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countingstarsbycandlelight's review against another edition
2.0
Although the author states that he will visit each of the apostles tombs, much of the time is spent going over history of the apostles. I would have liked more present day observations.
-k
-k
colinrafferty's review
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
larryschwartz's review against another edition
5.0
just started this, even though I've got 5 other books or so that should have precedence. something about the writing has drawn me in. don't judge me.
And that's a wrap. This was _fascinating!_ I need my own copy to read again.
And that's a wrap. This was _fascinating!_ I need my own copy to read again.
skitch41's review
4.0
According to the New Testament, the 12 apostles were the closest men to Jesus during his ministry and were key witnesses to his resurrection. Yet few of them have any spoken lines in the Gospels and Acts and all of them disappear into the shadows of history halfway through Acts. Into this void there have been a number of legends and local traditions across Europe, Asia and Africa about the Apostles' post-resurrection deeds. Many countries even claim to hold the bones of these saints. How to sort through them all? Thankfully, Mr. Bissell does that for us.
Part travelogue and part historical and theological investigation into the early church, this book packs a lot of history and theology into its 360+ page narrative. Rather than visit every location that claims to hold an apostle, Mr. Bissell visits one and for each of them and uses his travel and studies on early Christianity to enlighten the reader on the Apostles and their legacy. It is a great read filled with fascinating details. I especially appreciated his examination of the apocryphal tales to broaden our understanding. In a way, Mr. Bissell has made the Apostles more accessible to me by being so thorough about the tales that have surrounded each of them. His insights into other aspects of early Christianity are especially appreciated.
However, I was rather disheartened at how readily Mr. Bissell was willing to accept the most skeptical interpretations of the New Testament. Many of these views have been explained or debunked by scholars and theologians over the centuries, but Mr. Bissell doesn't seem to engage with these at all. Also, his snide comment toward the end of his book about certain strains of modern American Christianity being a "white-person Rastafarianism- a way for an aggrieved and self-conscious subculture to barricade itself in righteous anger" felt unnecessarily hostile and undercut the relatively respectful tone he had employed throughout the rest of his book.
A rather heady and fascinating romp through the history of early Christianity, I would recommend this book to people who are interested in the topic and already have a firm grasp on basic Christian history and doctrine.
Part travelogue and part historical and theological investigation into the early church, this book packs a lot of history and theology into its 360+ page narrative. Rather than visit every location that claims to hold an apostle, Mr. Bissell visits one and for each of them and uses his travel and studies on early Christianity to enlighten the reader on the Apostles and their legacy. It is a great read filled with fascinating details. I especially appreciated his examination of the apocryphal tales to broaden our understanding. In a way, Mr. Bissell has made the Apostles more accessible to me by being so thorough about the tales that have surrounded each of them. His insights into other aspects of early Christianity are especially appreciated.
However, I was rather disheartened at how readily Mr. Bissell was willing to accept the most skeptical interpretations of the New Testament. Many of these views have been explained or debunked by scholars and theologians over the centuries, but Mr. Bissell doesn't seem to engage with these at all. Also, his snide comment toward the end of his book about certain strains of modern American Christianity being a "white-person Rastafarianism- a way for an aggrieved and self-conscious subculture to barricade itself in righteous anger" felt unnecessarily hostile and undercut the relatively respectful tone he had employed throughout the rest of his book.
A rather heady and fascinating romp through the history of early Christianity, I would recommend this book to people who are interested in the topic and already have a firm grasp on basic Christian history and doctrine.
saintboleyn's review
4.0
A really interesting read, albeit an incredibly long and dense one. As a Bible geek, I enjoyed it. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has less than an obsessive interest in Christianity - it took me a month to finish for a good reason.
librarianonparade's review
4.0
For three years author Tom Bissell travelled the world, seeking the putative final resting places of Jesus' Twelve Apostles. The journey took him from Jerusalem to Spain, Kyrgyzstan to Greece, seeking tombs, shrines, reliquaries and archaeological sites, all claiming to hold the bodies (or parts of the bodies, relic distribution being what it was back in the day) of Jesus' closest disciples.
This book is a curious hybrid of genres - part travelogue, part learned disquisition on theology, part history of the early Church, part collective biography. Each chapter is devoted to one of the Twelve, broken up into sections, with Bissell's own experiences of his travels in these various countries interspersed with biographical detail, analysis of the relevant sections of the Gospels, and historical context. Bissell is a lapsed Christian, so the tone of this book is an appealing combination of active scepticism and reluctant reverence. There would be something in this book for both the believer and the atheist, and you don't find many books on Christianity that could lay claim to that.
