On "Gunman's Reckoning" by Max Brand ***

I was long under the impression that Max Brand was a pulp writing active and working today. This is because years ago when I worked in a bookstore, Brand's books still came out about once a month, staying on the shelves about a year before going out of print in favor of some other title. (Our western section was very small, mostly made up of Louis Lamour, which was the only author who actually sold much.) Brand wrote a lot, I suppose, and the mass market company publishing his stuff was still pumping it out on a schedule--putting it back into print and then taking it back out of print. But in terms of when he was writing, well, that part I had dead wrong. His stuff goes back to the 1920s; the publisher was merely recycling old stuff.

I discovered this rather recently, as I started reading this list of westerns, a genre I haven't spent much time with. I'm reading mostly chronologically, so I had intended next to turn to Zane Grey, but I wanted to be devoted to that book, and Brand was available for free public domain download on my phone--I figured I'd read it in between the more serious other reading I was doing, that is, whenever I found myself in a waiting room with nothing but my phone in hand.

The text definitely is what I would have expected from a pulp western. It was rather silly overall, with lots of tough talk, lots of fighting, lots of plot twists, and characters who seem too over-the-top to be real. The book centers on one Donnegan, but it doesn't start off with him. Rather, we're introduced first to some hobo on a train who is out to murder a man who has broken up his gang. That man who is to be killed as it turns out to Donnegan, who remains a rather shadowy figure for much of the novel. He seems more like a sheriff in these early passages, but once he jettisons from the train, holding on to his life, he is seen for what he is: a hobo also, a wanderer of the world--but one with a keen ability to wield a gun, to see through people, and to manipulate people.

Donnegan finds his way to a house, where he meets a woman (Lou) whom he almost instantly falls for, even though they've barely spoken a word. He wants a place to stay, but that requires the approval of the woman's father (the colonel), who won't take visitors. Donnegan insists, and somehow the old man comes to view Donnegan as an asset who can help him reclaim a mine for himself and his daughter's fiancé (Landis) for herself. In fact, the woman is in love with this fiance, who in turn has gone to work in the mining town, fallen in love with yet someone else, and run off with the old man's fortune. Donnegan is on the trail to help. Sure, he wants the daughter, but since the daughter wants this other man, Donnegan, because he truly loves this woman, sets out to get this other man back for her. I can't say the motivation here really convinces me: men will do lots for folks they love, but for someone they've barely met and mostly to enable that person to have someone else? It seems rather crazy to take one's life in hand that way.

 Donnegan's plan essentially involves making himself into a "big" deal in the town, impressing folks with his gunwork and some money he comes into through a shady interaction with another shady character, a gambler whom Donnegan robs and sends away. This plan involves making the mining town woman (Nelly) who has run off with the fiancé (Landis) of the woman who is in love with him (Lou) fall in love with Donnegan himself. The plan largely works, it seems, but as it turns out, the woman, Nelly, who has taken the fiancé is actually just doing so as a ruse, as she's in love with yet another man (Nick), who in turn is absconding with the old man's mining interests through the fiancé but only because the old man himself had absconded with the mining interests of a friend of Nick's. More plot twists follow, and love seems to come and go quick for the men and women at the center of the story. In the end, of course, there's a reckoning, a shootout, and most all is sorted out (except maybe what happens to Landis in the end, but who cares--he's just a plot point).

On "Christian Antioch" by D. S. Wallace-Hadrill ***

This work details the culture and ideas that developed among Christians in Antioch in the third century through into the seventh and even the ninth. As such, it's a bit out of my usual reading about Christian history, insofar as I mostly focus on the first two centuries. Still, knowing how thought progressed later can be helpful in understanding how it progressed earlier--or at least, that was my hope. The work is very much one of scholarship and not terribly accessible. Although terms are defined and people introduced, the degree to which such specialist terms and people are referenced throughout the work means that you have to read very slowly, take notes, or have recourse to some kind of reference work to get the full scope. That said, the gist of the arguments can still be gleaned from even a quicker read.

Watson-Hadrill shows how Antioch grew in distinctive ways from the process of thought that came to be more acceptable in Alexandria and, by extension in Rome. Antioch, though influenced by ideas coming out of these places, turned much of its attention to the east--to Mesopotamia and Persia, where its ideas found slightly more accepting ground.

After a brief introduction on the background of the church, Watson-Hadrill focuses on six major themes: biblical interpretation, historiography, the nature of God, the use of Greek philosophy, Christology, and desert monks. With regard to interpretation, I'd long read that Antioch took a more literal view of scripture as opposed to the Alexandrian way of reading scripture allegorically. What Watson-Hadrill brought out was somewhat surprising, however. Certainly, qualifiers must be made, insofar as many Antiochenes still used typography and this is really not easily differentiated at times from allegory. But what came to me as a surprise is the fact that some Antiochenes read the scriptures really literally--to extents that some come off sounding like today's secular reading of scriptures. They might go so far as to reject the idea, even though its made explicit in the New Testament, that Noah's ark or the Red Sea were types of baptism. More to the point, they often rejected prophecies taken to be about Jesus or future events, stating that these pertained only to ancient Israel.

With regard to historiography, the writers Watson-Hadrill studies are mostly later ones. As such, he talks a bit about Eusebius's history as being an interpretation of Christianity as reaching its fullness with the adoption of it by Constantine. It is a story, in other words, of triumph. Later historians in the region would try to pick up where Eusebius left off, but by then, such triumph was clearly not the end of the story, given how much infighting there had been in the church. As such, one might pick up the history from where Eusebius leaves off, but no one picks up the same story.

The nature of God, philosophy, and Christology discussions get truly into the weeds, with the Arians versus the Trinitarians and various groups in between (Monophysites, Nestorians). I always find this discussion a bit frustrating if not over my head. It's frustrating because these theologians get so caught up in the philosophy behind theology and lose track of, it seems to me, the real message--the way one should act (in some cases, it's not even clear that they're really that far apart in terms of thinking--but that doesn't stop them from treating each other horribly). The Nestorians, we might say, largely emphasized the human side of Jesus, while the Monophysites emphasized his divinity and the unity of God. Interestingly, Wallace-Hadrill points out how the Antiochenes and the Eastern church focused more on Aristotle's philosophy than Plato's, even though they might not have known it. Rather than the "ideas" being real and everything physical being a copy of those ideas, as in Plato's system; Aristotle focused on the particulars being real and the "ideas" being abstractions. As such, one can read the trinity as three persons who are unified as "God" as a kind of concept, rather than as a concept that finds form in three manifestations (although, in asserting that last part, I'm really presenting the trinity as modalism, which of course is another heresy to most Christian thinkers and so not a precise way to think of the concept).

In a final section, Wallace-Hadrill focuses on the religious devotion of many of the Antiochenes, Syrians, and Eastern Christians. He makes a case that their form of asceticism differed from that of the earlier Gnostics insofar as it was not asceticism based on the evil nature of physical things but on a desire to get closer to God, in the same way that Jesus was close. It's a valuable distinction but also, like so much that the church in the third through seventh centuries argued over, one that is difficult to really see. After all, the Gnostics too, even if rejecting the physical as evil, were aiming to get closer to God and the spiritual; that, after all, was the whole point.

On “Paul, Antioch, and Jerusalem” by Nicholas Taylor ***

This book aims to correct a common view that Paul squared off against Peter and James and the Jerusalem church, that he had one brand of Christianity, they another, and the two were essentially enemies after Paul attempted to correct Peter in Antioch. That said, even as Taylor aims to correct this view, he seems in many ways to defend it. Mostly, what he tries to do is point out that the situation was actually much more complex than that summary affords. In the end, we get a viewpoint that is more inclined to see Paul as squaring off against certain of the Jerusalem church but coming to respectful terms with Peter and James themselves sometime after that Antioch meeting. Much is made of the two gospels, one by Paul to Gentiles and one by Peter to Jews.

