Phil Harrison "The First Day": Book Review

Samuel Orr preaches on East Belfast's streets. There "he spoke only the scripture, no commentary, no opinion, no interpretation. No pleading." On the south side of the city, another resident elaborates on her chosen texts. She pursues another Samuel, surnamed Beckett. Anna Stuart "lectured her groups of avid nihilists while looking" from her classroom high up among the red-brick facades of Queens University, "at people scurrying far below, like insects." Phil Harrison sets up his protagonists as he begins The Third Day. His examination of faith and the tensions it creates and confronts engage the reader who enters into this novel. An award-winning filmmaker, he turns to fiction for his print debut.

As a Belfast native, Harrison scrutinizes "a city without roots." Rather than drawing sustenance from the earth, this place rejects security. "Flags, history, tradition, they all take light from the world and bury it." Where this perspective emanates from is not clear. Beginning in 2012, the setting for this story sours its residents. Those raised by the "1986 generation of nay-sayers" of "No Surrender" grow up "just as militant, though with less to lose. A decade of unimaginative leadership, of reconciliation attempts built around 'telling your story', served for the most part merely to trap people in the failed myths they'd grown up with rather than encouraging them to abandon them for bigger, messier ones."

This judgment resonates. Its speaker will be revealed as another victim of this entrapment as it passes down from the sins of the fathers. The stories told by this voice fill in much, but not all. Limits to complete understanding persist, in the city and in Orr's family. For quite a while, readers may remain unaware of who narrates, nearly omniscient, during much of the first half. Harrison slows this pace.

An authorial decision which may startle some embeds itself in the early prose. For the King James Version in all its poetry and power flows through Samuel Orr by habit and by vocation. His stream of consciousness fills with biblical cadences, verbatim from the Good Book. Orr, as a congregant regards him, "seemed to have an ability to make it all about him, to turn the scriptures into biography." Furthermore, the listener to Orr's sermon observes, that obdurate lay minister "yet did not actually do anything; he merely refused to change, to be anything other than his flawed, blunt self."

Like many an Ulsterman, Orr resists sentiment. Harrison keeps him at a distance. Orr's his most potent presence, and when he recedes, his creator plays it safer. Anna's predicament moves Orr, first to passion but soon to estrangement. Their son, also christened Sam (the triple nod to this prophetical nomenclature makes one wonder how necessary is this choice by the writer), must deal with his brother by Orr's wife, twelve-year-old Philip. (The author gives this foil his own first name.) That older boy is saddled with a burden. His father's actions in engendering a sibling only half a brother rankle Philip. He, the narrator defines, "became continuation, the past blurred into the present." Here, the predicament of many in the Irish North hardens the young as it has the old for centuries. "It was like the story they told children: if you pull a face and the wind changes direction it stays that way forever." Philip's determination to thwart both his father and the lad he has produced creates the story line which takes three-quarters of these pages to work itself out. This presumes a reader's patience.

For Harrison resolves to move Philip into a key scene which will effect the narrator and this account.
As with the naming Harrison chooses to grant central characters in The First Day, so with this pivot. It smacks of too-neat a scheme. Perhaps in film this could be carried off adroitly. In fiction, it calls attention more to the author than his antagonist. However, the narrator does reveal necessary sentences (in more ways than one) necessary for the scheme to be at all credible. "Philip had an extraordinary skill of carefully unpicking a person's weakness, of paying attention as much to what they didn't say as to what they did." He teases out the repressed and unravels what others labor to hide. "And he had that rare absence of compassion, a preparedness to use whatever he could get his hands on for his own ends." Certainly this foreshadowing follows through on that narrator's portent.

The crux lies in the ability of Philip to convincingly carry off what Harrison wants him to see through. Orr opines that his older son's "genius" evinces itself by Philip never stepping out of his role. He's "like a method actor who finishes work on a film and forgets to return to his normal life."

The novel's later half shifts the chronology thirty-five years later. Surprisingly, The First Day does not attempt to create a future New York City much altered from today. Gentrification turns into its own parody; artisans consume themselves. This may have already happened, one may aver, by 2012.

As a museum guard, the narrator inhabits a potentially rich setting for an inventive storyteller. Phil Harrison, once more, does not attempt to expand this as much as readers might expect. Instead, the narrator has to "find my own corners, my periphery." He rationalizes this as a better option to the dour conditions which have dampened his upbringing. "Darkness as character--the unknown not as absence but as a space to grow into." These marginal haunts, inevitably, echo those of Sam Beckett.

The First Day succeeds when it plunges Orr and Anna into their own Irish-based predicaments. When the narrative resumes across the ocean, it diffuses. Family secrets, betrayals, punishment and redemption add up to familiar tropes. The promise of the opening chapters, full of the addled and stubborn Orr's KJV compulsions to channel the prophets, and Anna's desperate confusion as she faces the joys and sorrows of motherhood, fades. The narrator trots adroitly at its start. When the story turns to New York, too much has been left unsaid and hidden for its revelations to excite its readers. What could have accelerated into a dynamic climax idles and glides into too rapid a resolution.
(NYJB 10/24/17)

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Phillip Freeman's "The Gospel of Mary": Book Review

Since I was a teen reading James Michener's "The Source," I've had a weakness for "So-and-so has discovered a missing Gospel" yarns. I liked the prolific Professor Freeman's recent Oxford UP retelling of Celtic mythology, so I gave this a try. Via an e-galley, I did not know until I finished that this is the third in his Sister Deirdre series. That explains some backstory I kept wondering why not more was divulged herein. I had no trouble following along, but it's better I assume to have caught up with the previous books, for the main character evidently has a complicated past and much to tell.

Not be confused with another, recent Irish-oriented story, Colm Tóibín's drama "The Testament of Mary," Freeman's "The Gospel of Mary" features the rapid pace, genial tone, and expository dialogue that fills us in on an Ireland when Christians still number few. Deirdre's grandmother was a druid and she claims the same identity, although when her mother died, her grandmother fulfilled her promise to raise Deirdre in the new faith. With allusions to a failed marriage, other past liaisons, and a child who died young hovering about, it's clear that Freeman's protagonist has had more adventures than most nuns might have, at least in later times. She lives with her friend and sidekick Dari in a monastery founded by Brigid, which to Rome's discomfort hosts celibate men and women together.

Rome's unease deepens as it sends a clever emissary to find out what the truth might be to a manuscript smuggled into the island with haste, secrecy, and danger. It is, naturally, the tale of Jesus told by his mother, and its passages intersperse, as they are translated by Dari from the Aramaic, with the fate of the two women as they get caught up in keeping their treasured text safe from the Church. The Church, after all, fears that its integrity will crumble if Mary's words are proven true, and even if they are not able to be verified, that the heresies and tumult generated by them will bring down Rome

It all moves satisfactorily. I read it in a sitting. Freeman has done his biblical homework, and he blends it with a quest that dashes about Ireland. There's plot complications, but the story line as a whole does not surprise. It's a pleasant narrative, and it likely will educate as well as entertain you.
(Amazon 9/5/17)

Christopher Hitchens' "The Portable Atheist": Book Review

As many reviews on Amazon precede mine, I will offer a sample of the places I found most engaging. Christopher Hitchens received plaudits from some and suspicion from others, even fellow travelers, for what seemed in the wake of his "god Is Not Great" bestseller a cash-in with not as much editing of the inclusions as a rapid assemblage. Too many of the 47 excerpts drag on; a careful compiler would have excised portions and given overviews, while translating passages from other languages and footnoting arcane references as so much material is drawn from sources long ago.

His introduction, on the other hand, pleases. It's a joy to read Hitchens, whether you agree with him or not. Early on his contrast between god-like cats and dogs who treat us like gods (15) establishes his point memorably. His frank question why "semi-stupified peasants in desert regions" receive revelations of their Creator vs. those among the rest of mankind resounds. (18) His humility that whether innate or inexplicable, we can still laugh at our folly of invention humbles us against such faith-claims. (25) As he cites his friend Richard Dawkins, we are all atheists of some sort, for who among us still worships Jupiter? (20) Hitchens thunders against theocracy as the original totalitarianism, the tyranny exerted against anti-theists who take on a more active stance of opposition against the despots determined still alive among us who exact punishment against thought-crime. (23)
Hitchens pithily and typically sums up the struggle: "the main enemy we face is 'faith-based.'" (29)

Among the entries, I perked up with Thomas Hobbes' examination of the four causes for the "natural seed" of religion. (45) David Hume's extended foray into the contradictory elements of a deity demanding both praise and terror serves as an early examination of the force that compels our fealty. (61) Then the poet Shelley tackles both the argument by design (89), and the fact that even two centuries ago, "men of genius and science" championed atheism (94) attests to this venerable legacy.

Leslie Stephens' name may be less familiar than the three mentioned above, but he responds to Cardinal Newman's appeal to conscience for belief in God with the plain admission that such an appeal "has no force for anyone who, like most men, does not share his intuitions." (155) Anatole France wittily captures the conundrum at Lourdes, full of crutches "in token of a cure." His friend points "to these trophies of the sick-room and hospital ward" to whisper: "One wooden leg would be more to the point." (168) Emma Goldman reasons how in every age, God has been forced to adopt himself to human affairs, a petty meddler rather than an eternal, awesome force for goodness. (186)

Bertrand Russell earns his allotted span in this anthology. He encourages the dogmatic reader to read papers of opposing views, good advice still. "If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason to think as you do. (275) Carl Sagan wonders logically why God is so visible in the biblical world while so obscure in ours. (318) Dawkins conjures up Mt .Improbable, where the seeker can climb by a gentler back slope towards rational discovery rather than a leap up the front precipice, as a way towards clarity. (387)

Victor Stenger's chapter 37 on cosmic evidence is lengthy but rewarding, as he dismantles arguments. A zero energy universe, rather than a miracle, is exactly its "mean energy density" for one appearing "from an initial state of zero energy, within a small quantum uncertainty" initially necessary. (314) While John Updike's rambling conversation in his novel Roger's Version puzzled me at first, the explanation of how quantum fluctuations or tunnels via Higgs Bosons sparked what became time and space prepared the way helpfully for the learned astronomical discussions by scientists in later pages.

