioned, Hesiod wrote during the Archaic age of Greek history, around 700 B.C.E. While the Theogony focuses on the gods and their interactions, the Works and Days takes its cue from the world of humans. The poem is addressed to Hesiod’s brother, Perses, who seems to have committed some kind of injustice against Hesiod. From this prosaic beginning, Hesiod moves into grand mythological speculation on the nature of humanity and justice, narrating the myths of Pandora and the four ages of mankind. He also includes many lines of proverbs praising justice and giving advice for tending a household. The poem ends with a farmer’s almanac of advice on planting crops and setting sail, what days of the month are best for various actions, etc.

As regards these days, fortunate and prosperous is he who knows all these things and does his work guiltless before the deathless ones, sorting out the birds and avoiding excesses. (135)

What did I get out of this book?

1. Hesiod’s ages of man myth charts the move from gold to silver to bronze to heroic demigods to iron men, each one successively inferior to the one before it. Each race of men is a bit further from being gods. Two interesting things here: first, the parallels to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2:32-34; each dream narrates stages of human decline. Second, many allusions in Homer suggest that Achilles and Hector are living in the age of heroic demigods. Even Homer’s humanity is superior to ours! I find it interesting how many cultures have these myths of a primordial fall. Perhaps it functions as a theodicy to explain the gap between the noble characters of myth and the messy world the myth’s audience lives in.

2. In lines 11-26, Hesiod details the two kinds of strife (eris): the good one that motivates men to war, and the bad one that motivates men to perform better to outdo their neighbor. Ancient Greek culture is known for being competitive. Even literature (epic and drama) was competitive, and the honors of victory were always limited to the best (aristoi). But here Hesiod seems to be aware that competition can only take place in a context of broader collaboration, i.e. civilization. Complete competition leads to warfare, which destroys society and makes men worse. We see this in our own lives, in everything from baseball to Dungeons and Dragons (yes, I have played!): competition only makes us better if we play by the rules.

3. This edition of the Works and Days includes a commentary by David W. Tandy and Walter C. Neale, respectively a classical philologist and an economic historian. They read the Works and Days as “a response to the arrival of a new political and economic structure in the early archaic period (750-480 BCE)” (xiii). Far from Homer’s world of nobility, the narrator of Works and Days adopts the persona of a poor peasant. He frequently mentions the fact that kings (basilees) simply don’t care about their subjects, and bitterly complains about the debt that poor farmers and peasants like him are trapped into by their lack of economic security. In Tandy and Neale’s reading, Hesiod’s response to the new world of trade and prosperity in the archaic age is frustration that the peripheral peasants are not gaining any of this wealth. Just the opposite: as traditional economic patterns break down with the expansion of trade, peasants lose, as surplus crops go outside the community rather than back to the community (37).

I really like this edition of Hesiod. These two scholars really brought their areas of expertise together into an interesting interdisciplinary exploration. My only complaint with this edition is the translation. Tandy and Neale render Hesiod into prose. Hesiod, like Homer, is in dactylic hexameter, but that is totally lost here. I’m not a fan of prose translations of verse. Of course verse can never be adequately rendered, but prose translations just admit defeat at the start rather than trying. So I would use this edition for its valuable historic and economic information, but not for its translation.

Next up: the Homeric hymns!

My review of Works and Days is on my blog:

http://jdhomie.com/2015/05/30/reading-challenge-3-hesiods-works-and-days/

Noce to see you back posting Jonathan.

Enjoyed your review of Works and Days

competition only makes us better if we play by the rules Did you say that or did Hesiod

This is interesting stuff. Curious what your reading list is.

Enjoying see you back, and following your reading. I'm also curious, as Dan is, to know what your reading list is.

Baswood -- I said that but it's in line with what Hesiod said (IMHO)

Rebecca -- here's the link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xOG0KJeeAsspVatAyD_Bs9LIoqwVz_uUwVtqP8IT...

Thanks for the encouragement everyone! :)

This is going some summer for you. Very interesting list. If all goes well my summer will cover three from the list: Jeremiah, Lamentations and Ezekiel.

Thanks. And impressive!

28. The Druze by Robert Brenton Betts

The Druze are a persecuted religious minority in the Arab world, with their population mostly in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. They are a split-off of the Ismaili Shi’a, but many of their beliefs place them far outside mainstream Islam, most notably their neo-Gnostic tendencies and belief in reincarnation. After an initial 26-year period of proselytizing when the sect was first founded, ending in 1043, the Druze have not allowed any converts for the last millennium. They are very insular and private, which makes them hard for any scholar to understand. So Betts’ book is a bit dated (1988), but it’s a good book introducing their distinct history and beliefs.

29. Postcolonial Reconfigurations: An Alternative Way of Reading the Bible and Doing Theology by R. S. Sugirtharajah

Sugirtharajah, a Sri Lankan biblical scholar transplanted to Britain, is one of the emperors of postcolonial biblical criticism. What is postcolonial biblical criticism, you ask? Postcolonial biblical scholarship seeks to study the colonial contexts of the Bible’s authorship, and how the Bible has been interpreted in colonial ventures since then. As Sugirtharajah puts it, “it is a process of cultural and discursive emancipation from all dominant structures whether they be political, linguistic, or ideological” (15). So postcolonial biblical scholars critique and call out the use of power, such as the power that experts and authorities are invested with, and how those forms of power reflect biases and ideologies.

(Sorry if I sound lingo-y, but I took a whole class on this stuff a while back.)

This book is based on a series of book chapters and articles Sugirtharajah originally published elsewhere. Only a few of the chapters are original. So this book does not cohere together very well. But that’s okay, since the chapters are really interesting, meandering between abstract theory and principles, and particular case studies. Sugirtharajah Two ideas that really stick with me are the need for a “hermeneutics of distance” and postcolonialism’s inability to discuss religion.

19. The Lost Letters of Pergamum: A Story from the New Testament World by Bruce W. Longenecker

Longenecker is a New Testament scholar who has written a splendid historical novel of first-century Christianity. The novel takes the form of letters written between an aristocrat of Pergamum and the apostle Luke. Through the course of the novel, the aristocrat Antipas learns about Christ through Luke’s gospel and through attending Christian house worship. By the end of the novel, he has embraced Christ and undergoes martyrdom to save another believer’s life. Though it is not a work of formal scholarship, Longenecker brings the first-century biblical world to life.

One example of what makes this novel so great is how Longenecker portrays early Christians’ views on economics. Antipas visits two Christian communities. One is full of aristocrats who demand the same honor and status within the community that they garner outside. The other represents the renunciation of honor and status that Paul called for in his letters. Antipas expresses his confusion to Luke, who responds to the effect that not all communities practice equally well. Then as now, some churches degenerate into clubs for the elite, while others practice true community and solidarity. But it’s one thing to say that, and another to have a first-century man narrate his confusion in first-person!

Did I say this was a great book? I’m going to hold on to it, because I would totally use it if I ever taught a course on the New Testament or early Christianity.

18. Iliad, Book 1 (Bk. 1) by Pamela Ann Draper

The review:

http://jdhomie.com/2015/06/03/review-iliad-book-i-by-p-a-draper/

Purists everywhere I guess. I'm impressed with your reading of the Iliad in original Greek.

Interesting reading you are doing, as always.

>42 JDHomrighausen: I had never heard of postcolonial biblical criticism, but it sounds fascinating. I'll add this book to my wishlist. I think at this point I may be more interested in biblical criticism than in reading the Bible itself.

Welcome back! And congrats on being so close to graduated.

>13 JDHomrighausen: Hi! I'm new to LT this year, lovely to catch up on your thread. I too, have a reading list for grad school but I'm sticking to pen and paper this year. I've used Evernote before, to maintain lists and to keep notes. It's available on the web and as a software. I've used OneNote as well: it's more functional if you like to format and organise your notes, but Evernote has the advantage of being more user-friendly. And Mendeley is great to keep your research organised, especially if it is in the form of PDFs. Hope this helps.

> 48

Hi reva8! Welcome to LT!

What are you applying to grad school for and what's your list? I am blogging through my list and making it rather public. I am banking on the theory that being very public with my efforts will motivate me to finish the list lest I feel ashamed in front of my peers for not doing so. Social pressure works.

I just discovered Zotero -- the digital age is amazing!!

I'm blogging my efforts:
http://jdhomie.com/category/summerreading2015/

Just a bit of good news -- I got my financial award letter yesterday and Yes! I am going to graduate school this fall. Beginning my MA in Biblical Languages at the Jesuit School of Theology/Graduate Theological Union. One of the perks is cross-registration with Cal's Classics and Near Eastern Studies departments.

(Zoe, any advice would be greatly appreciated!)

30. The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries by R. Gordon Wasson, Carl A. P. Ruck, Albert Hoffman

Argues that part of the mostly unknown mysteries of Eleusis in Greek antiquity were psychedelic drugs derived from fungi growing on wheat. A really spacey book, clearly a product of the 1970s. That said, the theory is interesting if unprovable, and makes us think about just how weird the supposedly rational and philosophical Greeks could get.

27. The Homeric Hymns: A Translation, with Introduction and Notes by Diane J. Rayor

Reviewed here:

http://jdhomie.com/2015/06/03/reading-challenge-4-the-homeric-hymns/

Congratulations on going to graduate school! Great to get that financial award.

Congratulations, Jonathan! You have another rewarding scholastic journey ahead of you.

Woo hoo!!! You go Jonathan!

31. The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius

Here:

http://jdhomie.com/2015/06/10/reading-challenge-6-suetonius-the-twelve-caesars/

>56 JDHomrighausen: I enjoyed your review of Suetonius! He really is a fun, light read, and you're right when you say that his aim was to understand the 'genius' of each Caesar, rather than provide a binary evaluation or even establish a hierarchy, moral or otherwise.

Good luck with finals!

Congratulations on your acceptance and financial aid to grad school! Another adventure awaits!

Congratulations on the good news about graduate school! That cross-registration aspect especially sounds fantastic. I don't know many people in the Classics department, but the NES department is my second academic home. There are so many great people and a great community feel. There's a biweekly(?) Akkadian reading group that brings together people from the department and GTU, for example (or at least one person from GTU). I sometimes wish that I had just stayed at Cal after my semester here.

I don't suppose you're going to be on campus at all in the next few days? It would be great to catch up in person. But otherwise, what sort of advice are you looking for? Will you be going on to do a PhD afterward? Have you already chosen your courses for next year?

I also love your summer reading list.

Also, did you know the NES department library has a LibraryThing account?

https://www.librarything.com/profile/UCBMesopotamia

Zoe, you're in luck -- I will in Berkeley on Saturday meeting some fellow GTU biblical studies students. Want to meet for coffee?

I hope to do a PhD elsewhere. Not sure what the future holds because the bride-to-be and I have to coordinate our career-building and where we live to do that. (We are not going to be one of those bicoastal academic couples. Not for us.) For me it will be most likely East Coast because that's where the Tier-1 biblical studies programs are.

Fall class schedule is tentatively Pentateuch and Methods, Wisdom Literature, Pauline Letters, and Intro to Rabbinic Literature. Thank God I don't have to play catch-up on languages. You would know: majoring in classics was one of the best decisions I ever made!

32. The Iliad by Homer, trans. Robert Fagles

http://jdhomie.com/2015/06/07/reading-challenge-5-homers-iliad/

33. The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts by Marvin W. Meyer

http://jdhomie.com/2015/06/18/reading-challenge-7-the-ancient-mysteries-ed-marvi...

