On “The Seven Cities of the Apocalypse and Roman Culture” by Roland H. Worth Jr. ****

 

This slim volume wasn't quite what I was expecting, and that has its good and bad points. There is a second volume, apparently, with “Greek Culture” in a title that does more of what I would have expected: namely, broken down the local culture of each of the seven cities. This volume is more of an overview of the culture of first-century western Asia Minor in general.

The work begins with a discussion of Roman culture in the area that was, in most ways, familiar to me, since in many regards the region was little different than others in the Roman sphere, particularly in the east, where Greek culture continued to hold such sway. As such, the information on governmental systems, festivals, slavery, sporting events, and so on was concise and would be useful to someone who has not read other works on the subject.

Where the work really shined for me was in its second chapter, half of which is given over to the Jewish community in the region, which forged as much as 20 percent of the population. Worth discusses how the population got there and how it interacted with the locals. On the whole, one gets the feeling that the relationship to between the different ethnic groups was largely cordial, with Jewish people even taking a role in government in some cases. 

Worth's discussion of the geography of Patmos and the two legal forms of exile was also of value. He explores whether the author of Revelation was actually exiled and, if so, what form that would have taken. Unlike so many contemporary authors, Worth tends to view the author as the apostle John (as opposed to another John), though he notes that the other theories don't necessarily impact how one reads Revelation. For him, the differences in form and language can be easily explained because the work is a different genre than the other works attributed to John.

A lot of time is spent exploring why John chose seven cities and why just these seven cities to aim the Revelation at. Worth doesn't reach a dogmatic conclusion, though he certainly shows the weaknesses of various arguments: that they were the most (economically) important, that they had the most believers, that they were where early bishoprics formed, that they were centers of the Imperial cult, that they were on the same mail route or road, and so on. In each case, at least one city is an exception, and often other cities that would qualify under those same conditions. Worth also discusses the importance of the number seven biblically—meaning completeness. It seemed to me, by the end of the discussion, that the use of (these) seven cities was deliberate primarily for rhetorical purposes. As such, the letters were aimed at the church as a whole, not at specific congregations: the congregations here had largely symbolic purposes.

Worth also uses a chapter to discuss the Imperial cult, which again was largely familiar territory for me. The reason he focuses on the cult, of course, is because many read much of Revelation as being about the literaral Roman empire of the time and its emperors and faith. Worth shows how one can read various metaphors in the work as related to such ideas. I rarely find such readings of much value. The book draws so heavily on Old Testament tropes that it often seems to me more in line with Jewish prophetic works than with the contemporary scene, but certainly readers at the time may well have seen the Roman parallels, just as people even today read events now as being explored in the work.

As for whether I'll read Worth's second volume, I'm on the fence. Many of the things he alludes to about his closer readings of the seven cities seem either like things I'd already know from commentaries or like dubious assertions. But in a way, that's what I was expecting of this volume, so in that sense, the fact that this volume ended up not being that was appreciated.

On "A History of Pan-African Revolt" by C. L. R. James ****

Having just read Apetheker's account of slave revolts, I was a bit concerned that this much-shorter book would be redundant. I need not be. James concerns himself not just with revolts in the United States but with revolts throughout the world--and not just with revolts that involve the literally enslaved either. For James, a Marxist, African uprisings are tied in with class uprisings and with efforts to bring about a more equitable world. Reading such events in light of Marxist philosophy was interesting, even if in my opinion, it blinds James to certain other problems.

James starts his work with the slave uprising in San Domingo, the only one to result in the forging of an independent nation, in which the former enslaved people become the managers of the new regime. This was enabled, as James brings out, by a number of fortuitous historical forces, including the number of enslaved people versus the number of others on the island, and the ambivalent responses of the French colonizers, who were themselves at the time facing a movement of the masses toward "liberty" and the throwing off of an old monarchal regime.

Uprisings among the enslaved in the United States never benefitted from such advantages, which meant they were bound to fail. The numbers were never on the side of those who rebelled, even in pockets where the enslaved outnumbered others--those were simply pockets, with an outside world ready to reimpose the status quo. It is in James's analysis of pre-Civil War uprisings that he makes some claims about lower-class whites taking the side of the enslaved; other reading I've done suggests that was almost never the case. Rather, based on racial prejudice and a desire of lower-class whites to align themselves with higher-class whites, the lower classes almost always took to the cause of the higher classes against the enslaved, even to their own detriment. (A book by Glenn Feldman called The Disfranchisement Myth shows how lower-class whites in Alabama even voted in state constitutional changes that would prevent themselves from voting just to keep black people from voting, essentially disenfranchising themselves.)

Similar cynacism can be attached to the Civil War, which in this case C. L. R. James certainly does. Here, playing off economic and pragmatic concerns rather than idealistic ones, James claims, the North would eventually find that divorcing a chunk of the South's population from the conflict by offering freedom was the only way that it would be able to win. This in turn would set up the United States for much of what would follow the war, where a decade later, the gains black Americans made would be gradually pulled away, the need for their aid no longer of the highest value.

James next turns to uprisings in Africa and to the history of African colonization. He brings out, interestingly, how the slave trade had, at least, largely kept ancient African civilizations intact. As that drew to a close (mostly, he claims, for economic reasons rather than by the efforts of abolitionists), Europeans took to actually taking over the land on the continent and essentially "enslaving" the population through colonization. Chattel slavery was gone, but a new kind of economic slavery took its place that has resulted in the problems that the world has had ever since.

Another chapter focuses on Marcus Garvey, whose back to Africa movement, James is no fan of. However, he does credit Garvey with bringing to the fore the idea of that the effort among African-descended peoples to remove the injustices perpetrated on them must be a united, global one. James's discussion of the West Indies focuses on the way those nations have taken up Western ideals even after the end of colonization.

The edition I read included an epilogue with material on events that had happened since the book's original publication, some three extra decades, from the 1930s to the 1960s. James found hope in the throwing-off of colonizers among various African nations, though he noted that in many cases such revolutions really only perpetuated problems, insofar as dictators of a different ethnicity, with a dependence on the same economic structure wherein raw materials are provided to more developed economies, are no better than colonizers. Where the masses could find voice, however, there was hope. Tanzania was James's dreamland, a place where the leader was trying to establish true communism (not Soviet communism), wherein all Africans in the nation would contribute to the greater cause. He makes the happenings sound like the start of a utopia, one that alas history beyond the scope of the book has shown has been difficult to attain

On “Paul, Artemis, and the Jews in Ephesus,” by Rick Strelan ***

Strelan sets out in this work mostly to question the degree of effectiveness that Paul's ministry had in the city. Acts 19 gives us the impression that the city was very heavily converted over to Christian ideals, but Strelan raises many objections not so much to the event itself but to scholarly (and indeed, mainstream) interpretation of it. His basic points are that Paul's mission was not very effective and that what little effect it did have was mostly among Jewish people.

One reason we know Paul's ministry was not terribly effective, Strelan proposes, is because Artemis worship continued to the the city's focus for a couple of centuries more. Further, that ministry mostly involved Jewish people because his communication seems to be almost entirely with people with Jewish names, because he does his primary work in synagogues, and because Jewish practices among Christians continue. (Indeed, Strelan would seem to believe that what Gentiles did come to be Christians in the region were those who were already predisposed to certain Jewish practices. References to Gentiles in such works as the letter to the Ephesians may actually, in Strelan's view, be to various strands of Jewish belief: Jerusalem centered versus Diaspora centered; those Jews who have kept up stricter Jewish practice versus those who have not.)

