Tag: <span>04 Book Review</span>

Tag: 04 Book Review

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The Spirit’s Breath: A review of The Bible in English: Its History and Influence, by David Daniell (Cessario, 2004)

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In Saint John’s account of the trial before Pontius Pilate, Christ asserts that he has come into the world that he “should bear witness unto the truth,” and Pilate’s reply is “Quid est veritas?” “What is truth?” This well-known retort (John 18:38) supplies a good starting point for a review of David Daniell’s 900-page study of English versions of the Christian Bible. Pilate’s question, after all, is one of the few examples of a complete New Testament sentence that is translated identically in the King James Version (1611); J. B. Phillips, The Gospels in Modern English (1952); the Revised Standard Version (1952); The Living Bible (1962-82); The New English Bible (1970); Today’s English Version (also Good News Bible, 1976); and the New International Version (1978). Daniell’s fascinating and well-researched study shows that identical translations of original texts constitute a rare occurrence in the history of the English Bible.

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The Decline of Marriage – Review of From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition by John Witte, Jr (Cessario, 1998)

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No one aware of the present state of marriage can pick up and start to read a book like this without soon harboring the suspicion that something central to marriage has disappeared over the past several hundred years.

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Ambivalent Obsession: Review of Schwartz: The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Alison, 1997)

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Schwartz has two very proper insights. The first is that identity forged over against others is violent, because the “other” is always conceived as despicable. And the second is that sibling rivalry is in some way tied to the concept of a jealous monotheism with a scarcity of blessings for distribution.

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How The Early Church Practiced Charity: Review of Peter Brown, Poverty & Leadership In the Later Roman Empire (Brueggemann, 2003)

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Upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, former president Jimmy Carter remarked that the “growing gap between the rich and poor” is the most elemental problem facing the world economy. But the gap between the rich and the poor is also a very old problem. Princeton historian Peter Brown takes up this issue of care for the poor as it was practiced in the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era

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Listening To The Text, Review of Alter, The David Story (Brueggemann, 1999)

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Alter’s book is important because it shows a keen listener in the act of listening. It demonstrates how one who already knows a great deal about the text is again surprised and led elsewhere by its detail. Alter invites his readers to listen with him, to hear more and other than already has been heard. Listening is a countercultural activity, an activity that leads to freedom, as Alter demonstrates.

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Refoming the Evangelical Conscience, Review of J. Daryl Charles, The Unformed Conscience of Evangelicalism: Recovering the Church’s Moral Vision, (Boersma, 2003).

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Taking his cue from Carl Henry’s 1947 The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, Evangelical scholar J. Daryl Charles sets out in The Unformed Conscience of Evangelicalism to inject a moral corrective into the life of Evangelicalism. The author’s passion makes clear that he regards the current situation no less desperate than the lack of social concern Evangelicals faced in the 1940s. Where Henry worried about fundamentalism being reduced to a “tolerated cult status,” Charles warns that Evangelicals are in danger of devolving into a “large sect” that is irrelevant to the purposes of God and the needs of culture. A number of factors have contributed to the decline of Evangelical ethics.