Just catching up, and oh, I hope to read The Iliad and The Odyssey someday.

>62 JDHomrighausen: I enjoyed both your reviews. I agree with all your comments on the Iliad, although some of your thoughts on how gods are different had not occurred to me.

I wonder if Marvin W. Meyer discusses the reasons for making a cult secret in the first place?

>63 rebeccanyc: Me too

More reviews.

17. Fragments by Heraclitus, trans. Brooks Haxton
(Very late!!)

http://jdhomie.com/2015/06/22/bad-translation-or-how-heraclitus-got-misrendered/

34. Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Collection of Ancient Texts by Georg Luck

http://jdhomie.com/2015/06/20/reading-challenge-8-arcana-mundi-magic-and-the-occ...

37. Jews and Christians: Volume 6: Graeco-Roman Views (Cambridge Commentaries on Writings of the Jewish and Christian World) by Molly Whittaker

Blogged here: http://jdhomie.com/2015/06/25/reading-challenge-9-jews-and-christians-graeco-rom...

38. Paper, Wood, and Copper: Early Printed Arts in SCU Archives and Special Collections by Elizabeth Newsom

This 53-page book provides some information on a book display going on at work right now. (I LOVE WORKING IN UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES!!) This book provides information on printer’s marks, explorer’s sketchbooks and travelogues, religious texts, and texts of classical learning, and how each used woodblocks and copper etching to enhance its visual appeal. A nice short read. How often do we get to read a fun book for work?

I just read through your blog, and added Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns to my wishlist. Love the blog and love the focus and effort you are putting into this reading.

I plan to focus next year on Homer. I want to find some decent texts about him*and maybe influenced by him* (not sure I'll be up for Joyce's Ulysses, maybe though) Maybe we could open a discussion thread here, if there is enough interest.

*or her, or them, or whatever.

> 68

Thanks so much, Dan! Blogging has been a really good way for me to focus my writing. Blogging requires a certain conciseness that academic writing doesn't emphasize as much.

Homer is definitely a good read. Do you have an Audible account? Elizabeth Vandiver's wonderful courses on the Iliad and the Odyssey are available from Great Courses. I listened to her course on the Odyssey in one sitting (driving from Los Angeles to San Jose) and would recommend it highly.

As for translations, there are many contemporary renderings of Homer, from Robert Fagles' more readable and "loose" translation to Richmond Lattimore's more word-for-word, preserving the Greek idioms and turns of phrase, but less readable one. I am currently reading Robert Fitzgerald's translation of the Odyssey and find he strikes a good balance. I have also heard good things about Stanley Lombardo and Barry Powell's translations.

I doubt Homer was a her. Whether Homer was a he or a them -- well, that's the debate...

Thanks J! I hadn't thought of The Great Courses. I have Fagles in e-book form and old paperbacks translated by W. H. D. Rouse. I'll keep Fitzgerald in mind.

ETA - the Rouse translations are from 1937 & 1938, in "plain English prose" according to Wikipedia.

> 70

Personally, I think prose translations should all go in the wastebasket. I know it's impossible to really translate poetry, but to decide to do it in prose is just admitting defeat from the start. Of course Homer's dactylic hexameter can't be rendered into English, but many of the free verse translations I mentioned above still have a sense of rhythm that can sound really nice. :)

35. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice by Catherine Bell

I’ve heard a lot about Bell in the past few years. She used to teach at my university, and built its religious studies program into the strong department it is today. She was one of the generation of teacher-scholars who moved my university from being a local Catholic school to being a nationally recognized one. Sadly, she died of illness in her 50s back in 2008.

This book was what put her on the map in religious studies. In it she lays out a theory of ritual, based on her work studying rituals in Chinese religions as well as reading large amounts of anthropological and sociological theory. She argues that instead of starting out with an a priori, set definition of “ritual” and dividing various practices into either ritual or non-ritual, we should instead look at processes of “ritualization,” of looking at how cultures mark various actions as ritualized actions. She then goes on to explore how ritual is social structure and social hierarchy, how ritual engages the body, how ritual space constructs dualities, and how it empowers the individual.

This book was really dense, and I wish she had used more examples to clarify her points. But comparative religion scholars still cite this as THE book on ritual. I’m sure I’ll return to it later for a term paper.

The Bell is one those books I wouldn't read, but am glad to read about. Interesting.

>71 JDHomrighausen: J, I didn't think about translation when I picked up the Rouse versions. I think they were library book sale purchases. Perhaps I should chuck them. My plan is to read Fagles. What I do next just depends on how deep I get into it.

I loved the first translation of the Iliad and Odyssey that I read (I was 18 or so), but it wasn't until a teacher pointed it out that I realized it had the 6+6 rhythm of alexandrine verses, which is familiar to the French because it was the standard form of classic poetry and theater. Racine and Corneille wrote in alexandrines, and Molière stirred up a scandal when he started writing in prose.

About 10 years ago I re-read them, but I couldn't find this first (for me) translation because I didn't know the name of the translator, and the one I found was in prose, which annoyed me a little, but it was still a pleasure to read. I think I got rid of that one though in one of my moves, so now all I have is an e-book of the Iliad based on the translation done by Leconte de Lisle in 1850. I have only read a few pages though.

> 74

I had no clue about French translations of Homer -- thanks for the info. If it's anything like English, there are far more than there need to be...

36. Orpheus and Greek Religion (Mythos Books) by William Keith Guthrie

Orpheus is a figure in Greek myth known for three main attributes: his melodious songs that charmed the most savage beasts, his failed quest to Hades to retrieve his lover Eurydike, and his death being torn to bits at the hands of Thracian women most likely in the throes of Bacchic frenzy. Yet Orpheus is at the center of a genre of Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Greek literature, including theogonies, hymns, and ritual tablets guiding believers through the afterlife. This literature was related to a religious movement, Orphism, which was a sect of Dionysiac worship more focused on purity and the afterlife.

I read this book for my independent study on Greco-Roman religion. Orphism is an important historical precursor to Christianity, because like Christianity, Orphism was a religion revolving around a sacred text. We have textual remnants from many Greco-Roman cults, but only in Orphism do we have the texts cited as having their own authority.

Guthrie’s book first came out in 1935, and he revised it in 1952. It is still an important text in the study of Orphism. Guthrie tries to piece together the evidence on Orphism to come to conclusions about the basics of the cult. Though his approach is unexciting because he is not very speculative, his conclusions have lasted longer because they are so cautious. He rightly concludes that we cannot know if Orpheus was based on a historical figure, that it was indeed a religious cult, and that its purported parallels with Christianity are less prominent than many claim.

I enjoyed this book, but it could use some revising; we have found evidence since this was written, most importantly the Derveni Papyrus discovered in 1962. This papyrus is a commentary on an Orphic hymn, now lost. I’ll be reading later this summer.

Orphism. Yet another world I didn't know existed.

39. The New Perspective on Paul: An Introduction by Kent L. Yinger

I read Yinger’s 103-page book on the “new perspective on Paul” (NPP) in 2 hours. It was worth my time. In this book, Yinger details both the main arguments and the history of the NPP, and directs his readers to further reading should they wish to study the issue themselves.

Chapter two, “Where did this all begin?”, looks at the 1977 publication of E.P. Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism, which laid the groundwork for the NPP. Sanders was dissatisfied with stereotypical views of first-century Judaism commonly held in the scholarly community: that Jews believed practice of the law and good works could lead to salvation, that this law was a heavy burden which nobody could uphold. Sanders instead set forth his view of “covenantal nomism,” a common system of practice and theology in first-century Judaism. Covenantal nomism holds that God and humans are in a covenantal relationship, a relationship in which humans are obligated to God but God also leaves room for God’s grace anbd forgiveness. Sanders cited texts from the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls showing the individual Jews’ relationship with God as dependent, vulnerable, and loving, rather than merely fearful of a wrathful and unforgiving God. Sanders laid the foundation for biblical scholars to question the traditional Reformation reading of Paul as an author speaking of salvation through grace apart from works. He questioned the reading of Judaism as a religion of oppressive legalism.

Chapter three describes James D. G. Dunn’s work in building on Sanders to truly initiate the NPP. Dunn sought to read Paul in continuity with first-century Judaism and covenantal nomism, rather than opposed to it. Dunn read Paul’s writings about “works of the law” as not referring to doing good deeds (“works righteousness”) but as referring to specific practices expressing Jewish identity, such as circumcision and keeping kosher. Hence, Paul was not saying one didn’t have to do good works to be saved, only that specific Jewish cultic practices were not necessary. The question becomes not “How may I be saved?” but “Who belongs to the company of the righteous?”

Chapter four details other NPP advocates who set forth their own perspectives. N.T. Wright asks what the problem was that Paul saw Jesus as saving Jews from. (You know those bumper stickers that say “Jesus is the answer”? Well, Wright is asking: “What is the question?”) For Wright, this problem was Jews’ disinheritance of the land, their exile and colonization under the Romans. Jesus as Messiah reconciled God to Israel for Israel’s sins leading to their political plight. Other NPP advocates, such as Francis Watson, argue that Paul was more interested in theological legitimation for his Christ-following communities than in working out a systematic soteriology. Heikki Raisanen argues that we should not try to impose theological coherence on Paul’s occasional letters in the first place. Other scholars argue that in Paul’s view, the new Christian mode of relating to God did not rule out the Jews’ special place in their covenant, but opened a different covenant to the Gentiles. Yinger stresses in this chapter that NPP advocates differ greatly amongst themselves.

Chapters five, six, and seven detail the historical, exegetical, and theological-ministerial critiques of NPP. Historians and biblical scholars take issue with covenantal nomism, saying we should not rule out the possibility that some Jewish groups had fallen into crass legalism. Exegetes point to passages in Paul that seem to refute the NPP, such as his insistence that he had been a sinner burdened under the law (1 Tim 1:15, Romans 7:15, 18-19). NPP readings of these texts can seem to flaunt common sense, but at the same time, Paul’s writing can be so rhetorical and opaque that it’s hard to figure out what he is doing. The chapter on theology and ministry was the most tedious for me. Yinger details Reformed thinkers who eschew the NPP because it runs counter to Luther’s reading of Paul. However, most NPP scholars are not concerned with contemporary sectual debates, but with Paul’s thought. As Yinger says, “trying to get Paul to answer a question he wasn’t asking always produces discomfort for biblical scholars, and usually unsatisfying results for theologians” (86).

Chapter eight, “Let’s Hear it for the NPP,” details several positive effects this new scholarship has led to: a better grasp on Paul’s letters, avoiding modern Western individualist readings of Paul, moving away from stereotyped and insulting depictions of Judaism, drawing more continuity between the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, bringing Paul and Jesus together, and bringing Protestants and Catholics together. Even the critics of NPP scholarship can reap some of these benefits!

Yinger’s book ends with two afterwards, by Donald A. Hagner and Don Garlington. Hagner critiques the NPP for passing over the uniqueness of early Christianity. Garlington suggests three areas of future research on the NPP. Yinger ends with an annotated bibliography of pro- and anti-NPP works for the reader to evaluate the debate for themselves.

Of all the areas of the Bible, I’ve probably had the least exposure to Paul, so this book was very helpful for me to get a handle on some of the current debates. I’ll most likely be taking a class on Pauline literature this fall, so it’s good to have a head start!

