Ratings:

Buy It - This book should be in your personal library
Borrow It - Borrow it from a friend or the public library
Bucket - It's trash.


Angels&Demons - Brown, Dan

Dan Brown launches into this high-speed mystery that centers around the long running antagonism between science and religion. In this journey that follows the hero, Harvard religious symbologist, Robert Langdon, through the depths of papal authority and secrets, the reader is held taught by the unfolding truths as Langdon and his love interest race to stop the mysterious Illuminati from killing cardinals and blowing up the Vatican with none other than antimatter.

In Angels & Demons, the author is less pedantic than in The Da Vinci Code and the plot unfolds mostly in believable fashion save for a central plot device that the ambigrammatical firebrands, being used by the killer, are some irreproducible lost art form. Brown has the tendency to rely too heavily on foreshadowing. This time fatally as he reveals in an early conversation with the killer, the location of the anti-matter bomb to any reader savvy enough to guess at the Vatican's most sacred location.

As usual, serious bible students will be unimpressed by Brown's supposed insights into scriptures and church history, but nonetheless as a story it is highly entertaining and a fun read.

Rating: Buy It

The Da Vinci Code - Brown, Dan

Dan Brown continues to barrage the reader with every trifling upturned by his pre-novel research in this second installment featuring his hero protagonist, Robert Langdon. Brown's insistence upon thickened foreshadowing and the assumption that the reader will be awed with every morsel of arcane fact keeps the novel from obtaining real substance. But the entertaining story which follows Langdon around France and England is cinematic and engrossing. Serious literate religious persons will find nothing novel in the underlying premise of The Da Vinci Code but the hoi polloi may be enthralled.

The most frustrating flaw of the novel is that after reading the title and the tease, one takes up the novel expecting a story that leads from clue to clue hidden among the old master's works. The presumption is that Leonardo Da Vinci himself is in on the mystery and planted among his works such clues, however, Da Vinci's art barely makes a cameo, a mere footnote pretext to what amounts to a Hollywood film script masquerading as profundity. The book is a good, fun read, unsubtle but ultimately worth the time.

Rating: Buy It

Postscript re: the movie: If your only experience with this story was the movie that is too bad. The movie was horribly paced and poorly edited and the excitement of the book didn't translate well to the big screen. I recommend reading the book instead. If they make a movie of Angels & Demons hopefully they will hire a better editor and director.

Myth Conceptions Joseph Campbell and the New Age - Snyder, Tom

I am not intimate with the work of Joseph Campbell. (I am currently mudding through The Hero with a Thousand Faces.) I first heard his name from David Lucarelli, my roommate from college, who said that if there were any body of teachings he subscribed to they would be Joseph Campbell's. That probably should have been my first clue to investigate further. Nevertheless, as I paged through Myth Conceptions, it was pleasant to note that someone was willing to take on such a demigod as Campbell. Although I don't agree with all of Tom Snyder's conclusions or positions on theology or life, in Myth Conceptions he stitches together a powerful argument that for the most part is satisfying. At the heart of Snyder's argument (TS is not the same Tom Snyder that was the former host of the Late Late Show) is that Campbell should not be allowed to violate the Law of Noncontradiction. That is Campbell should not be permitted to claim absolutely that there are no absolutes in life. Evidently such a claim is irrational and self-contradictory. Snyder also details a number of arguments on subjects close to a Christian's heart such as evolution, the veracity of the bible and the validity of the New Testament (Christian Greek Scriptures). While it was sometimes obtuse and most lines of reasoning ultimately lead back to the same premise above, overall Myth Conceptions at least brings some interesting questions into the discussion between Christians and Campbellists.

Rating: Borrow It

The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work - Cousineau, Phil & Brown, Stuart L.

The Hero's Journey is a collection of various conversations with Joseph Campbell. As usual, Campbell rambles in his disjointed fashion, peppering his discourse with reference to numerous stories, myth and legends - mostly of eastern origin. Without appearing to make much of a point, Campbell decries all formalized religion except his own pantheistic para-Buddist viewpoint. The reader desiring to understand more about Campbell's philosophy and teachings is best oft reading his works directly and other commentaries on these. But for some interesting biographic detail, The Hero's Journey contains some useful info from the horse's mouth.

Rating: Borrow It

Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew - Ehrman, Bart D.

