On “The Brazil Reader” edited by Robert M. Levine and John J. Crocitti ***

There's a second edition of this work with different editors that I realize now may have been better to read insofar as it would have included another twenty years of writing—that is, it would have included the Internet age, which was barely getting started when this first edition came out and plays no role in this volume. I chose the first edition, however, because it seemed organized in a manner more in keeping with what I was looking for. The first five parts are mostly readings that follow the historical development of Brazil, and the last four parts focus on cultural subjects—namely, women, race, economics, and popular culture (mostly music). The other subjects, of course, come up in the first five sections, but there's a nice balance here in terms of giving a reader a very general sense of the Brazilian experience.

I had read chapters about Brazil's history in books about Latin American history, so I didn't think that a book just recounting the history of the country was going to be as helpful to me as a book that would more fully also explore the country's culture. This book was a nice balance. Each of the parts comes with a short introduction, so essentially one stepped through history while reading the book. But then that history was backed up by primary documents from the period in question and sometimes further historical articles on a specific aspect of the period involved.

The first part revolved around Indian life and the explorers. Included among the readings was a creation myth that was more easily approached than many Native American stories in that regard. There were also Western accounts of Indian culture. The second part dealt with the colonial period and the familiar story of how Portugal's monarch actually came to be in Brazil for a while and liked it so much he didn't want to return to Portugal but was forced to do so. Part 3 dealt with slavery and its aftermath. Part 4 dealt with the Vargas period, when Getulio Vargas essentially ruled as a dictator after having come to power in an election. And then part 5 dealt with the military dictatorship that followed and finally the reestablishment of democracy, which at the time this book came out had only been active for about a decade. It was trippy seeing the names of some politicians who are still active in Brazil in that last historical section and to think the Brazilian democracy has managed to survive a couple of decades more.

Along the way one learns about how the arts didn't seem heavily impacted by the dictatorship, which seemed focused more on practical things. As such, subtle critiques of the regime often snuck by in music and literature, before being banned. One learns about racial dynamics in Brazil, which of course mythically are said to be nonissues but really are just like so many other areas of the world: the lighter your skin, the more advantages you have. There's a little about sport, a lot about music, making me wish that I'd more often had access to the Internet while reading so that I could play some of the styles of these songs to know what the authors were writing about.

Overall, one gets the sense of a country that is, unfortunately, like so much of the third world, a study in contrasts: a small very rich class and a large very poor one. There was one essay about a movie from the 1970s that focused on children growing up in the latter milieu and what became of them (though as stars of the film their lives had opportunity to go farther than most others, at least for the star of the film, things ended up badly); the film itself sounded a lot like the 2000s film Children of God but a whole lot more bleak: gangs and crime aplenty, with little way out.

On “Christianity in the Second Century” edited by James Carleton Paget and Judith Lieu ***

I had high hopes for this book, but I was quite disappointed. My reasons for avoiding it for as long as I did had to do with this being an edited collection. I don’t generally care for reading edited collections of essays on a subject. This volume is an example of why. Individual essays in such volumes, of course, can be useful, but the essays as a whole rarely add up to the sum of their parts. There’s no throughline. Rather, it’s like reading a journal--a bunch of randomly tossed-together articles on a broad subject. I had hoped to learn more about second-century Christianity; instead, I learned a few interesting things, but much of the collection was taken up with arguing esoteric points that in the end don’t really make a big difference to reality.

Case in point: Several articles were about the concept of the “third race” in Christianity in the second century. The takeaway seemed to be that people in the second century didn’t think about race and ethnicity the way that we do in our contemporary world. Well, yeah, obviously. Christianity, as a third race, is really just a way of saying there were pagans, Jews, and Christians--that is, a third group of people. I never thought that such writers actually thought of such peoples ethnically; it seemed a really long exercise to review so much literature to state the obvious. I guess some scholars might care about this, but these were esoteric points that didn’t really reveal anything terribly new or intriguing.

There were lots of arguments about gnosticism and how it is really a meaningless term, which I’ve read about in more detail elsewhere.

This isn’t to say that there weren’t some interesting points here and there. There were several essays that touched on Lucian’s Peregrinus and his portrayal of Christians in it, which showed that I really need to spend more time with this work. Tim Whitmarsh made the intriguing, though not wholly convincing, argument that the only people making the accusation that Christians were atheists were Christians themselves, setting up strawmen arguments about their persecution as such. Certainly, outside Lucian’s satire, Christians were the only ones to preserve this accusation in their defenses against it, but I think to convince me, Whitmarsh would have had to look also at the same accusations against Epicureans. I tend to believe the accusations were real. That said, I agree with Whitmore’s main point--that Christians used such accusations eventually to redefine what constituted an atheist: namely, someone who did not accept the one true god. But Whitmore’s essay points to the general esotericness of the collection, the need to try to say interesting things that in the end don’t amount to much.

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 “Libraries in the Ancient World” by Lionel Casson ****

This work is a short exploration of the development of the earliest libraries. I'd read the first chapter on the tablets that were found of ancient libraries in Mesopotamia some time ago, and I was familiar with much of the material on Roman libraries from another book that focused solely on those and that was much more thorough. But Casson's book is a good introduction to the subject.

As he notes, our knowledge of the Mesopotamian libraries comes from the fact that the societies used clay tablets and the burning of said libraries helped to make such tablets permanent, like clay jars. Most such works are merely archival records of sundry government and market materials, but some literary works also have come down to us this way. The libraries were largely for the government, the king, and the priests—the educated elite who needed the information to run the nation. Our knowledge of Egyptian libraries is less thorough, because the Egyptians wrote on papyrus, which doesn't last so long (despite the dry Egyptian climate, which has helped to preserve some such works—just not much from before the first century).

Another chapter focuses on the Alexandrian library, which started largely because a particular ruler had a desire to prove his intellectual acumen and to make the farily new city a capital for intellectualism. It was a library largely aimed at societal thinkers. The library burned a couple of times; alas, it appears that war was the largest culprit to the destruction of the library.

Another chapter focuses on the Greeks, whose libraries usually featured an open-air collonade that was used for reading. This was different than the later Roman libraries, which were usually all indoors and which generally included both a Greek section and a Roman section.

