Book Review - St. Augustine by Garry Wills

 St. Augustine by Garry Wills

London: Phoenix, 2000 (first published 1999)          ISBN 0753810727

A great little book. Written by Garry Wills (Pulitzer Prize winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg), this short book is a brief and pithy description of the life of St. Augustine, and an explication of his theology and philosophy.

Wills explains the progression of Augustine's intellectual and religious life, from Neoplatonism, through Manicheanism to being truly Augustinian. He explains how much of the writing about Augustine and his works focusses too much on the "earthly" in what he wrote, without understanding the religious points that Augustine was trying to make. 

Augustine was a humanist in the sense that he felt keenly the deficiencies that each person has when confronted with God: that we should emphasise forgiveness and mercy rather than exclusion of those who fall from the narrow way. That we should emphasise the love God has for humanity, rather than instilling fear into the hearts of mankind. "Act as you desire, so long as you act with love. If you are silent, be silent from love. If you accuse, accuse from love. If you correct, correct from love. If you spare, spare from love. Let love be rooted deep in you, and only good can grow from it."

Augustine, great thinker and rhetorician that he was, was deeply involved in battling heresy in the early church, particularly Pelagianism and Donatism. Regarding the latter, he was a key member of the council that helped quash the heresy, but acted with compassion to the Donatists in his Diocese, allowing the Donatist bishop to continue worshipping, and not exercising the death penalty against Donatists who killed a priest (Wills explains that as Bishop of Hippo, Augustine was responsible for civil order as well as religious - something he was always uncomfortable with).

Wills has given a good flavour of the type of person Augustine was - as prepared to admit his own flaws as to forgive those in others, a firm friend and an inspired leader. This book is a great introduction to one of the great thinkers of early Christendom.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Jerusalem: the Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore

 Jerusalem: the Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore

London: Phoenix, 2012 (first published 2011)      ISBN 9781780220253

One of the blurbs on my edition of this book calls it "a tour de force", and there is no doubt that Jerusalem lives up to that particular piece of praise as well as all the others that it has gained since publication. It is the story of Jerusalem for sure, but along the way the reader learns much of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, of the Arabs, Romans, Ottomans, Russians and British, of Crusader Kingdoms and Sultanates, and of modern geopolitics.

Like all great works of non-fiction, Montefiore has woven much more into his story than the bare bones. The reader comes away from this work with a much broader knowledge of Western and Middle Eastern history than they would have a right to, given the books ostensible subject matter. The reader does of course gain an intimate knowledge of the development and trials of Jerusalem itself, as well as wonderful little titbits of other information such as the origin of the phrase "Bob's your uncle", the fact that Rudolf Hoess, Franz von Papen and Rudolf Hess were all in Jerusalem at the same time, and that the future King George V got tattooed when there, in the same place as his father.

These little nuggets of information are the cherries on top of the wonderfully rich dessert of history that Sebag Montefiore serves up. Thankfully his style, and the easily digestible short chapters make it both easy to read, and easy to absorb the information.

Sebag Montefiore writes in the last pages of the book that "for 1,000 years, Jerusalem was exclusively Jewish; for about 400 years Christian; for 1,300 years, Islamic, and not one of the three faiths ever gained Jerusalem without the sword, the mangonel or the howitzer."

The history of this city is a history of rapine, destruction, and war. It is also a history of worship, ecstasy and wonder. It is a story of immigration, emigration, and cosmopolitanism. It is the story of a city that on many occasions threatened to die, but is in many ways the most important city on Earth. The origins of Jerusalem are obscure and biblical, although recent archaeology has proven that King David did in fact exist.

Until the arrival of the Romans, and sometimes even after, Jerusalem was a backwater. Holy to the Jews, it was of small interest to others apart from being an attractive place to loot, owing to the gold that was held in the Temple.

Rome and Herod brought some stability to Jerusalem, although religious fever often led to riots, and there was also a continuous underground of Jewish rebellion against Roman rule. This was mainly driven by Jewish fundamentalism; a belief that gentiles could not rule God's chosen people. Jesus was part of this milieu.

The disaster of AD70 when the Romans sacked the city and destroyed the Temple after yet another Jewish rebellion, signalled the end of any Jewish control of the city for nearly 1,900 years. Jews were expelled, and Jerusalem once again became a backwater.

After an interval of Byzantine rule, the Arabs took the city in AD630. Soon after came the building of the Dome of the Rock, which raised Jerusalem to a holy site for its third religion (and which has led to many of the trials and tribulations the city has suffered down the years). Montefiore explains that this move was partially political, as the ruler of Jerusalem, Abd Al-Malik did not control Mecca and so needed a counterweight to the shrine there.

While the Muslims tolerated both Christians and Jews, life was not easy for them under Islamic rule. The Crusaders however were worse. The Crusader Kings, who were essentially freebooters looking for land, were often dangerous to each other, but not as much as they were to both Jews and Muslims.

Saladin's relatively enlightened rule was but a short interlude between the Christian crusaders and the Mamluks and Ottomans, who ruled Jerusalem for 400 years. For most of that time the city was again a backwater - Jews were forbidden the Temple Mount, and Christian worship was heavily circumscribed (although the Christians seemed to rank ahead of the Jews in the eyes of the Pashas and Sultan).

As the Ottoman Empire sank into sloth and corruption, Western countries began to influence what happened at the centre of Christendom. Kings, Czars and Emperors vied with each other to endow churches, fund pilgrimages and gain the upper hand in the machinations to do with the operation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The rise of millenarian ideas in the USA and Britain led to a push to allow Jews back to Jerusalem so that biblical prophecies of the Armageddon could be fulfilled. Montefiore clearly explains how these ideas led to massive changes on the ground in Jerusalem (one of Montefiore's ancestors funded Jewish settlement there) and on policy. The Balfour Declaration was a ground-breaking change in geopolitical thinking, even though one of the major reasons it was made was to mobilise Jewish support for Britain's fight in World War One.

Montefiore brings the history up to the present with descriptions of the internecine terrorism performed by both Jews and Arabs during the British Mandate and beyond, and explains how so many chances to find a workable peace have been missed: when one side felt politically strong enough to offer terms, the other side was too weak to accept them.

The uneasy state of peace that currently entails in Jerusalem has come at the cost of almost total segregation of Jews, Muslims and Christians from each other, and the destruction of what was a unique culture. It seems that we humans have not learnt a thing from the history of this holy and benighted place.

