Adam, Eve, and the Serpent

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, by Elaine Pagels
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, by Elaine PagelsBy Elaine Pagels
Published by Vintage Books ed edition (September 19, 1989) Click to Buy this Book!

In The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels described the finding of the Gnostic Gospels in a cave in Upper Egypt in December, 1945, and how these documents shed an entirely new light on early Christianity. She also told how the Gnostics, though far from united in their beliefs, practiced and preached a far more esoteric Christianity than that of the Church; and how the Church suppressed and destroyed the Gnostic writings. The documents found in Egypt had obviously been hidden there to preserve them from destruction.

In her later book (1989), reviewed here, Pagels takes up the story again, this time investigating how the traditional patterns of gender and sexual relationship arose in our society. In the process she saw that the sexual attitudes we associate with Christian tradition evolved during the first four centuries of the Common Era, when the Christian movement, which had begun as a defiant sect, transformed itself into the religion of the Roman Empire. Many Christians of the first four centuries took pride in their sexual restraint, eschewed polygamy and divorce, which Jewish tradition allowed — and they repudiated extramarital sexual practices commonly accepted by their pagan contemporaries, practices that included prostitution, abuse of slaves and homosexuality. Such views, although not completely original, soon became inseparable from Christian faith. Some even went so as to embrace celibacy, which they urged upon those capable of the “angelic life.” More »

In Search of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton’s Clockwork Universe

In Search of the Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton’s Clockwork Universe
In Search of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton’s Clockwork UniverseBy Richard Baum and William Sheehan.
Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York, 1997 Click to Buy this Book!

 

On the back flap of the jacket cover, the publisher summarizes this book as one that “will hold you spellbound from beginning to end. An irresistible tale of human eccentricity … destined to become a classic.” Authors Richard Baum, former Vice President of the British Astronomical Association, and Dr. William Sheehan, an amateur astronomer and a psychiatrist by profession, present a highly readable history of astronomy regarding the search for additional planets in the solar system, a search that intensified after William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781. Attempts to explain observations of Uranus’ “wayward movements” led, through applications of Newton’s laws or “celestial mechanics,” to the sensational discovery of a second new outer planet, later named Neptune. Neptune was discovered in 1846 by the great French mathematician and astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (1811–1877), not from observations, but from calculations alone. The new planet was then observed in the exact position of Le Verrier’s calculations by Johann Gottfried Galle and his assistant on September 23, 1846.

The title of the book, the cover art, the photograph of the statue of U.J.J. Le Verrier across from the title page, the emphasis on the name Vulcan, and the publisher’s comments, above, are all somewhat slanted towards the entertainment value of the book (Richard Baum was involved in the Vulcan episode of the television documentary series Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World). The authors, however, do offer clear, informative history, helpful clarifications of astronomical theory and calculus, interesting biographies, and many humorous touches, all leading up to and including the quest for an intra-mercurial planet to explain the “anomalous advance of the perihelion of Mercury.” Searches for trans-Neptunian planets (e.g., the discovery of Pluto) are also described, from the time of Herschel up until the late 20th century. From the Epilogue: “Compared to the substantial gas giants sunwards of it, Pluto is a mere planetary soufflé, a creampuff planet … although it might be argued that Pluto does have a small moon — Charon, discovered only in 1978 — and an atmosphere.” More »

The Gnostic Gospels

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagelsby Elaine Pagels
Published by Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Edition, Sept. 1989 edition (September 19, 1989) Click to Buy this book!

 

In December 1945 an Arab peasant was digging around a massive boulder in Nag Hammadi, Upper Egypt looking for sabakh, a soil for fertilizing crops, when he found an large earthen jar almost a meter high. He hesitated to break it for fear an evil spirit might be inside, but the thought that it could contain gold overcame his fear and he smashed it. Inside were 13 papyrus books bound in leather. Disappointed, he brought them home and dumped them on the floor. His mother subsequently used much of t he material for fuel.

How the books came to be recognized is an interesting story in itself, how a local history teacher suspected their value and sent them on to a friend, how they were sold on the black market through antique dealers in Cairo, then confiscated by the Egyptian government, except for one codice, which was smuggled to the United States. Finally, thirty years after their discovery, they were deciphered and eventually published.

Mohammed Alí could not have imagined the enormous implications of his accidental find. If they had been found 1,000 years earlier, the Gnostic texts within would surely have been burned for their heresy. Bishop Irenæus of Lyon c. 180, wrote five volumes entitled, The Destruction and Overthrow of Falsely So-called Knowledge. By the time of the Emperor Constantine’s conversion in the fourth century, possession of books denounced as heretical became a criminal offense. Copies of Gnostic books were confiscated and burned. But someone in Upper Egypt, possibly a monk from the nearby monastery of St. Pachomius, took the banned books and hid them from destruction in the jar where they remained buried for almost 1,600 years. Today we read them differently — as a powerful alternative to orthodox, organized Christianity. More »

Ravelstein

Ravelstein by Saul Bellow
Ravelstein by Saul Bellow by Saul Bellow
Published by Penguin Books; First Printing edition (April 26, 2001) Click to Buy this Book!

 

I don’t think that “Ravelstein” is really about Ravelstein — whoever he’s supposed to be in real life, some say Alan Bloom, but this doesn’t interest me much. The real antagonist of “Ravelstein” is Chick, Ravelstein’s reluctant biographer. And Chick can’t be anyone but Bellow himself, or who Bellow would like to think he is or would like us to think he is, for the disguise is transparent.

Chick is old, a well-known writer of fiction, recently survived a serious illness by the skin of his teeth, married to a much younger woman, and Ravelstein’s best friend, perhaps his only friend, Jewish. And his writing style is suspiciously identical to Bellow’s. Sound familiar?

Now that we have established that the book is more about Chick than Ravelstein, we have no choice but to continue in that direction. What about Chick. What’s his issue? No question there. The issue is death – and what, if anything, happens afterwards. And why not? Bellow is 85 and that’s pretty near the end, even if he, as Chick, miraculously escaped death from fish poisoning. (One could look for symbolism in that, but I’ll abstain.) Trust Bellow to go for the jugular, try to get to the bottom things, even though he knows he can’t. At least he asks the questions that concern us all.

One of the things that I like most about Bellow’s writing is that he attacks these questions with ironical humor. In “Ravelstein,” Chick’s ex-wife (Bellow is not kind to ex-wives) tries to get him to be frozen for a hundred years and thawed out when a cure for his illness is known, but he suspects her of selfish ends and refuses. I can’t find the place or I’d quote it for you, but the book is worth reading for this hilarious episode alone. More »

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