Ibn Warraq's in-depth exegeses from Why I Am Not a Muslim similarly fill out a need here to get away from a steady attack on the Jewish and Christian versions of an Almighty. He also debates the principle within Islam of supersession, a series of revelations urging departure from earlier forms of belief to higher and then single ones. "If there is a natural evolution from polytheism to monotheism, then is there not a natural development from monotheism to atheism? is monotheism doomed to be superseded by a higher form of belief, that is, atheism--via agnosticism, perhaps?" (396) Wise words.

H.L. Mencken, for those contemplating pagan or pantheistic retreats, lists outmoded powers above and below to illustrate the dead voices of forgotten or outmoded forces once called upon by millions of our ancestors. Michael Shermer's discussion of the legend of the Wandering Jew seems superfluous, but Sam Harris' "In the Shadow of God" states a fundamental warning. "Whenever a man imagines that he need only believe the truth of a proposition, without evidence--that unbelievers will go to hell, that Jews drink the blood of infants--he becomes capable of anything." (457) A twist on the Grand Inquisitor of The Brothers Karamazov (the latter tale not here) as to God and morality?

Back to Dawkins, he notes how the Bible fails as a "truly independent guide to moral conduct," serving instead as a "Rorshach test" where people pick out what reflects their own morals and interests. (341) The God in this volume fails, he adds, to ultimately care about his creation. (336) Steven Weinberg seconds this. "But the God of birds and trees would have to be also the God of birth defects and cancer." (372) Salman Rushdie reflects: "Only the stories of 'dead' religions can be appreciated for their beauty. Living religions require much more of you." (381) A.C. Grayling denies that an atheist should label him or herself as one. "The term already sells a pass to theists, because it invites debate on their ground. A more appropriate term is 'naturalist,' denoting one who takes it that the universe is a natural realm, governed by nature's laws." (475) This spins back to Hitchens' start.

That is, he broadens the other contested term. "Religion is, after all, more than the belief in a supreme being. It is the cult of that supreme being and the belief that his or her wishes have been made known or can be determined." (loc. 393) This may be reductionist for scholars of the philosophy of religion. I aver so, but Hitchens tries to focus on the disputes among atheists over an "intervening" divinity. Men and women will continue, he avers, to create such. "We are unlikely to cease making gods or inventing ceremonies to please them for as long as we are afraid of death, or of the dark, and for as long as we persist in self-centeredness." (loc. 385) One last reminder, from the introduction again. "If anything proves that religion is not just man-made but masculine-made, it is the incessant repetition of rules and taboos governing the sexual life." (loc, 418) Hitchens, for all the scattered evidence marshaled here untidely at times against the presence of such a querulous God, endures as a presence. (Amazon US 1/5/17)

John Neeleman's "Logos": Book Review

Extrapolating the accounts of the Jewish War by Josephus with what we know of Saul-turned-Paul, the tension between his mission to the Gentiles with the Hebrew-centered Christian cult of James, the brother of Jesus, the ministry of the man born as Yeshua himself, and the influences of Philo of Alexandria, the Sicarii rebels against Rome, and the Essenes, as well as imperial machinations, this novel takes on a complicated situation. Perhaps gleaning hints how a pre-synoptic ur-gospel [called Q if not here but by German critics 160 years ago] came to be imagined and composed, John Neeleman presents his reconstruction in a sprawling tale. He makes a clever case for his bold theory of origins.

Jacob ben Aaron rises up in the higher ranks of those centered around Temple ritual in Jerusalem. Starting around the year we know as 46 when he was born, this focuses on the great revolt which for a time drove back the Romans who sought to crush Palestinian resistance. Frustrated by Hebrew intransigence, the rulers who collaborate with Rome make a convincing argument for capitulation, so as to keep a limited form of autonomy. But radicals take the lead and spark insurgency, hating Rome. Jacob learns to carry this revenge himself after sufferings hit home. To avoid spoilers, let's say that he is affected deeply and, caught up in the revolt, he survives partially driven by his own desire to fight back. He wanders from the fallen Temple around Roman territory. This allows Neeleman to introduce him and us to the teachings of the Essenes, the thoughts of the Persian Magi, the ideas of the desert Ishmaelites, and the philosophy of the Hellenized Hebrews who studied in Alexandria. All these, with a hint of Egyptian myth, build upon Jacob's childhood preparation in the Torah and the classics alike.

Neelemen cleverly creates a protagonist eager for knowledge of both great systems, sacred and profane, Greek and Hebrew, and by taking them in, he can integrate them, while remaining somewhat doubtful about the power of his traditional beliefs. At one low point, the theodicy he challenges "all seemed contradictory and an extended rationalization for failure." The "same formula," as he is told by one mentor of many, repeats the story of a nobleman anointed before being cast into the wilderness, only to overcome deprivation to be revealed "as the savior of humankind and the bearer of a word and bringer of a new and better age." This realization enables him to be open to syncretic patterns, as Jacob watches the Christian sect grow, and witnesses when Rome tries to come to terms with this restive message of liberation from outmoded ways. Jacob is well-placed to take advantage. 

"Logos is order. Logos is balance, measure for measure. Wisdom is understanding the Logos." Jacob hears this translated from lofty concepts to clever realpolitik by one well placed to put this into effect. The demand is that while "the will to power, desire, money, sex" may all be "stigmatized" as passions unbecoming the new world order, the fulfillment will entice many into the embrace of "good news."

Neelemen lines up many personages, and while their conversations as in such accounts may imitate the didacticism and erudite tone of the classic and ancient tellers in his own prose, this stately pace does blend with the feel of an antiquated chronicle. The expository content, as many doctrines, disputes, and dissidents have their lengthy say--often with citing Scripture as readily as does Jacob the epics--slows modern expectations. But judiciously dramatized battle scenes, frank but honest sexual encounters, and a determination to endure make Jacob's journeys worthwhile, especially after he must leave his hometown of Jerusalem. This mixes a coming-of-age saga with an novel of ideas, too. To sum up, if you wish an expansive but thoughtful examination of how Christianity might have evolved in its earliest days, as one man in the flesh became the creator of the word as Logos, it's here.
(Amazon US 3-10-15)

Pillar of Fire

Two headlines shared last Sunday's New York Times' front page. On the left, the feature: "Brooklyn Fire Kills 7 Children, Worst Toll in City Since 2007." The subheading: "Orthodox Family's Sabbath Hot Plate Cited." On the right, with a giant snapshot of a beaming "slightly built teenager with an easy smile" it documented "From Minneapolis to ISIS" as it told of a son of Somalians who chose "a Young American's Path to Jihad, and to Syria." I considered both, signs of what faith does to people.

The story of the Sassoon family, the father a Sephardic immigrant from Israel who emigrated to join his wife's New Jersey family, is sad. The mother and one daughter escaped, but their children and siblings perished. The father, at a religious conference, did not therefore hear of their fate until after Shabbos ended. Many neighbors or friends also had no knowledge until after their observance ended.

A blech, or tin plate, is often placed on top of a range to keep food warm. In the 90-year-old house, this caught fire in the kitchen, and then spread via the stairwell up to trap the family above. A "pillar of flame," firefighters concluded, shot up to be a manifestation of death, for a young, devout family.

Abid Nur's story, as he changed from shooting hoops to posing in the desert with a Kalishnakov, demonstrates another form of devotion to a desert religion's ancient code. He started to post threats of doom on social media, and then suddenly sneaked off, after perusing the 50-page online guide to jihad the Islamic States disseminates as to how to throw off Turkish border guards and prepare citified jihadists. Nur got some supplies, such as Nikes, at the local mall before going off to join the enemies of the West. His partner was caught, and the FBI plans to use him to dissuade other youths.

I thought of the "pillar of flame" and remembered another way fire works. On the stove, at the tip of a rifle, the power of the orange burst can kill as well as comfort, blast as much as it warms or heats a meal to keep the family content and happy, not wanting to eat a day-old plate of tepid fare. In Exodus, the divine presence marks the way for the Hebrews with a cloud by day and fire by night. The Wiki entry labels this as theophany--how God shows to us. The Sassoons and Nur (the surname is associated with a wealthy Iraqi business family, surely one that has very few remaining in that Islamic nation as ISIS continues ethnic cleansing; the latter name means "light" in Arabic) both seek that force. They craved its revelation, one by leaving America to go back to a holy land, the other by leaving the hallowed and contested desert to come to a big city. Which found what they sought?

