Short Story Reader

On "Jewish New Testament" edited by David H. Stern ****

2026-09-05T21:24:45.557-04:00

I purchased David Stern's Jewish commentary on the New Testament years ago, curious about it after my dad himself had purchased a copy. He bought the complete set, with the New Testament also, in hardcover, so when he died, it was one of the items I inherited. I don't think otherwise that I'd have bothered with the Bible--it's a Jewish translation, really, a paraphrase, of the New Testament. The commentary at times is very handy; the New Testament, I figured, well, I have plenty of other translations.

But this was a good read, insofar as Stern's choice of using Jewish words for various concepts in the New Testament, makes the New Testament unfamiliar in some ways, which made me pay a bit more attention, especially to common scriptures that I know so well by heart that I otherwise would pass over at this point without really rethinking. In this sense, the Jewish New Testament was a great aid in in meditation, which in turn makes me think about how I probably should venture out from the few translations I tend to favor more often.

On "Candide" by Voltaire ****

2026-09-03T20:17:26.392-04:00

I first/last read this back around 1991, as part of a world literature class. I must have thought well enough of it to have kept the book all these years. Periodically, now, I go back and read books in my personal library, in part as an effort to weed materials out and shrink my library and also give space to newer books, for which there is no room. This one will probably be one I jettison, but not because I did not like it. I'd be keeping it, I suppose, if the work were not in the public domain, but because I can pull it from the Internet, there seems little reason to keep a hard copy, especially when the version I have is pocket sized and not terribly condusve to easy functionality.

The book is interesting enough that I am tempted to try something else of Voltaire's, even if it's unlikely another work is as good as this one. The story is a satire, and the characters are drawn in large strokes. I don't suppose we are to take anything too serious or care too much about anything that's going on.

I long though my world lit professor, who liked to spend most class periods talking about contemporary California politics, didn't really have much to offer. He probably wasn't the greatest professor, but as I reread this, I was reminded that he actually did provide some philosophical context, context I would have loved to have had on this go around. I know that Voltaire was reacting to Leibniz and some other recent thinkers of his time in his account, but I don't remember much of what those folks said or who they were.

The gist of the story, however, involves the travels of Candide, who is greatly under the influence of his teacher Pangloss, who believes that everything always is for the best. Candide is in love with a gal from a rich family, and his impertinence one day in pursuing said gal gets him kicked out of the estate. It's for the best, however, because the land is soon invaded and the gal's family is most all killed off. Luckily, though raped, the gal survives, and Candide is not free to pursue her, as soon as he can get free from his army service.

Travels take them across the ocean, where an important man falls for the same gal and takes her, as poor and young Candide can do nothing to stop him.

Here, the story moves into the territory that I remember, a utopia called Eldorado. (I remembered this tale as similar to Samuel Johnson's Rabelais but now see that this portion of the story falls in its center and is really only a very small section.) Anyway, Candide still pines for his gal, so he leaves utopia--but he's given plenty of money for his journey. This now lets him do things he could not do before, but it also sets him up for constant con games.

In the end, he meets many of the characters from the early portions of the book and finds out all the bad things that have happened to them. Is it really the best of all possible worlds? When Candide finally gets his gal she is washed up. The focus switches then from seeking the best to simply working in one's garden. The ending seems rather stoic.

On "Generation of Swine" by Hunter S. Thompson ****

2026-08-30T07:41:30.608-04:00

There are turns of phrase that make Thompson a fun read for that purpose alone. Like so many of his books, however, the overall reportage remains dated, and because Thompson puts such a personal twist on everything, it's somewhat uncertain how much is really of value as historical record.

This book covers the last half of the Reagan years, including the Iran-Contra scandal and the election of George H. W. Bush. As with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail of 72, Thompson's preference for the Democrats is obvious, though his preferred candidate gets knocked out by a sex scandal. All this is stuff in living memory for me, which perhaps made it somewhat more interesting than his work about the McGovern candidacy. Still, because these are collections of newspaper articles, the whole seems less than the sum of its parts, and I didn't find myself pulled along in the book as I would a long-form piece.

When Thompson is at his peak, his editorial is less about current events and more about something else. My two favorite articles in this text, and the likely reason I kept this book on my shelf after first reading it decades ago, focus on making up a story and on giving advice. In one, Thompson sends his assistant out to get a tattoo so that he has something to put in his column; in the other, he writes about the youngsters and having children for his good buddy, the illustrator Ralph Steadman. As the years left for me on this planet wind down, however, I don't see myself rereading this book again.

On "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life after AI" by Cory Doctorow ****

2026-08-26T20:52:04.540-04:00

This book was lent to me by a coworker because he thought it might be useful for a class we're teaching together. Indeed, AI has changed a lot about our world and about teaching as well. I'm not sure exactly how this book specifically--or passages from it--would be useful in the class, but I'll be curious to hear my coworker's thoughts.

That said, this was a quick and breezy read that was very informative, and it being Doctorow, also provocative. Doctorow takes the stand that the AI buzz is primarily a bubble. I'd agree. I see a lot of parallels to what happened in the 1990s with the dot.com boom. Everything is being transformed by AI the way that everything was being transformed by the Internet. The only problem was that there was so much hype that even things that were not being transformed worked off this idea of the Internet transforming it. A few years after the bust, folks laughed at things like lobsters.com: your one-stop shop for lobsters delivered straight to your home. But even as those ideas gave way to reality, some of the more audacious ideas just needed a bit more time to come to fruition. At this point, you probably could get lobsters delivered to your home, though it would likely come through a marketplace like Amazon rather than a site devoted solely to lobsters. In this same way, we're looking for transformation by AI at things Doctorow says AI cannot do. I'm not sure he's right about that, though he's surely right about the speed with which some folks expect said transformation. Case in point would be his examples of architecture transformation. A group of architects laid off their draftsmen because AI can render pictures in a few minutes what it would take a draftsman days to do. Of course, if that's the case, as Doctorow points out, it won't be too long before people realize they don't need architects either, since people could go straight to the program to design a building. But what the AI cannot do is render blueprints based on those renderings, because it's based on algorithms regarding what pixel goes next to which; that the architect says that's just a step away is false, Doctorow notes. That may be true, at present, but I don't see why such an algorithmic program couldn't eventually be written to map blueprints to renderings, even if blueprints are much more complex and have little one-to-one correlation with renderings. They could be made to have such correlations. On the other hand, it isn't going to happen tomorrow. That's probably a decade or two away, as were many of the transformations made possible by the internet.

So in Doctorow's view, AI is not ultimately coming for most of our jobs. Companies who fire employees based on this will be woefully regretful, because the AI simply can't do what companies claim it can. On some level, this is true. But on another level, I'd say we will still need fewer people in some jobs. I think of the advent of the printing press. That put a lot of scribes out of work--but not all. Where, say, 167 scribes might have been needed to render 500 copies of a 100-page pamphlet in 30 days; 50 people could do that work in 3 days. But it would not have been cost or time effective to use a printer for just one or two copies of a 4-page document; scribes still had a function. Meanwhile, other jobs would have come into existence, like those who create the block type. And also more text would have been made available and prices would have dropped. Books would no longer be so scarce, and so the volume of text would make up to some extent for the jobs that would have otherwise been displaced. Further efficiencies in printing as centuries progressed would reduce work hours further, but each time with offsets in terms of other jobs and more volume.

Doctorow hates chatbots for customer service. Indeed, I'd agree that a company that gets rid of all customer service for AI is stupid if it wants a good reputation. But for basic queries, chatbots may actually have value, allowing a company to queue only truly unique queries to a human. (Of course, the whole point, in many cases, is crappy customer service, in order to avoid returns, which chatbots are perfect for.)

