25 10, 2020

Examining Jesus as a human

By |2020-10-25T08:06:52-07:00October 25th, 2020|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

“According to James” is an interesting and thoughtful book. Whether readers are Christians, Jews, Muslims, or something else, and even if they strongly disagree with the story Howard Rubenstein tells about James, an older brother of Jesus, they will find that the story prompts them to think about many aspects of religion. The story is [...]

18 10, 2014

The origin of “sin”

By |2014-10-18T22:04:06-07:00October 18th, 2014|Book Reviews|

                                                Review by Israel Drazin                                                                    Sin The Early History of an Idea By Paula Fredriksen Princeton University Press, 2012, 209 pages Paperback Cost: $14.28   Professor Paula Fredriksen of Boston University’s book on the development of the concept of sin begins with the view of Jesus and not with the prior Jewish [...]

2 01, 2014

Doubting Jesus Resurrection

By |2014-01-05T05:37:12-07:00January 2nd, 2014|Book Reviews|

Doubting Jesus’ Resurrection By Kris D. Komarnitsky   Kris D. Komarnitsky does not attack Christianity, but like President Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy, Bart D. Ehrman, and a host of other rational thinkers, he questions and dismisses the miraculous elements of the Christian faith. His focus in this superbly composed and easy to read book is [...]

21 09, 2012

Truth in the New Testament?

By |2012-09-21T05:55:27-07:00September 21st, 2012|Book Reviews|

Jesus, Interrupted Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About them) By Bart D. Ehrman HarperOne, 2009, 292 pages   Reviewed by Israel Drazin   Can knowledgeable people who are convinced that what they read in the Bible is not totally true, who see that many of their coreligionists have [...]

15 11, 2011

Tolstoy did not respect women

By |2011-11-15T04:54:55-07:00November 15th, 2011|Book Reviews|

Tolstoy A Russian Life By Rosamund Bartlett Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, 544 pages    Rosamund Bartlett, an authority on Russian culture, describes Lev Tolstoy, as she calls him, the greatest Russian writer, probably a genius, but a failure as a man. When he was young, he drank too much, gambled, and was over amorous with [...]

9 11, 2011

What is the Messiah?

By |2011-11-09T05:17:44-07:00November 9th, 2011|Thoughts|

By Israel Drazin I think that the messianic age is not a miraculous affair and the messiah is not a supernatural figure. There will be a gradual evolutionary and educative process that will improve people and encourage everyone, or nearly everyone, to live in harmony and work together to improve every individual and society. I [...]

21 10, 2011

Noble Prize Winner Saramago Mocks Judaism

By |2011-10-21T04:13:17-07:00October 21st, 2011|Book Reviews|

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ By Jose Saramago   The reviews of 1998 Noble Prize winner Jose Saramago’s brilliant book on Amazon and elsewhere have generally been quite comprehensive, very well written, and informative. Therefore I will not delve again into the aspects of the novel that they discussed, such as the book’s plot; [...]

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