40. Weird Al Yankovic: The Kindle Singles Interview (Kindle Single) by Mara Altman

Hell, why not? Yankovic is a funny guy. This interview shows his serious side; in fact, he is quite open about the fact that apart from his music, he is a pretty conventional and unexciting guy. The best part for me was reading about his creative habits. Apparently Yankovic works best in the middle of the night, with no music and no distractions, in a half-asleep state in which his mind is most prone to silly thoughts. Michelle (the fiance) will be seeing him on our honeymoon so I'm glad to read up in anticipation!

41. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald

http://jdhomie.com/2015/07/07/reading-challenge-10-homers-odyssey/

43. The Orphic Hymns by Apostolos N. Athanassakis

In my reading group on Greco-Roman religion, we are working through some Orphic texts, such as the Guthrie book I reviewed above. This book is a collection of Orphic hymns to various Olympian gods, personified natural forces, and of course Dionysus himself. The hymns date to the 2nd-3rd century CE, though their oral tradition may extend much farther back, perhaps even to the 6th century BCE when Orphism first emerged.

A little background: Orphism was a Dionysiac cult in the Greco-Roman world which emphasized moral and ritual purity. Orphism was based around the mythic singer Orpheus, most famous for his failed quest to retrieve his lover Eurydike from Hades. Orphism had a unique cosmology in which Dionysus was king of the gods (not Zeus!) and the world was born from an egg. We know very little about Orphism, and some argue that it was not really a cult but only a literary tradition. What we do know is scattered in classical authors (especially Plato), Neoplatonists from the 3rd century onwards, and three collections of texts found from antiquity: these hymns, a collection of golden funerary tablets from the 3rd and 4th centuries BCE, and a fragmentary papyrus containing an allegorical-cosmological commentary on an Orphic poem (now lost) from 330 BCE. So we really don’t have much.

This book is hard to review because it really is the best of its kind. Athanassakis is a well-known translator of Greek literature (he rendered the Homeric Hymns as well), and this is a revision of a work he first published in 1977. The hymns take up only 66 pages, but the notes take up 152. The notes are helpful, because they explain various references in the hymns, particularly to Orphic myth and cosmology. However, the notes do not give any philological guidance, so the student of Greek might want to look elsewhere. The translation is superb, and Athanassakis’ introduction had some really interesting points about religious epithets and the religious experience of chanting various epithets and names of God.

My only complaint about this book is the brevity of its overview of the hymns themselves. I wish Athanassakis had spent more time introducing them as a whole and discussing various aspects of them. It would be far too tedious to read the notes on every hymns.

45. Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets by Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston

http://jdhomie.com/2015/07/09/book-review-two-books-on-orphic-texts/

Intriguing review of The Orphic Hymns -- I'm familiar with the Homeric Hymns, but not these. What sort of connection is there between The Orphic Hymns and Euripides' The Bacchae (which I've seen on stage twice -- once as a puppet show and once in a hauntingly-evocative graduate school production).

> 83

Jane, I'm jealous that you have seen the Bacchae! The Orphic Hymns are much later (likely 2nd-3rd cent. CE), and seem to come from a cultic context rather than a literary one. (Although they are poetic literature as well.) For example, each hymn names a specific type of incense that is to accompany its performance.

44. The Song of Songs: A New Translation by Ariel Bloch

http://jdhomie.com/2015/07/16/reading-challenge-11-song-of-songs-a-new-translati...

42. The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through The Maze by Mark Goodacre

To be honest, I have a love-hate relationship with my Kindle. I love its convenience, but hate the fact that I can’t interact with it or flip through the pages like I can with a book. That said, I found a good use for the kindle: reading while I’m on the elliptical at the gym. Regular books don’t work: I have to hold them open and the print is too small to track while I’m moving around. The Kindle solves both of these problems.

Anyway, Goodacre’s short book is an introduction to the Synoptic problem, or the question of how the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) are related. He walks the reader through the problems and some of the theories about them. The first question: which gospel came first? The vast majority of scholars accept Mark as the first gospel, because of how Matthew and Luke clearly use his text, and because he uses simple language and vocabulary. Goodacre follows other scholars on this. This is contrary to the minority opinion, the Griesbach hypothesis, which holds that Matthew came first.

The next question, then, is where Matthew and Luke get their material from. Most scholars accept the “two source theory”: Matthew and Luke both use Mark as well as an independent sayings gospel called “Q.” Q has never been found, so it is purely hypothetical, but scholars suspect it is of the same genre as the gnostic Gospel of Thomas, which contains only sayings and teachings of Jesus with no narrative. Most scholars accept Q, but Goodacre does not. He instead sides with the Farrer hypothesis, which holds that Mark came first, Matthew used Mark, and then Luke used Matthew and Mark. (At all steps in the process, of course, oral tradition played a role as well.) He argues that pro-Q scholarship ignores instances of Luke using Matthew’s version of Mark, or Luke including stories in Matthew but not in Mark.

The synoptic problem has been around in New Testament scholarship for some time, and scholars spent a lot of time developing the contemporary consensus of Markan priority and Q. That said, I can’t help but wonder if this is an issue we can set aside for some time until new evidence comes up. There is just so little evidence one way or the other. That said, it is an issue that all biblical scholars need to be familiar with, and Goodacre is good at walking the reader through the issues rather than simply telling them what to think. He reduplicates synoptic parallels so the reader can see what he is talking about, and explains how to color code a synopsis. The chapters are broken up into small sections, and each chapter and section has a summary at the end. This was a nice gym read, but it would also be a good text for a class on the synoptic gospels.

46. 1-3 John: A General Reader (AGROS) by J. Klay Harrison and Chad M. Foster

One of my initial summer goals was to read the entire New Testament in Greek. Once summer started, reality got in the way. That said, I would like to read the whole NT in Greek, but I will instead break it up into parts. This summer I am covering the Johannine corpus: 1-3 John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation.

Harrison and Foster’s reader makes it easier to do that. They include the text of 1-3 John with running vocabulary and grammatical helps. They also include appendices on text-criticism of 1-3 John, vocabulary 50 or more times sorted by frequency and alphabetically, and paradigm charts. This reader is part of a series of books in Koine Greek education, AGROS, which aim to teach conversational Koine as well as textual and exegetical Koine. The series is a work in progress, and this was my first encounter with it.

If this book is any indication, AGROS is going to produce some useful texts. I really enjoyed using it! First, its choice of texts is good for a beginner. 1-3 John covers some heady theological content, yet its vocabulary is very small and its sentences very simple. Plus, the letters are short. So an intermediate reader of Greek can easily read them and feel the satisfaction of finishing three books of the New Testament. Harrison and Foster have done a superb job of parsing each verb and giving definitions of new words. Before each chapter, they place a list of new vocabulary, so if the reader wants to make flash cards they can.

However, there are a few ways this book could be better. First, I wish there was more exegetical help to make sense of what the Greek means. This book only helps with the linguistic aspect of the text. I used Raymond Brown’s The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary as a companion volume for the exegetical help and historical/literary background. Second, I didn’t care too much for the text-critical helps in this reader. As far as I know, most intermediate Greek classes don’t spend time on textual criticism, so why did Harrison and Foster put so much of that in? Still, they put the text-critical notes in an appendix at the end, so if you don’t want to use it, it’s easy to ignore. Third, there are some places that it would have been nice to have help with idioms. In 3 John 5, for example, the Greek text reads:
Ἀγαπητέ, πιστὸν ποιεῖς
The NAB in Brown’s commentary renders this “Beloved, you are faithful,” and the NRSV, “Beloved, you do faithfully.” So there’s an idiom here with ποιεῖς I was not familiar with. Oversights like this are uncommon and easy to correct.

Overall, I have to commend Harrison and Foster for their work in making 1-3 John more accessible. Now I’m moving on to the Gospel of John.

47. The Gospel According to Luke, ed. Michael Patella

Continuing my summer reading challenge, I’ve just finished Michael Patella’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke. This is part of the New Collegeville Bible Commentary, published by the Liturgical Press out of the Benedictine abbey in Collegeville, MN. This series provides very brief commentary on the English text, useful for parish study groups or general readers looking for basic exegesis. Here I have a few thoughts on Luke and a few thoughts on the commentary.

One of the difficulties of studying the Bible is that everything looks so familiar. It’s hard to step back and really read the text, really notice something new, because we think we know it so well already. This is especially an issue with the gospels. I’ve read Luke a few times now, and my New Testament Greek class last spring spent the entire quarter reading it in Greek. Still, a few things surprised me.

The stereotype of Luke is that he is the likeable gospel, the one that is most open to women and Gentiles, most interested in the poor. Supposedly, he is more readable than Mark, less eschatological than Matthew, and less cosmic than John. So one thing that really surprised me and sunk in for me this time reading Luke was just how often Jesus encounters demons, evil spirits, and Satan himself. I counted at least five times, from the temptation in the desert (4:1-13) to various cures of people infested with demons (4:31-37, 8:26-39, 9:35-50), to Satan himself pushing Judas to betray Jesus (22:1-6). Jesus is so good at dealing with demons that at one point, people accuse him of being one (11:14-23). Whether or not one believes that demons and evil spirits exist outside our imaginations, it is a commonly accepted fact that in the ancient world people ascribed many things to supernatural forces which we would give medical diagnoses to today. These many mentions of demons remind me that this is indeed a first-century text.

In his introduction, Patella lists reversal as a main theme of Luke’s gospel. Luke often shows reversals of power or privilege taking place in Jesus’ ministry, or has Jesus speaking about future reversals. For example, the centurion comes to Jesus to have his daughter healed, upsetting the colonizing relationship this man has over Judean peasants (7:1-10). Jesus gives his famous “suffer unto me the children” line, reversing his disciples’ devaluation of the child. And many of his teachings describe reversals, whether in the sermon on the mount (6:20-49), the “first shall be last” speech (13:22-30), or him telling his disciples that the first among them is servant of all (22:24-30). To me, these reversals are all part of the kingdom ethics, meant to be lived out in the here and now. This time around reading Luke, I saw this theme more than in the past.

I liked Patella’s commentary. At 158 pages, he gives neither too little nor too much. Most of it is exegetical, but he also gives cultural background in Greek and Palestinian daily life and customs, nuances of the Greek, and comparisons to the other synoptics. At the end of the book he includes questions for reflection appropriate to a bible study. For someone wanting to read Luke with some basic commentary, nominally from a Roman Catholic but mainly from a historical-critical-literary perspective, this is a useful book in a useful series.

There is a lot going on here. Quite interesting to catch up, and the to find The Odyssey, and Song of Songs and John and Luke, amongst the other stuff. I'm fascinated to learn the Ophric Hymns exist and we can read them.

Homer is a 2016 project for me. John and Luke may be a 2017 NT project...if I can project, long o, that far ahead.

Song of Songs was tough for me, but I was struck by how formal and respectful the love elements are. There is nothing risque, so to speak. It comes across on the surface, ignoring for the moment any divine elements, as a healthy relationship between a man and woman. But that divine element, that the poem is an allegory for love of God, it's not so easy to work in there while reading it. I found the effort of trying to do so only rewarded me with confusion.

Dan, I look forward to Homer! Maybe I can join my Bible reading with the group's. I'm not putting too much expectation on myself though.

Which Song of Songs translation did you read? Maybe mine brought out the erotic elements more. I agree that the theological allegory seems like a stretch. It's there, but you have to be looking for it.

ALSO! The one month countdown begins! August 29 I get married!

Wow, congratulations in advance! Will you have time to read before the big event?

Congrats J!