What's scary about what Doctorow writes is the bubble itself. One-third of the stock market's value is wrapped up in seven companies, all on the forefront of AI and the irrational exuberance around it. When the exuberance fades, the market will crash and so will a number of jobs and fortunes with it. It'll be like the dot.com bust or the housing bust all over again, but worse. Doctorow explains well how it is such companies come to have so much value (irrationally, I would say). It all has to do with P&E, profit and earnings. If you've got a taxi cab company that makes $200k profit on a million dollars of earnings per year, you're doing well, but if you do that every year, you don't really have much to offer to a stockholder beyond steady profit. If, by contrast, you're new tech, and you're promising taxis without drivers and ultimately a lot bigger profits, your loss this year on $200k of earnings is not enough to scare me away as a stockholder. It's the potential that's important. Next year, you make $400k in earnings and still show a loss, but those earnings keep going up each year. At some point, you might show a profit. In fact, you might someday show a huge profit. It's that potential that makes me want to invest. If eight years from now, you're making $5 million in earnings and $1 million in profits, that's a much better investment than the stable taxi company, especially if I got in early. Of course, if you're still taking a loss, if your earnings are still going up, maybe it'll still work out. Eventually, though, the tech company either goes under as investors grow tired of losses or it becomes stable, which means it's making a steady profit on a steady set of earnings, and there's no more grand potential. This explains how Ford's stock is cheap while Tesla's is through the roof, even though Ford makes many more vehicles and even makes electric vehicles. Ford is seen as stable rather than as having huge potential. This seems somewhat silly to me, as an investor, though, if one part of Ford's business does the same as Tesla's whole business.

I didn't care much for Doctorow's title (it seems too obscure), but the idea itself is worthy. Doctorow notes that most AI proponents have the usefulness of the technology backwards (though it helps them promote it, which is the whole idea). AI, they say, will do the work, and humans will just check it. This enables tons of many fewer workers. Doctorow notes how AI can help someone do a faster and better job, but the idea that humans become just the quality checkers is a bad one, like putting the brain in the AI (the horse head) and having the humans do the grunt work rather than the other way around. It's arguably less efficient, and it leads to workers/checkers not really knowing how to do the job and thus how to do the actual checking. If I never write code anymore, how will I know where the AI messed up its code? Writing code, at least the nonrepetitious part of it, is more interesting than reading it. Why give the good job to the AI?

But AI, as Doctorow notes, often doesn't even do much of what it's cracked up to do. He writes of the Turk, the medieval machine that could play chess but that turned out to be an illusion: a little human actually guided the machine's moves. Many times, that's what is the case with supposed AI. Some demonstrations of things like self-driving cars have actually had human engineers controlling the car remotely. Again, this is all part of the hoopla to drive stock prices.

This brings us to the role of "creatives." Doctorow notes that AI-created stuff carries no property rights. Some companies want this changed, but creatives should stand pat. AI is a great assistant. But the idea that AI can create instead of the person would render the person pointless. That's what big companies want. The creative jobs, which don't pay well anyway, go away, which renders questionable how much money AI actually saves. However, if there's no copyright for AI-rendered stuff, that makes it public domain, which means there's no profit to be made in, say, books created by AI. Anyone can take that book and reprint it as their own.

On “Image and Reality” by Judith Lieu ***

2026-08-23T09:12:20.509-04:00

This work explores the images of Jewish people in second-century Christian literature, especially that focused around Asia Minor. Literature includes the writings of Ignatius, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, various apologists, and Melito. The writing is very much scholarly, and the work isn't, in the end, terribly approachable. Lieu, of course, makes some excellent points and drew to my attention a number of issues and contexts of which I'd been unaware, but the work is difficult to outline or summarize, given a certain degree of unapproachability.

The gist of the argument seems to be that we should be cautious about how we view Jews in Christian literature of the time. Jews were often used to define Christianity, as so many scholars point out. This “image” isn't necessarily accurate when compared to the “reality” of the situation. Even so, Lieu cautions, we have to be careful even about this common trope—namely, that Christians used Jews to define their own faith. Often, Jews don't show up at all, and the way in which they are portrayed depends heavily on who is writing, why they are writing, and the genre that they are using. We can be just as careless, in other words, in presenting an “image” of Christianity rather than the “reality,” as we can be about the Jewish people and faith, when writing about the period. Indeed, anytime we write about literature or history, we are dealing in generalities that may not actually apply to a specific situation and that may color how a given work is read. That seems a valid warning, but I'm not sure how useful it is; rather, it seems an obvious truism that anyone who studies in any field should be aware of.

On “Tenth of December” by George Saunders ****

2026-08-06T21:27:38.164-04:00

I'm referencing the collection in the title, not just the story, which is the last story in this collection.

I first became familiar with Saunders not long after his first collection was published, Civil War Land in Bad Decline. I liked the title, but what really got me to read the book was the fact that a friend of mine was a huge fan of it and thought our story styles were somewhat similar. (That was a huge and unwarranted compliment, honestly, given what Saunders has gone on to be and what I have not.) Alas, I was not that impressed with the collection outside the story “The 400-Pound CEO.” Saunders's stories were weird and dark, but they often didn't really add up to much to me, didn't have much emotional resonance.(What we had in common, in the estimation of my friend, I'm guessing, was the darkly comic and sometimes weird.)

A few years later, I read the story “Pastoralia” in a Best American Stories collection and was very impressed. I love that story. But I never got around to reading Saunders again, until now, with this collection.

Alas, this collection strikes me much as that first collection did. It was enjoyable, but I didn't feel like I got much out of most of the stories.

Except, like the story “Pastoralia,” there is one story that blew me away, and that is the very first, “Victory Lap.” I heard the first part of the story read on a podcast and wasn't that interested. And I wasn't that interested reading that first section this time. But at the first break, that's when things get really interesting. The story is a lot like Joyce Carol Oates's “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” insofar as it involves a young gal taking up with (or better, being taken up by) a much older man in a sinister kidnapping way. But it goes in a different direction from there. The piece is about childhood and about ideals that we have and also about how we reconcile our values, as kids, the sometimes instructions we are given, and what is right and wrong in a given circumstance. And it's about the end of innocence, even as its about its preservation. It's just marvelous.

And with that sort of beginning to the collection, maybe it's natural that the rest of the collection was something of a disappointment. After reading one of the best stories I've ever read, nothing was going to match it and everything was going to be comparatively a disappointment.

Many of the stories focus on class differences, and like “Pastoralia” and “The 400-Pound CEO,” many focus on weird dynamics of work and office and its attendant, sometimes absurd rules. All are dark and many are funny, but like that first collection, many didn't really spark an emotional connection for me.

“Sticks” is a short short about a trash heap and moving. “Puppy,” probably my second favorite in the collection (because it has a modicum of the emotional connection), is about a rich mom and her kids and how she tries to protect them as they go to adopt a puppy—and also about a poor mom and her kid as she tries to sell said puppy. The latter's circumstances are shocking, and some of these go beyond class, I am sure, but much of them go directly to the opportunities that family has had in life versus the first. The misunderstanding and the rich woman's resolve at the end make this piece devastating.

“Escape from Spiderhead” was a sex dream, I suppose, with comments about science and culture and class as well, as prisoners are given drugs that change their emotions in ways that can lead to death and love. “Exhortation” was an absurdist office memo about making better (sales) numbers. “Al Roosten” is about one of those celebrity auctions with local celebrities and a man who feels he hasn't done enough with his life and regrets the action it takes him toward. “The Semplica Girl Diaries” focuses on a family trying to keep up with the Joneses, essentially, which involves a strange form of keeping personalized third-world slaves. “Home”—probably my third favorite—involved a military vet who did something vaguely horrible during his military service that has all his family vaguely disowning him on his return. It shows up the kind of superficial respect we give to the military even as we reject their actual needs. (Probably most heartbreaking is the way in which the man's own wife had run off with someone else while he was away, and now he's locked out of his kids' lives.)

