What Book Are You Currently Reading?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I'm feeling sorta open-minded today, so.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Really nice romance novel that I enjoy reading around this time of the year.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

wow.  there's a book?  That's disturbing.

Yes.  The movie was made afterwards.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Just got this in the mail, starting it today.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I've started writing my novel again, so I usually read fiction books during the process just to get my writing in the correct rhythm.  Recently, I started A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and The Bridges of Madison County again by Robert James Waller.  Throw in the Kissing Fish book, and I'm working on reading three books at once right now.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Added this to my 'currently reading' list last night.  It's a fairly short book, so I thought, why not?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Got it yesterday, started it today.

Also, for our Christian users here, I highly recommend the Kissing Fish book.  Even if it doesn't resonate with you entirely (I have found myself disagreeing with Wolsey at times), I consider it pretty transformative.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Audio version:

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I have to say, the more I read into this Zealot book, the less confidence I have in it.  It's not because of the author himself, who was given unfair treatment by Fox News (though he apparently has inflated his academic credentials somewhat), but his misinterpretations of scripture and the frequent errors he's apparently making make me question whether I should continue reading it.  I've been struggling to find a book about the historical Jesus that doesn't have all these 'ifs' and 'buts' attached to it, but this doesn't appear to be that book.  I ordered John Dominic Crossan's The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, which is viewed more favorably by the progressive Christian community, yet even that book has caused quite a stir and I'm left wondering if there is any text, other than the New Testament, that can give me a clear picture of Jesus' life.

Then again, I haven't delved much into Karen Armstrong's book yet, which I hope will give me some information about Jesus that the Bible does not.  But it probably won't.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

This is a little late, but thanks to everyone who gave me advice and offered some literature for me to look into.  I suppose getting the complete picture of Jesus' life is rather futile, and all we have are opinions and speculations.  Pretty much anything about Jesus outside of the New Testament is biased in some fashion, and with that we question the integrity of the NT itself simply because we don't know which aspects of Jesus' life are factually true and which things were ascribed to His life afterwards.  However, I ended up purchasing the books for their scholarly opinions.  At the end of the day, of course, I suppose Jesus is meant to remain an object of faith.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I decided to put down A Theology for the Social Gospel for a little while and focus on books that are more academic, though I certainly got a lot out of what I read of that book.  Next is Foundations of Wesleyan-Arminian Theology by Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, along with a couple other books on Methodist belief that came to my mailbox today.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I'm currently slogging thru Aquinas' Summa Theologica.  Maybe it's the translation I'm reading, but I'm not impressed so far.  He makes assumptions that while doctrinally sound are still assumptions yet he casts them as self-evident truths.  He also asks some questions I don't really see the point of, such as "Is God a superior example of oneness to all other ones?"  First off, as far as I'm concerned one is one.  Something is either one or it is not and I fail to see how one one can be different from another one its quality of oneness.  Even if it were possible for there to be differing types of oneness, how would one judge one one to be superior another one?  Aquinas doesn't say, nor does he say (at least in what I've read so far) why he considered the question worth asking.  He just points out that he had previously shown that God is one and that God is superior to all else, therefore He must be the superior epitome of oneness.

I can't really argue for or against Aquinas' position here since I don't know what he means by 'oneness' in this context, but most philosophical/hypothetical arguments are based in 'self-evident truths,' are they not?  God, for example, is superior to everything else purely by how He's defined and conceived in the realm of philosophical thought.  I don't quite understand your dilemma with the text you're reading.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

More of a page-turner than I thought it would be.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Resa Aslan - Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth


I was able to get it for $13 so I took the plunge.  it's relatively well done, and written for a mass rather than an academic audience, unlike most of the reading on religion/theology I've done over the past few years, which is refreshing, in its own way.  he focuses on the 'historical Jesus' and takes great pains to place him within the context of the socio-political situation of first-century Palestine, especially vis-a-vis the relationship between the Jewish cult and the Roman occupation.

I did skip ahead and read the chapter on Paul, towards whom Aslan can barely conceal his enmity, fwiw.

I've heard that this book makes so many historical errors that it's barely worth picking up and it repeats 19th century German scholarship that's mostly rejected today.  As a layperson who's interested in getting the hard facts about Jesus, I tend to avoid the highly disputed stuff.