Lost Christianities is a fascinating exploration of the disparate churches, beliefs, cultures and sects that composed the early Christian religion. Ehrman summarizes the impact upon the development of Christian thought and the formation of the Christian canon in this excerpt citing the thoughts of Walter Bauer (1877-1960):

Bauer argued that the early Christian church did not consist of a single orthodoxy from which emerged a variety of competing heretical minorities. Instead, earliest Christianity, as far back as we can trace our sources, could be found in a number of divergent forms, none of which represented the clear and powerful majority of believers against all the others. In other regions, views later deemed heretical coexisted with views that came to be embraced by the church as a whole, with most believers not drawing hard and fast lines of demarcation between them. To this extent, "orthodoxy,  in the sense of a unified group advocating an apostolic doctrine accepted by the majority of Christians everywhere, simply did not exist in the second and third centuries. Nor was "heresy  secondarily derived from an original teaching through an infusion of Jewish ideas of pagan philosophy. Beliefs that later came to be accepted as orthodox or heretical were competing interpretations of Christianity, and the groups that held them were scattered throughout the empire. Eventually one of these groups established itself as dominate, acquiring more converts than all the others, overpowering its opponents, and declaring itself the true faith. Once its victory was secured, it could call itself "orthodox  and marginalize the opposition parties as heretics. It then rewrote the history of the conflict, making its views and the people who held them appear to have been in the majority from apostolic times onwards.

Other interesting books that Ehrman has authored are: After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity (1999); The Apostolic Fathers (2003); Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (2000); Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament (2003); The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (2004); The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (1993)

Rating: Buy It

The Happy Heretic - Judith Hayes (2000)

I stumbled upon this amusing book by Judith Hayes author and columnist, in the Humanist section of the library. Hayes is an atheist and secular humanist and defines humanism as "simply the affirmation of the value of the human condition and the acknowledgement that we have only ourselves to rely on in our quest for a better world."

The Happy Heretic is a well written and an easy read. Hayes prose is simple and humorous but dull at times. Occasionally, while hammering home a point she tends to dramatize and sensationalize in very black and white fashion when a more subtle approach would be just as effective.

Despite her claims to have a good friend that is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hayes states in her book that Witnesses believe in a six-day literal creation story which is not true and such a belief has never been held by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Thus while no doubt knowledgeable in many areas, her specific understanding regarding Jehovah’s Witnesses and possibly other groups is questionable. Another knock regarding Hayes is that she lumps all Christians together and does not give any effect to the possible differences among faiths, churches or the various strains of Christianity. She sometimes holds a worldview just as one-sided and just as black-and-white as those she is criticizing or satirizing.

Hayes is at her best when she is summarizing the books of the Bible in her own irreverent way and you might even laugh out loud at some her commentary. Overall, this book is for people, including Christians, who can enjoy a good laugh at themselves and some of our society’s most sacred icons. But don’t take it too seriously.

Rating: Borrow It


The Rise of Adventism edited (1974) - Edwin Scott Gaustad

This is an excellent resource for understanding all of the various influences of the 19th Century that led to the rise of Adventism. The book is a compilation of essays with each concerned with one major area of influence. The chapter on Millerism is a particularly good summary of the movement.

Rating: Borrow It


Combatting Cult Mind Control (1988) - Steve Hassan

Hassan's seminal work is a fascinating and insightful look into the world of cult recruiting. Most of Hassan's experience whenn he wrote this book came from his involvement with the Moonies. Since then he has profited and become one of the nation's leading cult experts. In this work, Hassan doesn't specifically single out Jehovah's Witnesses in the body of the text but some references are contained in the appendix.

In Combatting, Hassan details his BITE methodology for identifying cults. An unbiased evaluation and an understanding of the  realities of being one of Jehovah's Witnesses leads one to conclude that Witnesses do not fit the model. For a detailed exploration of why Jehovah's Witnesses are not a cult visit this page.

Rating: Borrow It


Releasing the Bonds (2000) - Steve Hassan

In this latest book, Hassan expands upon his new methodology with a focus on helping persons cope with life after being in a cult. The work seems very useful for former cult members and especially for family members and others who wish to help their loved ones leave a cult group.

Unexplicably, Jehovah's Witnesses are featured more prominently in this book, however a Witness and other educated persons should realize, upon careful examination of these citations, that Hassan reveals himself to be ignorant of genuine Witness theology and culture. Persons interested in the cult question as it relates to Jehovah's Witnesses will be left without much guidance by this book.

Rating: Borrow It