On “In the Shadow of the Temple” by Oskar Skarsaune *****

Oskar Skarsaune has made a career of studying the intersection of Judaism with early Christianity. Having read his very good edited collection on the subject, I came to this work with some mixed expectations. I didn't figure Skarsaune could match that book's specificity and caution, but on the other hand, this was after all the guy who put together that other work. I wasn't really disappointed. Granted, this work is definitely more of an introduction to the subject and more basic, but there was still plenty I learned.

The first part of the book serves as a familiar rehearsal of the Jewish culture of the time—the geography of Jerusalem, Hellinistic influences, the major sects. The second part introduces the Christian element and how it interacted, as a Jewish sect, with other Jewish people.

In the third part, Skarsaune provides both some of the most interesting and least interesting material. It focused largely on Christian dogma and its relation to the Jewish elements from which it derived. There is a discussion of the process of Jewish canonization, with strong arguments for why it happened long before the academy of Jamnia. But the section also discusses how some of the Christian church ended up accepting the Apocrypha, while some did not. He then explores Christology, the holy spirit (lowercase, as per pre-Trinity understanding), and baptism, which are generally less interesting sections. That said, perhaps I'd have found the baptism section more interesting if I hadn't read earlier so much on the subject of how Christian baptism came to be and how it was different from the Jewish concept. The sections on liturgical practice come next, with special care taken with regard to the Christian calendar. One chapter in this regard was maddening, the next enlightening. Skarsaune notes that the Jewish fall festivals had no meaning for Christians and thus dropped out of use, while the spring festivals were reinterpreted for the Messianic life. In the next chapter, he admits that some Christians continued to observe the fall festivals and posits a reason—namely, that most Christian believers had been Godfearers (that is, Jewish sympathizers) if not Jewish themselves. Strangely, the clergy, however, ended up on the other side of this debate and really pushed to make people stop “Judaizing.” Also of interest: The need for Christ-centered holidays to round out the year (since all the holidays were in the spring) eventually led to the adoption of Christmas, in Skarsaun's view, finishing also the observance of the life of Christ (i.e., his birth, in addition to his resurrection).

Much of the book is given over to the typology of the temple in Christian practice. It feels as if Skarsaune set out to write a book on that subject and then was asked to do something more introductory, so most of the temple discussion falls in boxes at the end of each chapter. I could have seen a book on just that subject, but it likely would have had a smaller audience. Extensive suggested further reading also comes at the end of each chapter, which could prove useful for folks wanting to know more about a particular subject Skarsaune covers.

On "Creating the Canon" by Benjamin F. Laird *****

 

This is one of the best books on questions related to the biblical canon that I've read. Laird managed to find new angles and new ways at looking at what is a very well-rehearsed subject. He covers, of course, a lot of the standard territory, but to each subject he brings a degree of fresh thinking and wide-ranging discussion.

How were the New Testament books composed? Were the people credited with them really the authors? Laird brings up, of course, the degree to which authors relied on secretaries. Whether you were literate or not (and most people were not literate at the time), you might well have a person or persons who wrote on your behalf. One of the difficulties, of course, with much of the language in the New Testament is, of course, the fact that sometimes a given author might seem to be writing in a way that he hasn't written in earlier circumstances. This, of course, explains why that is possible. But it wasn't just secretaries who might have an influence on a work. There was the process of “publication.” Before a work was released into the world, it was often, even as it would be today, commented on by numerous others—friends and associates. It might, in other words, have various renditions, privately distributed. Once it was ready for dissemination, the secretary might make more than one copy: there might be a copy to the recipient, and a copy kept by the author. There might also be multiple copies, if multiple recipients, and sometimes these copies might differ according to the recipient. So it's possible, for example, that Paul created a version of a given letter for general reception, one for people specifically in a given city, and one for himself. Thus, we would have multiple versions of a letter floating around (for example, you might end up with Romans with and without chapter 16), but only one that was really intended for general publication. Still, that means there isn't really a single original. Once something was in publication/distribution, however, it was next to impossible to pull it back. It's now public, being copied from one recipient to another. But such intricacies explain both how most of our New Testament writings match so well against surviving manuscripts but also why there might be occasional significant variations—and it does so in a way that doesn't require that some later person has “messed” with the text.

Laird looks at also when canonization could have happened, per various other people's claims, denoting how no single council really determined the canon. Very interestingly, he posits that Marcion may not have “shortened” the Bible (rejecting certain letters of Paul) but may have only had access to a ten-letter version of Paul's writings. This idea seems a bit dubious to me, given when Marcion was writing (namely, at at a point when the fuller collection and other New Testament writings should have been available) and the conclusions Laird later reaches, but nevertheless it's an interesting thought.

After reviewing early citations to the books of the New Testament, Laird discusses how the New Testament likely circulated—namely, not as a single book but as a collection of distinct collections. Bookmaking just wasn't of the sort that you could it all twenty-seven works into a single volume. So generally, there were collections of various sorts, the most popular being the Gospels, Paul's letters (in ten, thirteen, and fourteen letter versions), Acts (sometimes with the General Epistles), the General Epistles, and Revelation. With regard to Paul's letters, the initial ten may have been published first, then later the others were added—thus, you have versions with and without the pastoral letters and with and without Hebrews. This doesn't require someone else write said books in Paul's name. It may be that Paul, or an associate, republished the collection with the additions (though of course such multiple publications leave open the possibility that someone wrote in Paul's name and added those works; Laird notes that no early writers doubted the authenticity of the pastorals). Nevertheless, what Laird shows is that rather than there being twenty-seven books circulating separately and gradually gaining status as canon, there were discrete collections that came to be considered canon.

