Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore
You know that foggy, where-am-I feeling you get after driving on the interstate for way too long, or after cramming all night for an exam? I've felt like that constantly for the past couple months! Very frustrating. At the end of the day, I'm never quite sure what I've done, how I've done it, or how I feel about it. How long have I been driving? Did I miss the exit? Get me to a Waffle House quick. I mean I'm kinda busy but I'm not that busy.
Lamb is charming and overdone, in that order. The first third, by far the best part, covers Joshua (Jesus) and Biff's childhood escapades. In the second part Josh and Biff travel east to find and learn from the wise men. The final section retells the Gospels - Joshua's public ministry as the Messiah.
My overall impression was that Moore had the most fun with the first two sections, but he felt obligated to tell the whole story, so he just muscled it out. I wish he'd done like Anne Rice and focused on a short boyhood time frame, one to three years - some kind of Huckleberry Finn adventure, with plenty of foreshadowing. I think that would have better served his comedic gifts. In any case, this is the funniest book about Jesus ever written!
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Week 18 - Holy Extended Family
Christ The Lord: Out of Egypt - Anne Rice
It's hard to read or think or write! I'm in a slump.
My favorite part of this book is the portrait of an "ordinary" 1st century Jewish extended family (when I read "household" in the NT, should I think of this type of family life?). Of course this holy family receives a difficult and mysterious calling, which they all, including Jesus, struggle to understand and respond to.
The two major plot devices: travel - from Egypt to Judea, then Galilee, then to and from Jerusalem again - and secrets - Jesus' family has kept the full story of his miraculous birth from him and others.
This book isn't as piercing as The Last Temptation or as potent as Jesus Christ Son of Man, but it is as earnest as those other two. It bears up under the weight of Rice's love.
All three Jesus novels have highlighted the landscape, or Jesus' interaction with the landscape. How important is the landscape in the Gospels as compared with other ancient biographies?
It's hard to read or think or write! I'm in a slump.
My favorite part of this book is the portrait of an "ordinary" 1st century Jewish extended family (when I read "household" in the NT, should I think of this type of family life?). Of course this holy family receives a difficult and mysterious calling, which they all, including Jesus, struggle to understand and respond to.
The two major plot devices: travel - from Egypt to Judea, then Galilee, then to and from Jerusalem again - and secrets - Jesus' family has kept the full story of his miraculous birth from him and others.
This book isn't as piercing as The Last Temptation or as potent as Jesus Christ Son of Man, but it is as earnest as those other two. It bears up under the weight of Rice's love.
All three Jesus novels have highlighted the landscape, or Jesus' interaction with the landscape. How important is the landscape in the Gospels as compared with other ancient biographies?
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Week 17 - 2-D or 3-D Jesus?
The Last Temptation of Christ - Nikos Kazantzakis
I've been in a complaining mood lately, so don't take my whining too seriously.
This book and the one I paired it with in my head - Gibran's Jesus The Son of Man - are beautiful, inventive, devotional. For both Gibran and Kazantzakis Jesus is the great Romantic Hero: striving, yearning, strong and sympathetic, a misunderstood poet, working outside institutions, overcoming worldly cares, a lover of nature and beauty, tragic yet triumphant. At the least, Jesus is our best self. Jesus fully integrates heaven and earth, in his existence and/or through his words and deeds.
Gibran's Jesus leans more towards the sage and mystic, and Kazantzakis' Jesus more towards the fear and trembling, existentialist kind of hero. I hope they got to read each other's work. Two wonderful writers, spiritually devoted to Jesus, sailing into his life with paper sails and a pen as rudder.
So...why are their Jesus's such dead characters? Maybe dead isn't the right word. Forced. We could chalk it up as another instance of the uninteresting-hero-in-an-interesting-cast-or-story problem, which I think is one of the great unsolved problems in the history of the universe.
You can tell as you read that Gibran and Kazantzakis both love Jesus very much, so perhaps they were trying too hard to get it right. It's as if they took a beloved icon, in all its two dimensional profundity, and tried to add perspective, make it 3-D, while still keeping the basic style of the icon. Jesus looks like a cartoon character on a live set. Who framed Roger Rabbit? Kazantzakis' Jesus is more human, Gibran's more divine, but they're stuck in a similar contortion - a mix-up of 2-D and 3-D conventions.
Another complaint - they both pin Paul as a power hungry fanatic. Also their female characters hang on the male characters, not just socially (mother, potential mother, wife, potential wife, servant) but spiritually: women's spirituality is portrayed mostly as sensuality - in relationship to a husband or child. One more gripe: Gibran paints a bleak picture of Jewish religion; Kazantzakis's is more lively, thankfully.
I've been in a complaining mood lately, so don't take my whining too seriously.
This book and the one I paired it with in my head - Gibran's Jesus The Son of Man - are beautiful, inventive, devotional. For both Gibran and Kazantzakis Jesus is the great Romantic Hero: striving, yearning, strong and sympathetic, a misunderstood poet, working outside institutions, overcoming worldly cares, a lover of nature and beauty, tragic yet triumphant. At the least, Jesus is our best self. Jesus fully integrates heaven and earth, in his existence and/or through his words and deeds.
Gibran's Jesus leans more towards the sage and mystic, and Kazantzakis' Jesus more towards the fear and trembling, existentialist kind of hero. I hope they got to read each other's work. Two wonderful writers, spiritually devoted to Jesus, sailing into his life with paper sails and a pen as rudder.
So...why are their Jesus's such dead characters? Maybe dead isn't the right word. Forced. We could chalk it up as another instance of the uninteresting-hero-in-an-interesting-cast-or-story problem, which I think is one of the great unsolved problems in the history of the universe.
You can tell as you read that Gibran and Kazantzakis both love Jesus very much, so perhaps they were trying too hard to get it right. It's as if they took a beloved icon, in all its two dimensional profundity, and tried to add perspective, make it 3-D, while still keeping the basic style of the icon. Jesus looks like a cartoon character on a live set. Who framed Roger Rabbit? Kazantzakis' Jesus is more human, Gibran's more divine, but they're stuck in a similar contortion - a mix-up of 2-D and 3-D conventions.
Another complaint - they both pin Paul as a power hungry fanatic. Also their female characters hang on the male characters, not just socially (mother, potential mother, wife, potential wife, servant) but spiritually: women's spirituality is portrayed mostly as sensuality - in relationship to a husband or child. One more gripe: Gibran paints a bleak picture of Jewish religion; Kazantzakis's is more lively, thankfully.
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