How then does one have a near riot in town due to such messaging? Strelan provides a summary of just how important Artemis worship was to the city, as well as a summary of what we know of such worship. One interesting detail that many have gotten wrong: Artemis was not a fertility goddess—quite the opposite. She was one who helped people through transitional times of their lives; she was, in fact, very staid and virginal. Ascetic practices would have fit right along with worship of her.

The threat that Paul posed to the city, with his preaching against the gods, his noting that they weren't real, was actual. However, Strelan reads the riot within a Jewish context rather than a Christian one. It was Jews, who argued for belief in the one god, who posed the real threat, of which Christianity was a mere sect. It was against them that the riot took place. It took place, Strelan claims, at the time that it did because the city was going through a period of financial toil; such riots against Jewish people who did not support the main benefactor/goddess of the city were not uncommon when times grew tough, as they were taken as being a major contributor to the troubles.

Strelan's ideas are provocative. He spends much time referencing other scholars, such that one knows that he's mostly contributing to a conversation among them rather than presenting something for the general public interested in the subject. Even if there are things to doubt about Strelan's thesis, what becomes clear is that many assumptions have been made about Paul and about Ephesus that have colored our reading of what the primary texts actually state and record.

On “American Negro Slave Revolts” by Herbert Aptheker ***

Consisting essentially of two undenoted parts, this book first provides an overall theory of revolt, showing how revolt was feared, how enslavers attempted to prevent it, and why it happened. The second half then goes into a summary of the various revolts that happened from colonial times through the Civil War. The first part is a very interesting discussion that elicits at times a good degree of pathos; the second part, alas, feels mostly like an impersonal listing of events with often little analysis.

Aptheker notes that he took up the work because little attention had been paid in the historical literature to such revolts, outside of Nat Turner’s, which was taken as an outlier. This lack of attention led, in turn, to a mistaken notion that people enslaved in North America had largely been docile; indeed, one might say it even contributed to such Lost Cause tropes mythologized in works like Gone with the Wind and Song of the South of the happy slave. Aptheker shows that enslaved people were by and large anything but happy.

One thing that contributed to the fear of revolt was the sheer number of enslaved people; indeed, in parts of the South, enslaved Black people outnumbered white people. This was one reason, beyond desire to maintain a healthy number of representatives in Congress, that southern states so sought to extend slavery into new territories. By spreading out the population, it was hoped, the ability of enslaved people to gather and thus bring about a change to their status would be diluted. Laws passed in some states limited the ability of African Americans to assemble in any manner, except by the authority of an enslaver. So, essentially, if you were a Black person, unless you were working, you weren’t allowed to hang out with other folk. Sometimes, such laws included free Black people in addition to those who were enslaved. It boggles my mind how any social life would be possible--and thus how one’s sanity could be maintained. But of course, such laws were to prevent even the ability to plan a revolt. Other laws aimed at keeping certain Black people away from those who were enslaved. Obviously free Black people were seen as a not good influence on those enslaved and were by law prevented from migrating to some states; similarly, those from areas in the Caribbean that had won independence from their enslavers were also bad influences and often were banned from entering a state (or even from being enslaved, since theirs would be a pernicious influence on enslaved Americans.)

A particular contributor to slave revolt was economic tough times. One can easily imagine how when financial times got difficult, those who were enslaved were the last in line to receive basic necessities such as food. The degree to which enslaved people hated their lot is made plain in various tales of men and women who deliberately mutilated themselves to avoid service; one particularly affecting tale involved a pregnant woman who killed herself rather than bringing forth children who would themselves be slaves. Stories such as these, in addition to reports about rebellions, were often suppressed in the media, lest it encourage others to rebel.

From there, Aptheker turns to the individual accounts of revolts. These read, mostly, like those of another book I once browsed that attempted to tell the tale of southern hurricanes. Alas, rather than providing much in the way of a plot, it simply noted, and then this hurricane happened. Two years later, this hurricane, with this much damage, and so on. The revolts, outside of Nat Turner’s, which receives its own well-conceived chapter, come in for a similarly unstructured account here, which makes for tedious reading. I understand the reason Aptheker needed to document each case, but the real heart of the book comes in the analytical first half.

On "Before the Mayflower" by Lerone Bennett Jr. ****

This history of Black America traces the lives of African Americans from before colonization all the way to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. I found much to learn and a few surprises along the way.

The opening chapter focuses on the contributions of Africa and Africans to world culture. I was familiar with much of this, and to be sure, one could argue sometimes about which culture truly was responsible for what particular technological and cultural advances. The point, Bennett seems to be making, is that up until the time of colonization, Africa and Africans were seen as, indeed were, every bit the equal (if not the superior) of other cultures, most especially European. This has a dramatic function insofar as when the later racist arguments arise, they can clearly be seen as attempts to impose power.

One surprising detail in Bennett's account was that of the first enslaved Black people to arrive in the American colonies. Such people were treated like any other indentured servant at the time--that is, after a period of service to pay for passage, the person was released. In essence, then, it seems that early Africans in the Americas were, after a period, free people. I should have known this, but I guess what was surprising was to see how early this happened and how such servants were considered pretty much like any other person. This changed relatively quickly, however. Without European governments to defend them, as poor whites had, and without a knowledge of the surrounding countryside or peoples, imported Africans had many advantages for exploitation by others once imported to the new lands. Laws in the 1660s soon changed such indentured servants imported from Africa into servants for life--chattel slavery came to the fore.

Bennett then traces the culture across familiar American historical events. Some enslaved people thought that the American Revolution should and would apply to them, and they fought alongside the other Patriots. Indeed, the British offer to free such peoples who joined their cause made American commanders relent in their ban against such men serving in the American forces. Unfortunately, southern plantation owners ruled the day when it came time to set up American law, and chattel slavery continued as the new nation took shape, encouraged eventually by new technologies that advantaged even more use of enslaved labor. 

I found the chapters on the Reconstruction period, after the Civil War and emancipation, particularly interesting, especially when it came to discussing the imposition of Jim Crow laws. I knew, of course, about the end of Reconstruction and the way that to maintain presidential power Republicans gave in to southern demands for the end of federal oversight. What I didn't know was that there were nearly two decades between that event and the imposition of Jim Crow. To be sure, Black people began losing rights as soon as federal oversight ended, but the imposition of segregation was kind of a gradual process that really only came to the fore around 1900. Of course, once one southern state passed such laws, the others quickly (within a few years) followed. Bennett then turns to Booker T. Washington and then to the civil rights movement, with which I'm more familiar. I look forward most to reading more about the Reconstruction period and early Jim Crow and pre-chattel colonization. The latter moments in history seem to get less coverage, and I'm glad that this Black Panther Reading List includes at least a couple of works on such subjects.

A word about Bennett's writing in and of itself: I like how the author mixes moments of lyrical flourish with his recounting of historical events. This could be easily taken to extremes, but he doesn't overdue it, and it's not something one sees often in historical writing.

On "The Souls of Black Folk" by W. E. B. Du Bois ***

This is the first of about ten books I've pulled from the Black Panther Reading List (https://library.pugetsound.edu/c.php?g=782488&p=5607493), which is not a list of books by or about the Black Panthers but rather a list of books, as I understand it, that the Black Panthers assigned to their members at the height of the movement. The idea of reading such a list came to me while listening to the Mother Country Radicals podcast. On that podcast, a story is recounted wherein a young recruit attending a meeting learns about becoming armed. He tells the person running the meeting he wants to be so armed; the next day, expecting some sort of weaponry, he's instead handed a stack of books: "These are your arms." So I thought it would be intriguing to read what such members were being armed with--a sort of different way to approach reading about the Panthers: read what they read.