There is so much more in this book than I have noted here - it is an accessible wonder, and well worth reading. You will learn a lot.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware

 The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware (Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia)

London: Penguin Books, 1991 (first published 1963)   ISBN 0140135294

This book is a useful (if slightly dated) introduction to the structure, beliefs and history of the Orthodox faith. Those of us brought up in a Western Christian tradition (Anglican in my case) may see the Orthodox Church as remote and exotic: I well remember that when a Greek Orthodox church opened in the city I grew up in being amazed at the chanting, icons and incense that accompanied their services and festivals - very different to my experience of Church.

Of course what I didn't know then, but this book explains, is that Orthodox services are in fact a link back to the earliest forms of Christian worship. Orthodox theology is based around the Bible and the decisions of the first seven Ecumenical Councils of the Church, believing that this is enough for true worship, "neither adding anything, nor taking anything away."

What does this mean in practice? It means an acceptance by those that are Orthodox that the great mysteries of the Christian faith are not to be interpreted or re-interpreted, but are to be accepted and lived. That there is no separation between belief, prayer and worship, that they all form part of being an Orthodox Christian: you can't claim to be one if you don't attend to those three things. That the clergy and the laity together guard the Tradition of the Church: there is no Pope, as the Church runs in a collegiate fashion, with the Holy Spirit determining the path forward through discussion and consensus.

Mysticism plays a much greater role in Orthodox life that Western Rites, as does the body. The belief that both the body and soul are made in the image of God means that actions and physical rituals are as important a part of Orthodox belief as thoughts and prayers. So while outwardly similar to Roman Catholicism, Orthodox have different emphases to living a life in Christ.

There are also of course deeper divisions, Filioque being a major one. What might seem a minor difference in words in the Creed actually is a major theological difference. Orthodox belief places the Father as the unique source of Godhead, with the Son and the Holy Spirit as part of the essence of the Father ("the divine is indivisible in its divisions"). If one states (as the Western Tradition does) that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, then there is no longer a unique source of Godhead. This seemingly technical issue is one of the two major divisions between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church.

The second division centres around the figure of the Pope, and specifically the power he has drawn to himself. The Orthodox Church has always had a hierarchy of the Patriarchy, and the first in that hierarchy has always been the Bishop of Rome. However, the Orthodox Church is a deeply ecumenical church - no one person, Bishop or Patriarch can decide Church dogma. Rome may be first among equals, but the idea that any one person can be infallible, or that they could command others in their beliefs, is anathema to the Orthodox.

Ware writes about modern ecumenical possibilities - while he writes in a hopeful tone, fundamentally the Orthodox stand firm in their belief that they are guardians of the true Tradition, so if other Churches don't move to them, it's unlikely that there will be a communion of Orthodox with Roman Catholic or Anglican. Since the publication of this book, it has been interesting to see particularly within the Anglican community a move to explore more deeply what the Orthodox Church has to offer, from actions such as installing icons in churches, to a move of people and priests to convert to Orthodoxy.

The other (first) half of this book deals with the history of the Orthodox Church. The division of the Church into Orthodox and Roman Catholic came about around the Millennium. Ware explains how the geo-political arena both widened the divisions (once most of the Orthodox lands came under Islamic domination their ability to engage with Western Christianity was limited), and created the unique structure of Orthodoxy as we know it today (Islamic domination made the Church not only the centre of religious identity, but also of national identity).

The national nature of many Orthodox churches is both a blessing and a curse: unlike Rome, Orthodox churches were keen to translate liturgy into local languages, so that believers could be fully involved in worship, but the temptation to support national leaders to the detriment of humanity in general has been a temptation to which church leaders have often succumbed. Ware uses the Communist domination of Eastern Europe to demonstrate both the willingness of people to be martyrs for the Church, as well as be fellow travellers for secular governments who wish to control and even crush religion.

Overall this is an excellent book for those who wish to understand an important part of the Christian Church. It's well-written, informative and learned. I feel it might be the start of a longer journey for me (thankfully the book comes with a useful bibliography and index for those of us who wish to go further).

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Last Temptation by Nikos Kazantzakis

 The Last Temptation a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis

(Translated from the Greek with a note on the Author and his Language by P.A. Bien)

London: Faber and Faber, 1983 (first published in English 1961)   ISBN 0571114342

I first became aware of this novel when the film The Last Temptation of Christ came out in the late 1980s. I've never seen the film, but had always been interested in fishing out the book to read. After the pleasure I got from reading Zorba the Greek, which showed me that Kazantzakis was a deep thinker about life and how it is led, I felt it was finally time to find a copy of this book and read it.

In this fictional re-telling of the life of Jesus, Kazantzakis is concerned with how the physical and spiritual intersect in human life. He hews fairly closely to the Gospels for his inspiration, but uses their sometimes conflicting stories and themes to advantage in depicting Jesus as a man tormented by God and by his fate as saviour of the World. Over the course of the novel Jesus comes to realise that while love is the answer, it cannot be achieved without pain and sacrifice.

One of Kazantzakis' strengths as a novelist is his characterization, and that is certainly a strong point in The Last Temptation. The figures of Judas, Zebedee, and Mary Magdalene are wonderfully created, and through them Kazantzakis explores greed, hard-headedness, repentance and love. The other disciples are wonderfully human, both in their failure to understand Jesus' parables, in their vain boasts of bravery in the face of death, and lustful thoughts of the treasures awaiting them in the Kingdom of Heaven.

But it is the figure of Jesus that is the main character in the book. Kazantzakis portrays him as a man wishing to deny his destiny, initially by denying that God was calling him, and then by thinking that the Kingdom of Heaven would come simply by preaching a gospel of loving one another. God drags him reluctantly to the conclusion that the human race can only be saved by the ultimate sacrifice, that he is a human version of the scapegoat Jesus encounters in the desert, therefore he must take the path of pain and death so that we can all live again in God.

Even to the last Jesus is reluctant. The last temptation of the title sees Jesus imagining a different life, of marriage and children, only to realise that this dream is in fact the work of Satan, and that he has indeed fulfilled his earthly mission by dying on the Cross.

One of the beauties of this book is that while it is clear that Jesus' life is one lived in service of the spirit and the spiritual, at no stage is the physical life looked upon with scorn. Kazantzakis revels in the mundane and the everyday, and often has Jesus espousing that God is everywhere and in everything, from ants to rocks, and even sinful men if only they would let God's light shine in their hearts.