Some attention is also given to book technology. Papyrus, which was common in Egypt, gave way to more durable parchment, which came to be used elsewhere. And then, in turn, scrolls, around the first century CE, began to give way to codexes (our modern book format). Christians, as has been written elsewhere, played a role in this, as codexes were their preferred format: culturally, not Jewish and not pagan, but also much easier to use and transport. Christian books, as the author brings out, could be purchased much like other books were.

Indeed, attaining books at this time may have involved purchase but also could involve copying. An author who wanted publication generally made the work available by making a number of copies to share. Authorship obviously wasn't about money; it was about reputation and getting one's ideas out there. Only those who actually made the copies (to sell) were likely to make anything off a book.

On "Jewish New Testament" edited by David H. Stern ****

I purchased David Stern's Jewish commentary on the New Testament years ago, curious about it after my dad himself had purchased a copy. He bought the complete set, with the New Testament also, in hardcover, so when he died, it was one of the items I inherited. I don't think otherwise that I'd have bothered with the Bible--it's a Jewish translation, really, a paraphrase, of the New Testament. The commentary at times is very handy; the New Testament, I figured, well, I have plenty of other translations.

But this was a good read, insofar as Stern's choice of using Jewish words for various concepts in the New Testament, makes the New Testament unfamiliar in some ways, which made me pay a bit more attention, especially to common scriptures that I know so well by heart that I otherwise would pass over at this point without really rethinking. In this sense, the Jewish New Testament was a great aid in in meditation, which in turn makes me think about how I probably should venture out from the few translations I tend to favor more often.

On "Generation of Swine" by Hunter S. Thompson ****

There are turns of phrase that make Thompson a fun read for that purpose alone. Like so many of his books, however, the overall reportage remains dated, and because Thompson puts such a personal twist on everything, it's somewhat uncertain how much is really of value as historical record.

This book covers the last half of the Reagan years, including the Iran-Contra scandal and the election of George H. W. Bush. As with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail of 72, Thompson's preference for the Democrats is obvious, though his preferred candidate gets knocked out by a sex scandal. All this is stuff in living memory for me, which perhaps made it somewhat more interesting than his work about the McGovern candidacy. Still, because these are collections of newspaper articles, the whole seems less than the sum of its parts, and I didn't find myself pulled along in the book as I would a long-form piece.

When Thompson is at his peak, his editorial is less about current events and more about something else. My two favorite articles in this text, and the likely reason I kept this book on my shelf after first reading it decades ago, focus on making up a story and on giving advice. In one, Thompson sends his assistant out to get a tattoo so that he has something to put in his column; in the other, he writes about the youngsters and having children for his good buddy, the illustrator Ralph Steadman. As the years left for me on this planet wind down, however, I don't see myself rereading this book again.

On "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life after AI" by Cory Doctorow ****

This book was lent to me by a coworker because he thought it might be useful for a class we're teaching together. Indeed, AI has changed a lot about our world and about teaching as well. I'm not sure exactly how this book specifically--or passages from it--would be useful in the class, but I'll be curious to hear my coworker's thoughts.

That said, this was a quick and breezy read that was very informative, and it being Doctorow, also provocative. Doctorow takes the stand that the AI buzz is primarily a bubble. I'd agree. I see a lot of parallels to what happened in the 1990s with the dot.com boom. Everything is being transformed by AI the way that everything was being transformed by the Internet. The only problem was that there was so much hype that even things that were not being transformed worked off this idea of the Internet transforming it. A few years after the bust, folks laughed at things like lobsters.com: your one-stop shop for lobsters delivered straight to your home. But even as those ideas gave way to reality, some of the more audacious ideas just needed a bit more time to come to fruition. At this point, you probably could get lobsters delivered to your home, though it would likely come through a marketplace like Amazon rather than a site devoted solely to lobsters. In this same way, we're looking for transformation by AI at things Doctorow says AI cannot do. I'm not sure he's right about that, though he's surely right about the speed with which some folks expect said transformation. Case in point would be his examples of architecture transformation. A group of architects laid off their draftsmen because AI can render pictures in a few minutes what it would take a draftsman days to do. Of course, if that's the case, as Doctorow points out, it won't be too long before people realize they don't need architects either, since people could go straight to the program to design a building. But what the AI cannot do is render blueprints based on those renderings, because it's based on algorithms regarding what pixel goes next to which; that the architect says that's just a step away is false, Doctorow notes. That may be true, at present, but I don't see why such an algorithmic program couldn't eventually be written to map blueprints to renderings, even if blueprints are much more complex and have little one-to-one correlation with renderings. They could be made to have such correlations. On the other hand, it isn't going to happen tomorrow. That's probably a decade or two away, as were many of the transformations made possible by the internet.

So in Doctorow's view, AI is not ultimately coming for most of our jobs. Companies who fire employees based on this will be woefully regretful, because the AI simply can't do what companies claim it can. On some level, this is true. But on another level, I'd say we will still need fewer people in some jobs. I think of the advent of the printing press. That put a lot of scribes out of work--but not all. Where, say, 167 scribes might have been needed to render 500 copies of a 100-page pamphlet in 30 days; 50 people could do that work in 3 days. But it would not have been cost or time effective to use a printer for just one or two copies of a 4-page document; scribes still had a function. Meanwhile, other jobs would have come into existence, like those who create the block type. And also more text would have been made available and prices would have dropped. Books would no longer be so scarce, and so the volume of text would make up to some extent for the jobs that would have otherwise been displaced. Further efficiencies in printing as centuries progressed would reduce work hours further, but each time with offsets in terms of other jobs and more volume.

Doctorow hates chatbots for customer service. Indeed, I'd agree that a company that gets rid of all customer service for AI is stupid if it wants a good reputation. But for basic queries, chatbots may actually have value, allowing a company to queue only truly unique queries to a human. (Of course, the whole point, in many cases, is crappy customer service, in order to avoid returns, which chatbots are perfect for.)