“My Chivalric Fiasco” returns to the office, focusing on a discovered affair and written in faux medieval language. The title story, the final one in the book, returns to the world of teenage fantasy, as a boy wanders out into the woods on a cold day dreaming of a gal and discovers an old man intent on killing himself—only to have the circumstance completely turn on itself.

On “Early Egyptian Christianity” by C. Wilfred Griggs ****

2026-07-31T19:57:12.898-04:00

This book covers the history of Christianity in Egypt until 451 CE. Griggs lays out the basics in his introduction and again in his conclusion. In between, he provides a useful summary of what probably occurred.

Of course, how exactly Christianity got to Egypt is something of a mystery. We know little of the history until the second century. Griggs posits that before the end of the second century, many versions of Christianity existed. At that point, the bishop of Alexandria positioned himself as superior to other churches and aligned himself with the church in Rome. Most important, he took over the school that had been forged in Alexandria but that wasn't actually run by church authorities. This attempt to assert authority isn't to say other churches in Egypt fell in line; they continued in many ways on their own path. One of those paths was monasticism, which wasn't much in line with the Catholics.

Athanasius in the early fourth century reconciled with the monks and brought them into the regular Catholic church. However, controversies (over Arianism) and fights over leadership continued. Further, Constantinople took on an increasingly important role in the Catholic faith, displacing Alexandria in importance, to the chagrin of Alexandrian bishops. This set up the slow split of Egyptian Christianity into Coptic Christianity and away from the Catholic church, most especially following the Council of Chalcedon.

On “The Bourne Identity” by Robert Ludlum ****

2026-07-25T22:44:38.491-04:00

Back in my twenties, before I had read much genre fiction, I had a view of it as largely plot based, with little in the way of character development or good turns of phrase (something I would say I found not to so much to be true, as I've aged and read more widely). As I read through the first portions of this book, my feelings were that Ludlum's work would have fit that earlier definition to the tee. The book opens with some overwritten descriptions of the sea (unneeded adjectives, redundant lines). It felt very much like someone were describing in excess the opening shots of a movie. What's more, as I read further into the book and was introduced to the characters, they seemed equally overwrought and yet not really real; they were elements, simply, in and for a plot—a plot that was, for all of its turns and twists—highly ridiculous.

But if Ludlum's first book in the trilogy fits all the stereotypes that I carried of genre fiction, it also lives within its world exceptionally well. I found myself, even knowing that the plot was ludicrous and the characters mostly cardboard (the main character's girlfriend, after all, after being taking hostage by him, gives up everything in her life to pursue him, risking her life, because at some point he saves her life, a situation she wouldn't have been in in the first place if she hadn't been taken hostage)--even knowing all that, and knowing that Bourne will survive, because there are two more books, I found myself drawn into the plot. What's to happen next? What will Bourne do?

The novel involves a case of selective amnesia. A man finds himself with exceptional military and spy-op skills, but he doesn't know who he is and how he came to obtain such skills. Nor does he know why everyone seems to be after him. The journey is thus one of self-discovery and one of survival. The plot really gets going when the man goes to a bank in Zurich, which has an account, the numbers for which are embedded as a chip in his body. Find the account; find out who he is. Or so that's the theory. But by doing so, he alerts others of his presence and so begins the hunt for him. And even knowing his name only gives him that; who is this man with this name. Periodically, as he comes across familiar scenes or people, he gets glimpses into his past, but they remain veiled. This is spies after spies, espionage to the hilt. It doesn't feel like there's much in the way of political, cultural, or social commentary along the way, unlike say in the work of Greene or Le Carre, but unlike the latter's novel that I read, this one is much more approachable, much more entertaining, and much less dreary. I usually looked forward to reading it, and certainly didn't want to put it down as I got closer to its end--a fitting end to my short spy fiction list.

On "Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Cities" edited by John R. Bartlett ***

2026-07-09T21:10:19.749-04:00

Generally, if there is more than one book on a subject and one is written by one person and the other is an edited collection, I will choose to read the former before I bother with the latter. The advantage with an edited collection is that one gets different perspectives on a topic. But there's also something nice about a single sustained argument. Occasionally, an edited collection will manage to be tightly enough woven together to do something almost akin to that.

Too often, however, edited collections feel like smorgasboards--whatever the editor was able to cobble together on a given subject. So, say, you're doing an edited collection on American presidents, and there's a chapter on Washington, and then the next chapter is on John Quincy Adams. There's no throughline. It's just random highlights.

This collection, alas, reminded me of exactly why I don't particularly care for such collections. I mean, I could be reading a set of journal articles, which is what such feels like. The individual contributions can be good, but they are still haphazard, and often half of them don't seem to cohere with material that is of interest. In this book, some chapters were focused on really esoteric topics and others were things that I really had wanted to know more about and would still like to know more about. What I was hoping for, I suppose, was a pretty sustained exploration of Jews in Roman cities--but something that seemed more than the sum of its parts.

The book has many highlights, though. I much enjoyed the essay by Lester Grabbe, who I'd long wanted to read, about how Greek culture affected Jerusalem itself. He writes in a very approachable way, even if much of the subject wasn't particularly new. Tessa Rajak's piece on synagogues did a good job of showing how such communities were likely more extensive than sometimes what little surviving architecture suggests. McGing focuses on population. My favorite chapter was Stern's about the Jewish calendar in diaspora cities; he makes some good points about how most Jews would have had a way to set the calendar locally well before the Rabbi's did so in the wake of the destruction of the temple.

As the book, went on, however, the book seemed more and more focused on arguments between scholars, as a scholarly book often is. But such made for fewer takeaways for me, wanting not so much to know why argument X is not right and more about the actual topic at hand.

On "A Perfect Spy" by John le Carre ***

2026-06-28T07:41:47.557-04:00

I'm a bit surprised sometimes by what manages to make it to best-seller lists. This is one of those books. Le Carre is no easy reading, engaging as he does in some high-end literary techniques. And what's left after all of it are a number of open-ended questions to ponder.

Usually, this is just my sort of balliwick, but I guess I was looking for something more absborbing. Much like some classic novels, like Pride and Prejudice, this one was a real slog until substantially into the text. I only felt compelled once I was about one hundred pages from the end. By then, a lot of the little things that le Carre had set up started to pay off. But that, of course, was part of what made the earlier passages so challenging. Why shift from sentence to sentence between first- and third-person, for instance? Who is Poppy? Wentworth? Other named people? As one gets toward the end, one starts to discover the meanings of these details.

The tail is essentially one of a spy who has decided to quit it all. He retreats to location unknown to anyone to do as he had always wanted: to write a novel (or maybe his memoirs), which is itself sort of a note to his son. Meanwhile, the spy world is all aflutter over his disappearance. Everyone wants him, because in their view he's done something heinous, but it appears at least initially that it's a hullabaloo about nothing. This two-pronged storytelling means that one set of chapters follows the current day, and the other follows the memoir. We get past and present occurrences. The difficulty is that from one chapter to the next, one is dropped in to a particular place and location without much background, meaning one is disoriented for about the first third of every chapter. When you finally start to figure out what's going on and maybe start to care, le Carre ends the chapter, and you're back in a spot of being lost. I suppose that's reflective of Magnus Pym's state (or really of many a spy), but it makes for a difficult and unsatisfying read.

In the course of the story, one runs across Magnus's conman father, his spy overseer and recruiter Brotherhood, his wife Mary, various lovers, and his best friend Axel. To what degree any of these people are who they seem, however, is difficult to know. Are his verious acquaintances and friends really that, or are they just using Magnus for their own agendas? Has Magnus actually managed to do anything of value with his life (and his spy career), or has he just been everyone's pawn?