The author essentially aims to show that Paul's relationship with the Jerusalem church varied over time. He did not contact Jerusalem early on and did not have a relationship with the church early on. Only when called to deal with how fellowship with Gentiles should be configured did Paul really start to deal with Jerusalem. This led eventually to the confrontation with Peter. After that, he tried to establish his own apostleship independent of Jerusalem (and Antioch, which had accepted Jerusalem's authority over his own) and created a number of independent church. In time, however, he came to some reconciliation with Jerusalem, or at least with the lead apostles, enough that he, as per agreed upon earlier, went forward with plans to collect donations for the Jerusalem church as a way of folding his own churches in with the lead church. This agreement was actually via/through Antioch, so Paul was actually doing something beyond or outside that agreement. When the timing proved to olate for Antioch's own donations, he had to go forward to Jerusalem on his own, which then led to troubles with the Jerusalem authorities and his eventual deportation to Rome and death. Or at least, that's much of what I got out of it. Taylor, as noted, seems to thread the needle a lot, showing how Jerusalem was never not in charge except that Paul was somewhat independent of it. It's a complex argument—much more difficult than simply saying Paul was on his own or Paul was not on his own.

The book itself is based on Taylor's dissertation. It doesn't appear that more than small changes have occurred between the two. The book is long on literary review and very definitely aimed at scholarly audiences, as his argument is one that would likely appeal only to those deep in the mud over what Paul's break or nonbreak with Antioch and Peter really consisted of.

On "The Virginian" by Owen Wister ****

This book was a staple on the shelf at a bookstore where I used to work, a Penguin classic. I don't know that we ever sold a copy. It looked rather dull to me, like one of those books you should read but won't until it's assigned in some class. It never was. I never read it.

Here I am some thirty years later, and I read it, because Wister's book is known in some circles as the first true Western--a book with all the conventions of a cowboy novel--and actually written in the early 1900s rather than in the 1800s as I had once supposed. And it is a surprisingly good read--difficult to follow in parts but generally not too difficult, and in some ways narratively unconventional.

It is one of the few books I've read that is told from the perspective of a first-person narrator that is actually about a third person. Think Great Gatsby--which is really about Gatsby and Daisy and Tom and not so much about the guy telling the story--or to a lesser extent, On the Road, which in some ways is really about Dean Moriarty more than Sal Paradise, though Sal's ideas play a much larger role than in Gatsby. Here in "The Virginian," our narrator tells us all about a certain class of men that the Virginian perfectly fits and that is disappearing along with the American West. We don't learn too much about the narrator (he's from out east and doesn't really know much about Western ways, at least at the start), and many times in the narrative, the narrator completely disappears, as if he's simply recounting stories he's heard from the Virginian or his friends about the Virginian.

The Virginian is a southerner who for a long while has been a cow-puncher. One-half of the book revolves around his relationship with a man name Trampas, who early in the novel feels insulted by the Virginian at a game of cards. Thereafter, Trampas is forever looking to one-up the Virginian, and the Virginian constantly manages to put him down. Trampas is a brute, a man who only stops stealing cows from the ranch at which the Virginian works because after beinghired by the ranch. One day Trampas says insulting things about a lady from Vermont who has moved to the nearby town to be a school teacher; the Virginian defends her, even though he doesn't know her. He also, at some point, saves her from drowning. These incidents drive the Virginian to take an interest in the woman, even as Trampas again feels put out by the man. An ultimate insult occurs when the Virginian is put in charge of carrying cows east to Chicago with a crew; on the way back, Trampas attempts to abscond with the crew by telling them of the fortunes to be made in a mine. The train on which they travel breaks down; they're stuck. The mine is real temptation. The Virginian manages to keep his crew aboard by going frog hunting and then selling the cooked frog legs for high dollars to the various passengers and by telling a good number of tall tales about the great money to be made from frog legs. On his return to the ranch the Virginian is promoted to foreman.

Eventually Trampas quits, and cows begin disappearing again. Meanwhile, the schoolmarm is drawn to the Virginian but also repulsed. She has no desire in general to marry, but also she is disgusted by the way that our cowboy serves as the law in a place where there is no law--that is, the Virginian occasionally has to kill a man. Such an instance occurs when the Virginian and a crew are sent out to hunt down and kill a cattle rustler gang. They catch two, one of whom is an old friend of the Virginian's, and execution then proceeds.

Trampas is one who manages to get away, though the Virginian has no real proof. Meanwhile, Trampas buys a horse from a financially desperate man who promises to buy the horse back. Trampas treats the horse miserably and eventually kills it. This is the sort of man Trampas is. He also, in the process, realizes Indians are after him, and he departs; the Virginian is not so lucky. His schoolmarm finds him and nurses him back to health and finally falls for him.

This same Trampas executes the man who he has taken in as an accolade in order to escape from the lynch posse. And on the day of the Virginian's wedding tells the Virginian that he has till sundown to get out of town or face his death. And so we have the inevitable duel.

The book ends somewhat surprisingly on a quiet note, focusing mostly on the teacher and her Vermont family. One can think of it, I suppose, as an extended coda. In a sense, that's its proper function. After all, as the narrator states in the first chapter, he's documenting a kind of man who is disappearing from the landscape, as the West is being tamed.

On "Deep Time" by David Darling ***

Darling sets out to write the history of the universe from start to finish, in which man among that history is but a blip. Even so, man does ends up with a much larger role that perhaps time itself warrants, because, after all, we are the ones reading and writing and theorizing this history.

We start with the big bang, an event for which there seems no logical first cause. The next several chapters then focus on one particle, as it comes into being and as it works its way around this fledgling universe. Darling points out how much happens in those first few seconds but how, in a sense, because of that, time really is different at this point, wherein things are so condensed.

Darling does his best to keep things simple. Unfortunately, writing about such a wide span of time in such a short work means that there's a certain glossiness to the whole, a blurriness, such that at times I found my attention waining. It didn't help that I read the work online as an ebook. I think reading in print, taking a bit more time and being a bit more comfortable, would have made the reading experience better and thus the book better.

Although Darling admits that the universe would seem to need some sort of physical law for the components to work as they do--for positive and negative to exist and attract one another--he mostly keeps to a naturalistic view of everything. When we finally get to Earth and the formation of life, we are given the story of the primordial soup from which life springs. And then, for a heartbeat, we see man emerge.

After man's emergence, Darling spends most of the rest of the book talking about the spaceship Voyager, as it wanders out of the galaxy and into the wide universe. What happens to it as the years pass and as the universe itself continues to expand. Eventually, the stars start to go out. A few black holes swallow up vast swaths of the universe, but still other parts continue to wander aimlessly, cut loose from their suns and centers, until they too fall apart and return to their particulate state.

Another option, the one now less popular, Darling also explores, that the universe is not ever expanding, that it is limited, like a balloon, and so at some point begins to contract. This idea gets shorter attention.

Darling ends with a pull toward Eastern philosophy, but with a Western slant. He hypothesizes how many himself could change the universe, especially insofar as the observer is never really separate from what is observed. We are part of the universe itself. Our mind is the universal mind. It seems a happy note to go out on, even if the picture of dead stars wandering and disintegrating add infinitum is a rather dreary future to look out upon.

On “Ramona” by Helen Hunt Jackson ***

This is the first in a list of westerns I intend on reading, a genre I've read little of. Jackson's book probably doesn't come to mind when one thinks of western tropes, I suppose, but it's set in the Old West, so I'm calling it one. It's a love story of sorts, but really, it's a screed meant to defend Native Americans and shame white America for its treatment of them. Jackson wrote a nonfiction work on a similar subject, got little traction, and so wrote this novel, which proved a success in terms of popularity but judging from history did little to change the tide of what was actually happening.

