On “Plato's Shadow” by Gary Petty ****

 

This book traces the changeover in Christianity from the first century into the fourth, as it moved from being chiefly a Jewish sect to being a new version of Greco-Roman religion, adopting many beliefs and practices from the latter along the way. There wasn't much new here to me, but Petty writes in a very simple manner that would make for easy reading and understanding among the most general of readers looking for an introduction (I wish I'd come across the book ten years ago, when I first started heavily reading in the subject). The period covered is a very long one, including not just the first four centuries of the Christian era but also the basics of Greek philosophy and the Jewish faith going back to their founding (and constituting almost half the book). As such, one can glean a clear sense of where Christianity comes in, but the history of the four centuries that are the book's focus is even more compacted as a result. The Bible is used heavily as a source, as are Bible helps; other sources include various classics on classical, Jewish, and Christian history, and there is a general smattering of quotes from various primary sources outside scripture. The most cogent argument Petty makes comes near the end of the book, when he notes how Paul could not be the source of so many of the changes to the faith established by Jesus and the original twelve apostles, but rather such changes were really the influence of later incorporation into classical Greek thinking. The argument is laid out succinctly and clearly, as with so much of the rest of the book; however, such would be unlikely to satisfy most diehard critics, who have laid out whole books on small aspects of the subject (usually, showing just the opposite of what Petty does but in more recent times increasingly appreciating Paul in his Jewish setting and beginning to understand that he was not the antinomian or anti-Petrine figure many earlier scholars have made him out to be).

On “The First Urban Christians” by Wayne A. Meeks ****

This book reminds me a bit of watching The Godfather. The two works, of course, have nothing to do with one another. But the comparison is the experience of reading Meeks's book and watching that movie. When I saw The Godfather, this classic of cinema, I was in my thirties, and the film was about the same age as I was. I'd heard for a long time about how important the film was and how great it was. Seeing it, however, I found to be underwhelming. I could see how the film was likely a great film in its time, but watching it thirty-years on, the picture seemed a cliché. All the gangster movie stereotypes were present. However, not having seen the film in the 1970s, when it first came out, I could not say whether in its time the film might have been extremely original. The problem, of course, is that so many (better) films and TV shows since then had used the same plot devices and characters. Arguably, those films were all drawing on The Godfather. So when I went back to watch this older movie, it seemed stale, when in fact as the origin of so much since, it might well be as important as I'd always heard.

Such is the care for Meeks's The First Urban Christians. This book is a classic, one of the first, apparently, to draw sociology so heavily into conversation with the first century of Christianity, and specifically with reading Paul's letters. The subject is covered better in many other works I've read, including by Rodney Stark. But the thing is, as I read, I realized the degree to which these other authors were likely drawing on Meeks. They just wrote better and added to the findings that he made, which made of course the original, coming to it after the more recent works, all that much less intriguing. And so, I'm left in the same position as I am with The Godfather. Was this a great book in its time? Almost certainly, but because I came to it later, after reading other stuff, it doesn't seem as revolutionary as it likely was in its time or as it would have been had I read it before those other works.

By looking closely at Paul's letters and at the social nature of Roman society, Meeks notes that most early Christians were likely from cities. That's because that's where most diaspora Jews were, which is among whom most Christian teaching began. Christians drew from a range of classes (though the idea of low, middle, and upper class is not a terribly effective way at looking at Roman society, which wasn't really based around the same sort of concepts as modern society): a slave might be richer or even have more power, for example, than a free man; a person of noble birth might be looked upon better than free man but not be as well off, and so on. The most prominent members were those with just such social inconsistencies in status: rich women, freed men with special skills, wealthy Jewish people. A particularly interesting chapter focuses on names, as they show up in the letters. Meeks then goes on to examing worship practices and governance in the church, using similar means, though the observations don't seem like anything beyond what I've read elsewhere. Meeks largely accepts the mainstream critical position that only seven of Paul's letters are genuine and that Paul was largely opposed to James and Peter in his views of the new faith, which to a degree colors his observations.