Du Bois's book is the oldest on the list. I'm glad finally to get around to reading it and to reading his work. He's been referenced so often in other reading, it seems a shame it took me so long to get around to him.

This classic book is at its best when Du Bois gives us his historical take on the Reconstruction period. I had never read about the Freedmen's Bureau, for instance, at such length; another chapter focuses on the work of Booker T. Washington, who has long come in for a great deal of criticism for his accomodationism, and there is no exception here. There is also chapter on African American religion that I found intriguing. Du Bois spends much of his work focusing on how to improve circumstances for freedmen--via education, via political means. These discussions, alongside the history, are the most interesting.

When Du Bois veers into more personal territory, recounting visiting a poor family or having a child, I found my mind more often wandering. As with many authors of the time, he waxes poetic, with flowery language, in these situations, and I found myself more interested in the larger issues of the other essays.

That's not to say that these personal flairs don't connect to the larger themes. The penultimate chapter reads more like story than an essay. It's about a man who went north for education; his return to the South does not go well. He is seen by whites in the area as "uppity" simply for acting like a human being, often, it seems, even without intending to make some sort of political or activist stance. He's suspect to whites, because of his education, and perhaps has also become a bit "out of practice" kowtowing to southern ways. His next to final sin is daring the kids in a class he teaches to learn something of their own culture (I hear echoes or the current ban on certain "race conscious" readings in Florida--I can't believe we're still dealing with such bans one-hundred-plus years later). In the end, he finds that he can't stay, which means that the hometown locals don't receive the aid that that education he has received should have enabled for their community. It's the story of one man--one likely similar to Du Bois himself in some ways--but it makes the larger points about the difficulties presented in improving the lot of a large segment of the people of the nation. 

On “Cities of God” by Rodney Stark *****

This book is in a sense more of a critique of the manner in which historians write history than it is strictly a work of religious history. Stark, a sociologist, sets out to show how useful numbers and statistical analysis can be to historians, and the case study he uses to set out his theory is that of the growth of Christianity in thirty-one cities in the Roman Empire in the first two centuries of the Christian era.

The thirty-one cities that he chooses are those that had populations of more than thirty thousand. He uses various means to count to how popular Judaism was in each city and how popular the goddesses Isis and Cybelle were in each city. Using these numbers and the fact that some cities were ports and others inland to reach certain conclusions regarding how Christianity spread and what types of Christianity spread. He shows, for example, that it spread more quickly to places near Jerusalem and to ports. But he also shows that gnostic versions of the faith were more often tied to those cities where Isis and Cybelle were worshipped, which, he notes, suggests that gnosticism did not derive so much from within Jewish settings but from those more influenced by paganism.

Using such ideas, he proposes various reasons that Christianity caught on in popularity, including how cities are troubled places with itinerant populations, such that the Jewish faith (and by extension the Christian) offered a kind of community less often offered from the proliferating pagan faiths. He also shows how paganism hung on much longer than many historians give it credit, long after Constantine.

The study is enlightening and the text very readable, even for folks less familiar with the scholarship he seems to be critiquing.

On “The Jewish Gospels” by Daniel Boyarin *****

Boyarin sets out to show how Jewish and Christian were actually fluid terms until the fourth century—that what we think of as necessarily Jewish was sometimes Christian, and what we think of as Christian was sometimes Jewish. The idea in itself isn't terribly surprising to me, as it is one I largely share, though Boyarin's split may be a bit late, depending one the region he's talking about.

I gleaned much from the specifics in this book, however. A major portion of the work is given over to the study of the terms “Son of God” and “Son of Man” which ironically places as meaning essentially just the opposite of what we would think them to mean. “Son of God,” he shows, demonstrates Jesus's link to humanity and, specifically, to nobility, like David, or even the first man Adam. “Son of Man,” by contrast, is really about demonstrating the manner in which God has manifested himself among men; its great meaning, thus, is really about how God has come to dwell with us.

Another, later chapter focuses on Jesus's views about food. Boyarin discusses the, for me, familiar discussion regarding Jesus's usage of the term “clean” when he says that all things have been registered as such. There are two different words, both rendered “clean” in most English translations, but one has to do with purification and the other with dietary restrictions. Thus, when one reads the New Testament closely, Jesus is really talking about Pharisaical rituals, not about Biblical food laws.

Finally, Boyarin questions the popular theory among many contemporary scholars, such as Bart Ehrman, that the suffering Jesus linked to Isaiah was really understood as a passage about the nation of Israel as a whole. No, Boyarin says, some Jews, even before Jesus's time, understood that passage as being about a Messianic figure, a single person.

It's a short book, but Boyarin brings out a lot of great points on specific issues that have taken up discussions in recent scholarly works.

On “First-Century Judaism in Crisis” by Jacob Neusner ***

This work is essentially a biography of Yohannan ben Zakkai, at least with regard to what we know about him. Who was Zakkai? He was apparently one of the foremost Pharisaical rabbis after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem who helped fashion what became rabbinical Judaism.

This isn't to say that he was, early on, much of a success. He departed Jerusalem for Galilee before returning to Jerusalem shortly before its temple's destruction. He looked more to the law than to the temple in terms of importance. Hence, like many Pharisees, he was well set to take up a leadership role after the temple's fall. He managed to escape Jerusalem in the siege and to find a home in Yavneh, where he helped set up the council that would hold sway over the post-Temple faith. Neusner waxes poetic throughout most of the biography, making up with flowery language and expansive quotes from rabbinical writing for the lack of extensive, solid information about the subject. On the whole, however, he manages indeed to portray what life was like for the Jewish people in the wake of this major event.

On "Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church" by Richard Bauckham *****

Another very interesting work by Richard Bauckham--this one focuses on the other brothers and relatives of Jesus outside of the heavily written about James. The second half of the book is mostly a close reading of the book of Jude, which while providing some interesting insights, is not so engaging as the first half, but that first half was very much illuminating in ways I never expected.

I first came across mention of this book in another work in that author's discussion of the family of Jesus in Ctesiphon in the second century. I had been aware of this claim in primary works, but I hadn't given it much thought until mentioned there. I was, like, I've got to check out what Bauckham had to say about that, and I'm glad that I did. The reason: Bauckham, in his focus on Jesus's family, sees possible ties to Jewish Christian settlements in the East (not heavily covered here, but not really covered anywhere) but also in Galilee, which until now, based on other reading, I'd largely figured was mostly devoid of Christians after the first century. By tracing where such people as Symeon (James's successor in Jerusalem) actually came from, he's able to show the likely continuing influence of Jesus's family in the region of Galilee.

The section on the book of Jude goes heavily into the way it interacts with the book of Enoch and the Testament of Moses and traces its views of Christ as God, which is a high Christology. Alas, I kind of figured Bauckham would tie the two things--the relatives and the book together--at the end, but it didn't really come together as I hoped or thought it would. He tries to do it via a discussion of the genealogy of Jesus as recorded in Matthew and most especially Luke, and while he certainly shows that the genealogies had rhetorical purposes (ties to specific individuals, to David but not through the kingly line, numbers of generations, etc.), the discussion didn't for me really tie things together as much as I'd have liked. Still, much of this book blew my mind in terms of the observations I hadn't yet considered.