The work is about Native Americans and the manner in which they are mistreated by the white Americans moving into California. It centers around the person of Ramona, a half-Indian gal, but the story starts off being about Senora Moreno and her ranch, which her son runs in name but which she technically has control of. (I'm about to summarize the happenings, so avoid reading on if you don't want the work spoiled for you.) The Morenos are Mexicans who lost a huge chunk of land to white settlers as well. Juan Can, the main helper on the ranch is growing old and broken, and one day Felipe goes to help him, gets a heat stroke, and is in grave condition. In steps Alessandro, an Indian, who has been requisitioned to help with the sheep shearing. He suggests the Felipe sleep under the stars, like the Indians. The treatment works wonders.

Meanwhile, Ramona falls for Alessandro, even as she once had an interest in Felipe. Senora Moreno opposes this love affair. Ramona shall not marry an Indian, as that is below her station, but at the same time, she would never be able to marry Filipe, because he is above hers. One wonders who would possibly be appropriate, since she is half-Indian and half-white. Moreno threatens to send Ramona to the nuns and also to cut off her inheritance. (It turns out that her father had left her a large dowry. Senora Moreno agreed to take Ramona in when Moreno's sister, who had keep the the gal, died. There is no love for her, however.)

Ramona runs off. Alessandro is a leader among his people and fairly well off, but the Indians of Temucula, whom he brings her to, it turns out, have been kicked off their land. The U.S. government doesn't recognize their property rights, and white Americans are moving in. Alessandro and Ramona flee to San Pasqual, where the same thing happens again.

Flustered and angry, the couple move to the high mountains, where the trails are difficult to navigate. At last, they should find piece. But the couple's baby grows sick, a white doctor offers no real help, and Alessandro goes crazy. Eventually, the leads him to mistake another man's horse for his own and he is shot as a horse thief.

Meanwhile, Senora Moreno dies. Filipe regrets letting Alessandro and Ramona be sent away, so he goes in search for them, which is complicated by the fact that they covered their tracks (even changing Ramona's name) so as not to be caught. It is shortly after Alessandro's death that he finds Ramona and brings her back to his ranch to take care of. He admits his love for her and marries her. He also concludes that California is no longer a good place for people of his ethnic background, so he sells out to Americans and heads to Mexico to live.

The work is in many ways very melodramatic, reminding me a bit of the plays one sees at Old West amusement parks.

On “Primitive Christianity in Its Contemporary Context” by Rudolf Bultmann ****

This classic work on the kind of thought that went into the making of the Christian sect takes a rather mainstream somewhat-secular scholarly approach to the subject, arguing that Christian practice is a mix of Jewish practice, mystery religions, and Greek philosophy. Although a translation from German, the text reads very much like a lyrical sermon in places, which one might think would wear thin but which actually grew on me. Bultmann quotes extensively from the scriptures, and although there is a fairly robust notes section, he seems often to avoid pointing to other scholars for his assertions, which makes for something of a need to take Bultmann at his word. That he is making claims many other scholars make means this may not be as problematic as it might sound; at the same time, too much emphasis on common ideas means that one isn't necessarily given reason to be convinced of some assertions since there isn't recall to actual primary sources (let alone, secondary) for them.

Bultmann starts with Jewish (really Old Testament) ideas about creation and the afterlife, largely asserting that such ideas grew out of Canaanite and Babylonian religion. Only after Jewish society mixed with that of Persia did ideas about resurrection begin to take shape within the Jewish faith itself. This is a common assertion but one that is not without those who have claimed otherwise—one wouldn't know that there are disagreements with regard to where the teaching about the resurrection derived from reading Bultmann, however. Still, one of the most interesting points Bultmann makes is how the Jewish faith became increasingly future oriented, as its own national problems and eventual demise took shape. That future orientation would in turn, to an extent, set up early Christian teachings, even as Christianity would itself eventually take more of a focus on the present, once it became clear Christ's second coming was not in the near future, though the “future” would survive in the Christian orientation toward an afterlife.

Bultmann then explores Greek philosophy—most especially its growth out of concerns regarding the governorship of the city-state. As the city-state fell by the wayside, other views came to the fore, including Stoicism and the various mystery religions. Bultmann does a great job of showing parallels between these two sets of beliefs with Christian belief, including lack of tie to specific cultures, and openness to peoples of all classes. (Bultmann does not, however, seem at all cognizant of the belief among many scholars that many of the so-called mystery religions did not gain widespread appeal until the second century, after primitive Christianity would have forged its basic ideas; if that is the case, then such religions may have affected Christianity in the second century and later but likely had much less influence on the first decades of the faith.)

Bultmann also looks at the influence of Gnosticism on the church, drawing comparisons between the two systems, mostly looking at parallels, such as a belief in a redeemer and renunciation of concerns with the physical world. A final section looks at early Christian ideas and how all these varying influences helped to forge what became Christianity.

On “Antioch and Rome” by Raymond E. Brown and John P. Meier ****

This work is split into two parts, one by Meier on Antioch and one by Brown on Rome. The two men opted to write the book together, in parts, because they saw certain parallels in the development of Christianity within the two churches and thought it best that by pairing up they could write a book that showed off these parallels.

The basic point of view of the two authors falls in line with the common one that Paul represented some kind of radical break from Jewish adherence to the law among Christians and that Peter stood at the other end, as one aligned with James and who insisted on Gentile adherence to Jewish customs. That said, both see Paul and Peter as moderating their views as their ministries matured, such that they came to more closely resemble one another. Still, as the authors state up front, it was Peter's more moderate view (between James and Paul) that won the day, even if some of Paul's radical ideas were folded into the Christian church. This is not a view I share (I tend to take the “all is good” vibe represented in Acts and other Scriptures as real rather than as a gloss intended to put the best face on what was an intense rivalry and disagreement); nevertheless, there is much to appreciate about the book, insofar as the authors do a great job of summarizing much of the scholarship about the church in these two cities and, even more so, about many of the few early sources we have that might relate to these churches.

Meier posits four basic views among early Christians: a conservative strain that insisted Gentiles keep the full Jewish law, including becoming circumcised; a moderate conservative strain that insisted on some Jewish practices but not circumcision; a moderate liberal strain that insisted on neither Jewish food laws nor circumcision; and a liberal straing that rid the church of not only Jewish food customs and circumcision but also of Jewish festivals. Although the authors seem to posit that Peter was of the moderate conservative strain and Paul somewhere between moderate liberal and liberal and that Peter won out, it seems to me that if one takes such a stand, it was actually the liberals who eventually won out, as contemporary Christianity exhibits little of the Jewish faith outside of the use of its scriptures.

Along the way, Meier makes a good case for why Matthew was written in Antioch around 90 CE, and also explores similar dating, place, and authority for the Didache and the Ignatian letters, including which rescension should be accepted. Brown similarly explores the authorship and tie of certain other books to Rome, including 1 Peter, Hebrews, and 1 Clement. Although there is room for disagreement, the arguments are well reasoned and give one much to think about with regard to the development of these two Christian communities.

On “The Incredible Human Potential” by Herbert W. Armstrong ****

This is another Armstrong book I hadn't read in decades. I enjoyed its thoroughness. Likely several booklets, that WCG offered, such as Why Were You Born?, essentially were chapters in this text. But put all together, the work has a kind of vibe. In many ways, it sums up the teachings of the Worldwide Church of God in the late 1970s. In that sense, it seemed a bit dated, but it also captures the spirit of many books of the era—that vibe. There's a kind of spiritualist self-help feel to it. This is what you could become, what God intends for you!

