The Moses Legacy

Frustrated that I was unable to get hold of a copy of 'Sisters of Sinai' and feeling the need for a little biblical mystery, I borrowed a copy of 'The Moses Legacy' by Graham Philips. Although I haven't finished it yet, the thrust of this book is that the 'Moses' who is mentioned in the Old Testament is, in fact, a composite character and that the events over which he presides occur at intervals so separated in time that he could not possibly be just one man. It's all very interesting, but rather bitty - I am finding it very difficult to keep the events discussed in order in my head, despite the fact that the author provides a handy summary at the end of every chapter. No foot or end-notes either, so no checking up on sources. I'm uneasy about his expertise too: his previous works are so diverse that I would call his 'scholarship' (such as it is) 'scattershot'. Once I started noticing that various statements were (from my semi-knowledgable point of view), somewhat dubious (esp. the section the pharoah Akhnaten's adoption of the Aten and the provenance of the OT), alarm bells started to ring and I decided to read a few reviews. I found this one on Amazon UK:

'When I was given this book as a present I could not wait to read it. Attractively presented, it promised to provide authoritative answers - or at least up-to-date research results - for questions which are bound to be of interest to anyone wishing to learn about the history of the Judaeo-Christian religions. Readers without much previous knowledge of this subject, and especially readers without any knowledge of Hebrew, will greatly enjoy the book and will think they have learned much from it, even if they may be somewhat surprised by such statements as 'The present Old Testament comes from a Greek translation known as the Septuagint' (p.23). Any readers with even an elementary knowledge of Hebrew, however, will find themselves in a very different position. To them it will soon become clear that the author does not have any knowledge of that language, though he does not hesitate to base much of his argument on detailed interpretation of Hebrew words he does not understand or misunderstands One single paragraph on p.115, for instance, contains at least four separate such misinterpretations.In itself this flaw obviously undermines some of the book's argument, but a moment's reflection will show that its effect goes much further. Even fewer readers than those who have some Hebrew will be familiar with any of the other ancient oriental languages used in the argument of the book, and once the author's Hebrew knowledge is shown to be non-existent it is no longer possible to place any confidence in his knowledge of these other languages - and thus in the conclusions of his whole argument. A health warning is most needed where that which is to be avoided is most attractive and at the same time most dangerous. By these criteria this book needs to be accompanied by a very large health warning.'

Alfred Moritz Former Professor of Classics, University of Cardiff.

You can't beat peer-review to sift out the chaff.

Hokum, then: but enjoyable hokum none the less. Not Dan Brown though, and still possibly good for provoking some after-dinner chit-chat.

Cosmological Schemata......and Book Mysteries

Strangely, I received an email from Amazon yesterday asking me to rate my transaction 'Sisters of Sinai'......as I had not received anything from them and was unsure as to the status of my order (see earlier post), I immediately went online and noted that that order appeared to be dead. Somewhat irritated, I logged on to The Book Depository and promptly ordered a copy from them. Hopefully it will arrive before too long - the BD are usually pretty good. Still, I originally ordered it from the BD through the agency of Amazon at £14.39: I am paying £15.64 to get it direct from the BD! If I had known that I would have had to wait, I would have gone directly to the BD in the first place!!! And will do in the future.

Whilst we were away in Venice, I managed to miss a programme on the BBC called 'The Narnia Code'. The other night, I caught up with it on BBC iPlayer (what a useful asset that is!) Whilst the programme was, in effect, a huge plug for Dr Michael Ward's book 'Planet Narnia' (not that I have a problem with that - it's wonderful when someone's PhD research is truly commercially viable), it laid out the intriguing notion that the seven chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis contained symbolism found within medieval cosmological theory. Apparently the idea came to Dr Ward late one night when he was reading one of Lewis's poems containing a couple of lines that referred to the imagined attributes of Jupiter, and it immediately struck him that those lines summed up, in a nutshell, the plot of 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe'.

