Crusade in Europe – Review

Dwight D. Eisenhower. Crusade in Europe. Doubleday, 1950.

Crusade in Europe is a classic military memoir by the general who led the Allied forces against Germany and its allies in Europe in World War II. It covers North Africa and Italy but focuses on D-Day and the fall of Germany. Since many people know at least in broad terms what happened, this review will point out significant observations that Eisenhower made.

One point Eisenhower makes immediately is that historically alliances are unreliable. I just finished Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 in two of my classes. That play illustrates this principle clearly. Eisenhower notes that Napoleon succeeded in most of his campaigns because he fought alliances, and the parties disagreed among themselves—just like the Percys in Henry IV. He stresses how important it was to have one overall commander. While he supported the idea, he tells us that he never expected to get the position. He had been promoted so quickly that he was a two-star general but still officially listed as a lieutenant colonel in regular army.

He could keep alliances going. He seemed to get along with everyone and sticks up with nearly every military and political person he had to work with, even General Montgomery, who had a reputation of being full of himself. Eisenhower admired and trusted Patton and stood up against the criticism he often received in the press. Among other things, he notes that Patton’s men were loyal to him. I mentioned in an earlier review that I had an uncle who was in the army in North Africa, Italy, and Northern Europe. The two generals he spoke most highly of were Patton and Eisenhower.

Eisenhower sometimes disagreed with Winston Churchill, but they would always come to an arrangement and carried mutual respect. At the very end he worked with General Zhukov who was leading the Red Army in Germany. He writes that while he was not especially sympathetic to Roosevelt’s domestic policies, that as a war leader of the country, F.D.R. “seemed to me to fulfill all that could possibly be expected of him.” (414)

It seems like the only person he had true difficulties with was Charles de Gaulle. Now, at the beginning of U.S. involvement it was unclear whose side De Gaulle was on. Later Eisenhower understood that once France had been the key power in Europe, and the rapid fall to the German Blitzkrieg was an embarrassment. One French general confided that “we…defeated ourselves.” Throughout, Eisenhower stresses the importance of keeping the alliance “on positive terms.”

He even explains why he called the World War a crusade:

…never before in a war between many nations the forces that stood for human good and man’s rights were this time confronted by a completely evil conspiracy with which no compromise could be tolerated. Because only by the utter destruction of the Axis was a decent world possible, the war became for me a crusade in the traditional sense of that often misused word. (157)

Eisenhower did have some challenges working with the press. Even though the press from the allied nations were all on the same side (something President Reagan contrasted with the press coverage of the Grenada rescue), reporters are looking for conflict, and much of the internal conflict they were reporting on had been fabricated. He also learned—as this reviewer had to learn when he was in the service—not all journalists respect classified or off the record information.

Sometimes there are quips that entertain, or as Eisenhower would say, contribute to morale. He does not quote the famous saying of the 101st Airborne when it was surrounded in Bastogne or General McAuliffe’s monosyllabic reply to the German call for surrender. He does tell the story that when the German garrison guarding the city of Aachen was limited to one building, the American VII Corps started using 155-millimeter rifles to knock the building’s walls down. The German commander surrendered and said, “When the Americans start using 155s as sniper weapons, it is time to give up” (312).

According to Eisenhower two key factors accounted for the Allied victory. World War II was the first war that used concentrated air power. Along with that was the increased industrial production from the Allies. By the beginning of 1943, Germany simply could not keep up. Early in the war, Germany had the advantage in both areas. No allied country was prepared. But by 1943 America in particular was assembling ships, landing craft, airplanes, tanks, jeeps, and weapons at an astounding rate. In one day of bombing in February 1945, the Allies put 9,000 planes in the air over Germany.

Eisenhower tells us that as the Allied forces were massing at the German border in the late fall of 1944, General Omar Bradley predicted that Germany’s only chance to successfully repel their attack would be if they made an advance at the Ardennes Forest. He then drew a likely German plan of attack on a map. “Within a maximum of five miles at any point,” Bradley correctly indicated the “bulge” of what became known as the Battle of the Bulge.

He also tells of how Patton’s troops almost by accident discovered the salt mine where the Nazis had hoarded many stolen valuables and art treasures including “a few millions of gold coins from the United States” (407).