Kazantzakis' exploration of the foment of Jewish society at the time of Jesus gives the novel an air of authenticity. The depiction of Judas and Barabbas as Zealots and of John as an ascetic allows Kazantzakis to explore the differing avenues the Jewish religion was travelling down at the time, and to cast into greater relief the radical nature of Jesus' teaching. While (in this novel) Judas was looking for a rebellion that would crush the Roman occupation and enable a Jewish state, Philip and Nathaniel were looking for thrones, gold and silken clothing. None of the disciples could grasp the true meaning of Jesus' parables, and could not understand why Jesus was not happy about the idea that his life would be recorded and a church created over him - his encounter with Paul during his last temptation is an excoriation of the established church, in a scene that is horrifying and edifying at the same time.

This translation reads very well (although in an afterword the translator explains how it is not really possible to convey the Demotic Greek of Kazantzakis into English), and even though most who begin to read this book will know how it ends, the story it tells is compelling and self-contained. Kazantzakis doesn't explain away any of the miracles, but in the milieu he creates in this book they seem like natural events.

There is no doubt that Kazantzakis has thought long and deeply about the life of Jesus, and about the message of Christianity and, in the (not coincidentally) thirty three chapters of The Last Temptation, he has written a very good novel.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Jesus by A.N. Wilson

 Jesus by A.N. Wilson

London: Pimlico, 2003 (first published 1992)              ISBN: 0712606971

I bought this book under the impression that it was a biography of Jesus. In a way it is, but it is also a book about the impossibility of such a biography, about what we can guess about the historical Jesus and how, in A.N. Wilson's view, the Church has created a religious Jesus that the actual Jesus would have abhorred.

Wilson explains firstly how Paul pretty much single-handedly created the Jesus of the Cross- the Son of God that we know and worship now. Then he goes on to explain what the Gospels were, how they weren't written as history but as religious texts to support the development of the early Church. In Mark especially, we see a text written by someone justifying the Church, and positioning it as a friend of Rome and an enemy of the Jews.

However that may be, we can begin to see through the fog of history and glimpse the "real" Jesus through careful textual investigation. How is this done? By various means: in Mark for example, Wilson points out passages where it is clear that the author is relaying a story which he doesn't understand - these parts of the Gospel we can surmise come from an earlier tradition. In a similar vein, we can search through the sayings of Jesus and track potential interpolations: if the Greek of the Gospels doesn't make sense in Aramaic (the language of Jesus), it may be a later interpolation.

We can look to the things we can surmise that Jesus actually said and the things he is reported to have done to try and get a sense of him. Firstly he never claimed to be the Son of God. He seemed, in the sayings that Wilson thinks may be authentic, to be emphasising an individual relationship with God rather than suggesting a creation of an institutional church with rules and laws. The Church we know now is a creation of the people that survived Jesus, not of the man himself.

Wilson also claims that the only way to make sense of Holy Week is to assume that Jesus was somehow connected to Jewish rebellion. We know through other sources that Jews were in constant ruction - prophets and rebels abounded during this time Jesus was active. Wilson points to the facts of Holy Week, where Jesus acquires a donkey colt on which to ride into town (in fulfillment of prophecy), and has a room to meet already organized (Wilson casts doubt on whether there was a Last Supper - John, the only Gospel that can be shown to have eyewitness accounts of what happened, doesn't mention a meal), as showing that the had a network of acquaintances in Jerusalem that went beyond his Disciples, acquaintances who were prepared to work for him.

Whether Jesus was actively engaged in rebellion against Rome, or whether he was caught up in a rebellion that was not his can't be known, but Wilson thinks that Jesus ended his life on the Cross thinking that his mission, his message, and his life had ended in failure.

Jesus is a book of opinions and surmises, but Wilson shows the reader how he makes the surmises and why he has the opinions, all the while explaining his sources (there are good notes and a decent bibliography in the edition I read). The mystery of Jesus' actual life will never be fully deciphered, but in Jesus, Wilson has built a possible life, all the while explaining why we have ended up with the Jesus of the Church that we have now.

Really well written, I can recommend Jesus as a great read.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - A History of the Jewish People by James Parkes

 A History of the Jewish People by James Parkes

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964

This is a handy little crib on the history of the Jewish people, rather than the Jewish faith. Of course, it can be difficult to separate the two; as Parkes writes in his introduction, "[t]he history of the Jews is the story of a people inextricably interwoven with that of a religion. Neither can be told apart from the other. It is obvious that there would be no story of Judaism if there were no Jews; but it is just as true that Jews would not have survived the long centuries of their total dispersion had there not been the cement of a religion moulded to their need either to transform or to tolerate the conditions of their corporate and individual lives."

Parkes' history shows a long tradition of a people trying as much as they can to accommodate themselves to the situation in which they existed at any one time. From the earliest days there were geographically diverse groups of people practicing the religion of Judaism, with more or less oppression from the powers of the time. There have only been very short periods of time when Jewish people have had the capacity to control their own polity - very early and very late in their history.

The story of the Jews after Classical times is one of interaction with both Christendom and Islam, and the changing fortunes of those relationships. Christendom very quickly began oppressing the Jews, as they saw them as a threat to the growth of their own religion. The Jews were, in Christian eyes, apostates, Christ-killers, and subverters of fellow Christians. Islam initially treated Jews much better than did Christians, but as the Muslim world shrunk in the face of Western Christian dominance of Europe and Africa, and Islam withdrew into itself, that relationship too became poisoned and died. During the secular age, rather than religious scares, the route of anti-Semitism runs along the lines of finance and conspiracy - the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Nazi rantings about Jewish control of finance took the place of older tropes of Blood Libel and miscegenation.

Parkes explains how the Jews developed their faith and ideas in separation from each other - the Sephardic Spanish versus the Ashkenazi Central Europeans. While non-Jews were the people's biggest enemy, they were not averse to internecine conflict either. The destruction of the Temple and exclusion from Jerusalem meant that the old ways of Jewish worship had to change, through a "democratic" system of congregationalism, through to a "professional" structure of paid Rabbis. This is not gone into in great detail, but is fascinating to a non-Jewish reader such as myself.

The final section of the book deals with the horrors and hopes of the twentieth century - the Holocaust, and the creation of Israel. Parkes focusses on the British Mandate in Palestine, how something that began with such high hopes ended in disaster, with the British washing their hands (a la Pilate) of the problems they had created with a poorly thought-out plan to let Jews come back home. Written in 1964, this book doesn't cover much of the ongoing disaster that has come out of this recent history.

If you are a person who doesn't know much about Jewish history this book, although dated,  isn't the worst place to start.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Anglican Way by Verney Johnstone

 The Anglican Way: a Plain Guide for the Intelligent Layman by Verney Johnstone

London: A.R. Mowbray & Co. Limited, 1948 (ninth impression 1961)

I love these kinds of books. Invariably published in England, they are a wonderful evocation of the English social order of pre- and post-war - working men who are keen to "improve" themselves, and being told how to do so by those in the upper middle class. That these sort of books were very popular is in no doubt - first published in 1948, this particular title had reached a ninth impression by the time my copy was printed in 1961.

