Important thing number one to say: The scenery is just excellent, and we enjoyed the movie, if for nothing more than scenery alone. After all, this pilgrimage has lasted for 1,200 years and walkers have been walking it for that long in this Roman Catholic trek of penance that Director Lydia Smith filmed and also caught its beauty.
Facing The Camino de Santiago in the film
review by Peter Menkin
There are a number of important things to say about this picturesque film about a religious pilgrimage with the apt title, “Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago” which this film goer viewed at the small art theatre outside San Francisco in the Smith Rafael Film Center, Paying $8.00 for the four o’clock show, December 8, 2013, as did his assistant Linda Shirado.
Important thing number one to say: The scenery is just excellent, and we enjoyed the movie, if for nothing more than scenery alone. After all, this pilgrimage has lasted for 1,200 years and walkers have been walking it for that long in this Roman Catholic trek of penance that Director Lydia Smith filmed and also caught its beauty. The Los Angeles Catholic paper Tidings writer Brenda Rees broadens the scenery remark of Lydia Smith this way: “Photographed with gorgeous images of idyllic landscapes and historical structures, the film depicts the physical and spiritual journeys for
Annie seeks spiritual strength to continue the walk for pain and physical failure plague her trek but she makes the journey through grit and need…call this faith..the film doesn’t say…
six pilgrims, ages 21-62, from Chile, Germany, Italy, the U.S. and other international countries. Some are walking for religious reasons, some for the physical test of endurance. Over the course of the film, these six will bond and form friendships, face extreme despair and doubt, accept kindness from strangers, find romance, brave the elements, and discover spiritual strength that will help them cross an entire country on foot.” How true is her statement, Brenda Ross’ It is in these relationships that some of the transformation is found. But for the religious, the transformation is with God, in that walk, in that way, in that step by step walk with God along the path. As two of the walkers found, it is on the path itself in the way that something unusual happens. It is a mystery of life itself, to be mystical about it and each has a way of coming to this mystery. Maybe it is in the joy they discover, and maybe it is in the hardships and the pain, and simply in the difficulty and success of traveling on foot along the 500 miles. Who is to say what the ways of the Saints or the ways of God may be that attract people to this practice. They go and do. Faith comes.
But for important thing number two, this writer has a point of difference, and it is this Religion Writer’s observation that it is a strength of the film in our modern day of secularism for this particular film. That is the very
An unhappy woman who suffers from depression this attractive person seeks relief and in her journey seems joyful in seeking what she needs. One of those like the many described in the radio interview with the director found in this report she has come on a search and what this writer calls religious pilgrimage. The filmmakers describe Sam this way: Sam is a Brazilian woman in her thirties who was desperate for some force to turn her unhappy life around. When our crew met her, Sam had just left behind everything she knew in Rio de Janeiro, purged her life of nearly all possessions, and fled with a one-way ticket to Spain. Sam suffered from clinical depression, and she decides to throw away all of her prescribed medication, trusting that the Camino – the meditative act of walking, the nature, and the people met along the way – will restore balance to her body’s chemistry.
secular interpretation the director and producer give the walk they portray on this religious path. All the participants seem to have less than deep conversions on the way. They hold meaningful conversations, of a kind. I am not just warm on the movie, it was hot in parts. What can be called shallow so much, adds up to more than that in the aggregate. They appear to go through what the new age people call, “changes,” or as one newspaper headlined their story– this is a movie about “A Road to Reflection.” I think that is really what the producers were saying their walkers found on the way. Now one can’t know the workings of God. What is a reflection at one time may be a life moving event later, or a conversion later on in life. So judgments of the mystery of a walk like that found on this ancient way can’t be made. And the movie is enjoyable, if not deeply moving, so the price of $8.00 was well spent on a cold Northern California later afternoon towards the close of the sun which set around 5:30 p.m.
The third and final thing that seemed important about the film were the pithy remarks by pilgrims. They seem to have meaningful things to say along the way. The pilgrims were needy. The pilgrims were sometimes mournful. The pilgrims were sometimes unhappy. All were in need of some kind of change for their lives, or a hope, or a renewal. Many times I was moved by what the pilgrims said, let me not fail to say that. So be prepared for real reflection and the better part of meaning and joy. Mercy.
Let me also not leave out this excellent report on Director Smith’s intent by another writer: “’My intention in making the film was that it would be completely appealing and acceptable
The Rafael Theatre inside. The film center says of itself: This beautifully restored, state-of-the-art, three-screen theater is one of few nonprofit theaters in the United States. The venue exhibits independent documentaries, classics, retrospectives, features, international works and hosts special events with filmmakers from around the world year-round. The Film Center annually serves approximately 150,000 attendees.
equally to someone that is very devout and to one that is agnostic,’ Smith said. “That was kind of my biggest challenge, and I feel like my great accomplishment. It doesn’t isolate any particular population of belief. To have it be acceptable to everyone was really important to me.”–quotation by Sean Gallagher, October 11, 2013, Archdiocese of Indianapolis paper.
So the reader will see, this Religion Writer is in much company in finding the film hasn’t much religious temper to it.
ADDENDUM II
From the film’s website:
The Camino de Santiago is named for Santo Iago, or Saint James – one of the 12 Apostles and rumored brother of Jesus Christ. According to legend, his body was found in a boat that washed ashore in Northern Spain thousands of years ago. His remains were transported inland and were buried under what is now the grand Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, which marks the end of the Camino. His bones were rediscovered in the 9th century, when a hermit saw a field of stars that led him to the ancient, forgotten tomb.