On "Christianizing Asia Minor" by Paul McKechnie ***

At the start of this work, McKechnie raises an important point--namely that the assumption that early Christianity was largely an urban movement cannot be wholly true. If 10 percent of the Roman Empire was urban and also 10 percent was Christian, that would mean that the cities would have been virtually all Christian. Clearly, much of the Christian world was not in the major cities but in the small towns and in the country. Less attention has been played to these locations, so that's what McKechnie sets out to do in the book, specifically with regard to Asia Minor, and most especially with the region of Phrygia, whose cities were much smaller than those of the western coast (those of Revelation) we are more familiar with. It's a worthy subject. Alas, the work beyond that, I found, difficult to follow.

He pulls from some familiar sources--Pauline letters, some Eusebian comments, Ignatius--and some wonderful secondary sources that I'm glad now to know about. However, much of the discussion stems from examination of gravestones, which lends to the more difficult reading and the greater difficulty in forging conclusions. Some authors are able to look at such things, gather statistics, and forge a cogent argument. That's not the goal here, however. McKechnie is interested in the stories left behind, but it's difficult to gather stories from a few lines across multiple stones. As such, the work seemed quite diffuse and less interesting that I had hoped.

On "Montanism" by Christine Trevett ***

This was not exactly an introduction to the subject of the heretical Christian group that emerged in the last second century. What I mean is that the work is definitely aimed at scholars who have a pretty good degree of familiarity with the subject. It's full of arguments with other scholars about the sect and specialized language. As such, it wasn't quite what I was hoping for.

Trevett's views on the subject are in some way difficult to parse, insofar as she spends much time presenting the views of others and then discounting those. If I read her correctly, she believes the Montanists got a bad wrap and that they were not nearly so heretical as they are said to have been.

Montanism originated with a set of prophecies made by one Montanus and a couple of women in the late second century and spread rapidly from its central Asia Minor origin to Rome and Africa and elsewhere, converting along the way the famous Christian writer Tertullian. They were known for being against marriage, for various prophecies (the New Prophecy), for their ecstatic state when making such prophecies, and for their claim to be actually the embodiment of God and the Holy Spirit when prophesying.

All this may be twaddle Trevett seems to say. The ascetic views were not terribly out of keeping with many other Christians of the era. The world certainly did seem to be falling apart for those alive at the time (war, pestilence that may have killed as much as 25 percent of the Roman Empire's population). Our knowledge of the sect comes mostly from those who stood up against it, save for Tertullian, but the degree to which his African variety actually spoke for the earlier origin, we can't know.

As such, the Montanists may root back to a tradition of prophecy in the area established by John, the other of Revelation, and by Philip's three prophesying daughters. The prophecies that we know of don't seem all that out of step with common prophecies denoted in the Old and New Testament, regarding the end of the world. The idea that these prophets thought themselves the embodiment of God may just be the (possibly intentional) misreadings of their statements (or readings of later prophets rather than the early ones). What's really going on, Trevett seems to be claiming, is a conflict between hierarchical authority being established in Rome and a more organic concept of God speaking directly to his believers through the spirit. (This would have found a central point of contention in the Montanists view that "Jerusalem" had been relocated to the local settlement of Pepuza, to which Jesus would return.) It's an interesting theory, though I can't say that I am convinced that the views of the Montanists were otherwise quite orthodox insofar as following earlier beliefs, if we are to take Tertullian's writings as indicative of them, since he clearly taught some things not part of the first-century church's views (trinity, heaven and hell). However, the New Prophecy certainly does seem to be in line with many an apocalyptic group that let its enthusiasm carry them away into specific application of biblical prophecy that turned out to have no bearing in reality.

On "Still Missing" by Beth Gutcheon ***

Here's an account that is in one sense all action. It starts with the disappearance of a child and barrels toward its conclusion. In between, however, is largely an exploration of the manner in which the child's disappearance affects a detective, a father, friends, coworkers, and most especially a mother. Gutcheon's focus on the emotional toll is something less often seen in the hard-boiled crime fiction I tend to read, so it's hard to pull off. In a way, I'd expect such reactions to be more muted, simply because of that. Gutcheon goes right on in.

With such a focus on the emotions, the work present characters in a way that is surprisingly passive. Sure, detectives span out across the city; the mother and friends place posters; the mother goes on television to plea for her child. But on the whole, there isn't a lot of buildup. The child is gone, and no one has a clue what's happened. There's no slow-whodunnit accumulation of facts that eventually lead to the child and the truth. Essentially, we're praying the whole way for a miracle.

Toward the end, after the police close in on a suspect, one is left with many questions. All facts seem to point to that suspect, but the suspect likewise has good explanations. The mother's own desires mean that she can't accept anything but a living son. Is she crazy? Or is everyone else just tired? If the story had ended there, with all these questions, it would have seemed quite true to the ambiguities of life and motivation. Alas, the work closes everything off with a nice denoument, one

On "All about the Bible" by Sidney Collett ***

This is an older introduction to the Bible written around the 1905. As such, of course, it's a bit dated. The author is clearly very religious, often making points about scripture that seem quite literal, to a point that at times even I thought he was potentially going too far (he claims, for example, that Moses's death, as described at the end of Dueteronomy, was obviously prophecy since Moses HAD to have written the Torah, as per tradition--I suppose such is possible, but the point seemed rather dogmatically stated and seems less likely than other possible explanations to me, even accepting the tradition). In addition, he was often too prone to drop names of "experts" to back up his points: This really famous/important man thinks such and such, so that must really say something about what I think about the Bible!

Still, the work had much of value, little pieces of information that are jewels to have on hand. He discusses, for example, in a rudimentary way how we got the Bible, what some translations are, the history of those translations, and a few "difficult" scriptures. Some of his archeological insights are really good in terms of explaining how some scriptures have actually ended up having truth that scholars at one time rejected, as based on what we have learned more recently (granted, one hundred years ago) from other historical records. The most interesting section is probably his very long chapter on the Bible and science, and while this is no doubt dated, he still does manage to provide some good explanations for some things that likely aren't as dated as one might expect. After all, the earth still goes around the sun, so some facts haven't changed. How the Bible fits with them is interesting--or how the Bible can be made to fit with them, one might say. Collett's not going to convince anyone who isn't a believer, but his observations can at times be intriguing to those who think in some ways like him.

On “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry ***

The last book on my selected westerns list, this for many is the quintessential western, the all-time classic. Surprisingly, it obtained the status though it was written just in 1986 or so. Perhaps, the miniseries had much to do with its overarching popularity within the genre, though I can see why folks would place it as the all-time best. It is a doorstop of a book and traffics in a huge collection of tropes from the genre: heroes, gamblers, gunfights, Indians (as faceless bad guys), cavalry, cowhands, horse thieves, bandits, rangers, sheriffs—it's got nearly everything you'd find in the genre. Beyond that, it's a kind of swan song to the period. It's set at the tail end of frontier days, when most but not all of the free-range buffalo are gone, when the Native Americans themselves are virtually all defeated, when there is little land left to settle. That's essentially the story: men from Texas making a cattle drive to Montana, where few have yet settled and good grazing land is apparently plentiful.