The Anglican Way is written by a former Canon of the Church, and is a wonderfully crisp evocation of what it means to be an Anglican as opposed to a Roman Catholic or a Non-Conformist Protestant. As Johnstone points out, the Anglican Church is actually a Catholic Church more than it is a Protestant Church, although it does have space for those who find the trappings of Roman Catholicism too much. While Johnstone doesn't delve too deeply into Church history, as this book is meant as a guide for the current practicing Anglican of his time, he does have succinct explanations of why and how the Anglican faith has developed in the way it has.

The heart of this book is a guide to how to be a good practicing Anglican. Johnstone explains that it is the Book of Common Prayer that guides the worship of Anglicans. Much of The Anglican Way is concerned with the text of the book (both the 1662 and 1928 versions), and how the worshiper should interact with it. Johnstone certainly has his own view on the best form of Anglicanism - certainly more to the Anglo-Catholic than the "Low" Church, and a great lover of the austerity of much of the texts. He would certainly be horrified with a lot of current Anglican practice, even in the "High" Church.

This book, written about 70 years ago, prefers an Anglican that attends Morning and Evening prayer perhaps more than the Sunday Communion, one who prepares for services by meditating on the scriptures before attending, one who doesn't substitute "personal fancy for corporate duty in the national attitude to religion" and any other things that "militate against Sunday church-going." He certainly doesn't like a priest who gives the Church notices before the Homily!

While this book is obviously out-of-date as a guide to worship, and almost laughingly pompous and out-of-tune with the current day, I found it a useful guide to the structure of the Book of Common Prayer - why it is set out the way it is, and why there is so little about remembering the dead, among other things. I picked up this book for fifty cents in an op-shop, and realistically that is all it is worth. However it did give me a few hours of enjoyment and education.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

 Under the Banner of Heaven: a Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer

London: Pan Books, 2004 (First Published 2003)              ISBN 9780330419123

Probably a strange book to be reading over Easter, but none the less fascinating for that. I've been a fan of Krakauer's writing for a long time, and this book, which is both a history of Mormonism, an investigation of the fundamentalist mindset, and the story of a heinous murder, does nothing to alter my opinion of his writing.

Krakauer explains in an afterword to this edition that he initially set out to write a book about faith, and particularly of the Mormon faith, but the murder of Brenda Lafferty and her 15 month-old daughter by two of her brothers-in-law led him to write the current book. Ron Lafferty, who was condemned to death over the murder, had received a revelation that he needed to kill his sister-in-law, with his brother Dan actually wielding the blade that killed mother and child. The story of this crime is Krakauer's entree into the world of the Mormon faith.

Krakauer uses the story of the murders and the ensuing trial as the spine of a story that investigates how Mormonism developed, and how fundamentalist Mormonism grew from the unusual way that Mormon belief has developed and grown from the initial revelation of Joseph Smith Jr. Those that are not part of a religious movement always see the incongruities and absurdities that are inherent in any religion, for of course one needs faith to believe. What is interesting about Mormonism, as Krakauer points out, is that the religion was born and grew during the modern age, the age of the printing press, the telegram, and widespread literacy. This has meant that the early growing pains of the religion are on show for all to see. We know that the early Christian church was beset with heresies and conturbation, but much of the detail has disappeared, either destroyed by time, or suppressed by the victors.

Krakauer shows us that the current Mormon church wishes the same to happen today, with its vigorous suppression of dissenters within its ranks, attacking those who would question church doctrine and motives (as they have with this book - the edition I read has an appendix where Krakauer defends himself against criticism from the Mormon church. Krakauer is never one to shy away from an argument!), and hiding away evidence of less-than-perfect behaviour  by its disciples. 

And less-than-perfect behaviour flows through this book, staining the history of Mormonism with the blood of its followers, enemies, and innocents alike. Joseph Smith Jr. himself was an interesting character: by turns crystal gazer and seer, his big break came when he dug up the gold plates shown to him by the angel Moroni and transcribed the stories on them that then became the Book of Mormon. While there is no doubting Smith's charisma and strength of personality, he was not above deceiving people and bare-faced lying if that was what it took to advance his cause.

There are many differences between Mormonism and mainstream Christianity, and one of them is that Smith in his early days of being a Prophet let it be known that anyone could and should speak directly to God, and to allow him (God is definitely male in Mormonism) to talk directly to them. While this support of direct revelation certainly helped Mormonism grow quickly (as did the fact that the Book of Mormon showed America as the home of faith - this is truly an American religion), it created a bit of an organisational and authoritarian problem - if everyone can hear directly from God, how can there be one leader?

This problem is the reason why Mormonism has become so very schismatic, with breakaway churches proliferating over the years, sometimes due to doctrinal differences, but also - it seems from Krakauer's book anyway -  due to personality clashes. One doctrine in particular has caused the Church much grief over the years, and was directly responsible for the murder of Brenda and her child: polygamy, or, as the Mormons have preferred to call it over the years, plural marriage.

This principle, revealed to Joseph Smith in the 1830s by revelation, has been the cause of much trouble within the Mormon church, and between the church and "gentile" society and government. It certainly seems, to an outsider, that Smith's revelation was very convenient, as he was a man who enjoyed the company of young women, and justified this enjoyment via his position of power within the church. The fact that he didn't publicly reveal the revelation until at least eight years after he started taking plural wives says a lot about just how controversial a doctrine it was. After Smith's murder in Illinois, the church was split apart by this issue. The mainstream church went down the polygamous route, with Brigham Young being a fervent supporter of the practice.

Obviously these ideas brought the Mormons into conflict with the rest of the United States, and even though their "exodus" into Utah bought them some freedom, it was only a matter of time before the US Government came and began a crackdown on such practices and in 1890 the then president of the church proclaimed a manifesto that required Mormons to comply with US law on marriage (although it seems that secretly some Mormons continued to take multiple wives).

