Mikhael
This book is the reason I've been barely able to read anything else. Didn't read straight through, but because it's my research subject, I've certainly spent enough hours on it. Good first effort at a New Testament translation, but points docked because Joanes Leizarraga pretty much just translated from a recent French publication
Not the book i was expecting, but not a bad book either. Useful as a gauge of what leaders a few centuries after Jesus' dead were concerned about in terms of overseeing a church. I really admire the gravity John sees as he surveys the office of priest, and i think my biggest takeaway will be related to viewing offices more seriously
Enjoyable. I like the style—the author, like John, uses some high brow English (respecting stuffy old rules like not ending with a preposition) while embracing plain and sometimes surprising images (like bodies piling up). As a bio, it's an homage to the many identities of John, but the writing style makes it a super-homage!
The format was also perfect, with poems and pictures neatly arranged and thoroughly contextualized. The meal of metaphysics and deep religious questing is paired with silly, mundane anecdotes like John's distaste for dairy:
“Donne loathed milk ‘passionately' – to humour Foxe, he drank it for ten days, but stopped in disgust, declaring ‘he would not drink it ten days longer upon the best moral assurance of having twenty years added to his life.”
Read this book!
Picked this up from the discount shelf at a bookstore. I'm not sure who's gonna read it. It's packaged like a children's book, with lovely illustrations and all, but the content is very adult. Even the language used is complex, so a kid definitely won't be able to read this; although it's formatted well for serialized bedtime stories.
On a recommendation from a friend, I decided to try this out even tho I'm not a huge fan of sci-fi media. The last cs Lewis book I tried reading I had to give up on bc it was incoherent in too many important areas. But this book is allowed to be a little out of this world, and it worked so well! Short enough that I'll be reading the rest of the trilogy promptly
For the goals and the brevity of this book, it's excellent. Naturally, he writes from a place of low church evangelicalism, so there's not room to entertain every Catholic/Orthodox position, but when he does invite those conversations, he does so from a plain, well-cited stance. Everything is well-cited, which is another reason to like this book. This is a survey course, and each extra-biblical footnote is a prompt for more specific study on the things the reader doubts or just wants to know more about. I wish it were deeper, but again, not the goal.
Wow finally done and it only took a year, rip. Ties my interests of Basque and the Church together. My memory of Crucible-month in school is that women got the heavy judgment, but interestingly, the Basque witch hunts were about as egalitarian as it gets. Both men and women were accused, and if anyone was particularly marginalized, it was kids, both boys and girls. I pray nothing like this ever goes down again, but hey, people are crazy.
Three stars because it wasn't engaging enough to finish at a normal pace
I liked this how I like a zoo. A zoo doesn't try to replace a study on wildlife biology or even a class on mammals, but a zoo does expose your five senses to marvelous stuff. Unfortunately, like some zoos, the wonder can get lost in the dallying, but I'd certainly like this author's style to tell some surreal mystery thriller story