But it takes more than eight hundred pages to get there. One reason is that McMurtry follows a great number of characters. Ostensibly, the central character is Augustus (Gus), a talkative former Texas Ranger who is quick with a gun and mostly lazy when it comes to all else. But the plot veers away from him at various points for chapters at a time, following among them: a prostitute who seems to have all the men in love with her; an old love interest of Gus's who now lives with an invalid husband in Nebraska; Gus's business partner and another former Ranger named Call; another old friend/Ranger who is a terrific lothario named Jake; a youngster named Newt who is of doubtful parentage; various cowhands—Dish, Pea Eye, Po Campo; a young sheriff and his deputy who are after Jake or perhaps after the sheriff's runaway wife; an excellent African American horseman named Deets; a bandit named Blue Duck; and on and on. In other words, it's more of an ensemble novel. And beyond that any one of these characters might die at any time, making the plot somewhat unpredictable. Sometimes a good guy dies, sometimes a bad one. Sometimes that death is “offscreen” (some other minor character we come upon mentions it) and other times, we get the actual scene. Individual episodes—robberies, run-ins, fights, bad weather—can make for exciting adventure fiction.

This is all to say that I understand the appeal. But I haven't fallen big for McMurtry. I enjoyed this work more than his Last Picture Show, which for me dragged and focused way too much of sexual exploits. In this work, too much is too much. It takes nearly a quarter of the book before the cowboys finally, definitively decide to start the cattle drive to Montana, a drive I knew was coming from page 1. Get on with, I felt throughout. Characters come and go. Since there are so many, I never felt that connected to them or emotionally invested, even when certain main characters died, ones I didn't expect. And while men are the center of the book and I would not expect otherwise, the women characters generally seem to be there largely for sex appeal. Indeed, the end of the novel itself seemed a bit strange insofar as its focus turned to a very minor event regarding a character who by that time has been out of the plot for awhile. It left me feeling as if, well, okay, the point? (I'm sure I'm missing something, the way I was underwhelmed by the end of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying's, though of course it somehow is supposed to suggest new life and vibrancy.)

On "You'll Never Capture It All" by AVD 3 ****

Apparently I'd already read this book when it was a set of blog entries. I discovered this in three ways. One, when the writer told me about the book, he noted that I'd already read it. Two, even though I didn't remember most of it, I came across a reference to my reading it (as a blog) about halfway through the book. And three, I remembered the description of the traffic at the very end of the book.

Now all that said, I enjoyed the book immensely. It's a description of one year at the Burning Man festival that occurs every year out on the high desert out West, a festival I've never attended and likely never will. I can't say that much of what is described appeals to me--most importantly, the dust, but also the inability to wash for a week or to essentially have the things that make life easy for a week. This isn't camping; it's worse, since it's out on the desert among tens of thousands of people. That said, the art work, the music, the faux town that pops up for a short while--those things would appeal to me, but probably not the weeklong, all-night party
. I'd be a day tripper, likely, if I went--preferably not on the day the man burns, at the very end of the festival, when the most people are there. No interest in that.

Nevertheless, reading about the experience and why some folks get so high from it is definitely the way to go for someone curious about the event but not curious (or brave) enough to go.

Interestingly, the book documents a year in which Burning Man made the national news--namely, the year the man--a giant wood sculpture that is burned on the last night--was burned by some chaos maker only a couple of days into the festival. In that way, one gets the scoop on how some folks felt about that event as it happened.

On "Hadrian and the Christians" by Marco Rizzi ***

This book is not aimed at casual readers, as evidenced by the fact that large chunks are in Italian, so you're expected to be bilingual to read it all. Not being literate in Italian, I read just the chapters in English. I came to the book because I was interested in Hadrian, but most especially in the Bar Khokba revolt, about which there is a deart of literature. As such, anything on Hadrian, since the revolt happened under his reign, usually provides some elucidation, which this book certainly did.

Alessandro Galimberti's chapter focuses on how Hadrian's relationship with the Greek mystery cults influenced his relations with the Christians and helped spur Christian apologists to write to Hadrian directly, possibly to distinguish themselves from the Jews but also possibly to ingratiate themselves after Grecian attacks on them.

Giovannia Bazzana focuses specifically on the Bar Kokhba revolt and how it was related to Hadrian's religious policy, which was one of tolerance but also integration with the Roman faiths. This latter element is what caused some Jews to rebel. In that way, it was not unlike the situation with Antiochus Epiphanes a few centuries earlier, with some worldly Jews fine with the effort but heavily devoted ones not. Christianity would have fit within such an agenda as well.

Another chapter by lessandro Galimberti focuses on what facts might be gleaned from the often unreliable Historia Augusta. It leads into a chapter by Livia Capponi on the Jewish rebellion in Egypt in 117 and how it was related to Serapis worship--and indeed, how Christians in Egypt may have merged the two belief systems.

A final chapter by the editor focuses on how Christians likely saw themselves in the years just before Hadrian.

On "Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome" by Anthony Everitt ****

This biography of the Roman emperor that ruled from about 117 to 138 might as well also have been a biography of the late life of his predecessor Trajan, as much of it discusses how Trajan adopted and oversaw the education of Hadrian. It provides a nice insight into Roman society at the time and much color lacking in other accounts, both those focused on larger issues and those focused on small. Everitt really shows his mastery of the subject.

Hadrian was from Spain. Orphaned at an early age, his overseers gave him a fine Roman education. In his early life, he was often less than exemplary, but he worked hard to impress Trajan as he grew older so that he might be seen as the proper heir to the throne, a role he was eventually placed into with the help of various women in Trajan's household with whom Hadrian had close relationships. Several things stand out to me about Hadrian, from Everitt's portrait:

1. Hadrian was a lover of all things Greek. He studied the literature and culture, became a devotee to Greek mystery religions, attempted to visit Greece as often as he could, and attempted to model much of his governance on Greek ideas insofar as he aimed to inculcate a kind of Roman-Hellenistic culture across the empire as a unifying force, which is a reason he ended up with so much trouble with the Jews, who he was otherwise, or at least early in his reign, rather sympathetic to. Hadrian even brought the Greek preference for facial hair to the Roman throne--all previous emperors had been clean shaven.

2. Hadrian was a fan of astrology. He used horoscopes and other divination tools to attempt to learn his future and the best means to accomplish certain tasks.

3. Both Hadrian and Trajan were homosexual. This is an interesting attribute of both these emperors insofar as this aspect of their lives played out on the throne. Hadrian had a wife, but it's questionable whether the marriage was every consummated, and he never had his own biological children, much like Trajan. He had a romantic relationship with at least one younger man/teen. Such was a lifestyle that went well with his love of things Greek, as the ancient Spartan society had encouraged military men to have relations with their underlings. In Roman society, apparently, there were few qualms with regard to men having other men as long as you were the dominant one in the relationship; if you were not, then you were considered something "less than." I suppose one could say that the point was, as a "true man," to be the dominant person in a relationship, whether your underling was a woman or a man.

4. Hadrian took a different tact in governorship than previous emperors insofar as he attempted to shore up the bounds of the empire rather than expand it. In some ways, this seems to have been a very good thing, arguably bringing more stability to the empire, save for the Jewish rebellion that broke out toward the end of his reign and that required extensive use of Roman resources (perhaps as much as half the army) to put down. It's a shame that more info isn't available about this event, but one can understand why the Romans weren't keen to write much about it.

On "A History of Christianity in Asia, volume 1" by Samuel Hugh Moffett ****

If you want a book about world history from about 0 to 1500, as processed through the lens of the spread of Christianity, you probably can't do better than this work. Moffett lays down the various theories about the earliest church, much of which we are essentially dependent on legends for. How much of any of these are true, we don't know. Then, he proceeds to explore the Nestorian and Jacobite faiths as they developed out of the more known portions of Christian history.