On “After Acts” by Bryan Litfin ****

Liftin reviews the various legends that have accrued around the apostles and a few other important New Testament figures and provides an evaluation of their likelihood. Liftin is a conservative scholar, which means he more typically accepts biblical accounts for what they are, rather than arguing against their accuracy, though he does sometimes note what secular and liberal scholars believe on such subjects. The book is written at a basic level, such that someone with only a little biblical knowledge and very little knowledge of postbiblical Christian history should have no difficulty with understanding it. For me, the work was a bit more basic than I anticipated and so proved mostly a useful review rather than a work that provided new insight. (Sean McDowell's Fate of the Apostles does similar work, though he focuses solely on the apostles, whereas Liftin looks more at prominent people, giving just one chapter over to the lesser known apostles. McDowell's work is more thorough, however, and as such more informative, but Litfin's book is a reasonable price whereas McDowell's is inordinately expensive given its length.) Like William McBirnie's classic The Search for the Twelve Apostles, Litfin spends quite of a bit of ink on relics and gravesites, often less with written documents, many of which are of such later dating that they're unreliable anyway. Litfin's work is not as detailed at McBirnie's either, but it's easier to follow. I'll come back to it, likely, as a reference.

On “Treasure Island!!!” by Sara Levine ****

This one came recommended to me from various websites that listed great recent novels. In addition, I was familiar with Levine's name—likely through various stories I've read of hers—and the premise sounded cool, so I decided, why not? I don't read much fiction anymore, so this would be a good break, and it was.

The premise? A woman reads Robert Lewis Stevenson's Treasure Island, a “boys' book,” and decides to change her life accordingly, living by its various morals and standards. It's been forty-plus years since I read Treasure Island, though I do remember somewhat enjoying it as a kid, insomuch as I could enjoy a “long” book back in those days (I wasn't much of a reader before my teen years), but I remember liking the live-action Disney technicolor movie from the fifties or sixties. I mean, pirates, after all (the subject still seems of great interest to people, but as a kid, I realized after trying to read some nonfiction about them, they were hardly as intriguing as theme park rides).

As I knew going in, the book was supposed to be funny, and the narrator and central character an incredibly awful woman. These turned out to be true. Turns out modeling one's life after pirates isn't so great an idea. That said, one gets the feeling that the narrator wasn't terribly stable to begin with—a decent-looking woman who uses those looks to hold down jobs and boyfriends, neither of which she appreciates, as she believes herself to be above them. Living by the dictates of a 150-year-old novel means not letting manners get in the way of how highly you think of yourself, which means taking advantage of other people at every turn.

My wife found the book reminiscent of Don Quixote, but shorter and easier to read. It's not entirely predictable, but the narrator's brain seems similarly addled by fiction such that she makes dreadful decisions for all around her. One of the blurbs makes note of its memoir-esque features and, indeed, one can read the book as a sort of parody of self-help memoirs, where someone makes some sort of decision to live by some new standard and change one's life accordingly. This narrator doesn't really change much; she's awful to start, and the book simply gives her an excuse to continue on the same path. Some might question, as such, whether the book is even really a novel, as the main character does not develop. But it's a fun read no matter.

On “The Edge of Marriage” by Hester Kaplan *****

I was blown away by this collection when I read it about twenty years age, which is why it resides so much in my memory as a great work. This time around, I could see the skill involved—Kaplan is a remarkable writer—but at the same time, I felt more manipulated. I'm not as much of a fan of fiction as I once was. What made me like fiction was that I felt like I was getting a deeper glimpse into the society and the people in it than one could get from nonfiction; these days, though, I tend to feel all the more the writer's use of puppet strings, the artistry of the fiction itself, which rather undoes the mistique of genuiness I used to find in such works.

Most of the stories in Kaplan's first collection, as one might expect from the title, revolve around marriages in some state of disrepair. “Would You Know It Wasn't Love?” subtly hints at a man's growing dimensia even as it revolves around a grown daughter who has come back to live with her parents after her marriage has proven to be somewhat less than satisfactory; the dad is not too keen on this, even while the mother seems perfectly fine with the situation.

“Dysaesthesia” is the most powerful story in the collection and the one that probably sold me most on the book when I first read it. An older first-time wife who married in part just to be able to have a marriage and family finds herself with a husband, an art professor, who is a prolific cheater, even as she attempts to raise their daughter, who idealizes both parents. The issue, however, is that one of those cheating sections goes disastrously awry, and now the wife finds herself the likely caretaker to a mostly disabled and unemployable husband. Were it not for the daughter, I would figure this marriage would be on its way to a quick divorce. As it is, however, one really ends up feeling just awful for this woman and the family in general—and even a bit of the husband's frustration.

“From Where We've Fallen” involves another couple with an adult child, this one a kid who can't hold down a job except as employed by his dad. Alas, even that is tenuous, as the son's actions put his father's business in jeopardy, and the father finds himself lying to protect his family but in the process hurting others.

“Cuckle Me” focuses on an old man and his youngish female caretaker, one who has come to love him almost as a husband, even as the man's son isn't particularly keen on the closeness that has arisen between the two.