On “Public Libraries and Literary Culture in Ancient Rome” by Clarence Eugene Boyd ***

2026-06-16T19:28:08.768-04:00

This short volume covers more-recent material that I've read elsewhere. Even so, there was some information here that I hadn't previously run across.

Boyd starts with Julius Caesar's order to found such “public” libraries, which Boyd really does call “public,” even though other sources make clear that the way we think of public libraries is not the same as Romans thought of them. Nevertheless, it's interesting that Caesar really got the ball rolling on this and that emperors followed suit. There were at least nine such libraries that have been identified.

Other facts I learned: Most such libraries were placed near a palace or temple (though he also notes those that were part of baths). Most faced east, because that direction was best at keeping materials from getting damp and thus being eaten by worms and the like. Most included artwork and served also as places of meeting.

Unlike what I'd read elsewhere, Boyd makes much of people checking materials out of libraries. Indeed, the primary documents support this as a possibility, though such people did seem to be well connected in some way, so I take others' point of view, that materials largely stayed in the library, as being the more usual custom.

Another section discusses bookshops, of which there were a surprisingly number in Rome. Without printing, books were produced by dictation to a number of scribes at one. And as I'd read elsehwere, there were even newspapers of a sort, with information about deaths, marriages, and happenings, updated daily.

All that said, Boyd's book is definitely aimed at early twentieth-century scholars. He quotes frequently from primary documents sans translation. Classicists would know how to read these, and many a schoolboy of the period also probably, but not so much readers of today.

On “Border Lines” by Daniel Boyarin ***

2026-06-08T21:18:10.010-04:00

I was a little disappointed by this book. It was actually great in terms of its subject matter and content, but it is very definitely a scholarly work, full of jargon and difficult at times to follow. There are losts of references to theory and theorists, which I've rarely understood the purpose of in texts, since so often such ideas are either not integral to the argument or are basic enough that it seems like no theorist need be named.

The basic point, however, if a strong one. Boyarin makes the claim—one that fits well with contemporary sociological and postmodern theory—that the creation of heresy in its modern sense was largely the result of an attempt by both Christian and Jewish writers to create boundaries around their respective faiths. To explore this point, Boyarin shows how the concept of “heresy” was at one point essentially just another means of thinking about a subject—for example, a sect. It's, in fact, Josephus uses when discussing various sects of the Jewish faith in his time. But roughly a hundred years later, Christians aren't just using the term to show differing sects; they're using it to describe only prohibited sects, nonorthodox sects—that is, heretics, as we think of them today. The Rabbis did something similar, declaring those who did not follow their proscribed ways of thinking as minim, that is, heretics. In this way, the Jewish faith transformed into Judaism, rabbinical Judaism.

Before Christianity, Boyarin notes, the concept of religion was tied into one's ethnicity and culture. There really wasn't much of an idea of one having a religion and then also having a nationality. Christianity created this new category of people. But so too did Judaism. It became a religion—for a while.

Curiously, after the Rabbis had thoroughly established control over what constituted Judaism, the idea of Judaism returned to its former roots as an ethnic thing. Today, at least among Jews, one does not so much talk of Judaism as a religion but of people being Jewish, culturally, ethnically, religiously. Thus, one can be a bad Jew—not following the dictates of the faith/nation—but one can never really renounce one's Jewishness.

Another curiosity: Christianity, in defining what was heresy, established itself through attempts at unity. Arguments in the faith aim for that, for a single correct interpretation. Judasim did the opposite. Once the ground rules were established, separating itself from Christanity, it became about arguing about differences of interpretation, presenting all of those as viable—which is what we find in the Talmud.

The case study is one that Boyarin discusses in other places, in a generally more approachable manner: the idea of God's Logos, or Word, or Memra. Boyarin makes the case, made similarly elsewhere in other people's works (Segal, Shaefer, Heiser, Hurtado), that Two Powers theology, the idea that God has a viceroy or partner or subordinate who is very much like him, was very much part of the Jewish religion until Christian times. That's when it became associated with Christanity and by contrast rejected by Judaism. While adoptionist, modalist, and unitarian ideas were made heretical by Christians in favor of a Logos divinity, Jewish Rabbis came to affirm that biblical passages seeming to point to such a figure were really figurative in meaning and that there was solely one God figure, sometimes expressed in different ways (virtually, one might say, modalism, rejected by the Christians). Hence, each faith defined the other, putting up borders accordingly. Those that fall within those borders, borrowing ideas from both sides of the divide are also made heretics, where once they'd have been accepted by either faith; now, as Jerome and some others would put it, they are neither Jews or Christians.

On "Goldfinger" by Ian Fleming **

2026-05-28T19:29:43.957-04:00

I have never liked James Bond movies, so it shouldn't have come to a surprise that I wouldn't like one of the books on which such movies are based. I chose this one for my spy fiction reading list in part because I'd confused it with Dr. No, the first James Bond movie and the only one film I've seen in the series that was at least palatable. But part of me was wary of reading the same book rather than one from a film I hadn't seen, so I'm sort of glad I got confused. The other reason I'd chosen this book was the first sentence, which seemed so incredibly absurd and in line with the Bond mystique that this seemed like a novel that would be emblematic of the series. That opening sentence essentially has Bond sitting in an airport lobby drinking whisky, smoking, and thinking about all the men he's had to kill and how he doesn't enjoy doing it. Oh yeah!

The tale itself is an unsurprising riff on Bond versus an arch nemesis--this time, Goldfinger, a man who likes to collect, um, gold. He has his heart of cornering the market. For this, he's come up with a plan to steal the gold from Fort Knox. But Bond, who sleeps with not one but two gals (and seemed like he might get a little from a third--alas, he never broke her) over the course of the novel, comes to know Goldfinger before then. First, he helps an acquaintance on a side job find out how it is that Goldfinger always wins at cards (he cheats, of course), which is how Bond meets the first gal, Goldfinger's aid in the crime. The second time, Bond is on a mission to enter Goldfinger's world to get a handle on his growing gold empire: this time, Bond plays golf with Goldfinger, who again cheats, which means that Bond has to come up with his own cheat to win. The third time Bond comes into contact, Goldfinger knows Bond is not completely on the up-and-up with him, and so it is that Bond is captured, tortured, and nearly killed, except, well, Goldfinger decides to use him in his Fort Knox scheme. That is, alas, Goldfinger's downfall, and it is also something that makes little sense, given Bond's untrustworthiness.

Goldfinger pulls in several of the top underworld criminal figures to help him. There is a long passage in which each figure is described--just as there are long passages describing the golf game. They grow cumbersome at times. Fleming is a master at physical descriptions of people. It's how he paints his world. But in that is also his failing, because there seems to be little beneath the surface. This is men's fiction, with bravado and adventure. Bond raises fast cars, drinks, kills, sleeps around; every gal he meets is a hottie to bed, and most take to him immediately because of his stunning good looks. What does anyone really want? Goldfinger wants gold. Bond seems happy chasing tail, drinking (even at times that require utmost focus), and going on adventures. Goldfinger has lots of assistants, who are loyal to him for . . . money, I guess? The women, I guess, they just want a hot guy? One doesn't read a Bond novel for penetrating character studies.

On "The Churches of Asia" by William Cunningham ***

2026-05-20T21:38:07.637-04:00

This history of the church in Asia [Minor] was written by in the 1800s, so it has some of the ticks that such works generally do: that is, a love for flowery language for the sake of being "lyrical." Despite that, the author does manage to get across his points. The focus is squarely on the second century.

