THE DESIRE of the EVERLASTING HILLS: THE WORLD BEFORE and AFTER JESUS (Hinges of History #3) by Thomas Cahill

Published in 1999 by Nan A. Talese, an imprint of Doubleday.

The Desire of the Everlasting Hills is the third book in The Hinges of History Series by Thomas Cahill. It is a series of histories that look at important long term movements in history that helped create Western Civilization. 

Nearly 20 years ago I read this book and the second book in this series, 

The Gifts of the Jews and then parked them on a bookshelf. I never read more books in the series and simply forgot all about them. With the pandemic quarantine came a purging of the bookshelves and these books returned to the to-be-read pile. 

Overall, I enjoyed The Gifts of the Jews, despite some slow spots. I had high hopes for this book because I thought it would fit in well with the strongest parts of its predecessor. But, I found this book to be a mostly plodding history with an absolutely excellent and inspiring last chapter attached to it. 

And, I have solved the mystery of why I never pursued the rest of the books in this series 20 years ago.

I rate this history 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE DESIRE of the EVERLASTING HILLS: THE WORLD BEFORE and AFTER JESUS (Hinges of History #3) by Thomas Cahill.

GOD IS NOT ONE: THE EIGHT RIVAL RELIGIONS THAT RUN the WORLD - and WHY THEIR DIFFERENCES MATTER (audiobook) by Stephen Prothero

Published in 2010 by HarperAudio.
Read by Paul Boehmer.
Duration: 14 hours, 37 minutes.
Unabridged.

Stephen Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University. The purpose of God Is Not One is to inform the reader of the eight greatest world religions, their philosophies and their way of looking at the world.

Prothero is very aware that choosing just eight religions is fraught with problems. How do you choose? Is it based on influence? Number of adherents? Importance of the countries it is in? He went through all of those questions again once again when he chose the order he would present the religions he picked.

The religions he profiled are: Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism, Yoruba religion, and Daoism. He spends about 90 minutes discussing each religion and includes nearly an hour on Atheism at the end, on the theory that militant Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens) behaves much like a religion, complete with evangelistic movements and a coherent worldview.

Prothero takes great pains to point out that these religions do not approach the world in the same way. He is pretty irritated at the "all religions are basically the same - they answer the same questions in different ways" view of religion. He thinks it is intellectually lazy. For example, Christianity teaches that the main problem with the world is sin. Daoism doesn't even have that concept - they think the main problem is society polluting people and making them unhappy by making them take on roles that go against their nature. Confucianism thinks the biggest problem is people not knowing their place in society - embrace the role given you and you will be happy. Yoruba religion is all about power, including spiritual power and leveraging it to your advantage. Atheism think religion itself is the problem - but they are usually most vocal against the three monotheistic religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity). They might be okay with Daoist and Confucian philosophy and some Buddhist sects. Of course, all of those summaries are super-simplistic.

Prothero is not making this point in order to say that the religions of the world can't get along. Rather, he is making this point in order to say that if we are going to get along, we actually have to know what the other religions are saying and where they are coming from.

Prothero's explanations include Western cultural references to movies and books. If you are a well-read person these can be quite helpful.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: GOD IS NOT ONE: THE EIGHT RIVAL RELIGIONS THAT RUN the WORLD - and WHY THEIR DIFFERENCES MATTER by Stephen Prothero.

WHY LIBERALS WIN the CULTURE WARS (EVEN WHEN THEY LOSE ELECTIONS): THE BATTLES THAT DEFINE AMERICA from JEFFERSON'S HERESIES to GAY MARRIAGE by Stephen Prothero

Published in January of 2016 by HarperAudio.

Read by Tristan Morris.

Duration: 10 hours, 42 minutes.

Unabridged.

Stephen Prothero takes a look at American history in Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars. Culture wars, for Prothero, are more than the typical left-right discussion  - they are a left-right discussion with serious religious overtones.

Prothero's thesis is that the major debates in American history have been those types of debates.