What's scary about what Doctorow writes is the bubble itself. One-third of the stock market's value is wrapped up in seven companies, all on the forefront of AI and the irrational exuberance around it. When the exuberance fades, the market will crash and so will a number of jobs and fortunes with it. It'll be like the dot.com bust or the housing bust all over again, but worse. Doctorow explains well how it is such companies come to have so much value (irrationally, I would say). It all has to do with P&E, profit and earnings. If you've got a taxi cab company that makes $200k profit on a million dollars of earnings per year, you're doing well, but if you do that every year, you don't really have much to offer to a stockholder beyond steady profit. If, by contrast, you're new tech, and you're promising taxis without drivers and ultimately a lot bigger profits, your loss this year on $200k of earnings is not enough to scare me away as a stockholder. It's the potential that's important. Next year, you make $400k in earnings and still show a loss, but those earnings keep going up each year. At some point, you might show a profit. In fact, you might someday show a huge profit. It's that potential that makes me want to invest. If eight years from now, you're making $5 million in earnings and $1 million in profits, that's a much better investment than the stable taxi company, especially if I got in early. Of course, if you're still taking a loss, if your earnings are still going up, maybe it'll still work out. Eventually, though, the tech company either goes under as investors grow tired of losses or it becomes stable, which means it's making a steady profit on a steady set of earnings, and there's no more grand potential. This explains how Ford's stock is cheap while Tesla's is through the roof, even though Ford makes many more vehicles and even makes electric vehicles. Ford is seen as stable rather than as having huge potential. This seems somewhat silly to me, as an investor, though, if one part of Ford's business does the same as Tesla's whole business.

I didn't care much for Doctorow's title (it seems too obscure), but the idea itself is worthy. Doctorow notes that most AI proponents have the usefulness of the technology backwards (though it helps them promote it, which is the whole idea). AI, they say, will do the work, and humans will just check it. This enables tons of many fewer workers. Doctorow notes how AI can help someone do a faster and better job, but the idea that humans become just the quality checkers is a bad one, like putting the brain in the AI (the horse head) and having the humans do the grunt work rather than the other way around. It's arguably less efficient, and it leads to workers/checkers not really knowing how to do the job and thus how to do the actual checking. If I never write code anymore, how will I know where the AI messed up its code? Writing code, at least the nonrepetitious part of it, is more interesting than reading it. Why give the good job to the AI?

But AI, as Doctorow notes, often doesn't even do much of what it's cracked up to do. He writes of the Turk, the medieval machine that could play chess but that turned out to be an illusion: a little human actually guided the machine's moves. Many times, that's what is the case with supposed AI. Some demonstrations of things like self-driving cars have actually had human engineers controlling the car remotely. Again, this is all part of the hoopla to drive stock prices.

This brings us to the role of "creatives." Doctorow notes that AI-created stuff carries no property rights. Some companies want this changed, but creatives should stand pat. AI is a great assistant. But the idea that AI can create instead of the person would render the person pointless. That's what big companies want. The creative jobs, which don't pay well anyway, go away, which renders questionable how much money AI actually saves. However, if there's no copyright for AI-rendered stuff, that makes it public domain, which means there's no profit to be made in, say, books created by AI. Anyone can take that book and reprint it as their own.

On “Image and Reality” by Judith Lieu ***

This work explores the images of Jewish people in second-century Christian literature, especially that focused around Asia Minor. Literature includes the writings of Ignatius, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, various apologists, and Melito. The writing is very much scholarly, and the work isn't, in the end, terribly approachable. Lieu, of course, makes some excellent points and drew to my attention a number of issues and contexts of which I'd been unaware, but the work is difficult to outline or summarize, given a certain degree of unapproachability.

The gist of the argument seems to be that we should be cautious about how we view Jews in Christian literature of the time. Jews were often used to define Christianity, as so many scholars point out. This “image” isn't necessarily accurate when compared to the “reality” of the situation. Even so, Lieu cautions, we have to be careful even about this common trope—namely, that Christians used Jews to define their own faith. Often, Jews don't show up at all, and the way in which they are portrayed depends heavily on who is writing, why they are writing, and the genre that they are using. We can be just as careless, in other words, in presenting an “image” of Christianity rather than the “reality,” as we can be about the Jewish people and faith, when writing about the period. Indeed, anytime we write about literature or history, we are dealing in generalities that may not actually apply to a specific situation and that may color how a given work is read. That seems a valid warning, but I'm not sure how useful it is; rather, it seems an obvious truism that anyone who studies in any field should be aware of.

On “Early Egyptian Christianity” by C. Wilfred Griggs ****

This book covers the history of Christianity in Egypt until 451 CE. Griggs lays out the basics in his introduction and again in his conclusion. In between, he provides a useful summary of what probably occurred.

Of course, how exactly Christianity got to Egypt is something of a mystery. We know little of the history until the second century. Griggs posits that before the end of the second century, many versions of Christianity existed. At that point, the bishop of Alexandria positioned himself as superior to other churches and aligned himself with the church in Rome. Most important, he took over the school that had been forged in Alexandria but that wasn't actually run by church authorities. This attempt to assert authority isn't to say other churches in Egypt fell in line; they continued in many ways on their own path. One of those paths was monasticism, which wasn't much in line with the Catholics.

Athanasius in the early fourth century reconciled with the monks and brought them into the regular Catholic church. However, controversies (over Arianism) and fights over leadership continued. Further, Constantinople took on an increasingly important role in the Catholic faith, displacing Alexandria in importance, to the chagrin of Alexandrian bishops. This set up the slow split of Egyptian Christianity into Coptic Christianity and away from the Catholic church, most especially following the Council of Chalcedon.

On “Public Libraries and Literary Culture in Ancient Rome” by Clarence Eugene Boyd ***

This short volume covers more-recent material that I've read elsewhere. Even so, there was some information here that I hadn't previously run across.

Boyd starts with Julius Caesar's order to found such “public” libraries, which Boyd really does call “public,” even though other sources make clear that the way we think of public libraries is not the same as Romans thought of them. Nevertheless, it's interesting that Caesar really got the ball rolling on this and that emperors followed suit. There were at least nine such libraries that have been identified.

Other facts I learned: Most such libraries were placed near a palace or temple (though he also notes those that were part of baths). Most faced east, because that direction was best at keeping materials from getting damp and thus being eaten by worms and the like. Most included artwork and served also as places of meeting.

