Bart D. Ehrman - Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

Forged, by Bart D. Ehrman, is an attempt to prove to a wider audience what many biblical scholars have known for a long time, that many of the books in the bible were not written by who we think they were. While I liked portions of the book, and it was certainly informative, in many places I found it to drag and become somewhat boring.

One point that Ehrman made repeatedly that I appreciated was that contrary to what some people claim, forgery did exist in antiquity and was soundly condemned when it was discovered. He goes on to point out that those who claim that forgery didn't really exist, or that the writers didn't mean to deceive anyone, or that it was common practice to sign one's work with the name of one's teacher as a sign of honour and humility, are basing those claims on absolutely no evidence. I remember very clearly being told in a first year new testament class at my bible college that even though many of the books were not written by the people whose names are on them, it wasn't really forgery because that type of attribution was common during those times. I remember thinking that that was a weird practice, but accepting it as the truth. It's nice to see that it in fact was not the truth.

Ehrman has a wealth of evidence that many of the books in the new testament were not written by those who claim to have written them, ranging from differences in writing styles, the coverage of topics that were not relevant until decades after the deaths of the supposed authors, and perhaps most interestingly the fact that those books were written in a highly educated style of Greek (employing Greek rhetorical argument styles) that it is very unlikely that people like Peter or Paul possessed. I also found it very interesting that many of the books, including the gospels, do not claim an author, and what were originally anonymous works had authors imposed on them centuries later when church authorities realized that in order for those books to be authoritative they needed famous authors like the apostles.

Ehrman does however spend a large amount of time examining forgeries that never made into the canon and that everyone acknowledges are forgeries. While that was interesting to a point, it began to drag on considerably. That is merely personal preference, however, as I would have liked Ehrman to have examined more possible forgeries in the bible itself (perhaps in the old testament, which he hardly touches on). I also had a few problems with Ehrman's acceptance of much of the bible as historical fact. He discusses the "genuine" Pauline letters, but does not provide the evidence he uses that they are in fact genuine. In addition, while he does look at historical inaccuracies (like the idea of an empire-wide census at the time of Jesus' birth) he does not look at the inclusion of the supernatural in the gospels and discuss the improbabilities of them (and the reasons why they were included, obvious as they might be).

Overall, Forged was a generally interesting book, although there were definitely some parts that were considerably more interesting than others.

Christopher Hitchens - The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

I bought The Missionary Position today after seeing a report on the news about a Canadian study that reached the same conclusion about Mother Teresa as Hitchens did; namely that she did very little to actually alleviate suffering but instead ran a massive propaganda machine that benefited from the plight of the poor and saw their suffering as noble. I expected the book to be virulently anti-Catholic, but it wasn't. Hitchens uses for evidence almost entirely Mother Teresa's own words and actions, with some reliance on former members of her order.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence that Hitchens has to support his thesis is the sheer amount of money that Missionaries of Charity took in compared to how much was spent on things like doctors and medical equipment. The results are staggering, and show a woman who was far more concerned with her own dogma than with actually relieving the suffering of the poor. Her hypocrisy is also stunning, as Hitchens points out that while supposedly advocating for the poor she hobnobbed with a variety of dictators whose regimes were supported on the backs of the poor and oppressed. It also bears mentioning that while she refused to provide adequate medical equipment or care for the suffering under her care, when she was faced with health problems she had nothing but the best medical attention.

My biggest problem with Mother Teresa is one that I had before reading The Missionary Position, although the book helped to solidify it. Namely, it is that Mother Teresa was more concerned with the so-called holiness of suffering experienced by the poor than with alleviating their pain (as evidenced by her telling a man who was wracked with pain that he was being kissed by Jesus rather than spending money on painkillers or doctors to help him). Her care for their souls far outstripped her care for their suffering, as one former member of her order has claimed that she authorized secret baptisms of non-Catholics without their permission. In addition, her own words condemn her as someone who was ultimately unconcerned with the poor. She explicitly said that caring for the poor was not an end in and of itself (she actually referred to this way of thinking as a danger!), but that caring for them was a way to reach heaven. This is important: she was not caring for them because they were suffering, or even because she wanted to help them get into heaven. She worked with them so that she herself could get into heaven.