Robert M. Price's "Killing History": Book Review

This New Testament scholar dismantles the quasi-historical claims asserted in Killing Jesus, by pundit Bill O'Reilly and co-author Martin Dugard. Robert M. Price, with considerable learning and abundant snark, demonstrates O'Reilly and Dugard's credulous acceptance of the myths, legends, and contradictory accounts filling Acts and the four Gospels. Countering with a lively argument based on biblical Higher Criticism, he encourages readers to accept the pair's take on the last days of Jesus as speculation rather than any testimony derived from dubious fact. Their bestseller may edify, but it has no place on the shelf alongside the criticism Price and his academic colleagues assemble against it. Grounded in reason, they defend skepticism.

Price begins by wondering why O'Reilly does not take the same cautious approach to assertions in the Bible as he would to provocative guests whom he interviews. In their 2013 bestseller, following books on the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, O'Reilly and Dugard fall for whoppers. If the veracity of the motives for assassination and the identities of those responsible in Kennedy's death remain contested, and if distance from Lincoln's demise muddies research today, all the more to be cautious when going back two millennia. But the pair accept unsubstantiated sources as true, and they stitch together an imperfect quilt, a narrative seeming to be woven at first glance as smooth and solid, but when examined closely reveals itself to be poorly assembled, with loose ends fraying all around.

Basing his critique on Burton Mack's proofs that much of the Gospels have been back-dated, incorporating early into the first century when Jesus is asserted to have lived many anachronisms from later in that same century, or even later, after the Temple had fallen to the Romans and Jerusalem had fallen, Price reveals much of the Jesus story as inconsistent and unsubstantiated. It is a "scissors-and-paste" fabrication, crammed with illogical testimony and awkward dramatization.

Disputes about rabbinical Judaism, which consolidated and codified itself after the Temple's destruction in the year 70, creep back into the New Testament, as in Acts and the Gospels. For instance, the Gospel of John promotes Jesus speaking as the divine Son of God, while, as Adolf Harnack reminds us as cited by Price, the Gospel message of the Father remains the message taught by the itinerant preacher. Followers "retroject" later disputes with Jews into "eyewitness" accounts.

What happens over and over is that disputes between sarcastic Jesus and the stubborn Jews caricature ongoing contentions from the subsequent period when Jewish Christians debated with gentile converts as to which sect merited favor. Rabbinical authority continually struts into Gospel accounts as unstable, undermined by a prickly Jesus, who lashes out at his apostles, propped up as dunces or dupes for their incomprehension of their leader's bold challenges. Set-pieces, as Price documents, keep trotting out dumb disciples and recalcitrant elders, even if the latter contingent in fact had debated many of the same conundrums that Jesus, in the Gospels, is shown falsely to have originated.

Price keeps up the pressure, dismantling O'Reilly and Dugard's many logical fallacies. He compares the duo's attempt to make coherent sense out of the conflicting motivations cobbled together to serve as Judas' rationales for betrayal to a jigsaw puzzle. The authors try to force its mismatched pieces to fit, even if some must be sawn off and others thrown off of the table. Such metaphors help readers enjoy the blend of scholarship and silliness which certainly help distinguish this take on this old tale.

For instance, a Mad TV skit, Dana Carvey's Church Lady from Saturday Night Live, Monty Python's Life of Brian, the storytelling tricks of H.P. Lovecraft, an R.E.M. song, and a recent polemic from David Mamet feature among the more stolid sources he cites. He even finishes, satirically, the tale left off at the Resurrection by O'Reilly and Dugard, channeling their own awkward style with clumsy asides and attempts at wit. All of this does rush past, and some weighty or learned assertions needed clarification. Price addresses this at the general reader, but as with many academics, now and then he forgets to slow down to explain. Context on the "two-headed dragon" from the I Love Lucy episode Price alludes to was needed, and what Herod's soldiers bent on "frog-gigging babies" must mean may be faulted to the galleys this reviewer was provided. All the same, this delivers a spirited study, from which a reader less informed about biblical scholarship can emerge educated and entertained.

Surprisingly, the account of the time on the Cross passes rapidly, for the emphasis wisely chosen by Price focuses on the contorted reasoning marshaled to invite Caiphas and Pilate as walk-ons and stage villains in the various Gospel versions. These all trot out a very clunky premiere of a Passion Play. Price shows how these distortions of true history shove us to a foregone conclusion of this unbelievable storyline, as a wobbly wheel forces a shopping cart into one direction. For the Gospels, this turns out to be the Resurrection, and acclaim given a Messiah who does not match Jewish ideals.

It creates a memorable story, but not an historical narrative. Price concludes with two appendices, to strengthen some of the counter-arguments raised earlier in the text. These deserve attention, for they cement what earlier chapters may have left slightly shaky. The first appendix sides with very delayed dates for the Gospels, much later than many earlier scholars have suggested. The second appendix clarifies what impacts delay may have had, once Christian texts are compared with classical sources.

Tacitus gives no proof of the historical Jesus, recounting instead only what Christians promulgated in the early second century. Josephus, with his own particular agenda to promote or muddle, may have inspired elements in the gospels attributed to Mark and Matthew. That Jewish survivor turned Roman apologist after his nation's defeat is vague as to who "Jesus called Christ" may be, given that a Greek form of Yeshua as an "anointed" priest may not be that uncommon an identifier for more than one candidate after all. Price reminds readers, in wrapping up his cautionary tale, that classical writers were not "front-line reporting" but rather passing along accounts long after the fact--or the fiction.

Readers are left, then, to face the results of their own post-apocalyptic encounter. When the Gospels and Acts are shown to rest on shaky ground, and when proof-texts trotted out by apologists and advocates in recent times who attempted to reconcile history with the Bible are shown themselves to be flimsy support for messianic claims and divine incarnations, pseudo-history itself, in Price's book, crumbles into its own ruins. What remains, in Killing History: Jesus in the No-Spin Zone, may make readers' heads spin. Freed from pundits or preachers, sober examination uncovers not history, but, fittingly or frustratingly depending on the reader's reaction, some gospel tales that beg to be believed.
(NYJB 9-2-14;  P.S. I later found this excerpt: "5 Reasons to Suspect That Jesus Never Existed".)

Michel Faber's "The Book of Strange New Things": Book Review

I have enjoyed all of Michel Faber's fiction, from sly fables to his eerie alien-on-Earth examination as Under the Skin to his triple-decker epic about a prostitute fending for herself in the labyrinth of decadent Victorian London, The Crimson Petal and the White. Faber displays calm aplomb in inventing fresh tales. Faber tends to peer in at human activities with slight discontent, and to present our foibles and ambitions to us as if with a faint air of disapproval or unease. He escorts us into intricate scenes amid inventive locales. Faber keeps readers wondering, through his unruffled, spare, and steady narrative style. He reminds readers of his skill in creating narratives which disorient us, even as they entertain. His subtle detachment doesn't weaken his literary craft, but it sharpens it, for we see through him our own estrangement.

In The Book of Strange New Things, Faber explores Christianity  (mocked memorably in his novella The Fire Gospel) but he (except in one welcome chapter of this more dour new novel) dampens any satire about faith and belief. Instead, we scrutinize a short span in the life of Peter Leigh. He's a reformed English alcoholic and addict who has turned his life over to Christ. He is recruited for a mission to minister the Gospel to natives. We soon learn they live not on our planet, but another, called Oasis by a shadowy corporation, USIC, which colonizes it.

Chauffeured to Cape Canaveral for his space flight, Peter admits he has no idea what USIC stands for. "Search me,' said the driver. 'A lot of companies these days got meaningless names. All the meaningful names have been taken. It's a trademark thing.'" Although Peter seems to be correct that the first part stands for United States, this multinational firm furthers a enigmatic corporate mission, a truly universal one, so to speak, which will extract energy and resources from Oasis. Faber, keeping the scope of USIC's cosmic ambitions shadowy, heightens their impact upon their newest employee.

Leigh leaves behind his wife, Bea, on a near-future Earth wracked by freakish weather, natural disasters, and social breakdown. The distance between this couple, conveyed by their transcribed transmissions, demonstrates Faber's skill in evoking a fraught relationship. Leigh's own confusion begins to grow despite his debriefing and training as to USIC's protocol. On arrival at Oasis, Peter finds "a red button on the wall labelled EMERGENCY, but no button labelled BEWILDERMENT".

Such suspense throughout The Book of Strange New Things remains vivid, for in Faber's alert depiction we must watch him, always at center stage. Faber juxtaposes the tension of Peter's first assignment, to create an ad hoc eulogy for a coworker he barely has had time to meet, with the news of Bea's pregnancy back on Earth. She tells Peter of its devastation from climate change and economic implosion. By contrast, the placid testimony by colonists and Oasans, as far as Peter can discern, appears to cloak two mysteries: what USIC intends, and why a few natives have embraced the Good News. The abyss between a dying Earth and USIC's coddled comforts on Oasis deepens.

Confronting human colleagues chosen for "no drama", Peter struggles to learn why USIC has sent him to Oasis, and why its some of its inhabitants wish to so fervently adopt the Christian message. Cut off from an increasingly fraught Bea and a home planet whose problems he cannot solve, he strives to rise to his new calling as a chaplain. Meanwhile, adjusting to the indigenous diet and trying to talk like an Oasan, he begins to drift away from the mentality of an earthling. Isolated from his colleagues, his brain starts to scatter, as "it sifted intimacies and perceptions, allowed them to trickle through the sieve of memory, until only a token few remained, perhaps not even the most significant ones".  In turn, he immerses himself into his task, to translate some of the Bible, and to go native as much as possible. Tension increases between his devotion and the mindset of his USIC comrades.