Unlike what I'd read elsewhere, Boyd makes much of people checking materials out of libraries. Indeed, the primary documents support this as a possibility, though such people did seem to be well connected in some way, so I take others' point of view, that materials largely stayed in the library, as being the more usual custom.

Another section discusses bookshops, of which there were a surprisingly number in Rome. Without printing, books were produced by dictation to a number of scribes at one. And as I'd read elsehwere, there were even newspapers of a sort, with information about deaths, marriages, and happenings, updated daily.

All that said, Boyd's book is definitely aimed at early twentieth-century scholars. He quotes frequently from primary documents sans translation. Classicists would know how to read these, and many a schoolboy of the period also probably, but not so much readers of today.

On “Border Lines” by Daniel Boyarin ***

I was a little disappointed by this book. It was actually great in terms of its subject matter and content, but it is very definitely a scholarly work, full of jargon and difficult at times to follow. There are losts of references to theory and theorists, which I've rarely understood the purpose of in texts, since so often such ideas are either not integral to the argument or are basic enough that it seems like no theorist need be named.

The basic point, however, if a strong one. Boyarin makes the claim—one that fits well with contemporary sociological and postmodern theory—that the creation of heresy in its modern sense was largely the result of an attempt by both Christian and Jewish writers to create boundaries around their respective faiths. To explore this point, Boyarin shows how the concept of “heresy” was at one point essentially just another means of thinking about a subject—for example, a sect. It's, in fact, Josephus uses when discussing various sects of the Jewish faith in his time. But roughly a hundred years later, Christians aren't just using the term to show differing sects; they're using it to describe only prohibited sects, nonorthodox sects—that is, heretics, as we think of them today. The Rabbis did something similar, declaring those who did not follow their proscribed ways of thinking as minim, that is, heretics. In this way, the Jewish faith transformed into Judaism, rabbinical Judaism.

Before Christianity, Boyarin notes, the concept of religion was tied into one's ethnicity and culture. There really wasn't much of an idea of one having a religion and then also having a nationality. Christianity created this new category of people. But so too did Judaism. It became a religion—for a while.

Curiously, after the Rabbis had thoroughly established control over what constituted Judaism, the idea of Judaism returned to its former roots as an ethnic thing. Today, at least among Jews, one does not so much talk of Judaism as a religion but of people being Jewish, culturally, ethnically, religiously. Thus, one can be a bad Jew—not following the dictates of the faith/nation—but one can never really renounce one's Jewishness.

Another curiosity: Christianity, in defining what was heresy, established itself through attempts at unity. Arguments in the faith aim for that, for a single correct interpretation. Judasim did the opposite. Once the ground rules were established, separating itself from Christanity, it became about arguing about differences of interpretation, presenting all of those as viable—which is what we find in the Talmud.

The case study is one that Boyarin discusses in other places, in a generally more approachable manner: the idea of God's Logos, or Word, or Memra. Boyarin makes the case, made similarly elsewhere in other people's works (Segal, Shaefer, Heiser, Hurtado), that Two Powers theology, the idea that God has a viceroy or partner or subordinate who is very much like him, was very much part of the Jewish religion until Christian times. That's when it became associated with Christanity and by contrast rejected by Judaism. While adoptionist, modalist, and unitarian ideas were made heretical by Christians in favor of a Logos divinity, Jewish Rabbis came to affirm that biblical passages seeming to point to such a figure were really figurative in meaning and that there was solely one God figure, sometimes expressed in different ways (virtually, one might say, modalism, rejected by the Christians). Hence, each faith defined the other, putting up borders accordingly. Those that fall within those borders, borrowing ideas from both sides of the divide are also made heretics, where once they'd have been accepted by either faith; now, as Jerome and some others would put it, they are neither Jews or Christians.

On "The Churches of Asia" by William Cunningham ***

This history of the church in Asia [Minor] was written by in the 1800s, so it has some of the ticks that such works generally do: that is, a love for flowery language for the sake of being "lyrical." Despite that, the author does manage to get across his points. The focus is squarely on the second century.

After knocking out which writings he accepts as genuine and early and thus informing his study, Cunningham begins with a discussion of church government. It was a fortuitous place to start, because I'd been thinking similarly rather recently about the second-century churches in Asia, so it was nice to see someone develop some of the ideas in a like manner. He notes that the church started with synagogues and structure there, but he also notes that it departed from that structure (a claim I would actually disagree with). At first, there was central leadership in Jerusalem (something I could largely agree with), but with that church's demise, congregations took on a Greek city-state model. That is, each church had its own elders and those in turn were informed by the people of the congregation. In turn, the churches were in communication with one another and so no one strayed too far. A second model, however, was also apparent, in the form of a central bishop (more akin to the Jerusalem model). This bishop was more of an administrator than a preaching elder or a servant. (Here, I think of the people who hosted the churches.) In time, though, this central authority took on more power in helping to determine who was and was not part of a given church (in part because some folks left the faith under persecution, and it was questionable whether they should be allowed back after such persecution had ended; and in part because of the very heresies--most especially continuing Judaism--that needed to be quelled).

Next comes a discussion of other views of the church. Cunningam focuses on two: Marcionism and Montanism. He also discusses briefly Ebionism, which he mixes up with the teachings of Cerinthus, who he claims was one of them--a patent absurdity that was adopted by some early historians and that Cunningham falls for. With regard to Marcion, Cunningham sees him as the religion by feeling and subjective spiritual perspective on who and what God is, one that abandons completely the law; he sees Montanism as the opposite: a rigid belief in legal stuff and an insistence that one accept new teachings coming from the Holy Spirit, as some claim. The church, in turn, stood against both of these with its growing structure.

