The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

Knight Death and Devil by Albrecht Durer (1472-1528AD)

This is one of the most fascinating and enjoyable books I’ve read in a while.  It was written in the early 19^th century and the story is placed a century earlier than that. 

The story takes place in Scotland where a family of Colwan live on the lordly estate of Dalcastle. George Colwan, the Lord of the Manor marries a woman, Rabine, as different from himself as if he were trying to create a marriage out of chiaroscuro counterpoint.  George is one for gaiety and frivolity while his wife, a staunch Calvinist, rejects any practice that might be even remotely light hearted. Their differing views cause such a breach in their relationship that at first Lady Dalcastle returns to the home of her father.  Therein follows a pretty funny episode.

 

Rabine's father wants to know why she has left her husband and returned to his estate.  His daughter rants for a while describing her husband’s moral and religious failings.  Her father professes to be so upset and offended by his son-in-law’s unchristian behavior towards his daughter that he proceeds to beat his daughter claiming that since his son-in-law is not present to receive his due flagellation, his wife is the appropriate proxy.

“What do you mean, sir?” said the astonished damsel.

“I meant to be revenged on that villain Dalcastle,” said he, “for what he has done to my daughter.  Come hither, Mrs. Colwan, you shall pay for this.”

So saying, the baillie began to inflict corporal punishment on the runaway wife.  His strokes were not indeed very deadly, but he made a mighty flourish in the infliction, pretending to be in a great rage only at the ‘Laird of Dalcastle’.  “Villain that he is!” exclaimed he, “I shall teach him to behave in such a manner to a child of mine...Take you that and that, Mrs. Colwan, for your husband’s impertinence!”

Rabine may be narrow minded but she’s not completely stupid.  She understands that this is her father’s not so subtle way of saying, “you made your bed etc...”  So she returns to her husband at Dalcastle.  They lead separate lives and stay in separate parts of the castle.  Lady Dalcastle develops a close relationship with the local Presbyterian minister while Mr. Colwan blatantly takes on a mistress.

 It’s not clear whether Mrs. Colwan and the minister have anything other than a relationship based on common religious principles, but she produces two sons, the oldest, George, who belongs to Lord Colwan and a younger, Robert, who may or may not be the Reverend's son.

It’s these two sons from which the real story begins.  George is raised by his father and the other by the mother. It is the son, Robert,  raised by Lady Dalcastle around whom the story centers. 

George is found murdered.  As the facts come to light, it reveals that it is his Robert, brother (or half brother) that murdered him.

The story is narrated in an interesting way. It’s not many writers that should attempt switching person narratives in a story but Hogg does it brilliantly.  First the circumstances surrounding George is described through an editor who briefly uses first person but for the most part writes in third person.  As the culprit is eventually found to be Robert, the narrator changes to first person narrative with Robert as the narrator. The final chapter of the book uses a different first person narrator and concludes with a final statement of the murderer.

This book reflects James Hogg’s fascination with the religious beliefs and country lore of the Gaelic people of Scotland.  It is rich in colloquial dialect and idiomatic use of the language as well as a sophisticated eloquence in expression that no longer exists in our modern usage of the language.

The story is deeply psychological in nature.  After he is arrested for his brother’s murder, while in prison, the Robert writes down his confession.  It is titled, “The Private memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: written by Himself.”

In his narrative, Robert explains his religious upbringing at the hands of his simple minded mother and the religiously narrow Reverend Wringhim.  It is imprinted on him from an early age that those who are chosen cannot lose their salvation therefore, they cannot do anything-be it ever so heinous- that would send them to hell.

From the first section of the book through the eyes of  the editor, we get a picture of Robert as an arrogant, anti-social person.  This enables the reader to understand how such a person could become led into a false understanding of what it means to be chosen or the assurance of salvation.

I believe some people might read into Hogg’s book an anti-reformed theology attitude, but this underestimates the level of sophistication of Hogg’s writing.  People’s beliefs are so much more complicated than simply black and white.  It is possible to hold onto a vestige of the truth and through one’s own pride and self-will distort that truth until what the person believes is no longer truth but falsehood.  This is the case with Rabine.  Her intention was never to cultivate a close relationship with God or glorify Him through sincere worship, but to inflate her own vanity in believing she was superior to her husband. 

She nurtures this same pride into her son who develops it to a degree that she never anticipated.  In the end she dimly begins to understand the Frankenstein she has unwittingly created. 