The work seems most dated (and disappointing) in its discussion of the church. Armstrong admits that the church is the people, and yet at times, he pretty clearly ties the definition of the church into the legally incorporated organization he served as the legal head of. It seems self-serving and given that that entity has mostly ceased to exist in any recognizable form, it lends a lack of credence and applicability to some of the material.

But in other respects, he lays out the faith as many have understood it, a reading that is distinct among Christian sects: God's purpose for our lives, how human minds work, why there is so much evil, and what happens after death.

On "Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era" by Wayne A. Meeks and Robert L Wilkes ***

This very short volume provides an introduction and background information about Christianity in Antioch largely as a means to introduce two sets of fourth-century documents written in Antioch: a group of letters by Libanius and a couple of sermons by John Chrysostom. The unifying reason for presenting the two sets of works is the writings are about the Jewish people of Antioch.

Libanius mentions the Jews offhandedly in a kind of historian context; I found myself more drawn to Chrysostom's work, which heavily focuses on them and their interaction with Christians, whom he sees as too easily drawn to the religious practices of. We are presented only with two (the first and last) of his homilies against Jews, but they, especially the first, are incredible in terms of showcasing the degree to which some older Christian--that is, Jewish--traditions persisted, despite the attempts of men like Chrysostom.

On “From Jerusalem to Antioch” by Jerome Crowe ***

Crowe's work is an accessible good read. If one wants a basic introduction to Jerusalem and Antioch in the first century, this would be a good work to try. Crowe's main task here is to try to explain how the faith changed as it moved from a Jewish mileiu to a Gentile, from a Jerusalem context to an Antioch one. He wishes to show how religion alters across cultures. It's an interesting premise, but on that count, the work seems a bit superficial.

The gist of the book focuses on various ways in which church functions differed in the two locations—preaching, doing missionary work, the mode of worship, the specific message, organization. Most of the text recounts basic details that most people would already be familiar with. In Jerusalem, converts were Jews and met among Jews; they focused on a kingdom to be brought by Jesus, and all fit well within the system already set up. When things came to Antioch, the message had to change, especially as it moved into the pagan realm and out of the Jewish and Jewish curious realm. Now, the focus became philosophical, focused on the “one God” as seen via his son. Meetings moved from synagogue to houses, and so on. Much transformation obviously did occur, but the changes discussed don't seem very deeply analyzed. We get an accounting of how things were different, knowing that the reason was differing cultures, but not so much a discussion of why such changes were made.

“On Theophilus of Antioch” by Rick Rogers ***

We don't know much about Theophilus as it turns out, and Rogers's book doesn't tell readers much more as a result. Although the book's subtitle promises “a life,” we get few details of that. What we know of Theophilus mostly comes from his three-volume work, To Autolycus, and it is that which Rogers spends most of his book recounting—quoting passages from it, and then explaining what those passages mean. I didn't feel like I gained much from the work's first two-thirds. It's been a while since I read Theophilus's work, so the summary was useful, but a rereading of his volumes would have served much the same value. I was hoping for more background, more cultural insight. Most of what we get in that regard is Rogers's breakdown of the volumes into three kinds of works, explaining how to see the work as an apology, as it is usually read, is perhaps not quite as useful as seeing it as also a teaching work.

Where the book grows most useful is in its final third, where Rogers does his true analysis of the subject. Here, he plays off the work of R. M. Grant, whose work he also summarizes. Grant's thesis on Theophilus largely claims that the man was a low-Christology adoptionist (one who believed that Jesus has no prebirth divinity and who was “adopted” as divine at the start of his physical life) of a Jewish stamp (much like the Ebionites). Rogers critiques this view, arguing that although Theophilus claims to be a Christian yet talks very little about Christ in his work, the work was largely intended for a particular purpose that did not require extensive discussion about Christ's role (indeed, such discussion may have turned off his intended pagan audience). As such, it's difficult to assess Theophilus's view of Christ.

That Theophilus was viewed favorably by later early writers such as Eusebius and Jerome, however, suggests to Rogers that he was “orthodox enough” and that his view of Christ may well have been more line with thinkers like Ignatius and Ireneaus. Indeed, Rogers points out, Theophilus's heavy emphasis on law keeping would seem to suggest a closer tie to emphases that the writer James makes in his New Testament letter rather than views outside the pale. (Rogers sees James and Paul not so much as opposites—Paul had his own way of emphasizing the efficacy of the law—but as writers who emphasized different aspects of faith.) Theophilus talks little of the death of Jesus allowing the forgiveness of human sin (indeed, doesn't really mention it), instead emphasizing, like James, that Christian faith (and the salvation that comes with it) demands an adherence to high ethical standards set forth in Scripture. Such emphasis would have played well to Theophilus's purpose of attempting to win interest from a non-Christian, who would have been more drawn to the ethical dimensions of Christianity than to the theological ones.

On "Ignatius of Antioch" by Allen Brent ***

This study of one of the early "bishops" of Antioch, one who wrote seven letters that are preserved for us and that were written on an extended journey across Asia Minor to the Italian peninsula on his way to be martyred by being fed to wild beasts in the Colosseum in Rome. The story may seem a bit farfetched (Why an overland trip? Would he really be free to talk and write so much?), but Brent discusses in large part what the circumstances were that caused the situation and why just such a thing was possible in the second century. With regard to being able to write and visit on his journey or even being sacrificed in Rome, Brent brings out various accounts that predated or only shortly postdated Ignatius's experience. Cicero, for example, a century earlier, makes note of prisoners being transported to Rome for gladiatorial games. Lucian and Samosota wrote a satire that closely mimics the Ignatian experience of people visiting a traveling prisoner--and some laws make mention of attempts to curtail such free and easy access, showing that a bribe certainly helped to make such visits possible and that laws had to be written to try to prevent just such occurrences.

Why Ignatius would have traveled all the way to Rome is another question that Brent addresses. He sees it as a case where putting Ignatius to death in Antioch would have created too much of a stir. Sending him away, thus, avoids the potential for more violence and fighting. What would Ignatius have done that would have created such stir? Brent makes the case that the strife was all internal to the Christian faith--namely, how to run the church. Ignatius was a proponent of a one-bishop-rule system. By placing himself in the fray and refusing any attempts at pardon, he made a martyr of himself in order to bring unity to the church in the city. Guilt-riddled, men might see what he was willing to do and change their ways accordingly. (I'm not sure I quite believe this, but Brent makes a decent case using cryptic comments from the letters).

Ignatius's main arguments for a bishop, slated next to a council of presbyters and a set of deacons, is drawn, Brent argues, largely from pagan mystery religion and Grecian city-state political systems under Roman oversight. The metaphorical counterpart in Christianity is the Eucharist, in which authority sits in a U-shape. The bishop stands in for God the Father, the presbyters as god's council (a type of the apostolic council), and the deacons as types of Christ, who take the bread and wine into the congregation. Ignatius, in his journey to Rome, takes on a procession like that made within the mystery religions, in which again he stands in for God and his various greeters as stand-ins for the gods, all in an effort to bring unity to the church (as such a procession would bring unity to the state), with the sacrifice to follow at the end. Various quotes from the letters seem to somewhat back up this claim. Indeed, even if Ignatius was not modeling his argument on pagan rites, as Brent seems to be arguing, he likely was at least applying similar terms to make his point, even as the New Testament writers use traditions such as Roman athletic events to make their points.