He closes with a discussion of the aforementioned controversy over persecution and with the controversy over the timing of the fast surrounding Easter. I like that Cunningham really emphasized that the issue was the timing of the end of the fast. I haven't given enough attention to this, though that is plainly what the early writers note. As for the rest of the discussion, Cunningham starts with a set of premises that dislodge the rest of his argument. Sunday is the resurrection, Friday is the crucifixion. Hence, for him, the fourteenth of Nissan (Passover) is on Friday, the high sabbath on the Sabbath. The Synoptics, he argues, adopted a crucixion on the high day for its symbolism (since clearly the Jews would not have conducted a trial and crucifixion on the high day, even as John notes). John preserves the actual historical account. But John, of course, being a Jew, maintained the fourteener position regarding when to time the end of the fast, which is better supported by the Synoptics. How could this be, if John was the writer of the Fourth Gospel? Cunningham argues that John wrote his gospel account to ensure that the real understanding of the timing of the events was preserved, even if symbolically he stood with the Jewish believers and their preference for the synoptic timing. Rome and others adopted Sunday morning for the commemoration and breaking of the fast because of difficulties determining when the New Moon was and problems with the Jews. In Asia, some wanted to break the fast earlier so that they could commemorate the Passover as Jesus had with his disciples. This all makes sense, but it fails to account for when the high day actually was, the fact that even in the Jewish community there were arguments over whether the Passover was to be held at the start of the fourteenth or the end of it (i.e., the fifteenth), and other matters.

On “Justin Martyr and the Jews” by David Rokeai ***

This rather short monograph focuses primarily on Justin's Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew—Justin's attempt to argue the superiority of Christianity and to perhaps convert Trypho. Rokeai provides a detailed account of the literature related to the topic, and he discusses in full the Talmudic responses to some of the same issues that Justin discussed. His overall point, however, is that Justin is essentially Paul on steroids. He argues that Paul was essentially anti-Jewish as well and that his occasional positive comments about the Jewish religion were simply an attempt to soften his otherwise strong rhetoric against Jewish traditions and law. Justin, in turn, didn't try to whitewash was Paul was really saying.

I think that Rokeai is right to say that Justin took Paul's ideas and used them to create his anti-Jewish rhetoric, but I think he misreads Paul. I don't think he was against the Jewish law or traditions; I think he wore his Jewish heritage with pride and wasn't just putting on a show. Justin misread Paul, and Rokeai falls right in line with Justin's misreading.

Some interesting ideas about why Justin argued as he did. Who was his audience? Surely he wouldn't have found many Jewish fans, but the audience was probably mostly those who might have had a choice between Judaism and Christianity. Another interesting point: Justin had to tread down a narrow path. He was against Marcion, who was also anti-Jewish. But Marcion's conclusion was that the God of the Jews was an entirely different God and thus rejected the Old Testament. Justin didn't argue that, but he still had to find a way to critique the Jewish law, traditions, and writings. To do that he espoused not a different God but a God who had imposed law and traditions on the Jewish people because they were uniquely incapable of being good people. Failing with even that, God had found his true Israel in the Gentiles, who replaced the Jews and whose natural morality, or willingness to accept Jesus and thus obey the larger law of love, meant that they had replaced the Jews in God's heart. In this way, Justin could keep the Old Testament prophecies and symbolism but jettison its laws. This goes far beyond anything Paul espoused. Paul noted the Jewish inability to obey God, for sure, but he didn't ground it in an idea that somehow non-Jewish people could do better, and especially not without the guidance laid out in the Old Testament; rather, he noted that because no one could follow the law, faith only in Christ could save, because all are otherwise due for the penalty of breaking that law: death. But as he notes, that doesn't then mean the law is bad or that it no longer applies; rather, believers were to live accordingly thereafter. Jewish people, not seeing Christ, meant that they were still under the penalty, but Paul noted that one day they would be shown the way accordingly and be welcomed back into God's fold. Non-Jewish people who took on the faith and lived accordingly certainly did become Israel, but they didn't replace the old Israel: they were welcomed into it.

On “The Book Proposal Book” by Laura Portwood-Stacer ***

Another book likely to be on the syllabus for the class I am due to teach next year. This one focuses on scholarly manuscripts. I can see the value of having such a book on the syllabus, though I think it would be more valuable for grad students than undergrads. But then again, some undergrads will go on to graduate degrees, so why not? The book itself is a great tutorial for folks unfamiliar with the publishing process who are looking to get their text published by a scholarly press—most especially folks coming out of graduate degree programs, with perhaps a dissertation to adapt for publication to help them along in the career development and attempt to get tenure. I took notes as I read, so this is essentially a summary of my notes.

The real reason anyone should write should be for the reader, even if you might have other objectives. It's really the reader for any given piece of material you're looking to publish you should have in mind.

The author differentiates between the prospectus (the formal proposal document) and the proposal (the package in which that prospectus appears (along with all the other materials that make up a proposal). It's a useful distinction, though I don't think I'll likely be so exacting in my notes here. The prospectus includes the title; a project overview; description of the audience, competing titles, how your book fits among them; a table of contents with summaries of each chapter; author qualifications; status of manuscript, word count, and number of illustrations.

Chapter 1, on knowing the process: The first step in getting ready to submit a proposal is to identify your target presses. Research and evaluate them to prioritize them. Gather the submission guidelines and summarize how your book fits the press's publishing program. Meanwhile, become knowable—get your name and work out there.

Chapter 2: In writing, show that your book will make a contribution to scholarly discussion and attract a sizable audience.

Chapter 3, on finding how you fit among other words: Your discussion of comparative titles should note what recent books are like yours and how yours is different (not better—just different).

Chapter 4, on audience and market: The are four audiences for a scholarly book: other scholars, students, practitioners, and general readers. That last audience is sort of a myth. What is a general reader? Instead of thinking of the general reader, focus on a specific type of reader (e.g., birders, athletes, etc.).

Chapter 5, on the thesis: If you don't have a thesis, some ways to get one include (1) imagining one change you'd like your book to bring about; (2) imagining something you don't want people to think ever again; (3) asking what lesson you want to impart; (4) asking what one thing you learned from your research that you most want people to know. Now try boiling that down to a one-sentence hook.

Chapter 6, on the descriptive overview for the book: This overview should involve the following things: (1) the hook (the one-sentence takeway); (2) the thesis (the main argument and conclusions); (3) the stake (why it matters); (4) the work's relationship to other works; (5) the basic evidence; (6) the general structure—how the story will be told (this is not the annotated table of contents, which comes later); (7) a description of the audience. This overview is ideally 1200 to 1500 words.

Chapter 7, on the annotated table of contents: Try for one to two paragrphs per chapter. Aim for roughly equal chapter lengths in the final book.