A number of times on the Western Front, they were surprised when the Germans made a move that made little sense and ultimately hurt them. We noted in another review something similar on Hitler’s Eastern Front. They realized that Hitler was overriding his generals according to his own intuition. In that respect, he said, “…we owed a lot to Hitler” (394).

At one point near the end of the war, he described coming to the first concentration camp his troops liberated at Gotha. He said, “I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock.” He made a point of exploring every part of the camp noting details in case people would say “the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda” (404).

Towards the end of the war in Europe, the Allies had to coordinate with the Red Army. Eisenhower’s contact had always been with Stalin. Eisenhower always refers to him as Generalissimo Stalin: He controlled everything. At the Russian and Western lines approached each other, Stalin let the local commander, General Zhukov, act as liaison.

Eisenhower shares some lessons he learned dealing with the Russians and Communists that could still be useful in Western nations that deal with Russia and China today. Eisenhower had a difficult time understanding how the Red Army promoted morale since the Russian command saw the troops as so much cannon fodder. He guessed the morale was simply based only “upon patriotism, possibly of fanaticism” (468).

Another Russian general was surprised that the Western Allies were concerned about the treatment of German prisoners. The Geneva Convention meant little to them. Also when the Western press wrote something unfavorable about the Soviets or Red Army, the Russian command expected the Allied authorities to censor or punish them in some way. When Eisenhower explained freedom of the press, the response was simply, “If you were Russia’s friend, you will do something about it.”This sounds like what the West is encountering with China today. Eisenhower concludes:

Communism inspires and enables its militant preachers to exploit injustices and inequity among men…The sequel is dictatorial rule…Were they completely confident in the rectitude and appeal of their own doctrine, there would be no necessity to follow an aggressive policy. (476-477)

Jesus might say, “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16).

Eisenhower tells of meeting Truman after he became President in 1945. Prior to that, he had only met him “casually two or three times.” Since the war was over, Eisenhower expressed to him a desire to retire quietly. But when they were alone, “he suddenly turned to me and said:’General, there is nothing that I won’t try to help you get. That definitely and specifically includes the presidency in 1948” (446).

At the time, Eisenhower considered this an “astounding proposition.” Crusade in Europe first came out in 1948. However, we know what happened in 1952. The general may have been astounded, but he must have taken the President’s proposition seriously.

The Tehran Initiative – Review

Joel C. Rosenberg. The Tehran Initiative. Tyndale, 2011.

Shi’a Islam—centered in Iran—believes that there were twelve great Imams, Muslim leaders, who succeeded Mohamed. The twelfth one disappeared and, according to Shi’ite teaching, will return alongside Jesus to set up a worldwide caliphate.

Sunni Muslims have a similar belief that their Mahdi or savior will come with Jesus to establish Islam worldwide. It might not take too much for someone who claims to be the Twelfth Imam to convince Sunni Muslims that he and the Mahdi are the same person.

Christians, naturally, would see this differently. I recall having a conversation a number of years ago with a Christian scholar about Iran. He said with an ironic smile, “How can we support a country whose goal is to offer hospitality to the Antichrist.”

Over the years I have read a number of works of fiction based on the biblical end times—not just apocalyptic stories, but stories of the Apocalypse. I can think of one published before the twentieth century, I think it was called Raptured. Then there was the A Thief in the Night series. One novel featured Pope Sixtus the Sixth (get it?). Of course, the Left Behind series was a big seller.

The Tehran Initiative appears to be more realistic than any of these others. First of all, it does not claim to interpret Bible prophecy. A few characters do. A few interpret Islamic prophecy as well. But at its core, this book is simply a techno-thriller in the vein of Tom Clancy.

In this case a man claiming to be the Mahdi and the Twelfth Imam has appeared. He has performed a few unusual miracles and appears to have escaped an assassination attempt. People seem to almost instinctively bow to him and call him lord. Though Arab and not Persian, he has persuaded the theocrats of the Islamic Republic of Iran that he is the real deal. He has declared that he will lead Muslims to rule the world. That includes wiping out both the Little Satan, Israel, and the Great Satan, the United States.

The story focuses on David Shirazi, an Iranian-American who works for the CIA. His cover is that he is a German citizen who works for a German telecommunications company. He gets in a few jams, but basically learns that Iran has built a number of nuclear warheads. Under the Twelfth Iman’s direction, Iran will use them to annihilate Israel. Israel does not cover a whole lot of territory, so this is no idle daydream.