Excited by his insight, he examined the qualities of the other members of the medieval cosmic hierarchy - the sun, the moon, mercury, venus, mars and saturn - and discovered that the writing contained in the other six Narnia books was indeed richly symbolic of those heavenly bodies. It was all a bit of a tease though: we found out that, for example, 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' alluded to 'Sol' - the sun, with its imagery of dawns, dragons and the eastern horizon, and that 'The Silver Chair', where the prince is thought to be a lunatic, is the 'Luna' or 'moon book'. 'Prince Caspian', with its themes of war, is the 'Mars book', who was also imagined to be the deity connected with woods and forests, hence the emphasis on the tree symbolism in that volume. I would have been fascinated to find out more and it was hinted that the theory was fully extrapolated....in the book! Grrr! Something else I'll just have to buy.....

It did occur to me, as it obviously did to the makers of the programme, that Holst's 'Planet' suite (used as a soundtrack) fits quite nicely alongside Dr Ward's theory, but maybe that, too, is tackled in the book.

**update: received an email from the Book Depository telling me that my order couldn't be fulfilled and so they were refunding my money. So why in Sam Hill wasn't the book flagged up as 'out-of-stock' when I placed my order? Oooooh!!!**

'The Gargoyle' by Andrew Davidson

In the event, I didn't take 'The Dante Trap' on holiday with me: for one thing it turned out to be a hardback (being a library book, THAT should have come as no surprise!) and thus rather cumbersome, for another it seems to be one of those books that feel the need to point out to its reader just how urbane and sophisticated it is, but ultimately I just can't take a hero seriously who 'leaves a black orchid as his calling card'! Tsk!

I ended up taking a paperback copy of 'The Gargoyle' by Andrew Davidson, which I picked up by chance whilst checking out the other book. Even though it is a 'Richard and Judy Book Club Book', which - sad snob that I am - I usually try to assiduously avoid. As I have mentioned before, holiday books have to tick certain boxes, and this one fitted the bill perfectly - with the added bonus of dealing with some pretty big philosophical issues. The unnamed protagonist, hideously burned in a car accident, relates the tale of his former life as a physically perfect hedonist and that of Marianne, a sculptress who he meets in hospital. She in turn relates episodes from their 'former lives' together as she tries to expiate her 'sins' by carving - and thus 'releasing' - gargoyles from stone. The theme is of course, redemption. But whose? Does Marianne really recall their lives as medieval Germans, or is she (as her status as a psychiatric patient would suggest) completely delusional? Does the hero really love her, as she tells him he does, or is she a meal-ticket who fills the void in his scarred life?

I read this book voraciously. Some of the prose is a bit rambling and overblown, but as a first novel (and I'm staggered to find that it is), it is extraordinary in both its philosophical depth and its bredth of knowledge. I also have to also that I am fascinated by the subjects that the author seems so knowledgable about - namely medecine and the preservation of knowledge. I am currently re-reading it as it is one of those books whose earlier parts become clearer with hindsight. And that is something I am inclined to do for very, very few books.

Temptation - but not a book this time!

Solved my holiday literature problem by trawling the 'net for books set in Venice, reading a few reviews and deciding, almost at random that 'The Dante Trap' by Arnaud Delalande would probably fit the bill quite nicely. Phoned the library and got them to reserve me a copy to pick up in the next few days. The library is ideal for this: there are very few novels that I really want to own, and holiday books are definitely of the most ephemeral sort.

Now that Lent is drawing to an end I am really fancying a glass of wine, a nice chilled sauvignon blanc, particularly as it is the school holidays. Nuff said! A little voice keeps telling me "Go on. Have one. You've made your point." It sounds so reasonable doesn't it? And that's the way temptation works: we don't do bizarre or out-of-character things when we give in to it - on the contrary it's just an extension of our innermost nature, our untrammelled σαρξ. But I know it's the thin end of the wedge. If I give in now, there is no point to my having started in the first place, and next year I may not bother at all. No, I shall resist. What could be better than the anticipation of a reward for a job completed and done properly?