In the millennium following its re-discovery, millions from all over Europe have walked thousands of miles to visit the remains of the disciple. At the height of its popularity in the 11th and 12th centuries, anywhere from 250,000 – 1,000,000 people a year are said to have made the pilgrimage.
According to Catholic tradition, if you faithfully completed the arduous trek, one’s sins were forgiven. If one completed the pilgrimage during a Holy Year – the infrequent occasion when St. James Day, July 25th, falls on a Sunday – a plenary indulgence was granted, allowing one to bypass purgatory and enter straight into heaven. In the Middle Ages, wealthy aristocrats would often hire people to walk in their name in order to, by proxy, absolve them of their sins without actually setting foot on the Camino.
Historically, many countries have provided criminals with the choice to either serve prison time, or do the Camino. Even today, Belgium will sometimes allow minor crimes to be pardoned by completing the pilgrimage. While, in these cases, the Camino was used as a form of punishment, its impact upon a pilgrim’s connection with themselves and their world community could instead be regarded as an unconventional form of rehabilitation.
UNESCO has declared it a Universal Patrimony of Humanity and a World Heritage Site. In 1987, the European Union declared the Camino de Santiago to be the first European Cultural Itinerary. Although originally known as a Christian pilgrimage, the Camino now attracts people of all faiths and backgrounds – from atheists to Buddhists, adventurers to mourners, and college students to retired friends.
One Response to Film Review: ‘Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago’ pilgrimage viewed at a small art theatre USA; enjoyable, picturesque and contemporary
09/12/2013 at 19:44
The film sounds really interesting, but I am disappointed that it does not take the religious viewpoint about the pilgrimage. I recommend the book “To the Field of Stars: A Pilgrim’s Journey to Santiago de Compostela,” by Kevin A. Codd (Priest, Roman Catholic). –Jan Robitscher, Berkeley, California
Interview: Mark Larrimore wrote ‘The Book of Job: A Biography’
Keeping company with Job, as friend or interpreter, is a worthy activity. Only the one who sees no challenge in Job or the questions his book is thought to raise should be dismissed. Recognizing that Job’s questions are not only “unfinished” in the book of job but “unfinishable”, we may conclude only that our obligation is to keep the retelling going in all its difficulty. This means learning to listen to every part of the text, and perhaps also to every serious past attempt to enter the argument—joining the long line of interventions that began with Elihu. Showing how or why this might be done has been the intention of this book.
Author Mark Larrimore, at New School New York City photo by NiQyira Rajhi for the New School Free Press
by Peter Menkin
How I do like the way Mark Larrimore has begun his work, “The Book of Job: A Biography.” There is a chill to the start. Here are the first sentences of his book, part of a series by Princeton University Press:
The book of Job tells of a wealthy and virtuous man in an unfamiliar land in the East. His virtue is so great that God points him out to hassatan—literally the satan. “the adversary.” a sort of prosecuting attorney in the divine court, who, whether by temperament or profession, is skeptical regarding the possibility of genuine human piety.
There in the introduction to this interesting work that is part of the very complete and large series of titles, “Lives of Great Religious Books,” we find quickly a sense of foreboding. The series is described by Princeton University Press this way, in case you didn’know:”Lives of Great Religious Books is a series of short volumes that recount the complex and fascinating histories of important religious texts from around the world. Written for general readers by leading authors and experts, these books examine the historical origins of texts from the great religious traditions, and trace how their reception, interpretation, and influence have changed–often radically–over time. As these stories of translation, adaptation, appropriation, and inspiration dramatically remind us, all great religious books are living things whose careers in the world can take the most unexpected turns.”
Let us give ear to author Mark Larimore’s own recitation on the radio to a longish interview with Tom Ashbrook who says of Job in his introduction to the talk:
The Book of Job is a brutal corner of the Bible. A good man, Job, thrown arbitrarily, suddenly, into a life of absolute agony. Stripped of his wealth. His children killed. Plagued and hounded and showered with misery. His only consolation is sounds like none: “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” Deal with it. The Book of Job is so harsh. It’s about unrelieved injustice and the suffering of innocent humans. About grief and rage and the human condition. And maybe about wisdom that goes right beyond the Bible. Up next On Point: The Book of Job, and life right now.
– Tom Ashbrook
The broadcast is here and this is its title:
The ‘Book of Job’ In the Modern Age
The Book of Job and the trials of Job. Hard and endless. We’ll ask what the hard old Bible story has to say now. http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/10/10/book-of-job
A man with a PhD from Princeton who teaches at the innovative or some would say liberal and even small, special New York City University with the excellent reputation The New School, Mark Larrimore is consistently rated by students a superior teacher and a very interesting one. Called by editor of Princeton University Press a very talented up and coming writer, the promising and talented Mark Larrimore is a good talker who is a pleasure to engage in a conversation and a man who has what used to be called “good vibes” with lots of energy and good sense, too. That is judging by his intelligent and educated conversation that holds ones interest: he is to put it more briefly, engaging.
This short statement from his University profile says much of the character of his course material, and this is a quote: “The study of religion and liberal education are indispensable to each other because religion is so often illiberal and liberals so often anti-religious.” To reach the Professor by email, write him larrimom@newschool.edu .