And that is what happens.  In his own words, Robert meets with a man, Gil-Martin, who wields a powerful influence over his life.  As Robert expands on his relationship with this other man it becomes apparent to the reader that this other person is not human but in fact something evil.  As the story progresses we become aware that Robert is under the complete sway of a demon.

The demon persuades Robert that he must “purge” the earth of all of those who are not chosen.  That it was not murder to do so, but, in fact, was work commissioned to him by God.  He quotes all sorts of scripture to justify this point.  Robert wavers at first, but doesn’t have the strength or knowledge of Scripture to counter him.  Apparently, for all his mother and the Reverend’s teachings, endowing her son with a grounded knowledge in Scriptures wasn’t included.

The Last Judgement by Luca Signorelli 1500AD

The discussions back and forth between the demon and Robert remind me of Jesus’ temptation by Satan in the desert.  The difference was that Jesus did know his Bible and was able to point out how Satan twisted Scripture in an attempt to tempt Jesus into committing wicked acts.

Gil-Martin uses the same tactics on Robert but, unlike Jesus, he has no defense.  Consequently, he commits various acts of murder and other wicked deeds, even some to his own horror. It’s a great illustration of someone who becomes a slave to his own corrupted nature.

The story ends a hundred years later when a grave is found at a crossroads.  It is the burial of a suicide.  The grave is dug up and Robert’s manuscript is discovered in the grave site.

I've read some reviews on this book that suggest that Gil-Martin could be a figment of Robert's imagination but the reason I don't think so is because after Robert's death, third party witnesses claim to see two people preparing to hang themselves but the grave reveals only one.

James Hogg came from farmer stock.  He over came the British class caste by educating himself and becoming a nationally renowned writer.  His stories often target the upper class and portray the common man as the hero.

Indeed, it is in the servants that we hear the truth of God’s word spoken. 

The servant John tells Lord Dalcastle exactly the sort of man he is:

“Well, John, and what sort of general character do you suppose mine to be?”

“Yours is a Scripture character, sir, an’ I’ll prove it.”

“I hope so, John.  Well, which of the Scripture characters do you think approximates nearest to my own?”

“...Ye are the just Pharisee, sir, that gaed up wi’ the poor publican to pray in the Temple; an’ ye’re acting the very same pairt at this time, an’ saying i’ your heart, ‘God I thaink thee that I am not as other men...”

A debate ensues between the servant John and Dalcastle where as the latter thinks it is a good thing to be a self-righteous Pharisee while John correctly points out that Jesus' parable was a warning against religious hypocrisy.

It is a clever method on Hogg’s part to have true wisdom disguised in heavy Gaelic dialect while the aristocrats, with their cultivated speech, are blind to the truth and are full of self-satisfaction.

The book should be a matter of interest, I think, to all Christians, simply because the topic of predestination and assurance of salvation are hotly debated subjects between denominations.

Below I’ve included the links to other blogs that have also reviewed this book from a different viewpoint than mine.  Thanks to Brian at Babbling Books for calling this great book to my attention.  I have since downloaded all of James Hogg’s books onto my Kindle (they’re free!)

James Hogg

 $1.99 on Kindle

Babbling Books

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetime-the-private-memoirs-and-confessions-of-a-justified-sinner-by-james-hogg-7621915.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Memoirs_and_Confessions_of_a_Justified_Sinner

http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue262/justified_sinner_rev.html

When Children Want Children and Rosa Lee: two books by Leon Dash

In 1984, Leon Dash, a journalist for the Washington Post, rented an apartment in a Washington D.C. ghetto for eighteen months and became intimately involved with six families.  He journaled his experiences with these families in an attempt to get at the heart of why so many black girls become unwed mothers.

 What he found was that it was not a lack of education or government intervention plans that allowed it.  These young girls knew exactly what they were doing.  They were not simply being promiscuous and finding themselves pregnant.  They were having sex and multiple sex partners with the objective of getting pregnant.

 They knew all about sex education from school.  The local clinics provided them with free birth control as well as state funded abortions.  These girls used none of these things.  They wanted to get pregnant.  They pursued sex with the intention of getting pregnant.

Dash realized these girls were not the victims but were the aggressors who pressured boys and even men to have sex with them for no other reason than to have children.

This unexpected discovery led Dash to search for answers.  Why were these girls engaging in a practice that produced poverty and misery?  His search caused him to delve into the back story and family tree of each of these girls. 

His conclusions were that these girls were not getting pregnant to increase a welfare check or out of ignorance but because the culture of their community elevated the status of women when they became mothers.  He traces this phenomenon back to the generation of these girls’ great grandparents who were sharecroppers in the south.