He looks at 5 areas:

1) The fight over who would run the country after George Washington - the

John Adams (1735-1826)

inheritors of the Calvinistic Puritans (John Adams) or those with a vaguely defined faith (Thomas Jefferson);

2) Catholics vs. Protestants;

3) Everyone vs. Mormons;

4) Fundamentalism vs. Modernism as commonly typified by the Scopes Monkey Trial (which only gets a passing mention in this book);

5) Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority types vs. abortion, gay marriage, the Equal Rights Amendment and more.

While his discussions were interesting and make a lot of good points, I don't think they live up to the thesis named in the title. These 5 points are really more like 2 points. The first 3 are basically the same point - mainline Protestants (even as that definition evolves) vs. other takes on Christianity. The last two are also basically the same point as well, a point made in the book as it easily moves from point 4 to point 5.

And, defining America as mainline Protestantism vs other religions and cultural traditionalists vs variations on the traditional family (women working outside of the home, gay marriage, etc.) limits a lot of discussion. For example, where does slavery fit into this mix? How about Native Americans? Or, how about the social safety net? Defense policy? States' Rights vs. Federal power? Internal improvements? Rights vs. safety in the post 9/11 world?

So, in short, this is an interesting book and a good discussion, but it does not live up to what it promises.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WHY LIBERALS WIN the CULTURE WARS (EVEN WHEN THEY LOSE ELECTIONS): THE BATTLES THAT DEFINE AMERICA from JEFFERSON'S HERESIES to GAY MARRIAGE by Stephen Prothero.

ST. PAUL: THE APOSTLE WE LOVE to HATE (audiobook) by Karen Armstrong

Published in 2015 by Brilliance Audio.

Read by the author, Karen Armstrong.
Duration: 5 hours, 21 minutes.
Unabridged.

Also published under the title St. Paul: The Misunderstood Apostle.

Karen Armstrong is a multiple award-winning author of more than 25 books, the great majority of them exploring religion. She is particularly interested in Islam, Christianity and Judaism. 

St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate is aimed at the informed layman - not at other historians or religious experts. I read A LOT of history and have gone to church my entire life, but I can get lost in the weeds pretty quickly if too much professional jargon is used. Armstrong assumes  basic knowledge of the Christianity and of the New Testament. Nothing too complicated or deep and most of my Bible knowledge comes from Sunday school and small group Bible studies led by layman with a workbook. Armstrong takes care to explain things along the way because she is not out to impress the intellectuals - she has written a history for regular folks.

Born c. AD 5. Died c. AD 64-67

Paul has always been interesting to me. His writings have always seemed to me to be the first real attempt to move Jesus' teachings into a formal religion. There are times when I find his writings to be quite inspirational. At other times, he strikes me as obtuse and misogynistic. But, I wanted to get into the book to have a better understanding of what he was teaching and when he taught it.

The first thing that surprised me was the concept of Deutero-Pauline letters. Many scholars are now assuming that nearly half of the New Testament letters from Paul were not actually written by Paul, but by writers that came after him and used his name. This was a fairly common practice in Roman times - if you liked an author, you just borrowed his name. The evidence for this comes from analyzing the vocabulary used, the writing styles and changes in theology.

For me, this mostly cleared up one of my major frustrations with Paul - his inconsistencies. I say mostly because he still had some, but not nearly as many.

Her biography of Paul was interesting, but a bit skimpy since the audiobook was only a little over 5 hours long. But, it does hit the main points and I ended up feeling much more informed than I was before I started. I wish she had added more about his impact on the development of the Church over the nearly 2,000 years since his death.

This audiobook was read by the author. Sometimes, that can be a problem because being a great author is not the same thing as being a great audiobook reader. However, Armstrong has considerable experience with public speaking and her performance was quite good.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ST. PAUL: THE APOSTLE WE LOVE to HATE (audiobook) by Karen Armstrong.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD: A THOUSAND YEAR JOURNEY from PSALM 23 to the NEW TESTAMENT (audiobook) by Kenneth E. Bailey

Published by Blackstone Audio in December of 2014

Read by Stephen E. Thorne

Duration: 10 hours, 5 minutes.

Unabridged.

