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Title: Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus by Thomas Cahill, Brian F. O'Bryne, Brian F. O'Byrne ISBN: 0-553-50238-7 Publisher: Random House Audio Publishing Group Pub. Date: 02 November, 1999 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 6 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.72 (93 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Everlasting in my Mind
Comment: So much intellectual discourse has been written in these reviews about this book. Allow me to give you a layman's review! Thomas Cahill's book is a smart, collegiate look at the times that surrounded Jesus, and it doesn't disappoint.
He examines the different Gospels and their approach to the story of the Jesus, and how each author tailor made the stories to suit a different audience (hence, the sometimes contradictions within the Gospels themselves), which I found delightfully enlightening.
His section on Paul was riveting, painting a picture of how a simple man could be so transformed by an event to change his life entirely. He also works to dispel some myths about Paul, particularly his sexist bias in his letters. He also bravely takes on some church doctrines that are apparently "Bible based", more power to him!
I did find the first chapter difficult to get through at times. I felt that Cahill was using terms and historical names that I wasn't too famililar with, and therefore, left the reader in the dark by failing to explain these people/events/terms. The muddy water soon clears, so just steer a course through the words and trust that your comprehension will come back!
Overall, Cahill's book summed up and affirmed much about what is known about Jesus and his times, and provides an inspiring look at Biblical events in the contexts of world history, leading to a deeper understanding of the Son that has transformed much of our own world.
Rating: 5
Summary: Thoughtful, Reflective, Respectful and Original -- Again
Comment: Desire of the Everlasting Hills, like Mr. Cahill's earlier two books, offers more information and insight than can be absorbed through a single reading. While I don't agree with everything the author (or Paul, for that matter) has to say, all of it deserves careful thought and reflection. As in The Gift of the Jews, Mr. Cahill sets the stage for the focus of the book by reviewing events that lead up to the main events. This isn't some "Chariot of the Gods". The author provides not unfounded speculation, but scholarly explanations that are consistent with what is known about how people lived and acted 2000 years ago. Some readers may feel that -- by providing academic, popular, alternative descriptions of issues central to our religious and secular worlds -- Mr. Cahill is playing with fire. I for one welcome the light and heat these books provide. If this book helps readers understand people from other cultures, religions and times, then it can also bring us closer to understanding each other in our own time. And that might be Mr. Cahill's greatest gift of all.
Rating: 5
Summary: Frank, gabby, open-eyed, and insightful.
Comment: Thomas Cahill is attempting something very difficult here. He is trying to tell the story of the person about whom everyone else has already told the story. He is trying to stand in the cataract of Jesus scholarship and grab out a few choice coins (not rocks), without getting drenched by a spray of technical verbiage. He is trying to write a biography that is chatty and colloquial, but also based on clear reasoning and sound scholarship. He is trying to write in a fair-minded manner about someone everyone either loves or claims to like in a deconstructionist manner that, finally, amounts to something resembling fear.
I have read quite a few similar attempts by non-scholars, or by scholars on Sunday afternoons, to do something like this, and I feel this one comes off pretty well. Probably the closest comparisons might be A. N. Wilson's skeptical Jesus, A Life (inferior), or Philip Yancey's mushy-evangelical The Jesus I Never Knew (not bad).
As you can see from reviews below, Cahill manages to offend a lot of Christians and secularists. Considering all the chances he is taking, both with style and substance, one might call that an accomplishment.
My advice would be to read a chapter before deciding if this is your style, if possible. I almost always found his arguments reasonable and informed, and I have read a lot of these books, on all sides. For me, the fact that he has literary pizzazz, and is not afraid to make a joke, maybe even a pun, does not hurt. This is not a book written by a robot. Cahill treats the text with the respect of relating it to the world of our experience, even if he is sometimes a tad groanish in doing so. Furthermore, while not a scholar, Cahill relies on a few fairly reasonable ones -- no, that does not include anyone in the Jesus Seminar, but unfornately, neither does it include N. T. Wright, in my view the best -- and he brings a fair amount of ecclectic background knowledge to the texts. (I was shocked to find him referring to the Chinese philosopher Yuan Zhiming, for example, who I thought was my secret.)
If some disrespectful comment here on John or another Gospel bothers you, try Craig Blomberg's Historical Reliability of the Gospels. If you ae attracted to the subtitle, "The World Before and After Jesus," but find too little about Jesus' impact on history, I might recommend Christianity on Trial, the fascinating works of Vishal Mangalwadi, or the relevent chapter of my own Jesus and the Religions of Man. If you're offended by Cahill because he makes bad jokes, I can't help you there. But I think he is ultimately serious about Jesus, and I'm with him there.
David Marshall / [email protected]
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Title: The Gifts of the Jews : How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels by Thomas Cahill ISBN: 0385482493 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 17 August, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill ISBN: 0385418493 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill ISBN: 0385495536 Publisher: Nan A. Talese Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Jesus' Little Instruction Book by Thomas Cahill ISBN: 0553374338 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 September, 1994 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Gospel According to Luke: Authorized King James Version (Pocket Canon) by Thomas Cahill ISBN: 0802136184 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1999 List Price(USD): $2.95 |
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