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jpgaipo's review against another edition
5.0
Me fascina todo de este libro rarísimo, hasta cuando cuenta el patatús religioso y fase capillita del autor.
Pero la forma en que novela toda la movida de Pablo y Lucas es increíble.
Pero la forma en que novela toda la movida de Pablo y Lucas es increíble.
hx87u6sj19asjx's review
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.5
mathildemr's review against another edition
5.0
L'un des meilleurs livres que j'ai lu depuis longtemps!!!
gal123's review against another edition
3.0
ספר עם פונטציאל לא ממומש
יכול היה להיות כאן סיפור היסטורי מרתק ואכן הפרקונים בהם הוא עוסק בכך הם החלקים הטובים של הספר.
אך מנגד ,ישנו חלק ניכר של הספר שיכל להיות מקוצץ ומורד ממנו ובנוסף הרגיש תקוע ולא מעניין.
הסופר מעניין ואני רוצה לקרוא ממנו שוב ובמיוחד את לימונוב.
יכול היה להיות כאן סיפור היסטורי מרתק ואכן הפרקונים בהם הוא עוסק בכך הם החלקים הטובים של הספר.
אך מנגד ,ישנו חלק ניכר של הספר שיכל להיות מקוצץ ומורד ממנו ובנוסף הרגיש תקוע ולא מעניין.
הסופר מעניין ואני רוצה לקרוא ממנו שוב ובמיוחד את לימונוב.
lizziekam's review
3.0
First not-for-me book in the Carrère canon. Turns out I'm not interested enough in the early Christian church to read this much deeply researched commentary on it.
djeand's review against another edition
4.0
Un livre passionnant et frustrant. Passionnant car l'histoire des débuts du christianisme y est contée de manière vivante et érudite, si bien qu'on apprend beaucoup tout en prenant du plaisir à lire. Frustrant car le côté mise en scène de l'auteur et de sa vie privée fonctionne moins bien dans ce livre que dans les oeuvres précédentes de Carrère. C'est parfois pertinent mais pas toujours et à la longue, cela finit par sentir un peu la recette. Mais cela reste une excellente lecture, distrayante et enrichissante, ce qui est déjà énorme.
blackoxford's review
4.0
Bleak Expectations
Part spiritual memoir, part intellectual self-portrait, part textual exegesis, part fictional dramatisation, The Kingdom is of a genre not often encountered in Anglo-Saxon letters. It is a French invention. Fame in France - in politics, in journalism, in the arts - brings with it the opportunity, possibly the obligation, to bare one's beliefs and motivations - or lack of the same. Perhaps this is a sort of rationalist Cartesian cultural legacy. Bernard Henri-Levy writes in the same vein, for example, in his The Genius of Judaism.
But whereas Henri-Levy writes about his lost and found Judaism, Emmanuel Carrere writes about his lost and found and lost again Catholicism. And whereas Henri-Levy celebrates Judaism, Carrere questions the credibility of Christianity as essentially an extension of Greek mythology. His basic question: How is it that a religion so soaked in Greek myth and magic emerged from Jewish monotheism and has come to dominate so much of the world? Carrerre is quite right to point the finger at Paul of Tarsus and his gospel-writing bag-man, Luke. For it is this dynamic duo, neither of whom ever met Jesus, who promoted his cause so effectively, and so weirdly.
Unlike the writers of other parts of the New Testament, Luke and Paul are real people. That is, we know for sure that their identities are not some symbolic or composite name. Mark, Matthew and John, for example, are unknowns aside from their gospel monikers. Paul is certainly the author of a number of letters (but not all ascribed to him). He speaks frequently in the first person: I saw, I believe, I command. And so does Luke in those parts of his writing, namely the Acts of the Apostles, in which he has first hand experience.
Carrere recognises that it is Paul's interpretation of Jesus's teaching and its significance that is the basis for Christianity. Paul, rather than Jesus, is the Christian Moses. And it is he who seeks to displace Moses, and with him Judaism, as the chosen people who proclaim the existence of the one God. Christianity rises or falls - intellectually, culturally, politically - depending on one's faith, therefore, not so much in Jesus but in Paul. And Paul has more than his fair share of credibility issues in Carrere's estimation.
Carrere's technique of interpolating, of imagining, scenes and dialogue that supplement the gospels is one that is an ancient pious practice. Without it, Jesus and his followers become formulaic and inhuman, even in the four versions that have been deemed orthodox. Carrere's inventions are at least as plausible as the various Christmas story embellishments, for example. And for the most part they are done sympathetically, as consistent with the 'official' texts.