A final section looks at the importance of authorship with regard to what was to be considered canonical. Laird looks at various theories regarding how the canon could come to be and could come to be (mostly) fixed (he acknowledges that actually the canon does differ across Christianity). He shows the shortcomings of arguments that dismiss the centrality of authorship—that the canon is just somehow evident, that the church decided it, that God inspired it, and so on. In the end, the early church believed these were the works written by the apostles and their associates and that's why they became canon. Authorship mattered, even if the works were inspired or the church decided; other “inspired” writings didn't make it. The point was that these were the witnesses God sent forth; that is what the church believed, and that is how the canon became fixed.

On “Misquoting Truth” by Timothy Paul Jones *****

I figured I'd give this Christian response to the work of Bart Erhman a go after reading Ehrman's similarly titled work. Even Jones has to admit that Ehrman is an amazing scholar, but of course, both Jones and Ehrman have particular points of view and different axes to grind, as do we all. So what was useful about reading Jones's book was seeing so many of the fact that Ehrman doesn't quite give the full truth about. The first part of this book largely adresses Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, and the second largely addresses Ehrman's Lost Christianities.

Interesting tidbits that Ehrman doesnt include in his text: While many early documents are missing author names on their works, it's possibly because the title page is missing; in the cases where we have author names attached, in every single case, from a wide variety of areas, the names (Matthew, Mark, John, etc.) match what these works would come to be called. It's not like someone assigned these names to the works later. (What neither Jones nor Ehrman discuss are the specific documents and the specific dates of the documents and the actual numbers, which is likely getting a bit too far into the weeds for most people. If we have Gospels of John before 300 and none of them bare his name, and we have sixteen from the 400s with twelve bearing his name, that would arguably mean something quite different from having two Johns from the 200s, one bearing his name, eight from the 300s with one bearing his name, and then twelve from the 400s with three bearing his name.)

Ehrman's argument about 1 Corinthians 11:34-35 being added by a duplicitous scribe with an agenda mentions that those two verses are sometimes placed after verse 40 in some manuscript; what he doesn't mention is that those two verses, nevertheless, still always appear. We don't have versions of the letter without them. That suggests something quite different to me.

Other things that Jones brought up were things I'd thought about even while reading Ehrman's work. Most of the discrepanciess Ehrman sees in early manuscripts as destroying the value of the written works seem, on reflection, not to make that much of a difference when it comes down to the actual pont of the work. The same message still applies. I suppose that one could argue that God should have put his writings on some kind of industructable stone so that we would absolutely what they said, which seems to be the only thing that would satisfy Ehrman's scepticism, but the part of the point of scripture is that God works through fallible humans; the stone would kind of dissuit the point. That we have as accurate copies as we do seems no less than a miracle, as Jones notes, because if you think about people copying stuff down in a language without punctuation or spaces between words, such would seem to lend to all kinds of errors and eventual changes. You can take from that what you will. One man sees the whole enterprise as a human one attempting to speak for a god created by humans, and one man sees God speaking through humans.

But as Jones notes near the end, and I think the point is a good one, we can't get too tied up in the idea that everything in the Bible must match or that we have all the answers. Such prognostications can lead us to lose faith when scholars point out the problems. We need to be honest about what's there and about what we don't yet understand, while seeing the bigger picture.

On “Underground” by Haruki Murakami *****

I first read this book at the airport in Madrid, Spain. I believe it was 2001, but it could have been 2005. Either way, at the time, I found the book engaging and heart wrenching, especially the account of the woman who became mostly a vegetable after the 1995 Aum Shinriko sarin gas attack in the Japanese subway, which is the focus of this book. On this second read a quarter century later, I didn't find myself tearing up (in fact, maybe because I remember the account of the woman, I was more affected this time by the account of a pregnant woman who lost her husband), but I was nevertheless pulled in by the interlocking accounts.

Essentially, the book is a set of interviews Murakami conducted with some of the attack's victims. In the account of the pregnant woman, it was incredible the coincidence that on thar particular day, her husband and she go up early to eat a heavier breakfast together before work. It was like a good-bye, but how would they have even known? Murakami organizes the accounts around stations, so one reads several different people's observations from each station, and often the one observed in one account is one telling the account in another. Also fascinating was the way that the people generally speaking didn't know what was going on, which I suppose is almost always the case in real time in these sort of events. I remember 9/11, which would have happened, actually not long before I read this title, the kind of chaos and confusion of the moment, and I also remember a friend of mine who lived in New York at the time explaining how that day was even more chaotic for her. After all, the Twin Towers were where most broadcasting towers were, which meant no TV or communication was available. Were we are war? What's happening?

But the accounts of the victims are just the first part of this book. The second part, tacked on apparently after its initial Japanese publication, concerns those who actually are or were part of the Aum Shinriko cult. This was interesting insofar as the accounts expose the way in which one's reaction to being in a cult really is complex. Most people got quite a bit out of the association, in terms of mental stability, but at the same time, it's clear that a good chunk of the teaching and behavior was abusive. Some were locked up for days or had to make a furtive escape from one of the group's communes. Further, of course, was the degree of loyalty the group inspired such that members would go through with such a plot as to release poison gas on a subway.

One other thing that surprised me was that these events occurred in 1995, so around the time of the Oklahome City federal building bombing. I'd thought these event occurred in the late 1980s, around 1987-89. Strange how our memory can transplant events like so. When I heard of this on TV (which I do remember), that means I was in grad school, not high school or my first year of college, as I'd thought.