>90 JDHomrighausen: nrsv - maybe less than ideal for SoS.

Congratulations!

I've been meaning to catch up with your thread for weeks, and I still haven't read all the reviews . . . but I will eventually.

Congratulations on your upcoming marriage!

Congratulations!

Congratulations on your wedding!!!

Re: eroticism in the Song of Songs -- you should compare it to the Mesopotamian Inanna.

Thanks everyone!!!

Rest assured everyone, I will have time to read. But Rebecca, don't worry about reading my reviews. They are more for me than for others. I assume not many others are as interested in my arcane scholarly reviews as I am. Unless, of course, they are infected with a similar neurosis, as Zoe is... :)

Jane, I've read Wolkstein and Kramer's Inanna. Isn't it fabulous? I found out about it by attending a local pagan liturgy in her honor. They use Wolkstein and Kramer as their main worship text. For some reason it didn't pop into mind when reading SoS, but yes, it should have!!

It is fabulous. There is (or maybe used to be) a video of her telling the story -- she was a wonderful storyteller. Much missed.

>97 janeajones:, >98 JDHomrighausen:, >99 janeajones: - ?! You all have left me so intrigued.

52. The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination: History and Techniques by Christopher De Hamel

De Hamel’s brief book focuses on the techniques of manuscript illumination. How are manuscripts produced? I read this to better understand the Saint John’s Bible I’m working with at school.

Chapter one, “Why manuscripts were illuminated,” describes some of the uses of illumination. For example, large initial capital letters could be used to mark divisions within a text. This would be useful in a day and age when books had neither page numbers nor tables of contents. Illuminations could also serve as a mnemonic for the reader. In all illuminated manuscripts, planning was difficult, and time and money were always limits.

Chapter two, “How manuscripts were designed,” describes several of the steps: ruling lines horizontally and vertically, collaboration between scribes and artists, etc. Incomplete manuscripts might not be as visually pleasing but often tell us much about how a particular manuscript was executed.

Chapter three, “How manuscripts were illuminated,” describes the steps to execute the design: drawing, gold leaf, paint, etc. Most colors in medieval mss. Came from minerals and plants. Gold was the most expensive part, and indicated a text considered important.

I'm sorry for the lack of reviews! I have a backlog of books waiting to be reviewed. However I am currently trying to publish a small book and between that and wedding planning, I am swamped. More details on the book later. :)

I am currently trying to publish a small book ...

!!!!!

You are making me feel like such an underachiever! LOL!

Very exciting news about the publication! And I can absolutely relate to the insanity of wedding planning.

48. Ancient Greek Love Magic by Christopher A. Faraone

A really fascinating overview of love spells in the Greco-Roman world. There is little evidence on this, so Faraone makes many guesses from cognate traditions and sandwiches centuries of change into one phenomenon. But! That is normal for research into the ancient world, particularly popular practices without many textual remainders.

Faraone divides love magic into two types: eros magic and philia magic. Eros magic was used by men to lure women into sexual relationships. Philia spells were used by women to keep their husbands and lovers from straying. In these spells, Faraone finds interesting implications for the construction of gender in the Greek world. For example, prostitutes and courtesans used eros magic, and male social subordinates used philia magic to keep the good favor of their superiors (e.g. patrons).

In a rare combination, this book was both academically serious without being dry as hell.

49. Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Gail Steketee and Randy O. Frost

When Frost, a research psychologist, started in the 1980s, nobody was looking at it. Everyone assumed it was just a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Frost found that no, it is a distinct mental illness, with similar traits to others. This book is co-written with Steketee, a social worker and professor. Between the two of them we get the psychological and social dimensions of this problem.

Frost and Steketee believe that there is a psychological type of hoarders. Traits include childhood trauma, indecisiveness, putting oneself into objects, and often, being highly creative and intelligent enough to see a use for everything. Each chapter moves between research results and individual case studies.

I come from a whole family of hoarders, so this book really helped me personally, but it was also interesting. I’m glad that books like this and the TV shows about hoarders have brought this illness to the public eye.

Trying to catch up on book reviews -- I get married in five days so I'd like to have this done beforehand!

51. What Does the Bible Really Teach? by Watchtower Bible and Tract Society

I was walking around downtown SF and the Jehovah’s Witnesses offered me a tract. I’ve had a few conversations with their door-to-door evangelists, but never actually read one of their tracts. Given that it is my professional duty to know the Bible now, I decided to give it a read. Toward the start, the tract claimed that the Bible is “harmonious,” “scientifically accurate,” and “historically accurate.” So the turf was claimed. Here I focus not on the majority of the book, which looked at broader, more agreeable theological points, but the things most unique to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I had learned of some of the JWs’ unique readings of the Bible, such as the 144,000 people who will be reign with Jesus in the new Kingdom of Heaven. I had heard of the prohibition on blood transfusions. I hadn’t heard, however, of a few other things:

First, JWs are non-Trinitarian; their sect teaches that the Son, Jesus, is created and of a lower divine status than God. (That explains why their baptisms are considered invalid by many other Christian denominations.) On page 202 the author does a contorted job of trying to explain why “the word was god” in John 1:1 doesn’t mean what it looks like it means.

Second, this tract was very clear that there is no life after death, citing Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6, 10 as proof-texts. It was an interesting contention. I need to look at the Bible more to understand how different books handle the question of the afterlife.

Third, this tract tried to argue that the Bible forbids involvement in political life. Now, I have spent the last three years being educated by Jesuits, so obviously this is not a worldview I can get on board with. I see it as the political equivalent of Gnosticism’s total withdrawal from the world of matter.

One thing that irked me as a budding biblical scholar was the constant proof-texting. Nowhere did the author say something like, “After a study of the main themes of John’s Gospel…” or even explain how the texts cited supported the theological point being advanced. Of course, this is not specific to the JWs; many other Christians and denominations are guilty of it, including the Catholics who have taught me so much of what I know about scripture. However, if these groups consider scripture so important, why do they read it in the laziest way possible, accepting it as a collection of theological bullet-points rather than a complex text that must be studied in all its unity and diversity? This is not a mind-set I understand.

Obviously I wouldn’t recommend this to understand the Bible better, but if you want to understand how Jehovah’s Witnesses read the Bible (or at least the sect’s official teachings) this is a good place to start.

55. The Icon in the Life of the Church: Doctrine-Liturgy-Devotion by George Galavaris

Not much information, but this book is a helpful general guide. Only 40-odd pages but many plates. I enjoyed the overviews of stylistic types inOrthodox iconography, but the plates were in black and white so this book has been superseded. I would not recommend it others.

54. The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy Seal by Eric Greitens

Greitens had an easy youth. He was raised in privilege, went to Duke, and spent years working on humanitarian and foreign aid projects. But he became increasingly convinced that force and protection are needed to truly make the world better, so he left behind lucrative job offers and a cushy academic life to join the Navy Seals. This book describes boot camp, hell week, and his service in the Seals in Afghanistan, Iraq, Malaysia, and elsewhere. I’ve never met a Navy Seal, so this was a great peek into another’s life, and I finished the book feeling like I really learned more about the world. One thing I liked is that, although he supports the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was also fairly honest about mistakes America made and basic ineffectiveness in some of its policies. A really good book. I have a lot of respect for Greitens.

53. Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America by Charles Prebish

This book examines issues in American Buddhism, including gender, the gap between Western converts and immigrant sanghas of Asian-American communities, Buddhisms’ responses to specifically American cultural and social situation, and the development of a truly American dharma. Prebish has been at the center of so much research on Buddhism in America — in many parts of the book, he quotes what he wrote in the 1970s and 1980s and describes how he changed his mind, or how history has proven his predictions accurate or wildly wrong. He also has a lot of anecdotes about meeting Buddhist teachers and visiting their sanghas.

A few downsides. This book was written in 1999, so it is already dated. The chapter on Buddhism on the internet is useless. None of this is so bad that he could not revise the book, though. Also he could shorten many of the lengthy summaries of the histories and activities of various Buddhist groups.

I still have to catch up with your reviews, but I wanted to congratulate you on your upcoming wedding. (And of course the book you are trying to publish!)

Congratulations! Five days... and, catching up on reviews.. Wow!

56. The Greeks and the Irrational by E. R. Dodds

Dodds’ book, published in 1951, is still worth reading today. In it, he reacts against outdated Victorian projections of ideal rationality onto the Greeks. In this cultural myth, Classical Greece was at an apex of science, philosophy, and reason in general. By contrast, Dodds explores the “irrational” aspects of Greek culture: madness, dreams, shamanic practices, orgiastic cults, etc. He argues that in every era where rationalism seems to take the wheel, “irrational” practices continue to pop up. In his reading, even Plato is a figure incorporating the “irrational” into his philosophy!

I say “irrational” in quotes because I don’t like the word. To me it carries a value judgment. I would just say “human,” because religious practices are part of being human. Even if Dodds’ specific statements about aspects of Greek culture haven’t stood up in light of subsequent research, his general point and the questions he opened up are still valuable today.

On the “Inherited Conglomerate”:
“The geological metaphor is apt, for religious growth is geological: its principle is, on the whole and with exceptions, agglomeration, not substitution. A new belief-pattern very seldom effaces completely the pattern that was there before: either the old lives on as an element in the new — sometimes and unconfessed and half-unconscious element — or else the two persist side by side, logically incompatible, but contemporaneously accepted by different individuals or even the same individual.” (179)

Hi everyone -- do not get too excited about this book! I am merely one editor of a book collecting some of the writings of a late friend and mentor, Fr. George Kennard. Kennard was a Jesuit for 76 years and taught philosophy for over 50 of those years.

http://www.jesuitscalifornia.org/website-2010/news--events/obituaries/january-20...

The writings are short excerpts from a book he never finished, sermons, and occasional articles, spanning his wide range of interests in Vatican II, philosophy of mind and language, Thomistic thought, social reform, and jazz music. We're working with a small local press and hope to have the book out by the end of the year.

So I am very excited about this, but it's not like I wrote a book. I feel this is a tribute to the legacy of a late friend.

Looking forward to my wedding. This is a sacred time in many ways. :)

Nice to catch up with you Jonathan. 4 days to go now and so wishing you a great day of celebration.

Thank you. :)

All the best to you and Michelle on your wedding.

I've been doing a lot of threads catchup this last two weeks, so going way back, I was intrigued by Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, and for different reasons by The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination. Unfortunately, the Fagles translation of The Iliad is still on my TBR.

Thanks for the link to Father Kennard's obituary. It sounds like he was quite a man and a real Jesuit.

Congrats Jonathan. Weddings can be crazy. Hope you can survive all the last minute stress and enjoy it.

Happy you aren't converting to a Jehovah's Witness on the eve of your wedding.

50. The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems, 1940-1640 BC by R. B. Parkinson

Although I live about two blocks from the largest museum of Egyptian antiquities on the West Coast, I know little to nothing about ancient Egypt. I picked up this anthology of Middle Kingdom literature to remedy that defect. Parkinson, a scholar in the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, translates and provides commentary on these 13 short works of literature, with genres ranging from moral tales, dialogues exploring various moral and spiritual crises, and teachings of wisdom that remind me of biblical proverbs. Unlike many edited anthologies, his commentary was just as vivid and interesting as the texts themselves.

Parkinson explains that the literature in this book comes from a time of cultural unease:

The Middle Kingdom was preceded by a period of less centralized power, when the country was divided, and its literature remained very aware of the dangers of civil unrest and the chaos of the interregnum. (5)

That being true, the literature in this book also attempts to uphold the cultural beliefs and structures of an early Egypt, such as the divinity of the king and the moral order of the cosmos.

