Walter Hooper, “C.S. Lewis Companion and Guide”
At 940 pages, this book can be called comprehensive; it includes a 120-page bibliography, summaries of works, and lists of key ideas, who’s who, and what’s what.
Books
Posts about books that I’ve read.
James T. Como (editor), “C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences”
This book is a series of vignettes by people who knew C.S. Lewis personally. What a wonderful man: generous, talkative, unpretentious, positive — a real role model. And there is material of interest beyond his personality in here: Jacques Barzun was a fan, Lewis accepts original sin because Paul seemed to (159), Lewis did not … [Read more…]
Edward Gibbon, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (abridged audiobook)
My interpretation is that he doesn’t say Christianity was the cause of Rome’s fall, but he certainly says it was a contributing factor. He also says that the number of martyrs was exaggerated (but he’s looking at just the reign of Diocletian). The book was probably considered more radical for his day than we’d consider … [Read more…]
Leslie Adkins & Roy A. Adkins, “Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome”
A couple of notes: (1) There was no consensus among Romans about an afterlife. (2) “Most early Roman gods were not anthropomorphic in nature until they became identified with Greek gods, so there is unlikely to have been much scope to invent myths about Roman gods. There is very little surviving evidence for Roman and … [Read more…]
Amanda H. Podany & Marni McGee, “The Ancient Near Eastern World”
I read that more relevant chapters, discussing the similarities among ancient faiths but also their differences; for example, non-Jews there saw man’s creation by the gods as motivated by a desire to save the latter from work via the food sacrifices offered to them by the former. These people, it should be borne in mind, … [Read more…]
Erica C.D. Hunter (updated by Mike Corbishley), “First Civilizations”
“According to Mesopotamian religion, human beings were created to serve the gods. Each city had a patron god, and these gods lived in images in the temples dedicated to them. The priests and other people who worked at the temples were their servants. Kings were thought to be appointed by the will of … [Read more…]
Elaine Landau, “The Assyrians,” “The Sumerians,” and “The Babylonians”
(All three of these are labeled by the library as juvenile literature.) Some notes: Assyria also relocated troublesome people it had conquered (51). The Sumerians had clocks that used 60-second minutes and 60-minute hours. Babylon was very much an on-again, off-again empire during the time it was (sporadically) ascendant, from 1792-539 B.C. Note: Babylon is … [Read more…]
Paul Strathern, “Kant in 90 Minutes”
Kant is a theist, but it is unclear to me what (if anything) he says about Christianity — which, however, is more a matter of history and, thus, might have been beyond the scope of his writing (cf. the bifurcated approach taken in my essay, elsewhere on this site, “Why I Am a Christian (and … [Read more…]
C.S. Lewis, “The Great Divorce”
I reread this in 2013 as a Lenten study. Two thoughts: First, I’ve thought more about what Heaven will be like than what Hell would be like; I wonder if that’s true of most people. Second, if the raised body is, in some sense, solid, then Heaven must be, in some sense, an actual place … [Read more…]
Joseph F. Girzone, “Jesus: His Life and Teachings”
This is a straightforward and valuable book: He just takes the four Gospels and makes them into a straightforward, chronological narrative of all that Jesus said and did. I did not notice any editorializing or omissions/additions. The book is 183 pages. (The author is a retired Catholic priest. I note that one website says he … [Read more…]