It makes for an enjoyable read, the lighter-hearted personal sections breaking up the otherwise weighty religious content. On occasion, Bissell's personal reminiscences verge into TMI (Too Much Information) - the lengthy section during his stay in India and his experiences of 'Delhi Belly' I could have done without. I don't expect to pick up a book on religion to read about the state of anyone's bowels!
This book is a curious hybrid of genres - part travelogue, part learned disquisition on theology, part history of the early Church, part collective biography. Each chapter is devoted to one of the Twelve, broken up into sections, with Bissell's own experiences of his travels in these various countries interspersed with biographical detail, analysis of the relevant sections of the Gospels, and historical context. Bissell is a lapsed Christian, so the tone of this book is an appealing combination of active scepticism and reluctant reverence. There would be something in this book for both the believer and the atheist, and you don't find many books on Christianity that could lay claim to that.
It makes for an enjoyable read, the lighter-hearted personal sections breaking up the otherwise weighty religious content. On occasion, Bissell's personal reminiscences verge into TMI (Too Much Information) - the lengthy section during his stay in India and his experiences of 'Delhi Belly' I could have done without. I don't expect to pick up a book on religion to read about the state of anyone's bowels!
hagiasophia's review
4.0
This book has a lot of three-star reviews, which makes me sad, since I really enjoyed it. The book is part travelogue, of the author's visits to various shrines and part history, as he covers the different stories and controversies surrounding various apostles. People expecting the book to be fully one thing or the other will be disappointed, but I loved the combination and felt it was well balanced, though a little more info on his travels would have been nice. The real weakness here is Bissell's disregard for religion. He is in no way disrespectful, but his disbelief can sometimes come off as harsh as he commentates on people believing in impossible things. I'm not saying he has to be religious, but he didn't share the sense of wonder other travelers did and that impacted his story telling quite a bit. On the other hand, Bissell's disbelief means he has no qualms about digging into non-canonical gospels and folk traditions, which was wonderful. If you are particularly rigid in your religious views, this is not the book for you, but if you want to learn about the evolution of Christianity, where the apostles' relics are kept and why they still have such a strong hold on our culture, then this is the book for you.
kamreadsandrecs's review
4.0
Anyone who has been to the Philippines and lived here for more than a year knows that an enormous majority of the schools are run by Catholic, Catholic-affiliated, or Christian institutions. I myself studied at Catholic schools my entire life - yes, even when I went to university. As a result, I am entirely familiar with the notion of catechism, or, as we called it in grade school and high school, “Religion” classes. In these classes we were taught such things as scripture, doctrine, dogma -everything the school deemed necessary for us to know in order to become good Catholics. By the time I graduated high school, my head was filled with a whole host of facts, figures, and ideas about the Catholic Church that I rather quickly forgot unless it had been insistently drummed into my head by constant repetition. This means that if someone asked me to list all of the Twelve Apostles I would probably only be able to name the most famous of them - but I can go through the motions of the average Catholic Mass (my cousin calls it “doing Catholic aerobics”) without thinking too hard.
However, despite my rather complicated relationship with organised religion in general and Catholicism in particular, I still find myself drawn to the stories told about and within it - in particular, its history. And there is plenty to be interested in - not least the many conflicts and questions that have shaped Christianity into the form (or, more accurately, forms) we recognise today. When I read Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, I did so in an attempt to understand the figure at the heart of Christianity. It made sense, therefore, to read Tom Bissell’s Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve, in order to understand the disciples who followed Jesus and who, for better or worse, laid down the groundwork for turning Christianity into the globe-spanning faith it is today.
Apostle begins with an Author’s Note, featuring an interesting epigraph:
My religion makes no sense
and does not help me
therefore I pursue it.
— Anne Carson, “My Religion”
The epigraph tells the reader all he or she needs to know about why Bissell chose to write a book on the apostles, though he clarifies it further in the Author’s Note itself:
Even after I lost my religious faith, Christianity remained to me deeply and resonantly interesting, and I have long believed that anyone who does not find Christianity interesting has only his or her unfamiliarity with the topic to blame. I think, in some ways, I wrote this book to put that belief to the test.