On “The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church” by Charles E. Hill *****

I thought I'd read one of the best books one could possibly read with Culpepper's bio and exploration of all the different tales about John through history, but Hill's book managed to provide something new and thoughtful. (I was drawn to the book having been impressed by many of his scholarly articles and realized his book-length work might be intriguing, and it is.) The book is a long one, longer than Culpepper's, and the point much more narrow, but I get the sense that Hill had to be so thorough because his views do not seem to be very popular among contemporary scholars. Essentially, the whole book is devoted to slapping down one argument—namely that the works of John, and most especially his Gospel, were not accepted by the early church because they started out as works more popular among Gnostic sects. As such, it was not until Irenaeus adopted John for the mainstream church that John's materials were acceptable for the canon. Hill quotes early text after early text, looking at just about every allusion to John that likely exists.

Hill shows how the "Johannophobia" of the early church, as he terms it, is simply not true. He shows that John's work was written mostly to counter Gnostic-type ideas and that most Gnostic sects understood his work in that way. Although one can find references to John's work in Gnostic literature, it is not complementary. It usually argues against John; if it uses John, it does so in a way that such groups would have used any such scriptures: that is, by finding analogies to their various aeon systems and so forth that would not have spoken to anyone who was not already initiated into and in agreement with such a system.

Furthermore, Hill goes on to show, most early church officials did accept John's work, most especially the Gospel, but also Revelation and 1 John, as apostolic and used it in their writings. (2 and 3 John are rarely used., but their brevity would preclude much usage—and the mere fact that they were preserved suggests that others thought them the work of the same author and bound them together.) Hill's claim with regard to usage of John's writing in general is a bit tricky but also well founded—that is, often early church writers didn't directly quote John, but to be fair, they rarely directly quote any of the New Testament. That just wasn't how authors wrote at the time, as many had to quote things from memory, not having a book before them. (Indeed, the work I recently finished reading about Eusebius noted that as one of his great innovations: the degree to which he quoted authors directly.) As such, the “quotes” of John are usually paraphrases of a sort, but the ideas seem very much contingent on his work. The implication is, further, that John was the author of all of the works generally attributed to him—that was certainly how writers in the first two centuries treated the works and attributed them (irrespective of whether John actually wrote them, which Hill doesn't take a hard stand on). It was only really in Eusebius's time that John's writings began to be called into question—and most especially, his apocalypse, because millennialism had fallen out of favor and Revelation is heavy on it. That critique has since found its way into modern scholarship, but it is nothing new, even if it didn't arise in the earliest centuries.

On “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis *****

 

Economics applied to baseball—that was my thinking in choosing to add this to my economics reading list. It wasn't that heavily into the theory, though, as in the the stories surrounding those who applied new ideas about statistics to sports, and specifically baseball and the early 2000s Oakland A's. In a way, the book adhered much more closely to the movie based on it than I would have imagined. That is, it was much more centered on Billy Beane's life and how his experiences shaped his work as general manager of the team. For a baseball fan, especially for one who grew up in the 1980s, with Bill James's abstracts and Status Pro Baseball, this book is a really fun read; given its heavily narrative nature, I'm not sure how much one gets from it from an economic theory perspective.

For me, much of the book was about how little I know about baseball of the era that Lewis writes about. I followed baseball deeply as a preteen and early teen, from about age twelve to sixteen, and continued to know it fairly well through the miraculous 1988 Dodgers season, when I turned eighteen. But once I started work and especially after I graduated from high school, I found myself with much less time to devote to the sport. Sure, I might check in on how a team is doing from time to time and who are the stat leaders, but I don't listen to virtually every game of my team, scour stats on summer days, or spend those days playing simulation games. As such, players come and go and I know nothing of them. This means, that outside of Jason Giambi, Tim Hudson, Barry Zito, and Nick Swisher, I knew virtually none of the players discussed in this book. And even of the four mentioned, I knew almost nothing of them, other than that they were for a while very good players. I found myself, as such, looking up some of the other players Lewis writes about.

The essence of the book is an attempt to answer how it is that the A's of the early 2000s, one of the cheapest teams in the sport, managed to put up teams that were constant winners. The answer is, of course, to any familiar with what has become standard now in the stport, by paying attention to statistics that others aren't. Things like batting average, for example, really aren't as important as on base percentage. ERA isn't as important as walk-to-strike ratio or homers pet batters. It's these sort of stats that the A's started recruiting with and building a team around. Such was essential, because a poor team like the A's can't afford to keep players like Jason Giambi, who can hit for power and average, so instead one gathers nonnames who actually do significant things.

Beane was apparently an incredible athlete and a potentially great player, but his major league career never panned out. The issue for him was psychological. He couldn't deal with getting out. The game is as much mental as physical. As a result, he floundered, until one day he quit—or sort of did. He walked from the clubhouse into the back office and asked instead to work there, which is odd coming from a relatively young player.

Thereafter, we learn about Bill James and his baseball writing. We learn about why the A's don't run. We learn about various players the A's recruited, such as the catcher Jeremy Brown (an on-base machine who is otherwise not that impressive and thus of no interest to other teams) or the pitcher Chad Bradford (whose low velocity and weird delivery disinterested other teams, despite statistical major- and mostly minor-league success, but whose extremely high groundball rate was of particular interest to the A's). We see how Beane goes about trading with other teams and drafting players, and how his success has meant that he's had to find ways to do so deviously such that teams don't realize who he's really after and thus raise the price.

