Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore
I came away from this book with three impressions

1. The sprawling, endless history of this hilltop settlement, its stones and myths endlessly dug up and rebuilt.
2. The way much of world history --or at least the history of the Abrahamic religions- swirls around this single spot
3. The beheadings and rapes, generation after generation. My own village has a history going back to the eighth century, but in nearly all that time, sickles were just used for lopping heads of grain, rather than heads of people. Must be something to be said for not being so famous. 

A wonderful book, a work of  an unobtrusive author who sorts through the rubble and presents it to us, scene after boody scene. I learnt a few things. The Jewish people have been given Jerusalem back on odd occasions before the current time. Julian the Apostate, for example, the second after Constantine, returned it to them. 

The crusaders, while an embarrassment to Christians, were no more rapacious and deadly than everyone else. 

King David officially exists, thanks to an insription found in the 1990s and no thanks to the Bible account, despite it being one of the most intimate, many-sided accounts of a famous person in all antiquity. 

It was also fun to find the backstory of the Jewish puppet kings who stroll across the New Testament. All were collaborators with the Romans. Montefiore picks out the day (for example) that Augustus, Herod the Great and Mark Antony strolled out of the Senate together. The photo of that would have been good for a few quid. Or Bernice who not long after hearing Paul in Caeserea -- 'I would you that you were all as I am, but for these chains'--turns up as the lover of Titus as he dismembers Jerusalem in AD70. Josephus was with them that day, and got a few of his Jewish friends taken down from the crosses on which many had been crucified. It goes on.

Some gems of good writing too: Chateaubriand's travelogue 'set the tone of the European attitude to the Orient with its cruel but inept Turks, wailing Jews, and primitive but ferocious Arabs who tended to congregate in pictureseque biblical poses' (p384)

Glorious,

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

"I believe in the grace of God. For me, that is where all these questions end"

and then this:

"then there he would be, fresh from the gallows, shocked at the kindness all around him."

I can't remember the last time I cried while reading a book. I could feel the sobbing welling up inside. It was doubly embarrassing because I was lying next to a pool in the Cote d'Azur on a brilliant blue day, and my wife was reading Bill Bryson.

Perhaps it was post-traumatic stress speaking after my coma and paralysis three years ago. The book I was reading had the weight of an old hymn, suffering graced in music.

Or perhaps it was because God was beautiful and humans, like mathematics, need infinity to make the sums come out right.

Either way, Marilynne Robinson's Lila is extraordinary.

John Polkinghorne: Belief in God in an Age of Science

No doubt the most illuminating book I have ever read on the subject, John Polkinghorne steers a reasonable and rational course between the extremists (Dawkins and the creationists) whose noise usually drowns out all else. He is a physicist and a theologian, and a winner I think of the Templeton Prize for progress in religion, the Nobel Prize in God.

The general next to God: Richard Collier

I was given this book by a Salvationist prior to interviewing a new Salvation Army General in Singapore, as you do. It's a history of the Salvation Army and its founder, General William Booth, after whom a street in my home-town was named.

Utterly, totally captivating with its stories of this pioneering denomination that sought out the poorest 10% in the UK and around the world.

This was the gospel setting the news agenda. Who popularized safety matches? The Salvation Army. Why is the legal age of consent in the UK and in many countries around the world set at 16? Because the Salvation Army, allied with a leading journalist, campaigned for it. MPs, who used child prostitutes, were in uproar. There were riots, bricks, violence, jail sentences against the campaigners. Still they fought -- laughed at, derided, causing major civil disturbances, criticized by the great and the good as well as the indolent and the bad.

Here's the story of the Salvationist leader who always used to march carrying a dead rat: he reasoned that it was better to carry the rats that were thrown at him rather than cast them aside to be hurled at him again. What a book.

The Flood: David Maine

This book is what happens when a novelist gets hold of the Biblical flood account and retells it as literally true. It's subversive, entertaining, thought-provoking. It's about a full-on believer very unlike the dreary and samey European traditions of books about vicars who've lost their faith but carry on anyway.

What is life like living with an extremist who turns out to be right? What do the family think of this God who drowns the world? What does Noah do after the Flood when the words from God stop coming and he has to cope with being an ordinary, lonely old man? What a fabulous, funny read. You might even have to use the phrase 'heart-warming' by the end but don't let that put you off.

The end of poverty: Jeffrey Sachs

Here's the opening quote:

This book is about ending poverty in our time. It is not a forecast ... Currently, more than eight million people around the world die each year because they are too poor to stay alive. Our generation can choose to end that extreme poverty by the year 2025.

We live in amazing days: Nigeria, for example, now has no foreign debt, through a combination of political reform and debt forgiveness (and a high oil price). Debt forgiveness would not have happened without the Christian Church's contribution -- a story that perhaps will rank one day with the Christian contribution to the ending of slavery. This marvellous, clear-headed, optimistic and prophetic book is essential reading to shape our responses to poverty, aid, debt and trade.

Father Joe, the man who saved my soul: Tony Hendra

In a kind of joint biography, Tony Hendra tells the story of his life as would-be Catholic monk, then a famous atheistic satirist (inventor of 'Spitting Image'), and finally, recovering Catholic. The constant in his life is Father Joe, a monk who spends all his days on the Isle of Wight and patiently counsels Hendra through good and bad days.

The language is fruitier than you will find in your average 'Christian bookshop' but Hendra's wit and honesty and Father Joe's wisdom and grace, and the un-theologized clarity of the story, make for an inspiring read. You'll never despair for a prodigal again, even if the prodigal is you.

Gilead: Marilynne Robinson

From an unpromising storyline -- old Presbyterian pastor writes letter to son born in his old age, including lengthy recollections of his sermons -- Marilynne Robinson has conjured a book about life, joy, fathers, sons, ordinariness and grace. It occasionally drags (I listened to an audio version) but is exquisite and fine, dissecting (for example) how love for a prodigal can even somehow be more intense than the the love for the one that didn't stray. It won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A lovely, remarkable book by someone who clearly not only shares my faith but could teach it to me all over again.

Paradise Lost: John Milton

How this classic of world literature, the greatest epic poem in the English language, and a classic of biblical thinking, has vanished from bookshelves is a mystery to me. The text is of course public domain and can be downloaded for free, for example at Project Gutenburg.

The Amazon link is for an audio CD version, which I preferred to reading the text itself.