Its literature is, in modern terms … didactic. The poems are generally unromantic in all senses of the word, but they are not impersonal or abstract; they have an intimate mode of address and deal with personal themes, being concerned with the human heart. Man’s ethical life is their central concern, and not the cultivation of subjectivity, or personal emotions such as romantic life. (9)

But there is always an edge. For example, “The Teaching of King Amenemhat” is a Hamlet-like text, in which an assassinated king visits his son in a vision and advises him not to trust his advisors as he did. While this text firmly holds to the divinity of the Egyptian king, it also alludes to the anomie of regicide. Another text, “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” is narrated by a peasant who was robbed and left destitute by an official until the king himself rights the situation. Yes, justice is served in the end; but in the meantime, life is unfair, and the powerful abuse their privileges. These texts are emblematic of many others in this anthology that walk a fine line between skepticism and chaos on the one hand, and upholding the divinely sanctioned social order on the other.

I would recommend this anthology to someone unexposed to Egyptian literature. Parkinson includes a chronology and detailed bibliography for anyone wishing to go further. (Too bad most of the works in the bibliography are in German and French!) For me the fun was in seeing parallels with biblical literature, even particular idioms that sound familiar from the Hebrew Bible. Parkinson continually laments that we know so little about each text and so many of them are only partially extant, but the fact we have anything this old at all amazes me.

58. How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill

Cahill’s book narrates Irish Christianity from the 5th to 9th centuries, especially how the monks of Ireland preserved classical literature and practiced a form of Christianity refreshingly modern and appealing to our time. I was left with mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, Cahill is an amazing writer. I really enjoyed learning about saints like Patrick, Brigid, Columcille, Columbanus, and Aidan. Just read this passage — the whole book is like this:

The vigorous gods of Rome were not eclipsed by some effeminate eastern fantasy religion Fecund Venus and bloody Mars did not vacate the field to the pathetic, pacifistic Christ. Rather, the life of the old religion had already drained away; and by the time Christianity came to the attention of the Roman gentry, the gods were shadows of their formerly lively selves — marginal, quieti manes, rustling through a dimly viewed eternity. (22)

This passage, however, is also symptomatic of what drove me nuts about this book. Cahill can be a bit too polemical for my taste, and he makes blanket statements that make me pause. The statement above is a case in point. From my reading of scholarship on Roman religion early this summer such as Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor by S. R. F. Price and Religions of Rome: Volume 1: A History by Mary Beard, I have been made aware that the average Roman was still highly emotionally invested in their polytheistic religions. As I understand it, the idea that Roman paganism had fallen into rote ritual is a canard designed to explain the rise of Christianity.

If Cahill is so wrong on this, a subject I do know something about, then what about the many statements he makes about Irish Christianity? He certainly seems to see Irish Christianity as a Golden Era, constantly contrasting it to the sexually puritanical, book-burning Roman Church of the patristic era and today. I do not know enough about the subject to disprove him, but academic habits of mind have trained me to be skeptical of the kind of blanket statements Cahill writes.

I’m not saying don’t read this book. It’s a great book and a great entry-point into the subject. But it is also a general public book written by a nonspecialist. So enjoy the book, but don’t let it be the be-all, end-all of writing on Irish Christianity. Thankfully, Cahill so entrances the reader with his subject, and provides such a useful list of further reading, that it would be difficult for this to be the only book one would ever read on the subject.

Also, yes, the wedding went well, and I am a happily married men. 10 days in and we are still going strong, lol. I dragged the poor woman to many bookstores on our honeymoon and came home with far too many books!

Congrats J! Enjoy the reading.

I completely agree about Cahill. I found him more of a cheerleader than a scholar. There is a place for that and it helps that the documented info is slim. Also very interesting about the Egyptian writing.

59. Understanding the Alphabet of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Development, Chronology, Dating by Ada Yardeni

This 39-page guide to the paleography of the Dead Sea Scrolls could not have been written by a more qualified guide. Not only is Yardeni a scholar of ancient Semitic philology and paleography, but she has a degree in graphic arts and calligraphy, so she brings an artist's eye to her work that most scholars of ancient texts don't have such formal training in.

In this lavishly illustrated book, Yardeni divides Hebrew paleography during the Second Temple period into four categories:

Pre-Jewish (late 3rd century - 167 BCE)
Hasmonean (167-37 BCE)
Herodian (37 BCE - 70 CE)
Post-Herodian (70 CE - 135 CE)

She provides detailed examples of each period, although the last period is, she admits, not well-attested. At the end of the book she provides a "cheat sheet" of the specific writing styles of each period. However, through these four period she sees three major developments:

Development of medial/final forms familiar today (e.g. of mem, nun, and tsadi)
Leveling of letter height, more even lines
Development of serifs/flourishes in gimel, zayin, tet, nun, ayin, tasdi, and shin/sin

Overall I really enjoyed the pictures in this book, which made it clear how the script changed over time. I do think she could have made the book longer and described certain things more. For example, she could have devoted specific chapters to each of the four time periods, rather than breezed through each one in a few paragraphs. Often I felt the ratio of illustration to text was off, so that images of manuscripts were not explained adequately.

Still, this is a fun little volume, and I would recommend it for a good 45 minutes of reading and future reference.

>121 JDHomrighausen: Married?! (And to think I knew you when you were just li'l ol libraryteen *sniff*)

Congratulations. :)

Thanks. :)

First week of graduate school wore me out. Lots of texts and things to analyze. Wow.

60. The Serekh Texts (Companion to the Qumran Scrolls) by Sarianna Metso

This short book analyzes the Community Rule scroll and fragments from Qumran, giving an overview of some of the major works of scholarship about it. The Community Rule (aka 1QS) was important for identifying the Qumran community as Essene, since many of its descriptions of the life of the community match Josephus, Philo, and Pliny's accounts of Essene life. This book is clearly written for Dead Sea Scrolls scholars, but some parts of it intrigued me, such as her section on connections between 1QS and the New Testament. This includes a similarity to Johannine literature in their shared ethical dualism. The last section of the book, on the function of the community rule and communal decision-making at Qumran, was also interesting. She connects the authority of oral decision-making with the kind of authority given to oral Torah by the rabbis of the Mishnah.

61. The Damascus Texts (Companion to the Qumran Scrolls) by Charlotte Hempel

Hempel's book, from the same series as Metso's above, analyzes the Damascus Document from Qumran. This text has an interesting history. A medieval version of it was found in the Cairo Genizah in the late nineteenth century. Later scholars found fragments of it at Qumran, including fragments that had material not in the Cairo Genizah manuscripts. This document is a manifesto and rule for a community, much like the Community Rule discussed above, but scholars theorize that it was for Essenes more generally while the Community Rule was specific to Qumran. Hempel spends a lot of time on the supposed redacted elements of this rule, and argues that scholars have considered its two sections, the Laws and Exhortation, too much in isolation from each other. She also discusses issues of scriptural citations, Messianic belief, covenant, and the liturgical calendar in the Damascus Document. I would only recommend this book to a scholar or a student, but she does summarize all the research on this text up until 2000, so it's useful for that.

Congratulations on your wedding!
As always, fascinated and enlightened by your reviews.

interesting about the Qumran

>126 JDHomrighausen: more intense than what you have already done?

57. Comprehending Cults: The Sociology of New Religious Movements by Lorne L. Dawson

Dawson’s book provides a concise and interesting overview of the current (as of 2006) social-scientific research on new religious movements (NRMs). He avoids the term “cult” because of its pejorative connotations which are not useful to the subject at hand. He aims to strike an attitude of critical sympathy, of being neither an apologist for new religious movements nor an “anti-cult activist” painting them all with the same sensationalist brush, branding all new religious movements as Wacos and Jonestowns waiting to happen.

In each chapter, Dawson begins with a question:
who joins NRMs and why? (There are many different reasons because there are many different NRMs.)
Are converts “brainwashed”? (No, most converts to NRMs take an active role in their conversion, particularly since their choices are scrutinized by society at large more than if they converted to a mainstream religion.)
Why do NRMs practice such sexual deviance? (A few do, but others are very conservative in their sexual mores, such as the Moonies.)
Why are NRMs so violent? (They are not any more violent than other religious groups. But NRMs with an apocalyptic worldview, charismatic leadership, and social encapsulation tend to be the most violent.)

His book raises some interesting questions. In his first and final chapters, he discusses the cultural significance of NRMs. He contrasts two conflicting views on NRMs. The first view, that of Peter Berger, sees NRMs as an example of the privatization of religion. Western culture no longer has a unified religious vision of morality and cosmology, and without it a legion of small pluralisms will come to take its place. Ultimately, this will lead to subjectivity as religion becomes more about choice than about being socialized into a social vision. NRMs are a symptom of secularization. The other view, espoused by Rodney Stark, sees NRMs as successful religious revival movements working against the secularization of the West. Both Berger and Stark are highly respected sociologists, but time has proven Stark more accurate. Rather than being a sign of the decline of religious consciousness, Dawson sees NRMs as “midwives for new religious consciousness,” as NRMs embrace capitalism, science, and postmodernism in their visions of the cosmos.

Another connection I made with this book was to mystery religions in the Greco-Roman world. Like modern mystery religions (some NRMs), ancient mystery religions were syncretistic, they had a flair of the exotic and foreign about them, and they were seen as a threat and marginalized by “polite society.” Some, like Scientology, even has the air of secrecy and the multiple levels of initiation involved in ancient mystery religions. The Romans even had a term for groups like this: “superstitio,” as contrated with “religio.” I hardly need to translate those words for you to see the modern equivalent! So this book made me wonder how well we could apply research on today’s religious movements (for which we have so much evidence) to past movements (for which we have so little evidence). Sometimes comparisons and analogies can help unpack the past better.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. Dawson was very clear if maybe too thorough in some parts. But at 199 pages this book was not unduly long as academic books go.

63. Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective by Amina Wadud

Recently I’ve become more interested in the Qur’an and integrating it into my studies in graduate school. Naturally I read this book, which I’ve heard people in Islamic Studies talking about for years. Wadud is an American convert to Islam, the daughter of a Methodist minister from Maryland, who earned a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan. Wadud is known as an activist for womens’ full participation in Islam; she caused scandal by giving a khutbah (sermon) in 1994 and even led a prayer service in 2005. So though this book contains analysis of the nuances of Qur’anic Arabic and reviews esteemed commentators on various texts about gender in the Qur’an, it is also a political manifesto. It is written like one too. Wadud kept it brief (105 pages), she speaks prophetically, and in it she does not engage in the kind of academic nuts and bolts (e.g. tons of footnotes) that she undoubtedly could have written.

Wadud’s main point in this book is that passages traditionally read as oppressive to women in the Qur’an, passages traditionally used to justify the inequality of women in various Muslim societies, are in fact not oppressive. In sum: the Qur’an itself, as the revealed word of God, is NOT misogynist. God/Allah is not a misogynist. Wadud re-reads these passages from a contextual standpoint. This is not too far outside the realm of traditional Islamic interpretation. It is standard to hold that in the Qur’an, God responds to the particular circumstances of the time in general and events in the Prophet’s career and the early Muslim community in particular.