Paul's fundamental message, in Carrere's view, was that the world had undergone an evolutionary change through the life, but especially the death, of Jesus. The being of the world, what is known in Greek philosophy as its ontology, had been altered for the better. This message is incomprehensible and meaningless to Jews, who had never been schooled in the categories of Greek thought.
To say that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, was one thing. Such a claim might be wrong but it was plausible and could be debated. It was certainly not heretical. To say that this Messiah saved by changing the basis of existence, however, was nonsensical, except to Greeks. This implied not simply a replacement-Moses but a replacement-Genesis. And this is indeed heresy: if God had found what he had done "good," what need could there possibly be for a second try?
So Paul abandons his fellow-Jews and proselytises among the Gentiles. His preaching isn't about Jesus, whom he only knows second-hand; it is about Christ, whose sacrifice of himself somehow, Paul claims, creates a new cosmic order. It is this new arrangement of the world, its ontological character, not the person Jesus which is what Paul announces. Jesus's purported resurrection from the dead is merely the miraculous evidence for this new order.
There is no subsequent gospel story that confirms this new order among the stay-at-home Jews. Nor is there a clear relationship in these stories between the God of Israel and Jesus. Yet Paul is confident that Jesus should be worshipped as divine as part of this new arrangement. He is also confident that this new order, which he calls the kingdom, will become visible imminently. Little wonder then that Paul desisted from spreading his message too close to Jerusalem.
Told in such a clinical way, it is clear that the spread of Pauline Christianity could only have taken place in a cultural and intellectual environment like that of the Roman Empire. Rome was the source and enforcer of law. But Greek was the language and philosophical font of a largely Hellenised population. And Paul's doctrines fit far more easily into the Greek Pantheon than into the Jewish Temple. Confident of the imminent end of the world, Paul attracted what today would be classified as a cult following of those who were eagerly anticipating an apocalyptic resolution of the world's miseries.
Carrere bases much of his interpretation of sacred texts on what is generally called the New Criticism, that serious exegetical study of the bible, which is a reading from rather than a reading into the text. This method began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and continues as the dominant mode of biblical analysis today. One of its first proponents was the Frenchman Ernest Renan, whose Life of Jesus and History of the Origins of Christianity caused widespread scandal by treating biblical texts as historical documents. At Renan's hands, the pious myths of Christianity, particularly those of the kingdom, do not fare very well. Things have not improved at all since then for the credibility of the texts or the attempts over centuries to square Jewish monotheism with the Pauline divinity of Jesus. Carrere's summary of the results of the New Criticism, and his own speculations, are a good introduction to the discipline.
Alfred Loisy, the French theologian, excommunicated at the beginning of the 20th century because he dared to take the findings of the New Criticism seriously, created the enduring bon mot about Jesus, Paul, and the first Christians. "They expected the kingdom," he said, "But what arrived was the church." Not a bad summary of the summary.
Postscript: for more on Paul, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2187830037 and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1934375764
Part spiritual memoir, part intellectual self-portrait, part textual exegesis, part fictional dramatisation, The Kingdom is of a genre not often encountered in Anglo-Saxon letters. It is a French invention. Fame in France - in politics, in journalism, in the arts - brings with it the opportunity, possibly the obligation, to bare one's beliefs and motivations - or lack of the same. Perhaps this is a sort of rationalist Cartesian cultural legacy. Bernard Henri-Levy writes in the same vein, for example, in his The Genius of Judaism.
But whereas Henri-Levy writes about his lost and found Judaism, Emmanuel Carrere writes about his lost and found and lost again Catholicism. And whereas Henri-Levy celebrates Judaism, Carrere questions the credibility of Christianity as essentially an extension of Greek mythology. His basic question: How is it that a religion so soaked in Greek myth and magic emerged from Jewish monotheism and has come to dominate so much of the world? Carrerre is quite right to point the finger at Paul of Tarsus and his gospel-writing bag-man, Luke. For it is this dynamic duo, neither of whom ever met Jesus, who promoted his cause so effectively, and so weirdly.
Unlike the writers of other parts of the New Testament, Luke and Paul are real people. That is, we know for sure that their identities are not some symbolic or composite name. Mark, Matthew and John, for example, are unknowns aside from their gospel monikers. Paul is certainly the author of a number of letters (but not all ascribed to him). He speaks frequently in the first person: I saw, I believe, I command. And so does Luke in those parts of his writing, namely the Acts of the Apostles, in which he has first hand experience.