Since 2002, Mark Larrimore has been teaching Religious Studies at Eugene Lang College. In this interview conducted by WNSR’s James Lowenthal for 25@25, Larrimore discusses his discipline and its relation to the Lang community, and the various changes he has seen during his time at Lang.
Here is that radio interview:
Mark Larrimore is a man who as writer of the work on Job thinks. This excerpt gives evidence of his efforts to find meaning and even some ongoing effort at working out the difficulties of the Book of Job…it’s kind of ongoing effect on readers through centuries of different readers and times:
Keeping company with Job, as friend or interpreter, is a worthy activity. Only the one who sees no challenge in Job or the questions his book is thought to raise should be dismissed. Recognizing that Job’s questions are not only “unfinished” in the book of job but “unfinishable”, we may conclude only that our obligation is to keep the retelling going in all its difficulty. This means learning to listen to every part of the text, and perhaps also to every serious past attempt to enter the argument—joining the long line of interventions that began with Elihu. Showing how or why this might be done has been the intention of this book.
An interview with the author Mark Larrimore was held with questions sent in writing and answers given in writing to Religion Writer Peter Menkin. INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR MARK LARRIMORE WITH PETER MENKIN Mark Larrimore, author of “The Book of Job: A Biography” (The words of the whirlwind} and a professor of religious studies at The New School. The book is also found here: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10075.html .
1. During the three years you worked on “The Book of Job: A Biography,” did you find the creation and research a kind of meditation? If so, tell us something of your meditation. Yes, this is a broad question, and to narrow it down: In what way did you find Job a Christian statement in your meditation, if at all?
Let me take that as two questions. Was it a kind of meditation? Yes, absolutely. I understand Job to be very significantly about our inability to understand the suffering of others, and even to acknowledge what profound questions it poses for our own religious views. The book is about interpretation and its failures. For me it’s a meditation on the experience of others, on our duty not to forget others in our own meditations. As I make clear in the introduction to my book, I do not come to the Book of Job out of world-wrenching suffering of my own. The Book of Job demands of me that I admit this. To the extent that it argues that extreme pain and anguish give a privileged understanding of things, an insight not attainable in any other way, I shouldn’t be interpreting it. But then my book isn’t my take on Job but an effort to provide resources for anyone’s effort to make sense of this book and the momentous questions it names, introducing interpretations and uses which are far deeper than any I could come up with.
Was mine a Christian meditation? Not so much. In part that’s because I attempted the perhaps impossible task of discussing the Book of Job as not clearly Jewish, or Christian, or humanistic – but also not free-standing, self-contained and self-interpreting. If we don’t ignore parts of it (as many readings do), the BoJ is troubling and difficult enough that it pretty much forces us to seek help wherever we think that can be found. It’s not a coincidence that Gregory the Great’s Morals in Job wound up drawing on pretty much the whole rest of the Christian scriptures. But this will be different for people of different faith backgrounds. I obviously drew on materials from Jewish as well as Christian traditions, as well as the essentially humanistic textual, historical and literary scholarship on which not only secular but many contemporary religious interpretations build.
2. As both writer and scholar, let us turn to the exercise of writer as participant in this larger series, Lives of Great Religious Books. Was your work part of a discussion with others or mainly a matter as a writer of solitary activity? Here the question is narrowed to the activity of the writing of “The Book of Job: A Biography,” or of its research and the reading of the Bible itself.
My book stems from a seminar I teach on interpretations of the Book of Job. I was pleased to be asked to contribute to the LGRB series, and also pleased at the discretion the editor gave us to define the project in our own way. In my college every course, no matter how specific its subject matter, also has to be an introduction to its discipline, so my “Reading Job” course was also an introduction to religious studies, to religious studies ways of reading. I think that’s reflected in the book – I hope so. I might add also that the course is a seminar, where mine is only one voice among others. I may have been wrestling with this text longer than the others in the discussion, and certainly have read more books about it, but that didn’t prevent my students from surprising and enlightening me on many, many occasions.
When it came to writing the book I didn’t seek out many new conversation partners but that didn’t make it a solitary activity. I wrote it alone – indeed, many of my colleagues had no idea I was working on it! – but the colloquium of the seminar continued in my head as I was writing. I regret profoundly not having got my acknowledgments to the press in time for inclusion in my book. I would have included the names of all my students.
3. Does Job engage you in a personal way, and how so did the book you wrote and the Book of Job itself especially finds you as a human being?
I want to say one would have to be inhuman not to be engaged by this story—except that, as I show in the book, many people turned away, condemning Job for his pride; some, more recently, condemn him for his “capitulation” at the end. Perhaps that’s human, too. And of course it’s precisely what the Book of Job predicts. I tried not to judge Job but to listen to him. That’s not always easy, as the fate of his friends shows. Indeed I recognized myself in the friends as much as in him, and am almost as critical of those who write off the friends without listening to them as to those who omit the parts of Job’s speeches they don’t want to deal with. I want to coopt Santayana here and say that those who do not learn from the mistakes of the friends are doomed to repeat them.
I also think it’s a great hubristic temptation to take God’s side and speak for him – the one thing everyone agrees the Book of Job warns against! I don’t do it in the book but I can say here that I find something very powerful in the divine speeches. Some forms of theological thinking and feeling are rendered obsolete by the vastness of outer and inner space discovered to us by science, but not this.