Christianity in the East at one time might well have had more adherents than in the West, but you wouldn't know it today. The history Moffett tells explains many of the reasons. Unlike in the West, Christianity in the East never had a major empire-wide political promoter--no Constantine--though there were occasional small kingdom adherents. As such, its popularity remained always at the mercy of whichever entity was in charge, as well as remaining often something seen as "foreign." Some kingdoms, such as that of the Mongols, were relatively open religiously, thus allowing Christianity to thrive as one religion among many, but others not so much. Thus, Christianity, rose and fell and rose and fell again throuough Asia, with the rise of various kingdoms and with the advent of Islam, whose influence grew stronger than in the West.

All that said, 1500 years across thousands of miles of land is a lot of material to cover. At some point, though accessibly written throughout, the work became for me more a set of names with a few highlights. I found it hard to keep track of all that was going on. Indeed, any history of nations outside the West, being less familiar culturally to me, tends to be difficult reading, a testimony to what we focus on in school. When more is unfamiliar, it's harder to find holds on which to ground one's self; were I to go read more and more histories of the East until events and people became easier to place, I'd probably find this book more accessible.

On "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" by Ron Hansen *****

Perhaps I ruined this book by watching the movie a few months ago, unwilling to wait to see something that had gotten such great reviews. The book received great reviews too, and I understand why, even if as I read, I often saw Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck in my mind. In a way, seeing the movie first may have helped, insofar as the book includes a lot of characters and keeping them straight might have been more difficult had I not known where the story was already going.

Hansen comes from a different school of fiction writing than that to which I've become accustomed and generally come to see as professional. What I mean is that unlike so many purveyors of modern fiction, he doesn't seem to descend as much from the concrete, action-is-character line of writers like Hemingway or Carver. Hansen has no problem using abstractions, describing people's character and feelings without reference to an act. Yet he manages to do so with great power. The book is also heavy on physical descriptions of people and places, which while beautifully rendered, seem somehow pertinent despite their length.

As historical fiction, there's a degree to which it's sometimes hard to distinguish what is fact and what fiction. Hansen noted that he didn't make up anything that would have strayed from known facts, but clearly in smaller scenes, he rendered some dialogue and so forth (but how much of this itself was pulled from newspaper accounts and so on is difficult to know without looking at his source material). At points, the novel felt more like history, as he covered material that seemed less connected to the action, providing readers with information about people and what happened to them once they left the main plot of the story. The last portion of the book, likewise, feels a bit of a letdown, as insofar as once Jesse is killed and we focus almost entirely on Ford, the chronological pacing picks up rather rapidly. Years go by in the page span where previously only a few days would have. And yet, in a way, that's Hansen's point. The letdown is not just ours but also Ford's. He had thought killing Jesse would bring him fame and fortune and popularity. He had not considered the emotional consequences (after all, he kind of idolized Jesse but also felt a bit envious of Jesse's own fame and wanted that for himself--even as Jesse was a quasi friend). In the end, the fame turned out to be more infamy, and the fortune short lived. As Ford notes, at one point, he died long before his actual death.

It's curious also how one comes to care about both James and Ford, who were both rascals and not people we would term good human beings insofar as what they did to others. Yet even after all the killing and stealing James did and how much you hate the way he treated others, when James dies, you end up feeling a little sad and a little angry at Ford; likewise, you feel somewhat similarly about Ford at his death, though he'd proven to be not much better. Perhaps that's because Hansen portrays them a little as men who come to rue their life choices and who wish that somehow, could they go back to pivotal moments in their past, they'd have taken a different path, like the one Jesse hopes for for his son, whom he shelters from stories about his bandit life.

On "The Question of Canon" by Michael Kruger *****

This well-argued book essentially attempts to show the difference between the extrinsic theory of biblical canon formation and the intrisic theory and the shortfalls of the former, which seems to be the more popular contemporary view. The extrinsic view of the canon posits that it was created by the church in the third or fourth century and that many works were considered--in other words, that there was little agreement regarding what constituted scripture until the church defined it in this late period.

Kruger argues that what constituted scripture came into being much earlier than that--possibly as early as the early second century--even if the canon was not established until many years later. Unlike those who claim the Christianity was an oral faith until much later, he shows how even if most people were illiterate, the Jewish faith--and the Christian faith that derived from it--was a textual religion. That is, these faiths dealt in texts, which served as authority. Oral readings of texts still constitute a written center to the religion.

He also shows how even in the second century, many of Christian writers talked of "scripture" when referring to many of the works that would become part of the New Testament. Even the apostles themselves seemed conscious of their attempt to forge a scripture that would, in fact, complete the scripture of the Old Testament.

What I like about Kruger's work (but also what is perhaps a bit maddening about it too) is that he doesn't overplay his hand. He makes little claim to the idea that the New Testament "canon" existed by the second century, only that the outlines of it were largely already there. Indeed, there is little one could point to that would definitively show that all the New Testament books had been selected by that period. And yet, at the same time, the fact that all these folks in the second century refer to New Testament scriptures as scripture does seem to suggest to me that perhaps a canon really already did exist (Eusebius and others' debates about what counted notwithstanding). After all, there is not a lot of debate about what constitutes New Testament canon to this day, and that suggests, as David Trobisch's work suggests, that fairly early on, someone "edited"--or rather, selected--what would constitute the collection such that the matter was closed; what we lack, alas, is hard documentation.

On "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid" by Michael Ondaatje ****

When I set out to read a group of Westerns, a genre I have had little experience reading, I mostly intended to focus on the pulp fiction, and indeed, most of the books so far that I've ready have fit into that category, but now, for the last few, I'm moving toward reading "high-brow" Westerns, those that intend to be Literature with a capital L. Ondaatje's work certainly fits into that because it's not a Western aiming for a popular audience, with a heavy-handed plot and a likeable character at its center. Rather, it's a book of poetry, with the legendary Western antihero Billy the Kid at its center.

The book, in large part, is a kind of "found poetry," extracts from real-life documents rearranged in a poetic format. Ondaatje aims to describe the final days of Billy from multiple points of view, as his partners are gunned down and he is taken prisoner by and then escapes from his one-time friend and now sherriff Paul Garrett. All this seeps through what narrative is provided, because, this being poetry, we're more focused on the thoughts of the people at any given moment than on what's happening. In that sense, not having read Billy's history, I found the earlygoing parts of the book difficult to follow, but as I read on, I began to understand who was talking when and how events came to be.

As a piece of descriptive and experimental literature (Ondaatje includes various types of prose, rhyming poetry/lyrics, free verse, photographs), the Collected Works works admirably. One gets a pretty good set of views of the young man--from his friend, lovers, enemies, and self--while also coming to see how real-life people enter into myth. It was an enjoyable read, though I can't say that the work made me empathize too much with anyone or made me want to read a ton more about Billy.

On "The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius" by Paul Trebilco ****

I was looking for a book about the Johannine cricle or about second-century Ephesus, and there really don't appear to be as many as I thought there would be. Trebilco's book is a huge tome, though, and was well worth time involved in getting through it, though it only goes up to the time of Ignatius.

Trebilco largely makes the argument that Ephesus housed several Christian groups and that certain groups were friendly toward one another, while others were beyond the pale. Pauline and Johannine circles, in other words, borrowed from each other, but Nicolatains and the like were not acceptable. These folks left the Johannine circle, forging their own docetist circle that were not acceptable to Ignatius.