What Wadud does it push this principle further. So if a passage in the Qur’an mentions a misogynistic practice current in Muhammad’s time, she points out the the Qur’an only MENTIONS this practice without CONDONING it. Other times she points out that since the Qur’an criticizes practices of its day, we are called to do so as well, even more than the Qur’an might in that particular instance. She wants to look not just at particular passages or prooftexts about women and gender in the Qur’an, but at the general arc of the revelation toward equality, justice, and the full inclusion of everyone in the Islamic community. She applies this hermeneutic to the Qur’anic narrations of creation, to the stories about the mother of Moses, Mary, and Bilqis, to the doctrines of eschatology in the Qur’an, and to Qur’anic prooftexts on the rights and roles of women.

It’s hard for me to evaluate this book, because many of her arguments hinge on a technical knowledge of Arabic that I don’t have. But there were definitely some of her arguments that I was not persuaded by. For example, in a discussion of the “companions” that are a part of the pleasures of Paradise, she reads this as God simply speaking in terms that the men of Mecca would understand: Paradise has beautiful women. This inducement would bring those men to faith, since God knows their “dreams and desires.” In this and other cases, I wonder if Wadud is not pushing the contextualization hermeneutic too far.

In other words, Wadud begins with an unspoken premise: the Qur’an is God’s word, and thus it cannot have any imperfections. So any imperfection in it, such as misogyny, must be a function of its interpreters’ bias rather than anything in the text itself. She denies that the text itself might reflect any misogyny. For many passages, this interpretive strategy works well: she questions established readings and pushes new directions. But for other passages she seems to push too far. I was left wondering how much she was imposing her own view of a Western feminist (though she does not describe herself as a “feminist”) onto the text.

But to her credit, she says her reading is one possible, plausible reading, not the be-all and end-all. So she admits she brings a bias to the text, but that her bias (her framework if you will) is harmonious with the text, more so than a misogynistic bias.

Wadud’s book is fascinating, and once I have studied the Qur’an more, I am sure I will get more out of it on a second reading. I would recommend it highly.

>131 JDHomrighausen: The idea of "new religious movements" wasn't even on my radar until I read Going Clear. I will look for this book.

>132 JDHomrighausen: I remember being how a bit taken aback when I read I Am Malala on how misogyny isn't always a given in Middle Eastern culture and it was more than a little interesting (and frightening) to see how Malala's Pakistan went from the founder saying this: "Jinnah {the founder of Pakistan} said, “No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women.” to the climate she eventually came to live in where girls couldn't even be educated.

These are great reviews. Makes me want to read Going Clear (actually I think I'd rather listen to an audio version).

>132 JDHomrighausen: a lot to think about here.

>133 avidmom: interesting about the founder of Pakistan.

Postmodernism essentially renders words utterly meaningless.

Care to clarify?

Components of postmodernism:

1) Holding forth at length on scientific theories about which one has, at best, an exceedingly hazy idea. The most common tactic is to use scientific (or pseudo-scientific) terminology without bothering much about what the words actually mean.

2) Importing concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities or social sciences without giving the slightest conceptual or empirical justification.

3) Displaying a superficial erudition by shamelessly throwing around technical terms in a context where they are completely irrelevant. The goal is, no doubt, to impress and, above all, to intimidate the non-scientist reader.

4) Manipulating phrases and sentences that are, in fact, meaningless. Some of these authors exhibit a veritable intoxication with words, combined with a superb indifference to their meaning.

as defined in

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science by Alan Sokal.

I am going to add to that the fact that postmodernism is essentially and originally a Gallic experiment in the skewing of concepts and their meanings, which should not come as a surprise either, seeing as French people are actually the originators of talking nonsense without making it too obvious to outsiders. Too bad the rest of the world and its pseudo-intellectuals felt the need to follow suit. Postmodernism = Gallic claptrap, self-important and narcissistic doubletalk. It adds nothing of value to science either way.

1) Holding forth at length on scientific theories about which one has, at best, an exceedingly hazy idea. The most common tactic is to use scientific (or pseudo-scientific) terminology without bothering much about what the words actually mean.

2) Importing concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities or social sciences without giving the slightest conceptual or empirical justification.

3) Displaying a superficial erudition by shamelessly throwing around technical terms in a context where they are completely irrelevant. The goal is, no doubt, to impress and, above all, to intimidate the non-scientist reader.

4) Manipulating phrases and sentences that are, in fact, meaningless. Some of these authors exhibit a veritable intoxication with words, combined with a superb indifference to their meaning.

Sounds like every New Age book I've ever seen. To be fair, though, you're quoting a pretty polemical source. I don't follow postmodernism all the way down its rabbit hole, but I do find it a useful reminder to be humble.

64. Envisioning the Book of Judith: How Art Illuminates Minor Characters by Andrea M. Sheaffer

Last spring, my art history professor, Kathleen Maxwell, gave a presentation to the classics department on her research into Byzantine illuminated manuscripts. She mentioned something offhand that stuck with me: when studying these manuscripts, the art historians tend to only look at the art and the biblical scholars tend only to look at the text, mainly for text-critical purposes. The sad result of our disciplinary boundaries is that we often don’t understand these manuscripts, which were created as a unification of art and text.

I’ve since seen what she meant as I have been researching the Saint John’s Bible, trying to find biblical scholars engaging with art as visual exegesis of scripture. So I was pleased to find Judith Scheaffer’s book, which combines literary readings of minor characters in the book of Judith with analysis of Renaissance art depicting Judith. Each painting’s treatment of these minor characters serves as a springboard for the close literary readings she performs of these books. So in various chapters, she analyzes Achor, Judith’s maidservant, the Israelite crowd, Bagoas, and Holofernes. She digs deep to find how each of these characters moves the plot along and contributes to the central message of the text. I am impressed with how well she integrated the two modes of analysis, particularly since this book was based on a dissertation. (Let’s be honest: dissertation-books are often clunky and not much fun to read!)

Scheaffer left me with a series of questions to think about as I read up on Saint John’s Bible material. These are taken from page 9:

How does the art enable us to ‘see’ something we may have ignored in the textual narrative?
How does the art illuminate or add to an aspect of the biblical character or text as a whole?
How does the art alert the viewer to something important that is glossed over in the text?
Have artists ‘read’ the text in a different way from scholars or other readers and so present a different visual interpretation?
Lastly, how does our encounter with the visual representation of a character influence the way we read the narrative?

Sheaffer also pointed me toward other scholarship combining art history and biblical scholarship. I may be biased since she earned her Ph.D. at my school and now works as Director of Admissions here (we emailed back and forth when I was applying!), but I found this book useful for opening new avenues of investigation. I’m adding it to my methodological toolkit.

>139 JDHomrighausen: It makes me kind of sad that there are books of the Old Testament that are not in my Protestant Bible. My aunt, a staunch Lutheran, ended up teaching music at a Catholic school and the first thing she did was read all those omitted books. (I think there are 7 in total that are in the Catholic O.T. but not the Protestant.) So, sadly, I have no idea what Judith is all about. I'm plodding my way through the O.T. - but once I get through all 39 books there (IthinkIcanIthinkIcan....) I am going to get my hands on a Catholic Bible and read those 7 missing books!

Just to add to the discussion: The idea of art's connection with religion and art's role of making religion more acceptable by the mainstream culture is one of the points brought up in Going Clear as well. It wasn't anything I had ever thought of before.

>140 avidmom: I'm hoping to do the same thing. They are all in my study bible, which will make it a but easier. We actually read Judith during the OT group read.

Enjoyed your review J.

I've only read Judith in Old English, but it seems that any museum I go into with any kind of Renaissance or Baroque collection has at least two or three paintings of Judith and Holofernes.

Oh yes, Judith was very popular as a painting subject. And the servant is always there too. I'd be interested to read what Scheaffer has to say about her. I might try to find that book. We discussed Judith in This BR thread. The way I saw it, the servant was important because she prepared Judith's meals and made sure she didn't eat anything impure. So it's a bit strange that she features so prominently in Christian iconography. In the paintings, she always seems to help with the killing.

65. Jesus in the Talmud by Peter Schäfer

Schafer’s book, Jesus in the Talmud, examines what can only be a scintillating subject: how does Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, appear in the Talmud? Schafer emphasizes that in the vast ocean of Talmud, passages referring to Jesus (implicitly or explicitly) are only a few minor drops. But those drops are important to analyze to bring together the fractured histories of Judaism and Christianity. While Talmudic references to Jesus are far too late to be of use in understanding the historical Jesus, he argues that these passages are counternarratives to the Christian stories about Jesus and Christian polemics against Jews.

In each chapter Schafer takes a Talmudic passage and unpacks it. Chapter one, “Jesus’ Family,” paints Mary as a prostitute who conceived Jesus by a Roman soldier named Pandera/Panthera. Chapter two analyzed Talmudic passages depicting Jesus as a failed rabbinic disciple who “public spoils his food dish,” a euphemism for sexual licentiousness. Schafer argues that this relates to the Talmudic narrative of Jesus’ bastard birth and Gentile blood, but also to the Gnostic language of Jesus loving Mary Magdalene. In chapter three, we see Jesus as rabbinic disciple of Yehoshua b. Perahya, but an utterly failed disciple who “practiced magic and deceived and led Israel astray.” This chapter actually explains the origins of Christianity: Jesus was peeved because his teacher was impatient with him!

Chapter four, “The Torah Teacher,” introduces a rabbinic follower of Jesus, R. Eliezer. Rabbi Eliezer becomes a stand-in for critiques of Christianity. Eliezer is also accused of sexual impropriety, and elsewhere in the Talmud is depicted as a weak debater who must summon God to ratify his points (this is a famous rabbinic story). According to Daniel Boyarin, Eliezer is a liminal figure who represents the borderline between Judaism and Christianity.

Chapter five deals with spells of healing in the name of Jesus. While the Talmud depicts this magic as effective, it is also dangerous and prohibited because Jesus is, well, not kosher. Just because Jesus has divine power does not mean God approves. The power is an open conduit, and immoral and moral men alike can use it.

The next chapter is very interesting. Talmudic sources on Jesus’ execution actually accept Jewish blame for the charge, in keeping with a long Christian tradition of deeming Jews Christ-killers. But here the Talmudic sources accept responsibility and defend the penalty, arguing that Jesus was an idolater and a blasphemer who was sentenced fairly according to the law. Wow.

The next two chapters describe Jesus’ disciples as dead failures, and paint a vivid portrait of Jesus’ afterlife eternally trapped in a bath of boiling excrement in hell. Yuck.

Schafer’s final chapter examines some of the broader themes of Jesus in the Talmud. For example, many of the accusations against Jesus have to do with sexual immorality, implying that he was the son of a prostitute and was himself licentious. Another theme is magic, which is connected to the accusation that Jesus was an idolator and blasphemer – we see this accusation against Jesus in the gospels too (e.g. Mt. 26:63-65). Schafer also discusses differences between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds in their depiction of Jesus. Most of these slurs only appear in the Babylonian Talmud; he argues that this is because Jews under the Sassanians were not under a Christian empire, so they could speak more freely. Schafer also argues that the rabbis of the Bavli must have been familiar with the New Testament because there are explicit references to NT texts in these counternarratives, particularly to John.

I really liked Schafer’s book. The book itself is only 129 pages, and his writing is very clear and to-the-point. I would highly recommend this book.

Interesting book. I had never heard of any of that before and I find it kind of depressing to learn that stuff is in the Talmud. That's not what I would call intelligent criticism.

> 145

I agree, Dan. Every religion is guilty of it though. Some just have more power to enact it on the human realm in addition to the spiritual realm.