The title story focuses on an older couple, the wife of whom has lost her best friend, leaving of course just her husband as her main social conduit. The story basically details how our relationships change with age. “Goodwill” walks a similar line, this time with a daughter grieving her mother's death, as she goes through her mother's things deciding what to keep and what to throw away (probably the weakest story in the collection, insofar as there are no real surprises here, and it seems mostly just a laundry list of items attached to memories).

“Claude Comes and Goes” focuses on a couple and their best friend—an ex-lover of the wife's, who lives a stereotypical bachelor life: different women all the time, never eating at home, and so on. In this case, Claude tries to establish a relationship with a grown daughter of his who had previously never met, but as with so many such storylines, the bachelor finds that his no-connections lifestyle is not conducive to suddenly having a relative care about him.

“The Spiral” focuses on a stairwell in a house's center, and a couple's relationship with it, with the older not-so-healthful husband confined to the downstairs and the wife with her own life upstairs, until of course life changes the way they use the different parts of the house.

“Live Life King-Sized” focuses on a grown son who takes care of a resort that his family owns. But really, it's about that son's relationship with a man and his wife, a man who has decided to live out the rest of his life, what little there is of it, at the resort, scaring away other patrons in the process.

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 “Traffic” by Tom Vanderbilt ****

I was expecting more of an urban planning and studies work, but the first part of this text—and indeed, the last part also—is more about human psychology. Vanderbilt does get to urban planning eventually, as I would find, and once he does, the book became more interesting to me. But I can see why he started with psychology, because it is after all the psychology that affects so much of how and why we plan our roads the way that we do. That said, the book as a whole was fairly unsettling, insofar as it made me realize just how unsafe driving in general is. I wish I could get away without it, but even as I might wish that, if we deal with vehicular traffic at all, even as pedestrians, we're in danger (and perhaps even greater danger).

I might summarize this book as being a set of counterintuitive findings about roads and driving, which Vanderbilt seems to be set on presenting. That is, of course, what makes the text as interesting as it it. I'll note just a few of the odd facts that he runs down for us:

Should you merge early or late? That is one of the opening questions. I'd say I'm usually an early merger, as I don't want the stress of trying to get into the correct lane later. The issue with merging early, though, is that you're failing to use the full available space of the road. So the key would be to merge late? Vanderbilt eventually shows that the best thing to do is to simply move forward in whatever lane you're in, merging (if you must) when time arises. This isn't exactly late merging, because if you happen to be in the lane to which people are merging, you shouldn't shift to the other one to try to speed past other cars—that creates other dangers.

Have you ever wondered why insects don't get into traffic jams? I hadn't given it much thought, until Vanderbilt brought it up. Ants, I guess, have a whole system laid out where lines of traffic go more heavily in certain directions and so on. But the advantage is that they have a team goal. When we drive, it's usually each vehicle for itself. This encourages behavior that usually ends up hurting everyone. He comes back to this when talking about searching for car spaces, which I'll come back to as well. The other insect he discusses is the locust, which really is kind of every insect out for itself. The insects at the front of the pack eat up the food; at the back, the insects eat the insects that are in front of them, given that the food is gone. Wow! What a life.

So parking spaces. When they are scarce, do you sit and wait for a spot to open up or drive around looking for one? Women apparently are more likely to do the former, men the latter. Both add to congestion. Men are also more likely to park further away on the central aisle and just walk, while women are more likely to try to snag a closer spot, even though it might take more time. I am definitely a man in that regard, though I wouldn't say I just park on the central aisle as far back as needed. I usually park farther out so as not to have to deal with cars around me, but I'll often go to the side.

Congestion also results from out tendency to be in for ourselves, the way, say, that if one had a community pasture, there are few conditions to discourage overgrazing. What I mean is that if there is scarcity, the only way to avoid such is to cooperate. But if the system is set up as first-come first-serve, cooperation doesn't really pay off for the individual user. In such a system, even if the pasture is overgrazed, I'm better off sending my sheep there and at least getting some feed than not even bothering. And so it is with spots on a highway or in a parking lot. I could choose to drive a route that is an hour longer and twenty miles out of my way, but if I do that, I'm helping others more than myself. If I can squeeze onto the highway, even if I only save a half hour (and slow it down for everyone else), it's still a net gain for me. This is one reason that GPS tracking used to filter cars to less traveled routes in heavy traffic times probably won't work—the other being that travel times are very dynamic (so a route might slow or speed precipitously in a given short period of time). It's also why bigger roads usually don't result in less traffic, as people congregate toward that shared pasture.