Ignatius's letters, some thirteen or so in number, are accepted or rejected a spurious by various critics. Six are rejected by almost all, but the other seven are more so accepted. It is these seven that Brent devotes his time examining, and these seven that he argues actually are legitimate. One chapter is given over to countering the arguments of some more-recent scholars who reject some or all of the letters. Another chapter is devoted to how Polycarp's letter fits in with the Ignatian letters. Polycarp's one surviving letter is largely seen as authentic, but some scholars see the mention of Ignatius in it as a forger's interpolation. Brent seems pretty convincing in noting that probably the main reason we even have Ignatius's letters is that Polycarp gathered them, even as his letter makes mention of doing.

Brent also addresses why Polycarp would save such letters if they maintain a position in which pagan ideas are used to justify a version of church government. He sees the link here largely as both Ignatius's and Polycarp's fight against Docetism, the martyrdom of Ignatius being perhaps one of the greatest arguments against the doctrine.

On "The Church in Antioch in the First Century CE" by Michelle Slee ***

This work essentially sets out to examine two sets of Christian communities that existed in the church in Antioch during the first century: one open to Christian converts and one that expected converts to become fully Jewish before becoming Christian. Slee bases this reading on the disagreement that is recounted in Acts 15 and more especially in Galatians 2, and then sees the Didache and the book of Matthew as being written by these two separate communities (the Didache by that of the community open to Gentiles and Matthew by that open only to Jews). The argument is very clearly set forth--outlined at the start, summarized as one hits each chapter, and then summarized again at the end of the book. What could have been difficult reading was very clear.

Slee also does a very good job of summarizing the scholarship surrounding her various assertions, both those for and against her positions. The effect is to give readers a full sense of the opinions out there, but it also to an extent takes from the overall convincingness of her case. Her opinion seems, in such context, merely yet another one rather than the distinctive answer. Indeed, I felt as if she were quite straining in her overall thesis by the end, because so many various "facts" have to line up as she sees them for her overall point to be true.

We have to, for example, accept that the Didache was written in the first century (the earlier the better) and that Matthew was written around 80 CE--and both in Antioch. Many scholars agree with these dates and the place, but if one doesn't, nearly the entire argument falls away. Further, one must accept that James and the Jerusalem church, after making an agreement with regard to how to treat Gentiles, went back on that agreement, thus splitting Paul off from the other apostles and most especially James. Slee even tries to make a case that the letter reproduced in Acts was not written in Jerusalem or at the conference at all--rather, it was created in Antioch by a Didachist faction and the writer of Acts introduced it into his account (the real agreement, which was nevertheless rescinded, was noted earlier in James's speech; because the speech and the letter don't line up precisely, one must be from some other source--as if there would be any point in quoting both if they did line up precisely!).

The center of all of this argument was tablefellowship, and more precisely the Eucharist. The Didachist was open to "Law-free" Gentiles; the writer of Matthew expected all Gentiles to become Jews so that they could share meals and was only recently even open to that. But what is a Eucharist? What does "Law-free" mean? What is Judaism (when no such unitary concept actually existed during much of the first century)? Slee didn't, for me, adequately define these terms. She admits that the Eucharist at this time wasn't well defined, which is likely, but it was unclear to me how it differed from tablefellowship in general or a love feast. If it is only the bread and wine portion of a meal, why would that be special at this time? And if the Gentiles are "Law-free," are they free to worship pagan gods or do other things forbidden in the Scriptures as long as they don't bring improper meat to the meal? The whole issue with tablefellowship with Gentiles was the idea that they were impure based on the possibility that they might be involved with pagan worship, even indirectly, in what they ate. The decree in Acts 15 was to mitigate that. So "Law-free" seems an awkward wording to use, since it imposes part of the law. And how exactly is Matthew a defense of a Jewish Christianity open only to fully converted Jews, when so much of the book critiques the Pharisees, even if it does not (as Slee brings out) critique the Scribes in the way the other Gospels do? (Slee sees the critiques as being actually about Christian factions.) Slee makes her arguments, but in the end, I found many of them unconvincing.

On “Aphraates and the Jews” by Frank Gavin ***

This short text aims to explain how the fourth-century Eastern Christian writer Aphrahat drew many of this ideas from the Jews. The first half provides basic information about life for Christians and Jews under the Sassanian Empire and the basics of the relationship between the two religious groups. The Jews seemed to have faired somewhat better, but neither group did all that well, as their religious affiliation's tie to the Roman Empire was the window through which the empire's leaders saw them: not so loyal as to be Zorastrian, like real Persians. For Jews, this meant trouble especially during the time of Julian, who promised the Jews a rebuilding of their temple; for Christians, the trouble was more constant once the Romans accepted it as the main faith of their empire. Jews occasionally, apparently, even made trouble for Christians. Christians didn't do themselves much of a favor insofar as they seemed to actually favor the Romans, given the views of the Romans about them.

Despite all that, the Christian faith and Jewish faith were still relatively close, especially having a common origin. In the latter half of the book, Gavin looks in particular at a few of Aphrahat's Demonstrations to show how Aphrahat's words mimic those of the rabbis.

On “The Formation of Christianity in Antioch” by Magnus Zetterholm ****

A really good intellectual work will often pull one toward a new way of thinking, slowly and then all of a sudden, providing an epiphany similar to what a character might receive at the end of a work of fiction. Zetterholm's book is such a work. Perhaps not quite as much of a history of Christian church in  Antioch as I would have liked, it managed to make me rethink a bit what's going on in Ignatius's letters and why the Gentile church would have an interest in a gospel mostly aimed at Jewish concerns.

Zetterholm's basic thesis is that the parting of the ways of Christians from Jews was not so much that as it was a separating of Jesus-believing Jews from Jesus-believing Gentiles. This may seem obvious, but Zetterholm focuses on what the implications for such a statement really mean.

The book begins by looking at the role of the Jewish community in Antioch. As Zetterholm makes plain, that community was not a unified front. As with any immigrant community, Jewish peoples in Antioch fell into various factions. Here, Zetterholm uses social theory to make his point. (The long summaries of such theory are perhaps what makes the work very much one of scholarly tone and less interesting than it would otherwise be.) That theory essentially posits that such immigrant communities have varying sets of people: some aim to fit in more with the community to which they've moved, some become more inclined to focus even more on preserving the culture from which they have come. And then, there are folks of various stripes in between, who merge some aspects of the old home with that of the new. So some Jewish people gave up practicing “Judaism,” while others became much more devout, and still others continued some practices while abandoning and adopting others. Judaism, at this time, Zetterholm claims, although not the definitive religion we now know it to be still had unique characteristics that all the various sects would have agreed on, even if they didn't agree on all the particulars or the meaning of those characteristics.

Gentiles in Antioch would have been attracted to Jewish synagogues because of the community that such gatherings offered. Antioch as a city would have been a dangerous and lonely place full of crime and disease. The Jewish synagogue would have offered a reprieve from such a world in ways few others legal gatherings could have. The Jesus movement's impact within those synagogues would mean that some of the synagogues more open to Gentiles would have been affiliated with the faith being forged at that time.

Much ink is spilled at this point on the Acts 15 conference and Paul's letter to the Galatians, as it is in any work about Antioch. Zetterholm, like many, if not most, Christian writers posits a split between followers of James and Paul that would be relatively permanent, with Paul demandings Gentiles remain Gentiles and James demanding Gentiles become Jewish. (The disputes in the New Testament, I would counter, don't really show this.) Nevertheless, the implications of the differing factions do play out in an intriguing way as Zetterholm sees it.