For many Mormon fundamentalists, it is this manifesto that draws them away from the official church. What was given to Joseph Smith as a revelation from God could surely not be taken away merely because some earth-bound government said so. Or so the thinking goes. Which brings us back to the Lafferty brothers. The product of a strict but orthodox Mormon upbringing, the Lafferty brothers began to move in heterodox circles, and through their own study of Mormon doctrine and history, came to the conclusion that the current mainstream Mormon church was heading down the wrong path, and that the older strictures of Smith, including polygamy, were required to be lived out here on earth if one was to be truly among the saved. The Lafferty brothers formed a prayer circle, and were much influenced by another Mormon outcast "the Prophet Onias" (Robert Crossfield), who taught them how to receive revelations from God. Brenda Lafferty, wife of Ron and Dan's younger brother Allen, was having none of it, and was a forceful advocate within the family and especially with Allen for more orthodox thinking. Unlike the wives of the other brothers, Brenda had a good Mormon education, and could argue scripture with the men. Thus we come to Ron's revelation that both Brenda and her child were to be "removed", along with other people who had annoyed Ron (It is interesting that many of the revelations that we read about in this book just happen to solve problems for the people who receive them).

 There is much bloodshed described in this book, from the Mountain Meadows massacre, to the work of Porter Rockwell, the Mormon "avenging angel" who murdered those seen as inimical to the faith, to the idea of "blood atonement" which gathered strength within the Mormon religion after the murder of Smith. In many ways it is not a pretty story, and yet Krakauer reminds us that the vast majority of Mormons are hard-working, clean-living family people. Like all faith traditions, there is light and darkness within.

Krakauer has a wonderful knack (driven no doubt by many hours of thinking and drafting) of creating a story from many threads that flows cleverly together: the history enlightens the current time, the investigations of the sects reveals the meaning behind the murders, and we the reader are carried on a flow of words into (what for me was) a different world. There is much more to this book than I have described here. It's well worth reading.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Rome and Jerusalem by Martin Goodman

 Rome and Jerusalem: the Clash of Ancient Civilizations by Martin Goodman

London: Penguin, 2007                                                     ISBN 9780140291278

What a book! This magisterial work is so much more than the title and prologue might suggest. Using the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 by the Roman Empire as a focal point, Martin Goodman has written a book that takes the reader through both Roman and Jewish society before and after the cataclysm of the destruction of the Temple during the Roman sack of Jerusalem.

With wide-ranging and deeply researched chapters on how both Rome and Jerusalem saw themselves (and others), how they governed, how family life was lived and more, this book is a compendium of what life was like in Rome and its Empire in the First Century AD. The amount of detail is staggering:  this book is like a rich dessert after a big meal - delicious, but to be partaken of in small servings (it took me nearly two months to get through, which is about 4-5 times longer than I would usually take to read a book of this size).

Goodman makes a case that the destruction of Jerusalem was not initially due to any great Roman hatred of Jews, or the Jewish faith, but more an unfortunate by-product of Roman political maneuvering, especially Vespasian's rise to power after the death of Nero and the year of the four emperors. 

In the first section of the book, where Goodman gives the reader the detail of both Roman and Jewish lives and activities, he makes it clear that both the Romans and the Jewish sides did not have a natural enmity. From the Roman side, the Jews and the Jewish faith were seen as exotic and quaint, perhaps more so than other conquered peoples, but not in a threatening way. In fact some Romans took up some of the Jewish ideas, including resting on the Sabbath. While there were wobbles in the relationship when Caligula ordered that a statue of himself be installed in the Jewish Temple, fortunately Caligula died before his order was implemented. While the Romans thought it odd that the Jewish people only had one God, they generally let them alone. From the Jewish side, they were happy to pray to their God for the health and good fortune of the Emperor, but not to worship him.

So how did the peace collapse? Like most revolutions, the core problem was taxation. This led to a raid on the Temple, which caused a more widespread uprising. Nero sent Vespasian to quell the province, initially avoiding Jerusalem. Vespasian was called back to Rome, which was in disarray after Nero's death, and he left his son Titus in Judea to continue the campaign. The  Jewish side was in disarray after factional fighting, and Titus launched an assault on Jerusalem to provide a triumph for his father, as that was felt to be politically necessary after his accession to power. Titus assaulted the city, causing many casualties, but initially avoided destroying the Temple. There is a school of thought - one that Goodman is inclined to believe - that it was never the Roman's intention to destroy the Temple, and that its destruction was an accident. The fact that Roman troops rarely desecrated shrines of other peoples they fought lends weight to this theory.

However once the Temple was destroyed it was politic for Titus and Vespasian to tell the story that the destruction was always intended. Of course that also meant that the Jewish people in the Empire were under persecution, not necessarily for things they'd done (other groups rebelled from time-to-time under the Empire but weren't persecuted in the same way), but to assist in the projection of Imperial power. The end of the war in AD70 was not the end of Jewish suffering - they were forced to pay a yearly tax, and of course they were not allowed to rebuild. In fact Jerusalem was made free of Jews, another punishment. While the Jews for many years held out hope of rebuilding the Temple, to this day it remains a ruin.

Goodman shows us that it was the political shenanigans in Rome, from Vespasian all the way through to Constantine, that kept the Jews as a repressed and un-loved people. These political issues led to the Christians moving from seeing themselves as a sect of the Jewish faith, to something in opposition to Judaism. With the power of Rome directed against the Jews, early Christians did not want to be associated with them. Thus the birth of Antisemitism can be seen to have occurred through the need for Vespasian to have a triumph to cement his new-found imperial stature, and the Jews being the unfortunate victims at the time.

This book is an absolute treasure-trove of information and thinking on Rome, Jerusalem, the Jewish faith and early Christianity. It has been for me both eye-opening and mind-widening.

Highly recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer

 Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer, translated from the German by Richard Graves, with an introduction by Peter Fleming

London: Pan Books, 1956 (First published 1953)

Having seen the Brad Pitt movie of this book, and only half-believing that it could be true, I approached this book with much interest. Yes, a lot of the movie was made-up, but not the parts that I thought! Seven Years in Tibet is an amazing tale of struggle and hardship, adaptability, stoicism and ultimately friendship and growth.

Heinrich Harrer was a well-known Austrian mountaineer, famous for his ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, when in 1939 he joined an expedition to climb Nanga Parbat headed by Peter Aufschnaiter. Unfortunately for this group of Germans, war was declared and they were promptly placed into an internment camp by the British in India. Harrer was determined to escape, and escape to Tibet, a neutral country from where he was going to attempt to get to the Japanese lines and then back to Germany. He made several attempts to escape before he succeeded with a group of others. Eventually, only Aufschnaiter and Harrer actually made it across the border into Tibet. Tibet at that time was not only closed to foreigners, but also was a medieval-style feudal society. Harrer and Aufschnaiter, by a series of tricks, stratagems, and begging, managed to gain a foothold in Tibet, and over the course of a year managed to make it to Lhasa. That year involved a series of almost unbelievable treks through the most desolate of country, exposing them to the best and worst of the Tibetan people: the invariably friendly and helpful nomads, the brutish bandits, and the (sometimes) imperious officials, who found these European interlopers both fascinating, and a problem.

