Two Great New Reviews

Several in-depth reviews of the book have just been published.

This one in the LA Times book section gave it five stars and implied that I was a bit like Dan Brown's Robert Langdon. Not really, but it's quite flattering to be compared with the eminent symbologist.

And this one on the Christian Humanist blog had some extremely interesting things to say.

First, my favorite quote: "And to prove that old texts have their own warped sense of humor, there’s even a baby-switch gag in which Mary panics because she sees one of the Magi’s mystical vision of Christ and thinks that he’s kidnapped baby Jesus. Of course, when she finds the real Jesus back where he should be, the infant gives her a long speech providing her anxious soul comfort. (Yes, you did just read that. You really want to check it out now, don’t you?)."

And second, a very insightful critique of one of my major theses (and one that I don't really have a good answer for at present): "Landau’s footnote to this verse as well as the volume’s concluding essay point to this as evidence of an early “theology of the world’s religions” and speculates that the final episodes in RM might have been later scribal addenda geared towards taking the sting out of such an intellectual novelty. The problem I see with Landau’s approach is that he seems to apply a very modern understanding of “faith” without giving any lexical justification. In modern times, of course, phrases like “interfaith dialogue” and “faith-based organizations” are relatively commonplace: “a faith” in this language-game is Islam, Christianity, or something bearing resemblance to them, and there are a plurality of “faiths” in the world. In legal systems that recognize a plurality of incommensurable “faiths” or “religions,” such a use makes perfect sense, but in an intellectual context that knows syncretism but not pluralism, such a move seems strange."