4. Does God act out of character in smiting Job, or is it solely the work of Satan?
It’s certainly not just the work of the satan: Satan hadn’t happened yet. But even in the later tradition which reads hassatan as Satan, the larger question is the same. If God’s in control, then the sources of human affliction are operating with divine permission. What’s particularly troubling about Job is that the usual arguments for divine permission aren’t made. It may be, as later interpreters say, that the affliction was for Job’s own good, but he’s never told that (except by Elihu, and God never says so). Instead, it seems like God is passing the time in heaven by inviting the prosecuting attorney of the heavenly court (hassatan) to test his favorite pet. Hassatan is just doing his job. It is God who acts out of character here. Or we might have to say that the Book of Job shows that our understandings of God’s character are inadequate. I don’t mention King Lear in the book but that’s a very Joban play. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport” is a very Joban thought.
5. In the conception and execution of this book was this work you did one of the scholar or of the teacher?
Perhaps because I teach at a seminar college, it’s a little difficult for me to distinguish these. I don’t lecture but try to structure spaces of reading and discussion where students learn how to keep learning, how to become a teacher, how to become a scholar. I want my students, and the readers of my book, to learn how to do what I’m doing – how to read, how to have the confidence to form interpretations and the humility to challenge them, how to trace the sources of a work, the drama of a debate, the history of an idea, the uses of a story. I might add that, when it comes to the Book of Job, I feel myself as much student as scholar. I am not a Hebraist or Biblical scholar – I came at this material from the other end, working my way backward from modern philosophy and religious life to its sources. I would not have been able to write my book without leaning very heavily on the work of scholars like Carol Newsom, David Clines, James Kugel, Bruce Zuckerman, Robert Eisen, Lawrence Besserman, Susan Schreiner… In this connection I suppose I’m teaching that you don’t need to be a scholar of the Hebrew Bible to be able to engage and explore it. Most of the interpreters I discuss in my book weren’t Hebraists either.
Job with friends etc.
6. Talk to us about the reader in your mind when you wrote the book?
I didn’t really know who my readers might be. This was my first time writing something which might reach beyond the halls of academe. It was a little hard fixing an image of the educated lay reader I was trying to be of service to. So sometimes I was thinking of my friends and students, sometimes of readers of other books in the Lives of Great Religious Books series, sometimes of my parents! I had had the pleasure of leading a four-session discussion group on the Book of Job at my church (the Church of the Holy Apostles), so I imagined study groups as another possible readership – though these discussions made me feel very much the bookish academic! Only very late in the process, as a friend who’s studying at Union Theological Seminary was working through the text with me, did it occur to me that it might also be of use in seminaries.
7. In your book you stress that the Book of Job is read differently by people from different faith traditions, or from none, and appropriately so. What are some distinctly Christian ways of reading it, and do you think they can be of value for other readers?
It makes sense for people to read a sacred text in the context of the whole canon of scripture – especially for a text as full of puzzles and paradoxes as Job. It’s distinctive of this modern chapter in the history of the Book of Job that people think they should read it on its own, out of any context.
The traditional Christian reading is allegorical: Job is a “type” for Christ. Like all Old Testament texts, it’s a riddle which can’t be solved without the key of the New Testament. But although typology is intellectually and historically very interesting, I’m not sure anyone really knows how to think that way anymore. The folks at Oberammergau tried to bring it back in their most recent Passion Play, juxtaposing a scene of Job’s quarrel with his friends with the mocking of Christ, but I suspect most viewers just saw it as a parallel.
The much-celebrated “patience of Job” is Christian, too – the phrase comes not from the Old Testament but from the New Testament Epistle of James. I dare say it’s the dominant understanding of the story among Christians: God pushes nobody farther than s/he can go, God has God’s own reasons for striking human beings with afflictions but if we abide patiently we will be amply rewarded. Job’s suffering here isn’t a parallel to Christ’s but to our own. In my book I try to suggest that if Job defines what patience is – all of the Book of Job, not just the first two chapters! – then we may need a more robust understanding of what patience means. That more robust understanding, largely forgotten among Christians today, is deeper and richer than mere servile, masochistic silence. Job’s world has fallen apart. He feels abandoned, indeed persecuted by God – and he says so.
Job’s recantation, “I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes,” has been an important part of Christian understandings of Job, too, but there are good textual reasons to question this translation. It is not that Job – the most virtuous human being – is a despicable sinner, but that, compared to the infinite power and majesty of God, the merely created is as nothing. But one shouldn’t stop there, for in the Book of Job the infinitely powerful and majestic One knows and is proud of this nothing, and even speaks to him.
Many of these ways of understanding Job could be shared by non-Christians. I’ve had wonderful discussions about these topics with a Hindu friend, for instance. It was also in conversation with her that I realized just how astonishing is the Christian belief that God subjected Godself to Job’s human experiences of anguish and abandonment out of love for the world.
8. It’s been a pleasure to make your acquaintance through these questions. Have we missed anything important? If so, please talk to us about what we’ve missed now.
Thank you for the wonderfully thoughtful questions. One of the great satisfactions of this project is the quality of conversations it has generated, from each of which I learn a little bit more about the Book of Job and its continuing power to help us wrestle with the most important questions.
“Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living;
for to him all of them are alive.”
(Luke 20:38)
Year C Proper 27
Jan Robitscher
Job 19: 23-27a
Ps. 17New
Bridges Presbyterian Church
Luke 20: 27-38
November
10, 2013
What keeps us from sleeping
is that
they have threatened us with resurrection.
Accompany us, then,
on this vigil,
and you will know
how marvelous it is
to live
threatened with resurrection.
(Julia Esquivel, A Sourcebook about Liturgy, p. 116)
In this month of November, as the leaves fall
and the days grow shorter and colder, we Episcopalians begin with the
celebration of All Saints and All Souls--a time when we remember those shining
examples of the Christian life who now are counted among the Communion of
Saints--and also those saints (the New Testament word means all who belong to
the household of God) who are nearer and dearer to us. Perhaps you do, too.
This is at once both joyful and painful, comforting and frightening. The end of
the Christian Year brings us face to face with mortality--in the world
around us and in ourselves. The Rule of St. Benedict bids us “keep death daily
before one’s eyes.”1 Not very easy for us in our death-denying
culture.
Day of the Dead Altar at Church Divinity School of the Pacific
But we cannot avoid it since we are faced with
death all the time. We see it on the news every day: the wars in Afghanistan
and elsewhere; mass shootings; the homeless who die violently-- or simply
of exposure --on our own streets. Or in quiet moments we remember those family
and friends whom we knew and loved so well. It doesn’t matter what side they
were on or what their politics were. They are all dead, gone, separated from
us--at least from our human perspective-- and nothing we can do can bring them
back to us again. Worse, perhaps we have thought it silly--or even scary--to
think of them in a continuing life with God, in heaven. Death and taxes
are certain--but resurrection? Perhaps the poet is right:
What keeps us from sleeping
is that
they have threatened us with resurrection...
+ + +
Job certainly knew what it was to live
threatened by death. Everything he held dear--family, lands, livestock, and
even his own health--had been taken away from him in a kind of cruel game
played by his “friends” (I use the word advisedly), and all this with God’s
apparent cooperation. And, at least at this point in the story, Job was
not afraid to pour out his grief before God in words which might not be read in
church if we really gave them their full vent:
“O that my words were written down! O that they were
inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!”
But Job knew more. Somehow, in spite of
everything, Job also knew what it was to live “threatened with resurrection”,
to live knowing that death is not the end of this life, but the beginning of an
existence in another realm where he will be able to see God face to face and
live. And we must be careful, when we hear his words, not to hear too much of
the wonderfully sweet music of Handel’s Messiah in them, which is
appropriate at other times:
“For I know that my redeemer lives, and that at the last
he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been
destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God...”
Perhaps Job wanted to echo of the last verse of
Psalm 17:
For at my vindication I shall see you face,*
when I awake, I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.
And Jesus also had to contend with the question
of the Sadducees, “those who say there is no resurrection...” They really
were “threatened with resurrection”, and posed the question in the form
of a story that seems so ridiculous that it is a wonder that Jesus did not just
dismiss it for the silliness that it was and leave. But in a remarkable act of
patience, Jesus gently points out to them that, indeed, we will all
enter eternal life after death, and that our existence and relationships there
will be quite different from those we have known here. For, as one person has
put it, we will no longer be in the relationship of father, mother, child,
spouse, friend, or stranger. Instead, we will all belong to the “siblinghood of
Christ”.2 In any case, says Jesus,
“Now [God] is not God of the dead but of the living;
for to him they are all alive.”
Job with friends
Here is the perspective we need! To “keep death
before [our] eyes” is not a morbid exercise, but a way of looking at the
Communion of Saints; those who inhabit the Church Calendars of Episcopalians or
Roman Catholics or those we hear about in the news, or our own beloved dead. To
see them through the eyes of God is to see them alive! Not alive as we
might like to have it, but alive with God in another place where there is (as
our funeral liturgy puts it) “no death, neither sorrow nor crying, but [the]
fullness of joy with all [the] saints”. Far from being the stuff of science
fiction or New Age fads, Jesus bids us enter into the simple construct of
children (Jesus says we will all be “children of God”) to lay hold of our
faith. Eternal life and resurrection are our belief and our hope. Job dared to
proclaim it. Jesus taught it to questioning Sadducees, and than walked his talk
all the way to death and resurrection, so that we could follow after
him. I offer again the poet’s invitation:
‘Lives of Great Religious Books’ new series by Princeton University Press
Editor Fred Appel
by Peter Menkin
In this article about the Princeton University Press series “Lives of
Great Religious Books,” this Religion Writer offers a two part
introduction: (1) A kind of interview with Fred Appel of the press who
talks a little about the ongoing program of the publishing project, and;
(2) some notes and comments on one of the titles written by the
distinguished professor and scholar Alan Jacobs titled, “The Book of Common Prayer:
A Biography.” Interestingly, when I received the two of the books of
the series, I noted their size and so inquired about that and was told: Regarding the format of the books, we decided to go with a
slightly smaller format (most books are 6 x 9, these are because it is
visually appealing and also a comfortable size for reading and slipping
into a pocket or bag. It also makes the collection really stand out on a
shelf as a cohesive group.