Kenneth E. Bailey spent more than forty years teaching theology in Egypt, Lebanon, Jerusalem and Cyprus and along the way he developed a natural curiosity about shepherds. This is natural, considering how often shepherds are mentioned and that many of the main figures of the Old Testament were shepherds at one point or another (Abraham, Moses and David to name a few) and that Jesus refers to himself as both a shepherd and a lamb. 

Combine that natural curiosity with a willingness to research and the ability to see the stories from a different cultural perspective and you have something new, at least new for those of us in the West. 

In The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament Bailey has delivered a very readable (or in my case, listenable) overview of the major passages about shepherds in the Old and New Testaments and how they relate to one another and the cultural meanings of these texts and makes them all the richer and more meaningful. He also looks at the way the Orthodox and Coptic churches have approached the concept of Good Shepherd through the centuries.

He starts with Psalm 23 and explains the structure of how it is written and goes into cultural detail. Far from boring, I found it to be fascinating and in some ways, it changed my understanding of the Psalm. It says a lot more than I ever thought it said before.

The other passages were Jeremiah 23:1-8, Ezekiel 34, Zechariah 10:2-12, Luke 15:1-10, Mark 6:7-52, Matthew 18:10-14, John 10:1-18, and I Peter 5:1-4. As Bailey works his way through each passage he goes back to the 23rd Psalm and then compares the passages. As he goes along, he assumes that the reader picks some of it up and does not go back and re-explain things that he mentioned many times. If a new thought is introduced (such as the concept of the sheep being misled by a "bad shepherd") he discusses it fully and refers back to the new concept if it comes up again.

For me, the most powerful moment came when he tied together four stories of Jesus' life in Mark 6:7-52. Even though the story of Jesus sending out the disciples to preach on their own, the subsequent beheading of Jesus' cousin John the Baptist,  the feeding of the 5,000 and the story of Jesus walking on water all sit right next to each other in Mark, I have never heard all four them told as one story (usually, I have heard them as three separate stories). The way Bailey explains it, the disciples came back after John's death and the 5,000 would have come to hear Jesus' reaction to the wanton murder of his cousin by King Herod. What would Jesus do to avenge his cousin? After all, culturally, there would have to be some sort of response by Jesus, John's most well-known relative. Would he denounce the king? Would he go into hiding? Would he ask them to join him in overthrowing this despot? Bailey looks into the deep symbolism of every sentence in that story and I was very impressed.

While I appreciate that I received a free copy of the audiobook for review purposes from the publisher, this is one of the few times that I wished I had a paper copy of the book so that I could flip through it and make notes as I read and then quickly be able to refer back to it.

Reader Stephen E. Thorne did a good job of reading the text. He read its slowly enough that you could easily follow along and think as you went but not so slow that it dragged. 

This book can be found at Amazon here: 
The Good Shepherd: A Thousand-Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

THE HISTORY of the ANCIENT WORLD: FROM the EARLIEST ACCOUNTS to the FALL of ROME by Susan Wise Bauer

Published by W. W. Norton in 2007

Susan Wise Bauer is well-known in the home school community for her well-written histories. I am not a home school parent but I do recommend her History of the Ancient Word for history buffs who would like a long-term general overview of history.

Bauer mines lots of types of sources to build a view of the earliest cities and their beliefs. Bauer's history focuses on political leaders and religious/philosophical beliefs of different civilizations. One thing that I really like was her ability to take myths and legends (like Gilgamesh) and tie them into actual history and demonstrate why those myths and legends mattered to those ancient peoples and give the modern reader a way to have a better understanding of these ancient peoples. 

The book starts with a focus on four major civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus River Valley (India) and the Yellow River Valley (China). As these groups grow, other areas are added (such as Ancient Greece and Rome).  

The text of this book is 777 pages long and it has almost 90 pages of works cited, notes and an index. One of the real strengths of this book is the inclusion of nearly 100 relevant maps. I was also pleased with the timeline included at the end of every chapter was helpful as well. Each timeline included the civilization just discussed and another of the groups as well so they can be compared.