The notion that Bissell wrote the book “to put [his] belief to the test” is one that resonates with my own relationship with Christianity. While I no longer subscribe to (indeed, am wary of) organised religion, I am still deeply curious about its history and structure and how the most popular forms have managed to survive to this day. My interest in Christianity specifically is only natural given my own personal background - and again, similar to Bissell’s, since it was his own history in the faith that drove him to write Apostle in the first place.
Aside from explaining the raison d’être behind the book’s existence, the Author’s Notes also explains Bissell’s approach to his subject:
From 2007 to 2010, I traveled to the supposed tombs and resting places of the Twelve Apostles. … This book has no interest in determining which sites have the greatest claim to a given apostle’s remains. It is instead an effort to explore the legendary encrustation upon twelve lives about which little is known and even less can be historically verified.
…
… Indeed, since the very beginning of Christian history, the Twelve Apostles have wandered a strange gloaming between history and belief.
These statements, and many others throughout the book, are sure to set off alarm bells in the heads of more devout readers, but that, I suppose, is why Bissell does the reader the courtesy of writing an Author’s Note in the first place. If the reader is looking for information that will conform to Christian doctrine, then he or she will be sorely disappointed, perhaps even angered, by its content. Take this excerpt, for example, which deals with the question of Jesus’s relatives - or seeming lack thereof - in Christian discourse:
Why there is not more information about the influence of the relatives of Jesus has been said by some to be the greatest riddle of early Christianity. Yet Christians failed to preserve and in many cases destroyed the works of countless early Christian writers, including that of Papias, Irenaeus, Origen, and Hegesippus. The likely Gentile Christian response to work that emphasized the enduring influence of Jesus’s family’s descendants is not terribly difficult to imagine. Recognizing Jesus’s family endangered the doctrine of the virgin birth, placed the exceptionality of Jesus himself at risk, and unhappily reminded Gentile Christians that at the beginning there was only Jewish Christianity.
Having asked similar questions to the one posed in the above excerpt, and having encountered people who are not comfortable answering them, I can see how it may difficult for someone who is not very open-minded to wrap their mind around what the excerpt - and Bissell’s book as a whole - is trying to say. If some of the reviews I have seen are any indication, I think it is quite safe to say that Bissell as lit more than a few fires in his wake.
But I think it is also clear that Bissell did not write this book for the narrow-minded set. Apostle is a book for those who, like Bissell, are practitioners of “the boldly searching Christianity [he] has always been drawn to.” This is a book for people - believers or otherwise - who like asking questions, and like finding answers to those questions. It is for readers who are driven to address their faith, not with blind belief, but with the desire to “comprehend the comprehender”, to paraphrase Augustine. It is also for readers like myself, who no longer subscribe to Christianity but are driven by curiosity to understand it anyway.
For such readers, Bissell’s book is easy to enjoy without the guilty squirming someone with a less open mind might feel. His language is easy to understand and get into - especially when he leavens the more serious historical analysis with snarky comments, both in the main text and in the footnotes. The following is one of my favourites, and is related to Bissell’s observations regarding medieval European cathedrals and basilicas:
The peasants who lived in the shadows of these costly, otherworldly churches must have accepted all this as reasonable, just as we somehow accept that earning tens of millions of dollars for pretending to be Iron Man is reasonable.
While the above excerpt does say something interesting about the medieval peasantry’s attitude towards the great cathedrals built in their communities, I think it says a lot more about Bissell’s scorn for Hollywood blockbusters than anything else - something the reader may find humorous, or irritating, depending on his or her preferences.
Aside from the snark, Bissell also tells anecdotes from his travels while researching the book. There are quite a few amusing moments, but he tells one story, in particular, that I find remarkably touching:
”I love Americans,” she said. “Do you want to know why?”
I did, if only because the number of times a Muslim had asked me if I wanted to know why she loved Americans had just increased by 100 percent.
“Because Americans can be many things, many ethnicities, and many religions, just like the Kyrgyz people. Because Americans, like Kyrgyz, are free people.” Then she took my hand. “You are looking for Matthew?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am. Or I was.”
“May God let you find him,” she said. I tried to retrieve my hand, but she was not yet done: her fingers warmly tightened. “May God straighten your road. May God put the wind at your back. May God allow the rain to come down softly. And may God bring us together again.”
