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In an evocative and imaginative novel, Amelia Earhart tells us what happened after she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared off the coast of New Guinea one windy day in 1937.
Book Description
In this brilliantly imagined novel, Amelia Earhart tells us what happened after she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared off the coast of New Guinea one glorious, windy day in 1937. And she tells us about herself.
There is her love affair with flying ("The sky is flesh") . . . .
There are her memories of the past: her childhood desire to become a heroine ("Heroines did what they wanted") . . . her marriage to G.P. Putnam, who promoted her to fame, but was willing to gamble her life so that the book she was writing about her round-the-world flight would sell out before Christmas.
There is the flight itself -- day after magnificent or perilous or exhilarating or terrifying day ("Noonan once said any fool could have seen I was risking my life but not living it").
And there is, miraculously, an island ("We named it Heaven, as a kind of joke").
And, most important, there is Noonan . . .
Customer Reviews:
Fluff.......2006-06-21
There are essentially two halves to the book - pre-island life and island life. I did not particularly care for either half, though the first is a bit more lyrical. In the first hald, the prose is a bit surreal and dream-like, so if you are not into that literary style skip this book entirely. The second half consists of a fictional Amelia playing the TV show "Lost" only with two people and not interesting at all. The prose also goes completely flat. It's a bunch of jagged paragraphs. On top of all this, fans of Amelia are probably not going to like this either, as the fictional Amelia goes through a complete personality change that the author hints was always under the surface (she's not truly happy until she's stranded on a beach, naked with her navigator and drinking coconut juice - in other words, being a pilot didn't make her happy.) I just don't think this book is worth it, even though it's a slim volume and is not going to take days to read.
I Was Amelia Earhart.......2005-06-20
I Was Amelia Earhart talks about the famous aviator's last flight in 1937 to Howland Island, a small piece of land in the Pacific Ocean. Amelia is already America's sweetheart because of her magnificent flying feats in a time when flying is still nascent. She flies with a drunk named Fred Noonan, and after they crash on an island with no human life (Howland, perhaps) in the Pacific, an unexpected relationship later blossoms between the two pilots, if only because that is the only way to keep their sanities.
The beginning of the book is extremely beautiful and lyrical as it talks about Amelia's love affair with the sky. The beginning also talks of Amelia's early years and her cold relationship with her husband (and simultaneously, her manager). The book switches from first person to third person frequently, and that was ingenious until it got to be annoying and hard to read. The last half of the book is a shame because it does not match the beginning in its beauty. The two pilots wander around the island, wander some more, ponder, and make love. That's about it. I Was Amelia Earhart lulls readers to sleep in the beginning because of how wonderous and surreal her story is, but then the reader may find himself really dozing in the end because of its flatness.
Disappointing.......2005-03-24
This was essentially a bodice-ripper with Amelia Earhart as the central character. Extremely disappointing. Lack of details about Earhart's life before the crash are the work of a lazy writer. The "afterlife" of Earhart post-crash is offensive.
a reader.......2003-08-19
I had been meaning to read this book for quite a while and finally got around to it while on vacation. I was eager to read others' thoughts ... although I am in no way religious, I found myself fascinated by what I took to be Mendelsohn's vivid exploration of purgatory, heaven and hell, using Earhart and Noonan as her literary vehicles.
I was surprised to see that no one else picked up on this and instead mainly focused on the media hype surrounding the book. Talk about boring!
Interesting story...........2003-08-12
I like the beginning, it is very captivating... it is as if she is talking directly to me from after life... or I am dreaming about meeting her in the Heaven, and she is telling the story of the last day of her life....
For that, I think the switching back and forth between first and third person works for me. It gives the illusive feels to the story.
The idea of the story is interesting. Amelia Earhart's life after the crash is more alive than the one she lived before. I think the author established that in the first page of the book "...What I know is that the life I lived since I died feels more real to me than the one I lived before..." Her life before that, she was trap in a marriage without love; a union of business instead of love. All her life she has wanted to fly, to fly away from life...her wishes seems to be granted when she crashed onto the isolated island. She is living her life. And most of all, she may be in love for the first time...
In this novel, her life may have just begun when the rest of the world think it has ended.
In my opinion, part 1 is beautifully written; however in part 2 the writing and the structure turn flat, like diary entries that are written quickly just to jot down the events, so that you'll remembered in the future. I find myself flip through the pages impatiently want to get to the end.