Hitchens does a masterful job of exposing Mother Teresa's hypocrisy by doing what he set out to do: judging her reputation by her actions rather than her actions by her reputation.

Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

I bought The God Delusion a few days ago after realizing that I had read very little by any of the great atheist scholars of our time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Dawkins does an excellent job of disproving the existence of a god as well as showing how religion is in general a negative or at least not a positive force in the world.

Dawkins looks at quite a few controversial issues, but one that I especially appreciated was his examination of why religion is somehow granted an automatic respect where other personal beliefs (such as politics) are not. People feel free to argue against other peoples' political viewpoints, but see religion as a taboo, which translates into a tolerance for the extreme elements present in many religions (he uses the example of authorities turning a blind eye to female circumcision in Britain so as to not upset the fundamentalist Islamic community there). He also makes a strong argument against the indoctrination of children in religious beliefs, arguing that children should be taught how to think, not what to think.

Dawkins also examines a number of misconceptions about atheism and scientific belief. First, he makes the obvious point that natural selection is not random chance. He points out that the common religious argument that chance is an impossible method for life to have emerged on earth is correct, but that unlike what they assert, chance is not the only alternative to intelligent design; natural selection is. He also raises the common religious argument that those who do not believe in a higher power see no point in life by stating that because atheists believe that we have no more chances at life that we see life as even more worth living to the fullest. Finally, he also looks at the commonly asserted belief that atheists who argue their points are just as much fundamentalists as religious extremists. Dawkins refutes this by pointing out that passion does not equal fundamentalism, and that while a religious fundamentalist will not change their mind regardless of the evidence presented to them, a passionate scientist will change their mind when provided with new evidence.

In arguing against the existence of the supernatural, Dawkins makes a number of very solid points, including the obvious one of pointing out the great many contradictions in the bible. He also examines Thomas Aquinas' argument of infinite regress halted by god (everything has a cause, leading back in a long line of causes until they reach god) and makes the same point that I did when reviewing Lewis' God in the Dock: if god is the cause of all these things, what caused god? He also takes aim at the idea that human morality has a divine source, and that atheist morality is flawed because there is no god to provide an ultimate definition of good and evil. First, he argues that clearly modern human morals do not come from the bible, since no one in the modern world follows every precept in the bible. Therefore, just as atheists choose which morals and values they adhere to, so too do Christians. Second, he points out what he calls the "debate stopper:" if there is no morality without god, then people are naturally immoral and would, without the restraint of god's presence, be rampant murderers, rapists, and looters. If it is not the case that people would rampantly commit crimes without god's presence, then god is clearly not required for morality. This brought to mind the argument that those who blame women for being sexually assaulted (because they were dressed "indecently") are not just blaming the victim, but also insulting men in general, since it assumes that men are naturally rapists who are only able to restrain themselves if women dress "modestly" (incidentally, that is essentially what fundamentalist Muslim doctrine is saying when it forces it women to cover themselves from head to toe).

Overall, I greatly enjoyed The God Delusion. Dawkins makes a number of excellent points both disproving the existence of a god and arguing against religion in general. I would highly recommend this book.

Marcus Brotherton - We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories From The Band of Brothers

I bought We Who Are Alive and Remain a few months back after reading Dick Winters' Beyond Band of Brothers because I thought it would be interesting to learn the stories of the men of Easy Company who hadn't been featured in Winters' memoirs, Ambrose's Band of Brothers book, or the mini-series.

The stories themselves were very interesting, but the format of the book left something to be desired. Brotherton organizes the book according to themes (such as motivations for joining the army, or the journey across the Atlantic), and includes snippets from each man he interviewed providing their perspective. The problem is that this fragments the individual mens' stories, making the narratives that they provide sometimes hard to follow. Brotherton also acts on the assumption that his readers have either read Ambrose's book or have seen the mini-series, because he provides virtually no information to buttress the accounts of the veterans he interviewed, including when they reference the names or activities of men seen in Band of Brothers but not featured in Brotherton's book.

There were a number of things that I really liked about We Who Are Alive and Remain, however. One is the perspective of the replacement troops who came into Easy Company after Normandy. Band of Brothers doesn't really focus on them at all, so it was nice to see their stories, how they came to be in Easy Company, and what their experience as replacement troops was like. Perhaps the best part of the book for me was the last section, in which the children of three members of Easy Company who survived the war but have since died shared the stories of their fathers.