Lewis's book is a throwback in a way, to a time when the sport was first discovering the more efficient way of operating. Teams like the A's and Rays could still take advantage. I'm not sure that's as much the case anymore, as teams like the Dodgers have both the money and the brains now, and it's sad really. In addition, the focus on stats has taken away for many teams things like the steal and encouraged things like the shift, making for more predictable play. Pro baseball has attempted to adjust the rules, making larger bases, taking away the shift as a legal move, as to bring some things back, but at the same time, it's also encouraged more homers and jettisoned pitchers batting such that to one who enjoys the strategy element of the sport, it seems less interesting than it once did.

On “John, the Son of Zebedee” by R. Alan Culpepper *****

I'm something of a traditionalist in terms of who wrote what in the New Testament (it's the simplest answer); Culpepper, like so many modern scholars is not. He believes that John the apostle wrote none of the books attributed to him; rather, a community of early Christians wrote the works that were later associated with the apostle. Culpepper includes his arguments for why he believes this is so in his biography of John and raises a number of good questions for those who would take other positions. What makes this work so great, however, is that it isn't just an expression of Culpepper's views. Rather, it's an exploration of how the “myth” of John came to be. As such, it's a compendium of all the writing (alongside some other creative works) that has been done about John and that has been credited to John. It's probably the most complete and encyclopedic source on this subject around.

In discrete chapters, Culpepper explores who John actually was (What does Sons of Thunder mean? How was he a pillar of the church? Was he a priest or related to one? Did he know Greek?); who the Beloved Disciple, the author of the gospel of John, was (the apostle? the elder? Lazarus?); who the authors of the apocalypse and letters were (the apostle? the elder? a seer? the beloved disciple? a community?); how traditions in the second through fifth centuries tied or did not tie John to these writings; how John's reputation was burnished in various largely fictional Acts about his life and how much we can know about his life outside scripture (did he die a martyr? did he go to Ephesus? travel through Parthia?); the art and poetry about John; nineteenth-century scholarship on John; and twentieth-century scholarship on John (which scholars fall into which of three basic camps: John the apostle as author, John the Elder as author, or a Johannine community as author)?

For me, the chapter about the various mythic Acts was a slog. Culpepper provides a lengthy summary of many of them. That said, the summary is extremely useful as a reference and likely one I will return to. The chapter on art of poetry did not, for me, not all that useful, but it fits well with Culpepper's main goal, which is to provide a summary how John has been seen across the ages, even if these works never even purport to be accurate.

What in the end makes this such a great work is that while Culpepper has his own views on the subject, he provides full summaries of the points of views others have had. As such, one learns why some people claim the Beloved Disciple is John, why some claim the Elder never existed, why some claim John the apostle died early, and so on, even as one learns the views Culpepper himself holds. There really is so much that can be argued, and it's nice to have it all in one place.

On "Why Nations Fail" by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson *****

Countries are poor or rich because of their institutions. That is the basic argument. The authors use the example of the two Koreas and even more the two Nogaleses, one in Mexico and one in Arizona. Each has a better off partner. Why? They have the same geography, culture, people, and knowledge. It is because on one side the institutions exploit the people and on the other the people have more say in those institutions. I think the authors are pretty much correct, though I wouldn’t credit the institutions so much as the character of the leadership. That is, corrupt government leads to poverty.

The authors reference inclusive versus extractive economies and politics. Historical examples proliferate, which makes for great reading. In the examples, only rarely does a political system and economy not match and usually not for long. Extractive situations enrich and empower a small elite, while inclusive ones do so for the vast swath of society. With this also is the need for a strong central authority; without such, there will be no one to enforce laws, and thus society will fail to be extractive but also will not be able to be stable enough to provide the benefits of inclusivity. While inclusive societies are better off, extractive political systems don’t give way to inclusive ones because of creative destruction. That is, inclusivity also means less power and less ability to hold on to resources for the elite, meaning they would lose out even in a richer society.

Two other factors affect growth: critical junctures and institutional drift. Sometimes a plague, disaster, or invention will come along and change all the rules. Small adjustments at these junctures become big differences between nations as the institutions drift along based on that reaction.

Extractive economies can provide economic growth for a time. The problem they inevitably encounter, however, is the lack of creative destruction. When elites are focused only on gaining riches, they fail to spur innovation among others and thus the economy eventually stalls, or others attempt to take the elite position and centralized authority disappears, bringing an end to the structure and stability needed to extract wealth.

It is in the best interest of those in power to prevent creative destruction and thus to continue to extract wealth. A broad coalition of stakeholders, however, can interfere with the ability of the elite to continue to hold power, and once that broad coalition exerts its own power to force creative destruction, society revolutionizes. If that broad coalition holds, you have inclusion and the advantages that come with it. But often new elites emerge in whose interest it is to prevent continuing creative destruction.

The slave trade of course was part of that extractive economy. But so too was colonialism. Once slave trading was banned in the west, the authors bring out, slavery continued into the twentieth century via rules put into place in African countries that kept locals essentially enslaved to corporations and rich folks in the country itself. I hadn’t really thought about this before. The history of South Africa was particularly galling to read, where laws were put in place to create a racial underclass to be low wage workers, where previously there had been a greater degree of equality and advancement. One small Asian nation was completely obliterated, fourteen thousand killed, by the Dutch east Asia company because the people refused essentially to become subservient to the corporation. These were cases as such where nations were made to fail so that others could succeed by extracting land and labor and resources.

