I've read a few more books recently so I'll dash off some quick reviews. Warning: I'm feeling a bit flippant today.
First, I finally finished the bible. Actually, I gave up reading the actual bible and turned back to my Complete Idiot's Guide to the Bible. I just got so bored with Jesus and the traveling and the healing and all that. Also, the bible that I have has some strange notations in it that make it very difficult to read. Every single proper name is written with the dictionary-type pronunciation notation, with stress marks, carats, and the whole works. Considering the number of names in the bible, this gets quite overwhelming. All of Jesus' words are in red which was actually helpful because I never could have figured out who was speaking on my own. Then, of course, are the paragraph numbers and italicized words. I had no idea why so many words were italicized in this King James Version, but apparently, these words were added at some later point in translation. I really do not understand why they would need to do this. Other works are translated between languages all the time and it is understood that there is no such thing as a word-for-word translation and that the translator must be trusted to convey the proper meaning.
As to substance, here are just a few impressions. The Old Testament was a lot of fun, but if I was trying to take it as some kind of moral guide I suppose it might have been depressing. Jesus did not impress me, but I did get a bit more of a sense of how Christianity was new and unique. The altruism in the New Testament is definitely much stronger, as is the focus on reward and punishment in the afterlife. Really, what struck me most is how absurd the bible is. I've always held that Christianity is no different than any cult, and reading the bible just gave me more evidence. Do Christians really believe that Jesus came back from the dead? I mean, are you kidding me?
Next, I read a terrible Michael Crichton book called Timeline. Crichton always has some kind of intriguing premise, and then he lets you down. This one was worse than usual. I'm done with Crichton.
I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. I read it for my book club. It's a classic, right? Well, I found the mystery to be dull, the resolution to be somewhat arbitrary, and I didn't even like Poirot. I've read Christie before and liked her mysteries, but this one left me cold.
So, three duds out of three. I am glad that I read the guide to the bible, though. I'm sure reading the actual bible carefully would have given me a clearer picture, but I got what I wanted out of the guide. Since I started with almost no knowledge of the bible, this gave me an overview. It was worth the time. The other two, not so much.
"Jesus did not impress me..." Not even that changing water into wine stuff? C'mon, that's cool, not to mention handy.
ReplyDelete> ". . . and I didn’t even like Poirot."
ReplyDeleteBravo! I have never been able to finish a Poirot story. On the other hand I do have the complete Miss Marple set in my personal library. (The only books in my library are those I expect to read at least one more time in my life.) Miss Marple is a little too "fluffy" at times, but I love her insistence on observation, her inquiring mind, and her skill at understatement. The earlier Marple stores are generally better reading, for me, but I have read them all.
On the Bible: excellent sources, for anyone making a non-scholarly but next-step-deeper study of Christianity, are:
1. Pheme Perkins, Reading the New Testament, latest edition (2nd?).
2. Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction.
Both books are written by Catholics for Catholics. They are clear and comprehensive. They are not critical in the way an atheist author's books would be, but they are quite informative while bowing to facts widely accepted by secular scholars. E.g., on p. 7 of RNT, Perkins, referring to the NT James letters says:
"Although it claims to be by 'James', the leader of the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, the careful Greek style of this work makes its composition by one of Jesus' Galilean relatives unlikely. However, it does represent the ethics of Jewish Christianity. Like [Letters to the] Hebrews, Jas is really not a letter but a sermon for the faithful. It has been transmitted with a brief letter of introduction to establish James as the author behind it."
That sort of information is helpful to me in trying to read "holy scripture" as theists read it--but with some critical distance.
LB: Seriously, I was not impressed by "magic." I guess if you really believe it, you'd have to think the guy was pretty special, but when you come in with the knowledge that that there is no supernatural, the guy just comes off like the magician brother on Arrested Development. A pathetic guy, desparate for attention. All of Jesus' moral authority came from his "magic" and his claim to be the son of god. There was nothing (that I read) in the NT that SHOWED why his morality was right, or that it worked, or anything at all. I guess I am just too firmly grounded in this world to even expect such a thing. Frankly, I'm freshly horrified to think that all of these Christians don't murder, steal, and lie, based on this faith. They claim that without god, there would be no morality, but they are the ones with nothing to ground their behavior. I really need to read SB's Prager series, since I'm thinking about these issues anyway.
ReplyDeleteBurgess: Those books sound quite good, but I'm not interested in that level of study. I was raised in an agnostic home and have almost no knowledge of Christianity, so just wanted to get a basic idea. Nice to hear your thoughts on Christie. I think I must have read the Marple books in the past. BTW, the general consensus of my book club was the same, that MoTOE was a subpar mystery.
The Poirot books aren't very good; I read a bunch of them after having seen the A&E series. I would recommend the series highly: it too is a *little* dull (if I watched it while I was tired, I invariably drifted in and out of sleep, but was engrossed if I was awake and fully focused), but David Suchet is excellent and the British Art Deco setting is wonderful.
ReplyDeleteBill, yes, I've heard such great things about the show. I won't count it out based on the books.
ReplyDelete