Interesting about the Talmud's view of Jesus, but perhaps not altogether surprising, although as Dan says, "depressing."

66. The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters by R. S. Sugirtharajah

Though I have read Sugirtharajah’s scholarship before, and I have a general idea of what he thinks and what methods he uses, I continue to enjoy his vibrant writing and innovative research. This book examines the Bible and the Third World in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial times. Rather than trying to give an exhaustive history (that would be several volumes) he zeroes in on specific episodes and incidents: Nestorian biblical interpretation in premodern China; colporteurs working for the British and Foreign Bible Society who distributed the Bible as a text of moral improvement and British cultural imperialism; colonized subjects who educated themselves and began reading the Bible through the lens of their own cultures, such as John Colenso and Olaudah Equiano; and postcolonial movements in biblical interpretation such as base communities’ exegesis, liberation hermeneutics, and Sugirtharajah’s own method of postcolonial biblical criticism, and what he calls “vernacular hermeneutics.” For Sugirtharajah, this is no mere pedagogical exercise, but a mode of reading that is designed to bring out submerged voices, to empower people to claim biblical narratives as their own.

One interesting issue I hadn’t thought of was related to inculturation. Sugirtharajah pointed out that for early Indian (i.e. India) biblical interpreters who tried to read the Bible in the lens of Hindu culture, their inculturation of the text was tied to their elite, brahmanic religion. Sugirtharajah asks, what about the dalits, the people oppressed within Indian culture too? A postcolonial biblical scholar would not settle for ignoring their voices too. You can see that postcolonial biblical scholarship does more than merely bring up the voice of a silenced culture. One has to pay attention to the many voices, elite and unprivileged, operating within a culture.

To me, this brings up many questions of what it means to be an ally to another. In my case, as I deepen my study of and dialogue with Islam, I am always aware that I can’t idealize Islam as a perfect religion or Muslims as perfect people. Islam and Islamic cultures have their own heritage of sexism, empire, and violence towards other peoples and religions. Navigating those issues, learning when and how to voice my own issues with another tradition, is a difficult part of being an ally. Sugirtharajah reminds me that in being an ally to another, it is not enough to talk to the elite scholars or trained clerics of another tradition, just as Brahmanic biblical exegetes are not representatives of all of Indian culture. Sugirtharajah’s anti-authority, anti-scholar streak (though at the same time he is a scholar!) is a good model to keep in mind as I navigate other cultures and religions.

All that aside, I enjoyed this book immensely. I was frustrated that the first part, on precolonial encounters, was very short — only one chapter. Even though the evidence is much scantier for that time period, I felt there was still more he could expand on. Another criticism is that while Sugirtharajah sometimes refers to bringing out the Bible’s non-Western, Oriental heritage, I wish he had expanded on that more. Still, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in postcolonial biblical hermeneutics. It’s not a big field, so this book is a good place to start.

68. The Im-possibility of Interreligious Dialogue by Catherine Cornille

Cornille, the chair of the theology department at Boston College, has become a major organizer and leader of the school of comparative theology, a mode of interreligious dialogue involving rigorous study and comparison of Christian and non-Christian texts and traditions. Cornille’s specific background is in Christian theology and Hindu studies. In this book, she envisions five traits that make for fruitful and ideal interreligious dialogue. So the book is not really about the im-possibility of dialogue, but about its possibility! In doing so, she reviews many contemporary strands in interreligious dialogue, and lays out a vision that people involved in specific dialogues can apply to their own context.

The first chapter, humility, was my favorite. Cornille distinguishes between spiritual and doctrinal humility. Spiritual humility is the traditional Christian virtue: knowing our place before God. Doctrinal humility is awareness of the limitations of our doctrine in knowing God. Needless to say, this is not a major part of the Christian tradition. Cornille finds the potential for doctrinal humility in a) the historical consciousness that the language and ideas we use to formulate doctrine are situated in time and place; b) the eschatological awareness that there will come a time when all of our concepts about God will be superseded (think 1 Corinthians 13: “for we know in part and we prophecy in part”); and c) apophatic theology’s insistence that all speech about God is limited. This division between two types of humility is really useful for me. I have met many Christians who have lots of spiritual humility but very little doctrinal humility, who are kind, generous, humble people but completely closed-minded when it comes to their beliefs. It is hard to get these people to dialogue.

The second chapter, commitment, articulated a need to both be committed to a root tradition and to be open to another. Cornille does not think that true interreligious dialogue requires an openness to conversion, as some scholars have written. But she also does not think that one can dialogue without a home tradition, and she castigates New Agers and people who claim to practice all traditions for trying to make interfaith a religion rather than a practice within a religion. She also insists that people involved in dialogue bring the fruit of dialogue back to their tradition — by publishing and popularizing the importance of interfaith, even if doing so gets you in trouble. (Theologians lose their jobs over this stuff.) I really like how Cornille clears the path to dialogue of some pretty extreme opinions that might exclude people.

The third chapter analyzes interconnection: what brings us together? She looks at external challenges of the world’s suffering, commonalities in mystical experience across traditions, and traditions as all responding to some common Ultimate Reality. She acknowledges that ethical concerns often bring religions together, but they also need to move the dialogue beyond the problem of the moment to keep a connection. While most scholars have moved beyond the idea of a common mystical experience, or a perennial philosophy, finding parallels between religions’ spiritual experiences has been a common topic in inter-monastic dialogue, which has been one of the longest-lasting and most sustained avenues of dialogue. The last topic, Ultimate Reality, has led to some pretty un-useful ideas (e.g. John Hick’s philosophy) but has also pushed Christian thinkers to incorporate non-theistic worldviews within Christian metaphysics. She looks at thinkers such as Mark Heim and Raimon Panikkar who have done so. In all three areas, she stresses, we need to find interconnection without jumping to the idea that we are all the same. I meet people both inside and outside the interfaith dialogue world who think that we are really all the same underneath. This was a popular idea decades ago, but now we have seen it is not very useful and alienates people from dialogue. I am glad that Cornille also has no time for it.

Empathy is the subject of the fourth chapter, and here Cornille dives into a complex phenomenological analysis of the subject. The main gist of her argument is that empathy, which is both an emotional and a cognitive capacity, is the capacity to imagine life in someone else’s shoes. While we can never fully enter someone else’s heart and mind, through emotional sympathy, shared experience, and imagination, we can strive to get closer and closer. But we will always filter our imagination of their mindset through our own lens. Empathy is necessary for dialogue, because without empathy dialogue just becomes a matter of data-exchange; but empathy requires dialogue because we must speak with people to gain insight into their hearts and minds. And the more we gain in empathy, the more we see the world (including our own tradition) through the lens of another tradition. That’s a valuable skill in dialogue and in life.

The final chapter analyzes hospitality, which she defines as a recognition of truth in difference, or the possibility of there being truth in another tradition. She charts two extremes that this virtue avoids: no hospitality, only mission and apologetics; and hospitality toward similarity, i.e., other religions are only true in so much as they agree with mine. Hospitality toward difference acknowledges similarities within the context of difference, though there will always be limits to how much of another tradition we can agree with as true.

A few comments on this book.

First, Cornille is pretty clear that she sees these not as prerequisites for dialogue, but as ideals. So we can apply these to whatever dialogue we are involved in, as all dialogue is particular to our religions, denominations, countries, gender, race, etc. But I wish she went into more depth on how exactly to work our way up to these traits. If I am leading a parish group in dialogue, and I want to help them see the distinction between spiritual and doctrinal humility, how can I present this in a skillful way? Although Cornille is more of a scholar than an interfaith activist on the ground, I think she could have expanded on this more than she did. I want a how-to manual. This is especially necessary because, as Cornille states repeatedly, most of the five ideas above are not the reflexive habit of most religious traditions. Often we have to work against the grain of the tradition to find a good basis for these traits of good dialogue.

Second, I was not clear throughout the book whether these five conditions are more theological stances or virtues. She seemed to cast them as theological stances, but several times I thought her argument would have been enhanced if she had used the Aristotelian language of virtue as a golden mean between extremes. So humility is a mean between absolute agnosticism and arrogance; commitment is a mean between rootlessness and closed-mindedness; and so forth. This ties in to the comment above. Among theologians, the language of systematic theology might be useful, but to ordinary people, the language of virtue and habits of thinking and feeling would be more useful.

This book came out in 2008, and in the academic interfaith dialogue world, it’s a pretty important book. I’m curious how others have commented on it and applied to the specific dialogues they are involved in. This was a very good read, and it gave me a valuable lens for critiquing efforts at dialogue today.

>148 JDHomrighausen: - I have trouble with finding patience for this kind of book, since I equate these encounters so strongly with imperialism.

>149 JDHomrighausen: - i thought I might be bored by this review and forced myself to read it...actually it's very interesting.

> 150 on 148

Don't worry, Dan, the author of this book did too. At least for the contemporary counters -- the pre-colonial encounters did not seem to have that vibe.

71. Toward Our Mutual Flourishing: The Episcopal Church, Interreligious Relations, and Theologies of Religious Manyness by Lucinda Allen Mosher

Though I have given some study to the statements of the Roman Catholic Church on interreligious dialogue, I haven’t read the statements of the Episcopal Church on this topic — at least not until Mosher’s book introduced these documents. As a member of the latter church rather than the former, I feel a little shamed. Thankfully, Mosher’s book exists to assuage my guilt. Mosher is herself an Episcopalian, with a doctorate in theology, and she works as a consultant, writer, and educator in interreligious matters. She also teaches multifaith chaplaincy at Hartford Seminary. So she is the perfect choice of author to introduce this subject.

Mosher reviews the history of the Episcopal Church’s work in dialogue: its work through the National Council of Churches, its 1988 statement on Christian-Jewish Relations, its campaign to “wage reconciliation” with the Islamic world after 9/11, and its response to the “A Common Word” document released by Muslim leaders. One of the most interesting sections of this book was her discussion of subtle supercessionism in the liturgy, drawing from ideas put forth by Daniel Joslyn-Siematkowski. Another section I liked was her description of being personally asked to draft the church’s response to A Common Word. Wow!

Her concluding chapter attempts to spell out some distinctly Episcopalian themes in dialogue.
1. Dialogue and reconciliation as a response to our baptismal covenant.
2. Anglican radical incarnationalism’s ability to see God in religious others.
3. The discernment that diversity is good because of #2 and because of the role of creation in Anglican thought.
4. Similarly, the importance of the Holy Spirit in Anglican thought helps us see the Spirit at work in religious others.
5. Reconciliation as a major theme in a denomination whose origins are in reconciliation.
6. Trinitarian thought as a lens through which to view other religions.
Although I think these six points could have been condensed to three, I like her spelling these out for me.

One problem with books like these is that they can seem rather tedious. Given that much of her book is summarizing and commenting on ecclesial statements, her source material is hard to work with. I like that she includes these documents in the back so the reader can read them first, then read her comments on them. After skimming this book briefly, I intend to do just that; but her book has given me the big picture, and for that I am grateful.

72. Understanding Other Religious Worlds: A Guide for Interreligious Education by Judith Berling

Although Berling teaches at my school, and although she teaches in areas I am passionate about, I won’t be able to take her class. She is retiring at the end of the year. To celebrate her work, the school is putting a symposium devoted to her thought. I’m hoping to present at the symposium, as I have a project on the backburner that intersects neatly with this book in particular. So I read this book, which I have been meaning to do for a while anyway!