One clear question to the Imam is—what about Jerusalem? Muslims value “Al Quds,” too. The Mosque of Omar supposedly shows the spot where Mohamed ascended to heaven from and returned with a message from Allah. On the other hand all Muslims venerate Mecca above all cities, and Shi’ites also value Qom in Iran.

Besides the adventures in Iran with Agent Shirazi, we follow Marseille, an old family friend who may become his girlfriend. Those guys attempt to have a personal life, but it is not easy. We also get some drama from Najjar, a nuclear scientist whom Shirazi helped to escape from Iran.

We also follow President Jackson. Jackson had studied in an Islamic country for grad school, so he believes he understands Muslims. He also feels the United States should go along with the United Nations more, even on Israel. This may make him a little more naive about both Iran and the Mahdi. But if you negotiate with people who call you the Great Satan and whose crowds shout, “Death to America,” what can you expect?

In this case, expect a techno-thriller with a somewhat realistic apocalyptic connection.

For what it is worth, this is probably the first book I have read not associated with Clancy that actually tells a story in a way similar to what he did.

The Duel and Other Stories – Review

Anton Chekhov. The Duel and Other Stories. Translated by Constance Garnett, Project Gutenberg, 6 June 2013.

This was a freebie both on Project Gutenberg and Amazon which I decided to download because I like some of Chekhov’s stories and plays, and the libraries and bookstores are closed.

The Duel is a novella of about a hundred pages. The main characters are a couple living in sin on the Black Sea in a Russian Caucasian province in the late nineteenth century. The woman has left her husband, and they both left Petersburg to start over. Things move slowly but inexorably toward the duel of the title. Today the story is probably mostly of historical interest because we are reminded of the variety of nationalities and even religions within the old Russian Empire. We also see that social standing based on birth was still primary in the old aristocratic system.

One of the main characters is an impartial doctor who may be a stand-in for Chekhov himself. At one point the doctor notes:

“Faith without works is dead, but works without faith are worse still—mere waste of time and nothing more.” (82, cf. James 2:20)

The most pointed and probably most relevant story today is “The Princess.” The title character is, indeed, a princess. The tale contrasts the way she sees herself with the way others see her. Maybe like an American from inside the Beltway today, she not only has an inflated view of herself and, simply, does not understand anyone outside her class. One line in particular should get us thinking today about how the rich spend their money:

Can you possibly go on thinking of your philanthropic work as something genuine and useful, and not a mere mummery? It was a farce from beginning to end; it was playing at loving your neighbour, the most open farce which even children and stupid peasant women saw through! (175)

That is spoken by one person who is dangerously brave enough to speak his mind. Perhaps it is something we should all be paying attention to.

“The Mire” is probably the funniest or, at least, the most ironic. Here we meet the heiress to a vodka distillery who is Jewish. Like many other places in Europe, usury laws made it more convenient for Russians to borrow money from Jews and vice versa. In this case our protagonist Lt. Sokolsky is trying to get Susanna Moiseyevna Rothstein to pay the two thousand or so rubles that she owes his cousin so that he can get married. I wonder if it inspired Fitzgerald at all.

If Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” were a farce rather than a horror story, you might end up with “The Mire.” My grandfather used to say, “Women—you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.” I once heard a character on television say, “Men—you can’t live with them and you can’t shoot them.” Somehow, both apply to this tale.

Other stories in this collection are worth reading, too. They give us a sense of the Russian middle and upper classes in the two or three decades prior to the Communist revolution. Even then, there is in many of the stories a sense of resignation: We are stuck on the steppes, and there is not much we can do about it. Fifty years later they might be stuck on the collective farm or factory, but how much had changed?

Moving Beyond Trauma – Review

Ilene Smith. Moving Beyond Trauma. Lioncrest, 2019.

Moving Beyond Trauma introduces the reader to Somatic Experiencing therapy. The basic premise is that to recover well from a traumatic experience or upbringing, we have to involve the body as well as the mind.

The author notes that “talk therapy” works to some degree, but especially if a person experiences fear, digestive problems, shaking, or rigidity when encountering a situation or person, then perhaps that individual needs to have control over the body as well. She notes that many times our responses are automatic, based in what she call the reptilian brain, in other words, the brain stem. Our nervous system, after all, goes through the whole body.