The above scene takes place in a wooden Russian Orthodox church in Kyrgyzstan, and aside from Bissell and the Muslim woman, there is also a Russian Orthodox priest present - a friend of the Muslim woman’s, with whom she trades poetry. This story is a reminder to the reader (as it must have been to Bissell, I imagine) that religion is not such a hard-and-fast thing as it is so often made out to be, that it is possible for all people, regardless of their religion or even lack thereof, to live alongside each other in peace, if only we are more understanding, more openminded, more willing to see the similarities instead of the differences.
Still, despite Bissell’s language, travel anecdotes, and snarky comments, this is not an easy book to read. Bissell has structured the book in such a way that each chapter is a self-contained essay on its chosen subject, but within each chapter the narrative organisation is not as clear or cohesive as the reader might want it to be. There is a tendency to meander between travelogue and historical analysis, with a pace that varied wildly from relatively snappy to absolutely plodding. I also have an issue with the last chapter, which has an ending that feels like Bissell just throwing in the towel on the whole book. I do not expect any sort of triumphant ending, because this is not a book that requires one, but I do wish that Bissell had chosen to conclude his book in a manner that is more satisfactory than one that seems to say: “Well, that’s it, that’s all folks!”
Overall, Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve can be an enjoyable book, in its own way, but it is also quite a challenging book, especially if the reader is a devout Christian not ready to confront certain ideas about his or her religion. However, for readers who are ready to ask such questions, or for readers who are not religious but still curious about how Christianity came to be, then this is a book will prove remarkably informative and may possibly open up other lines of inquiry in the future. As long as the reader is also willing to put up with Bissell’s sense of humour and the vagaries of his narrative organisation, then he or she should have fairly minimal problems with this book.
However, despite my rather complicated relationship with organised religion in general and Catholicism in particular, I still find myself drawn to the stories told about and within it - in particular, its history. And there is plenty to be interested in - not least the many conflicts and questions that have shaped Christianity into the form (or, more accurately, forms) we recognise today. When I read Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, I did so in an attempt to understand the figure at the heart of Christianity. It made sense, therefore, to read Tom Bissell’s Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve, in order to understand the disciples who followed Jesus and who, for better or worse, laid down the groundwork for turning Christianity into the globe-spanning faith it is today.
Apostle begins with an Author’s Note, featuring an interesting epigraph:
My religion makes no sense
and does not help me
therefore I pursue it.
— Anne Carson, “My Religion”
The epigraph tells the reader all he or she needs to know about why Bissell chose to write a book on the apostles, though he clarifies it further in the Author’s Note itself:
Even after I lost my religious faith, Christianity remained to me deeply and resonantly interesting, and I have long believed that anyone who does not find Christianity interesting has only his or her unfamiliarity with the topic to blame. I think, in some ways, I wrote this book to put that belief to the test.
The notion that Bissell wrote the book “to put [his] belief to the test” is one that resonates with my own relationship with Christianity. While I no longer subscribe to (indeed, am wary of) organised religion, I am still deeply curious about its history and structure and how the most popular forms have managed to survive to this day. My interest in Christianity specifically is only natural given my own personal background - and again, similar to Bissell’s, since it was his own history in the faith that drove him to write Apostle in the first place.
Aside from explaining the raison d’être behind the book’s existence, the Author’s Notes also explains Bissell’s approach to his subject:
From 2007 to 2010, I traveled to the supposed tombs and resting places of the Twelve Apostles. … This book has no interest in determining which sites have the greatest claim to a given apostle’s remains. It is instead an effort to explore the legendary encrustation upon twelve lives about which little is known and even less can be historically verified.
…
… Indeed, since the very beginning of Christian history, the Twelve Apostles have wandered a strange gloaming between history and belief.
These statements, and many others throughout the book, are sure to set off alarm bells in the heads of more devout readers, but that, I suppose, is why Bissell does the reader the courtesy of writing an Author’s Note in the first place. If the reader is looking for information that will conform to Christian doctrine, then he or she will be sorely disappointed, perhaps even angered, by its content. Take this excerpt, for example, which deals with the question of Jesus’s relatives - or seeming lack thereof - in Christian discourse:
Why there is not more information about the influence of the relatives of Jesus has been said by some to be the greatest riddle of early Christianity. Yet Christians failed to preserve and in many cases destroyed the works of countless early Christian writers, including that of Papias, Irenaeus, Origen, and Hegesippus. The likely Gentile Christian response to work that emphasized the enduring influence of Jesus’s family’s descendants is not terribly difficult to imagine. Recognizing Jesus’s family endangered the doctrine of the virgin birth, placed the exceptionality of Jesus himself at risk, and unhappily reminded Gentile Christians that at the beginning there was only Jewish Christianity.