After knocking out which writings he accepts as genuine and early and thus informing his study, Cunningham begins with a discussion of church government. It was a fortuitous place to start, because I'd been thinking similarly rather recently about the second-century churches in Asia, so it was nice to see someone develop some of the ideas in a like manner. He notes that the church started with synagogues and structure there, but he also notes that it departed from that structure (a claim I would actually disagree with). At first, there was central leadership in Jerusalem (something I could largely agree with), but with that church's demise, congregations took on a Greek city-state model. That is, each church had its own elders and those in turn were informed by the people of the congregation. In turn, the churches were in communication with one another and so no one strayed too far. A second model, however, was also apparent, in the form of a central bishop (more akin to the Jerusalem model). This bishop was more of an administrator than a preaching elder or a servant. (Here, I think of the people who hosted the churches.) In time, though, this central authority took on more power in helping to determine who was and was not part of a given church (in part because some folks left the faith under persecution, and it was questionable whether they should be allowed back after such persecution had ended; and in part because of the very heresies--most especially continuing Judaism--that needed to be quelled).

Next comes a discussion of other views of the church. Cunningam focuses on two: Marcionism and Montanism. He also discusses briefly Ebionism, which he mixes up with the teachings of Cerinthus, who he claims was one of them--a patent absurdity that was adopted by some early historians and that Cunningham falls for. With regard to Marcion, Cunningham sees him as the religion by feeling and subjective spiritual perspective on who and what God is, one that abandons completely the law; he sees Montanism as the opposite: a rigid belief in legal stuff and an insistence that one accept new teachings coming from the Holy Spirit, as some claim. The church, in turn, stood against both of these with its growing structure.

He closes with a discussion of the aforementioned controversy over persecution and with the controversy over the timing of the fast surrounding Easter. I like that Cunningham really emphasized that the issue was the timing of the end of the fast. I haven't given enough attention to this, though that is plainly what the early writers note. As for the rest of the discussion, Cunningham starts with a set of premises that dislodge the rest of his argument. Sunday is the resurrection, Friday is the crucifixion. Hence, for him, the fourteenth of Nissan (Passover) is on Friday, the high sabbath on the Sabbath. The Synoptics, he argues, adopted a crucixion on the high day for its symbolism (since clearly the Jews would not have conducted a trial and crucifixion on the high day, even as John notes). John preserves the actual historical account. But John, of course, being a Jew, maintained the fourteener position regarding when to time the end of the fast, which is better supported by the Synoptics. How could this be, if John was the writer of the Fourth Gospel? Cunningham argues that John wrote his gospel account to ensure that the real understanding of the timing of the events was preserved, even if symbolically he stood with the Jewish believers and their preference for the synoptic timing. Rome and others adopted Sunday morning for the commemoration and breaking of the fast because of difficulties determining when the New Moon was and problems with the Jews. In Asia, some wanted to break the fast earlier so that they could commemorate the Passover as Jesus had with his disciples. This all makes sense, but it fails to account for when the high day actually was, the fact that even in the Jewish community there were arguments over whether the Passover was to be held at the start of the fourteenth or the end of it (i.e., the fifteenth), and other matters.

On “Justin Martyr and the Jews” by David Rokeai ***

2026-05-18T20:52:51.426-04:00

This rather short monograph focuses primarily on Justin's Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew—Justin's attempt to argue the superiority of Christianity and to perhaps convert Trypho. Rokeai provides a detailed account of the literature related to the topic, and he discusses in full the Talmudic responses to some of the same issues that Justin discussed. His overall point, however, is that Justin is essentially Paul on steroids. He argues that Paul was essentially anti-Jewish as well and that his occasional positive comments about the Jewish religion were simply an attempt to soften his otherwise strong rhetoric against Jewish traditions and law. Justin, in turn, didn't try to whitewash was Paul was really saying.

I think that Rokeai is right to say that Justin took Paul's ideas and used them to create his anti-Jewish rhetoric, but I think he misreads Paul. I don't think he was against the Jewish law or traditions; I think he wore his Jewish heritage with pride and wasn't just putting on a show. Justin misread Paul, and Rokeai falls right in line with Justin's misreading.

Some interesting ideas about why Justin argued as he did. Who was his audience? Surely he wouldn't have found many Jewish fans, but the audience was probably mostly those who might have had a choice between Judaism and Christianity. Another interesting point: Justin had to tread down a narrow path. He was against Marcion, who was also anti-Jewish. But Marcion's conclusion was that the God of the Jews was an entirely different God and thus rejected the Old Testament. Justin didn't argue that, but he still had to find a way to critique the Jewish law, traditions, and writings. To do that he espoused not a different God but a God who had imposed law and traditions on the Jewish people because they were uniquely incapable of being good people. Failing with even that, God had found his true Israel in the Gentiles, who replaced the Jews and whose natural morality, or willingness to accept Jesus and thus obey the larger law of love, meant that they had replaced the Jews in God's heart. In this way, Justin could keep the Old Testament prophecies and symbolism but jettison its laws. This goes far beyond anything Paul espoused. Paul noted the Jewish inability to obey God, for sure, but he didn't ground it in an idea that somehow non-Jewish people could do better, and especially not without the guidance laid out in the Old Testament; rather, he noted that because no one could follow the law, faith only in Christ could save, because all are otherwise due for the penalty of breaking that law: death. But as he notes, that doesn't then mean the law is bad or that it no longer applies; rather, believers were to live accordingly thereafter. Jewish people, not seeing Christ, meant that they were still under the penalty, but Paul noted that one day they would be shown the way accordingly and be welcomed back into God's fold. Non-Jewish people who took on the faith and lived accordingly certainly did become Israel, but they didn't replace the old Israel: they were welcomed into it.

On "The Quiet American" by Graham Greene ****

2026-05-13T22:00:16.643-04:00

I'm not sure how much this qualifies as a spy novel, though it does have lots of international intrigue. It's focus is really a newspaper reporter and a surreptitious activist (perhaps, he qualifies as a spy). It's really a love triangle story: two guys battling it out for a young Vietnamese gal name Phuong. The story is set in 1950s Vietnam, toward the end of the French role there, as the Americans begin to make a few inroads.

The two men are Fowler and Pyle. Both men are annoying and easy to dislike. Fowler is British, older, the reporter, and has Phuong as his girlfriend. He's married, and his wife (back in Britain) won't allow a divorce. This means that Phuong is nothing but a fling to him. He's using her, stringing her along, saying that one day he'll marry her, as he wants. Pyle is an American, working on distributing plastics that go in to bombs to help the Vietnamese Democratic movement (if it's that). He falls in love with Phuong at first site and sets about to make her his girlfriend and wife, despite the fact that Fowler is already involved with her. Both men are jerks in my view.

The story begins with Pyle's death. Fowler is the immediate suspect, but then the rest of the novel is told in flashback to how these two interacted and came to know each other. Despite the characters being unlikeable and the political discussions seeming somewhat dated (though I suppose they apply to any such colonial situation), the novel brings into focus some big questions about journalistic objectivity and staying outside the news to just observe it. At what point, one asks, does this become a problem as a human being caring about other humans? And at what point does a concern for the general populace become more important than a concern for the individual? These are hard questions.

On “The Book Proposal Book” by Laura Portwood-Stacer ***

2026-05-05T21:46:00.001-04:00

Another book likely to be on the syllabus for the class I am due to teach next year. This one focuses on scholarly manuscripts. I can see the value of having such a book on the syllabus, though I think it would be more valuable for grad students than undergrads. But then again, some undergrads will go on to graduate degrees, so why not? The book itself is a great tutorial for folks unfamiliar with the publishing process who are looking to get their text published by a scholarly press—most especially folks coming out of graduate degree programs, with perhaps a dissertation to adapt for publication to help them along in the career development and attempt to get tenure. I took notes as I read, so this is essentially a summary of my notes.

The real reason anyone should write should be for the reader, even if you might have other objectives. It's really the reader for any given piece of material you're looking to publish you should have in mind.