She emphasizes the importance of touch to help with people trying to overcome certain fears or trying to establish good relationships with people. The best part of the book are testimonies of some of her clients. This includes people who experienced sexual assault, raised in abusive homes, grieving over someone’s death, fighting an eating disorder, to name a few.

It is not just our minds that we have to bring into line but our bodies through its nervous system.

As I was reading this book, I had an opportunity to test the basic idea on a small scale. When I was a child, I was terrified of dogs. Even after we had a pet dog, certain dogs still made me uncomfortable. When I was a teenager, I recall taking to my mother about it. She said that when I was a baby, she was walking me in a stroller and a dog jumped into the stroller. I was terrified.

Smith notes that some traumas may happen to us before we can speak, some even in utero. I was walking the other day in a park where there were people walking their dogs. None of this particularly bothered me, until one dog I was approaching started barking at me. I felt the old fear well up. I consciously told my body to relax, that it is all right. Immediately that nervous reaction went away. There appears to be something to this. Most of us learn that in this life the mind cannot be separated from the body.

Some of what Moving Beyond Trauma shares sounds similar to primal integration, another holistic psychological technique involving physical actions and touch as well as talk therapy. This has proven to help some individuals as well.

Years ago when I was a stringer for a newspaper, I proposed doing an article on a couple that practiced primal integration. The editor thought it sounded too weird. I get it, but it is hard to argue with success. There are a variety of people and personalities, and not every technique works with every person.

I confess I prefer the term medulla or brain stem to “reptilian brain,” but that is more a matter of taste, I guess. The term reptilian brain may sound creepy, but somatic experiencing may be just what some people need to help them overcome much greater difficulties than being frightened by a dog when a baby.

An Account of the Discovery of Tahiti – Review

George Robertson. An Account of the Discovery of Tahiti. 1955. Edited by Oliver Warner, Dent, 1973.

I have owned An Account of the Discovery of Tahiti for a long time but had overlooked reading it. I picked it up out of curiosity to see how it compared with Herman Melville’s Typee, his nonfiction account of spending the better part of a year on the island of Nuku Hiva during his whaling days.1 Both works are considerably earlier than Robert Louis Stevenson’s The South Seas, which describes an idyllic, Westernized, and Christianized South Pacific.

Robertson kept a fairly detailed diary while he was the sailmaster on board the H.M.S. Dolphin, sailing around the world and tasked with locating a new continent in the South Pacific or South Indian Oceans. Neither existed. (Australia had already been discovered.)

The Dolphin was the first European vessel to land on and truly discover Tahiti. At times the sailing vessel was surrounded by hundreds of Polynesians in canoes. Robertson seemed to be a favorite of the woman who was the Queen. While communication was crude, the sailors and the native people were able to develop a pretty direct and apparently fair trading system. The Tahitians loved metal objects, especially nails. The sailors were delighted with fresh food, poultry, pigs, and fruits.

At first there was a certain amount of mistrust on both sides, but the Dolphin was able to intimidate the native people by their weapons. Soon both sides were peaceable.

There is not a whole lot of specific detail about the culture, but it is interesting to read about this cross-cultural engagement. While Robertson is concerned about skin color, he saw the Polynesians as being much more similar to Europeans than natives of other exotic places they had visited. The women, he writes, were “handsome.” He speculates that they might have had Jewish ancestry because Jews have migrated all over the world.

This book covers a little over five weeks in the summer of 1768. Tahiti really does sound like a tropical paradise. Even though the captain claimed the island for Britain, the French arrived two years later and turned it into one of their colonies. Still this is an interesting historical artifact, and the few woodcut style illustrations in this edition add to the exotic quality of the record.

One curious structure was a small step pyramid, like some of the older Egyptian pyramids or those in Mesoamerica. Was Thor Heyerdahl onto something, or is that just coincidence? Typee goes into much more detail about the lives and lifestyles of Polynesian people, but Master Robertson’s record is a nice introduction.

_________________
1 Typee covers about a third of a year. Ship records show that Melville actually spent about a month there, so his story is fictionalized. I guess we might call it creative nonfiction today.