It's refreshing to finish five-hundred pages, which I read in two sittings, that refuse to show off a writer's style or parade his own predilections. Faber manages to speak through Leigh sympathetically. Committed to his calling, Peter honestly responds to all who need him, human or alien, as he strives to do good. Even the USIC plant's heliostats, for solar power collection and storage, cause Peter to be moved by "their inanimate confusion. Like all creatures in the universe, they were only waiting for the elusive light which would grant them purpose". Yet, the omnipotent author remains separate from his troubled protagonist, for we learn of his thoughts only by indirect first person narration, and through the letters Peter and Bea exchange from a vast distance, as their own estrangement widens.

For instance, Peter begins to regard himself, cut off from familiar surroundings and stimulation, differently as he ministers more to the natives than to his own needs. As he preaches to the Oasans, and as he learns their language, he increases his cultural dislocation. "He imagined the scene from above--not very high above, but as if from a beach lifeguard's observation tower. A tanned, lanky, blonde-haired man in white, squatting on brown earth, encircled by small robed figures in all the colours of the rainbow. Everyone leaning slightly forward, attentive, occasionally passing a flask of water from hand to hand. Communion of the simplest kind." Faber leaves these analogies with previous holy men or desert scenes for us to fill in. Their sketchiness enables the reader to view Peter's maturation and his acceptance of a hard-earned wisdom. Faber hints at an objective response, but he presents us only with Peter's subjective resolve. This unfolds convincingly, as this novel with its cautious pace takes its time to portray Peter's transformation on Oasis into a different person.

The novel is simply told. The desert climate of Oasis and its vaporous atmosphere challenge Leigh and his human coworkers to endure its harsh environment, mentally and physically. Endurance dwindles for a few. Faber keeps mum about the back story regarding both planet and the corporation he dramatizes. Whoever knows more about USIC, the Oasans, and the mission Peter joins is not telling. As in Faber's previous fiction, the situation the protagonist meets appears to be more complex than what this idealistic but flawed Everyman can fully comprehend. Not all questions find answers.

Therefore, the ambiguity in this tale, and the "elusive" purpose for which Leigh has been recruited and USIC set up so far away may not find full clarification, any more than the message of Jesus may find complete explication for Oasis' natives, or for Peter Leigh himself. While he imagines success, the ultimate lesson of this philosophical novel may lie in its acceptance instead of what one of Leigh's predecessors may have found, during his own "ecstasy of derision". Faber leaves us, along with Peter, wondering about these elusive and haunting, yet ultimately poignant and down-to-earth, life lessons.
(As above 10-21-14 to PopMatters, originally in shorter form 9-15-14 to Amazon US)

Mark Larrimore's "The Book of Job: A Biography": Book Review

This biblical story's always troubled me, so Mark Larrimore's energetic and pithy survey of its "multiplicity of voices" and the puzzles this oddly edited text generates is a welcome introduction. The complex history of how interpreters (starting with the book's own Elihu and Job's friends who try to counsel him) have reacted to the legend, in Larrimore's understanding, resists "closure" no less than the themes it raises, of "providence and evil, the meaning of innocent suffering, the nature of God and humanity's place in creation." Rabbinical, early Christian, medieval, Reformation, Enlightenment, Romantic, fundamentalist, New Critical, and post-Holocaust readings of the text all gain attention, as well as how the book is "performed" in liturgy.

Chapter 1 looks at ancient interpretations--oral and legendary--and Larrimore wonders if Job himself is Jewish or a Gentile, for instance, another complication for a text with such obscure characters.  Chapter 2 looks at disputations, the medieval debates where philosophers (especially Maimonides but also Aquinas and Calvin) followed the example of Job and his friends as they disputed among themselves. Chapter 3 takes on the medieval burials of the dead and how the book of Job "enacted" itself beyond the text itself in liturgy and in a French mystery play, "La Pacience de Job."

Theodicy may not be as popular as it once was, but for centuries, Job's predicament allowed a confrontation with belief as "the model of an anguished but fervent modern religiosity." As the professor's previous book dealt with the problem of evil, Chapter 4 fits Larrimore's expertise. William Blake's illustrations show another way Job's story has been transformed, and Larrimore notes the uses of Blake's depictions on the covers of studies and novels, for instance, another point that even if an aside shows the perpetuation of Job's anguish. I wish more popular culture contexts such as this were delved into, as these spark much interest.

The post-Shoah struggle with Job's lessons, themselves a tangle of textual cruxes and confusing shifts, show the "exile" of Job for the fifth chapter. Not only Kant or Leibniz, Voltaire or Herder, but Elie Weisel and Richard Rubenstein, and a provocative comparison between G.K. Chesterton and Slavoj Zizek (albeit too brief a one for me for these last two pairings) demonstrate the range of Larrimore's examples. Similarly, his conclusion touches (I wish more here too was provided, as cinematic connections stimulate curiosity) on "The Tree of Life" and "A Serious Man" as two different, and typical, takes on the positive and negative aspects of Job's dealing with his troubles.

"In its jarring polyphony and its silences," Larrimore concludes, the Book of Job "speaks to and for the broken." Larrimore notes (he teaches at The New School) that the book has in the academy become detached from "monotheism which is now in exile in our secular age," a universalized one that we seek when "stepping outside the rest of salvation history" or the rest of Scripture. Again, these observations merited much more depth, but Larrimore finds provocative insights, a value to any inquirer. Therefore, as reacting to this morally troubling and poetically bold biblical book, both atheists and "the remnants of the covenantal monotheisms" might seek solace for their suffering as shared by Job and those in this tragic, bold, strangely conceived and unconventionally arranged story.
(Amazon US 12-14-13)

Paul Kriwaczek's "In Search of Zarathustra": Book Review

Well-written and intricately assembled, this tale by the author, who as a child left Vienna for England as a Czech Jewish refugee, integrates his story with other encounters and exiles when ideologies and itineraries generate the force of a concept made real. He hunts down the impacts of a faith preaching one god, conflict between good and evil, a judgement day, an afterlife of the damned and saved, and a messianic savior. This ancient faith, nearly dead in its Iranian homeland and surviving somewhat among the Parsis who emigrated to India in the 8th-10th centuries to evade Islamic imposition, fascinates Kriwaczek.

From the Oxus River and the Hindu Kush, to Hadrian's Wall and Mithras' temple in the heart of the City of London, from the last fortress of the Albigensians in the Pyrenees to the destruction wrought by Alexander the Great of Persia, from Roman legionaries to a poignant portrayal of Nietzsche: Kriwaczek connects events and places to the spread of Zoroaster's prophetic preaching.

The chronology of his 2003 work, accumulating incidents and travels over many years, does not follow conventional linear narration. One shortcoming, perhaps due to the seemingly eternal strife in many of the regions Kriwaczek roams, is that you meet far too few Zoroastrians. While a remnant survives in intolerant Iran, and while they may fear a foreigner's intrusion, I wondered why he did not balance this with a stay among the Parsis, or followers who attempt to perpetuate their culture abroad; one wants more, given that converts to today's Zoroastrianism are forbidden.

It's instead an engaging history of ideas combined with a brisk journey to places where some connection however tenuous with Zoroastrianism might be argued. I found this travelogue engaging; the asides by Kriwaczek reveal a fresh perspective on familiar topics. "Belief always takes on the face of its environment." (18) A desert faith's landscape evokes severity amidst sparseness; dales, vales, and seas welcome spirits and gods into a richer terrain for the imagination of those at ease. 

The contrasting emphasis of Christian "evidence" vs. such a mythic rather than "literal" memory encourages the convert to Christ. Kriwaczek reasons that the appeal of the Gospel lay in its insistence that Jesus lived recently among us. A "gospel truth" may have swayed many away from paganism or Judaism due to this relevance. He also notes how a lunar calendar fits a nomadic culture and the pilgrim's wanderings, while a solar one matches the imperatives of tillage and settlement. (168)

Another ancient impact shows as Satan grows from prosecutor or antagonist to policemen or "agent provocateur"; "Evil" enters via the Assyrian conquest of Judea and Babylonian exile which enables Zoroastrian suppositions to filter into the Tanakh as it gets written down. (198-199) This leads to another insight. Oral tradition gets inscribed, Kriwaczek reminds us, only when crisis comes. (207)

Ezra for the Bible, the Talmud for the teachings after the final destructions of the Temple and the Jewish nation, and an orthodox reaction that fixed the version of the Almighty, theology, and the afterlife as known but not seen: this characterizes the approach of monotheisms. (207-209). The Qur'an shared this conception. The fratricide following the Prophet's demise impelled its recording.

Finally, the problem of evil and its persistence sparked different monotheistic responses Kriwaczek attributes to each major variety. Jews blamed themselves. Christians agreed but added that all of Adam's progeny inherited this flaw. Muslims wait for the afterlife's recompense for their theodicy.

These religions unwittingly pass on core teachings traced (if in too brief a fashion at the end of this narrative on pg. 228) to Zoroaster and the followers of Mani and magi. Good and Evil as archetypal foes, "named angels," the Devil, a binary otherworld, and a messianic deliverance at the world's end define the persistence of a faith small in size today but enduring in ideas. (Amazon US 6-30-13)

Reza Aslan's "Zealot": Book Review

"No lord but God" echoes as still relevant among religious radicals, or reactionaries. That was the Zealot party's battle cry. An Iranian immigrant, Reza Aslan as a new Californian briefly left behind his Shia heritage for a teen stint as a born-again Christian. Now a professor of religion at UC Riverside, and long interested in ecumenical as well as jihadist studies, Aslan freshly times his lively look at Jesus. He mixes scholarship with social media; as a Muslim and a CEO of a studio covering Middle Eastern issues and the diaspora, he shows awareness of how to package a very familiar subject in attention-getting ways. N.B.: If you come to this review ready to attack Aslan before reading the book or my last paragraph, kindly reconsider, as this careful study deserves a patient reading; my already long review elides much. I emphasize that that nearly a third of Zealot is endnoted; Aslan, a UCSB Ph.D. in the sociology of religion, has done his homework in two decades of meticulous investigation. Here's my summation.