One of those soldiers was Herbert Sobel, who was featured in Ambrose's book, the mini-series, and Winters' memoirs as an incompetent jerk. Sobel's son shares his recollections about his father, which were entirely positive. More interestingly, to me, was that almost all of the veterans interviewed by Brotherton had good only good things to say about Sobel. By contrast, the vast majority of the men interviewed by Ambrose disliked him, including Winters, who admitted to a hatred of Sobel. Obviously there were serious problems with Sobel's command or he wouldn't have sparked the sergeants' near-mutiny featured in the mini-series, but there is clearly more to the story than Ambrose and HBO showed. It makes me wonder a little bit about how Ambrose chose which veterans to interview, that they would all share the same view.

Overall, We Who Are Alive and Remain was quite a good book, but it should only be read after having read or watched Band of Brothers, otherwise the reader will be left with a lot of questions.

Edward Crankshaw - Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny

 
I don't remember buying Gestapo, but I'm glad I did, as it was quite an interesting read. Crankshaw's goal with the book was not to give a full history of the Gestapo and its activities (although he did give a very good summary of the history) but rather to show the extent of the Gestapo's crimes and the extent to which the Gestapo was integrated with other elements of the SS, the Wehrmacht, and German society in general. Crankshaw's point in doing so was to show how widespread the crimes of Nazi Germany really were, and to prevent the guilty from pointing at the Gestapo and claiming that they were solely responsible for all of the crimes that occurred.

Perhaps the biggest strength of the book lies in how well Crankshaw outlined the key figures of the Gestapo as well as the structure of the organization and how it fit in with other Nazi organizations. The formation of the Gestapo, SS, SD, and other Nazi groups was very complex as various people jockeyed for power, but Crankshaw does an excellent job in showing exactly how the Gestapo was formed, who was in control of the various aspects of it, and how it was interconnected with other parts of the Nazi power structure, therefore implicating each department in the crimes of the others.

I definitely appreciated how Crankshaw refused to subscribe to the myths of Wehrmacht innocence that are still prevalent today. He showed quite clearly that the German generals had ample opportunity to stop Hitler from reaching power in the early days but chose not to (even after seeing his brutality in dealing with the SA) because they believed that regaining their weapons and military was the most important thing for them. Crankshaw also does a good job of refuting the popular theory that the Wehrmacht was not involved in carrying out the Holocaust. To the contrary, they were well aware of what was going on, were under orders to facilitate the SS in carrying it out (providing accommodations, transport, etc), and in some cases participated in the slaughter. On the rare occasions in which a Wehrmacht officer did protest, it was often more because he was concerned for his own mens' mental well-being than for the lives of the Jewish people being murdered.

Crankshaw also advanced the interesting theory that in Germany people were willing to carry out the orders of the sadists in power because their education system had drilled into them from childhood that they should obey the instructions of those in authority without question. He says that this is a more plausible explanation than the theory which believes that teaching Germans that Jews were subhumans allowed them to justify to themselves killing them, since in America black people are regarded as subhuman and in Britain many of the colonized peoples are regarded as subhuman (the book was originally written in the 1950s), but in neither case is there genocide directed against them. I would disagree with that slightly and say that in America and Britain in the 1950s those people were regarded as inferior humans, but not subhumans, and that in cases where others were regarded as subhumans (such as the attitude in America towards Native Americans several centuries ago) there were in fact widespread slaughters that were seen as justified. I believe that Crankshaw's argument about the rigidness of German education helps to explain the mechanics of the Holocaust but cannot be seen as the sole contributing factor.

Overall, I very much enjoyed Gestapo. It does an excellent job of proving its main argument, that of the guilt of people and organizations outside the SS/Gestapo, and was very interesting to read. I would highly recommend it.

Carlos Alberto Montaner - Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution

I bought Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution a few years ago, but didn't get around to reading it. Written originally in the 1970s, Montaner last updated it in the 1980s before the fall of the USSR, so there are a number of arguments that he makes that are no longer really relevant, and it would be interesting to see an updated version especially now that Raul Castro is at least nominally in charge of Cuba.