For all of the strengths, the book does have weaknesses. It rarely discusses technological changes or different agricultural techniques. The book focuses on leaders, wars and battles, the common man of the past is rarely spoken of. To be fair, this book is a chunk as it is - if more detail were included it would be an unwieldy tome. 

Constantine the Great (272-337).
Photo by Jean-Christophe BENOIST

Bauer does delve into philosophical movements, as I mentioned earlier, but, surprisingly, leaves out the entirety of the philosophical movement of Ancient Greece except to quote them when talking about other cultures. Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, the Stoics - their ideas are not discussed at all. I found that to be so odd that I literally searched the book's index to see if I had just skipped the chapter they are in. Along with Judeo-Christian beliefs, Greek thought was (and is) one of the pillars of Western thought. 

The book does not actually go to the Fall of Rome, which has been traditionally dated at 476 AD. Instead, it ends at 312 AD when Constantine the Great became the sole Roman Emperor (prior to that he was a co-ruler). That is an interesting date to choose because that is the moment when Christianity stopped being a persecuted religion in the Roman Empire. 

NOTE: This book is the first in a multi-part series that is still being published. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome.

A CALL to ACTION: WOMEN, RELIGION, VIOLENCE, and POWER (audiobook) by Jimmy Carter

Published in 2014 by Simon and Schuster (AUDIOWORKS)
Read by the author, Jimmy Carter
Duration: 6 hours, 33 minutes

Jimmy Carter and I have a strange relationship. Don't get me wrong, the 39th President and I have never met and are not likely to. I think that his presidency was, on balance, a well-intentioned mess and his post-Presidential career has been a mix of amazing achievements (Habitat for Humanity, for example) combined with annoying commentary and self-intervention into areas where he was not invited (ask Bill Clinton what he thinks of Carter's self-appointed mission to North Korea during the Clinton Administration).

This book only re-affirms my impressions of Jimmy Carter. I admire his religious faith and his intimate knowledge of the scriptures. I also admire his willingness to learn about other faiths and the fact that he teaches in his church's Sunday school. His work through the Carter Center has also been a mixed bag of amazing work against poverty and disease and less-than-helpful self-insertion into international politics. 

As Carter describes it early in his book, A Call to Action was written because so many people asked him to use his position to call attention to the how religion was being used against women around the world. 

The book also looks at the economic and political status of women and often ties religious views into how women and doing economically and politically. This is mostly a look at Christianity and Islam with some commentary on Judaism but almost none on Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism or any of the other faiths of the world.

Carter is especially critical of Christian denominations that do not allow women to be pastors or priests. He lays down his arguments here quite well, which is appropriate since he publicly broke with the Southern Baptists over this topic in 2000 and has laid out his reasoning for doing so many times. 

Former President Jimmy Carter signing
 A CALL TO ACTION in April of 2014. 
Photo by Mark Turner

He is less critical of the Islamic world. Don't get me wrong, he is critical, but spends much less time on the topic than he does in criticizing Christianity. He dismisses a lot of the more obvious things like burkas, not letting women go to school and not letting women receive medical treatment as local tradition. This is true, but it is tradition bolstered by certain verses in the Koran or by attitudes that draw on those verses for strength. 

This leads to the heart of my strange relationship with Jimmy Carter. It is not that he did not have a point about any of this stuff, it is that he points his finger at America and the West for so long in comparison to the other religions and countries.  He gushes over the improvement of the conditions for women in China in a section that focuses on China and brushes over the one child policy, forced abortions (he addresses the forced abortions at the end of the book but only as part of a larger movement) and the number of girls in orphanages. He focuses on the positives and brushes over the negative. When discussing America, he brushes over our positives and focuses on the negatives. Note, I am not saying we are perfect, I am saying his focus is often out of balance. 

The book was read by Jimmy Carter. At first, I thought that this was an odd choice considering his age (he was 89 when this book was released). His weaker voice has only deepened his accent and it does take a few minutes to get used to it. But, in the end, Carter's unique voice, especially if you remember his presidency, was the only one that could read this audiobook - his style is all over the text and you would have been imagining it being read in his voice anyway. At times, his emphasis on certain words while reading express his feelings more than the words themselves would have. Every time he says the phrase "female genital cutting" he practically spits out the word "cutting" - his distaste is obvious.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A CALL to ACTION: WOMEN, RELIGION, VIOLENCE, and POWER (audiobook) by Jimmy Carter.