Chapter 8, on titles: Don't get too clever with titles. Titles are a marketing tool and should give away the book's subject so that people will be able to find it when searching for works about that subject.

Chapter 9, on voice: Use your own. Avoid jargon, overly extensive quoting and referencing, passive sentence structure,and hedging.

Chapter 10, on the bio: Aim for two paragraphs, one with public-facing stuff, like your publications and title, which will go out with marketing copy, and one with press-facing stuff, like media contacts and social media accounts and other things you have that might be of aid in getting word about the book out to the public. Also include a CV.

Chapter 11, on other stuff: You'll need to include an estimated word count, illustrations count (and eventually illustrations themselves and permissions), suggested reviewers (scholarly presses will often use these contacts for the blind review process that all books go through), time line for completion of the book, and sample chapters.

Chapter 12 is on tips for getting ahold of an editor. Chapter 13 is one the review process and contracts. And chapter 14 is on production and marketing. In other words, these latter chapters are really about the publication process, once the proposal has actually been accepted. The author suggests working on the marketing questionnaire you'll eventually receive early, before being asked, and provides a list of the things that are usually in those questionnaires. She also notes that well-placed promotional opportunities to the target audience do more for a book than big generic marketing. If you write a book on birding, go to where the birders are, like a birding newsletter, in other words, not to one of the biggest circulating popular magazines, where only a small fraction of the readers are birders and most other people won't care. The book closes with appendices of checklists and examples of prospectuses, introductory letters, reviewer reports, and so on.

Like I wrote: an excellent resource for someone looking to publish with a scholarly press. She covers not just the basics of getting through the initial stages but in those latter chapters what will happen throughout the rest of the publication process. Any given author will learn this stuff as the process unfolds, but so many want to know more up front, and this book gives that information.

On Jewish War Under Trajan and Hadrian, by William Horbury ***

This is the most complete account of the wars between the Jews and the Roman Empire post 70 CE that I've read, going deeper into the subject than Mary Smallwood's very thorough but also easier to follow book. Horbury's text is very much an academic work, at times difficult to follow and very much bogged down in details that, to be exhaustive, it must be.

After a contextual introduction, in which Horbury claims that all the Jewish wars can be seen as one uprising rather than a set of uprisings, the book provides a long account of the literature that already exists on the subject--a very useful exercise. I'd read several of these works, as it turns out, and it was great not only to read Horbury's summation of works I hadn't gotten to but also to some I had, in part to remind me of their basic points but also because it was interesting to read how Horbury himself interprets the findings of some of these authors.

The text turns then to the various wars and their causes, most particularly to the Kitos War, for which very little information exists. Horbury does an admirable job pulling in the various historical sources and some sources that less certainly refer to it. The war, as he notes, was not just in Egypt but also in Cyprus and modern-day Libya (Cirenaica), the latter two actually seemingly more heavily the source of the conflict, at least as I read it. Egypt, of course, was a constant bed of intrigue between Jewish and Greek residents, but the Messianic hopefuls did their best to spread into the area, spreading the war. The war also coincided with the Roman invasion of Parthia. I expect I'll return to Horbury's text to review more about this war, since I've seen nothing else quite so thorough.

Judea's turn at the war, of course, would come a little over a decade later, in what is known as the Bar Kochba uprising. On this, I was on more solid ground having read more about it. Horbury doesn't just repeat what others have said, of course, but since those others have written more accessibly about the subject, I found myself more easily zoning out in these latter sections.

On “Thinking Like Your Editor” by Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato ***

So I'm preparing to coteach a course next year, and this is one of the books we intend to use. It's a pretty good summary of the proposal process and of the publishing process in general: for serious trade nonfiction. There is other nonfiction, however, like how-to books, and this one doesn't really delve into that. Or humor. And fiction, of course, is yet another animal.

I'll summarize each chapter, mostly so that I remember its details.

The book opens with an account of the controversy over where to shelve a book. Some books, of course, have two or three subjects, and where they end up in a store can make a big difference in terms of sales. Publishers and booksellers don't always agree.

The introduction notes that acquisitions editors often make decisions based on proposals rather than book manuscripts. The author notes why academic books aren't trade books: (1) discipline-specific writing; (2) jargon; and (3) niche subjects. Editors focus on readers. As an author, you need to know why your book is being written, for home, and what it wants to say. These days, TV appearances sell more books than book reviews.

Chapter 1: All book decisions, including marketing, type of edit, sales, print run, jacket, are based on four criteria: (1) Does the book have a buying audience? (2) Who is that audience? (3) What does this book say to that audience. And (4) Will the audience buy the book? Trade books are idea books, not practice books. So there are four more questions to answer: (1) Is it a book or an article? (2) Is it general interest or academic? (3) Has the audience been properly defined? And (4) Is the topic compelling to a core audience?

Chapter 2: The proposal should tell the editor what needs to be known, not just what the author wants to say. The big five questions a proposal answers: (1) What is the book about? (2) What is the book's thesis and what is new about it? (3) Why are you the person to write it? (4) Why is now the time to publish it? And (5) Who is the core audience and why will they want it? Good proposals tell a story. The proposal is twenty pages double-spaced and leaves the editor wanting more. If you don't have a thesis yet, think of the question driving the projects, the thing you will answer. The answer to that question is more than just the thesis, though—it is the thesis plus the answer to the question, “And so?” That is, how does this finding affect the reader?

Chapter 3: In proposal, the table of contents should contain a paragraph for each chapter with basic points. (Two to three pages for the TOC.) The sample chapter doesn't need to be a real chapter. It can steal from other parts of the book. The point is to be compelling—show that you can write. There are three types of books/chapters: narrative, argument, and explanatory. The proposal package should include the proposal, the TOC, sample chapter, and your CV (with previous publications and publicity contacts).

Chapter 4 is about whether to get an agent or go straight to a publisher. The author recommends the former in most cases.

Chapter 5 denotes the importance of balance and truth telling. If a writer argues something a reader knows not to be true (twisting basic facts), how are we to trust the argument when we get to material we don't know. (I'm reminded of a podcast I was listening to just today, where I knew info that the podcaster obviously didn't. Made me doubt the accuracy of everything else that's been discussed.)

