“All shall be well . . . .”

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

“Why I Am Not a Christian”

Ninety-nine years ago, the famous atheist (agnostic?) British writer Bertrand Russell gave a lecture called “Why I Am Not a Christian” to a branch of the National Secular Society, England. The lecture’s text soon appeared in a booklet, now available at archive.org.

Russell argued that God’s existence cannot be proved, and that Jesus was not “the best and the wisest of men,” let alone the Son of God. According to Russell, “one very serious defect” in Jesus’ character was that “He believed in hell.”

It’s a quick read, and you might enjoy spearing Russell’s fallacies as I did.

20th Century Biblical plays

Some recent reads:

J.B (1958) by Archibald MacLeish. The book of Job moved into the 20th century. J.B., a wealthy businessman, loses everything and struggles with God. “If God is God, he is not good // If God is good, he is not God.”

Gideon (1961) by Paddy Chayefsky. The character from the book of Judges defeats Israel’s enemies with God’s help but finds his relationship with God too much to handle and finally “divorces” God.

Both works can be read for free at Archive.org.

Recent reads

A Doll’s House (1879) by Henrik Ibsen. A feminist manifesto, though Ibsen later disclaimed any such intent. Available for free on Project Gutenberg.

The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A tragic takedown of the excesses of the Jazz Age. Also free on Gutenberg. Adapted for film several times, notably a treatment faithful to the novel starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow (1974).

Life on the frontier

My Sixty Years on the Plains: Trapping, Trading, and Indian Fighting by W. T. Hamilton (1905) tells the story of the 19th century opening of the West, when fur trappers paved the way for white settlement. Under 100 pages, $0.99 as a Kindle book.

Other Worlds

Other Worlds Than These, J. J. Adams, ed. (Night Shade Books, 2012), brings together thirty authors in the alternate-history genre to explore the might-have-beens of life. What would have happened if someone assassinated Hitler? Or no one assassinated Lincoln? Or what if we could travel to parallel worlds where life differs from what we know? You get the idea.

The writers include well-known names in speculative fiction such as Stephen King, Greg Benford, Robert Silverberg, and Michael Swanwick. Other well-known contributors include George R. R. Martin and Joyce Carol Oates. The book is available to borrow for free at the Internet Archive. For a massive database of titles in the genre (with no links, unfortunately), go to Uchronia: The Alternate History List.

A Story of Redemption

In Convicted: A Criminal Memoir, Tim Cross describes his life as a thief and drug dealer that sent him to prison in his early twenties. His jailhouse conversion—a real one this time—has led to a life of ministry to other convicts both before and after his release.

If you ever visit the infamous Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee, now a museum, you can still see the self-portrait that became the cover of his book.

Available from Amazon as an ebook and in print.

Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls

I’m reading The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (ed. Geza Vermes, Penguin, 2004) and learning new things about the Scrolls. So far I’ve read the big books: the Cairo Damascus Document, the Community Rule, the War Scroll, and the Temple Scroll, leaving the shorter works, many of them fragmentary, for later. Some observations from a nonspecialist:

• The Essenes of Qumran (assuming the Scrolls come from them) practiced a rigorous form of Judaism. Each member knew his own rank within the group. Cultic infractions drew harsh punishments: long suspensions from the meetings and meals, reduced rations, and even permanent expulsion. Nearly all actions an individual could take had to be approved by his superiors.

• If we thought the Pharisees were legalistic, the Essenes demanded even more. The Temple Scroll requires more, and more complicated, sacrifices than Torah. In the idealized future world of the Scrolls, the latrines of the holy city had to lie at least 3000 cubits outside the gates! And so on.

• The Essenes rewrote Torah, at least the cultic parts. Drawing heavily from Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, the writers of the Temple Scroll laid out an ideal future with a new design for the Temple, expanded rituals, and an arrangement by which the whole city, not just the Temple grounds, were holy to God.

The 2004 edition is free for download in PDF at archive.org. The 7th edition (2012) adding a few newly discovered Scrolls, is available from Amazon.

House of David

I confess that I’m picky about Bible movies, always complaining about the liberties the screenwriters take. (“Hmmf! That’s not in the Bible!” — You get the point.)

But House of David, a series on Amazon Prime, is not bad. It traces King David’s life from his humble beginnings as a shepherd onward. So far, he’s a commander of a thousand for King Saul, but we all know where that’s headed.

The best casting so far places Ali Suleiman, who played a terrorist chief in a Jack Ryan series, as King Saul. He portrays Saul’s good days and days of madness with a sure touch.

Oddly, the series portrays Doeg the Edomite as an occultist. Also, it expands the role of Saul’s wife Ahinoam, only mentioned in the Bible, to a power behind the throne.

Surprisingly, David himself appears as an illegitimate son of his father Jesse, but it turns out that some rabbis thought so too. This apparently comes from Psalm 51 (“In sin my mother conceived me”) and Psalm 69 (“I am a stranger to my brothers”).

The series has much to criticize and much to enjoy. Recommended.

A crowdsourced mystery novel

Just started a classic mystery by “certain members of the Detection Club.” Thirteen established writers contributed a chapter each, one after the other. Each writer had to include all the clues from previous chapters, and the solution could leave no loose ends.

Authors of The Floating Admiral include luminaries such as GK Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie. I’ll come back later and tell you how it went.

Later: Now I can see why this approach to mystery writing didn’t become popular (that I know of). Since each author complicated the story by adding new clues, the final solution had to become so complex as to defy belief.

Tastes vary, but I prefer a solution that I might have guessed if I hadn’t overlooked something. I’m glad I read the book but have no plan to come back to it.