Book Description
Whether in the title poem, spoken by those who lived longingly and vicariously through the famous missing aviator, or in "Circus Fire, 1944," which intimately recounts a haunting New England tragedy, Gabrielle Calvocoressi uses her prodigious gifts of imagination and empathy to give voice to the hope and heartbreak of small-town America. In painstaking, vernacular verse, she conveys the ambitions and failings of a distraught populace—in the edgy jazz portrait, "Suite Billy Strayhorn," for example, or the enthralling, interwoven sequence, "At the Adult Drive-In," which conveys, at once, a personal and communal corruption.
Penetrating and compassionate, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart portrays, with a storyteller's arc, the troubled landscape of the left-behind.
Customer Reviews:
So Pleasing, Heart Wrenching, Beautiful.......2006-02-03
A fan of Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Pablo Neruda, Anne Carson, & C.D. Wright, among others, this was one of the most astounding collections of poetry I have ever read. Please read and support this wonderful poet!
A compilation of some of her best work.......2005-06-12
Gabrielle Calvocoressi is currently a Jones Lecturer in poetry at Stanford University (where she was previously a Wallace Stegner Fellow). Her poetry has been published in a number of important literary journals. The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart is a compilation of some of her best work to date and gives voice to the hope and heartbreak of contemporary rural and small-town American. Graves We Filled Before the Fire: Some lose children in lonelier ways:/tetanus, hard falls, stubborn fevers//that soak the bedclothes five nights running./Our two boys went out to skate, broke//through the ice like battleships, came back/to us in canvas bags; curled//fossils held fast in ancient stone,/four hands reaching. Then two//sad beds wide enough for planting/wheat or summer-squash but filled//with boys, a barren crop. Our lives/stripped clean as oxen bones.
America the Beautiful.......2005-05-31
Calvocoressi's voice is American in the purest, most evocative sense. The Last Time I Saw Ameila Earhart is a textured mediation on loss & the act of living in its wake- in it the historical is the personal. Its beauty, its certainty, derives from the holiness of the poet's affections, the truth of her exquisite imagination. Read it & be (for a moment) whole beyond all confusion.
She makes it look easy!.......2005-05-30
Gabrielle Calvocoressi's poems sweep up behind us like the 1944 Hartford circus fire she writes about in them. Everyone in the big tent, women and children mostly, it being 1944 - is having a marvelous time, la, la, la. The acrobats are "an entire family / suspended from a miniature porch swing." What could go wrong? They're just like us, only tiny. Then wham! In seconds the tent is engulfed in flames. Hundreds have died, leaving "Our lives / stripped clean as oxen bones." Hartford citizens remember that fire to this day, and this book has a similarly stubborn effect. Its poems are full of porch swings and oxen bones, images ordinary Americans might reach for to describe extraordinary events. The humility of the images, together with Calvocoressi's ventriloquism, is what gives them their powerful stealth. We don't read about so much as overhear her large cast of characters - a big tent for a short book - grapple with problems of memory: how to express it, how to explain it, how to live with it, and how to live by it. The poet gets out of the way of her poems, freely admits "Having Never Been to Gettysburg," and lets "Sedge grass, Little Bluestem, Bristlecone Pine / (O if this were the worst of it)" be "Not me, that insatiable lyric, darkening / The doorway of small town beauty / Parlours." Enter those incognito temples with your hat off, big tip in hand (her characters could use the money) and due respect.
Loved It - Now Teach It.......2005-05-20
I'm an 11th and 12th grade English teacher who loved the book so much, I dropped a couple poems into my American Literature Curriculum during a Modern Poetry Unit. The kids have responded well, particularly to "Circus Fire, 1944," and some even made the choice to focus on a few of the poems for their poetry presentations. The nature of Calvocoressi's poetry is perfect for class due to the mix of stark, forceful imagery and thematic complexity. In other words, the poems are accessible, yet still allow for complex and engaging classroom discussions/disagreements - certainly no mean feat.
Book Description
No stranger to the realms of myth and magic, World Fantasy Award winning author Patricia A. McKillip presents her first contemporary fantasy in years. Solstice Wood is a tale of the tangled lives we mere mortals lead, when we turn our eyes from the beauty and mystery that lie just outside of the everyday.
When her beloved grandfather dies, bookstore owner Sylvia Lynn knows she must finally return to her childhood home in upstate New York and face the grandmother who raised her and the woods which so beguiled- and frightened-her. But it's not until she meets the Fiber Guild-a group of local women who meet to knit, embroider, and sew-that Sylvia learns why her grandmother watches her so. A primitive power exists in the forest, a force the Fiber Guild seeks to bind in its stitches and weavings. And Sylvia is no stranger to the woods.