Chapter 6 is about using narrative elements to drive reader interest—essentially posing a question and dangling the answer out in front for th reader to discover.

Chapter 7 argues that anecdote to start a book is oversold. If used, it should be short. Intros instead should get quickly to the thesis, a bold thesis. Readers use the intro to see whether to buy the book. In essence, the intro should give away the book in terms of the thesis, but the rest of the book shows how that thesis can be true. That's how readers stay curious. Intro also lays out how the book is different from other related texts. Exception to this advice on introductions: biographies. Those will use an anecdote to lay out one emblematic moment from the life of the subject. After the introduction, in nonfiction, comes the context chapter. Then narrative chapters with side issues in break-narrative chapters or in two-to-three page section breaks with more more context.

Chapter 8 reviews the editing and publishing process.

Writing craft books usually intimidate me a bit. They make me feel like I'm not sufficiently following rules. But the best way to learn is really by doing and by reading, a lot.

On “The Twelve” by C. Bernard Ruffin ****

This is the fourth book I've that focuses, in some way, on each of the twelve apostles following the books of the New Testament. It is not as good as Sean McDowell's Fates of the Apostles, which focused chiefly on how they died and is a bit formulaic in chapter setup but which is also more up to date, more readable, and more focused on sources. Nor is it as good as Brian Liftin's After Acts, which also is somewhat formulaic, does not cover all twelve apostles thoroughly, and is often lacking is source citations, but which is very readable. However, it is better than William Steuart McBirnie's The Search for the Twelve Apostles, which while thorough and quotes heavily from sources, is kind of a drag of a read and seems too heavily focused on burial places and relics. Ruffin's book covers each of the twelve and is somewhat thorough; however, like McBirnie's work, the writing at times drags. It also seems a bit too heavily and uncritically dependent on legends and Catholic teaching (though I have no idea whether Ruffin was actually Catholic). Unfortunately, it's unlikely that any book will ever satisfactorily fill one's curiosity about the twelve after the events of the New Testament or even about them in terms of their background and biography, since in some cases, all we know of them in the New Testament is a few scattered quotes and their names.

Although I was familiar with most of this material, there were things I learned—or perhaps was reminded of that I'd forgotten. Ruffin engages in some closer readings of the New Testament text and raised for me some perceptions that I hadn't yet come across. Take, for example, the two callings of Peter, one while fishing and another with his brother Andrew coming to tell him to come meet Jesus. Ruffin puts these together, with the idea that Peter met Jesus once, and then was actually called to discipleship sometime later while fishing. There were also some descriptions of Jesus's extended family that I was only vaguely aware of—for example, the idea that Matthew was conceivably a cousin of Jesus. James Tabor makes much of how virtually all the disciples were related to Jesus and tries to make the case that all three of his brothers were among the twelve (or maybe that's Jeffrey Butz's argument or maybe both—I get these ideas and whose they are confused). But in making such a case, Tabor's claims begin to stretch credulity, and one feels that the writer has an agenda. Ruffin clearly has an agenda also, but that agenda would not be forcing familial relationships on Jesus's disciples, as such would seem more to discount his belief that Jesus was God in the flesh than to serve it, insofar as if so many of his followers were family members, it's easier to make a case that this was a familial conspiracy. In that sense, at least on this account, Ruffin comes across as a bit more believable, when he makes cases for at least five the apostles possibly being cousins. Another interesting claim: That Philip the deacon and apostle were the same. He notes that the twelve may well have wanted an apostle as one of the seven deacons to preserve doctrinal truth, and Philip, who would work heavily among the Samaritans and whose Greek name suggests a connection to the diaspora community, would have fit the agenda well.

Anyway, the book was worth the read, even if it took longer than I would have expected for a book of its size.

On "From Paul to Valentinus" by Peter Lampe ****

More than any other book I've read in recent years (or perhaps ever), this one reminded me of the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, of going from a large point and seeing how all the small points of evidence fit within it versus gathering all the small points of evidence to discover some larger point. Lampe's work seems heavily invested in the latter. In a way, that's great. He can dismiss what others have accepted as givens and start afresh, perhaps coming to the same conclusion and perhaps not. No assumptions. (The degree to which anyone does only inductive or deductive reasoning is questionable. Any argument is a mix of both. We all have our biases. And even if one present an argument inductively, some of that argument has likely been built on deduction.) The focus on the little things is illuminating, but it's also a bit tiresome, as for vast parts of the book, one doesn't necessarily see where Lampe is going. It's just a bunch of seemingly disjointed facts, until of course he finally gets to his conclusions.

The first part of the book looks at where Christians lived within Rome. He does this in part by looking at how the earlier writers describe those communities. But more interesting is when he looks at where Christians tend to be buried, which end up corresponding to the other evidence. In all, he finds Christians most heavily located along the Via Appia and in a neighborhood called Trastevere, which was at the time very densely populated and heavily full of immigrants. In all, early Roman Christians seem to be mostly immigrants and not terribly well off. Part of the reason Christians could be blamed for the burning of Rome under Nero was that their communities were not heavily affected--as such, they would seem to be the natural perpetrators.

The second part of the book provides biographies of known named Christians. Details here were at times interesting, but on the whole this section was less intriguing than the former. Of course, his named Christians do seem to be wealthier and more prominent (for obvious reasons). Even so, he notes how Aquila and Prisca were probably not wealthy people. Their business was one with less social standing than others; they likely lived in the same building in which they worked, and that business was also the "home" in which their church met. Moving so often for them was not a sign of wealth but of seeking work opportunities. Among the named Christians are several slaves and freemen who were affiliated in some way with the emperor's family, though some slaves could be quite well off. Only a very few people were associated with the senatorial elite, and mostly this was wives rather than the actual senators, for whom such Christian affiliation would have been a death sentence. There is a lot of emphasis in early writings on the well-off supplying for the needs of poor, of which there were many more.