Holiday Reading

I am very, very pernickety about what I read on holidays. The book has got to feel j-u-s-t right or I really do get quite grumpy. I've made some real mistakes in the past: St Augustine's 'City of God' on a Greek beach holiday when daughter no.3 was three months old (what was I thinking of?); Nikos Kazantzakis' 'The Fratricides' which just filled me with gloom as I finished it off on the last day of a holiday filled with rain; 'The Thirteenth Apostle' which I threw across the apartment in disgust....and so it goes. I feel a bit like Des Esseints in Huysmans' 'Against Nature' neurotically trying to match aesthetic experiences. But, for me, holiday reading is part of the whole holiday experience. Thus I am wondering what to take with me to Venice. I am stricken with regret that I have already read Sally Vickers' 'Miss Garnett's Angel' as that would have been little short of perfect - well-written, but easily digested and with the correct sort of atmosphere and sense of place. As would 'The Seven Sisters' by Margaret Drabble. Or 'The End of Mr Y' by Scarlett Thomas - but I've read them already too, and I rarely do re-reads. I want something with a decent plot that will distract me if there's any turbulence on the flight, but not too complex. It has to be well-written.....nothing Dan Brown-ish, not pure thriller, but definitely with some intrigue. The local library hasn't turned up anything for me as yet, although the husband is happily getting on with Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods' (which I am eyeing enviously). I guess I'm just going to have to head for Borders and grumpily poke at the shelves. I am emphatically not like one of my former colleagues who took with him to Crete Denniston's 'Greek Particles' and a few volumes of Livy (in the original)!!!

Duh? A Guide for the Perplexed

Don't know what's happening really......got an email from Amazon yesterday indicating that they were making a refund to my card, but on checking my order status, I see that my order (Sisters of Sinai) is still 'live' with an estimated delivery date of a couple of weeks. I ordered it from The Book Depository via Amazon and on checking the former, found that they still claim to have it in stock. I suppose I'll just have to wait and see if it turns up. I have, however, spent the money allocated for it in my current account: on an Everyman guidebook for our upcoming trip to Venice. The Everyman guides are sumptuous - too heavy to lug around in a daysack (as are the equally fine Dorling Kindersley versions) but essential for finding out about hidden treasures that are not flagged up by the far shorter and more portable 'InSight' guide (with map) that I bought in preparation last week. The 'Everyman' is the sort of thing to pore over on the plane, planning out itineraries, or over breakfast, or dinner, or sitting up in bed at the hotel.

Our Lady of the Forest II (*spoiler*)

Well, I finished Dave Guterson's 'Our Lady of the Forest' and am left pondering the denouement and the themes.

It seems to me that expiry of Ann the seer completes an allegory of the Passion, and I am trying to figure out who the book's characters represent, if indeed they represent anyone other than themselves - it could be my imagination. Ann herself is truly the Suffering Servant, reviled and scorned, deemed unfit (except by her acolytes) as a vehicle for divinity. Father Butler makes an adequate Caiaphas, and the ambivalent Father Collins would fit with Nicodemus. Carolyn Greer probably represents Judas, who sells Ann out for hard cash and is ultimately responsible for her death. But exactly who does Tom Cross (note the name) represent? I think that the answer might be 'every man', man that cannot bear the weight and responsibility of his own actions and needs to feel that there is a higher force that can forgive, comfort and redeem. But deeper than this narrative is the theme of truth: what is the reality behind Ann's revelations? How did she know the whereabouts of the disappeared Leigh-Ann's bones? How did she find the buried water source in the forest, later credited with healing powers?

Was the truth that she had already stumbled across the dead child's remains during her spell as a mushroom hunter? In the sodden forest, would a pool appear wherever one dug out a pond? Indeed, did she really receive visitations from the Virgin Mary, or were they the product of her over self-medication?

The end story is that the whole episode has a redeeming effect on all who have come in contact with Ann: Father Collins gets his long-desired new church, paid for by the swarming faithful; Father Butler is made Vicar-General; Carolyn Greer funds a temporarily exotic lifestyle through larceny of the funds entrusted to her, but finally comes to realise the hollowness of it all; Tom Cross finds salvation in devoting himself to serving the newly-built church and caring for the son he believes that he crippled; the previously semi-derelict logging town of North Fork is saved by the steady flow of pilgrims and their money.

Ann is ultimately the catalyst for their change, but like so many catalysts, is herself consumed and destroyed in the process.