Countries that adopted inclusive political dynamics in the nineteenth century as the Industrial Revolution was taking place tend to be the rich ones today.

A virtuous cycle exists for nations with inclusive politics and economies. As elites sense that by not giving in on small issues could lead to revolution, they tend to expand power to less well off people in a gradual process. Likewise, such elites recognize the power monopolies wield over them and not wanting to compete, they break them up. Essentially so many parties have some degree of power that they recognize that not following equality in the law, even when it hurts their own cause, could lead to trouble down the road when they are no longer in charge. An example is given with regard to how fdr tried to pack the courts, which proved unpopular even though his policies were popular and the courts were interfering. Such preserved rule of law. In Argentina the opposite happened. Peron managed to get power to fire judges and install his own and ever since there has not been an independent judiciary and thus rarely a functioning democracy. (I fear that our virtuous cycle is drawing to a close in America, as parties, especially conservatives, play zero sum games. Republicans packed the Supreme Court in a dubious manner. Now the president is wielding powers he doesn’t actually have and congress is letting him and aiding him.)

The vicious cycle is just the opposite of the virtuous. Political power is extractive and limited to a few; this gives economic power, which in turn aids the political power. When the regime changes, it’s not a broad coalition of people but just another group setting themselves up as elites. This is what happened in Africa. Colonial empires extracted resources and set up government to do so; when they left, those who took over used the same techniques to continue extracting resources. Such is also why the us south persisted in poverty for so long. Plantation elites extracted from cheap slave labor; after the civil war, they set up a new system that more or less continued the same practices and kept the rich rich and the poor poor. Very little manufacturing or urbanization or modernization occurred because the system was set up to allow the well off to continue extracting. Eventually if such vicious circles aren’t broken, constant fighting to be top dog leads to a breakdown in the entire system and a lack of any central authority.

The few countries that have broken the mold have done so, the authors claim, with a broad coalition of interests. They give the example of Botswana, which I did not realize was as wealthy as it is. It was not heavily victimized by colonialism. When it became independent it was very poor and had few educated. But what it did have, I would say, were good leaders. I’m not sure they could not have personally benefited from forging an extractive economy. But their focus was on the nation. When diamonds were discovered—likely the source of much of the national wealth—they ensured that the money made was invested not in the tribe who owned the land (which seems would have been easy, especially as it was the tribe of the nation’s leader) but in the nation itself. The wealth is shared. In this sense I can see the virtuous circle taking hold. Everyone knows that if one person or tribe took the wealth for themselves, the nation would lose out. Better to share.

The authors close by noting that their theory is historical. There is no policy prescription that will bring about such changes. Giving money to poor countries usually just enriches the charities and the people in charge, rather than aiding the poor in the country. Increasing trade with an extractive regime, like china, will not make the regime change to an inclusive one. As such, growth in such a country will be temporal, the authors argue. Indeed, in a concrete example given, where a man started a company that was too successful compared with the government companies, he was arrested. The people aren’t actually free to innovate; riches belong to the elite. That is China. But in Brazil, a workers party, a broad coalition, has taken over the government and positive changes seems to be taking hold. Inclusivity. In both examples, however, I see more personal character and lack of corruption as the reason for a given success. You can’t have inclusivity unless the leaders are truly servants more interested in helping their coalition than manipulating it to enrich themselves. In this regard, the American experiment may have benefited by such leaders and may be drawing to a close with the loss of such.

For those wanting a spiritual explanation, Paul and Peter note that God puts the leaders of nations in charge; as such nations rise and fall, succeed and fail, by the leaders who ultimately take those positions. Call it inclusivity versus extraction if you want, but such hardly seems a result of pure happenstance.

On "Wealth in Ancient Ephesus" by Gary G. Hoag *****

I found this scholarly volume immensely interesting. Hoag does a close reading for select passages from the first letter to Timothy alongside a review of Xenophon of Ephesus's Ephesiaca. By doing so, he provides a new way of interpreting many of the passages in the biblical letter. Some readings seem more convincing than others, but no matter, one comes away feeling as if one knows Timothy much better in its context.

Xenophon's work has historically been placed a century or two after Timothy, but as Hoag notes, more recent scholars now see it as being written at about the same time, which allows for the parallel reading. Hoag examples specifically attitudes toward wealth in Timothy and how those attitudes compare with those of the Ephesians and others who would have read Xenophon's tale.

The tale involves a young couple who meet at a festival for Artemis. Because they don't properly respect the goddess, the goddess banishes them to some hard times before they are allowed to return, more humbly, to Ephesus as the loving couple that they are.

In the most convincing of his arguments, Hoag examines how the work links up ideas about femininity in comparison to what the author of Timothy writes about women. Some odd statements are made in Timothy, but they fit very well when one reads them in light of the mythology surrounding Artemis. There seem to be very good reasons that the author of Timothy discusses childbirth and the creation, beyond just these being biblical stories.

Hoag's arguments regarding false teachers, benefactors, and wealth are a bit less convincing, but they are still intriguing ways to read the letter. I say they're less convincing not because they aren't good arguments but because the standard reading of the letter--that the author is dealing with some kind of proto-gnostic set of teachers--still makes sense. In other words, although Hoag makes a strong case that the enemies of the writer could be wealthy Ephesian worshipers of Artemis, he doesn't quite convince me that the other possibility doesn't make sense. So really, he simply adds to the way that one could read such passages. But this is by no means a bad thing.