Carrere recognises that it is Paul's interpretation of Jesus's teaching and its significance that is the basis for Christianity. Paul, rather than Jesus, is the Christian Moses. And it is he who seeks to displace Moses, and with him Judaism, as the chosen people who proclaim the existence of the one God. Christianity rises or falls - intellectually, culturally, politically - depending on one's faith, therefore, not so much in Jesus but in Paul. And Paul has more than his fair share of credibility issues in Carrere's estimation.
Carrere's technique of interpolating, of imagining, scenes and dialogue that supplement the gospels is one that is an ancient pious practice. Without it, Jesus and his followers become formulaic and inhuman, even in the four versions that have been deemed orthodox. Carrere's inventions are at least as plausible as the various Christmas story embellishments, for example. And for the most part they are done sympathetically, as consistent with the 'official' texts.
Paul's fundamental message, in Carrere's view, was that the world had undergone an evolutionary change through the life, but especially the death, of Jesus. The being of the world, what is known in Greek philosophy as its ontology, had been altered for the better. This message is incomprehensible and meaningless to Jews, who had never been schooled in the categories of Greek thought.
To say that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, was one thing. Such a claim might be wrong but it was plausible and could be debated. It was certainly not heretical. To say that this Messiah saved by changing the basis of existence, however, was nonsensical, except to Greeks. This implied not simply a replacement-Moses but a replacement-Genesis. And this is indeed heresy: if God had found what he had done "good," what need could there possibly be for a second try?
So Paul abandons his fellow-Jews and proselytises among the Gentiles. His preaching isn't about Jesus, whom he only knows second-hand; it is about Christ, whose sacrifice of himself somehow, Paul claims, creates a new cosmic order. It is this new arrangement of the world, its ontological character, not the person Jesus which is what Paul announces. Jesus's purported resurrection from the dead is merely the miraculous evidence for this new order.
There is no subsequent gospel story that confirms this new order among the stay-at-home Jews. Nor is there a clear relationship in these stories between the God of Israel and Jesus. Yet Paul is confident that Jesus should be worshipped as divine as part of this new arrangement. He is also confident that this new order, which he calls the kingdom, will become visible imminently. Little wonder then that Paul desisted from spreading his message too close to Jerusalem.
Told in such a clinical way, it is clear that the spread of Pauline Christianity could only have taken place in a cultural and intellectual environment like that of the Roman Empire. Rome was the source and enforcer of law. But Greek was the language and philosophical font of a largely Hellenised population. And Paul's doctrines fit far more easily into the Greek Pantheon than into the Jewish Temple. Confident of the imminent end of the world, Paul attracted what today would be classified as a cult following of those who were eagerly anticipating an apocalyptic resolution of the world's miseries.
Carrere bases much of his interpretation of sacred texts on what is generally called the New Criticism, that serious exegetical study of the bible, which is a reading from rather than a reading into the text. This method began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and continues as the dominant mode of biblical analysis today. One of its first proponents was the Frenchman Ernest Renan, whose Life of Jesus and History of the Origins of Christianity caused widespread scandal by treating biblical texts as historical documents. At Renan's hands, the pious myths of Christianity, particularly those of the kingdom, do not fare very well. Things have not improved at all since then for the credibility of the texts or the attempts over centuries to square Jewish monotheism with the Pauline divinity of Jesus. Carrere's summary of the results of the New Criticism, and his own speculations, are a good introduction to the discipline.
Alfred Loisy, the French theologian, excommunicated at the beginning of the 20th century because he dared to take the findings of the New Criticism seriously, created the enduring bon mot about Jesus, Paul, and the first Christians. "They expected the kingdom," he said, "But what arrived was the church." Not a bad summary of the summary.
Postscript: for more on Paul, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2187830037 and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1934375764
soavezefiretto's review against another edition
3.0
At times I was convinced this was going to be a four-star book, but I lost my interest a bit towards the end, which may of course not be the author's fault at all, alas. If you are at all interested in Christianity as a historical phenomenon (and really you should be if you want to understand western civilization), this is a must read. It's full of humor, compassion and really interesting to read, so it shouldn't be too hard to do. Certainly recommended.
j_picsacat's review against another edition
5.0
Supongo que te tienes que haber criado un poco en un ambiente capillita para que te mole. Una buena crónica de cómo Pablo fue el primer bloguero de la historia y como eran las peleas de foros en el siglo I, cuando el cristianismo no era mainstream