At least since Ernest Renan sparked controversy with his 1863 life trying to make Jesus more human by making him less Jewish, so as to be more "Aryan" Christian, learned biographers seek to understand a Jesus making sense to today's rational, contextual, and text-based mindset. The "higher criticism" of the mid-19th century popularized (more in seminars than seminaries) this. Aslan emphasizes a rebel alongside the two "thieves" really assassin-revolutionaries ("lestai") crucified: a trio condemned for resisting the Roman empire and its Jewish collaborators. Reminding us that the Sicarii were "daggermen," he places Jesus within a cabal closer to today's insurgents in this same region than with honey-voiced peacemakers, or wistful redeemers with flowing locks and fair or dark eyes that follow you across a room. What follows is my paraphrasing of Aslan's brisk re-reading.

While this version of the Son of God as warrior has been preceded by liberation theology with a Galilean upstart rallying peasants and workers to an uprising, Aslan in presenting a vibrant, tense depiction for today appears to want to wake us up out of complacency, vividly. His appended annotations support his interpretation but this scholarship is subtle, to opt for verve. For instance, the narrative proper starts not with a manger scene or Annunciation, but a well-paced informative depiction of the Temple, ending with the assassination of High Priest Jonathan in 56 CE by a zealot.

The Zealot Party did not exist until a generation after the death of Jesus; Aslan after taking us forward to show their revolt and defeat (Masada as the last stand) moves backwards then (not sure why this provides the book's structure, but he keeps this often-told tale quite entertaining, precise, and provocative, certainly its best feature) to the Gospel narratives. He cautions readers who expect the historical Jesus to match the mythic Christ; he explains the backdating of all new testaments about Jesus functioning as an heroic tale so that even those in the know or closer to the real events that may have supported the Church's revisionism would understand. As these Christian scriptures are not meant as eyewitness accounts but fulfillment of prophetic "truth," this literary activity makes whatever can be extracted out of the accounts (and those which fill in the story outside the canon) tendentious. Rather than cherry-pick chapter and verse (although I suppose any biographer of Jesus or biblical critic may fall into this occupational hazard), Aslan strives to frame his arguments 'in situ.' (Again, I anticipate disputes may arise from those who do not ponder his endnotes within their own context, or recite rote objections or quibbles without the academic training of Aslan and colleagues.)

He tries admirably for an accessible prose style, not to mention keeping his narrative free of academic contention, while integrating many ancient sources smoothly and modern scholarship tacitly. Aslan argues for a "Fourth Philosophy" (i.e., after Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes) zealot-friendly Jesus. "Give back" what is Caesar's by linguistic study becomes the telling phrase, and this is not "render unto" the imperial powers in submission by the downtrodden Jewish nation, but a defiant in your face sort of response to that tricky question. As a defiant Jew, Jesus is shown as telling his disciples in guarded analogies and curious parables his messianic "secret" when he would rule his homeland, for these "aspirations" persist as the "singular fact" that led to his crucifixion, with "The King of the Jews" posted above him not as a taunt but as was Roman custom, the reason for his conviction.

The Kingdom of God challenged the Temple authorities. He detested the scribes as well as moneychangers; quislings like Caiaphas in league with Pilate (revealed as a ruthless ruler, not the hesitant caricature) represent the Caesar whose imposition of taxes and servitude rankles Jesus and his careful group of chosen apostles. He asks them who people say he is but cautions them to keep quiet. Aslan interprets this as subterfuge until Jesus can come to Jerusalem to take on his opponents. Until then, as an "itinerant exorcist and miracle worker," the real difference of this purported carpenter (that steady line of work is so doubtful in mud-brick Nazareth it's likely apprentice Jesus and his brothers had to labor to rebuild the resort city of Sepphoris): he offered his magic for free.

Rather than a "utopian fantasy," the Kingdom of God "vindicates the poor and oppressed. It is a chilling new reality in which God's wrath rains down upon the rich, the strong, and the powerful." While some parse turning the other cheek or loving one's enemies as assurances of pacifism, Aslan rejects this. He reminds readers (unlike Renan's work) that Jesus is a Jew, and has the back of his own people, as any faithful Jew would in occupied Palestine as in defeated Judea or ancient Israel. "He understood what every other claimant to the mantle of the messiah understood: God's sovereignty could not be established except through force." John the Baptist and other rebels set this in motion.

The curious title "the Son of Man" Aslan shows as part of the necessary secret. Jesus promotes this as a sort of overt identity to cover the messianic title that his followers bestow upon him. "This man is the messiah" as confirmed by early hearers of his message betrays the tension: this equates (in my phrasing) to a deadly terrorist threat today spoken against those in charge. Sedition=death.

Novelistic touches, as in the high priest's assassination or the prayers in Gethsemane, reveal Aslan's talent for enlivening with careful detail the greatest story ever told over and over for two millennia. Why Jesus when arrested stays largely silent seems logical: three years of a ministry bent "on destruction of the present order and the removal of every single person who stands now in judgement of him" speaks for itself. Aslan reasons that later Christians glossed over much of the radical context he extracts as to the rebellious nature of Jesus as fractious Jew before he was elevated to Christ for all Gentiles. If you remain curious as to how the passages he must select have been judged by scholars as more trustworthy than others, this appears embedded in his appended research but submerged in the main body of narrative. (I have an e-galley proof to rely on; at 70% Aslan's afterword and annotated endnotes begin, to document his range of scholarship, nearly a third of the entire text under review.)

He does often show how "patently fictitious" certain iconic sections are. As with the "trial" offered by Pilate to the rabble, often Mark and later writers (aimed at certain audiences) distance themselves safely from any sympathy with the rebels in the wake of the destruction of Herod's Temple. Such back-dating must always remain foremost in mind by any educated reader of the Christian scriptures.

This revision for non-Jewish readers meant the Gospels had to be sanitized of "revolutionary zeal": Jesus had to be recast (in each succeeding gospel in more outlandish form) as peacemaker and the Romans as free of what now the Jews were given full blame for: his death. Caiaphas proves the heavy; Pilate plays his pawn. In "passion narratives," for "liturgical purposes," a ritual sequence of events arises that early Christians can re-enact. The end is a given: Jesus as crucified messiah. Aslan strips accretions off and looks at the crucifixion for sedition, but then jumps ahead to the first martyr.

Stephen, as imagined soon after Jesus' death, learns his resurrection is attested as confirmation of him as the messiah. But this does not jibe with Judaism, "awaiting a messiah who triumphs and lives." Yet, as Stephen does not live in Jerusalem, is not a scribe or scholar, and so does not know the prophecies that Jesus' followers reinterpret, Aslan figures "he was the perfect audience" for a new pitch "being peddled by a group of illiterate ecstatics whose certainty in their message was matched only by the passion with which they preached it." 33-35 CE, Acts reimagines Jesus' trial (while repeatedly misappropriating Jewish scripture) as Stephen's speech to his persecutors before he is commemorated as the first one to die for his savior. He makes the speech recasting the resurrected, messianic "god-man" in otherworldly, apolitical fashion: blasphemy to the Jews. Then the stones fly.

For Aslan, this marks the end of the historical Jesus and the start of the Christian cult: Jesus as God.  Nobody who knew Jesus (don't trust names titling Bible books) wrote anything. Illiterate apostles, while Jesus' family waits for his return, hunkered down rather than evangelize as Paul did: this limited who defined Jesus' message. Greek-speaking Jews and then non-Jews in the diaspora wanted not a "revolutionary zealot" but "a Romanized demigod" who preferred to stay celestial. The veil of the Temple rent, direct access to God's Son ended any need for Jewish ritual or Torah-true teachings.

Yet, why did Jesus persist among his followers as the accepted messiah, when rival claimants did not? Aslan credits "fervor." A true messiah could not die by Mosaic Law. So, "a stumbling block to the Jews" as Paul notes let alone a contradiction, return from the dead had to be claimed so as to establish a risen Christ's victory. Verifications "according to the scriptures" ensue: "they are carefully crafted rebuttals to an argument that is taking place offscreen." Earthly rule faded; heavenly rule rose.

Diaspora Jews relying on Greek were more open to arguments that appealed by metaphor and symbol beyond the Hebrew-based, less sophisticated community in Jerusalem of Jesus' family and followers. After Stephen's death, intriguingly, the Hellenized community was sent away, and they increased the ranks among urbane, Greek-literate Jews who would be the first to be called Christians in Antioch. Rather than fulfilling the Law, Jesus did away with it. National concerns of reforming the priesthood in Jerusalem did not matter compared to the doing away with the Temple ritual entirely, and then incorporating the Gentiles within a missionary movement for non-kosher, uncircumcised converts.