In this book, Berling discusses the pedagogy of interreligious education. I get the sense that her career prompted her to think about this subject, as she moved from being a scholar-teacher of Chinese religions at a secular university in an area where few of her students were Chinese, to being a scholar-teacher of Chinese religions in a divinity school in a part of the country where many of her students were Chinese and/or a member of one of the religions she teaches on. (Her specialty is Daoism.) So she has had to move beyond a top-down pedagogy of an expert, to a bottom-up pedagogy of teaching as conversation, as building students’ voices and getting them to bring in their own experiences rather than simply telling them facts and theories to learn.

The heart of her book is a theory of interreligious learning as a conversation balancing the twin poles of a) an authentic understanding of another religion on its own terms, and b) reflection on that other religion in the light of Christian worldview and self-identity. She spells out that theory using her own experience, experiences of colleagues, and scholarship on theories of learning. The rest of the book is a) a plea for the importance of interreligious education in seminaries, and evaluations of various ways that has been implemented, and b) practical how-to guides for implementing interreligious education in the classroom and in local churches. She even has an appendix of practical questions to ask when creating “parish learning experiences.”

I found this book really useful, both as I am taking a class in Christian-Muslim dialogue and learning some of the theory and pedagogy of dialogue, and as I am hoping to start a program of dialogue in my own parish. I like how she makes many handy lists throughout her book, bullet points that can be easily learned and applied. My only complaint is that she can be long-winded, but at 126 pages her book isn’t that long anyway. I would highly recommend this for educators in religion of any kind.

62. A Social History of Hebrew: Its Origins Through the Rabbinic Period by William M. Schniedewind

Read this too long ago to have many thoughts. Was really interesting, but will revisit at a future date.

67. The Emergence of Islam: Classical Traditions in Contemporary Perspective by Gabriel Said Reynolds

I first heard about Reynolds’ work through a Muslim professor who was NOT a fan. But for the last month, I have been following Reynolds’ EdX course on the Qur’an to better understand this scripture, and I’m pretty impressed. Reynolds teaches Islamic Studies at Notre Dame, and his work is focused around the early history of Islam. This recent work is designed to be a survey (for classroom use) of his theory of the origins of Islam.

Reynolds explictly positions his historical framework as revisionist. Most Muslim scholars, he explains, use biographical and hadith literature about Muhammad to explain the development of Islam, and to explain particular verses in the Qur’an. He argues that most Western scholars of Islam follow this pattern. Reynolds argues that much of this literature was written in large part in order to explain the Qur’an, so to use it to explain the Qur’an would be merely circular reasoning. Instead, Reynolds proposes reading the Qur’an on its own terms to better understand the milieu of early Islam.

This is where Reynolds starts his revisionism. Whereas most traditional accounts of the rise of Islam emphasize the widespread pagan worship in Mecca and Medina, Reynolds finds instead a scripture in sustained conversation with Jewish and Christian texts. He finds few specific references to pagan myths, but many to Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, Jesus, Mary, and other biblical figures. Why would the Qur’an be in such dialogue with Jewish and Christian scriptures, unless the major background of early Islam was a monotheistic Mecca and Medina? If Mecca and Medina were predominantly pagan, why do the religious apologetics of the Qur’an not reflect that?

To me this was the most important part of the book. But Reynolds, far from being some archaic Orientalist, is also concerned with the meaning of these scriptures today, and includes sidebars quoting contemporary Muslim thinkers on the meanings of Qur’an passages. The last chapter of the book is a short history of 20th- and 21st-century approaches to the Qur’an, from arguments that the Qur’an is a “scientific miracle” to the Qur’anist movement. I also like how he “does his homework,” so to speak, and tells us what sources he is using for each part of Muhammad’s life and how reliable they are. Unlike some revisionist historians, he explains what the status quo is that he is revising.

As I go deeper into my study of the Qur’an and Islam, I’m looking forward to seeing what Muslims think of Reynolds’ work. But as I said above, I am impressed.

75. In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad by Tariq Ramadan
76. Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman by William Montgomery Watt

Read these for a joint book review for my Christian-Muslim dialogue class. Had to write a review of a Muslim leader; what better one to write on than Muhammad? They make a fun contrast. Watt is an old-fashioned Orientalist writing as a historian, and Ramadan is a contemporary Muslim discerning moral and spiritual lessons from the life of the prophet.

77. Eric Gill : Further Thoughts by an Apprentice by David Kindersley

Found this in our archives as I was studying up on Gill. Gill was a strange guy: a famous early-20th century Catholic sculptor and engraver, but also a pervert who slept with his sister and his teenage daughter. Kindersley doesn’t talk about any of this, but reminisces about his days as an apprentice in Gill’s sculpting business.

79. Qur'ans: Books of Divine Encounter by Keith E. Small

Read this to write a book notice in an upcoming journal. Small’s book talks about, and has many lavish images of, Qur’an manuscripts throughout history. Quite fascinating. Will post the full review when it is published in June.

78. Islam and Belief: At Home with Religious Freedom by Abdullah Saeed
Saeed’s short book (24 pages, almost a pamphlet) argues for religious freedom in Islamic countries. Will return to later.

Hi, glad to see you back, and with so many fascinating books too! I saw a great French documentary series very recently called Jesus and Islam, and I've been wanting to read about the birth of Islam for a while. I'm looking for a good book about it. I have added to my wishlist a French book by Jacqueline Chabbi who was one of the interviewees in the documentary.

Nice to get an update from you. The Emergence of Islam sounds terrific.

74. Has anti-Semitism roots in Christianity? by Jules Isaac

In 1947, Jules Isaac delivered his “Eighteen Points,” bullet points for the removal of anti-Judaism* from Christian doctrine. A French schoolteacher who had lost his wife and children in the Holocaust, Isaac would spend the rest of his life tracing the Christian tradition of anti-Judaism throughout history, a project that culminated in his magnum opus Jesus and Israel and his meeting with Pope John XXIII that influenced the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate so heavily. This short book, a transcript of a lecture Isaac gave, is a short introduction to his ideas. Isaac traces Christian anti-Judaism back to the second and third centuries at least, to the “deplorable divorce” between the two religions. He argues that while the pagan Romans were anti-Jewish, Christian anti-Judaism was even worse, more systematic, and rooted more directly in religious teachings. So developed the ideas that Jews were degenerate, sensual, rejecters of Christ and committers of deicide. Isaac calls on Christians to repudiate these teachings, which he says are not part of the essence of Christianity.

These days it is pretty commonplace to admit the fact of anti-Jewish bigotry through history. Now scholars see it not just in patristic writings, but even in the New Testament itself. But much of that conversation was sparking by the Holocaust and its immense psychological impact on both victim and aggressor. This book was a good entryway into the work of Isaac, a real visionary, who I imagine must have been despised by many for his efforts to trace the Holocaust not simply to 19th-century racial ideologies, but theologies dating back to the first centuries of Christianity.

*Throughout his work Isaac uses the phrase “anti-Semitic,” as that was the lingo of his day. However, the more accurate term is anti-Jewish, to emphasize the religion rather than the race, and the fact that there many Semitic groups who are not Jewish.

80. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity by Nabeel Qureshi

Qureshi, the son of Pakistani immigrants to America and a Muslim from birth, narrates the story of and reason for his conversion to Christianity in this work of apologetics. Even though I don’t agree with all of his points, this is a very well-written book, and I appreciate Qureshi’s tone of charity and love toward Muslims even as he comes to disagree with central tenets of Islamic doctrine.

Qureshi’s book presents many of the major apologist arguments against Islamic belief: the text criticism of the Qur’an, the historicity of the crucifixion and resurrection, the violence of Muhammad as the leader of early Islam. But what makes Qureshi’s book different from a typical book or theology or philosophy is that he interweaves these arguments throughout a memoir of his deconversion from Islam and conversion to Christianity. The main instigator of his conversion was his college friendship with Christian apologist David Wood. Wood and Qureshi were not only best friends, but also fellow members of their college debate team. As they grew closer practicing for debate tournaments together, they engaged in their own years-long debates over the rationality of belief in Islam versus Christianity.

These debates culminate in the end of the book in Qureshi’s accepting Christ. But for most of the book, Qureshi is a Muslim – and his best friend is a Christian. For Qureshi, their friendship was precisely what allowed them to debate their deeply-held personal beliefs. Their conversations arose from being in the same classes, going to the same debate tournaments, and being best friends. Throughout it is clear to me that Wood cares about Qureshi as a person, not just as a person to be converted. I really liked how their friendship enabled difficult conversations to take place.

And Qureshi delivers on his promise. Unlike some deconversion narratives, his does not depict his previous religion and its adherents as depraved, violent, or monolithic. Instead he stresses the diversity of Muslims (57), emphasizes that Islam is not as rigid as some think (69), mentions that Islam has a “highly developed notion of morality” (110), and honestly assesses that “if by Islam we mean the beliefs of Muslims, then Islam can be a religion of peace or a religion of terror, depending on how it is taught” (115). Qureshi doesn’t paint all Muslims with the same brush or attack their religion in unfair ways. He is charitable.

Qureshi was not a convicted life-long Christian who read a few books on Islam and decided that it was incorrect, but a Muslim from birth who loved his faith. Throughout the book he makes it clear that it very painful for him to come to the conclusion that the central Islamic tenets he was taught growing up were not rationally defensible. Muslims for him were not some far-away group of people, but his parents, whom he loves so much that he dedicated this book to them. Even though many Muslims would disagree with his conclusions, and I don’t agree with all of them either, to me he speaks more authentically because of his personal journey.

82. The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens by Eva C. Keuls

Keuls’ book uses ancient Greek vases as a source for understanding the sexual politics of ancient Athens. She argues that Athens were a “phallocracy” in which phallic symbols dominated the life of the polis. Her book is really interesting, because she talks about prostitution, concubines, pederasty, marriage, myth, tragedy, and other juicy subjects. I suspect she is right that the writing of social history of ancient Athens has ignored artistic sources, but then again, reading this book, I can understand why; artwork is too vague to often be of much help. Often I found myself wondering, how the heck did she get a particular conclusion from a particular vase? Still, she raises a lot of good questions and writes very provocatively, even if her conclusions often seem stretched.

>163 JDHomrighausen: Sounds interesting!

Wow! I need to mark this thread to catch up on all your reviews when I have more time.

Thoughtful and interesting reviews as usual. Thanks.

>163 JDHomrighausen: Interesting though I'm a little hesitant to wishlist it. Does she discuss theatrical productions at all?

> 163

A little bit, but mostly vases. However the book is somewhat old, and if you want something on theatre, might want to stick with a scholar who specializes on that.

Some end of year reflections at:

http://jdhomie.com/2016/01/01/my-top-10-or-so-books-of-2015-and-goals-for-2016/

Happy New Year!

>162 JDHomrighausen: wait, he doesn't find Islam rationally defensible, but finds Christianity to be so? I'm thinking that's got to be thin crowd.

Enjoyed your reflections.

>170 dchaikin: Dan, the same thought occurred to me, but after watching Muslim scholars struggle with history in Jesus and Islam, I think I can see his point. Christian intellectuals have been struggling since the 19th century at least to adapt their religious beliefs and the way they see their sacred texts to the challenge of science and rationality. From what I saw, it seems that Muslims have barely started on this road. Personally I see it as a losing battle anyway, but for someone who wants to keep his faith without completely denying the scientific and historical knowledge available to us in the 21st century, I can see the appeal.