A Book Every Jew Should Read . . .

. . . and every Christian and every Muslim, too. Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus is a primer on the New Testament that aims to introduce the layman to the fundamentals of textual criticism. In addition to laying bare a number of ways in which Christian scribes altered the Biblical text to justify the Church's growing antisemitism in the early centuries after Christ, the book also contains fascinating discussions of the differences among the Gospels — particularly Mark and Luke — and the political and theological agendas of different scribes that led them to copy and miscopy the Bible in particular ways. (One minor point is that the rolling cadences of the Authorized Version were based on a Greek text that was corrupt and partly concocted.)

Equally fascinating is Ehrman's description of the methodology and labor that have been employed by Biblical scholars in hopes of recovering the lost "originals" of the New Testament manuscripts.

Jews and Muslims should take no solace in the discomfiture of the adherents of the New Testament, however. Ehrman suggests that the Hebrew scriptures suffer from fewer variants only because fewer manuscripts have survived, and he speculates that textual criticism of the Koran would reveal the same 'fingerprints' of human composition as the New Testament.

Double Hitch

I just finished two vastly entertaining books by the irrepressible Christopher Hitchens: Why Orwell Matters and god is not Great. Of the two, the first was more instructive and the second more entertaining.

Why Orwell Matters tackles the question of why Orwell has worn so well when so many of his contemporaries are unreadable. Hitchens unflinchingly addresses both Orwell's legendary moral clarity and his moral lapses — mainly with respect to women and gays. Acknowledging the limitations of Orwell's early fictional efforts, in contrast to his lifelong mastery of the essay, Hitchens also shows how Orwell found his voice by the time he wrote Animal Farm and, in the shadow of impending death, 1984. Hitchens, a former Marxist, has a thorough mastery of the factional politics of Orwell's time on both the Right and the Left, and clearly delineates how Orwell, having been a forceful supporter of the war against Germany, made his name exposing the less apparent but equally monstrous evil of Stalinism at a time when many of his contemporaries were seeking to palliate it. On a minor note, I enjoyed the mention of Orwell's composing Coming Up for Air in Morocco, and the wicked skewering of French criticism and Claude Simon that comes as a coda to the book.

god is not Great, though it has a profounder subject, is in some ways a shallower book. A classic vituperative essay, it seeks not merely to show that religion is false but that it is wicked. Hitchens cites religion's laughable creation myths (and consequent enmity to science), its celebration of blood sacrifice, its genital mutilation, and its sexual repression as being among the qualities that have a poisonous influence on moral and civic life. In covering so much ground in several hundred pages, however, the book necessarily has a more general focus than, say, Hitchens' extended essay on Orwell.

R.I.P. David Halberstam

David Halberstam, 73, Dies in Car Crash - New York Times

The Dean of Modern Journalism and one of the Vietnam War's most intrepid reporters is dead at 73 after being hit broadside in a car accident in Menlo Park, California. A reporter to the end, Mr. Halberstam was conducting research for a book when he died. We mourn for Mr. Halberstam and for the books he will never write and note the bitter irony of a death on America's streets of one who endured so many perils abroad.

Carterized

eatbees blog Jimmy Carter vs. Israel Eatbees has a generally favorable take on Jimmy Carter's new book on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Andrew Sullivan, commenting on Jeffrey Goldberg's review in the Washington Post, has a less favorable view. Goldberg seems to feel that Carter is excessively biased in favor of the Palestinians, but he does not address the continuing loss of life and property on the Palestinian side of the Wall, only the deaths of Israelis by Palestinian suicide bombers. My only conclusion is that I am looking forward to reading the book.

Epic Achievement

Robert Fagles - Report - New York Times

Robert Fagles follows his celebrated translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey with a new translation of the Aeneid, becoming in the process one of the few people to translate all three epics. Remarkably, Fagles, who earned his doctorate in English literature, taught himself Greek and Latin. The Times' review has an interesting discussion of the subtle distinctions that Fagles attempted to capture between the poem's "public" voice and the private voice expressiong Aeneas' personal anguish.

Denial

I have just finished Bob Woodward's State of Denial. I can't quote from it, because I have already lent my copy to a friend. However, I can say it is a very clear explanation of how the Iraq War, a bad decision in the first place, went from bad to worse. Most of the outline should be known to any reader of the newspaper by now, but the details are quite telling. Perhaps most revealing for me was Woodward's account of Jay Garner's telling Donald Rumsfeld the United States had made three tragic mistakes: disbanding the Iraqi army, purging the government of mid-level Ba'ath party members, and refusing to meet with a provisional government. Garner's analysis, however, does not begin to capture the fundamental wrongheadedness of the prosecution of the war portrayed by Woodward, from the futile search for the Weapons of Mass Destruction that never were to the willful deafness to any kind of bad news.

The Road Back

I am reading the final chapters of 1812:Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow. Reading about the last stages of Napoleon's retreat in subzero termperatures, I have never been so attached to my nose as when reading how the noses and toes of Napoleon's soldiers broke off in the cold. Soldiers who did not freeze were in many cases burned alive in overcrowded huts, starved to death, murdered for their supplies, or, in some cases, killed in combat or picked off by the Cossacks. By the end of the march, Napoleon's 650,000 man Grande Armee had essentially ceased to exist.

50 Percent

A good friend of mine remarked over dinner the other night that you have read everything you need to read if you have read Moby Dick and the Brothers Karamazov. Guess that means that I am halfway there.

Time's Top 100

The Complete List | TIME Magazine - ALL-TIME 100 Novels

Time Magazine picks the 100 best English language novels since 1923, when Time started publishing. (Ulysses was published in 1922, so it does not make the list.) The list may say more about Time than about the novels. (What is Judy Blume doing there?) However, it is quite entertaining to read the mini-reviews of the critics, and there are several intriguing titles previously unknown to me.

Still Crazy After All These Years

The Hand of Time


It has been 36 years since he published "Slaughterhouse-Five," his breakthrough novel about a time-and-space traveler named Billy Pilgrim, the planet Tralfamadore and the firebombing of Dresden by Allied forces during World War II.

Juvenile, simplistic . . . maybe, but you've still got to love Kurt Vonnegut.