One of the things that I most appreciated about the book was that Montaner addresses his biases against the Castro regime upfront, and spends a fair amount of time confronting the anticipated arguments against his point of view. As someone who participated in anti-Castro actions and is now living in exile he is quite biased (as is evidenced by his somewhat tedious use of sarcasm throughout the book) but overall I think that he did a fair job of looking at the struggles that Cuba was undergoing. I especially liked that he spent an entire chapter examining the claims of progress that Castro claims Cuba had made. He admits that for some people (specifically the very poor and the black community) standards of living are indeed better than they had been, but he counters that this has been achieved by a drastic reduction in the quality of life for everyone else, including not just the rich and middle class but also the working poor. For each of the so-called successes (such as education, healthcare, race relations, and gender equality), Montaner devotes a section to looking at what has actually improved, what has been manipulated by propaganda, and what has deteriorated.

I would have liked if Montaner had spent more time examining resistance to Castro within Cuba. He spent quite a bit of space discussing how the average Cuban is dissatisfied with the regime and how many of them have fled or attempted to flee, but very little time to actual resistance. What few resistance movements he does examine are entirely ones that were backed by the US decades ago. He does not clarify whether or not with the cessation of US support for Cuban resistance all resistance ended, or if there are still some resistance movements.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book was the last chapter, in which Montaner examines what he believes might happen to Cuba in the decades to come. He looked at what the consequences for Cuba might be if the USSR and USA ended up on friendlier terms, but does not discuss the possibility of the complete collapse of the USSR. The closing section of the book is eerily prescient, as Montaner predicts a time in which Fidel fades into the background of Cuban governance, giving control of day-to-day operations to Raul, after which Raul begins a period of slow liberalization.

Overall, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution was a very good book. It started off somewhat slowly, and there are sections that drag, but in general it is a very interesting look at Cuban society between 1959 and 1989, and I would highly recommend it.

James Brabazon - My Friend the Mercenary

I bought this book a few weeks ago mostly at random, as it looked interesting and was on a subject that I knew very little about. It follows James Brabazon, a British journalist, as he ventures into Liberia during the Second Liberian Civil War alongside Nick du Toit, a South African mercenary he had hired to protect him. The story follows the two of them through a number of trips to Liberia and then concludes with a botched coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea partially led by du Toit that Brabazon was supposed to have come along to film.


Overall, it was a very interesting book. It was fascinating to see how Brabazon evolved from a rather naive journalist struggling to reconcile his role in the conflict (as an observer to atrocities that he could do nothing to prevent but that he was profiting from) to someone who was in many respects a mercenary himself (seen in helping to coordinate a Liberian rebel ambush, referring to the Liberian rebels as "we" and "us," and being relieved that Charles Taylor wasn't arrested during the conflict because that would have meant the end of the war and therefore the end of Brabazon's story). I also found it very interesting how by the end Brabazon admits that it has become impossible for him to be a neutral journalist in the Equatorial Guinea affair, as his friendship with du Toit has compromised his neutrality. This also led me to question whether or not there might be things about du Toit or the conflict that Brabazon did not talk about in order to protect his friend's reputation, although he did talk about du Toit's questionable past as a part of the South African special forces during Apartheid.

In general, My Friend the Mercenary was an excellent book, and I would highly recommend reading it.

Dominique Enright - The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill

I picked up The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill a few days ago as a way to pass the time while waiting to meet friends. It was exactly what I hoped it would be, a light read that collected the many quips attributed to Churchill and not the more portentous things that he said over his career.


I don't really have much to say about the book, other than that I quite enjoyed it. I appreciated that it also included quotes by others about Churchill (not all of which were complimentary), and that the introduction gave a relatively balanced look at him rather than fall into the blind hero worship that too often accompanies Churchill. My only complaints about Wicked Wit are that not all of the quotes can be verified (as admitted by the editor) and that for some reason in a small number of quotes the editor has chosen to try to imitate the slur in Churchill's speech.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, it was a quick and light read that was quite interesting.

C.S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain

Like my other C.S. Lewis book on theology God in the Dock, I was given The Problem of Pain by my aunt and uncle when they were getting rid of some of their old books. As with God in the Dock, I had very little desire to read it but decided to just get it over with.