The reason is that after the destruction of the temple and the imposition of the tax on all Jewish people, Gentile believers would have been placed in an awkward position. All Jews, whether practicing or not, were subject to the tax. Gentiles, by contrast, would have only been subject to the tax if they became Jews. As such, they'd have had strong reasons not to become Jewish. Within the synagogue, however, in some communities, they could not take part unless they became “Jewish” by taking on Jewish customs. If the opted not to become Jewish, as Paul had told them they should not be, then the couldn't be full-fledged members of the synagogue and, as such, couldn't be part of a legally recognized colegium. So either they had to become fully Jews (and pay the tax) or they couldn't meet with the synagogue and thus were subject to punishment for illegal gatherings—a penalty either way. Efforts to justify Christianity to Roman authorities (as per the second-century apologists), in his reading, thus become efforts to become legally recognized gatherings separate from Jewish gatherings. As such, criticism of the Jewish faith within such writings are part of an effort to help those Roman authorities distinguish the two from one another, but with the Gentiles now claiming to better represent the ancient faith written out in the Jewish scriptures. Thus, they are still a synagogue group of sorts, in the ancientness of their beliefs, but not of the Jewish stamp, in the rebelliousness of their subjects. When Roman authorities finally do recognize the different several centuries later, anti-semitism has become part of parcel of early Christian teaching.

On “The Day the Sun Died” by Yan Lianke ****

This is the last book on my Chinese literature reading list, a work by a contemporary author that plays mostly as dark fantasy.The work is one that would have likely fascinated me at a slightly younger age, as it heavily involves sleep walking and that line between sleeping and waking.

The text centers around a young man, a child maybe, a simpleton, who grows up the son of people who run a funeral accessories store. At one time, his father worked with his brother-in-law in the crematorium business. His job was to inform on people who bury their dead relatives, as the law no longer allows that due to a shortage of land. There was much money in it, but eventually, the father felt too much shame in informing on his neighbors, so he gave it up. His brother-in-law, by contrast, makes good money, burning up bodies. What's left, often, is a bit of oil, much like grease is left when one cooks ground beef. (I'd never thought of that aspect of crematory work.) This oil, he sells for a nice sum. The father decides to buy that oil at an inflated price, as long as the price always remains the same, in part to make up for his once having been an informer. He does nothing with the oil—simply stores it. You know that oil is going to play a role somewhere later in the story, and it certainly does.

The story itself focuses on one long night, when various atmospheric forces block out the sun and result in people falling very easily to sleep. Pandemonium ensues, as people live out their dreams—often killing themselves or others. Others stay awake and take advantage of the situation. This part makes little sense to me, since we don't all start committing crimes because folks are sleepwalking or asleep. Otherwise, every night would be scary indeed. Nevertheless, looting and riots follow.

With no sign of the night ending and fights become more intense, the boy's family tries to come up with a plan to bring back the sun and wake people up.

Perhaps the strangest element of the plot is the author's own namesake taking part in the novel. The boy is a big fan of the author's novels, and were I more of a reader of Yan Lianke, I would know whether the plots, quotes, and titles cited are real or just made up. Nevertheless, the author is there in the town, sleepwalking among the inhabitants—and eventually gathering notes for the novel.

On "Playing for Thrills" by Wang Shuo ***

This book starts off with a very interesting premise, arguably even a good one. It's a mystery. A guy finds out he's the major suspect in a murder case, the death of a friend of his ten years ago. He's got to clear his name, find an alibi. The week of the supposed murder, however, he doesn't remember. Where was he? What was he doing? Could he have been the one who murdered his friend?

Imagine The Hangover as a murder mystery, and you've got kind of the gist of this work. The protagonist doesn't have a great memory. Of course, I probably wouldn't know my whereabouts from a given week ten years ago either, except that I live a very humdrum life and so could probably point to being at work, but after work? I would have no idea and little way to track that down if I hadn't taken notes in some way. Or maybe the main character was on a bender. The novel then tracks his attempts to find out what he was doing that week, as he interviews friends he knew and places that he frequented at the time.

The protagonist is something of a ne'er-do-well, a guy who spends most of his time gambling and playing around with friends, and when he can still manage, chasing tail. So are most of the characters in the novel. This makes for some degree of difficulty telling the characters apart. There's a man in a striped shirt whom nobody knows who was at the last dinner at which they saw the murdered man. But later in the book, other friends wear such a shirt, the murdered man does in a dream/memory, and even the protagonist. The characters are in a way interchangeable, which makes them a bit less interesting.

And when one doesn't have characters to root for, it all becomes about the plot. This plot is loose and goofy but substantive enough to sustain two-thirds of the book. But at that point, the novel takes an odd turn, one that plays well with the kind of players all these people are but that blows all the suspense in the book and makes it, well, not terribly interesting anymore. One gets the sense that even the author isn't all that interested anymore, from the way the last few pages of the book go.

There's probably a lot here that is missing in translation. Footnotes explain some of the cultural context, some of which I knew but most of which I didn't. There are jokes that flew right by me, not being Chinese, references to classic works and authors. Such makes me appreciate all the more works that manage to speak to a person in translation, because they speak not just to the culture in which they arose but to the human experience. This book didn't really do that, even though it made a stab at trying to say something about identity and jokes and other human things; there wasn't, in the end, enough heart.

On "Christianity in the Second Century" by Emily J. Hunt. ****

The subtitle of this book is "The Case of Tatian," which is what this book is really about. I'd have flipped the two titles were it me, since the main title is deceptive and too broad for what the author does here. Certainly, some of what she writes about Tatian establishes ideas about broader trends in second-century Christianity, but the book does not really lay claim to that focus. If I'd wanted a general book about second-century Christianity, I'd have turned elsewhere. Lucky for me, I came to this work because I was looking for a work about Tatian, and it was a ready read.

Tatian was a second-century Christian who grew up a pagan in Assyria. At some point, he went west, became a student of Justin's and then, after Justin's death, apostasized, becoming a gnostic, moving back toward Assyria, and disappearing from history. Or so that is what most histories will tell you, based on the writings of various early church historians. Hunt calls this apostasization into question. The second century was rife with different points of view, and while Tatian's may not have been mainstream, they were hardly gnostic. It seems that the label was assigned him possibly for political reasons by these later church historians.

The two works Tatian is most known for are his Oration to the Greeks, which still survives, and the Diatesseron, one of the first harmonies of the Gospels--and the only version of the Gospels available in much of the church of the East for the first few centuries. Hunt looks closely at the first work to ferret out Tatian's points of view and his likely influences. She comes to believe that Tatian was heavily influenced by his teacher Justin and possibly eastern Christian view but not as much by the Gnostic Valentinus or Greco-Roman philosophy (except insofar as the ideas of philosophy permeated early Christianity generally). There are, of course, some problems with depending so much on the Oration, the main one being that we're not sure when it was written and and therefore what stage of Tatian's point of view it represents. If written early, he could well have changed much of his perspective later on (Hunt doubts not so much the early writing but the idea that he would have actually changed his point of view so greatly as to accept Gnostic ideas, something I find a bit dubious, knowing how some people really do flip in terms of belief systems over the course of their lives); if written later, of course, we're on pretty firm ground to use it to argue that the various early historians had Tatian wrong in many respects.

As per the Oration and what little we have of the Diatesseron, it is evident that Tatian did have ascetic sympathies, much like most other Eastern Christians. It's also clear, however, that he did not believe in more than one God, an evil and a good god, a pleroma of aeons, or the immortality of the soul, as most Gnostics would have. Rather, like Justin, he embraced the resurrection. He thought there to be just one God (curiously, he rarely mentions Jesus in the Oration). He believed demons to be fallen angels. Perhaps one of the most unique aspects of his thought, insofar as what Hunt describes, was his belief that people had been created with the spirit of God but that that spirit was removed when Adam sinned; the Christian process thus is one of having that spirit restored.

