A More Christlike Word Review

In this book Brad Jersak attempts to unconfuse the common misconceptions about what the Bible is and who Jesus is, and he does it well. It opens with Brad’s own journey of the shifting understanding of scripture in his life as it became harder for him to hold to the recent Protestant inventions of Biblical infallibility and inerrancy. I say recent because neither early Christians nor the Judaic traditions have ever claimed this about scripture. In fact, Jewish tradition seems more aware and embracing of its discrepancies and contradictions than possibly anyone else.

Nevertheless, his main point becomes that for Christians there is an infallible Word of God that the New Testament writers point to, but his name is Jesus. From this point Brad puts the Bible back into its context as a liturgical text shared and interpreted by its community, especially in terms of how it points to God. Brad shows how the whole of scripture according to the early Christian traditions was seen as an unfolding drama of redemption. Yet, it itself is being told through the messiness and brokenness of human lives and it constantly reflects that.

What changes is when Christ claimed that all of scripture always testified about himself, which is what Brad calls the Emmaus Way of reading the Bible. He convincingly argues that Christians are not being disingenuous when reinterpreting the whole text through Jesus. Just as every Judaic interpretation comes from one of many rabbinic schools of tradition, so Christianity comes from its own rabbinic Jesus-tradition. This tradition reveals Jesus as the plot twist that makes us have to rethink and reinterpret everything that came before it.

So, if you have ever found yourself disturbed and confused over the Bible’s many tensions, good. You were paying attention. This book will be a helpful resource for reorienting you toward what to do with that trouble. In essence, it is okay for the Bible to be a text in travail because it is a saga that is going somewhere. But, as Brad contends, it is one that points toward the unpredictability and incomprehensibility of an infinitely merciful, redemptive and Christlike God.

 

(I received this book for free from Speakeasy in exchange for an honest review.)

Invisible Cities

Given that I write a lot of book reviews these days, I feel the need to state that this is Not a review of Invisible Cities. It is, nonetheless, personal lit-crit or a commentary on interesting themes that I noticed in the story. It may seem odd for a theology blog to engage this particular story, but I assure you it fits well with many of my past themes. 

This book, however, is what I consider to be an important work of literary art. I believe genuine art must be flexible enough to never be pinned down by one person’s interpretations, so my hope is to not discourage further engagement with the story, but rather the opposite.

As a brief synopsis, Invisible Cities is set in a fictional time and place with real historical characters: Genghis Kahn holding captive the renowned explorer Marco Polo with plans of executing him. Yet there is a catch to Polo’s captivity in that so long as Polo can keep Kahn fascinated with telling him detailed stories about all these cities that Kahn has conquered, though never bothered to visit, then Kahn will never get around to killing him. Thus, Polo tries to endlessly keep the stories going. Though Kahn is never quite sure whether he is being told the truth or not, it works. Khan is captivated by his descriptive stories of exploration.

At face value this entire book can look like a wonderful use of language moving interchangeably between poetry and prose with lots of ingenious word plays, and it definitely is, but it is also more.

There is a moment late in the book where Polo is traversing the countryside pastures, set between the cities, and Polo stops to exclaim that the pastures all look the same. But a shepherd nearby condemns Polo’s blindness to its wonderful differences. This pointedly sets juxtapose what Polo had been pointing out to Kahn about the cities. So, what I see is a possible counternarrative being brewed by Calvino calling forth sight to what the world has become blind to.

To borrow from another book to help make this point, in Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, the character Jayber is reflecting on his own invisible hometown and says, “Thousands of leaders of our state, nation, entire administrations, corporate board meetings, university sessions, synods and councils of the church have come and gone without hearing the name Port Williams. And how many such invisible, nameless, powerless little places are there in this world? All the world, as a matter of fact, is a mosaic of little places invisible to the powers that be. And in the eyes of the powers that be all of these invisible places do not add up to a visible place. They add up to words and numbers.” (p.139).

For me, this sums up what Calvino is at least indirectly pointing toward with Kahn's faulty understanding of place. To what degree he might have actually been saying this I cannot say. But if nothing else, Invisible Cities does seem to be a long meditation on difference; specifically difference among those who refuse to ever discover it. Those who cannot see it, power being especially guilty of this, mark all its conquests as being contained by a one-dimensional sameness to be enumerated among its own possessions. It is colonization and colonization is the work of control by creating sameness, but it does so with the consequences of eradicating beauty, choking life and robbing the world of its meaning. 

Yet in the process of this book, Calvino may just be recovering the language that undoes such spells of contentment to this. 

Samaritan Cookbook Review

I once unwittingly wondered why people still bought cookbooks when most recipes were available online. My aunt responded by saying that a good cookbook should be just as much a cultural experience as it is about preparing food because they belong together. To only get a recipe does not contribute to that. From that moment on I had the utmost respect and love for a cookbook that was also capable of drawing its reader into the experience of the people and place it is from.

For most of human history food and its preparation has been a thing of community that belongs to its land and knows it familiarly. Until the dawn of industrialized agriculture, commercial grocery, fast-food and tv-dinners (the real war on family and culture), everyone gathered to take part in growing food, food preparation, eating and even the lost art of conversation which all contributed to the fullness of its social dimension.

My point in opening a book review like this is that the “Samaritan Cookbook” captures this. The Samaritans have long been a people who remained close to their food, land and each other. Most people only know them from the Biblical instance when Jesus responds to the question of “Who is my neighbor?” with the parable of the “Good Samaritan.” To call them “good” was actually scandalizing to its original hearers as the Samaritans at that time were the hated/ostracized remnants out of the northern kingdom of Israel.

However, as this cookbook shows the Samaritans never ceased to be in that place nor did their Jewish way of life ever come to an end: religiously, culturally or dietarily. That they never left the land is very significant toward the heritage of these recipes as their hand has a long history in Middle Eastern cuisine. These recipes have been collected and handed down over many generations, but this is the first time that this specific collection has been translated into English.

As I have been making my way through these recipes, I have noticed familiar Mediterranean flavors, but I am finding a unique fluidity and simplicity in their ingredients and preparation that does not always exist in other cookbooks from these regions. Yet, their simple combinations never lack for taste or nourishment and to me this simplicity tells of their way of life and community. So, I recommend Samaritan Cookbook: A Culinary Odyssey from the Ancient Israelites to the Modern Mediterranean as a learning experience about the Samaritan people through their stories and food.

(I received this book for free from Speakeasy in exchange for an honest review.)