In general, I had fewer objections to The Problem of Pain than I did to God in the Dock, largely because while the latter was billed as a book designed to provide arguments in favour of the existence of God to the unbeliever and failed to do so, the former was seemingly designed to provide believers with an argument on why pain exists in the world if God is good. As the arguments in The Problem of Pain are therefore not directed at me, most of my objections are with the lack of consistency that is present in Lewis' arguments. For example, he argues that God is omnipotent in the sense that he created everything, including free will, and therefore does not interfere with humanity's choices except in select circumstances, which are rare and wondrous enough to be called miracles. This clashes somewhat with his arguments in later chapters. In one, Lewis claims that "whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we think we want." If this claim is true, then does this not mean that far from allowing us our own choices, God is in fact interfering with our lives at every turn? In a similar vein in a later chapter, Lewis argues that God wants us to be happy in him, and that he therefore strips away our false happiness (which is when we experience pain) until we turn to him, which is the only way to be truly happy. As with the last argument, if this is true, then how can it be said that God interferes only in select circumstances? If he is in fact stripping away all "false" happiness, then it would seem to me that he is interfering with our free will down to the minutiae of our lives.

Although most of the book was aimed at doubting or questioning believers, there were a number of arguments towards the beginning of the book that were seemingly aimed at atheists. His first argument is that it is implausible that humanity would have imagined a just and good creator when surrounded by the horrors of a harsh and unjust world. The major problem with this is of course that for the most part religion did not begin with people imagining a just and good god. Instead, it began with people believing in the power of nature (with the sun, moon, wind, rain, etc all existing as deities). Even once early forms of Judaism emerged there was still not a belief in a just and good god. Instead, there was a god who was incredibly jealous ("Thou shalt have no other god before me"), who demanded that his followers obey a seemingly random assortment of laws (no shellfish, no contact with menstruating women, etc), and who commanded his followers to fall upon their enemies and slaughter all those living within towns who opposed them. The idea of a loving god who wanted his people to know joy through him was a much later development.

Lewis' second argument against atheism follows the same pattern as his arguments in God in the Dock by constructing straw men. In particular, Lewis claims that there are only two alternatives concerning Jesus. Either he was an "abominable raving lunatic" or he was who he said he was, but that there is no middle ground. According to Lewis, since the records bear out that Jesus was not a raving lunatic, he must logically be who he said he was. Ignoring the fact that the only "record" that can be consulted on this matter has a rather vested interest in proving that Jesus was not in fact a lunatic, there are still several alternatives that Lewis conveniently ignores. First, there is the possibility that Jesus never existed, and is instead the product of the human propensity for inventing myths that justify their own actions. Second (and what I tend to believe), there is the possibility that a man named Jesus did live roughly 2,000 years ago, taught a large number of followers to believe what he had to say without it necessarily being the truth, and was executed as a disturber of the peace, and that after his death his followers exploited and expanded his legacy in order to gain their own followers and increase their own influence. For those Christians who argue that the spread of Christianity on such a scale would have been impossible without it being a divinely inspired and aided truth, I would point out that if you are Christian and therefore believe that other religions are false, how can you explain their spread to large numbers of people without divine assistance? The truth is that many people are eager to believe in something larger than themselves, and are therefore easily led to believe what they want to believe.

I did not particularly enjoy The Problem of Pain, but I did not really expect to. Lewis' arguments have a number of logical holes which he does not bother to address, and I am not sure that even were I a Christian that I would accept them as they are.

Kazik - Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter

I got Memoirs for Christmas this year because it looked very interesting, but I had a difficult time getting into it. It was well-written and interesting, but lacked quite a bit of detail.


Often when I was reading Memoirs I was struck by the thought that I would really like to read a book about Kazik that was not written by him. Largely this is because he tells the story as though writing for people who already know the people and places that he is talking about. As a result, he leaves out quite a bit of the back story of the people involved, which makes it somewhat difficult to follow in places. The editor does their best to add footnotes explaining who people are and what happened to them, but the result is a somewhat disjointed narrative, taking the reader out of Kazik's story and into a dry mini-biography of the person in question. Another reason why I would be interested in reading an expanded account of Kazik's story is because he goes into very little detail about himself and his own motivations. It is left unclear why he joined the fighting when so many didn't, and how he specifically came to be a leader in the movement.

All of that being said, Memoirs was still quite interesting. The personal stories, while sometimes told out of context, were riveting, as was Kazik's perspective on life within the Warsaw Ghetto.