The Web and the Rock – Review

Thomas Wolfe. The Web and the Rock. Thomas Wolfe: The Complete Works. 1940. Pandora’s Box, 2018.

Thomas Wolfe’s novels are all autobiographical. The Web and the Rock, his third novel, introduces us to a new character; however, George “Monk” Webber could be a stand-in for Eugene Gant from the first two novels. He comes from a city in the mountains of North Carolina (“Old Catawba” he calls it) near the Biltmore Estate. In this novel, though, he calls Asheville Libya Hill instead of Altamont.

Monk Webber’s background differs slightly from Eugene Gant’s. He is orphaned and raised by relatives with connections to the countryside. Yes, Webber’s father came from Pennsylvania Dutch country like Gant’s, but this pays more homage to Wolfe’s mother’s rural relatives. Instead of going to the state college like Gant, Webber goes to a small Baptist college in South Carolina.

The first part of The Web and the Rock provides the web. Like Look Homeward Angel, it is a collection of memories and sketches of what the people and places were like growing up in the mountains of Old Catawba. Like Gant’s, there are detailed descriptions of George’s relatives, neighbors, and townspeople. All of these people and locations and events provide the network, the web, to his background or foundation.

George begins to get led astray in college. He may or may not have had experiences with prostitutes, but he starts attending an Episcopal church rather than a Baptist church of the school’s affiliation. We skip a few years until George, like Gene, arrives in New York City. He hints about having spent some time in Boston, but there are no Prufrock-like soirees until he gets to the Big Apple.

If his upbringing and later travels are the web, George tells us that Manhattan is the rock. In a previous review I marveled that Wolfe was so meticulously detailed about even random people Eugene Gant saw on a street once but was so vague about the true love he meets or discovers. Not here. Much of this tale is about the tempestuous and intense relationship between Webber and Mrs. Esther Jack.

Like other writers who cut their teeth in the 1920s, we see little remorse for an extramarital affair in here. In fact, Webber frequently complains that Esther has been unfaithful to him in spite of her being married. We meet her about a third of the way through the book, but it is more than halfway before we find out that she is still married. The Web and the Rock is the closest thing to a love paean on Wolfe’s part to his longtime paramour and supporter, Aline Bernstein, who was a stage designer and wife a Jewish businessman.

If even half of the relationship described in The Web and the Rock is based on what really happened, Wolfe owed a lot to “Mrs. Jack.” She was connected. At one point George Webber freaks out, as we might say today, because he has not heard back from a publisher that has had his typescript for five weeks.

Five weeks! As I write this, a publisher has had a typescript of mine for over three years! I once had an article rejected by a magazine after they had had it for four years. The business has surely changed in a century!

As always, Wolfe probably overwrites, but he writes so passionately. We see a lot about the upper class Jewish culture of the turn of the last century in New York. We get a sense of the theater in the 1920s. There is a lot of humor as Mrs. Jack and Webber go back and forth with Jew-Gentile stereotypes. Back then, Christian meant “Gentile” to most Western Jews. As has been said, there is never a dull sentence. Wolfe is simply interested in everything and everyone.

Some of the chapters could be separate stories on their own. At least one was. I started reading the chapter titled “The Child by Tiger,” I knew the story. I do not think I had read the short story by the same name, but I had heard it, probably on The Moth Radio Hour or one of those other literary radio shows. Wolfe was a middle class white from the segregated South. Yes, he sometimes uses language of the time period that would be considered offensive today, but he had great sympathy for the blacks of his hometown and was appalled by the injustice of the Jim Crow system. We find such appalling incidents in his “web.”

Wolfe also had his own take on the Lost Generation. He says that that is what they call us, but what it really means is not so much misplaced, but never found. Still, there is a lot of searching.

Whether it is the horrors of a lynching or the spontaneous camaraderie of the Munich Oktoberfest, The Web and the Rock brings us there. The reader can decide whether George Webber, a.k.a. Gene Gant, a.k.a. Thomas Wolfe, lived a life well-lived, but regardless of that, The Web—the taspestry of life—and the Rock—a “singing” Mannahatta—have an intensity that this prose Whitman weaves, and maybe unravels, for us.

N.B. Because parts are set in the American South of a hundred years ago, some characters in this novel use language that would be considered racist today, though it is clear the author himself does not share that sentiment.