  He holds the white plantation owners who enslaved and sexually abused the black women responsible for this generational cycle of out of wedlock pregnancy.

Dash’s second book, Rosa Lee:  A Mother and Her Family in Urban America is about a woman in her fifties, Rosa Lee, who is a heroin addict and is HIV positive.  All but two of her eight children are also drug addicts and criminals and two of them are also HIV positive.

Dash spent four years with Rosa getting to know her and her family.  Again he searched their backgrounds and pretty much arrives at the same conclusion as in his first book:  that living as share croppers in the south caused a break down of the family and produced the lawlessness, out of wed lock pregnancies, and eventual death of Rosa and her two children.

Dash in both books is unapologetic and honest.  He traces Rosa’s life of crime to when she stole as a child that led to her shoplifting as an adult.  She even trained her children and grandchildren how to steal and sell the stolen items.

 Her recurring theme is, “I’m just trying to survive!”  However, that doesn’t explain that most of the money she obtains through her criminal behavior, prostituting herself as well as her children, and also her and her children’s welfare checks go to maintain her heroin habit.

Dash shows the remorselessness of Rosa.  She admits that what she’s doing is wrong but she doesn’t try to stop.  She not only endangers her children but gets them addicted to the drugs as well.  When a man offers her money to have sex with her nine year old daughter she accepts.  This daughter eventually becomes a heroin addict and also develops AIDS.  Even after being diagnosed with the disease, Rosa and her daughter and a son, who also has AIDS, refuse to stop having sex.  They bluntly inform Dash that they don’t care if they transmit the disease to anyone else.

She makes drug transactions through her grade school aged grand children because the police won’t arrest them.

I found both books to be tragic tales of self-destructive lives but I did not find Dash’s conclusions (basically, it’s the white man’s fault) to answer every question.

First of all, as Dash himself admits, most black families who came up out of poverty in the post Civil war south, including sharecroppers, did not turn to a life of drug addiction and crime.  Secondly many white families (my father’s included) came out of similarly hard circumstances.  Before the 1960’s the majority of black and white families from poverty-stricken backgrounds moved up to middle class status.

Even out of Rosa’s extended family, out of all her brothers and sisters, she’s the only one that turned to a life of crime and drug addiction.  The cycle of criminal behavior started with her, not before.

Finally, the percentage of white and black families that are being raised by single moms, and more and more often grandmothers, has grown exponentially since the 1960’s.  Before 1965, less than thirty percent of black children were born out of wedlock.  That number is now eighty percent.  Forty percent of white children are now born out of wedlock.  The majority of these children live under the poverty line.

Dash insists that government welfare checks aren’t the reason the women in his first book are having babies or causing people like Rosa to become drug addicts.  Maybe so, but they certainly aren’t preventing it and they definitely are enabling it.

Rosa and her children-with the exception of two who left and joined the middle class- never made it past grade school.  The pubic school just kept passing them through the grades until they dropped out.  Rosa couldn’t even read.  Yet she was a rocket scientist when it came to working the system.  She knew how to get a welfare check for every single child she had.  She went to a methadone clinic to get her drug fix for free, yet still spent most of the government checks on drugs and used charity organizations to feed her children.

 The checks didn’t stop her from shoplifting.  When she was in the hospital, one son came to visit her and while there stole the phones from the rooms on her floor and sold them to local stores.

Leon Dash said he wrote these books to alarm the rest of us into action.  But he provides no solutions.  He can’t.  As a secularist he has to admit that man made institutions did not help urban America, they enabled it.

The problem is a moral and a spiritual one.  As Rosa herself proved, even if Dash, while faithfully recording her life, refuses to come to that conclusion. 

In the year before she died of AIDS.  Rosa joined her local church and became a Christian.  For the first time in her life, her body was free from drugs.  For the first time she looked back on her life and regretted the devastation she wrecked on herself and her family. 

Her body may have become a victim to disease, but in the end her spirit was delivered from corruption.

Even though I don’t agree with Dash’s viewpoint, I congratulate him on boldly taking on a serious plight in our society that is eating away at its stability like a cancer.  I saw this first hand when I taught in public school and he’s right.  The rest of America needs to acknowledge this travesty and seek ways to take action.

As a Christian I have my own opinions, of course and I also have opinions about seriously reforming our government welfare and educational system but those are subjects for another time.