To close, Lampe looks at "fractionation" in the Roman church--that is, the division of the church into house churches. What did this mean for church structure, centralization, government, and doctrine? Lampe finds that most Christian groups in Rome were mostly independent, which allowed for disparities in doctrine and for great tolerance for such disparity among the groups. Valentinians, he finds, for example, mixed with other Christians; they weren't a distinct group meeting separately, except perhaps in addition to regular meetings. Those who did separate early, such a Marcion, did so in part because they made themselves pariahs but insisting on the properness of their views to the denigration of others; in other words, they as much separated themselves as the larger church separated from them.

There was no bishop overseeing the Roman congregations until very late. Lampe sees Victor as being the first to really attempt to lay down such power over all the groups, pushing out some who don't belong in his view. Some earlier elders, like Anicetus, Soter, and Eleutherius, were prominent, but they were more firsts among equals or men charged with dealing with outsiders in communication or gathering various congregational materials for the poor. It was these responsibilities that led to the eventual centralization of Roman church authority. (Jewish synagogues, Lampe finds, were similarly separate in power in Rome, unlike, say, in Alexandria, where there was a central council, into which all synagogues fed.)

These are intriguing ideas, though as Lampe acknowledges, there had to have been some degree of cooperation among elders of the various groups, for people like Clement or Soter to speak for all of them.

What does this suggest to me about those groups that continued to hold on more to Jewish practices? Alexandria's comparative centralization could mean that Jewish Christians were more quickly dismissed from the synagogues in total, leading to an earlier break with such traditions. The removal of Jewish people in general after 115 and the Kitos War would have also created an even cleaner break. In Rome, it would seem that some synagogues may have remained open to Christians, although Nero's reign of terror might have been a motivating factor in Jews separating from Christians earlier as well. Similarly, with a looser set of Christian groups, some groups may have remained more inclined to hold on to said traditions. That is, indeed, the argument of some regarding why Victor made the proclamation he did regarding the Quartodecimans, those who observed Passover rather than Easter. Some from Asia Minor likely held on to those traditions in their meetings in Rome, causing Victor to confront and attempt to remove not just them from fellowship but also all the congregations of Asia Minor. Much to think about.

On “Inside Roman Libraries” by George W. Houston ****

I didn't quite get what I was looking for from this book, but I didn't think I would. (I'm really wanting to know more about how Christian books were spread and what role a libraries may have played. Clearly, many individual churches had such works, as they read from them at a services, and clearly those works reached beyond the church, because other writers refer to them or Christians refer other people to them, as if they could be obtained. But claims that such books were deposited in libraries, as I've read, never seem to be backed up with hard evidence.) Houston does exactly as his title suggests: He explores Roman libraries as they existed between roughly 100 BCE to about 400 CE. The first chapter is excellent, as are the later chapters. That first chapter lays out some basics about such libraries—how they were financed, how they could be quasi-public, how manuscripts were obtained. There weren't really “public” libraries in the way that we think of libraries, but there were libraries that were open to the public, and there were libraries that were open to a small set of users (say, the people who were part of a specific society). Libraries (that is, people who collected books) could obtain books via professional booksellers/scribes, via copying a book out for themselves, via having a slave copy it out for them; the emperor had his own collection, and that might be obtained also through government seizure for crime or as plunder from war. Sometimes these books would also be sold off.

After that, Houston focuses for several chapters on some very specific collections, looking particularly at lists of books that were maintained for particular libraries. Such lists were not, as he notes, catalogs; books likely were organized by subject and author but similarly loosely. Houston focuses on scrolls, not codices, which were not so popular during this period. (I read somewhere, now I don't remember, that even Christian writers used scrolls rather than codices except for for works of Scripture, which is interesting.) He goes into how scrolls were stored and what might damage them and so on. But because the focus is on specific lists—a collection of mostly philosophy, a collection of mostly comedy, and so on—these middle sections are a bit dry.

Finally, he steps back again and looks at the architecture of such libraries. He notes that they usually had windows for ease of reading—and that these windows actually had glass or were very thin marble, allowing for light but keeping out rain and insects. This was news to me. Often, statues were in such facilities—of the sponsor, the emperor, a god, or of authors. There were likely seats but perhaps not so much tables; scribes might play a role in some libraries but not in most.

Then he goes into the personnel. There was a commissioner of the library for the emperor. Local libraries likely had directors. Then there were likely slaves underneath them working. Books were likely not free to be handled by patrons in terms of browsing and they certainly weren't available to be checked out; rather, a reader would ask a worker to get the book for him or her, and then that person would read the work on site. Books, after all, were super expensive, with each being copied out by hand. Most lasted about a century before being worn out. When trying to obtain a book from which to make one's own copy, much effort often was expended. Some copies were poorly transcribed. That was one purpose of the emperor's collection: as a resource to the government but it also served as a resource from which to find decently accurate works. I'm glad books are so much easier to obtain today.

On "Akiva" by Reuven Hammer ***

This is the second biography of Akiva that I read, and it is the more straightforward of the two. That is, it goes a bit more chronologically, though like the other, it too works off a number of themes. It also seemed a bit more hagiographic. I won't rehearse the contractions regarding Akiva's life, since I did that when discussing the other book, though this author tends to be more willing to say something is legend versus something is probably fact than Holtz was. Still, there are many things neither author knows or even guesses at.

Instead, broader picture emerges. Akiva grew up poorly educated but became learned as an adult. He married at least once and was devoted to his wife. He had many followers. He helped (indeed, was instrumental in) create the Mishnah, the collection of topically arranged Jewish teachings were the foundation for the Talmud. He didn't oppose the Bar Kokhba Revolt, although the degree to which he supported it as uncertain. He likely did call Kokhba the Messiah. Akiva died a martyr, for teaching the law when it was illegal, though he likely died in prison, facing trial, before execution.

Hammer writes quite a bit more about Akiva's relationship with Christianity. Part of the motivation for the Mishnah appears to have been Christianity and its competing books. For Akiva, the law (oral and written) was sufficient and good; no sacrifice was needed. Indeed, Akiva didn't really believe in an oral law--it was part of the written law, he would have claimed, in there all along. Still, other passages in the Talmud show how the Sages placed themselves even above God in places in terms of their importance to that law. At the same time, the law came directly from heaven, for Akiva; it wasn't the work of inspired humans, as some sages would claim--it was God's actual words. By fashioning so much importance on these subjects, Akiva could deny the various claims of Christians.