An interesting chapter revolves around how more dangerous roads are actually, statistically, usually safer for driving. There are fewer fatal crashes, for example, in heavy traffic. After all, everyone is going slower! Here Vanderbilt gets deep into urban planning, discussing how some cities have actually created zones within the city where driving is actually more difficult, where cars are forced to slow, where there is more mixed use of streets. This restores the vitality of such zones of the city while also slowing cars down—all this without speed bumps and other awkward traffic inventions, because cars now can't treat the street like a thoroughfare to be simply passed through as quickly as possible.

Returning to psychology, Vanderbilt discusses how driving habits differ in different locales and how safer cars often lead to more dangerous driving. That's the whole counterintuitive aspect to virtually everything revolving around traffic. Bigger roads lead to more traffic, not less. Safer cars lead to people driving less safely. It seems there's a kind of equilibrium that we're set to return to, no matter how much we might try to compensate.

On “A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23” by Phillip Keller ****

 

My wife was somewhat surprised to find me reading this. It seemed a bit too inspirational and touchy-feely. Indeed, the book is that. I would say that Keller probably could have written something that was about half or a quarter of its length and made his point. He fills the text out to book-length by giving readers nice-sounding discussions about faith and God and stuff like that.

But the meat of the book is extremely useful, which is why I decided to read it this second time (the first time being well more than a decade ago). Not having been a shepherd, I have no way of otherwise gleaning the various subtleties of this most famous of Psalms. Keller, with his extensive experience with sheep keeping, has much info to provide about what each line of the Psalm actually goes much deeper than we might otherwise expect. Indeed, I usually think of the last portions of the Psalm as moving away from the sheep metaphors, but Keller shows how even such acts as the spreading of oil on the head is a shepherding act—meant to keep male sheep from butting each other too hard, meant to keep insects and flies from alighting on the sheep and laying their eggs. I'll likely return to this book again at some point.

On "The Trial" by Franz Kafka ***

Reading this work had been a long time coming for me. I just never got around to it. It was not exactly what I was expecting. Oddly, I read The Castle years ago, even though this was the book I really always intended to read; that one, someone had suggested in terms of helping me with a story I was writing at the time. Maddeningly, of course, as with so much of Kafka's work, The Castle has no proper ending. The Trial, as it turns out, is missing pieces too, but it does have an end.

Having read both that other novel and his complete stories, I should have known that I would not find the work completely satisfying. True, some authors do manage to write one great piece that towers over everything else, and The Trial is apparently that for Kafka--but it did not seem so to me.

The story is about a man, Joseph K., who is accused of a crime. No one will tell him what the crime is. I guess I was expecting more of a courtroom and jail room novel, but oddly, the man accused is allowed to continue living his regular life, mostly. He does, toward the start, enter a courtroom one time, but never a jail cell, and as the book continues on, he never enters the court again, though his life becomes consumed in many ways by his case. I guess, really, this makes for more interesting reading than if he'd have been locked up in some cell for the whole novel.

Others hear of his being arrested and try to help. An uncle hires a lawyer for him. Various women spend time with him, talking about his case. Business clients set him up with others, including a painter, who gives Joseph K. some advice--namely that if he is innocent, he shouldn't worry, but then, contradictorily, notes that K. will never not be guilty in the eyes of the law and the best he can do is put off the verdict. Other people who have been accused offer advice, and at the end, even a priest, who tells a story about a man who is kept from advancing to another room by a gatekeeper but through persistence is eventually let past the door near the end of his life (when it no longer really matters). Much time is spent interpreting and reinterpreting this story in almost nonsensical fashion. Is the gatekeeper merciful? Cruel? The priest scene comes just before the end of the book, suggesting a kind of last rites being offered over Joseph K. In that sense, the book takes on the religious overtones I figured would make a greater part of the work, but Kafka doesn't make much of that tired trope. He skewers the legal system quite a bit, but not in a funny way. Mostly, it's just a sad theater of the absurd sort of book.

Perhaps, the best part of the work is the way that K. becomes, during the course of the events, more and more paranoid. He comes to think that others are looking to take his job, that some are spying on him, and so on. How could he not, after all, when so many know of his case and that he is awaiting trial. In that way, one gets a sense of how the court of public opinion works against a person even before being found guilty or not; in essence, it doesn't matter, which is the gist of K.'s experience.