There's less concentration in Aslan's survey on the Gospels, for his analysis takes up only about 20% of this book. Zealots for the first 30%, and then halfway on, the post-Resurrection reactions to Jesus. Paul, a repentant Pharisee, claims himself as the first apostle. He justifies his outreach rejecting Torah as "a ministry of death, chiseled in letters on a stone tablet." While Jesus can be held (depending on which verses: refer to endnotes) as upholding the Law, Paul abandons Jewish history. Given Paul's extremism, creating a Christ mattered, not a human Jesus or Roman rule during that violent century.

James differed; Paul dissented. Rival versions of the message angered Paul, and after meetings in 50 and 57 CE with those in Jerusalem, his former enemies, Paul finds trouble. The latter visit is poorly timed, for he is mistaken in the crackdown after Jonathan as a rebel leader of 4,000 Sicarii, "the Egyptian." Meanwhile, this chaos leads James' Hebrew sect to anticipate the Second Coming. This unrest leads to Paul being extradited, supposedly under house arrest, to Rome. There, Gentiles listen. Peter seems to have preceded Paul to preach there; both are said to have been killed under Nero in 66.

For James, 62 CE marks his stoning by the Sanhedrin amidst Roman reprisals in Jerusalem. His unjust fate, not that of his brother, is the main focus of Josephus' quick glimpse, the first non-biblical mention of Jesus "the one they call messiah" extant. Aslan reads this as evidence of James' stature (rather than Paul's) as leader of the Jesus movement. Why James gets short shrift may be due to later promotion of the perpetual virginity of Mary, and distrust of dynastic inheritance by the early Church.  Priestly power--expanding by a Christian, Romanizing empire through Constantine and his Rome-dominated council of clerics--fits well into Peter's papal placement as "bishop of Rome." The Nicene Creed set down Jesus always as God, and not as once human, codifying imperious tradition.

Aslan does not editorialize about his presentation. He leaves it up to us to judge the efficacy of such a bold messiah. He expects a mature readership able to handle revisionism and historicity. Certainly any new book examining this most debated of all figures will spark denial or dissent. I leave experts to parse claims advanced in the narrative; suffice to say Aslan's endnotes strive to support what my summation above and his main-text presentation must simplify for clarity. Whatever scholars say, providing this very readable and engaging set of reflections on Jesus, his times, and his impact, Aslan deserves an attentive audience willing to reject tendentious Sunday school tales, for a rigorous study.

(P.S. I reviewed this carefully for Amazon. As Aslan explains: "Anybody who thinks this is an attack on Christianity has not read it." Note sadly this "ad hominem" attack by a Fox News interviewer: she clearly had not read it, nor many on Amazon who attack this. I tried to be fair, but many are closed-minded to a scholar's right to write about religion objectively. 7-16-13 to Amazon US)

Edmund Gosse's "Father and Son": Book Review

In 1907, this "study of two temperaments" dramatized religious convention opposed to rational modernism. Edmund's father, Philip Henry Gosse, ran a Plymouth Brethren household. His wife died of cancer, and the son movingly documents her own demise, drawing from her diary, and enriched by his own recollections. After she dies, at twilight, he seeks his father's embrace: "I used to turn my face up to his, patiently and wonderingly, while the large, unwilling tears gathered in the corners of his eyelids." While the severity of his parents' attitudes has been challenged by scholars of Edmund's dramatic and eloquent narrative, the power of the clash of tradition and innovation at intimate levels during the mid-nineteenth century's encounter with Darwin's revolutionary theory can be felt.

As a naturalist, Philip tried to reconcile the new doctrine, arguing in the book "Omphalos" that as Adam added a navel thanks to God's intervention, so His plan allowed for fossils embedded to look as if a more antiquated cosmos had been intended from the beginning. Philip thought his argument would reconcile atheists and believers, but he was shattered when his book met with dismissal and was ignored. He popularized the Devon tide pools, and Edmund recalls with bittersweet detail the wonders that the shores once held undisturbed in his youth--until his father's studies and illustrations convinced many others to visit the beaches, and to ruin the fragile ecosystem irreparably.

Therefore, in its environmental as well as creationist themes, you can see the relevance a century later of this account. He describes the Victorian conventional mindset well. "People would, for instance, go on living over a cess-pool. working themselves up in an agony to discover how they had incurred the displeasure of the Lord, but never moving away." He also engagingly portrays the shift to an "extreme" Puritan and fundamentalist sensibility as he and his father--soon with a stepmother--live in a hamlet in Devonshire. There, away from the city, the foibles of trust in those deemed upright and righteous turns sad, or subtly satirical. A spinning top or a plum pudding, the word "Carmine" all loom large in the young child's mind, and can terrorize as deviations from the approved mentality.

While he's precociously allowed to be baptized before adulthood after being grilled by the elders, he finds the "mechanical address" and empty language of his prayers a telling revelation. Like a pot that surrounds an already growing plant, he feels as if he's trapped, and tries to grow up around the suppressing weight of the pattern imposed. He grows apart from the faith of his father, and in the final section breaks away as a maturing man from Philip. "The incidents of human life upon the road to glory were less than nothing to him," a man of belief.

Seeking a truer criterion of "moral justice" than that of the Christian Judge, Edmund refuses to sanction an Almighty who would condemn millions for "a purely intellectual error of comprehension." So, individualism, the ability to think for himself, takes control. He refuses to compromise, and no truce, he concludes, could have been acceptable between son and father. (Read  via Project Gutenberg for the Kindle. Amazon US 11-9-12.)

Pharaoh's hard heart

Commenting on my review last year of the "New American Haggadah," Matthew A. Levine asked c/o Amazon:

I just wonder about the version of the ten plagues that you mention, is the comparison to FDR, Truman, and Lincoln really applicable? Even though I personally don't believe that violent means are ever justified, at least, according to the official version of history, in these cases it was necessary to achieve a good end. According to the Passover story, the Pharaoh was ready to let the Jews go free, and then God "hardened his heart," so in this case liberation could have been achieved without any violence whatsoever. What was the point of that, and how can it possibly be morally justified?

This refers to my statement in the original review: "the Ten Plagues again by [Jeffrey] Goldberg find memorable comparisons. The power of a God who hardened the heart of the evil Pharaoh grows mysterious. Lincoln, FDR, and Truman all are shown as presidents who took the lives of many innocents in their determination to bring about a greater good. If emancipation ends or fascism succumbs, do the ends justify the means?"

I responded: "Matthew, that's precisely the type of question this Haggadah might inspire for a seder, or your own reflection. I recently re-read Nicholson Baker's 'Harper's' essay about the reaction to his own claims in 'Human Smoke' about the folly of violence even in WWII, and his remarks remind me of yours about the hardening of a heart, and how war might have done that to the Allied foes. Perhaps the collective authors strain for relevance and parts of this smack of appealing to a certain demographic, but if its contents can spark a question such as yours (and mine), it's worthwhile."

At the risk of ostracism as a wicked son (if without a Jewish father), this recent exchange stimulated my Pesach planning. My wife wondered if a seder could avoid a mention of "God," and given the spectrum of those attending this year spans secular to atheist, and skeptics with a healthy proportion of lawyers, I figured the timing was perfect for contemplating taking this on tour, if around my table.

(Update: it went well enough, given my own probable or inevitable lapse into professorial mode. After a viewing of the South Park episode, I didn't get into the WWII-Shoah context much which may have been just as well. The youngest son answered many questions from my older son's guest who did not know about the tale much. We skipped the Four Questions, but made up by our Maggid, the narrative we retold--I checked three guests' claim that Moses found out he was Hebrew from a garment shown him by sister Miriam. Not in Exodus; a charming but non-scriptural addition?)

My investigation--as a not-wicked but too-diligent son of my own has waylaid my (admittedly Reform, so perhaps while it may lean towards refuseniks even they may not agree with Baker's pacifism) Torah, detouring me from study of its gleanings--has led me to study Baker's Human Smoke: the Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization.  Levine acknowledged by his own glance at its Amazon raters (where my review at that link appears 3/25/13) a massive negative swell of criticism directed at it. I was dimly aware of it when it came out in 2007 but very attentive to "Why I Am a Pacifist" in Harper's for May 2011.

In the book, Baker cites Hitler on January 30, 1941, vowing to fulfill his "prewar threat: If international Jewry pushed Germany into a world war, the Jews would be finished in Europe." (283) Baker does not hold the Allies as free of culpability. The RAF, soon under "Bomber Harris," would continue its remorseless retaliation as retribution (these three terms appear over and over in his sources by late summer of 1941). The defiant British refused to negotiate and the more Hitler bombed their homeland, the more Churchill calculated FDR would send aid and be drawn into global war.

"The bombing offensive fed Hitler's wrath, in direct connection with his concept of the 'Jew's war' against him, and helped unite his nation behind him and justify further Nazi atrocities against the remaining Jews." (qtd. 391) Historian Schlomo Aaronson's assertion supports Baker's cause and effect. Churchill's bellicosity and desire for FDR's lend-lease of weaponry to Britain implies that the Allies were partially responsible by warlust of accelerating the mayhem and backlash of the Shoah.

Civilians displaced by carpet bombing were told the Jews were at fault, and German residences were appropriated by the Nazis who then sent their former occupants off to ghettos. This blame game, as American armaments intensified British raids on innocent Germans, may have hastened the Final Solution. U.S. entry spurred ever more destruction of the Jews, as they lost their hostage status as bargaining chips with the Allies. Death camps emerged, the first readied as it were the day after Pearl Harbor. Analyzing this escalation inspired Baker's Harper's May 2011 essay "Why I Am a Pacifist," which continued the story after the end of 1941, and predictably sparked a firestorm of controversy.