The author differentiates between the prospectus (the formal proposal document) and the proposal (the package in which that prospectus appears (along with all the other materials that make up a proposal). It's a useful distinction, though I don't think I'll likely be so exacting in my notes here. The prospectus includes the title; a project overview; description of the audience, competing titles, how your book fits among them; a table of contents with summaries of each chapter; author qualifications; status of manuscript, word count, and number of illustrations.

Chapter 1, on knowing the process: The first step in getting ready to submit a proposal is to identify your target presses. Research and evaluate them to prioritize them. Gather the submission guidelines and summarize how your book fits the press's publishing program. Meanwhile, become knowable—get your name and work out there.

Chapter 2: In writing, show that your book will make a contribution to scholarly discussion and attract a sizable audience.

Chapter 3, on finding how you fit among other words: Your discussion of comparative titles should note what recent books are like yours and how yours is different (not better—just different).

Chapter 4, on audience and market: The are four audiences for a scholarly book: other scholars, students, practitioners, and general readers. That last audience is sort of a myth. What is a general reader? Instead of thinking of the general reader, focus on a specific type of reader (e.g., birders, athletes, etc.).

Chapter 5, on the thesis: If you don't have a thesis, some ways to get one include (1) imagining one change you'd like your book to bring about; (2) imagining something you don't want people to think ever again; (3) asking what lesson you want to impart; (4) asking what one thing you learned from your research that you most want people to know. Now try boiling that down to a one-sentence hook.

Chapter 6, on the descriptive overview for the book: This overview should involve the following things: (1) the hook (the one-sentence takeway); (2) the thesis (the main argument and conclusions); (3) the stake (why it matters); (4) the work's relationship to other works; (5) the basic evidence; (6) the general structure—how the story will be told (this is not the annotated table of contents, which comes later); (7) a description of the audience. This overview is ideally 1200 to 1500 words.

Chapter 7, on the annotated table of contents: Try for one to two paragrphs per chapter. Aim for roughly equal chapter lengths in the final book.

Chapter 8, on titles: Don't get too clever with titles. Titles are a marketing tool and should give away the book's subject so that people will be able to find it when searching for works about that subject.

Chapter 9, on voice: Use your own. Avoid jargon, overly extensive quoting and referencing, passive sentence structure,and hedging.

Chapter 10, on the bio: Aim for two paragraphs, one with public-facing stuff, like your publications and title, which will go out with marketing copy, and one with press-facing stuff, like media contacts and social media accounts and other things you have that might be of aid in getting word about the book out to the public. Also include a CV.

Chapter 11, on other stuff: You'll need to include an estimated word count, illustrations count (and eventually illustrations themselves and permissions), suggested reviewers (scholarly presses will often use these contacts for the blind review process that all books go through), time line for completion of the book, and sample chapters.

Chapter 12 is on tips for getting ahold of an editor. Chapter 13 is one the review process and contracts. And chapter 14 is on production and marketing. In other words, these latter chapters are really about the publication process, once the proposal has actually been accepted. The author suggests working on the marketing questionnaire you'll eventually receive early, before being asked, and provides a list of the things that are usually in those questionnaires. She also notes that well-placed promotional opportunities to the target audience do more for a book than big generic marketing. If you write a book on birding, go to where the birders are, like a birding newsletter, in other words, not to one of the biggest circulating popular magazines, where only a small fraction of the readers are birders and most other people won't care. The book closes with appendices of checklists and examples of prospectuses, introductory letters, reviewer reports, and so on.

Like I wrote: an excellent resource for someone looking to publish with a scholarly press. She covers not just the basics of getting through the initial stages but in those latter chapters what will happen throughout the rest of the publication process. Any given author will learn this stuff as the process unfolds, but so many want to know more up front, and this book gives that information.

On Jewish War Under Trajan and Hadrian, by William Horbury ***

2026-05-02T21:47:00.004-04:00

This is the most complete account of the wars between the Jews and the Roman Empire post 70 CE that I've read, going deeper into the subject than Mary Smallwood's very thorough but also easier to follow book. Horbury's text is very much an academic work, at times difficult to follow and very much bogged down in details that, to be exhaustive, it must be.

After a contextual introduction, in which Horbury claims that all the Jewish wars can be seen as one uprising rather than a set of uprisings, the book provides a long account of the literature that already exists on the subject--a very useful exercise. I'd read several of these works, as it turns out, and it was great not only to read Horbury's summation of works I hadn't gotten to but also to some I had, in part to remind me of their basic points but also because it was interesting to read how Horbury himself interprets the findings of some of these authors.

The text turns then to the various wars and their causes, most particularly to the Kitos War, for which very little information exists. Horbury does an admirable job pulling in the various historical sources and some sources that less certainly refer to it. The war, as he notes, was not just in Egypt but also in Cyprus and modern-day Libya (Cirenaica), the latter two actually seemingly more heavily the source of the conflict, at least as I read it. Egypt, of course, was a constant bed of intrigue between Jewish and Greek residents, but the Messianic hopefuls did their best to spread into the area, spreading the war. The war also coincided with the Roman invasion of Parthia. I expect I'll return to Horbury's text to review more about this war, since I've seen nothing else quite so thorough.

Judea's turn at the war, of course, would come a little over a decade later, in what is known as the Bar Kochba uprising. On this, I was on more solid ground having read more about it. Horbury doesn't just repeat what others have said, of course, but since those others have written more accessibly about the subject, I found myself more easily zoning out in these latter sections.

On “Thinking Like Your Editor” by Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato ***

2026-04-30T22:16:00.002-04:00

So I'm preparing to coteach a course next year, and this is one of the books we intend to use. It's a pretty good summary of the proposal process and of the publishing process in general: for serious trade nonfiction. There is other nonfiction, however, like how-to books, and this one doesn't really delve into that. Or humor. And fiction, of course, is yet another animal.

I'll summarize each chapter, mostly so that I remember its details.

The book opens with an account of the controversy over where to shelve a book. Some books, of course, have two or three subjects, and where they end up in a store can make a big difference in terms of sales. Publishers and booksellers don't always agree.

The introduction notes that acquisitions editors often make decisions based on proposals rather than book manuscripts. The author notes why academic books aren't trade books: (1) discipline-specific writing; (2) jargon; and (3) niche subjects. Editors focus on readers. As an author, you need to know why your book is being written, for home, and what it wants to say. These days, TV appearances sell more books than book reviews.

Chapter 1: All book decisions, including marketing, type of edit, sales, print run, jacket, are based on four criteria: (1) Does the book have a buying audience? (2) Who is that audience? (3) What does this book say to that audience. And (4) Will the audience buy the book? Trade books are idea books, not practice books. So there are four more questions to answer: (1) Is it a book or an article? (2) Is it general interest or academic? (3) Has the audience been properly defined? And (4) Is the topic compelling to a core audience?

Chapter 2: The proposal should tell the editor what needs to be known, not just what the author wants to say. The big five questions a proposal answers: (1) What is the book about? (2) What is the book's thesis and what is new about it? (3) Why are you the person to write it? (4) Why is now the time to publish it? And (5) Who is the core audience and why will they want it? Good proposals tell a story. The proposal is twenty pages double-spaced and leaves the editor wanting more. If you don't have a thesis yet, think of the question driving the projects, the thing you will answer. The answer to that question is more than just the thesis, though—it is the thesis plus the answer to the question, “And so?” That is, how does this finding affect the reader?

Chapter 3: In proposal, the table of contents should contain a paragraph for each chapter with basic points. (Two to three pages for the TOC.) The sample chapter doesn't need to be a real chapter. It can steal from other parts of the book. The point is to be compelling—show that you can write. There are three types of books/chapters: narrative, argument, and explanatory. The proposal package should include the proposal, the TOC, sample chapter, and your CV (with previous publications and publicity contacts).

Chapter 4 is about whether to get an agent or go straight to a publisher. The author recommends the former in most cases.

