Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:
- John Shelby Spong: Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes. Or, as the paperback cover also proclaims, “Freeing Jesus from 2,000 years of misunderstanding.” Here the then-Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, advances scholarship that argues the Synoptic gospels and Book of Acts were intended to be read aloud in the synagogue and early church as parallel texts to the day’s Pentateuch (Torah) portion. Rather than being accurate biography or history, then, he contends that they were essentially a midrash voicing something of the intensity of the early “followers of the Way,” theologically but not factually true. Crucial to his rational is an awareness of the major Hebrew holidays of the time, and placing the Christian teachings within them – that is, also within a lunar calendar. Thus, instead of a chronological history of Jesus’ working with the disciples over a three-year period, or more, the Synoptic texts compress their presentation into a one-year framework. In the final sections of the book he deconstructs the Nativity and the Resurrection, as well as many of the teachings attributed to Jesus, yet leaves a strong case that what was being demanded was an experience of the Spirit/Holy Spirit, rather than Jesus.
- Patricia Lynn Reilly: A God Who Looks Like Me: Discovering a Woman-Affirming Spirituality. Essentially a self-help workbook for women to work through, either individually or in “circles of support,” this 1995 publication is now a generation old and no doubt surpassed by more comprehensive volumes. It does included reference to El Shaddai as “breast” even though it’s often translated in its other meaning, “high places.” She also includes a list of alternative images to use in place of masculine terms, including Womb of Compassion, Nurturer, Seeker of the Lost, Source of All Life, Faithful Mother, Shekhinah, Healer, Sophia, Queen of Heaven, Gathering Mother Hen, and so on. She makes a strong case for the negative outlook on female functions, including birth, as unclean, and curiously the lack of an infant rite equal to circumcision. She also makes a claim for the decreased value of woman as they age. I like her suggestion to record reactions to her exercises using one’s non-dominant hand, and wonder if this might help me get deeper into my own repressed layers.
- Harold Loukes: Friends and Their Children. This 1958 British publication comes from another era as it attempts to steer a third way between those parents who would insist on a dogmatic training for their children and those who would offer them none. He does follow the cycle through infancy, the first years at school, adolescence, and so on. I wonder if any of it would have helped, back when.
- Eugene Ehrlich and David H. Scott: Mene, Mene, Tekel: A lively lexicon of words and phrases from the Bible. Despite William Safire’s praises in the New York Times, I find little reason to continue keeping it on my bookshelves, not when I have Strong’s concordance.
- Jessamyn West: Except for Me and Thee. A charming novel of a Midwestern Quaker couple and their family roughly covering the years 1810-1875. Some of it I would question against the cultural history, but for the most part, I think she gets it right. In some ways, it dovetails in nicely with MFK Fisher’s outsider look at small-town California Friends only decades later.
- Sarah C. Gleason: Kindly Lights: A History of the Lighthouses of Southern New England. While my focus is on the lighthouses of New Hampshire, Maine, and Cape Cod, this volume goes far beyond its Southern New England catalog. Gleason provides a detailed history of the origins of the American lighthouse system, including a timeless examination of the true costs of a bureaucracy that for too long concentrated on a lowest-bidder mentality.
- Jared Diamond: Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality. Despite the title, this is a rather pedestrian dynamic based on the need for childcare within the tribe.
Jnana's Red Barn 