The first small bit of the work looks at the social context, providing a short history of Ephesus, its religious and trade importance, and the Jewish community within it. Next, Trebilco turns to the accounts in Acts and in Paul's letters, finding Acts to be mostly trustworthy. He's less certain about what we can glean directly from Paul about Ephesus, as the Pauline imprisonment in Ephesus isn't perhaps as clear as might be desired. The letter to the Ephesians, furthermore, was likely not directly to the group--in fact, it may have actually been written in Ephesus. It bears, in early manuscripts, a blank to whom it is written, suggesting that it was an enciclical for sorts, sent out to various churches and that Ephesus was just a convenient name to attach to it in the end.

Next, Trebilco turns to the pastoral epistles, the Johannine epistles (and gospel), and Revelation. He takes the view that the pastorals were pseudonymously written by Paul by people from a Pauline group in Ephesus. The Johannine works, he believes, were written not by the apostle John but by John the Elder. The pastorals were written in the 80s, the letters from John in the 90s, so we're looking at two groups nearly contemporarily to each other. From this, Trebilco draws out various ideas about what the leadership practices and theological concerns were among the two groups.

Although one has to go along with Trebilco's ideas with regard to authorship and time of writing (which are fairly common among scholars) to glean what he does about the community(ies), the argument is well put out (if often redundant) such that his ideas are easy to follow. I didn't learn quite as much about Christianity in Ephesus as I would have liked, but what Trebilco shows is that after Acts, we really have little to go on other than theoretical leaps about where works derived and what those works represent about the people who wrote them and to whom they were written.

On “Little Big Man” by Thomas Berger ****

I'm not sure how to take much of this book. I read that it was a parody of westerns, and I suppose one could read it that way, but it wasn't particularly spoofy. I read that it was a picaresque novel, and it is at some level like that—a story in episodes with various parts pulled in from almost every western trope you could imagine. I read that it is a western from the point of view of the Native peoples on the other side, and it does that to an extent, but not really. It's just its own weird book, one that gave me some pause especially early on. It opens with a preface by a supposed expert, the man who gathered the tales from Jack Crabb, a 112-year-old man who lived in the Old West. The preface is hilarious, full of faux learnedness and silly asides. And so I was expecting something similar of the book—but not so. The book seemed much more serious, even in its rendition of tall tale after tall tale. Further, the portrayal of the Native Americans seems problematic, at once cliché, overly positive and overly negative—but I suppose that that is Berger's point in such a portrayal: we never do fully understand them.

The tale starts when Crabb was a kid whose family is slaughtered by the Indians on a journey out west. He's taken captive and raised as a Native American—a Cheyenne—for about five years. In the process, he becomes something of a warrior, killing one man and saving the village—and specifically a frenemy named Little Bear. For this, Crabb is given the name Little Big Man. Eventually, in a fight with whites, Crabb finds himself in danger of being killed, so he ditches the Cheyenne garb and identity and now again becomes white.

As such, he's put into a preacher's family—really just the preacher and his wife—and raised proper for a short while, but the high living and moralizing doesn't suit him well, so eventually he runs away.

He ends up back with the Cheyenne somehow at some point—actually, at various points—so without rereading, it's exactly to recall what happens when. He does a stint as a businessman, gets ripped off, dallies among the Cheyenne some more. He gets married to a Swedish gal, gets himself mixed up with some bandits, meets Wyatt Earp, is again clobbered by Indians, to whom he loses his wife and kid. He becomes a drunkard, goes searching for gold, befriends a Cheyenne gal and son and marries the gal, and takes up life as a Cheyenne again, having another son by her. Then Custer wipes out his Indian family and he vows revenge. But instead of that, he gets mixed up with his long lost sister (actually, this happens more than once as well), and meets Wild Bill Hickock, who teaches him how to be a marksman, even as they play poker night after night. Meanwhile, he rescues a gal from prostitution. Eventually, Crabb meets up with Custer again and somehow ends up in Custer's calvary, but his desire for revenge has long since died. This takes him to Little Big Horn, where he once again meets his Indian family. In other words, Crabb is a Forest Gump of the western, somehow ending up in every part of history during a certain set of years. Are we to take him seriously? Even the learned scholar responsible for recording the story doesn't know, but it's an intriguing yarn.

On "Torah for Gentiles?" by Daniel Nessim ***

Nessim sets out to discuss how the Didache depends on the Torah for much of its teaching, essentially laying out a Torah for Gentiles as opposed to Jews. It's a decent if heavily focused introduction to the Didache, with a focus especially on the Didache's first half (the so-called "two ways" section, which would have been a common idea in the Jewish world that also would have played well for Gentiles).

The work derives from Nessim's dissertation, and it feels like one. As such, it really is a technical work aimed largely at scholars. There's a chapter that features a thorough literature review, and untranslated quotes of German and French scholars, as well as writing in the original Hebrew and Greek, abound. Such makes it difficult if less rewarding reading to the general reader.

Nessim takes the stands that the Didache emerged from a Jewish world in Syria around 80 CE, was written to and for Gentiles, and likely was written in at least two phases (with the first part written earlier than later). The work also probably contains elements of oral tradition and may have been intended for memorization by a community that was not very literate.

On “Last Stand at Saber River” by Elmore Leonard *****

This short novel is the best western I've read so far among those in this most recent genre list (though not nearly as good at classic Van Tillberg's classic The Oxbow Incident). There's reason, I suppose, Leonard was the writer dujure for many movies in the 1990s. This work includes full characters, an engaging plot (with cliff hangers at the end of each chapter), and historical tie-ins. I was thoroughly entertained and wanting to read more than I am by a lot of fiction these days. The only thing disappointing was the end, which was sudden—I could have actually wished for a coda or an epilogue, though in a way that would have dissuited a work that was generally full of suprises. Still, without the coda, a certain amount of emotional payoff seemed absent.

The work concerns Paul Cable, a Confederate veteran returning to his home in the Arizona territory. In his absence, some Union-leaning ranchers have taken his property. Family (wife and three young kids) in tow, Cable needs his farm back, but the ranchers aren't about to surrender it. Meanwhile, the local general store has change hands. The new owner is himself a Confederate veteran but something seems off about him. Indeed, as Cable soon discovers, he's about as untrustworthy as most of the Yanks. For both, the Civil War looms large, even out here on the territory, where the war is far away.

On "Beyond the Great Snow Mountains" by Louis L'Amour ***

Only one story in this collection is a Western; most fall under the adventure or crime/detective genres, but this was the only book available by L'Amour in the library, and I wasn't going to skip him in a reading list on Westerns.

A friend of mine growing up was a huge fan of L'Amour, had probably read all of this stuff. The friend could read at an incredibly fast clip, but if he had only read L'Amour, I would likely not be impressed, now that I've read this writer. The reading is not challenging. My friend, though, who had mastered speed reading to such an extent that he could look not just at sentences at a time but whole pages, would read Leon Uris or Charles Dickens novels in a night, so I know that he wasn't sticking just to short, simple books when he bragged of finishing so much so quickly.

That said, his admiration of L'Amour does make me think that perhaps he was more inclined to like heavily plotted material rather than strong characters. Indeed, from the collection, I would get the feeling that that is really all L'Amour was about. Sometimes, character motivations and actions seem secondary and nearly defy logic. Then again, I was reading a book published after L'Amour's death, made up of stories he did not publish in a collection in his lifetime, which suggests that even he may not have thought this his strongest work.

The collection consists of four stories. The sole Western, "Roundup in Texas," involves the familiar tale of a cattle rustlers and a man who sets out to save the cattle for a gal, ending, of course, in a shootout.