On "Soul on Ice" by Eldridge Cleaver ***

 

The last book on my Black Panther reading list, it's the only one actually by a Black Panther, as it's the only such work that I could find that was written by someone involved in the organization at the time that the Panthers were actually at their most active. I was not sure how much I would enjoy the work; I suspected that it might grow tiresome in its argument. That was not the case at all, though the work, as the chapters progressed, did have diminishing returns. Cleaver is a magnificent writer. I can see why and how this work was published. The essays are dynamic, the language beautiful.

The work is divided into sections of essays. The first section is the most intriguing. It consists of a set of letters he wrote while in prison. One essay focuses on a standard day, which, as a man of good behavior, provides him with more privileges than may others. Still, he's cut off from reading certain works considered subversive, often simply because the warden has decided such, not because a work is particularly radical. It's a personal thing. While in prison, Malcolm X was killed. The manner in which this filters to the prisoners is interesting—first as rumor and then over time confirmed. Not having access to the outside world so much, Cleaver can live in denial for a few days, even though he is one of the first to learn of what happens.

Cleaver, it seems, was taken in by the Black Muslims as well. And by Garveyism. It's interesting to see these various ideas that I read about in other works and how they played out among an actual Black Panther, as such Panthers were in some ways less inclined to find the approach of civil rights activists like MLK useful. Still, in the later passages of the book, Cleaver doesn't seem as virulently opposed to such movements as Malcolm does in the early portions of his autobiography. Like Malcolm, though, Cleaver moves away from Elijah Muhammad and some of his views.

The second section deals with current events—boxing (i.e., Muhammad Ali's fights), Vietnam (how Black Americans seemed more likely to fight this war, which in Cleaver's view is mostly a white colonialist enterprise), and James Baldwin (a writer he finds to be very good but who also is too inclined to kowtow to white views for his own good).

A collection of love letters follows and then a section mostly focused on male-female relationships. Here, the work loses steam for me. There are some interesting observations regarding why black men are attracted to white women, and why white women are attracted to black men, and how these attractions stem from the power dynamics involved in enslavement—the idea of the forbidden, of having power, and so on—but mostly Cleaver just waxes lyrical in ways that didn't seem to convey much to me.

On "The Seven Churches of Asia" by A. Svoboda ***

This was not quite the book I was looking for, but being in the public domain, I took a gander at it. I was hoping for or expecting a sort of short history of the seven churches mentioned in Revelation, maybe a bit of discussion of culture of each community. Svoboda does supply that but really not much more than one could easily get from a short article on the subject or a Bible commentary. And with regard to the history, he usually provides everything from the founding to his contemporary day, so not much is focused on bibilical times. His focus, rather, is on archeology. There are lots of descriptions of buildings and of what remains of them. Indeed, what the book really reads like is a travel guide. It provides minimal cultural and historical detail and especially concentrates on the visual contemporary. Indeed, at the end of the book is an appendix with a run-down of how many days it would take to travel from one city to the other, with choices regarding which routes to take and suggestions regarding the best means to conduct one's trip. In that sense, it's an interesting artifact of its time. Svoboda suggests having bodyguards along some portions of the route, because of robbers, and even suggests speaking with specific knowledgeable people along the route. I don't think I'd have wanted to venture along such a route in the late 1800s, when Svoboda was writing.

On “Caesarea under Roman Rule” by Lee I. Levine ****

Levine sets out to do a difficult thing: write the history of a city during Roman times—the first four centuries CE. It's a difficult task because, as he notes, we lack records for much of that time. The early first century, with Josephus and the Bible, has a relatively large amount of material, albeit from just those few sources. But the end of the first century and the second are nearly a blank slate. The third and fourth are largely recorded by Eusebius, Origen, and the rabbinical records.

Founded—or rather, more or less re-created—by Herod from an earlier and much smaller settlement called Strato's Tower, the city was intended largely for the Hellenistic element of Herod's kingdom, in part to keep the portion of the Jewish element that hadn't supported his ascension in line. Despite the city's cosmopolitanism, Jews still ended up making up a good portion of the population. A sea town, it was a center also for trade, exporting the agricultural products of the hinterland and importing from places like Alexandria.

The Jewish rebellions led to a number of Jewish deaths and eventually to their being pushed out of the city—but not forever. (An influx of Roman soldiers made up for much of the depopulation.) By the third century, there was a significant Jewish community again, as well as communities adherent to pagan faiths, and Christianity. Surprisingly, Samaritans were the largest of the groups in the city at this time, though we have few records from them. The Jewish disfavor of the Samaritans grew as well, in part because they agreed to offer sacrifices for which Jews were exempt; in other words, to whatever degree Samaritans had been thought of as Jews, that came to an end during this time. Meanwhile, Christian academies found a home in the city, as it took on a more important place in the church than Jerusalem.