Reviewed on May 31, 2014.

AMERICA'S PROPHET: MOSES and the AMERICAN STORY by Bruce Feiler

Published in 2009 by William Morrow (HarperCollins)

I love the premise of America's Prophet - that America has a special connection with the story of Moses beginning with the Puritans and going right up through Martin Luther King, Jr. He lays out the correlations with some skill but, in the end it just started to drag.

This review (and the book, to a lesser extent) is helped by a basic knowledge of the story of Moses. Feiler provides the necessary background on Moses and then proceeds to make comparisons. For example, the Puritans saw themselves as fleeing a domineering power (England) and taking refuge in the wilderness (New England) like the Children of Israel fled the Pharaoh and went into the Sinai. The Puritans took comfort in the story of Moses because they believed that they would also be led by God.

Martin Luther King, Jr. during the
"March on Washington"

A slight change in interpretation and Moses becomes an inspiring symbol for the Americans in the Revolutionary War, the Abolitionist movement, the Underground Railroad, both sides in the Civil War, immigrants, the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement (with the oddly prophetic "mountaintop" speech given by King right before he was murdered). Of course, there is a long discussion about Charlton Heston's portrayal of Moses in the movie The Ten Commandments. Oddly, there is only a very brief mention of Brigham Young leading the Mormons to Salt Lake City, fleeing from the United States in search of religious freedom. I am not a Mormon, but that story has every bit as much correlation to the original story as any of the others do.

Sadly, the story drags in in the later parts of the book with the discussions of post-Civil War immigrants and Charlton Heston. Feiler's attempt to wrap it all up with a discussion of his family's Passover celebrations is well-intentioned but really slow, capping off a solid book with an ending that never seems to end.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: AMERICA'S PROPHET: MOSES and the AMERICAN STORY by Bruce Feiler.


Reviewed on November 12, 2013.

Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (audiobook) by Tosca Lee

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio 
Published February 5, 2013
Read by Jason Culp
Duration: 9 hours, 11 minutes

As the title says, Iscariot: A Novel of Judas tells the the story of one of the most infamous people in history - Judas, the disciple that betrayed Jesus.

Tosca Lee tells the story in a very sympathetic manner. At no point in the story is Judas an evil man. In fact, he is the opposite - he is an exceptionally good man who lives an upright life, tries his very best and truly loves Jesus, the man he calls "teacher."

A close up of Judas Iscariot (front) in
Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper"

Tosca Lee creates a sympathetic back story for Judas involving a life full of loss, pain and a tragic multi-generational search for the messiah. Judas has decided that searching for a messiah is the surest way to get hurt. Instead, he has joined a secret society that is working to push the Romans out of Judea. But, things radically change when Judas meets John the Baptist and then goes on to meet Jesus.

Interestingly, throughout the story, as Judas hears what Jesus teaches he rarely gets the real meaning. He argues with Jewish officials that Jesus speaks in metaphors all of the time so his stories cannot be taken literally but Judas mainly misses the point time after time. Judas is looking for a military leader and does not truly hear what Jesus says about his true purpose and when his kingdom will commence.

Tosca Lee's writing style is often clunky with old-fashioned phrases. It can be be very tedious but it does blend easily with quotes from the Bible when they are worked in (she tends to use quotes that are similar to  the more formal style of the NIV translation rather than some of the more informal newer translations). For all of that clunkiness, there are some moments of literary magic here. The scene where Jesus heals the leper comes to mind as does most of the story of Jesus's trial.

Jason Culp brought this book to life. The multitude of voices he created just work to create a different world.  Even better, Culp really acts out the anguish and the passion that prevail throughout the end of the story.

I received a copy of this audiobook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review as part of the Audiobook Jukebox Solid Gold Reviewer program.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Iscariot: A Novel of Judas

Reviewed on March 22, 2013.