Further, if the reader wishes to jump to an article describing the
series, look to this link provided by the publisher who says on sending
it: We have had a few articles about the series including this rather early one: http://chronicle.com/blogs/pageview/i-regret-that-i-have-but-one-life-to-give-for-my-author/28384
But more as an introduction is this quotation as written in 2011 by
the Editor of the project himself, found in the paragraph below as the
best of introductions and explanation of the project itself. A far
better one than this Religion writer could write and so well to the
points of the project:
“Lives of Great Religious Books” was born in the
faculty lounge of the NYU Law School in the early spring of 2005, in a
conversation over tea with the eminent Israeli philosopher Avishai
Margalit. I had come to NYU to meet with Margalit, then a visiting
scholar in the Law School, to ask him about his current research and
writing, and talk more generally about trends in the humanities. This is
one of the great privileges and joys of being an acquisitions editor at
a distinguished scholarly publishing house: being able to engage smart
and imaginative people in conversation on topics that preoccupy them.
After talking about his own work – including a book he had begun that we
eventually published in 2009 – the topic of conversation turned for
some reason to memoirs. Margalit was of the opinion that too many were
being published – or more precisely, that too few were worth reading.
Then he tossed his head back and said dreamily, “you know what I’d like
to read? A biography of an important book – the story of its reception
across time. That’s the sort of memoir we need more of.”
For more of this excellent piece about the story of this project
written by the Editor, go to this link and finish his article. Copyright
will not allow us to print the whole piece here. http://blog.semcoop.com/2011/04/26/fred-appel-on-lives-of-great-religious-books/
During the course of looking into this series by Princeton University
Press Editor Fred Appel agreed to take some time and jot some of his
remarks on the series down in answer to some questions sent to him in
writing. He responded in writing and herewith his answers as he sent
them to this Religion Writer Peter Menkin.
1. In a conversation with your writer Mark Larrimore I
expressed my interest in learning of interest in his title by the
public in general, a hard thing to pin down since his book hadn’t yet
been released when he and I spoke in early October, 2013. So this
question of you, who created the series of religious titles: What
expectation did you have of readers and that audience for their appetite
for the titles in the series, including both Mark Larrimore’s book a
biography of Job and Alan Jacob’s a biography of The Book of Common
Prayer. Please feel free to give a broad based answer to the question.
When I think of who might be interested in reading books in the
“Lives of Great Religious Books” series, I never think of “the public in
general.” That seems like too vague a category. I see each book in
the series having both a broad, interdisciplinary scholarly readership
and a potential readership among educated and interested non-scholars.
Just who these people are will vary from book to book. Alan Jacobs – a
wonderful and experienced writer – has a following in Christian circles,
and this fact combined with his particular assignment (the Book of
Common Prayer) leads me to predict a strong market among (a) historians
of Protestantism and the English Reformation & other scholars with
interests in British Anglicanism and (b) non-scholars with involvement
and/or strong interest in the history of the Anglican Church, and in
Christian prayer and liturgy more generally. Mark Larrimore’s book on
Job, by contrast, will likely attract a different scholarship readership
– perhaps historians of philosophy and theology and other scholars
interested in biblical reception histories – as well as a different
general readership (more Jewish as well as Christian readers, say). A
forthcoming book on the Yoga Sutra of Patangali – by David Gordon White –
will attract readers interested in eastern religious traditions and the
philosophical roots of yoga. And so on.
2. I think it is a rarer day than not when one gets a
chance to get to ask an Editor in Chief who has created a “full length
series” of such imaginative and scholarly religious titles of the kind
you’ve begun to edit questions on their making. How does the series
grow, and what does it take to get them to go? Please give us an
anecdotal response on one or two author-scholars you chose and the
titles they’ve written or will write. Any struggles in their creation?
Finding the right authors for books in this particular series has
been a challenge. Ideally, authors for this series have some
demonstrable scholarly expertise in the subject matter in question.
That almost goes without saying. What is more, they must be able to
tell the story of the book’s reception over time in a way that engages
the interest of educated non-specialists. In other words, the authors
must be comfortable writing for those who are not themselves
specialists. Many of the authors in the “Lives” series have written
books of this sort before, so the task is not so difficult for them.
They’ve had practice. I’ve also chosen to work with scholars who have
never written such a book before, and they require more guidance.
Sometimes their first drafts are just too scholarly.
3. Internally, at Princeton University Press, what was
the big budget on the full creation of all titles projected for this
project and what is the initial print run of a single title? Tell us
about one of the designers, and who came up with the design concept for
the books in the series? Describe for us what a book looks like, and
where can one of the books or even the whole series be found? Our local
bookstore, for example? Are seminary libraries interested, or where?
What about University libraries? Who are the book’s buyers or projected
buyers and readers and do you know a reader, or have you a “model” of
one? I am interested to know who reads religious books, especially Old
and New Testament works.
Initial print runs vary from title to title. We tend to be rather
cautious with first printings, reasoning that if a particular book
attracts a bigger than expected following, we can always reprint. I’d
say that initial print runs for this series range from 3,000 to 5,000
copies.
The design template for the series was developed by a talented
designer at Princeton University Press – now retired – named Tracy
Baldwin. We encourage our authors to suggest appropriate images for the
front jackets. Because many of the books in the series focus on
religious books that have inspired striking works of visual art, there’s
often an embarrassment of riches to choose from.