As with so much of early Christian history, however, much of Tatian's life and thought is hidden in shadows. We have only the one work and a few early comments about him, each with their own agenda. Hunt's work adds now, many centuries later, to that set of comments; there have been and will be others to do so.

On "Marcion" by Adolf von Harnack ***

This introduction to Marcion is one of the few book-length critical studies on the gnostic teacher of the second century--Marcion, the creator of a New Testament consisting only of seven of Paul's letters and an edited version of the Gospel Luke. That seems to be his main claim to fame, when one reads about him in other works. He posited that the god of the New Testament was a different one than the Old Testament and that all the rest of the Bible was twisted by Jewish thinkers and believers, who had fallen for the doctrines of the old fake god.

As one commentator said Harnack's work, Harnack makes Marcion almost into a Protestant hero. Here is a man who understands the difference between the god of the Old and New Testament, who had the guts to know that grace is by faith alone. Indeed, parts of Harnack's work definitely come across that way, especially in the introduction and conclusion. But Harnack does draw a line at claiming there were actually two gods; he sees that as Marcion's bridge to far for Christians.

In between, however, Harnack does a good job of showing some of the subtle aspects of Marcion's thought. One would get the sense that Marcion was an antinomialist, and yet in reality, he was an ascetic. If the Old Testament is the work of a evil creator god, then one must do what one can to prevent the continuation of the creation. That means no sex, no joy in physical things. They're all fake and keep people bound to that fake god, just as much as the law, so one is to avoid them. Interestingly, while Marcion saw much of the New Testament as corrupted (thus his throwing away of much of it), he saw the Old Testament as an unadulterated complete work. And it is in fact the means by which one comes to know the difference between the good god and the bad one, so even though he dismisses it as scripture, it has a purpose. As Harnack implies, Marcion wouldn't have even had a problem with much of the content of the law (no murder, adultery, etc.); rather, his problem was with the motivation for keeping that law. The good god is all love; he will not judge. Rather, one falls out of contact with that god and thus loses out on the goodness. The evil god, by contrast, punishes for not keeping his law. But the evil god and his law will one day pass away with all that is physical.

Of particular interest to those technically inclined is Harnack's inventory of items that Marcion deleted from or changed in Luke's Gospel and even from Paul's letters (I hadn't realized he'd made changes to Paul's letters before; makes one wonder what exactly Marcion thought he was looking at that he felt like he knew better than the texts handed to him; I mean, if these works are full of errors, why bother trying to rescue them?).

Marcion, according to Harnack (and many who have written about Marcion since), was also the impetus between the canonization of the New Testament and the organization of the larger Christian church. In this view, his New Testament predated that of the orthodox church; it was to refute him that the church came up with its own list of acceptable books. Likewise, his church was earlier organized, in this view, with a hierarchy of structure and government.

On “The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature,” edited by Joseph S. M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt ****

This is the second volume of Chinese literature put out by Columbia University Press that I've read. The first was classic lit; this volume deals chiefly with the literature of the twentieth century. The shame in that is that when the two volumes are put together, the one to two hundred years in between get short shift. Like the previous volume, I was not a fan of the manner in which this volume was put together. As someone who knows little about Chinese literature and who is trying to learn more about it, I would have relished a bit more attention to context. Why these selections? And what do these selections say about the state of Chinese literature at the time? This volume, rather, is set up like a literary anthology in which the editors' voices are relatively muted; the “literature” you're reading is the important stuff, even if you know little about it. There are no headnotes. Instead, there is a set of short biographies placed at the start of the entire book, forcing a reader to go back and forth between the selections and the bios for info. The bios give good life info and sometimes a little info about the selection itself, but it's hard to glean, from the bios and the overall setup, why the editors chose some works or how relatively important the writer or the piece is to the overall body of modern Chinese literature. I found myself no longer checking the bios by about halfway through the volume, as they began to run together.

Intriguingly, the editors chose to provide the volume in three sections, with three subsections each. First, the anthology is split up by genre: Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction. Then, it is split up by period: pre-Mao (from 1918), Mao, and post-Mao. Personally, I would have preferred the genres not be split out, so that the work would have been wholly chronological, but I can see the value in the generic splits. The fiction section is the longest, taking up 5/7 of the overall text, with the poetry and nonfiction each taking up about a seventh. Initially, I would have thought the fiction—short stories, not chapters from longer novels—too long, but the editors choice here seems to be wise. It is the stories that are the strongest section of the book. The poetry, I found, though often full of profoundly beautiful imagery did not seem on par, as a whole, to the classic Chinese poetry of years before, the images often not evoking a parallel track of thought about life. The nonfiction was also not so inspiring or interesting to me. As such, the stories proved to be the section that most seemed to reflect the concerns of daily life for modern Chinese.

What is evident in the pre-Mao section stories is the poverty that must have dominated China before the coming of communism. Such helps explain why the revolution came about. One gets the sense in some tales, which present a more communistic view, of the hope some held out for revolutionaries. But mostly, one gets the feeling for the overall povery of the population. The Mao section of stories present only a few of idealism. That's because so much of the literature that the editors have chosen comes out of Taiwan. But there's probably good reason—idealistic stories of Maoist society do not generally make for interesting reading, except maybe the first one or two times. The Post-Mao world is surprisingly open about the failures and horrors of the Cultural Revolution—neighbors turning in/on neighbors to keep from being turned in themselves, no one truly guilty of anything outside a willingness to sell others out for alleged lack of loyalty to save one's own skin; old revolutionaries who have come to see the folly of their hopes; local party leaders who use their authority to perform heinous acts.

My two favorite pieces in the book stemmed from this post-Mao period. The first, “The Tunnel” by Chen Ruoxi, concerns a lonely older man whose adult children are devoted to the party and who are making their way up various government positions. This older man cannot be and is not allowed to have a love interest, since that would interfere with inheritance and potentially with the children's party status. During the course of the story and his service on one of the party committees helping to aid the community, he finds himself falling for a widow, whose husband had been accused of being against the party and had been taken away. The father finds various amusing ways to have small trysts with this woman, sneaking out, for example, to see movies with her. But the family will NOT allow him to remarry—it is simply shameful for an older man and would hurt his children's own economic needs. One day, the couple opts to skip the movie and go for a hike in some lesser known part of the city. They find a tunnel and some alone time. The ending here is heartbreaking, just as the man's experience of being denied love would have been.

The other story, and a very short one at that, that stood out to me was Liu Yichang's “Wrong Number,” not so much for its emotional connection as for its technical trickery. The tale is one told twice, once without the “wrong number” phone call and once with it, showing how a few minutes—a dead butfferfly, if you will, to use the old sci-fi trope—can change the course of one's life.

On “The Common People of Ancient Rome” by Frank Frost Abbott ***

This work had moments of lucid prose focused on the “common” people, but the majority of the early portions of the work focused on language and literature. In a sense, I understand why. We have mostly just what is written to gather information about such people. But in that sense, the work becomes one of linguistics and reflections on literary statements about the lives of such folks, itself not the most pedestrian discussion. I was fairly bored before Abbott got to stuff I was actually interested in—economics. Life, as Abbott notes, was quite hard for most common folks and luxuries few. Indeed, things we would consider staples, such as a well-balanced diet were not to be had. Bread and water might be your livelihood. Much of this I'd read elsewhere by now, for example, regarding housing and trade guilds. Still, it was interesting. Abbott closes with a couple portraits of Romans about whom we know a little from writings that survive. These were not “common” people, however, in my estimation, being friends to Caesar and various political entities. As Abbot''s work makes clear in its selection of things to discuss, finding info on common folk two thousand years ago is no easy task. Histories are written about the “important” people in our world.