Leon Dash (born (1944-03-16)March 16, 1944, in New Bedford, Massachusetts) is a professor of journlism at the University of Illinois in Champagne.  A former reporter for the Washington Post, he is the author of Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America, which grew out of the eight-part Washington Post series for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.  (From Wikipedia)

The Art if Readable Writing by Rudolf Flesch

   Even though Flesch wrote his book in the 1940’s, it’s instruction is relevant for today’s writer.  I found The Art of Readable Writing to be an entertaining and interesting way to learn how to write better.

    The book is made up of twenty-one short chapters.  I spent a couple minutes each day just reading one chapter and absorbing whatever point it made.  He starts with debunking Aristotle (“his rules were meant for political speeches, pleadings in court, and funeral orations.  You’ll have rather few occasions for these three types of writings”) although, I still recommend reading Aristotle’s books on rhetoric and writing. (Besides, they’re free downloads on Amazon).

    Chapter two discusses getting inside other people’s minds in order to effectively communicate your ideas.  Don’t assume your audience knows more than they do.  In this instance he’s talking about people who write non-fiction information. He provides examples from government pamphlets that are designed to give people instructions to help them in whatever situation.  These pamphlets were largely incoherent because they assumed the reader had the type of informed background that allowed them to understand the rhetoric used.  Wow.  The government using our tax money to furnish us with useless material.  Surprise, surprise.

        Other chapters deal with shaping ideas after the writer has done his research but before he starts writing his book, the art of readability, developing an ear for writing (how to write as we talk but not really), degrees and results of plain talk and how to be human even when writing factually rather than creatively.

     Every chapter is loaded with examples from writings from newspapers, journalists, government legalese, magazine articles and advertisements, to name a few.  Thanks to these I now also own a book from Pulitzer prize winning journalist Hal Boyle (“Help, Help!  Another Day!”-funnnnnyyyyy!!)  For each topic Flesch examples of both good writing as well as bad (like aforementioned government pamphlets).

     Two particularly interesting chapters are devoted to showing how our sentences have shrunk over the ages but our words have expanded.  He compares English prose by Hakluyt written about 1600 AD to a modern passage.  Hakluyt’s sentences average about ninety words per sentence while the modern essay only had twenty! Nevertheless, he asserts that “Our sentences have grown shorter in number of words, but these words themselves have grown longer and richer in meaning.  And while we don’t need so many words any more to express our thoughts, the words we do use carry a much heavier load of ideas.   He concludes that “our modern short sentences are an illusion as far as ideas are concerned”.

     He has a chapter about unpredictable words followed by a chapter about unpredictable readers. Both chapters are to help the writer make sure that he chooses the right word to convey what it is you actually want to say.

      Feslcher adds an appendix at the end of the book that includes a readability formula and a reading list which sites the sources of all his examples.  I found this useful so I could look up books I could order for myself (as I already mentioned.)

  My verdict?   A great book to add to a writer’s library.

   

 Other books on writing:

The Making of a Story: the Norton Guide to Creative Writing by Alice LaPlante

Five Books on Writing and Grammar

Why I Write by George Orwell

The Deer on a Bicycle: Excursions into Writing by Pat McManus

    

The Triumph of Truth: A Life of Martin Luther by Jean Henri Merle D’Aubigne (translated from the French by Henry White)

This book is valuable to read, not only because it chronicles the life of the founder of the Reformation but because the author wrote it in the 18^th century. Consequently the style is quaint but eloquent.

Martin Luther is D’Aubigne’s hero. This is made clear from the get go by his almost fawning descriptions of Martin Luther, omitting any faults or negative attributes and his demonizing of the Roman Catholic Church. D’Aubigne’s opinions were not fettered by the narrow confines of political correctness or “cultural sensitivity” writers today feel obligated to conform to.

On the one hand it’s refreshing to know exactly where someone stands on a subject without having to read between the lines. On the other hand a certain amount of credibility is lost when it’s so obvious where the author’s prejudices lie.

On yet the other hand, it’s not as though today’s writers don’t write from a specific bias, we’ve simply had to become more clever at looking even handed. And besides, it’s not the bias that discredits a person’s viewpoint but whether the bias is a valid one or not.

But I digress.

Having said all that, I found D’Aubigne’s biography to be beautifully written, if stylistically dated, and highly informative of a man who has recently begun to fascinate me as I have become interested in more liturgical forms of worship. I’ve recently finished reading Luther’s Small Catechism, which is as solid an exegetical thesis on Christianity as I’ve ever read, not to mention his Ninety-nine theses and another book called “The Lutheran Difference.” All of these books break down in specific points what exactly it means to be a Christian and what precisely do we believe when we say we are a Christian.