The books in the series have a family resemblance, design-wise. They
come in small packages – no book is more than 60,000 words in length.
They can be found in fine bookstores everywhere, both Barnes &
Nobles and in the finer independent stores. (They are more likely to be
found in bookstores that carry books published by university presses
and other academic publishers.) They can also be purchased, of course,
on Amazon.com and on other on-line book retailers. Whether your local
bookstore has copies in stock is a good question. If they don’t have
any copies, you might want to ask them to place an order!
As for the projected buyers, please see my answer to #1, above.
4. Please tell us what titles are in the series, when
it will be completed, and some highlights on the Christian and Old
Testament standouts. Especially, those that you favor.
Books in the series that have already been published:
Augustine’s Confessions: A Biography – Garry Wills
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison: A Biography – Martin E. Marty
The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography –Alan Jacobs
The Book of Genesis: A Biography – Ronald Hendel
The Book of Job: A Biography – Mark Larrimore
The Book of Mormon: A Biography – Paul Gutjahr
The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography – John J. Collins
The I Ching: A Biography – Richard H. Smith
The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography – Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
Forthcoming Books in the series:
The Book of Exodus – Jan Assmann
The Book of Revelation: A Biography – Timothy Beal
The Analects of Confucius: A Biography –Annping Chin & Jonathan D. Spence
The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography – Richard H. Davis
Josephus’s The Jewish War: A Biography – Martin Goodman
John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography – Bruce Gordon
The Koran in English: A Biography – Bruce Lawrence
The Lotus Sutra: A Biography – Donald S. Lopez
Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Biography – Joseph Luzzi
C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: A Biography – George Marsden
The Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas: A Biography – Bernard McGinn
The Greatest Translations of All Time: A Biography of the Septuagint and the Vulgate – Jack Miles
The Passover Haggadah: A Biography – Vanessa Ochs
The Song of Songs: A Biography – Ilana Pardes
The Daode Jing: A Biography – James Robson
Rumi’s Masnavi: A Biography – Omid Safi
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography – David Gordon White
The Talmud: A Biography – Barry Scott Wimpfheimer
The forthcoming titles will be rolled out 1-2 per year, on average.
Next up, in spring 2014, are David Gordon White’s book on the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali and Bernard McGinn’s book on the Summa Theologiae.
As for which ones I most favor: that’s too hard of a question. I love them all!
5. Talk to us about your own career a little, where
did your love of books and of religion spring from and what is your
personal and scholarly taste in books found? Of the series, which titles
intrigue you, and which picks are your favorites, and why? Is there an
author in the group of so many who is a favorite of yours? This is a
little like, what is your favorite color.
I have a scholarly background myself, having completed a Ph.D. in
political science and political theory at McGill University in Montreal
almost two decades ago. What interested me most of all in my studies
was the history of ideas; where ideas come from, how they take hold in
particular societies and cultures, and how certain views seen as
self-evidently true in certain places and at certain types lose their
hold on people’s imaginations as circumstances change. Certainly the way
religious books are read and understood change enormously over time.
This series explores these changes with respect to certain landmark
books in our major religious traditions.
Here again, it’s hard for me to play favorites. I can tell you how
gratified it’s been to work with scholars whose writing I’ve admired for
years – Garry Wills, Marty Marty – and how much I look forward to
working with other distinguished scholars who have signed up for the
series: Jack Miles, Annping Chin & Jonathan Spence, Martin Goodman,
and Jan Assmann. But I also find it enormously gratifying to help
younger, less experienced scholars find their voice and attract a
broader readership for the first time, such as Mark Larrimore and Paul
Gutjahr (who wrote a very well received volume on The Book of Mormon).
Here in this video Editor Appel makes remarks about his series itself as described below… (Video by Martin Griff / The Times of Trenton)
HERE ENDS THE INTERVIEW WITH FRED APPEL AND THE INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES, ‘LIVES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS’
(Video by Martin Griff / The Times of Trenton)
HERE BEGINS SOME NOTES AND COMMENTS ON ALAN JACOB’S WORK ‘THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER: A BIOGRAPHY’
Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the
honors program at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He has been called a
top professor in America, so says an article about him found here: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/07/the-power-line-100-alan-jacobs.php
The article says about him, “It was big news last fall when Baylor University’s honors program hired Alan Jacobs
away from Wheaton College, where Jacobs had been a prominent fixture as
the Clyde Kilby Professor of English for nearly 30 years. (Check out
his useful home page here.)
Jacobs is much in the mold of C.S. Lewis, combining a grounding in
classical thought and literature with an interest in modern writers and
contemporary perspectives (especially on technology).” So we begin to
write about his writing the book that one reader told me was a scholarly
piece of good and proper worthwhile subject development and interest to
her as reader, but lacked as much fire and passion as she would have
liked. That she missed to a degree, but not enough to put the book
aside. So she continued, still interested enough to be happy she had the
book to read. This is good remark for a book of this kind, so let us
not diminish the author too much. It is a cool enough read.
Alan Jacobs
This work that Alan Jacobs brings to understanding in The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography
is a work with which I am as a man who attends Church in the Episcopal
tradition familiar. After all, the Eucharist is offered on Sundays in
the Parish I attend each, and I am usually a regular attendee, and one
who attempts to pay attention during the worship service. In fact, as a
believer this Religion Writer can be personal in an assessment of the
work by Professor Alan Jacobs of Baylor University, and there is little
way not to be involved in the narrative history of this distinctive and
useful study meant for the informed and even educated reader for whom
this title is meant, as is the series of which it is a part published by
Princeton University Press.