Eventually they made it to Lhasa, and were given respite by one of the nobles there. They soon carved out a niche for themselves: Tibet at that time was almost wholly lacking in any form of modern appliances or technology, and Harrer and especially Aufschnaiter (who had an engineering background) set to in assisting the government with flood-mitigation works, sewerage, and other improvements to the town. They moved from being curiosities to being part of the upper-class social set.

None of this had gone un-noticed by the young Dalai Lama, and eventually Harrer was introduced to him, and became his tutor and guide in all things Western. Harrer describes a young man who was very bright, very curious, and very knowledgeable in Buddhist scripture and tradition. Harrer came to admire him very much, as he did the Tibetan way of life, despite its superstition and seeming backwardness.

Unfortunately his time in Tibet came to an untimely end, with the Chinese invasion of 1950. He knew he couldn't stay, but was heartbroken to have to go.

Seven Years in Tibet is not only a wonderful description of a personal journey, but an informative guide to what Tibet was like in its last few years as an independent country on the roof of the world. A wonderful way to while away some winter hours in front of a fire.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Four Gospels by E.V. Rieu

 The Four Gospels: a new translation by E.V. Rieu

Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1952

Sometimes it's good to take a fresh view on things. For those of us who are, or have been, regular church-goers, we think we know the Gospels from our regular Sunday attendance. Every now and then we might read some of the Gospels, but usually in isolation, and for religious reasons, rather than as literature, or as a book. This is of course right and proper, but, sometimes, it's good to take a fresh view on things.

E.V. Rieu went back to the original Greek texts of the Gospels to try and give us that fresh view. In his introduction he explains how he not only went back to the earliest texts available of the Gospels and re-translated them, but has also eschewed the Biblical tradition of dividing the text into verses (although the chapters remain). He has also taken into account the latest (in 1952) scholarship and re-ordered the Gospels into chronological order - Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.

Reading the Gospels in that order, one after the other like one would read a novel, shows them in a new light. It strengthens, I think, the idea that John's Gospel was actually written by that Apostle. Where the other three Gospels essentially tell the same story, with different emphases, John's Gospel gives us a much greater insight into Jesus himself. The first three Gospels report very much what Jesus did as much as what he said, whereas John reports so much more what he actually said, and in a way that intimates that John was there with Jesus when he spoke.

The eternal message that Jesus gave to humankind is not changed in this translation, and I found on reading this version that the incomprehension of many of those who heard him speak was more noticeable, with Jesus speaking in parables that the Pharisees and other Jews could not grasp - even the Apostles struggled at times. Jesus wanted to save us all, but we have to want to be saved - we need to move towards Him, and He will be there for us.

I can recommend this translation if you want a different way to approach the Gospels, or if you find the "official" Bible structure a little intimidating. Well worth a look.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Martin Luther: Catholic Dissident by Peter Stanford

 Martin Luther: Catholic Dissident by Peter Stanford

London: Hodder, 2017              ISBN 9781473621671

This is a good, up-to-date re-telling of the life of Martin Luther, written in a fairly easy style by a self-confessed lifelong Catholic, Peter Stanford. That fact, and the subtitle of the book, give the reader the hint that this biography is going to look closely at Luther the man, and his battle with God and the Church.

Because for Luther it was a battle. He never felt secure in the love of God, and much of his questioning was due to this insecurity. His depressive nature meant that to him God was always the unknowable, and in many ways the un-get-to-knowable being. His reading of the Bible, and the Letters of Paul in particular, led him to his doctrine of "justification by faith" which means in simple terms, that absolute faith was enough for a person to ascend into heaven. This realization (for realization it was, after much reading, thought, and discussion) led him to conclude that much of what was undertaken by the Roman Catholic Church in the early sixteenth century had little to do with Jesus, the word of the Bible, or even with the idea of faith: it was a money making scam for the princes of the Church, as well as those earthly princes who chose to be in on it.

His famous 95 theses (which Stanford shows were almost certainly not nailed to the church door in Wittenberg) were not Luther starting a new church - he never wanted that - but an invitation to debate what he saw as the excesses of the institutional church, none of which were based in scripture. For Luther, it was the Bible that was the source of instruction in worship, not the accretion of practice of the institutional church. The main point he was making was that all the practices that the Church stated to help save souls (pilgrimage, purchase of indulgences, payment for masses for the dead and so on) did nothing of the sort. Faith saved your soul, and if you didn't have faith nothing else could help.

Luther aired his objections to Church practice at an opportune time in history. These questions had been raised before, and movements quashed, but by the early sixteenth century many German princes were unhappy with the role Rome played in their principalities, and the taxes they were expected to pay to the Holy See. Elector Friedrich III of Saxony (who ruled over Wittenberg and its university, where Luther taught) was one of those princes, and a pious man who also wanted answers to the questions Luther was asking. The protection he gave Luther, and the popularity of Luther's message, which spread rapidly via the printing press, meant that soon his "reformed" church spread across much of Northern Germany.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles, was too busy fighting in other parts of his empire to do much about this heresy (Luther was branded a heretic and was to be burned, but Rome did not have the military power to make it so, and Charles had bigger fish to fry). By the time Charles could turn his attention to Germany, the Lutheran movement had become too big to repress, and so an accommodation had to be made with those who followed it.

Stanford writes well on Luther's personality - how he was loath to take a step backwards ("here I stand"), and was only too ready to return the scorn that Rome heaped on him (the initial response to him was to treat him as a drunken German fool, which was a huge mistake). Luther not only battled the Roman Catholic Church, but other protestant sects as well, most famously Zwingli, and others who's beliefs developed along different lines to his own.

Of course, by his stand, this activity was exactly what Luther had released on the world. By convincingly stating that each person should find God via the scriptures, he opened the world up to many differing views of what a church should and could look like on earth. The idea of an individual having a relationship with God was envisioned by him, and the result of that is to be seen today all around the world. His stance also led to changes (eventually)  in the way Catholics saw religion and how they should relate to God.

Stanford writes about all of this in a way that is easily understandable to those with little history of the period, without being overly descriptive, which makes this a good book to read as an introduction to Luther and what he achieved. I would state though, that if you are a person of no religion at all, there may be a little Bible catch-up required to help you through Luther's thinking. Thankfully, the Letters of Paul and John's Gospel (which Luther recommended people read, from his own translations of the Bible, the first into German) are good reading.