On “Cold-Case Christianity” by J. Warner Wallace *****

After hearing an interview with the author, I'd been looking forward to reading this for probably a few years and finally got ahold of a copy. It was worth the wait. Granted, the early going portions of the text were a bit disappointing, but as Wallace moves deeper into his arguments, the case gets more and more compelling. There isn't much that is necessarily suprising; it's all basic Christian apologist argument, but Wallace is pretty thorough.

What the author does here is essentially discuss how the manner in which one goes about solving a criminal case based on evidence and testimony actually fits well with what evidence has been left for us in the Bible about Jesus's life and work. He starts early on by discussing the basic argument that skeptics have against the Bible: namely, that miraculous/supernatural events do not compute with what we understand about the known world. Indeed, if one is a materialist, that is the end of the conversation right there. But Wallace claims that witness testimony of the supernatural can't be disregarded, especially when there are so many witnesses. For my own self, I've been somewhat skeptical of the idea that our five senses explain everything about the world around us; it seems a bit bold to try to claim that all knowledge can be gathered from the “physical” world; there might well be things that we can't see/hear/touch/smell/feel that are real and existent. As such, one can't necessarily dismiss all things that don't fit with our material limitations, even if there is nothing we can glean about things outside of them without some sort of revelation. But we can see, as Warner himself notes in one chapter, the material results of such supernatural power—that is, one chapter is devoted to the creation, wherein Wallace essentially runs down the various well-trodden arguments for creation versus some other less than satisfactory argument for the origin of life and the universe. But in that sense, the book, in its earliest chapters, where it's running through these well-rehearsed arguments alongside his police life, the book seems a little predictable.

The deeper in Wallace gets, however, the more intriguing the work becomes. That's because he begins to summarize some ideas that are somewhat less explored in standard apologetics and theological works, and he does it in a way that is very much easy for a lay reader to understand. I recognized some of the scholarly work that I've seen others write in Wallace's text, but made much more accessible. Some of that work is in books I've managed to check out of the college library, but said books are at such high academic prices I'll never likely purchase a copy; now, I have those arguments, scriptures, and quotes in Wallace's book, and it's nice to have those summations put into such easy to access form. I especially enjoyed section 2 of the book, where he is as much talking about being a detective as he is about examining the evidence. His main point in this section is that, yes, one can still argue other things about the evidence presented, but are those arguments the most logical? the simplest? I think Wallace presents a good point here. We can accept the evidence handed down to us; that is in fact the simplest explanation for all that we know about Jesus. Or we can, by contrast, settle on something that is much harder to defend, some sort of conspiracy theory. It doesn't fit the evidence as well or as simply, but if one is a materialist, such an argument fits with the world one knows. It's really a matter of which one you're going to choose.

On “The Rise of Christianity” by Rodney Stark *****

Another fine book by Stark. I much enjoyed reading this prequel to his Cities of God. Although the books cover much of the same ground, they are different enough to both warrant reading. Cities of God focuses on why and how Christianity spread where it did; this one focuses on why Christianity found popularity.

The subject is one that has been addressed numerous times. I'm reminded of Gibbons's own list of reasons, having to do with the differing culture of Christianity, but Stark really brings the arguments home from a sociological view. He focuses on such subjects as kinship networks and migration. But he also looks at exactly what appealed. Take, for example, the spread of disease. Christians were more likely to nurse one another (and others); this meant that more survived and that that caring also appealed to those people, Christian or not, who did survive. Christianity gave a better home to women in terms of how it saw women as more equal to men. Christianity gave a home to people in cities who otherwise were often lonely by providing networks previously unavailable. Add to such items as that the more often cited sacrifices of Christians—their willingness to die for the cause, their higher sense of virtue, and one begins to sense that Christianity's conquering of paganism was almost inevitable.

On “On Killing” by Dave Grossman *****

I first heard of this text when Russia first invaded Ukraine and drafted a number of young men to serve in the army, pushing them to the front lines apparently with little training. The skeptical author of the article noted how it takes training not just to kill but even to be able to kill—and the author noted this text.

This book was amazing, insofar as it opened up a world of information about the U.S. military and about military service in general that I simply did not know. Through World War II, the author notes, only about 20 percent of combat soldiers even managed to shoot their guns at a person. Many simply didn't shoot, or if they shot, they would shoot into the sky or something like that. People don't want to kill people. It is disturbing. Huge numbers of rounds were expended to kill a single person, suggesting deliberate missing. How does the military get beyond that? By Korea, the number of combat soldiers actually shooting at the enemy had risen to 55 percent, and by Vietnam it was 90 to 95 percent. The key? Proper conditioning.

Grossman notes how the military has managed to do this, through, for example, exercises wherein people's first instincts kick in in battle—and those instincts become to kill. You practice shooting at the enemy, almost without thought. Target practice, for one.

Another key is to separate the soldiers from the enemy. There's a sliding scale, wherein the more distant one is from the enemy, the less disturbing it is to the soldier to kill. (Interestingly, even those whose lives are at stake find it somewhat less disturbing, because it's less personal, more like a natural disaster, something that can't be helped, or blamed on an individual person.) Place two soldiers in close proximity, however, Grossman notes, and they'll often just leave each other alone—they see the other person as a person. There are many such anecdotes he offers. (There is conditioning for this as well, though, such as training to kill people by using models with oranges for heads.) By contrast, a bomber often feels little for the people he kills—the people are never seen. Move in to snipers, then bayonets (almost never used anymore because they do require such close proximity), to swords and knives, and finally hands: each lowers the effective kill rate and raises the amount of anxiety a person feels in killing.

