We have winners for the two up-for-grab issues of Books & Culture, May/June 2010 issue! Renae and Lindsey. Congratulations, you two! If you’ll e-mail me at comment4elissa at gmail dot com and provide me with your addresses, I shall send them straightaway. Happiest of reading to you. John Wilson, my editor at Books & Culture, […]
God as Literary Character – Part 2
I’ve been reading God: A Biography by Jack Miles, and have found so many things worth thinking about. For my preliminary thoughts, see yesterday’s post here. We are all our fathers and our mothers, in that we inherited 23 chromosomes from one, and 23 from the other. We have nothing all our own. That said, […]
God as Literary Character
I’m devouring this book–God: A Biography by Jack Miles. Of course, I’m hoping some of it will be useful and translatable for my second novel. [Jack Miles, “a former Jesuit, pursued religious studies at Pontifical Gregorian College, Rome, and the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and holds a doctorate in Near Eastern languages from Harvard University.”] The Bible […]
A Long Way From Tipperary
Although not all of Crossan’s book A Long Way From Tipperary was riveting to me (I skimmed the personal parts, devoured the spiritual thoughts), I found a few nuggets that meant something to me. [Crossan is an ex-monk, ex-priest who’s written myriads of books on the historical Jesus.] If you, dear reader, have followed my […]
Heresy Was Not Always Heresy
When you become a Christian, you are told that “God has a plan for your life” and “Jesus died on the cross for your sins” and “You will go to heaven when you die.” But you aren’t told where all that doctrine came from. Well, other than the pat phrase, “Yes, it’s all there. Right […]