In A Word Volume 9, Issue 1, Spring 2008
Chris's Pick
Paul W. Kahn
Out of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil
Princeton University Press, 2007
Paul Kahn is a professor at the Yale Law School and the Director of the Orville Shell, Jr. Center for Human Rights at Yale University. In one of the most remarkable books that I have read in years, Kahn mines the narrative imagination of the West, juxtaposing religious traditions that emerge from the story of Adam and Eve with traditions of learning that are embodied in Sophocles' account of Oedipus. His thesis is that liberalism was born out of the Enlightenment and has been governed by sensibilities that lost touch with core theological categories. This shallow understanding of both Judaism and Christianity has left the modern world with a flattened and inadequate comprehension of the sacred character of law and duty, community and individual, love, death, and evil. The comprehensive character of his argument defies a pithy summary, but the reader will be hard pressed to find a volume that moves as seamlessly from one discipline to another or provides such dazzling vistas of our philosophical landscape. Kahn's book is a tour de force, and the lapidary phrasing is so compressed that most readers will want to chew limited portions at any one sitting. The effort will reward, not with broken teeth, but with a powerful experience of why all of us must learn to read anew and interpret again and again the foundational myths and stories of Western culture.
If you would like to purchase this book, click here.
Rosann's Pick
Phyllis Trible and
Letty M. Russell, editors
Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives
John Knox Press, 2006
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all trace their beginnings to Abraham, whom they consider the founding father of mono-theism. Also pivotal in the story of this extended family of believers are Abraham's two wives, Hagar and Sarah, though traditionally they have received far less attention than Abraham. Redressing this deficiency is a major focus of con-temporary feminist biblical scholars and theologians. Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perpectives, edited by Phyllis Trible, University Professor of Biblical Studies at Wake Forest University Divinity School and Baldwin Professor Emerita of Sacred Literature, and Letty M. Russell, Professor Emerita of Theology at Yale Divinity School, is a superb contribution to this effort. The book grows out of the 2004 Phyllis Trible Lecture Series held at the Divinity School at Wake Forest University. Trible and Russell co-author the first entry, an overview of the history of interpretation of Hagar and Sarah that alone is worth the price of the volume. Subsequent essays are organized historically, beginning with examinations of biblical, patristic, and medieval sources, and concluding with the challenges raised by contemporary appro-priations of the Hagar and Sarah traditions. Trible's essay interprets narratives in the book of Genesis that pertain to Hagar and Sarah. Riffat Hassan, Professor of Religious Studies and Humanities at the University of Louisville, treats the stories of Hagar in the traditions of Islam. Adele Reinhartz, Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, and her daughter, Miriam-Simma Walfish, a student of rabbinical literature at the Hebrew Uni-versity of Jerusalem, write about rabbinic interpretations of Hagar and Sarah. Elizabeth Clark, John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion at Duke University, examines how the church fa-thers interpret Hagar and Sarah, an essay that nicely parallels Reinhartz and Walfish on the rabbis. Russell authors two essays: one on Paul's allegory in the letter to the Galatians about Hagar and Sarah, the other, a theological reflection on the traditions of Hagar and Sarah from the perspective of a white Christian feminist. Delores Williams, Paul Tillich Professor Emerita of Theology and Culture at Union Theological Seminary in New York, parallels Russell's essay with a womanist reading of the Hagar tradition for African-American Christian commu-nities. Each of the essays in this volume is a gem, meriting serious study and discussion. A superb example of feminist and womanist interpretations at their best and a provocative testimony to the formidable challenges that continue to haunt our traditions, Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Chris-tian, and Muslim Perspectives is a must-read.
If you would like to purchase this book, click here.
Joel's Pick
Lauren Kessler
Dancing With Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's
Viking, 2007
Upon seeing this title in the bookstore my first thought was, "lots of luck, Kessler." It was not luck that helped Lauren Kessler to succeed in her stated task. It was the need, following her mother's death, to understand (and in the process find meaning in) that dreaded illness that seems for all practical purposes to rob one of one's very self. Kessler, who directs the Graduate Program in Literary Non-Fiction at the University of Oregon, became a bottom-rung caregiver at a residential Alzheimer's facility. Dancing With Rose chronicles her experiences during the months she worked at the facility and details the unexpected humanity she discovered during those backbreaking months of service. You will be moved and inspired by Kessler's narrative. She learned so much about Alzheimer's and about herself. If you read this book, you will also learn.
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