Only a man as robust as Martin Luther could have had the gumption to take on the Roman Catholic Church. For those who aren’t familiar with Luther or the Reformation, the can of worms that Luther opened is that he translated the Bible into vernacular German. For over a thousand years, the Bible had been in Latin, the Church service had been held in Latin (and was until the 1960’s), a language that people, except an elite few (priests, scribes, etc.) no longer understood. (Ironically, the reason St. Jerome translated the Bible into the Latin Vulgate in the 4^th century was that it was the language of the masses.)

Now, for the first time in Germany, the average citizen could read the Bible for himself, in his own heart language. This created complications, because people could compare the mandates of the Holy Roman See to what Scripture actually said and see if they were compatible.

It turned out that not all of it was. There is no mention of purgatory in the Bible. Or a paying for pardons, or praying for the dead, or a works-based salvation. Or anything remotely implying that a man could be an infallible Pope who had the authority to forgive sins and have power over people. In Luther’s Ninety-nine theses, he demands of the Pope that if he did have that authority, why did poor people have to pay exhorbant prices to receive salvation? Why didn’t the Pope give salvation away freely?

Needless to say, the Roman Church, did not take any of these challenges lying down. Luther had to go into hiding for a while but the can of Worms (pun intended-Worms is the city where Luther nailed his Ninety-nine theses) had been opened and the Holy Roman See to this day blames Luther for fracturing Christians into contentious groups.

It is true that different denominations got off to rocky starts and bloody wars were fought as a result. The wars didn’t go on forever, however, and frankly, another way to look at it is realizing that instead of blindly following one man who claimed to have sole authority given to him by heaven, every individual could now think for himself. He or she could read scripture for him or herself and commune directly to God without going through a human mediator.

One could argue that this also ushered in the “Enlightenment” era where people decided to reject God altogether. That may be, but I believe that people who reject God will do so regardless of whether they belong to a church or not. Compulsory church membership saves no one.

Martin Luther, a monk who had once been plagued by guilt because he realized all his good works could never save him, realized it is by grace alone a man can be saved.

The main difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is that Catholics believe that good works are instrumental in producing salvation (along with taking the Eucharist) and Protestants believe that salvation is by God’s good will alone and afterwards produces good works. That’s an oversimplification, but still the bare bones truth.

Luther lived long and had a wife and children but his last days were very sickly and it’s possible he became mentally disturbed. He was a turbulent, fiery and at times, highly antagonistic individual, but you won’t hear about any of that in D’Aubigne’s account. However, in a future review I’m going to discuss Table Talk, a collection of Luther’s actual sayings. Reading his quotes, one can see why many people-not only the Catholic Church- could become offended at his inflammatory language.

Even Hitler used some of his quotes to incite anti-Semiticism in the thirties and forties.

Many of these quotes were taken out of context and also were said when he was extremely ill. Still, I won’t justify his words.

Luther was a sinner saved by grace. If you don’t believe in sin, then don’t judge him.

As an aside, Luther’s translation of the Bible not only helped set off the Protestant Reformation but it also codified the German language and united the Germanic speaking peoples.

If you’re interested in the life of one of the major movers and shakers of the Western world, D’Aubigne’s biography would be a good (but shouldn’t be the only one) source to start.

I bought this book.

A Rabbi Looks at the Last Days by Jonathan Bernis

       It amazes me that many Christian authors who are focused on the last days do not seem to be aware of what is happening in the Jewish community around the world.

  Just as the Bible predicted, the Jewish people are being restored to their land and to their Messiah. 

   Although Jewish people who accept Yeshua HaMashiach are often ostracized by their families, friends and business associates, Jews all over the world are turning to him and becoming Messianic Jews in numbers not seen since the first century.

    This is how Mr. Bernis opens his book, A Rabbi Looks at the Last Days.  Bernis first describes his own Jewish upbringing and how he came to know the Lord (a girl he used to do heavy drugs with in college became a Christian and was instrumental in leading him to faith.)

      Bernis then goes on to give a brief history of  the Jews and how we can know that the last days prophesied in Revelation are near.

     In his chapter “Why Satan Hates the Jews", he gives a history of their persecution from the Roman destruction of the Temple, the thousands that were massacred during the Crusades, all the countries that expelled them, the Spanish Inquisition, the ghettos of 1826, Russian pogroms, and let’s not forget Hitler. 

     The infamous Adolf Eichmann (1902-1962), sometimes referred to as “the architect of  the Holocaust” and who was hanged for his crimes in 1962, once said, “Throughout history men have dreamed of destroying the children of Abraham.”