So far, reflecting on Pharaoh's tale, with little commentary--as a fundamentalist might advise-- Exodus makes me wonder about who's to blame. I can't avoid the mention of God, but he may share in the blame game, if not by venerable scholars; Biblical marginalia favor an Augustinian approach. That is, the Pharaoh could have chosen mercy, but he let himself act tough, as this fit a severe ruler in the Middle Eastern model and it showed all the more the comeback of the Hebrews against overwhelming odds and a Memphis home team's martial and mental advantage at Luxor Stadium.

In a 2011 Slate essay, "Sympathy for the Pharaoh," Michael David Lukas considers various rationales advanced by theologians and critics. He notes: "Towards the beginning of the story, Pharaoh hardens his own heart (or it "is hardened" in the passive voice). Following the sixth plague, however, Pharaoh seems to lose his nerve and God steps in, hardening his heart for him." While the likes of Martin Luther King and Erich Fromm aver that the hardening is due to Pharaoh's own defiance of compassion and his decision to use free will to defy Moses' appeal, Lukas reminds us that such apologists for justice and resistance to evil stay mute as to why God steps in to harden the heart that appeared to waver after the infliction upon the recalcitrant Egyptians of boils. (I confess this always impressed or repulsed me as particularly nasty, given my adolescent reaction to skin blemishes.)

My family's search for inspirational fare led to "Jewpacabra," aired March 14, 2012, episode 4, season 16. We join the action as Cartman's dream of being transported back to ancient times leads to why frogs are raining down, God's hand in this curious trajectory, and how that seems unfair to frogs. 

Kyle:	It doesn't matter. Because God is going to harden the Pharaoh's heart!
Cartman:	What does that mean?
Kyle:	It means Jehovah is going to use his powers to keep the Pharaoh from letting us go.
Cartman:	Well that doesn't seem very fair, Kyle. I mean, if God is going to make Pharaoh say no, then why would he punish him for saying no?

South Park's script is on to something, as satire snaps. A few minutes it devotes to the depiction of the plagues and Passover: here it hones in on this conundrum. Cartman continues to dream as P's son:

Cartman:	Daaad, when's it gonna stop raining frogs?
Pharaoh:	It'll be okay, my son. The weather will clear.
Cartman:	But my friend Kyle, he says that the reason we've had all these plagues and stuff because you won't let all the Jews leave.
Pharaoh:	[sighs] It's a complicated political issue, my son. An economic social issue that needs time. We can't let them leave, but is it really all that different from when the north didn't let the confederate states leave the USA?
Cartman:	Wow, that makes sense. Don't think anyone can deny that. [a bloody frog lands over the edge]
Pharaoh:	Poor frogs. I feel so badly for them.
Cartman:	But dad, my friend Kyle says that if we don't do whatever the Hebrews want us to do, God is gonna kill little Egyptian boys.
Pharaoh:	Hah, I don't think God would do such a thing, little one. No matter what happens, we can't let ourselves believe in the Hebrew version of God. We believe in a just Lord who would never murder innocent children.
Cartman:	I love you, dad.
Pharaoh:	And I love you son. And our love grows.

Speaking of dad, I've mused at DeMille-epic length about my own college-age antiwar stance four years ago at Pax Christi-Passover; the elevation of a pope named Francis may align with this spring's paschal ritual. In that 2009 entry, I raised many of recollections as a child hearing my dad remark "nobody ever wins a war; there are only losers" and my own naming after my mom's only brother dead on the shores of 1944 Saipan lingered. Raised with Vietnam footage on network t.v., I recalled to Niall the "Welcome Home POWs" bracelets worn by my hippie-spawned grade-school classmates from the far more liberal side of town. I credit as an teen my own surprised encounters via Thomas Merton's autobiography and J.F. Powers' incarceration to learn that Catholic Workers and pacifists during even the "good war" and the "greatest generation" existed as fellow communicants next to my presumably unaware mom and dad as they worked day and night in factories for the "war effort."

No, they were no saints, no Franciscans jailed as Fr. Louis Vitale has been (see "Pax Christi"). During the days of the Evil Empire and the contras, I showed my dad an article by L.A.'s Cardinal Timothy Manning decrying the "culture of war" and our local "defense industry." My dad and mom had worked at such factories (as did Layne's--both our dads were turned down for induction due to punctured eardrum and stuttering respectively); my machine shop, further-deafened by tool-and-die, dad looked the prelate's op-ed over with a glance and almost sneered: the Cardinal never had to worry about how his bills were to be paid or where his next meal was coming from.

Yes, I have seen the numbers cut into the arms of the elderly; Leo and I heard Dario Gabbai tell of his fate as a sonderkommando fueling the furnaces of Auschwitz. The more I study Irish republicanism over decades, the more attentive I am to what I didn't notice once upon a time: the perpetuation of "whataboutery." What about Hitler, what about the Battle of the Boyne, what about the Irish Civil War after the one that tried to gain independence, but left in the wake of a cleverly phrased and jerry-rigged treaty dividing the Free State a legacy of bitterness for generations. Baker's allies would insist any treaty brokered ought to be preferable to more death. It's hard not to disagree, despite my clan sympathies. I remain cognizant of perhaps cognitive dissonance here, but I state my case nonetheless.

Teaching PTSD vets, kids with plates in their backs and pins in their knees, wives with babies to care for while their husbands are off in Afghanistan, students called up for reserves, active duty, or desert training in the middle of a term; survivors of firefights in Fallouja who went three months without bathing in over a hundred lbs. of cloth and gear in 140-degrees: what some must undergo to qualify for an education on a GI Bill. I despise a nation and a mindset which rewards only those who may have risked their life and their sanity to cull a few thousand dollars for improving their livelihood and their mentality. I'm not naive enough to acknowledge my own desires lurk for revenge or reprisal; my Fenian blood can run deep. Yet, my maturity demands that I seek and support calmer ways to redress wrongs and right injustices. As Einstein challenged in 1930: "If only 2 percent of the men liable for war service were to refuse, there would not be enough jails in the world to take care of them." (23)

Beirt Cháisc 2013/5773

Tá Cáisc inniu. Nach bhfuil muid a ceiliúradh a dhéanamh air anseo, go fírinne. Ar ndóigh, is maith linn chun feacháint ar scannáin faoi an séasúr seo.

Ní feidir liom a bhréatnaigh na tsraid ar an Chaineal Stair faoi An Bíobla.  Tá mé ag muintir cúrsa "Reiligiún Comparádeacha" anois. Mar sin, cheap mé gur chóir go mbeadh liom a fheicéail é.

Mar sin féin, d'fhoghlaim mé faoi Cháisc na nGiúdach. Rinne ár teaghlach "seder" ag ar an n-teach ar feadh an tseachtaine seo caite. Thug muid a chuir ár chairde ar chéile.

Pléigh muid go léir an sceal anallach. Mhín mo mhac is oige Eaxodus. Ith mo mhac is sine matzah.

Gach mo shaol, tá suim agam leis an Bíobla. Mar sin, tá mé ag mealladh chuig an ábhar seo. Bain sult as agam díospóireachta é freisin.

A pair of Easters 2013/5773.

It's Easter today. We don't celebrate it here, truthfully. Of course, we like to watch films about this season.

I can't watch the series on the History Channel about the bible. I'm teaching a "Comparative Religions" course now. Therefore, I thought I might see it.

Nevertheless, I learned about "the Paschal feast of the Jews" (no word in Irish for Passover!). Our family made a seder at the house during the past week. We invited friends together.

We discussed the ancient story. My younger son explained Exodus. My older son ate matzah.

All my life, I've had an interest in the bible. Therefore, I'm attracted to this material. I enjoy debating it too.

Íomhá/Image: William de Brailes: The Crossing of the Red Sea

Malachi O'Doherty's "Iscariot": E-Book Review

This Belfast journalist's previous non-fiction combines memoir and cultural and political observation well. The Trouble With Guns astutely analyzed the Provisional IRA's machinations within the Northern power structures; The Telling Year: 1972 examined the tension as he reported for the press that dramatic year about his own neighborhood; I Was a Teenaged Catholic juxtaposed his Catholic upbringing with his stint under a Hindu guru in hippie-era India; Empty Pulpits treated the retreat from mainstream Catholic dominance over much of the island this past generation. I liked each one (see my 2009 reviews on this blog or Amazon British and/or US).

It's intriguing to trace similar tension within an earlier, far more mythologized time and place: Palestine under Roman occupation in the company of Yeshua. He's "almost your double," as the narrator, Judas, tells his twelve-year-old friend, "Ben Joe," son of Yusef and Mary. Judas' own father is suspected, in the taut opening scene, of collaboration with the empire. His son, humiliated at fourteen, vows "to kill a Roman soldier." Judas by small steps--a dove, a dog, and then by mock practice with his pal--learns to take life with a knife. Certainly the shift from Ben Joe's assistance with Judas in "operations" against troops and his next encounter, watching his "double" debating Temple elders about the Book of Jonah, demonstrates a bold take on Scriptural piety. We also see the insistent resonance that widens dissension between the two youths. The puzzler that Ben Joe articulates, as Judas filters it: do you do nothing for yourself, or do you resist authority?

The combination of today's colloquial and off-color dialogue with biblical scenes enlivens this tale. Ben Joe argues that it's no crime for guerrillas to murder in the name of an oppressed people, however futile the revenge. They panic and divide the outwitted Romans--"soldiers just flailed among themselves, like a woman who has startled bees"--and stab "at close quarters" as if it's bear-baiting.