A General View of the History of the English Bible – Review

B. F. Westcott. A General View of the History of the English Bible. 1872. Second ed. Amazon.com, 2014.

Since I teach the history of the English Bible in my British Literature classes, I came across this title in a book I recently reviewed that devoted a chapter to Dr. Westcott. This is the most thorough book on the history of the Bible in English through the King James Version. It includes references to editions that no longer exist and does an exhaustive comparison between different versions, especially the more influential ones.

Other books have had the same purpose. For most general readers, F. F. Bruce’s History of the Bible in English is sufficient. Westcott has more details including mentions of a possible English version, clearly neither Latinate nor Wycliffite, that Chaucer may have used and a printed version of the Cheke New Testament. Cheke was Edward VI’s tutor.

As far as we know, Cheke only did the Gospel of Matthew and it was not published until the nineteenth century, three hundred years after he lived. But if there were a Cheke New Testament still in existence, as at least one contemporary source claims, it would be a collector’s item.

There are also many detailed comparisons emphasizing both differences between certain translations and similarities showing likely influences. Westcott also belonged to a committee which was tasked with updating the King James Version, so he does devote a chapter to the work on that.

Because Westcott was such a thorough researcher, A General View of the History of the English Bible is not dated. Anyone who really wants to get delve into the origins and stories behind the translations of the Bible into English from Wycliffe through King James, this book does the job.

Alas, the electronic copy issued by Amazon was clearly done by an optical scan, and no attempt was made to correct problems. Some words are unreadable: They resemble the cuss words from a comic strip. Because superscripts are seldom recorded properly, there is usually a mishmash between the footnotes and the text. The e-book needs some serious editing. My recommendation: Get the above edition and expect to be annoyed, or do an inter-library loan for a printed copy.

The Time Machine – Review

H. G. Wells. The Time Machine. 1898. Gutenberg.org, 2018.

Like many others in the days of their youth, I had read a few of the well-known novels of H. G. Wells, namely The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. The last two stuck with me, and I could not help thinking of Dr. Moreau when I read Crichton’s Next.

Somehow, I missed The Time Machine. Though I had never read it, I knew something about it because of things I had heard or read about it. I know I had some friends who read it or who had seen the 1960 film, which I also missed.

So, yes, I knew there was a time machine and the main character traveled into the future where humanity had evolved into two races or species—the Eloi and the Morlocks. Somewhere I even had a vague recollection of the name of Weena, the Time Traveller’s Eloi girlfriend.

Like other narrations of the time period such as by Conrad’s Marlow or Doyle’s Watson, this is a frame story told to us by a person who tells us what the Time Traveller told him. We never know the Time Traveller’s name. I seem to recall a television show—possibly The Wild, Wild West or Sliders—where he was given the name Tempus, Latin for “time.”

The story appears indebted to two or three other famous travel or survival stories: Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and Typee. Gulliver finds a kind of ideal society ruled by horses, the Houyhnhnms, and depraved and decadent humans called Yahoos who promote evil. Similarly, the Morlocks of the underworld are the depraved anthropoids in The Time Machine who love the darkness rather than the light. (See John 3:19.)

Like the Time Traveller, Robinson Crusoe also finds himself stranded on a new, strange world. Crusoe discovers that his island is occasionally used as a retreat by cannibals, not unlike the way the Morlocks raid the Eloi on dark nights. Both Crusoe and the Time Traveller think of ways to exterminate their frightening, flesh-eating enemies but then have second thoughts. In Crusoe’s case, his conscience moves him. For the Time Traveller, it was simply impractical.

The Eloi live in a kind of simple, paradisaical idleness, like the Tahitians of Melville’s Typee. They spend the days eating, playing, and making love. The Time Traveller never sees any of them working. He was not even sure where their clothes come from.

They inhabit large, run-down buildings that had been built in an earlier era. They are smaller and weaker than humans like him. He had discovered a future land where people were living “on a strictly communistic basis” (6). But it was more like the vision not of Marx but of Marcuse, of sensual idleness. There are, for example, no older Eloi. Like the Golden Age of classical mythology, fruit trees were abundant, and that is what they lived on. But as in certain popular dystopias today, what happens to old people?