     True but the question remains:  Why? (pg. 31)

  Bernis then goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden and explains God’s purpose for the Jews and His plan of salvation for all of mankind through the Jewish nation.  This is why Satan wants to destroy the Jews.  Because he hates God and wants to destroy as many of His creation as he can.

    The second reason we can know that Jesus’ return is imminent is that the scattered Jews are returning to Israel from the four corners of the earth.  He discusses Israel becoming a nation and Jews from all over the world returning there.  He points to Biblical prophecy from the Old Testament that is being fulfilled today.

      The third reason is because many thousands of Jews are turning to Yeshua (chapter 4 "Something is Happening among the Jewish People" pg. 57)   Bernis describes his trips to the former Soviet Union where hundreds of Jews came to Bernis’ preaching venues and surrendered their lives to Christ. 

      In a country beaten down by atheistic values Bernis describes the hunger for the Gospel there.  He found the Jews there very receptive to hearing about Yeshua (as opposed to the U.S. where there is great resistance to belief in Christ and fear of losing one’s “Jewish identity”).

   He also has some interesting comments on the times of the Gentiles nearing fulfillment which ushers in the time for the Jews to receive salvation.

      The second part calls upon Christians and their responsibility to share the gospel among Jewish people.  

      Bernis points out that many well-meaning Christians won't share the Gospel with Jews because they don't want to offend them or even believe there's no need since being God's chosen people saves them.

    Bernis gives a helpful chapter in which he discusses what sort of semantics a Christian should use when sharing the Gospel with a Jewish person.  So much of Christianity has been so "Europeanized" that Jesus Christ is practically unrecognizable to Jews (he said he thought Jesus’ parents were Mr. and Mrs. Christ. Christ is the Greek word for "Messiah").

    He finishes with an interesting chapter on the Tabernacle feasts and especially the Passover and how they foreshadow the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as the Passover lamb “who died once and for all for all our sins, yesterday, today and forever”.

       All in all, I found this an interesting book and a good one for Christians to read to learn about the end times and witnessing to God’s special people from a Messianic Rabbi’s perspective.

I received this book for free from Baker Publishing.

Kindle: $8.79

Other links:

The Jewish Voice

The False Prophet by Ellis Skofield

The Harbinger by Johnathon Cahn

Called to Controversy: The Unlikely Story of Moishe Rosen

Book Review of Crash Course in Jewish HIstory from Abraham to Modern Israel by Ken Spiro

  Rabbi Spiro is an Orthodox Jew who wrote this book based on courses he taught at the Aish HeTorah College of Jewish Studies in Israel.  It is his intention to give Jews a simplified historical line to trace their beginnings as a people to their place in today’s world.

     Because it is a “crash course”, Spiro’s book is easy to read.  In a nutshell, Spiro’s intention is to delineate Judaism from other people groups in the world.

     Now that’s not hard to do or prove.  Jews are the offspring of Abraham with whom God made a covenant.  God does not change or go back on His word.  His plan for the Jewish people will continue until its fruition.  It's important to note that Rabbi Spiro's conclusions differ to what the Bible states in Romans 1:16.  He claims the whole point of the Jewish existence is to usher in world peace. 

      The first part of the book gives a basic run down of historical events that are in the Old Testament.  He skims through the beginnings of the world, the Patriarchs, the Exodus, Moses and the law, the chronicles of the judges, prophets and Kings and finally the Babylonian exile.  This much I already knew from reading my Bible.  Nothing new there. 

     What was interesting was the information he gave concerning the four hundred year gap between the Exile and the Messianic Era.  Here we learn about the Men of the great Assembly, the rise of the Greek empire, the Revolt of the Maccabees, the Romans, Herod and the events that led up to the war of the Jews, the fall of Jerusalem and the Destruction of the Temple.  While these latter things were prophesied in the New Testament (Jesus’ Olivet discourse in Matthew 24) they are not recorded there, presumably because the New Testament writers had all been killed during the Roman Emperor Nero’s persecution.  Much of this I had  read about in Josephus’ books on the War of the Jews but Spiro gives a quick recount which makes it easier for people who just want the skinny on the subject.

       After this, Spiro gives concise accounts of the beginnings of the Talmud, the rise of Islam, the different Jewish groups that scattered throughout Europe during the Middle Ages up to establishing the nation of Israel and the heroic individuals that helped make this historic occasion happen. Spiro describes Kabbalism and the beginning of the Hassidic movement

     Spiro’s main thrust for the rest of the book is how the last two thousand years of has been one long onslaught of persecution and sorrow for the Jewish people.  It is tragic and heart rending to read about.  He doesn’t exaggerate, it is all sadly true.

