Contents:
Certainly a topic worth considering, Carroll undertakes a strange compositional journey to get there. Reviewers have little choice but to push forward, but the non-contractually obligated may choose another course. The strange introduction involves an explanation as to how man evolved from the Big Bang to cave dwellers to hunter-gatherers and so on.
This rambling account could be justified if it induced a certain eureka moment in upcoming chapters, but unfortunately, it only serves to illustrate the need for a more discerning editorial eye. Emerging from the desert on page 44, the trial ends. Carroll dives headlong into what he should have started much earlier: In his mind, this religious violence is unacceptable.
With precious few pages left, Carroll seems to realize that the work is incomplete without his prescriptions for civilizational healing. Unfortunately, a prescription leading to world peace cannot be written in 19 pages, and certainly not when one of the recommendations is a thinly veiled call for humanity to link hands and sing Kumbayah.
Carroll is right to be fascinated by religion. What people believe is hugely important and has a tremendous impact on human behavior and interaction. But cheap entreaties demanding a shared worldview turn a blind eye to what is best in mankind: There is no neat solution to the problems that have long caused humans to fight and kill one another. Join the Monitor's book discussion on Facebook and Twitter. Best nonfiction books of Already a Monitor Daily subscriber? This website uses cookies to improve functionality and performance. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
Carroll carps that the "Old Testament contains six hundred passages that speak of bloody killing' Carroll, who once attended a seminary, knows perfectly well that the early Christians had to contend with heretics who fell away from the church on this very point, so he must have heard the answer. The Old Testament was written during a primitive era by a people relating their history as they understood it.
They said God was wrathful, or that he changed his mind. Christian theologians dismissed the idea that God could be angry. Or even stub his toe and have a bad day. Christians said entire of the Old Testament had to be viewed through the new revelations of Jesus Christ, and these were revelations of love, from a God who was love itself, and joy, since Christ conquered death. St Augustine explained that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is revealed in the New, a phrase I'll bet Carroll heard at least fifty times in seminary, yet curiously cannot recall today.
Carroll is consumed by a shivering, ugly hatred of Christianity, yet smiles fondly at "the benign tolerance of paganism. Tolerant Romans butchered every single Druid they could lay their hands on and every Carthaginian.
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The tolerant Carthaginians slaughtered their own children in industrial quantities, as a bribe so they could prevail against the Romans. The tolerant Aztecs and Mayans yanked the still beating hearts from thousands of unfortunates every single year, including children, before settling down to their jolly feasts featuring body parts of the people they had just murdered. The tolerant pagan gods cared not a whit about pedophilia, also practiced on an industrial scale by both ancient Greeks and Romans. Nor did the Stoics. Only the Christians cared enough about it to end it.
And I doubt Ignatius of Antioch, as he was being fed to the lions, was thinking, "Golly, what luck I was born into the tolerant Roman empire. What a hurtful lie. The crucifixion was an act of breathtaking sacrificial love for humanity. And it was a donation, not a requirement by the Father. The consequences Carroll refuses to examine: The complete failure of his thesis is revealed when he can only find the Crusades to put forward as proof of Christianity's "violence Yes, in two thousand years. Sounding pathetic and desperate, he later grouses over the war to free the slaves. And as for the Crusades and their "perversions" he fails to mention a few salient points.
Before the Islamic armies came, the vast arc of territory which was originally under the Roman empire, had been Christian. Four popes came from North Africa, and there were some bishoprics across Africa, Egypt, and the Middle East, the population totaling about fifty percent of the Christian world.
Which all fell to the Muslims. The first Crusade was called when the pope had received a letter pleading for help, as an enormous Islamic army was close to Constantinople. A good book on the subject: Carroll claims Crusaders traveled home laden with "plunder". At least half of those who went on a Crusade died, a fact well known at the time, which is why going on a Crusade was seen as a penitential act, and as for "plunder", it is remarkably hard to get plunder when all you do is lose.
How odd, then, that they resulted in two thousand years of hospitals that tended to the deaf, the sick, and the blind, and those stricken with leprosy.
Even today, with all the government aid available, Catholic nuns and priests tend to the majority of lepers in the world and one third of AIDS patients. Even while they were being persecuted by the tolerant Romans, Christians were raising money to help the poor or as aid in times of famine.
A belief that God was truth itself, the Logos, and that, because we are born rational creatures, we should seek to understand God and the world by use of logic, began in the west as a result of belief in a rational God. Technology is a fruit of this belief. So were international human rights, proposed by fourteenth century nominalism. Christian theology argued against slavery, so slavery was ended across all but the fringes of Europe. Much later, in , the papal bull Sicut Dudum the pope declared that anyone who bought, sold, or kept a slave was excommunicated.
This was followed by half a dozen other papal bulls saying the same thing. Such books as "Handbook of Religion and Health" or "Who Really Cares", exhaustively went over the research on religious people compared to those who were non religious. The religious were much less likely to steal, cheat, lie, commit a crime, commit adultery, they had children who achieved higher outcomes, and gave to charity in far higher amounts than the non religious.
Good books on the subject of how Christianity changed the world for the better: Then perhaps Carroll could explain why the Sadducees wanted him dead. In the by-and-by, therefore, anything goes" p The only Christians consumed with the other world were saints such as Father Maximilian Kolbe, who gave up his life for that of a married Jew in the Nazi death camps. Violence tends to be what happened to the saints, not what they practiced. And calling Christianity "history's most potent source of violence" is hyperbolic He's never heard a whisper of the ten commandments?
The errors stagger on: This is humiliatingly silly overreach, but he's desperate because the New Testament calls for forgiving your enemy seven times seventy a day, not exactly a cry for "bloody mayhem". The only people in the history of Christianity actually influenced by Revelation were a few village schizophrenics and the occasional small nest of hysterics. And "the bloody mayhem that will be the mark of" Christianity? Didn't he have an editor? Or a history book? Oh, those crudely superstitious Christians, so unlike the glittering genius that is Carroll.
He gives the game away: Believers, poor dullard clods. At the end of the book, he introduces his preference to Judaism or Christianity.
Ah, a glimmer of truth in his mountain of fabrications. Carroll's good religion is the absence of religion! Why, we are all shocked, shocked! Who could have seen this coming? The only thing Carroll claims is holy is "the therapist" p I am not making this up. The holy therapist is where you go to worship self. Please, pray for him. James Carroll goes back to prehistoric times as he relates the story of monotheism. He explores the actual and metaphorical history of Jerusalem; follows the intertwined threads of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity; and carries us up to the present day problems in the Middle East.
He matches his scholarship with emotional engagement.
I loved the book. One person found this helpful 2 people found this helpful. James Carroll at his best! Regardless of one's faith or lack of it, the book is worth reading to better understand its prominence today. Wonderful and enlightening book. Gives great insight about the history. Packed with amazing information, which is to say: A highly recommended study. I'm amazed page after page with new sight lines on Judaism and Christianity. The book is a huge intellectual adventure, and a very rewarding read provided you give it the time.
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