Chapter 5 denotes the importance of balance and truth telling. If a writer argues something a reader knows not to be true (twisting basic facts), how are we to trust the argument when we get to material we don't know. (I'm reminded of a podcast I was listening to just today, where I knew info that the podcaster obviously didn't. Made me doubt the accuracy of everything else that's been discussed.)

Chapter 6 is about using narrative elements to drive reader interest—essentially posing a question and dangling the answer out in front for th reader to discover.

Chapter 7 argues that anecdote to start a book is oversold. If used, it should be short. Intros instead should get quickly to the thesis, a bold thesis. Readers use the intro to see whether to buy the book. In essence, the intro should give away the book in terms of the thesis, but the rest of the book shows how that thesis can be true. That's how readers stay curious. Intro also lays out how the book is different from other related texts. Exception to this advice on introductions: biographies. Those will use an anecdote to lay out one emblematic moment from the life of the subject. After the introduction, in nonfiction, comes the context chapter. Then narrative chapters with side issues in break-narrative chapters or in two-to-three page section breaks with more more context.

Chapter 8 reviews the editing and publishing process.

Writing craft books usually intimidate me a bit. They make me feel like I'm not sufficiently following rules. But the best way to learn is really by doing and by reading, a lot.

On "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad ***

2026-04-21T19:45:00.001-04:00

I was never able to get through Lord Jim, but I was a teen at the time, and then in college I read Heart of Darkness and came to admire it--but I think that was in part because I wrote a paper on it and as such read the book several times over. This book feels like it would need to be read more than once to truly appreciate it; unfortunately, it didn't bear so much interest in me that I felt compelled or desirous of reading it a second time.

The story is one of a secret agent named Verloc who involves himself with various revolutionary anarchist groups to feed, I suppose, information to the government. But that government isn't so impressed by the information that Verloc provides. He's threatened with being cut loose.

Reverse back a bit. Verloc is married and takes care of a wife, his wife's mother, and his wife's mentally challenged brother. The everyday front he has is an adult bookstore--racy photos, books, gifts, and other stuff that men might like, though don't want anyone else to know it.

We also meet along the way the various revolutionaries and some police and law enforcement types. In the middle of the book, a bomb goes off, and a man is blown into pieces. Some witnesses say another man was with him. Who was the other man? Who was the man blown up? Much of the rest of the plot revolves around this. In the process, we see more about Verloc's character, the character of those involved in law enforcement, those involved with the government, and those involved with the revolutionary movements. No one comes off looking very well, and one feels sad for those unwittingly caught up among them.

On “The Twelve” by C. Bernard Ruffin ****

2026-04-08T12:21:00.003-04:00

This is the fourth book I've that focuses, in some way, on each of the twelve apostles following the books of the New Testament. It is not as good as Sean McDowell's Fates of the Apostles, which focused chiefly on how they died and is a bit formulaic in chapter setup but which is also more up to date, more readable, and more focused on sources. Nor is it as good as Brian Liftin's After Acts, which also is somewhat formulaic, does not cover all twelve apostles thoroughly, and is often lacking is source citations, but which is very readable. However, it is better than William Steuart McBirnie's The Search for the Twelve Apostles, which while thorough and quotes heavily from sources, is kind of a drag of a read and seems too heavily focused on burial places and relics. Ruffin's book covers each of the twelve and is somewhat thorough; however, like McBirnie's work, the writing at times drags. It also seems a bit too heavily and uncritically dependent on legends and Catholic teaching (though I have no idea whether Ruffin was actually Catholic). Unfortunately, it's unlikely that any book will ever satisfactorily fill one's curiosity about the twelve after the events of the New Testament or even about them in terms of their background and biography, since in some cases, all we know of them in the New Testament is a few scattered quotes and their names.

Although I was familiar with most of this material, there were things I learned—or perhaps was reminded of that I'd forgotten. Ruffin engages in some closer readings of the New Testament text and raised for me some perceptions that I hadn't yet come across. Take, for example, the two callings of Peter, one while fishing and another with his brother Andrew coming to tell him to come meet Jesus. Ruffin puts these together, with the idea that Peter met Jesus once, and then was actually called to discipleship sometime later while fishing. There were also some descriptions of Jesus's extended family that I was only vaguely aware of—for example, the idea that Matthew was conceivably a cousin of Jesus. James Tabor makes much of how virtually all the disciples were related to Jesus and tries to make the case that all three of his brothers were among the twelve (or maybe that's Jeffrey Butz's argument or maybe both—I get these ideas and whose they are confused). But in making such a case, Tabor's claims begin to stretch credulity, and one feels that the writer has an agenda. Ruffin clearly has an agenda also, but that agenda would not be forcing familial relationships on Jesus's disciples, as such would seem more to discount his belief that Jesus was God in the flesh than to serve it, insofar as if so many of his followers were family members, it's easier to make a case that this was a familial conspiracy. In that sense, at least on this account, Ruffin comes across as a bit more believable, when he makes cases for at least five the apostles possibly being cousins. Another interesting claim: That Philip the deacon and apostle were the same. He notes that the twelve may well have wanted an apostle as one of the seven deacons to preserve doctrinal truth, and Philip, who would work heavily among the Samaritans and whose Greek name suggests a connection to the diaspora community, would have fit the agenda well.

Anyway, the book was worth the read, even if it took longer than I would have expected for a book of its size.

On "Road Dogs" by Elmore Leonard ****

2026-04-05T21:26:00.005-04:00

I placed this as my last book on my Elmore Leonard list after reading that it had characters from City Primeval, La Brava, and Out of Sight. It also, as it turned out, had a character from Maximum Bob, which I didn't read. But really, the book is one about characters from La Brava and Out of Sight; other characters are simply mentioned.

This is a Jack Foley book, the main character in Out of Sight. Cundo, a violent offender in La Brava, is also here. Now, they're prison pals. Cundo has a good deal of money and a good lawyer, and he sets Foley up with that lawyer on an appeal, who gets Foley out of prison with barely a sentence to his name. Now Foley owes Cundo big time.

Cundo is crazy about some gal named Dawn, a woman who professes to be psychic but who by and large seems largely to be a conman. Dawn wraps Foley into her arms and tries to enlist him in her schemes—one to rip off a grieving actress and another to rip off Cunda. But Dawn is too confident in her appeal as a woman, uses it to get power over a lot of men whom she uses. But it's not enough, by and large. For some money is remains too important. And for Foley, it's a kind of honor. It seems he's determined to go straight, if only he can find a way.

It was probably George Clooney playing Foley in the movie Out of Sight that did it, but he remains my favorite Leonard character. I can't see help but see him playing the role, his cool and suave persona, likeable even if a crook.

On “The Hot Kid” by Elmore Leonard ***

2026-03-29T12:06:00.004-04:00

This is one of Leonard's later books and also one of his works of historical fiction. As a writer of westerns, Leonard would seem to have been a natural for the historical fiction genre. The difference, of course, is that instead of writing in that standard genre, he would now apply his crime-writing skills to something of an earlier era. In this case, we're talking 1930s America and the era of prohibition gangsters.

As with so much of Leonard's fiction, this one is built around a superhero: Carl(os) Webster, a U.S. marshal who is a quick draw and whose standard line is something along the lines of, “If I you make me pull out my gun, I shoot to kill.” And indeed, he does. In one instance, he manages to shoot four people before one of them gets a clean shot at him. His one misstep seems to have been when he was a teenager, when instead of shooting a guy to maim him, he kills him. But otherwise, he's fast and accurate.

The main antagonist is one Jack Belmont, the child of an oil baron who could have it all and easily, but he's enamored of the thrill of the criminal life, and so instead of taking a job in his dad's business, he opts to become a bank robber—and a literal joy killer: that is, a guy who enjoys killing for the joy of it.

Inevitably, the two men are to meet, and the novel dances around the eventual final confrontation until it finally happens.