     Because of the relentless persecution and numerous attempted annihilations of the Jewish people, Spiro concludes that Christianity is a false religion. He also asserts that Christians claim that God changed His mind about the Jews and rejected them in favor of Christians.  On the one hand, I can see how he would think this based on how some Christians or even certain Christian denominations have acted throughout history.   On the other, for all his research, he apparently didn’t take the trouble to actually read the teachings of Christ in the NewTestament to see whether these professing Christians were actually obeying Scripture when they persecuted the Jews.  He might have concluded that instead of Christianity being a false religion that, in fact, some people falsely profess to be Christians.  Jesus said you can judge a tree by its fruit. 

      Interestingly, in Chapter 39 (Origins of Christianity) Spiro claims that Christians have mistranslated the Bible because they used only Greek and Latin translations.  That is a false assertion-every modern translation of the Bible is from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.  This is true even of the 1610 King James Bible. But then he goes on to say that the reason the United States have been a place of refuge for the Jews is because the Puritans who founded our country based their beliefs on Old Testament Scripture and, in fact, many of the founding fathers were Hebrew scholars! (Chapter 54:  Jews and the Founding of America) 

     Finally, he says it’s impossible to read the Bible without Oral Tradition and since time is taking us farther and farther away from Moses and Oral Tradition, the meaning of Scripture is becoming increasingly obscure.  So according to Rabbi Spiro, Christians are wrong because they don’t have an accurate translation of the Bible but then again, he asserts no one can really know what the Bible is saying anyway! 

        Also what I found fascinating was how Spiro acknowledges that the Messianic era began at the time Christ came to earth but doesn’t believe Jesus is the Christ.  He believes the Messiah is still coming and when he does, he will usher in world peace through the Jewish people.

     Yet Spiro doesn’t take into account the problem of sin.  Moses did.  What was the purpose of all those animal sacrifices?  What is the purpose of Yom Kippor and Rosh Hashanah?  Why did the animal sacrifices that were made to atone for the sins of the people stop at the ushering in of the Messianic era?  Isn’t it because the Messiah had in fact come and made the one and only atoning sacrifice when He sacrificed Himself for everyone’s sins- making animal sacrifices no longer necessary?  Does not Isaiah 53 prophesy this very event?   

    Rabbi Spiro ignores all of this and insists that the Messiah is only coming to bring world peace and he’s going to do it through the Jewish people.  He believes the time is very soon now that Israel is a nation again.  He never mentions mankind being reconciled to God. He also fails to share any belief Jews have of the after life. 

     A couple of other things I found interesting.  Spiro is against both the Hassids and the secular Jews.  Both have got it wrong, according to him.  Hassids have created an artificial legalism that isn’t necessary and the secular Jews have capitulated in an effort to assimilate with the Gentiles.  He insists this is also true of any Jew that becomes a Christian: it is merely an insincere effort to avoid persecution.  He doesn’t explain why Jews became Christians even when it caused persecution.  As it does for many today. Some Jewish friends of mine who have become Messianic believers (recognize Jesus Christ as Y'shua Mashiach) have told me that their families held a "shiva" for them.   This is a symbolic burial (literally “seven days of mourning”) for becoming an “apostate”.

     Do I recommend this book?  I don’t know.  I don’t think it is the most informative book out there-even for Jewish history because it is so superficial.  It certainly isn’t a reliable resource for Christians.  I think it’s value for me, as a Christian, lies in that it allows me to get inside the head of a Jewish person and understand why he and-I’m sure other Jews- think the way they do about themselves and how they perceive Christians.

I bought this book.

For more information or book reviews on Jewish literature and culture:
http://kenspiro.com/
The Chosen
Called to Controversy: The Unlikely Story of Moishe Rosen

The Complete Works of Josephus translated by William Whiston

 It took me three years but I have finally finished Whiston’s translation of the complete works of Josephus. It is probably overly ambitious to try to review this 1,147 page translation in one post, but I will share the highlights of specific sections.

The first work is The Life of Flavius Josephus which was written by Josephus himself. In this book Josephus informs us that he is a Levite; which is to say that his is a descendant of the Aaronic order which were the priests. He was born in the first year of the reign of Caius Caesar, also known as Caligula. This was the crazy Caesar who initiated the Caesar cult, made his horse a god, and also one of the crueler ones, maybe even crueler than Nero, if he had been allowed to live long enough. (He was murdered by his own body guard, that’s how horrible this particular Caesar was.)