Allow me as a Religion Writer a moment to gain some distance on the
subject of worship as I know it, and the elements of living a more
faithful, even religious life in the midst of the secular American
society of Northern California and especially Marin County as I have
experienced it–within the very upscale and shall I admit it Christian
community of 200 or so congregation members who gather intermittently to
hear various words and even on their own read from this 1979 American
Prayer book on their own. It is a lucky thing to get a book like
Professor Alan Jacob’s “The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography”, for it is imaginable that the educated class who are both
Episcopal and not will find it a fine source of education and
information for finding out about this faith and its practices. Yes, let
us call this a religious title of enormous resources for a very large
variety of purposes of practice.
The author has gone through so many areas of history and areas of
thought in the work to let us know about them. And about the history of
this book that goes back centuries to England. For after all, it is
English in making and Anglican in kind in a worldwide manner. One
Chapter talks of the language used in the book, and he starts it by
starkly remarking, “The ‘somberly magnificent prose’ of the prayer book
remains its single most striking feature. It is highly rhythmical and
consistenty reliant on Latinate structures, but it borrows from biblical
Hebrew a deep allegiance to parallelism.” He offers some longer
quotations of language from the text, as in use of confessional text and
language from the 1552 book, also, to illustrate points.
The distinguished scholar Alan Jacobs is certainly a man of the mind,
and his list of conversation, debate, and discussion as listed with
others of his level is found on the internet by Googling his name or
checking out Atlantic Monthly conversations through the same
means. He is a man of distinction in the sense of his ability to
communicate in writing, and not to belabor the matter, he’s done a fine
job with this book, at least to this man’s taste who did look through
the title and was interested in finding the sections on history and
those on the Eucharist, also known as Communion.
This book by Alan Jacobs is one in a series called “Lives of Great
Religious Books,” by Princeton University Press and its Fred Appel who
at the time of its creation conceived of the series.
In this article, the pleasure of speaking with Alan Jacobs was not
found, for he chose to discuss matters with this Religion Writer through
email, much of his answer by pointing to his blog, and through a
Princeton University Public Relations woman. Questions submitted in
writing as an interview were answered in writing through Public
Relations by him personally. This email statement on the book by him is
an example of the kind of answer he gave by writing:
“My own view about my book is that it’s probably a little better
suited to the British audience than to the American, since it’s the
English BCP that I mainly discuss. I try to talk about developments
throughout the world, but the lion’s share of the attention goes to the
English books, followed by the American ones.”
I myself have been an Anglican for nearly 30 years, and I never
want to be a part of any other tradition. I am relatively conservative
in my theological views, but I do not share the passionate commitment to
the 1662 BCP, or in America the 1928 one as “the last *real* prayer
book.
Those are wonderful books, but I think the scholarly and pastoral
work on developing liturgies that has accelerated since the 1960s has
produced some really wonderful stuff. It has also produced *too much*
stuff, too many options, but I don’t know how that could have been
avoided.
He adds in another email: “I will probably soon be posting some thoughts on my blog (http://text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com) — and I also have a tumblelog associated with the book, though that’s largely photographs:
This is what Alan Jacob’s says on his blog that is so interesting,
and I think readers will agree, the Professor is an interesting man. One
gets a taste of the kind of thing he has to say about his own book, a
self-reflective moment that he calls “self-promotion.” Here are the
words from his blog, and there the article ends: My “biography” of the Book of Common Prayer is now available
and I hope some of you will buy it. It was a great deal of fun to write
— though I have to say, I found it extremely challenging to fit an
extremely complex story into the relatively brief format of the series.
Speaking of the series, it’s a wonderful one,
created by Princeton University Press’s religion editor, Fred Appel.
Fred’s terrific idea was simply this: that all books, but in an
especially interesting way religious books, have lives:
their story really only begins when they appear, and develops over
centuries or millennia as readers encounter and respond to them.
The Book of Common Prayer,
unlike many other books in the series, constitutes something of a
moving target because it has been revised several times and has given
birth to prayer books in countries other than England. I have tried to
trace some of those ramifying lines of development, though my chief
emphasis has been the English book.
I loved working on this book because it gave me the chance to write
about so many things that fascinate me: the Anglican tradition of which I
have been a part for almost thirty years; the visual, aural, and
written forms of worship; ecclesiastical controversy; literary influence
and linguistic echoing; and, not least, the history of books and
book-making (though I had to confine a good bit of that to an appendix).
And on that last point: this is my third time working with Princeton
University Press, and of all the publishers I know they are the most
devoted to the craft of bookmaking. The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography is at the very least a very beautiful little book — as were the two Auden editions I have also done for PUP, For the Time Being: A Christian Oratorio and The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue. I own a great many e-books, but these you’ll want to have in paper and boards if at all possible.
One more thing: you might want to check out my tumblelog devoted to the book — it has some lovely images and even a few relevant words.
both
Episcopal and not will find it a fine source of education and
information for finding out about this faith and its practices. Yes, let
us call this a religious title of enormous resources for a very large
variety of purposes of practice.
–Jan Robitscher, Berkeley, California