The problem with conditioning, however, getting people to kill even when they can see the enemy, is that it still doesn't deal with the psychological toll it takes on an individual after the deeds are done. If a community supports the soldier, and if the soldier is part of a unit wherein there is support (and peer pressure and commands as well), the soldier will be more able to handle the fallout (by essentially rationalizing the actions, as not entirely belonging to the self rather than a community), but such was not the case with the Vietnam War, where soldiers were with their units for only short periods rather than long ones and where the war was unpopular at home. The trauma for such veterans was unfathomably worse, as such.

Grossman closes with a study of how our video games and television have anesthetized our youths to violence and made killing easier. There are many people who will disagree with this, and no study, as even Grossman admits, can absolutely show the connection, because there are too many variables involved. However, there is a close corollary to the availability of such things and the rise in violence in society, suggesting that this is more than just a coincidence. As school shootings and mass shootings proliferate, I can't help but think part of the reason this is possible isn't just the availability of guns but also the fact that watching such things really has made younger generations more callous to this sort of thing.

On "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Haley

I'd long wondered why Haley's name was on a so-called autobiography, but having now read this work, I understand. Haley really did write this book, which really is made up of Malcolm's words. The process was one in which Malcolm essentially ranted, and Haley wrote and then organized everything into an actual narrative. With time, Haley did draw out the stories of Malcolm's life to make the work possible—that is, more than a set of complaints. It must have been a huge amount of labor, but it is an incredible read.

What makes it so incredible is that one sees a man change not once but thrice. As a child, Malcolm was extremely smart. Alas, his father, a Garveyite, was killed by whites, leaving Mom with eight or so kids to raise on her own. Mom, in turn, was eventually taken away to a mental institute (something of a sham, one gets the feeling), and the kids were farmed out to relatives and foster homes. Malcolm ended up being raised by some kindly Christian white folks who sent him to a mostly white school. There, he excelled. He was among the tops in the class academically and was elected class president, but when he noted one day that he wanted to be a lawyer when he grew up, the teacher laughed at him. He should go for something appropriate for him—like a carpenter. It peeved Malcolm off. His white classmates, not nearly as smart, could say they wanted to be doctors or whatever, so why should Malcolm be laughed at? On one level, I can understand the teacher's point (not the laughter), because at the time, it likely would have been very difficult for a Black kid to become such a thing; there's something to be said for realism. On the other hand, why discourage a kid? Some black kids, even at that time, did grow up to be lawyers, after all.

This experience, in turn, made Malcolm give up on school. He fled to a relative in Boston. There, he learned to lindy hop, wore zoot suits, straightened his hair, and became a hipster. After a short bout in jobs that paid well to a kid but not to someone older, he also got into drugs and drug dealing, gambling, and various illegal activities. And he found himself a white girlfriend—a married woman. He moved on to New York, where he continued in the same activities—and added burglary to the mix. When the white girlfriend's husband found out about the affair, Malcolm knew the jig was up. The cops were after him after all, and he was likely going to end up dead, so he essentially allowed himself to be arrested.

In prison, another transformation would occur. (I'm reminded of Damon Wayans's skit about the man who educates himself in prison by reading and writing the dictionary; my guess is this was a parody of Malcolm's experience, who did that and read extensively.) Malcolm's siblings got into the teachings of Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm was skeptical, but after reading some of the material and then writing Elijah, who actually wrote back encouraging him, Malcolm found himself under Elijah's spell. He converted.

Now Malcolm became a straight-edged man. No drinking, drugs, or women. Out of prison, he went to help the Nation. A good speaker, he soon found himself as the main spokesman for the organization and one who helped to raise up several mosques. But in time, others grew jealous—and as Malcolm would discover, so would Elijah, who himself turned out to be something of a hypocrit, fathering two children by two different women in the organization. Malcolm defended Elijah even from that, making up some excuse for why it was okay for the leader to do things no one else would be allowed to. He was under the spell. But that broke when he was kicked out for a minor “infraction.”

This in turn caused him to go to Mecca, on the Hajj, where he discovered true Islam and the brotherhood of man. Rather than believing whites were the bad spawn of the original black man, he came to see that all people are brothers. The issue is with the racist system. In this, I saw a lot that is the current thinking in the fighting racism movement. Individual whites might be okay, but the system makes all whites racist, or so goes DEI theory. The book ends, here, of course, because Malcolm was killed. In the epilogue, Haley goes into that killing, which Malcolm knew was coming. It happened at a speech, three likely Black Muslims sitting on the front row raised guns and shot them.

Malcolm's idealization (indeed, the idealization of the whole Nation) of Elijah was fascinating. The Nation of Islam really does seem like a cult. In a sense, it reminded me of growing up in the church I grew up in, which had a leader people idealized. Unlike Elijah, I don't know if accusations about that man are true; so many people hate or love him that to this day, rumors are impossible to verify one way or the other. Are they made up to damage the man or are they real and hidden? But it's fascinating how even Malcolm's brothers pick Elijah over Malcolm, and Malcolm, until the break, justifies anything Elijah says or does. Yet, when he does break, he doesn't break from Islam; he just realizes that it's much deeper and profound than Elijah teaches. For Elijah, it's just a sham way to raise up a group. Likewise, I continue on in the faith of my birth, despite my uncertain feelings about the man who had so much to pushing out a lot of the faith's views, because there is truth in it, whether or not it was used by a man to make money.

