Harper Perennial edition 1983

(1) BIBLE & BIBLICAL MYTHOLOGY:

MANFRED BARTHEL – WHAT THE BIBLE REALLY SAYS (1982)

Genesis and apocalypse, alpha and omega, allelujah and amen!

Of course, the Bible itself is my primary book on this subject, with it and biblical mythology each in top spot in my Top 10 Mythology Books and Top 10 Mythologies respectively. It’s helped into top spot in that for many people it is not just mythology but religion – hence I take a broad view of this subject to extend to Jewish or Christian folklore such as angels and saints.

The most prominent Biblical figure in my reading – reflecting the prolific number of books on him – would be Jesus, particularly with analysis or studies of what is often termed the historical Jesus (as opposed to the mythic or religious Christ), hence a few of my honorable mentions here. On the other hand, my personal favorite book of the Bible is the Book of Apocalypse, or as I like to call it, Babylon and the Beast – hence my special mention for Jonathan Kirsch, who wrote about it in A History of the End of the World.

It doesn’t stop there. As I like to quip, it’s the book that doesn’t stop giving, even after you stop believing – but also with respect to reading other books, including other entries in my Top 10 Mythology Books or special mentions. Specifically, there’s the aforementioned special mention for Jonathan Kirsch, with his books on biblical subjects other than The Book of Apocalypse – primarily the Old Testament but also manifestations of religious belief within Christianity. More generally, there’s my top ten entries for Barbara Walker’s The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets as well as the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, each of which has a substantial number of their encyclopedia or dictionary entries on Biblical subjects or broader subjects within Jewish or Christian folklore.

However, the keynote book I’ve selected for this special mention for books on the Bible or biblical mythology is Manfred Barthel’s What the Bible Really Says. The book is summed up in its subtitle, “casting new light on the book of books” – or as per the longer blurb or precis this edition (which is the one I have) has on its front cover for some reason, “fascinating archaeological discoveries and surprising new translations are enriching our understanding of what the Bible really says. Here readers of all religious persuasions will find fresh insights to illuminate and make the Bible more meaningful and exciting reading”.

Given the book was published in 1982, that light is not so new anymore but it remains highly, well, illuminating. I’m not so sure about that “readers of all religious persuasions”, or that “exciting reading” for that matter – as I like to quip, the Bible may be the Word of God but in that case He needed a good editor. Barthel is forthright from the outset that any serious study of the Bible has to abandon any notions of fundamentalism or literalism – that the Bible is literally true in every aspect. However, those inclined to skepticism towards any historicity in the Bible may find their views challenged equally.

What the Bible Really Says is the source of my hot take about the Bible, to antagonize both believers and skeptics – that the Bible is a lot less historical than fundamentalist believers usually maintain, but more historical than skeptics usually give it credit.

Among other things, it proposes more naturalistic explanations of apparently supernatural miracles. For example, it queries that people have proposed all sorts of different explanations, allegorical or otherwise, for the burning bush, until only recently thinking to ask a botanist whether there was a plant capable of matching that description. And indeed there is – a species of plant that accumulates an oil on its leaves, which can then ignite in the sun and burn off, harmlessly without affecting the leaf or plant.

And so on – with little interpretative nuggets like that throughout the book, literally from genesis to apocalypse.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – WHAT ELSE?)

Oxford University Press, 3rd edition

(13) PHILIP JENKINS – THE NEXT CHRISTENDOM: THE COMING OF GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY

This book was – dare I say it? – a revelation.

That is not to say it was positive or negative, given the word revelation is often used to imply the former, but it was a dramatic paradigm shift for me. Previously, I had assumed that the world was slowly but steadily becoming more secular, with religion inexorably on the wane – perhaps with Islam as something of an outlier but particularly for Christianity, such that the world might be seen as increasingly post-Christian.

As I like to quip, I live in a Nietzschean world with a Freudian mind, so it was all too easy for my own assumption to follow the influence of Nietzsche’s pronouncement that God is dead, with increasingly fewer people showing up to the wake.

So did the revelation of this book prove that assumption to be true or false? Well…yes and no, but mostly yes.

The assumption is by and large true for the West, with some outliers – notably the United States, where there is substantial resistance to the more advanced secularization in Europe.

However, it is not true elsewhere and this book’s essential thesis is that, due to demography, the West is an increasingly smaller part of the world as a whole – waning in population in proportion to the so-called global South, certainly in relative terms and potentially even in absolute terms. And the assumption definitely does not hold for the South, where religion is booming – which looks to remain the case for the foreseeable future, until at least later in this century.

Not all religion mind you, as the book identifies three predominant religious currents booming in the global South – conservative Catholicism, fundamentalist Protestantism and Islam. The first two of course are currents within the religion of Christianity, which is the book’s primary focus. To sum up the book’s thesis in a nutshell, while Christianity West is waning, Christianity South is booming. (One was tempted to say Christianity East as well as Christianity South, particularly to connote Christianity in Asia as well as the symmetry in opposition with Christianity West, but that risked confusion with Orthodoxy).

Two interesting points stick most in my mind from this book. The first and more substantial point was that this was not some radical redirection of history, but in many ways history turning full circle to Christianity’s origin – where, for the first centuries of its existence, Christianity was predominantly an Asian and African religion, not a European one.

The second point, less substantial but more amusing as irony, is its reference to a work of SF satire, in which a future Christian Africa sends missionaries to a non-Christian Europe – a work that, as the book points out, may resemble satire less and less in the foreseeable future.

The book’s author Philip Jenkins is an American historian of religion with a focus on Christianity and has written a number of books on it, both for its future (as here) and its past. This is the only book of his that I have read so far, but hope to read more in the expectation that they prove to be as engaging as this one.

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)