The Time Traveller notes that because the Eloi did not work, because “there is less necessity…the specialization of the sexes with the reference to their children’s needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even in our time, and in the future age it was complete.” (32) Gender fluidity? Wells could see something coming with greater leisure time even in his day.

The Time Traveller notes that with a kind of idealized communism “there were no signs of struggle.” So the Eloi are remarkably passive.

Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness…This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, then come languor and decay. (35)

Even the socialist Wells acknowledges that Utopias cannot last.

There is quite a bit of adventure and conflict here. Also, like much science fiction since, there is speculation about the direction biological evolution will take the human race. The Time Traveller’s theory—and he admits it is speculation—resembles Lysenko’s. Biological evolution goes hand in hand with the socialist dialectic. In this case, class distinctions eventually evolve mankind into two species.

The Time Traveller has a wild adventure in the future land of the Eloi and Morlocks. He also has experiences even further into the future that may have been inspired by Byron’s “Darkness.” The Time Machine ultimately takes a fairly realistic view of human nature in spite of its popular Utopian thought. Perhaps we need to consider what it is suggesting today.

As Milton put it:

…ignoble ease, and powerful sloth,
Not peace. (Paradise Lost 2.227-228)

And again:

But what more oft in nations grown corrupt
And by their vices brought into servitude,
Then to love bondage more than liberty,
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty. (Samson Agonistes 268-271)

The Gospel of John in Modern Interpretation – Review

Stanley E. Porter and Ron C. Fay, ed. The Gospel of John in Modern Interpretation. Kregel, 2018.

The Gospel of John in Modern Interpretation
is a direct and clear theological volume presenting an overview of theological perspectives on the Gospel of John (with some mention of his epistles and Revelation). These are not primarily interpretations or commentaries of the Gospel of John, but detached speculative analyses of the Fourth Gospel (FG) more concerned about the authorship or origins of the book.

The introduction by the editors helps readers understand the issues. Around two hundred years ago there was the historical critical movement, an attempt to question the authenticity of many books of the Bible or their inclusion in the Bible. This was followed by a history of religion movement, placing the parts of the Bible into whatever time they were written—but frequently getting into disputes about what time period the books were written.

This was followed by the source critical theories of various types. Currently there is a movement to look at the books as primarily literary works. There are eight articles altogether, two written by Porter, one by Fay, and the rest by other scholars.

First comes B. F. Westcott, best known as the compiler of the standard Greek New Testament text (the Westcott-Hort New Testament). Westcott, we are told, focused on the text of John and the historical context in which was written and canonized. From my own brief experience with Westcott, he was a thorough researcher.

Next we read about Adolf Schlatter, a prolific German historical-critical scholar. While concerned about the historical context, he saw the FG written to emphasize the divinity of Christ—an orthodox position. He also noted the Jewish and Palestinian context of the FG and downplaying Hellenistic influences others saw.

C. H. Dodd was also a prolific writer. He was concerned about the FG in relation to a hypothetical oral tradition. This reviewer has noted elsewhere a disconnect between theologians and other scholars of oral tradition. Many nineteenth and twentieth century theologians speculated about oral tradition but never applied Bible texts to works we know were orally transmitted. If we apply the work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, there is very little, if anything, in the New Testament that indicate any formulae typical of oral tradition. Unfortunately, this article does not bring up any of that secular research.

One of the most influential theologians of the past century has been Rudolf Bultmann. He saw the FG as being derived from Gnosticism, indeed, he hypothesized that Gnosticism predated Jesus among the Jews. The article suggests that there is a lack of evidence for this, but the theory does have appeal for someone who has studied Scripture and become skeptical. “Did God actually say that?” See Genesis 3:1.

Probably the most widely known theologian among the general English-speaking populace is John A. T. Robinson. Though best known for his Unitarian leanings in his book Honest to God, he also wrote about the FG. Ironically, he challenged theologians like Bultmann who took the view that the FG was inserted in the canon, if not actually written, long after the first century. Using early Christian historical writings and noting that even Revelation mentions the Temple as if it were still standing, Robinson believed that John’s corpus must have been written before A.D. 70.

Robinsons’ The Priority of John stresses John’s writings are the most important in the New Testament. And John emphasizes Jesus’ divinity most explicitly. Maybe Robinson’s Unitarian leanings were conditional, or, as the author of the article, the editor Dr. Porter, suggests, Robinson hopped on various popular bandwagons.