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 "Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity" by Kirsopp Lake ****

This short book based on a series of lectures tells the story of the early Christians in five cities--Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome. Most of the book is about the development of Christology in the early church. Lake falls in line with a number of more secular-type scholars (not that he was a secularist) in pushing forward the theory that Jesus himself never identified himself as the son of God or the Messiah. This was, according to Kirsopp, a later development. Instead, Jesus was mostly a preacher in the tradition of John the Baptist, one who preached repentance and most important about the soon-coming Kingdom of God. The church then made his message about himself.

Lake believes this largely happened as Jewish Christianity came into contact with the Hellenist project. The hellenization of Christianity, in other words, turned Jesus divine. It did this through the intermixture of the faith with the mystery religions of ancient Greece. Many scholars believe such religions weren't really a thing until the late first or early second century, but Lake thinks of them as quite well developed with their man becoming a God and their promise of immortal life via one's soul wafting off after death. I'm inclined, after reading a few other books about the Artemis cult, to think that mystery religions were already a thing by the first century and well before that, though they did change with time. In this sense, the parallels that Lake draws up are intriguing.

In his final chapter, he turns to Ephesus and Rome. The former he sees as taking an adoptionist view of Jesus's divinity, one backed up by a reading of the Shepherd of Hermas. By contrast, Ephesus had a high view of Jesus's divinity, as a preexistent being, as seen in the Fourth Gospel. These two views, he contends, merged to forge the trinity a couple centuries later, largely through the efforts of Origen of Alexandria.

He makes some good arguments, though the simplicity and lack of depth with which he takes such big stands--he does after all accomplish all this in just one hundred pages--belies the fact that many of the ideas are actually not as sound as they sound.

On "The Wretched of the Earth" by Frantz Fanon ***

This work on the Black Panther Reading List focuses on colonialism more than on African American culture specifically--and most especially the effect of colonialism on the colonized.

Fanon is a skilled writer, full of bravura and wonderful words. Alas, much of the work, especially in the first half, is best read by someone with a background in the history of the cultures about which Fanon writes. Not knowing African colonial history, I felt lost for much of it.

Where Fanon shines most for a reader like me comes about midway through the book. Here, Fanon begins to focus on how colonial subjects react when they are finally given their freedom from the colonizing country. In essence, Fanon notes, they often fall into same traps that existed in the culture beforehand. A few take the lead and become, essentially, the colonizers, playing the roles that have been left vacant, while the rest continue in their colonized state. No real solution, as such, comes into being, despite national freedom. This seems almost a running them throughout the rest of the book, as Fanon examines cultural output and personal views of one's self.

The last chapter, indeed, talks of how colonizers often talk of the colonized people--that is, that such people have less intellectual capacity and a tendency toward violence rather than suicide. But Fanon shows clearly how these cultural projections of the colonizers onto the colonized are unfair and inaccurate, if not in part a response to the colonial state itself. Without the ability to act against the colonizer and reduced to low states, the colonized turn on each other, fighting for the few resources granted. "Crime," Fanon notes, drops in a revolutionary period, as people move against power rather than themselves.

The conclusion calls for people to build new models of government and existence. It is all good and well for the third world to thrive, but if it merely mirrors the first world, real gains to the human race will never be achieved.

On “St. Paul's Ephesian Ministry” by George S. Duncan ***

I was hoping to read a full account of Paul in Ephesus, but this book is only that in a small sense. Duncan's main goal, it seems, it to prove that Paul was imprisoned for much of his time in Ephesus. It's an intriguing thesis. The argument allows Duncan to reposition Paul's prison epistles by several years. Many scholars claim most of those epistles were written by a person writing in the name of Paul or that they were written from Rome. There is some argument that some of them could be written from Caesarea. Duncan disposes with all those possibilities and places them all within Paul's three-year stint to the city (he doesn't really address the possiblity of a post-Roman stay in Ephesus). In part, he makes his point by looking at the minor characters in the letters, the people Paul mentions in the greetings and closings, the Tituses, Timothies, and Demases.

The rest of the book explores the implications of this for what they say about Paul's ministry and forges a chronology that Duncan usefully summarizes in a timeline at the end. But Duncan does not stop there; he claims also that the pastoral epistles were written from Ephesus during this period. What starts as an intriguing idea becomes more and more speculative as Duncan gets deeper into the text, and while he had me in the first third of the book, his continuing discussion of the topic actually made me feel like his claims were likely incorrect, as just how many problems arise with this timeline becomes apparent. Although he is right to note that Acts is not exhaustive about Paul's doings, Duncan seems to need to add more and more to that period such that it seems almost too much.