I did not find this to be one of Leonard's better books. In many ways, it was predictable. The line between good and evil seems fairly obvious, even if Webster likes to dally with men of questionable ethics and prostitutes, and the women in the book seem to be interested in men merely for the degree of excitement they bring, no matter which side of the law they are on. I chose to read it, however, because the work centers on a couple of themes that were close to Leonard growing up: namely, the criminal underworld specifically of this era and baseball. So the idea was to see those interests play out in a book, which was likely a fun and worthy endeavour for Leonard as he was closing in on the end of his career.

On "From Paul to Valentinus" by Peter Lampe ****

2026-03-18T20:13:00.003-04:00

More than any other book I've read in recent years (or perhaps ever), this one reminded me of the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, of going from a large point and seeing how all the small points of evidence fit within it versus gathering all the small points of evidence to discover some larger point. Lampe's work seems heavily invested in the latter. In a way, that's great. He can dismiss what others have accepted as givens and start afresh, perhaps coming to the same conclusion and perhaps not. No assumptions. (The degree to which anyone does only inductive or deductive reasoning is questionable. Any argument is a mix of both. We all have our biases. And even if one present an argument inductively, some of that argument has likely been built on deduction.) The focus on the little things is illuminating, but it's also a bit tiresome, as for vast parts of the book, one doesn't necessarily see where Lampe is going. It's just a bunch of seemingly disjointed facts, until of course he finally gets to his conclusions.

The first part of the book looks at where Christians lived within Rome. He does this in part by looking at how the earlier writers describe those communities. But more interesting is when he looks at where Christians tend to be buried, which end up corresponding to the other evidence. In all, he finds Christians most heavily located along the Via Appia and in a neighborhood called Trastevere, which was at the time very densely populated and heavily full of immigrants. In all, early Roman Christians seem to be mostly immigrants and not terribly well off. Part of the reason Christians could be blamed for the burning of Rome under Nero was that their communities were not heavily affected--as such, they would seem to be the natural perpetrators.

The second part of the book provides biographies of known named Christians. Details here were at times interesting, but on the whole this section was less intriguing than the former. Of course, his named Christians do seem to be wealthier and more prominent (for obvious reasons). Even so, he notes how Aquila and Prisca were probably not wealthy people. Their business was one with less social standing than others; they likely lived in the same building in which they worked, and that business was also the "home" in which their church met. Moving so often for them was not a sign of wealth but of seeking work opportunities. Among the named Christians are several slaves and freemen who were affiliated in some way with the emperor's family, though some slaves could be quite well off. Only a very few people were associated with the senatorial elite, and mostly this was wives rather than the actual senators, for whom such Christian affiliation would have been a death sentence. There is a lot of emphasis in early writings on the well-off supplying for the needs of poor, of which there were many more.

To close, Lampe looks at "fractionation" in the Roman church--that is, the division of the church into house churches. What did this mean for church structure, centralization, government, and doctrine? Lampe finds that most Christian groups in Rome were mostly independent, which allowed for disparities in doctrine and for great tolerance for such disparity among the groups. Valentinians, he finds, for example, mixed with other Christians; they weren't a distinct group meeting separately, except perhaps in addition to regular meetings. Those who did separate early, such a Marcion, did so in part because they made themselves pariahs but insisting on the properness of their views to the denigration of others; in other words, they as much separated themselves as the larger church separated from them.

There was no bishop overseeing the Roman congregations until very late. Lampe sees Victor as being the first to really attempt to lay down such power over all the groups, pushing out some who don't belong in his view. Some earlier elders, like Anicetus, Soter, and Eleutherius, were prominent, but they were more firsts among equals or men charged with dealing with outsiders in communication or gathering various congregational materials for the poor. It was these responsibilities that led to the eventual centralization of Roman church authority. (Jewish synagogues, Lampe finds, were similarly separate in power in Rome, unlike, say, in Alexandria, where there was a central council, into which all synagogues fed.)

These are intriguing ideas, though as Lampe acknowledges, there had to have been some degree of cooperation among elders of the various groups, for people like Clement or Soter to speak for all of them.

What does this suggest to me about those groups that continued to hold on more to Jewish practices? Alexandria's comparative centralization could mean that Jewish Christians were more quickly dismissed from the synagogues in total, leading to an earlier break with such traditions. The removal of Jewish people in general after 115 and the Kitos War would have also created an even cleaner break. In Rome, it would seem that some synagogues may have remained open to Christians, although Nero's reign of terror might have been a motivating factor in Jews separating from Christians earlier as well. Similarly, with a looser set of Christian groups, some groups may have remained more inclined to hold on to said traditions. That is, indeed, the argument of some regarding why Victor made the proclamation he did regarding the Quartodecimans, those who observed Passover rather than Easter. Some from Asia Minor likely held on to those traditions in their meetings in Rome, causing Victor to confront and attempt to remove not just them from fellowship but also all the congregations of Asia Minor. Much to think about.

On "Tishomingo Blues" by Elmore Leonard ***

2026-02-26T19:18:00.000-05:00

I added this Leonard novel to my list because of the unavailability of some other books and, gladly, because this is the one Leonard lists as being his favorite among the books he wrote. I can see why. The book involves a lot of material about Civil War reenactments, the Dixie Mafia, and Tunica, Mississippi, all topics that interest me. But in that is the problem, because whereas Leonard likely enjoyed the research, the book itself didn't translate terribly well into fiction. I'd have rather read nonfiction books on each of these subjects. What's more, having lived in Mississippi for three years and the South for decades, I found Leonard's evocation of the Deep South to be a little superficial; it just didn't feel like the work of someone who knows the South, with all the complexities that come with the region (the Civil War focus probably didn't help with presenting a more nuanced view of the area).

The plot of this one didn't really grip me either. In the end, what it is about is two warring underworld factions, one gang essentially beating up on another to take over the other's turf. Crime pays, in much of Leonard's fiction, even if the criminal who gets paid in the end is the lesser of two evils--the person who happens in to a fortune rather than setting out to do bad stuff. This is true here, to an extent, but it's also true that some of the scummier people end up very well off; indeed, the book is full of scummy people, so it would be difficult to avoid such an end.

The central character of the book is Dennis Lenahan, a diver who takes his show on the road, playing to crowds at various attractions. A slow time finds him in Tunica, where he sets up as the attraction at a new casino/hotel. This is at a time when Tunica's fortunes were on the upswing, with legal gambling casinos along the river having brought much-needed tourists and money to the region. From his diving perch, Dennis witnesses a murder by a member of the so-called Dixie Mafia. Threatened if he dares to go to the authorities with what he's seen, Dennis stays quiet, dithering throughout the book about whether he should come clean and serve as a witness. News of his presence, however, leaks out anyway, which brings trouble for everyone.

Meanwhile, a man from Detroit named Robert befriends Dennis. Robert seems to know a lot about the Civil War, and he likes pushing the buttons of the folks he meets by claiming, for example, that a photograph he has of a lynching shows his grandfather (the lynchee) and the grandfather (the lyncher) of the persons to whom he shows the picture. Robert, though, isn't some civil rights provocateur; he's just another crook, looking to infiltrate the drug trade down South. The Civil War reenactment is a perfect cover to kill off the folks he needs to to pull off his plan, except of course that the southerners whose buttons he's pushed have similar plans for Robert and his crew. I didn't care about any of these jerks.

Dennis, in one way, is the worst of the bunch. He's not outright evil. In fact, he's dragged into the novel's events against his will. But it's his complicity that makes him so utterly frustrating. He doesn't seem to care as much about the right or wrong of any action as just staying out of trouble--but not because he seems scared. He comes off as a guy whose morality is governed simply by what is best for him. If he can get away with something, he'll do it, which makes him in a way a passive and less interesting character.