In Josephus’ autobiography we are informed of how destructive the internal fighting for power was among different Jewish factions that ultimately led to Rome stepping in and the resulting fall of Jerusalem. He also lets us know what kind of warrior he was. According to him, he was a very fierce warrior. We learn of all the intrigues and deceptions that transpired back and forth between different Jewish leaders and how his own life was at peril by opposing leaders and their armies and how he successfully fought them off.

To get an idea of the brutality of the times, I’ll mention one example where another Jewish leader attempted to overthrow Josephus by spreading lies and slander about him. He then set an army against him but Josephus fought back with his own army and captured the leader. In his “mercy” he allowed the man to cut off his own right hand in exchange for his life. After hanging the man’s hand around his neck, he let him go as an example to the others. Gee. What a guy.

As I read of all the wars and battles included in this book I gather this was a common practice. This was an era when there must have been a lot of mutilated men walking on the earth.

It was enlightening to read  about the vying for leadership between the priests, Sadduccess, Pharisees and Zealots. Each one was determined to rule over Jerusalem and none of them seemed to care what sort of chaos, misery or suffering they caused to do it. I had not previously understood how this internal division had led to Jerusalem’s destruction.

What all of them seemed to forget is that Rome considered them a province and Vespasian and his general Titus eventually arrived with troops and caused even greater slaughter than the Jews were already experiencing at their own hands, if that were possible. The blood bath described is unimaginable. One particularly harrowing account describes the cannibalism that peoples in the city resorted to because they were being starved out. There’s one particularly hideous account but I don’t have the heart to write about it.

The second book is titled The Antiquities of the Jews. This is comprised of twenty books that starts with the Creation, works its way through the Patriarchs, the Kings of Israel, the destruction of Jerusalem prophesied by Jeremiah and Isaiah and the ensuing Babylonian captivity. It ends with the Jews departure out of Babylon, return to their homeland, rebuilding their sacred city and Roman rule.

What I found exciting about these books were their faithful account and affirmation of the historical account of the Bible. Josephus’ history of the Jews is not a word for word repetition of the Old Testament but a reliable secondary source and substantiates the historical veracity of the Biblical account and its place as a valid historical document.

Also enlightening is the historical account of what happened in the four hundred year gap between the Old and the New Testaments. Here we learn about Cleopatra, Mark Antony, Alexander the Great, and the Herods. One has to read Josephus’ account of Herod Antipas to truly appreciate what a paranoid, murderous monster he was. Nobody was safe around him. Not his wives, his children, no one. He believed everyone was plotting against him.

Of course, they all were. It’s interesting to see the world in which despots live. Everyone is constantly fearful of his own life while seeking to snuff out the next person’s in order to rise in power. It didn’t matter who that person was, either. If it was a son, or mother or father. People willingly threw their own relatives to the wolves if it meant furthering their own position. Were people ever really happy back then?

The final book is The War of the Jews. This is a more in-depth description (seven books) of the fall of Jerusalem. When one reads of the bloodshed and destruction of the time, Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 takes on a whole new understanding. The mass slaughter of humans defies description. I don’t know how there can be any Jews left after this whole sale destruction of humans. Thousands upon thousands were killed. Lakes were filled with bodies. Yet the Jews wouldn’t surrender. The remnant that was left was dispersed and would not return to their own country until two thousand years later.

The last section is essays by the translator, William Whiston, who contends that Josephus became a Christian and was one of the first Bishops in the church. He cites many early sources to support this. I don’t know if that is true or not but the only thing for sure is a direct quote where Josephus mentions Jesus Christ:

Now there was about this time, one Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles also. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him for he appeared to them alive again the third day as the divine prophet had foretold them and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him: and still the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18 pg. 379 and Appendix, dissertation 1 The Testimonies of Josephus concerning Jesus Christ, John the Baptist and James the Just, pg. 979.)

The Complete Works of Josephus is not a quick, easy read. But it is a highly rewarding one and, if you’re willing to invest some time in reading a little a day, you’ll find your own historical insight and appreciation for the Judeo-Christian culture and tradition all the richer.

There are a number of translations available. I recommend William Whiston’s because it is extensively annotated and has the added bonus of Appendices that include seven dissertations by Whiston as well as ancient Jewish weights and measurements, several maps, and a list of Ancient testimonies and records cited by Josephus.

Kindle: $1.99