As an introduction to Luther the man, and to why and how he changed Christianity forever, this book is worth picking up, and is certainly easier to read than many other biographies of him.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple

 From the Holy Mountain: a Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium by William Dalrymple

London: Flamingo, 1998 (First published 1997 by HarperCollins)  ISBN 0006547745

This book is a diary of a journey undertaken by William Dalrymple in 1994, from Mount Athos to the Great Oasis in Egypt, visiting Christian communities, churches and monasteries on the way. He uses as his "guidebook" The Spiritual Meadow, a book written in about 610AD by John Moschus, a monk and ascetic who travelled throughout the Levant and Middle East. Dalrymple, as did Moschus, travels with a view to discerning the current state of Christianity in its early heartland. Moschus travelled at a time when the hold of Christianity over much of this region was great, but beginning to show cracks: Dalrymple travels at the end of days for many of the communities and establishments that he visits, and  ventures over the intervening millennium-and-a-half of history to show why the time of Christianity in the Middle East is over.

He began his trip with the idea in his head that the upswell of fundamentalist Islam was the main reason that Christianity was losing its foothold in its birthplace, but his journey uncovers a much more complex, multi-layered, and nuanced story. In Turkey, the Christians are the forgotten people - not seen as Turks or Kurds, the don't fit into any national story that either of those ethnicities want to tell. The Turks want to deny any Christian history of their country, both to hide the realities of the massacre of the Armenians and to engender a patriotism based around Islam and Turkishness. The Kurds, in their struggle for an independence denied to them by history, created a war zone in the remaining Christian areas, which destroyed Christian as well as Kurd villages, and meant that the government was suspicious of any Christians as possible fellow-travellers with the Kurds.

The story in Syria at the time of writing was a better one for the Christian community. Assad needed the Christians to bolster his Alawite government against the more mainstream Muslims who didn't like his rule, and so they had less issues with repression than Dalrymple expected (the situation is different now of course - many of the cities he visited, such as Aleppo and Homs have been destroyed in the civil war). In Lebanon, the Christians were their own worst enemy, precipitating the civil war there, which did not turn out well. Israeli Christians are seen as Arab, and potential enemies - their land is sequestered, their ancient sites neglected, and their ability to worship curtailed. In many ways being a Christian in Israel is harder than in Muslim majority countries, where there is (was) at least some respect for Christianity as a religion. Only in Egypt can Dalrymple find true evidence of Islamic fundamentalism threatening the ongoing status of Christianity. Of course, much has changed in all these countries since 1994, and many of the issues that dogged Christian communities in these areas have become much worse since then.

What Dalrymple constantly notes in this book, and has happened at an increased rate since, is the emigration of members of Christian communities to the West (USA, Canada and Australia in particular). So while stories of churches being destroyed and people being killed make the headlines, the facts are that Christians are leaving for many different reasons, with persecution being only one. This mass migration not only impoverishes the religious life of the countries they leave, but also is economically damaging, as many of the Christians were dis-proportionally represented in the ranks of professionals and business.

The broader social and political story is only one aspect of Dalrymple's book. It is a book of a journey, and he writes of the people he meets along the way: those that have suffered dislocation and war, those that still cling to what little hope there is ("we trust in God"), and those with a religious vocation who follow it whatever the cost. Some monasteries in 1994 are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, with only two monks left, surrounded by ruined Christian churches (in Tur Abdin), while St. Anthony's in Egypt is still thriving despite harassment by local Islamists and the Government. Dalrymple walks through Byzantine towns in Syria that are almost completely preserved, tries to find churches in Turkey that have been converted into mosques, and ruins in Alexandria that are almost hidden by later building. He walks through parks in Israel that elide the Christian history of the ruins they are "preserving", and talks to many Christians who are too fearful to speak out against their persecution in case they bring more upon themselves.

One perhaps surprising thing revealed in From the Holy Mountain is the intermingling of Christian and Muslim beliefs, especially around holy places and shrines. On more than one occasion Dalrymple finds himself at a monastery or tomb and sees Muslims worshipping alongside Christians. This is perhaps not as surprising as it might first seem. As Dalrymple points out, at the time of Moschus, Islam was seen by some as a Christian sect rather than a separate religion, and many of the beliefs of the Christians in the Middle East transferred across into Muslim practice. In fact, as Dalrymple points out, the bowing and prostration that forms part of Muslim prayer has its origins in early Christian practice, practice that Dalrymple witnesses himself in the Syriac monasteries.

Along the road, we see the journey through John Moschus' eyes as well. Dalrymple, a Roman Catholic, is the product of the Twentieth Century, unable to see events through a lens anything other than rational and modern. Many of the monks Dalrymple meets on his journey would understand Moschus better, with their belief in visions of Saints and fighting off demons. Moschus was quick to point out immorality amongst the faithful, as well as collecting stories of those holy men who left a mark by their sayings or activities. While the towns and cities Moschus visited have either changed completely or disappeared, many of the monasteries and some of the churches were not only still standing, but are still operational.

However, they were becoming fewer and fewer, and in the twenty-five years since Dalrymple undertook his journey they have become even fewer. From the Holy Mountain is a fascinating journey through space, time and religions, and a wonderful historical document in itself. It is well written, learned and urbane.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Mount Athos by John Julius Norwich, Reresby Sitwell and A. Costa

 Mount Athos by John Julius Norwich and Reresby Sitwell with photographs by the Authors and A. Costa

London: Hutchinson, 1966

"The monastic republic of the Holy Mountain is an autonomous protectorate that occupies a remote peninsula in northern Greece. Twenty 'Ruling Monasteries' share government and own the land. In addition, a number of dependencies are to be found: some resemble the monasteries and others vary in size and appearance from small villages to the precarious cliff-dwellings of anchorites. A survival of the Byzantine way of living, set in a landscape that has remained unchanged since antiquity."

The above quote from this book is one of the best short descriptions of what Mount Athos is that I have read. It is the first paragraph of the second part of this multi-authored work, an attractive quarto in which the text is interspersed with pictures from the Holy Mountain. It is an account both of the history of Mount Athos (the first section of the book, written by Norwich), and a description of the authors journey to most of the monasteries and some of the other establishments in the early 1960s (the second section, written by Sitwell).

John Julius Norwich, while an expert on Byzantine history, is no lover of religion. His history of the Mount is shot through with what seems to this reader to be a disdain for the monks there and how they live their lives, with little insight into the religion which sustains them - much as in his history of the Papacy he refused to discuss theology at all. The trip was organised so the authors could see and photograph the architecture and the art, and Norwich's dismay at the treatment of the art and buildings comes from a secular viewpoint of a historian and antiquarian, which is at odds with the religious view of the material world held by the monks. It seems from his disparaging remarks about the food and the monks that Norwich did not have any sort of spiritual experience while on the Mountain. However, his potted history of the peninsula is a good one.