On "Parthia" by George Rawlinson ****

Of the three books I've read on the Parthian Empire, this is the best. One focused on the political history of the empire and was difficult to parse without more understanding about the general history surrounding the events. One was really interesting and well written but had an agenda that made much of the information in it suspect. Rawlinson's text seems to strike a good balance, providing useful background info for the eventual political history that follows. But it doesn't just focus on events; it also gives information about the geography and culture, which gives one more of a feel for what those events meant to the folks living at the time.

As a work of history written before the 1950s, it does, alas, participate in some of the dated wording and colonialist perspectives that such older histories often do. Rawlinson, in other words, is too often willing to take on the views of Parthia's detractors, calling it a region of barbarians and critiquing its culture as less refined than those of the West. 

The book starts with a discussion of the geography of the area. Following that comes the bulk of the book: a recounting of the various kings and the wars in which they participated. Because so little information was recorded by the Parthians themselves, most of our history about the region comes from outsiders, most especially the Romans. Thus, the history to a large degree is a recounting of Rome's various wars with the empire--and usually over the kingdom of Armenia. My particular focus of interest was the warfare within Mesopotamia, so it was interesting to read about Cassius's disastrous invasion of Parthia--and then the later less disastrous invasions by Titus and another emperor (Severus, if I remember right). Rome never seemed to hold the land for long. Strangely, Parthia would often send royal family to be educated in Rome, which would give Rome the aura of holding "captive" Parthian royals and let it feel superior, even as Parthia often put the actual Roman army to flight.

Parthia was a rather loose empire, with many vassal states within it. The Parthian king was a "king of kings" insofar as many of the vassal states had their own rulers. One gets the feel that it had a more easygoing government than Rome did and that the people had more freedom (though, really, it wasn't likely the "people" who had the freedom but the vassal governments within the Parthia empire that had the freedom to rule over the people as they willed). That leant the kingdom both its strength and its weakness, insofar as the kingdoms ruled over were more often willing to fight for themselves but also, with less cohesion among the subject peoples, less unity between the various factions.

On “Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory” by Markus Bockmuehl ****

The most intriguing idea contained in this book is that, as Bockmuehl argues, we may not be able to know exactly who Peter was or what he actually did, but we can note his importance and the degree of influence that he held over the early church by the shadow that he casts, the the ripples that he left in his wake. Bockmuehl the examines what those ripples would be, even as he admits that some of the literature about him may not be wholly accurate. It's a good point. Why, after all, would so many early writers fuss over Peter or try to tie their own claims to Peter were it not that Peter had some kind of heavy early influence. He must have been an important apostle.

Bockmuehl does this by examining first writings left behind in the Eastern church and then in the Western. As he notes, few in the Eastern church lay claim to him as one of their own, that is, as one who traveled extensively in the area. Rather, Peter is more often associated with the West, even in the East. And his martydom in Rome is acknowledged by quite a few early writers—hinted at if not outright stated. Bockmuehl also provides a useful website where he summarizes, or gives quotes from, the various early writings about Peter, which should be very useful to anyone else who might want to examine the evidence.

He closes his book by looking at Peter in two particular situations. First, he looks at Peter's conversion—or rather the narrative of it. Much attention is given to Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, but we have no similar single moment provided for for Peter. Yet in Luke, Jesus tells Peter that he will be handed off to Satan for a while, and when he returns, he should take care to care for others. We never really see that moment. When did it happen? It seems to have occurred between the end of Luke and the start of Acts, wherein Peter is already strong in the faith. Bockmuehl guesses that the turn to Satan happened at Peter's denying of Jesus, which would make sense. The turn back would happen at Jesus's resurrection, when Peter saw Jesus, which would also make sense. John's recounting of Jesus telling Peter to “feed my sheep” three times works off this theme of conversion—insofar as it's the opposite of Peter's three-time denial.

Second, Bockmuehl looks at Peter's upbringing in Bethsaida, which is only mentioned once in Scripture. This was perhaps the most interesting reading Bockmuehl did in the work. We associate Peter with Capernaum, where he lived as an adult. Bethsaida was a far different area—mostly, from what we can tell, Gentile. As such, Peter would have been quite familiar with non-Jewish culture and likely would have spoken Greek (contrary to what many try to argue—namely that he didn't know the language), even though he likely grew up in a devout Jewish household. Such a background, of course, would have made Peter a very useful apostle indeed.

On "The Dream of the Red Chamber" by Cao Xaoqin ***

Credit working a second job and general length of the book for making me take so long to get through this one. Or perhaps credit the fact that this book, although a classic of Chinese literature, goes nowhere. It reminded me of the Japanese classic The Tale of Genji, insofar as it is largely about court intrigues and relationships among a well-to-do family. Single chapters are great. Indeed, I read an excerpt from this book in an anthology, which made me look forward to reading this text. But the episodic nature of the book and the fact that the writer often introduces plot points that go nowhere ultimately make this something of a frustrating read.

The early chapters of the book recount the disappearance of a young woman and the family's reaction to it. It's a great set-up (where'd she go? what happened? don't know), but eventually, we end up spending time mostly with the family of one Pao-yu Secundus, a fifteen-year-old with many female cousins and servants who sloughs off at his schooling and displeases his father. As a portrait of this portion of China at this time, it's intriguing. Pao-yu forges a close friendship with one other male at one point, who then traipses off to other places. He forges close relationships with his various maids and cousins. They get together to write poetry and start a poetry club. Families of the maids visit. One lower-class mother of one of the maids visits, gets drunk, and makes a full of herself.  One maid is given the opportunity to be the second wife to a rich older man, which she rejects, much to the shock of others. Pao-yu travels far off to a temple, unbeknownst to his family, indeed, hiding the very fact. Each of these things is told in discrete chapters, which alone are interesting enough. Together, not so much. Court life is tedious.

The book ends--or at least the version of the book I read--ends with Pao-yu meeting a doppelganger, another boy named Pao-yu, this one twelve years old, but otherwise similar in personality and looks and even class situation. He is even, at one point, somewhat mistaken for the other boy. Intriguing. But alas, it was just a dream. Not so intriguing. "And if you'd like to know what happens next, reader, you'll need to turn to the next chapter." That is, the book ends with the same ending that all other chapters carry, as if the author were writing a serial that was cancelled in its midst, with discrete chapters that feature the same characters but not always plot points that go from start to finish.

On "The Shepherd of Hermas" **

I wasn't expecting much from this work, and it delivered just about what I expected. I find it interesting so many early Christian writers thought this almost on the level of scripture. My interest in that stems largely from the fact that were this work actually in the cannon, what sense would I make of it--and why would one think it at such a level that it should be.

The work starts off with a set of visions or tales in which Hermas meets up with various angels--mostly women. He finds himself drawn to them; they give him instructions. He's warned about having lusting thoughts. At one point, he's even told that Christians have the opportunity to repent only once of a sin after baptism; after that, there's no more hope. That seems a strange comment and one that later portions of the work don't seem to confirm.

Although the visions were not particularly interesting to me, the next two sections had a bit more going for them. The second section consists of mandates, twelve of them. Think of them like commandments for New Testament believers. I couple of them seemed so close in meaning that I had a hard time distinguishing between them. Most were a bit long-winded, and so not as easy to ferret out or summarize as the Ten Commandments. Nevertheless, I'll try here:

1. Believe God is one.
2. Be guileless.
3. Love truth.
4. Remain pure.
5. Have patience.
6. Trust righteousness.
7. Fear the right things.
8. Remain temperate in right things.
9. Avoid doubt.
10. Put away sorrow.
11. Trust the Spirit.
12. Remove evil desire.

The last section consists of a set of parables, comparing the church and believers to this and that--trees, plants, cities, towers. These, on the whole, seemed much more approachable than the visions at the book's start.