Cana's wedding, the Magdalene, the parable of the steward, and the resemblance between a pretend and a genuine preacher in Galilee complicate matters in unexpected non-Scriptural fashion. At sixteen, Ben Joe joins the zealots. The next section puts the narrator under the headstrong, wasteful command of brutal Barabbas. Pacifism meets with annihilation; the Temple rabbis counsel cooperation with the occupation. Godless Barabbas presents a compulsive alternative: more revenge.

Before murdering a man, Judas reflects: "You must either try to ignore his character or look for something in it to hate, or you will not be able to kill him."  He tells of how people expect to see what they do, as sudden death follows predictable course to provoke reprisal and worsen oppression. The pointless slaughter drives him away from the zealots.

The narrative shoves us into the baptism of the Nazarene at the Jordan by John; but confusion persists who that new preacher might be, for Judas. Yeshua's Sermon on the Mount and the loaves and fishes, however, signal a transformation. Hope arrives for Judas. He learns to put down his decade of burden. The Nazarene's sensible message is as brief and straightforward as himself, and he soon leaves the crowds for the desert.

Ben Joe, now cynical and cruel, awaits in Capernaum, where he sends out followers to do miracles and shake up the establishment, so as to further his own "authenticity." He presumes to speak for the spirit, while Yeshua restored it and taught one to listen to it. You can see how this will unfold: the preacher advocating gentle, personal transformation vs. the one defiantly rallying communal fervor against injustice. Judas must decide which Galilean to go with, and this entangles his fate once more.

Martha and Mary assist him, and they all learn of a popular preacher's arrival. The story of the "woman caught in adultery" takes a deft twist, as does that of the Samaritan, Lazarus, the Prodigal Son, and rejections of the Pharisees under a clever imperium always looking after its own interests. Back in Judas' hometown of Nazareth, complications ensue as Yeshua visits the Rabbi's home, sees Mary the mother of James, and preaches at the synagogue. "Yeshua might be a prophet, perhaps the only one to our generation, and yet mimicry and gossip had made him ridiculous." The twinned relationship skews the biblical saga; its tilted representation keeps the reader as off guard as Judas.

The novel then deepens the mystery of appeals to a wavering one's "better nature." O'Doherty's Judas filters the author's unease at subservience to another, no matter how eloquent the message or assured the medium. Yeshua confronts Peter: "Who do you think I am?" Suffice to say that the later stages of the conventional Gospel tropes of an angry and a composed, wonder-working or contemplative Jesus, a thieving Barabbas, and the conflicted narrator gain integration enriched by imagination.

The final third takes place in Jerusalem, at the Day of Atonement. Yom Kippur's autumnal timing doesn't align with the scriptural chronology naming Passover, but it allows O'Doherty to bring back the sisters and Lazarus at Bethany neatly, the cursing of the fig tree, and the entry by beast of burden into Jerusalem. It also helps him with the climactic rationale that Judas will confront. Driving out the traders from the holy precincts makes sense rearranged, as does the placement of the threat that a subversive preacher brings to the Roman citadel and Antipas and the power center of Jewish priests under Caiaphas. Parts in the home stretch, despite the natural excitement that accelerates as a fresh retelling keeps us wondering, did lag by comparison with O'Doherty's earlier revisions of the Gospel narratives. Lots of conversation slows this, as the author has to shuffle episodes around to move the logic along, and to connect characters who appeared earlier on with the action that adapts the Gospels. Admittedly, it's ambitious. Some characters felt too mustache-twiddling and backroom-conniving as villains, as the climax delays; energy lessens, explication grows. Still, you will read on, wondering how what we've long "known" of Judas' fate will square with this shape-shifting novel.

The kiss of Judas at Gethsemane earns pathos. The poignancy of the narrator's decision intersperses with the hardening of the heart. Contradictions within the Gospels, for O'Doherty's version, find commonsense solutions as he blends his fictional resolutions into those tales from the testaments--and those peddled by the apostles, Judas' "former friends." Wishing for an end, perhaps, may be salvation.

The matter-of-fact manner in which what's soon legendary starts as the mundane, mixed up by rumor by the credulous into the miraculous and manipulative, reminds me of the retellings of the Exodus and settlement of Canaan in Shulamith Hareven's trilogy Thirst (see my June 2012 review)."Iscariot" similarly reveals how it might have been, before sanctimony got the better of the secular struggles. (Kindle review to Amazon US 1-7-13)

Stephen Prothero's "The American Bible": Book Review

"Why allow John Boehner or Nancy Pelosi to dominate your book club when Jefferson, Lincoln, and King are in the room?" To arrange such a conversation, Stephen Prothero compiles our nation's "core texts" from our "de facto public canon" into an "American Talmud," offering speeches, songs, stories, and sayings to spark discussion and debate as primary "books." Following each inclusion, he chronologically arranges dissenting and affirming comments from activists, lawyers, politicians, writers, and scholars. Ten "scriptural" sections comprise this biblical inspiration, mixing at first predominantly religiously infused arguments with, as the nation evolves, more secular and diverse texts. Furthering this Boston University professor's survey of contributions to our public discussion of issues that matter, it's a logical follow-up to his 2007 study "Religious Literacy."

Professor Prothero aims "not to create a canon but to report upon one." He seeks to overcome our bipartisan antagonism and our weariness with policies, parties, and principles which seem to shift. Returning key texts that matter to our public conversation, he hopes to renew hope among Americans. In this affordable, thoughtful, and balanced collection, Prothero invites us to listen to what our fellow Americans have discussed over almost four centuries as our necessary exercise in self-government, an experiment as open-ended as any ever attempted by citizens anywhere, anytime.

The book begins, logically, with "Genesis": colonial calls that often reenacted the Exodus story. "Law" follows as constitutional traditions and Supreme Court decisions from Brown in 1954 and Roe v. Wade in 1973. "Chronicles" relate "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Huck Finn" excerpts on slavery neatly, while a telling absence of an intended excerpt, denied by the estate of Ayn Rand, allows "Atlas Shrugged" to enter only in its commentaries, not the original text! Surely a moral lurks in this refusal.

Songs as "Psalms" follow, and for "God Bless America," even an Indiana billboard attests to its power, alongside "This Land Is Your Land" for a sharper counterpart to jingoism and patriotic cant. "Proverbs" places aphorisms around a Talmudic pattern of surrounding voices, before "Prophets" announces "Civil Disobedience," Eisenhower's farewell address about the military-industrial complex, King's "I Have a Dream," and Malcolm X's autobiographical defense of his "demagogue" role with a predictably if astutely chosen chorus of dissenting as well as assenting voices joining in as commentary in the decades since, with our current president among poets, pacifists, and preachers.

Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" opens "Lamentations" fittingly; Prothero prefaces this with an exegesis of how this "new gospel" elevated the Address above not only the "letter of the Constitution" but the "spirit of the Declaration of Independence." It redefined America as more revolutionary than conservative, in the professor's perspective. He then juxtaposes this with another dramatic response to war, Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and ends that section with Bill Clinton invoking in turn Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address to heal the damage of the Vietnam War.

Appropriately after this division, the book breaks into its "Gospels" with inaugural addresses by Jefferson and FDR, before a surprising entry by Ronald Reagan. Not from his presidency, but from nearly two decades earlier, when on television he endorsed Goldwater and argued against LBJ's Great Society, to set the course for the resurgence of his own career and that of the GOP. Prothero tips his hand perhaps away from the expected tilt of many in academia towards the left. Although his sympathy may hover, he does take pains to present the views of conservatives fairly in such chapters. Examining the comments appended to "The Speech," from Reagan's demythologizing biographer Lou Cannon to his memorialist Sarah Palin, the sharp voices for these polarizing texts prove lively.

After the figures of such bold presidents, "Acts" may seem anticlimactic.  Yet, the Cold War insertion of the "under God" clause into "The Pledge of Allegiance" merits extended analysis in one of the most informative segments. "Epistles" from Washington's "Farewell Address" prove relevant in terms of both the rise of the Religious Right and the controversy over "entangling alliances" as foreign policy. Lesser known one may hazard to nearly any reader than other entries: Jefferson's "Letter to the Danbury Baptists" in 1802, over the separation of church and state. At the time of this letter, a national church was prohibited by the First Amendment, but not by states. The "establishment clause," articulated here by Jefferson, became long a tenet of Democrats--at least until the past decade's return by even many liberal candidates towards espousing in public their own faith.

Faith supports the second document from King, "Letter from Birmingham Jail." No book of revelation or apocalypse concludes this compendium, although the Civil Rights Movement has its own eloquent speakers in the commentaries that follow, if oddly nearly all after the initial unrest during which King's letter was delivered. The epilogue wraps up the presentation with more on the race question, which Prothero emphasizes as the key question in all the "American Bible," as a melting pot has not endured as a model, but a fiercely partisan, multicultural, and multiethnic polity.

Prothero reminds us of competing readings we bring to this anthology's issues. Dissent erupts, even as it's channeled into conversation, as heroes rise and fall and politicians come and go. This dynamic, as this edition represents handsomely (even if the parchment-type of background for primary texts may jostle aesthetically against the brown-on-beige commentary footnoted therein), may not resolve these worthwhile wrangles Americans love to engage in, but they stand for our "shared practice" to argue the public good (I think of the ideal of the founders, a "res publica") as regularly as some go to Mass, attend sermons, or visit temples. (Amazon US 5-29-12 via a review copy; author's website)