Among the adventure stories is "By the Waters of San Toledo," about a woman whose father dies and who is stranded in a faraway place with a man who she doesn't like but who thinks she should not belong to him. There is gunfighting, and a daring escape attempt. "Crash Landing" is about a man attempting to save passengers from a plane wreck that is precariously propped on a mountainside. "Coast Patrol" involves World War II pilots and ship captains and takes the prize for the most ridiculous character transformations--a woman whose father dies (a common trope, it seems, in these stories) is now due to be married to one of the seamen, having known him for a year and come to depend on him; Turk Madden, however, a U.S. flying ace who is flying for Russia, after discovering much of the ship's crew dead, tells her that the seaman is the one responsible and, in fact, that he is a traitor to the United States government who is on Japan's side. The woman immediately, despite receiving nothing but Madden's word, turns sides, taking up for Madden, and disavowing the seaman, her fiancee, despite his protests. After Madden kills the traitor, she and Madden get together. Not sure why she would betray her one true love on the word of a stranger. The title story also fits the adventure model, this one about a woman stranded in a faraway Asian country, who marries a local and who finally has a chance to return to the United States, but whose true desires are very much tested.

"Meeting at Falmouth" involves a twist ending that is hardly worth the fifteen or so pages it takes to get to it.

Two stories involve boxing and tough guys' attempts to make boxers throw fights for gambling money--"Sideshow Circus" and "The Money Punch."

Contemporary crime stories include "Under the Hanging Wall," about the murder of a mining employee, and "The Gravel Pit," about a man whose attempt to take off with a company's payroll goes awry such that he has to kill another man.

A man who writes adventure has to know how to describe a fight, I suppose, and L'Amour was certainly good at that. Much of many of the stories runs through the various punches each character throws, and somehow, one is able to keep track of what is happening. It's good action--but often not much more.

On "Shane" by Jack Schaefer ****

This classic western is essentially the tale of a mysterious superhero who rides into "town," does away with the bad guys, and leaves. It is told from the point of view of a kid who witnesses the action, and it's interesting to see how Schaefer manages to get the kid to places where he can witness the important events.

My wife, in her own reading of The Virginian, is the one who first brought up the superhero comparison to westerns, and it made me think a bit about how most of the books I've read so far fall into just that sort of set of cliches. Indeed, there are numerous sites on the internet that claim superhero movies are the new western--and then a whole bunch rebutting that claim (westerns are more varied is the standard reply). But so far, I'd say there's a fairly common throughline with regard to standard western elements. Most involve a super gunslinger, generally mysterious, who saves a woman from some baddies. There are variations, of course. Some involve more than one gunslinger, as in Zane Gray's Riders of the Purple Sage. Some, as in the case of Shane, avoid the woman--the romantic love interest. Here, the gunslinger saves a family.

The work itself is set out on rangeland that is transitioning toward farmland. The resident rancher wants to keep the land free for his cattle to roam, and so he's doing his best to push out the homesteaders who have taken up residence on the vast open federal land with the intention of claiming their 160 acres. Threats of violence and then actual violence follow. The focus of the rancher's attack is the Starret family, because that's where the manliest man of the small and not yet official community resides. When I say, "not yet official," I mean that this is the wild west, land where there is no sherriff to enforce the law. It's neighbor against neighbor. And in that sort of situation, one needs men like Shane to protect the "decent" folk.

The writing here is assured, and the narrative point of view provides a kind of innocence and wonder that works well in what is a kind of tall tale. That gives the work a feeling of genuiness that has seemed lacking in most of the other westerns I've read, so that even if it's much the same story, it feels heartfelt.

On “Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting of the Ways” by Thomas A. Robinson *****

This is probably the best book I’ve read on first- and second-century Christianity in Antioch. The work is in many ways a critique of scholars who have tried to argue that the reason for Ignatius’s martyrdom was an internal division within his congregation and of scholars who have argued that there were multiple Christianities or multiple Judaisms. Robinson is intent on arguing that the fractiousness was likely from outside Ignatius’s church and that Ignatius’s church was the main body, if not the only, of Christianity at the time. He makes good arguments on both counts, but at the same time, I remain unconvinced that Ignatius necessarily presents us with orthodoxy and that there was really only one church.

The book starts out with an exploration of the history of the city and Christian culture within it. This first half, as noted, sets a very good stage for all that follows and is probably about as thorough as Downey’s chapter on the subject of the church in this period in his book on the history of Antioch of Syria in general. That history, which Robinson lays out, is then used to discuss Ignatius in context.

One interesting argument Robinson notes is that we don’t today speak of Mormonisms. Clearly, there are various offshoots, small branches, break-off groups of Mormonism. But the whole is still seen as Mormonism singular, and there is still generally also one major Latter Day Saints group. It’s a good point. Critics probably are too much inclined to think that early Christianity had no main group or that all the various offshoots and branches were every bit as large as the main (thus, the misemphasis that “Christianities” present). That said, I think Robinson may be a bit bold in trying to claim, as he seems to do, that all the docetists and Judaizers were mixed in with the one church and had no means of meeting on their own. Clearly, even today, heretical teachings within one Christian sect that are orthodox in another still make their way across sects at times, and you can have a person with a few odd views meeting among others who have another set of views, even if another sect might be closer to that person’s views on a particular point.

Another interesting claim is that Ignatius’s concern about Judaizing was not so much that Jews were converting to Christianity and bringing their Jewish practices with them, and insisting Gentiles fall in line, but rather that Gentiles were becoming Christians, then as they became familiar with the teachings, were becoming more attracted to full-on Judaism, such that they were leaving Christianity to become Jewish proselytes (in other words, there wasn’t a lot of Jewish proselyte to Christian movement; rather, it was more often Christian proselyte to Jewish movement). It’s an interesting argument, and Robinson presents a good case. Again, however, I think one should be careful about taking a hard line with regard to what was happening. My guess is that there were some who did exactly as Robinson claims, but I’m less inclined to believe that there weren’t also still Jews who were attempting to influence Christian practice. Maybe everything was settled in Acts 15, but it seems to me like even after that, there were plenty of people in the church who seemed unwilling to abide by the decision (at least if we take Galatians as being written after the Acts 15 decision) and that that had not all come to an end by 100 CE.

On “The Didache” by Thomas O'Loughlin ***

This second book on the Didache that I read was aimed at a more general audience and yet seemed much less interesting and useful. The work lays out the discovery of the Didache and then focuses on themes within the Didache and what those would have said about the community that used the document. O’Loughlin often seems more concerned, however, about how we read the Didache in our contemporary day and what that says about contemporary Christianity. He notes how various scholars have accepted or rejected it, or dated it late or earlier, based on their preconceptions about what Christianity is like now. If a given doctrine or practice seems odd, then that is good reason to reject part of the document or to argue that this particular sect was heretical in some way or that the ideas represent something before full development and so on. O’Loughlin closes with a section on the Eucharist and how one’s views on that are often used to separate Christians today, whereas, he claims, the Didache, shows that the Eucharist was really about unifying Christians rather than separating—once one was baptized, one was “in.” Baptism, thus, was the distinguishing feature. Point taken, except that even the Didache notes that the Eucharist was for members only, and is that not also then a way of distinguishing one set of people from another, just like baptism? Today, with so many Christian sects, many with differing views on the Eucharist and baptism, it really isn’t much different. One might be baptized and then be “in”—and able to participate in the Eucharist, but only in the group. Go to another Christian sect and a rebaptism might be necessary, but afterward . . . Although I suppose there are sects where only the ministry participates in the Eucharist, but that’s a whole other issue. Anyway, with a focus so much on critiquing contemporary Christian practices, the book proved to be less than I was looking for historically.