One of the “bandwagons” Porter on Robinson dismisses out of hand is Boman’s thesis on differences between Greek and Hebrew thinking. I thought Boman presented a convincing case, but the author of this article call the thesis a “fundamental (mis-) conception” (145). Considering that I am familiar with a couple of Bible teachers who take Boman very seriously, I guess I should look into a critique of Boman to see how his thesis stands up as it was beyond the scope of the article in this book.

The article on Raymond Brown tells us Brown hypothesized that the Gospel of John differs from the so-called Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) because it was written by a later “Johanine Community.” This is largely hypothetical, but one can make a case by emphasizing the differences between John and the other Gospels.

Leon Morris comes up next. This requires a brief apologetic on the part of the writer of this chapter because Morris was a literalist. He accepted the writings of John in the New Testament in their original as true and inspired. This means that Morris provides some balance to the more speculative material promoted by some of the other writers described in this book.

The final article is devoted to R. Alan Culpepper. He takes a literary approach to the FG. He treats it as a biography of Jesus and goes from there. He emphasizes that each of John’s writings had a specific message. The purpose of John’s Gospel is easily summarized in John 20:31:

…but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

The author of this article is one of the editors, Ron. C. Fay. Dr. Fay emphasizes this point:

Culpepper works will not allow anyone to forget that the Gospel of John is literature aimed at forcing a response of faith from the reader.(235)

That is a good way to sum things up. As I am writing my draft of this review on Good Friday during Coronavirus shelter in place, I would ask the reader simply this: “What do you do with Jesus?”

The Common Rule – Review

Justin W. Earley. The Common Rule. Inter-Varsity, 2019.

A minister whom I know and respect enthusiastically recommended The Common Rule. This young man is under thirty. As I read this, I felt the book should not be titled The Common Rule, but Common Sense. Doesn’t anyone who is serious about his or her faith do these things? I guess I am an older generation. We already learned the lessons presented here. Maybe they were not transmitted clearly to the next generation.

Earley chooses the term rule deliberately. The rule, such as the Rule of St. Benedict, was the set of regulations and schedules that monks in a monastery would live by. Earley’s daily rule is simple enough: Pray three times a day, at least one meal a day with others, one hour with the phone off, read Scripture each day before turning your phone on.

The weekly rule is also basic: One hour of conversation with a friend, limit media to four hours, fast from something for 24 hours, take a Sabbath rest.

My reaction was pretty much this: Doesn’t everyone do this? Or at least something similar?

The answer is apparently not. I apologize if I sound self-righteous, but I guess even though I started using the Internet because I was writing computer programs, I still view the cell phone as basically a telephone. And why would anyone want to carry a telephone with them all the time? “Bible before breakfast” was a common expression. And doesn’t anyone who does not have in-house paid cook share meals together?

I recognize that such things are habits which need to be deliberately pursued. I observe that some of my high school students appear to be addicted to their cell phones. After a 45 minute class, they breathlessly grab their cell phones to see…who knows what? One hour off a day would, I suppose, be a real exercise in self-control. I read that one middle school that required students to surrender their cell phones before each class discovered that placing the phones in a transparent bag made the students more relaxed because at least they could see their phones.

The weekly habits, I confess, I may not be so diligent with, but I get it. I do succeed to do no school work at least one day on most weekends. That is deliberate. Some weeks an hour conversation with a friend is a challenge—excluding a spouse, that is. Friendship is important. And, yes, we do need a break in our busy lives. These are things to live by.

This is certainly a good review of what is important in our quotidian activities. And Earley tells a good story. This is not done in a lecture or sermon style. There are graphs and pictures. He shares how he had to discover these things in his own life. I can sympathize. He works for an international law firm, and he had to keep in touch with the London office which is five or six hours ahead of where he lives in Virginia. But no one really cared if he did not log on to his phone at 8 a.m. rather than 6 a.m. In other words, relax, people. Like so many other things, phones and jobs are like our emotions: They are good servants but poor masters.

That, then, becomes the ultimate question, who or what ultimately is your master? I guess most of us have to learn that the hard way. Earley is providing a service to help others. God knows we all need help in some ways.

Book Reviews and Observations on the English Language