Having asked similar questions to the one posed in the above excerpt, and having encountered people who are not comfortable answering them, I can see how it may difficult for someone who is not very open-minded to wrap their mind around what the excerpt - and Bissell’s book as a whole - is trying to say. If some of the reviews I have seen are any indication, I think it is quite safe to say that Bissell as lit more than a few fires in his wake.
But I think it is also clear that Bissell did not write this book for the narrow-minded set. Apostle is a book for those who, like Bissell, are practitioners of “the boldly searching Christianity [he] has always been drawn to.” This is a book for people - believers or otherwise - who like asking questions, and like finding answers to those questions. It is for readers who are driven to address their faith, not with blind belief, but with the desire to “comprehend the comprehender”, to paraphrase Augustine. It is also for readers like myself, who no longer subscribe to Christianity but are driven by curiosity to understand it anyway.
For such readers, Bissell’s book is easy to enjoy without the guilty squirming someone with a less open mind might feel. His language is easy to understand and get into - especially when he leavens the more serious historical analysis with snarky comments, both in the main text and in the footnotes. The following is one of my favourites, and is related to Bissell’s observations regarding medieval European cathedrals and basilicas:
The peasants who lived in the shadows of these costly, otherworldly churches must have accepted all this as reasonable, just as we somehow accept that earning tens of millions of dollars for pretending to be Iron Man is reasonable.
While the above excerpt does say something interesting about the medieval peasantry’s attitude towards the great cathedrals built in their communities, I think it says a lot more about Bissell’s scorn for Hollywood blockbusters than anything else - something the reader may find humorous, or irritating, depending on his or her preferences.
Aside from the snark, Bissell also tells anecdotes from his travels while researching the book. There are quite a few amusing moments, but he tells one story, in particular, that I find remarkably touching:
”I love Americans,” she said. “Do you want to know why?”
I did, if only because the number of times a Muslim had asked me if I wanted to know why she loved Americans had just increased by 100 percent.
“Because Americans can be many things, many ethnicities, and many religions, just like the Kyrgyz people. Because Americans, like Kyrgyz, are free people.” Then she took my hand. “You are looking for Matthew?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am. Or I was.”
“May God let you find him,” she said. I tried to retrieve my hand, but she was not yet done: her fingers warmly tightened. “May God straighten your road. May God put the wind at your back. May God allow the rain to come down softly. And may God bring us together again.”
The above scene takes place in a wooden Russian Orthodox church in Kyrgyzstan, and aside from Bissell and the Muslim woman, there is also a Russian Orthodox priest present - a friend of the Muslim woman’s, with whom she trades poetry. This story is a reminder to the reader (as it must have been to Bissell, I imagine) that religion is not such a hard-and-fast thing as it is so often made out to be, that it is possible for all people, regardless of their religion or even lack thereof, to live alongside each other in peace, if only we are more understanding, more openminded, more willing to see the similarities instead of the differences.
Still, despite Bissell’s language, travel anecdotes, and snarky comments, this is not an easy book to read. Bissell has structured the book in such a way that each chapter is a self-contained essay on its chosen subject, but within each chapter the narrative organisation is not as clear or cohesive as the reader might want it to be. There is a tendency to meander between travelogue and historical analysis, with a pace that varied wildly from relatively snappy to absolutely plodding. I also have an issue with the last chapter, which has an ending that feels like Bissell just throwing in the towel on the whole book. I do not expect any sort of triumphant ending, because this is not a book that requires one, but I do wish that Bissell had chosen to conclude his book in a manner that is more satisfactory than one that seems to say: “Well, that’s it, that’s all folks!”
Overall, Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve can be an enjoyable book, in its own way, but it is also quite a challenging book, especially if the reader is a devout Christian not ready to confront certain ideas about his or her religion. However, for readers who are ready to ask such questions, or for readers who are not religious but still curious about how Christianity came to be, then this is a book will prove remarkably informative and may possibly open up other lines of inquiry in the future. As long as the reader is also willing to put up with Bissell’s sense of humour and the vagaries of his narrative organisation, then he or she should have fairly minimal problems with this book.
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