Sitwell's description of their journey is somewhat more sympathetic to the monks and their way of life. He seems to have been able to appreciate the timelessness of life on Athos better than Norwich, and his descriptions of their travels by boat, mule and on foot bring to the reader a flavour of what it must be like to visit and stay at the various monasteries - or at least what it was like in the sixties.

One enduring theme from both writers is that they felt they had visited the Mount just before it ceased to be. Many monasteries were in poor repair, most of the monks and holy men were of advanced years, and weren't being replaced by those younger. Sitwell and Norwich put this down to the advance of western materialism, and, importantly, that many of the countries from which monks were sourced had become Communist and banned religion. They saw their trip as a cataloguing of a way of life that was about to pass.

Fortunately for Athos, and the World, that hasn't happened. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Second World has led to a revival of Orthodox religion, and consequently the revival - to some degree - of Athos. More men are choosing to go there and live the religious life, and many of the monasteries have refreshed both their buildings and their personnel. There is life in the Mountain yet.

A big part of this book are the 63 plates, which are a mixed bag, photographically speaking. There are some wonderful pictures, but others not so good. They do, however, give the reader some insight into life on the peninsula.

As someone who has a fascination with Mount Athos, I found this book interesting, but really it's a fairly minor work on the subject. One for completists only.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Short History of the Cathars by Sean Martin

Short History of the Cathars by Sean Martin

Harpenden: Oldcastle Books, 2018                 ISBN 9780857303097

This book is a great introduction to one of the most fascinating periods in Church history, one that is shrouded in mystery and myth: who were the Cathars? What did they believe? Why did the Church see them as such a threat? Short History of the Cathars tries and mostly succeeds in answering these questions in a series of short informative chapters.

The origin of the Cathars is murky: it seems that the heresy known as Catharism in Southern France and Northern Italy was imported from the Balkans. Catharism was one of many dualist heresies in the early Church, believing that the Earth was the domain of Satan, and that God ruled only in heaven. The Cathars had their own structure of "Believers" and "Perfect". "Believers" being those that followed the beliefs of Catharism, while the "Perfect" were like the priesthood, and abstained from most human indulgences.

In fact, to Cathars everything of the world was corrupted with evil, including the Church, which they particularly regarded as the work of Satan. The reason Catharism became a problem for the Church, especially in the Languedoc region of France, was that the Church there was notoriously corrupt and venal, and had lost the respect of not only the lower classes, but of the nobility as well. The Cathars, with their life of physical denial and holiness, seemed more holy than the official members of the Church, and soon gathered much support.

Initially the Church tried to use persuasion rather than force to convert the heretics, but when that didn't work they moved to harsher measures, including military action and executions. That it took over 100 years to finally suppress Catharism, with much bloodshed, shows how much hold it had over the population in Languedoc. It could be argued that much of the lingering anti-clericalism in France can be traced back to this time.

I was drawn to this book remembering Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou, which I read whilst at University, and found completely fascinating. Short History of the Cathars is no less fascinating, although far less detailed. A great introduction into this era of Church history.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - New Short History of the Catholic Church by Norman Tanner

New Short History of the Catholic Church by Norman Tanner

London: Bloomsbury, 2014 (first published 2011)       ISBN 9781472909886

This book is a serviceable short history of the Roman Catholic Church, with the caveat that it is written by a Jesuit priest, who perhaps glosses over the bad more than perhaps he should. Packing nearly 2000 years of history into a little over 200 pages leads to much compression - Tanner has dealt with this by taking a broad-brush approach to his work, but still manages to cover a lot of ground. By dividing the book two ways - chapters historically, and within each chapter sections looking at Church government, popular religion, missionary work and so on, the reader gets a flavour of what changed and what remained constant across the history of the Church.

At times Tanner runs the risk of seeming to be an apologist for the Church, downplaying the sins of the Borgia Popes for example, and portraying the Reformation as a minor disagreement that got out of hand. Likewise the split between Catholic and Orthodox is portrayed as an issue of bad timing. Tanner mentions in passing some of the geo-political machinations that were precursors to these splits - perhaps he could have made more of them. He devotes more time to recording the workings of the Church Councils and to theological, liturgical and doctrinal movements, an area that often gets overlooked in other Church histories, so perhaps he does have the balance right after all.

While we think of Roman Catholicism as a World religion now, Tanner shows us that this growth really exploded only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in fact many centuries of the Church's existence consisted of decline rather than expansion. The last two centuries have been difficult for the Church in other ways, walking a tightrope straddling tradition and modernity, scripture and human appeal.

This book is a useful guide for the major events in the history of the Church, but a book not be read in isolation.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Bible for Grown-ups by Simon Loveday

The Bible for Grown-ups : a new look at the good book by Simon Loveday

London: Icon Books, 2017              ISBN: 9781785782633


This book is an easy-to-read breakdown of the history of the creation of the Bible. It is not a theological work in any great way, nor is it a work that attempts to tear down faith. Simon Loveday has used a limited number of sources, and the King James version of the Bible, to show us how and why the good book was created, and how the politics and history of the Jews in Judea and Israel affected what was written, how it was written, and what was excluded from the book.

The beauty of this book is that Loveday has given the reader a relatively easy to digest version of current Bible scholarship and shows us when each book was written (sometimes who wrote it!), and how editors and "redactors" have changed what was originally written to suit their purposes. He also shows us occasions where a mis-translation has had a big effect on the course of belief.

In his discussion of the New Testament, Loveday explains how it was the letters of Paul that were the first part of that book to be written, with the Gospels coming afterwards when the developing Church needed something written down to guide them. In fact Loveday writes that it was Paul who created what we know as the Christian Church today, not Jesus. One thing that I think is important that Loveday mentions is that the New Testament as we know it today wasn't in existence before about 350AD, even though most of the writings it contains were written hundreds of years before. The Gospels were written, especially Matthew and Luke, to ensure that the life of Jesus fulfilled the prophetic predictions of the Old Testament. So, the Bible isn't history, but it is an attempt to uncover truth, and the way it was written and constructed should make the reader wary of taking it too literally, although the messages of the New Testament are clear.

In the final section of the work Loveday shows us the literary qualities of the Bible, something that was quite different to the other literature (Roman and Greek) of the time, and how the Bible introduced the idea of character development into writing, and so arguably set the course for the development of literature as we know it today.

Like the curate's egg, The Bible for Grown-ups is good in parts.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell