Picks from March 2007
We hope you enjoy this month's selections! We encourage feedback, so please email us your reviews and suggestions for future books. Reviews will be posted on the Forum as we receive them. Thank you.
Cooking with the Bible: Biblical Food, Feasts and Lore by the Rev. Dr. Rayner W. Hesse, Jr. and Anthony F. Chiffolo
About the author:Rayner W. Hesse, Jr. is the author, with Anthony F. Chiffolo, of We Thank You, God, For These: Blessings and Prayers for Family Pets. A graduate of both Union Theological Seminary and The General Theological Seminary in New York, he most recently completed his doctoral work (D. Min.) in liturgy and philosophy of religion at New York Theological Seminary. An accomplished chef and biblical scholar, Fr. Hesse is an ordained Episcopal priest serving a parish in New Rochelle, NY.
Notes on the book:
Since biblical times, the Judeo-Christian lifestyle has centered on meals. Extending hospitality to both friends and strangers was a divine command, and an invitation to dine was sacred. The Judeo-Christian bible is peppered with stories of meals; these range from simple meals put together quickly in order to feed a few unexpected guests, to elaborate feasts carefully prepared to please dozens of partygoers for many days.
Cooking with the Bible looks at eighteen of these meals found in the Scriptures, providing full menus and recipes for re-creating some of the dishes enjoyed by the peoples of biblical times. While describing how ancient cooks prepared their foods, Cooking with the Bible also explains how contemporary cooks might use modern techniques and appliances to prepare each of the eighteen meals. In addition, the authors recount the lore of all the ingredients used in the book, detailing their origins, the history of their cultivation, their nutritional value, and their various uses.
Each chapter begins with the menu for a biblical feast. A brief essay describing the theological, historical and cultural significance of the feast follows. Next come separate recipes for the dishes served in the meal, followed by more commentary on the dish itself, preparation methods used in biblical times, how the dish was served, and the lore surrounding the individual ingredients and dishes. Recipes for a wide variety of breads, stews, rice and lentil dishes, lamb, goat, fish and venison meals, vegetable salads and cakes are detailed, all of them carefully tested.
Make delicious dishes such as Rice of Beersheba, Rebekah’s Tasty Lamb Stew, Date and Walnut Bread, Pistachio Crusted Sole, Bamya, Goat’s Milk and Pomegranate Syrup Torte, Haroset a la Greque, Pesach Black Bread, Watermelon Soup with Ginger and Mint, Date Manna Bread, Braided Challah with Poppy Seeds and Lemon, and Friendship Cake.
The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus by Amy-Jill Levine
About the author:Amy-Jill Levine is E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, where is also holds the position of Director of the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender and Sexuality. Dr. Levine earned her B.A. in English and Religion at Smith College, where graduated magna cum laude. She went on to earn her MA and Ph.D. in Religion from Duke University.
Professor Levine’s numerous books, articles and essays address such topics as Second-Temple Judaism, Christian origins, Jewish-Christian relations, and biblical women. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biblical Literature and the Catholic Biblical Quarterly and has held office in the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association and the Association for Jewish Studies. A widely sought-after speaker, she has given hundreds of talks to both academic and nonacademic audiences throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
A self-described “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Protestant divinity school in the buckle of the Bible belt,” Levine combines critical rigor, literary-critical sensitivity, and a frequent dash of humor with a commitment to eliminating anti-Jewish, sexist, and homophobic theologies.
Notes on the book:
In a book intended for Jews and Christians alike (but mostly addressed to Christians) Amy-Jill Levine offers both critique and corrective on topics as seemingly disparate as the Jewish content of the Lord’s Prayer and Christian responses to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But that is Levine’s point: to show how frequently and disastrously inaccurate beliefs about Jesus and early Judaism produce distorted relationships in the present.
Mixing rigorous scholarship with helpings of wit and pastoral care, Amy-Jill Levine reveals Jesus as The Misunderstood Jew. Levine shows how Christians often misunderstand Judaism in general, misunderstand the New Testament in particular, and thus yank Jesus out of his Jewish context—resulting in intolerance (and sometimes outright hatred) of Jews. She doesn’t let Jews off the hook either, cutting through willful ignorance of Jesus and his message.
Levine takes an unflinching look at modern anti-Jewish readings of the New Testament, including the stereotyping of Judaism as legalistic, purity-obsessed, Temple-dominated, xenophobic, violent, greedy, and misogynist. She shows how Christian theologians often make Judaism look backward and antiquated so that Christianity can, in contrast, look progressive and superior.
Christianity started as a Jewish movement before spreading to the Gentiles of the Mediterranean. Levine helps readers understand the culture in which Jesus grew up and that he celebrated—the diet and dress of first-century Palestine, Jewish holidays and customs, the numerous public roles of Jewish women, and the rituals of the Temple. All of those head-scratching says and acts of Jesus that have befuddled Bible readers for generations suddenly make sense in light of his Jewish heritage. This book will prompt a much needed new look on how Christians should understand Jesus, the Gospels and the New Testament.
The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters by Timothy Luke Johnson
About the author:Luke Timothy Johnson is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia.
Professor Johnson earned his Ph.D. in New Testament Studies from Yale University. A former Benedictine monk, Professor Johnson has taught at Yale Divinity School and Indiana University. He is the author of more than 20 books, and hundreds of articles and reviews.
Notes on the book:
Catholic theologian Luke Timothy Johnson knows that the creed, although it is recited by millions of worshippers every Sunday, is far from being well understood. He also knows, clearly from personal experience, that much of what the creed affirms-from a personal Creator to a final resurrection-is the butt of jokes at fashionable dinner parties. This book is his careful attempt to explain to perplexed Christians, with attention to their dinner party friends, why an ancient confession of faith still makes sense in the modern world.
Exploring the Nicene Creed line by line, Johnson introduces readers to the history behind each phrase, both in Christian Scripture and in church tradition, and he defends its relevance to faith today. While this approach is similar to that of Catholic apologists like Scott Hahn and Patrick Madrid, Johnson diverges from them in his willingness to sharply criticize both the secular modern world and his own tradition when he sees either one denying the powerful, liberating truths that the creed expresses.