Were Duncan correct, however, he is correct to note that it would be truly revolutionary, since we would know almost nothing about his later ministry or his time in Rome (and there would certainly be political reasons that Rome would have claimed such letters for itself).

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 "Garvey and Garveyism" by Amy Jacques Garvey ***

I thought this would be more of an introduction followed by a bunch of Marcus Garvey's writings. I'm glad that it wasn't, as the thought of such seemed like it would be rather dull, especially given that Garvey died near a century ago and much of his writing would likely have seemed dated. What the book is instead if a biography with extensive quotes from his writings and from others' writings about him.

I had read a bit about Garvey in other works, but to be able to focus on him helped me to understand better his importance, as well as the reason that we don't hear about him as much as certain other Black leaders.

Garvey was a bit like Donald Trump (not in point of view, of course). What I mean by that is that he took on positions that were contrary to majority thinking and that were to a degree controversial but in so doing appealed to masses. He didn't believe that Black people would ever get a fair shake in societies dominated by white folk. In a way, you could see segregationists eating up Garvey's ideas, because they would have fit right into segregationists' ideals. That said, Garvey had a point insofar as he felt it important that Black people of the world be given the opportunity to stand on their own; otherwise, those with power would continue to take advantage of them. This flew in the face of forces such as the NAACP and W. E. B. Du Bois, especially because Garvey advocated African Americans moving to Africa rather the integrating and forcing U.S. society to give them the rights they were due. Few people took up that cause, and I don't blame them. I wouldn't move to some other continent just because of the color of my skin; this is where I am and who I am.

As per the biography, Garvey was greatly persecuted. A shipping company he started (to support his organization) went bankrupt, and he ended up going to prison for supposedly siphoning off funds. Total setup, according to the biography. The biography, written by his wife, seems hagiographic, so I didn't feel like a got a fair assessment as to whether he really did do anything wrong. Nevertheless, he only got out of prison by being deported to his native Jamaica.

The biographer gives him credit for much of the African continent throwing off the colonial powers. Perhaps, he was responsible in some indirect way, but there certainly didn't result a single united Africa, as he was pushing for.

All that said, one begins to understand how Garvey could have influence later on on such groups as the Nation of Islam.

On "The Jesus Dynasty" by James D. Tabor ****

James Tabor certainly lays out a lot to think about and ties a number of odd details together, some of which I hadn't known about; the work is well written and entertaining. That said, I came to this book looking for more information on Jesus's family but expecting not to glean too much, given that I knew that Tabor's book had a particular point of view that is shocking to anyone who is a believer. Tabor, after all, is a big fan of the work of S. G. Brandon, who himself espoused certain views that dismiss large chunks of the New Testament. In Brandon's view, the Christians were Zealots, and the Gospels do their best to hide that fact from the Romans. What's more, the idea that Christians fled Jerusalem before its 70 CE destruction is dismissed as fantasy by Brandon. So this is where I figured Tabor would be coming from, but that wasn't quite true.

For James Tabor, the Jesus Dynasty is one rooted in the ministry of John the Baptist. John was to be the priestly Messiah, while Jesus was to be the kingly one. Jesus's work was a largely family one, and Jesus himself was not the son of God but son of a Roman soldier (Pantera) who possibly raped Mary. I hadn't known about this accusation/theory, but shortly later came across it in some rabbinical writings from the fifth century. Anyway, Jesus's disciples were made up of largely of family members, including four of his brothers (who share the same names as four of the disciples). John's death came as a shock, and Jesus's also. The Messiahs were dead, but they lived on in the work of Jesus's brother James, who would unite the priestly and kingly Messiah and restore Israel. The Messiah is wholly physical in Tabor's view--except insofar as the Messiah was supposed to usher in the appearance of the Godly Son of Man in glory.

James, of course, died also, as did the other relatives of Jesus, but this was Christianity, real Christianity, for the first couple of centuries, as seen in the Ebionite sect, which accepted Jesus as a prophet but not divine. It was Paul, alas, who changed Christianity into a more spiritual dynamic, with Jesus as son of God. His work colors the entire New Testament, including the Gospels, which were all written after 70 CE and the death of James. Only in the books of James and Jude, Jesus's brothers, and in the book of Q do we see truly what Jesus's minsistry was really like and what it was really about. Tabor takes Q as very much authoritative, though Q (a sayings Gospel of Jesus from which Matthew and Luke drew their various accounts of Jesus's words) is a theory and has never been found in a manuscript form; it seems a bit much to base an entire theory around.