On “The Jews under Roman Rule” by E. Mary Smallwood *****

The first portion of this book is in large part a summary of Josephus's works, a tendency that can't be helped, given that Josephus is our main source of information regarding this very subject. Smallwood, however, makes the events come to life, abbreviating where Josephus fails to and expanding where more information is now available.

Then, of course, Josephus as a source comes to an end soon after the First Jewish War. The work from here, by necessity, becomes more sketchy, as Smallwood has much less in the way of source material from which to draw. That said, she does admirably, with what little primary data we have. What I liked was that she does exactly as denoted in her title—she looks not just at the Jews in Palestine but at the Jews throughout the empire, usually in alternating chapters. As such, there was much more here on the Alexandrian uprising of 115-117 than I'd read anywhere else—and Smallwood, in addition, sets it within the context of Jewish uprisings occurring elsewhere in the empire at the same time. We get similar detail regarding the Bar Cochba revolt in 135.

After these revolts, information becomes even more dificult to come by. Smallwood does as she can, looking at archeological sources, at what we can glean from the silence of other sources, and at what little can be gleaned from the Mishna. As Smallwood sees it, after the Jewish revolts, culminating in 135, the Jewish people largely came to see their Messianic hopes as being wholly supernatural, giving up on the idea of rising up themselves. What troubles did occur were usually in the context of Roman civil war, the taking of one side or another in the conflict for rulership of the empire. And while the empire did impose some anti-Jewish measures, they were usually temporary. Even the banning of Jews from Jerusalem appears to have been only partly enforced, in time. Troubles would arise, however, more so as the empire moved toward nominal Christianity.

On “The Triune God” by Edmund J. Fortman *****

This work provides a quick synopsis of trinitarian thinking from the beginning of the Christian faith to the twentieth century. My interest was primarily in the first half of the book—really from the foundation of the church through the first couple of centuries—and these are the book's clearest passage. In fact, as Fortman lays out, the Trinity teaching doesn't really find full form until the time of Augustine, in the fourth/fifth century, with some major “clarifications” happening in the Middle Ages, with Thomas Aquinas.

Fortman, himself a trinitarian, does a good job providing a framework and even denoting—or admitting—that trinitarian teaching is only implied among thinkers in the first one hundred years or so. He runs through pertinent scriptures and also through pertinent passages in early writers. The doctrine would not begin to find substantial form until the beginnings of the third century, and even in that, there would be plenty to argue over for the next hundred to two hundred years. Earliest thinkers didn't spend much time trying to figure out the place of the Holy Spirit; incorporation of the spirit as a “person” within the godhead would only begin really near the end of the second century. Instead, the arguments were over how Jesus was God and how he was related to, or positioned against, the Father.

Many of the arguments seem heavily tinged in philosophy, and after Augustine, even more so. As later Catholics would affirm, the trinity is a mystery. In that sense, I'm left wondering why there's been so much attempt to explain it. As becomes clear, as the centuries go on, there really isn't a good way to explain it; the second half of the book is full of seeming nonsense speak. Our terminology doesn't have the words to express what is attempting to be said; and even some of the terminology used, such as person(a), has changed over the years such that that that older terminology is no longer even as meaningful apparently as it once was (even though no better terms have arisen). Fortman, as he discusses later thinkers, seems to affirm much of what Augustine and certain other thinkers said on the subject, but over and over I'm left wondering why so many insist on this view of God (or insist Christians hold to it), when the earliest Christian writers did not conceive of God in the same way (and thus wouldn't be Christians in the view of contemporaries). The assumption is, of course, that later writers were led to greater truths that go beyond those earlier writers—but if the doctrine is so essential, why did the early writers not have it? Are Christians perhaps arguing over and hypothesizing about the wrong thing?

On “The Strange Career of Jim Crow,” by C. Vann Woodward *****

I'd long imagined this book as much longer than it is. It is referenced a lot in literature about the civil rights movement, and it turns out it was originally based off a series of lectures. That means not only short but also accessible, with minimal presentation of references. In this case, it works very well.

What one gets is a very brief account, toward the last third of the book, of the civil rights movement up through the early 1960s. All the major events are there, placed in context, which is wonderful.

But the real joy of this book, for me, was the way that Woodward blows up many of the assumptions that it's easy to have about the way that race relations came to be in the early twentieth century. He notes that actually, during antebellum years, Blacks and Whites in the South were actually quite mixed socially, especially in the city. This was different from how things were in the North, where the races were much more inclined to be socially segregated, even if not by law. This mixing actually amazed Northern visitors.

After the Civil War, this mixing didn't go away. Blacks and Whites were on intimate terms in the South, not in the North. This isn't to say, of course, that there was any sense of equality, just that there was no real impetus to force the different races into different spheres. Reconstruction didn't change this. In fact, in some ways, Reconstruction was almost a success, insofar as Black people were now able to take on political power as well.

So what changed? After the federal interest in forcing the South to treat Black folks as people, the South slowly began to impose laws that reinforced the inferior status of Black people. These laws were those that led to segregation: the Jim Crow laws. They started, in just a few states, with the forced separation of Blacks and Whites on railroad cars. But within a decade, the practice had spread almost entirely across the South, along with other rules in virtually every sphere, such that eventually there were separate places for virtually everything—food, school, water fountains, and so on. Jim Crow segregation, in other words, really didn't come to be “normal” until around 1900. By 1950, when the Supreme Court started ruling against such laws, many folks just felt like Jim Crow was the way things had always been down South.

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 "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 "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.