Some other issues with the work: Tabor claims the meal Jesus had with his disciples was on Wednesday night rather than Thursday, as most Christians do; thus, Jesus died on Thursday, not Friday. He bases this on the idea that there was an annual Sabbath--a double Sabbath--as denoted in Matthew if one interprets the wording in Matthew 28:1 that way, a possible translation I hadn't earlier been aware of but something that is possible. The issue with the double Sabbath, however, as Tabor interprets it, since he places the Passover as occurring at/after Jesus's death is that at least on the Jewish calendar that has come down to us, the beginning of the days of Unleavened Bread (i.e., what is often termed Passover, though Passover is actually the day before) never happens on a Friday. Thus, Jesus could not have died on Thursday evening, unless the calendar changed between the first century and now. As I've long understood it, the First Day was actually Thursday, so Jesus died on Wednesday and has his final supper on Tuesday.

In the end, Tabor comes to the conclusion that if Christians understood these wonderful new truths about Jesus's life, there would be harmony between the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and Christians would have a new appreciation of all that Jesus did. He's write that there would be more unity between the faiths insofar as their views of Jesus would be more similar--in Judaism, he would be accepted merely as a rabbi; in Islam, he is accepted as a prophet; and without the divine status, Christians could fit in with either of those. The problem, however, is that without that divine status, there isn't really any substance for Christianity to wrap itself around. If Jesus was merely seeking a physical kingdom that would bring about God's intervention in the world and if that Jesus died and was just a man, then he would be just another failed Jewish Messianic figure. Indeed, as Paul would write, if Jesus be not raised, then Christians are still in their sins and there is no hope of resurrection. We might as well just live for the day. Tabor's idea that somehow his claims enrich Christianity, therefore, don't and can't--were they true, they just rob Christianity of all substance.

On “The Black Muslims in America” by C. Eric Lincoln ****

Lincoln's work is one of sociology more than history. Not having that much knowledge of the Black Muslim movement, I found this work very interesting and informative. That it was written from a sociological perspective, however, had some drawbacks insofar as the book was organized around topics and themes rather than chronologically. This meant, for me, that at times the work was hard to follow—that is, it was hard to remember particular points because I didn't have a narrative to pin them on.

Of course, history still makes up a large section of the work. One does eventually learn about Wallace Fard, Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm X, and others. Fard was the founder of it all. I don't remember much about those sections of the book, but as the book moved into the 1960s, it becomes clear that Fard comes to be seen by later Muslims as a kind of Allah incarnate. Elijah Muhammed, in turn, becomes Fard's spokesperson and prophet. The movement, in other words, takes on a kind of cultism. Malcolm X was one of the converts (all converts apparently take on the X “surname”), an important one insofar as he was able to give effective voice to Elijah Muhammed's and the movement's ideas. But as becomes plain, very late in his short life, he abandoned certain givens that the movement believed in—possibly at the peril of his life, and certainly at the rejection of him from the movement—coming to see the brotherhood of all people at the Haj.

The cultishness was one of the main things I took from the book; others were the kind of reverse racism embedded in the movement, and the manner in which the movement actually changes people's lives for good. All these things sort of go together.

A major tenet seems to be that White people are essentially the devil. The world will one day change, and God's children, the colored people, will rule and Whites will be cast off to the dustbin (or at least confined to Europe, where they belong). The Muslim movement is not integrationist. And really, in some ways, it's understandable why some minorities would be skeptical of integration, the way that it has often led not to better living conditions for minorities but to simply another manner of oppression.

The Muslims encourage good behavior from their converts, and this has led in some cases to poorer people (to which the movement largely appeals) actually making changes that positively affect their lives (e.g., drug aversion, commitment to family and work). They also encourage self-defense, even as they discourage activist sort of activities. This is in part influenced by the eschatalogical utopian viewpoint—that one day, Allah will take care of everything and Whites will fall and Black people will rise to their natural position. The counterpoint to such beliefs, however, is that it seems as if the religion is a way that actually stifles meaningful interracial achievement and solutions and attempts at meaningful change; instead, it reinforces racial strife.

The sort of eschatological thinking actually reminds me a lot of some branches of Christianity and calls to mind the way that Marx would call religion the opium of the people. The focus of the Black Muslim movement seems in many ways to have been Elijah Muhammed. What he says/believes goes. Run counter to that, and you're out of the church. Don't create trouble, in other words, in or out of church surroundings so that the movement can keep growing.