Download Description
"No stranger to the realms of myth and magic, World Fantasy Award winning author Patricia A. McKillip presents her first contemporary fantasy in years. Solstice Wood is a tale of the tangled lives we mere mortals lead, when we turn our eyes from the beauty and mystery that lie just outside of the everyday. When her beloved grandfather dies, bookstore owner Sylvia Lynn knows she must finally return to her childhood home in upstate New York and face the grandmother who raised her and the woods which so beguiled- and frightened-her. But it's not until she meets the Fiber Guild-a group of local women who meet to knit, embroider, and sew-that Sylvia learns why her grandmother watches her so. A primitive power exists in the forest, a force the Fiber Guild seeks to bind in its stitches and weavings. And Sylvia is no stranger to the woods."
Customer Reviews:
I Really Enjoyed This!.......2007-06-30
I love Patricia McKillip's work because of her writing style. I really love the way she uses words to bring out feelings and meaning. This book started out slowly for me. The first character, Sylvia is at home with her partner and the tenuous relationship is described. Syl gets the call to go back to her grandmother's house for a funeral and she is reunited with family. It took several chapters of the author describing the family and what was happening there for my interest to be piqued. I think I started to really feel interested when I read that Syl was going to her Grandmother's Fiber Guild meeting and somehow I knew that there was some secret to it. After that, the plot became more interesting for me and moved more quickly. As the story unfolds, people are trapped in the faery world and some of the faeries come into ours. I wondered what was going to happen and how it was going to be resolved. The technique of switching points of view between chapters also makes the book more interesting.
Another thing that I liked about this book is that it had a moral, a life lesson connected to the plot that made me think afterwards. All the women in the Fiber Guild worked so hard to keep our world separated from the faery world. This was done not because of bad experiences, but because of a folk lore tradition of depicting people of that world in a bad light. I think it is that we all have our predjudices about different types of people. These predjudices limit us and keep us from having new and different experiences. We really do need to sort out which ones of our fears are well founded. We don't want to be trapped by our fears as the people in this story were for so long.
I hope you will read this book!
Hooked me on McKillip.......2007-05-04
I had never read any of Patricia McKillip's books before, and so loved this novel that I've been seeking out all of her others---which I also love! Thanks Patricia, for your imaginative, poetic and compelling writing!
Readable, but not her best work.......2006-10-13
I adore Winter Rose, just as I adore most of McKillip's work, and I was looking forward to this title.
It's--ok. McKillip's prose is, as ever, beautiful. Sylvia and the Changeling are both interesting characters, and there is some truly haunting material here.
However, the fact remains that McKillip is not really suited to writing with a Message (I can't think of any author that is, really), and this book has a Message, much as Something Rich and Strange had a Message.
Nor does Mckillip truly expect her readers to show much intelligence in understanding the Message--it sticks up painfully all through the novel and then is announced at the end by the Faerie Queen, just in case we'd missed it.
If you really love Mckillip, and you want to read everything, go ahead & read it--there are some wortwhile nuggets here and there. If you only like her, or are reading her for the first time, skip this book. Read Winter Rose instead.
Solstice Wood is terrific!!!.......2006-10-04
Sylvia Lynn is Rois' (from Winter Rose) four times great granddaughter and Lynn Hall has been left to her after the death of her grandfather. She has moved a continent away from Lynn Hall and her grandparents, because like Rois and Corbet she is half- fay. Her grandmother Iris has been the leader of the Fiber Guild, which she describes as a sewing circle, but it's more of a coven about fear -- and good food-- and binding up the rents between this world and the Otherworld.
Owen, Sylvia's near -relation thinks:
"The heir to Lynn Hall had just walked out of the world into fairyland. The heir to Lynn Hall, born to guard, and watch, and keep all passageways locked againsr the wood- folk, was one of them herself. And one of us.
And so was the young man who had stolen my daughter's heart."
This is an excellent tale, well worth reading and owning. I liked the varying POV and contemporary setting very much.
Graceful and enchanting.......2006-08-09
McKillip is a true master of the fairy tale. Solstice Wood is set many, many years after her wonderful tale, Winer Rois (which I devoured in one setting!) It may be helpful to pick up that book before reading this, as sort of a background because McKillip doesn't delve much into what happened in Winter Rois, she just sort of uses it for a setup. Syl the main character is part fay, part human, whom has hid her heritage from her grandmother her whole life and must come to terms with this upon the death of her grandfather (whom embraced the fay and the wild wood in which they lived.) There is not a ton of action, but what action there is is well wrought. The characters are well described and the plot is solid. I know Amazon toted "The Stolen Child" as the "new" fairy tale but I believe Solstice Wood to be a much better selection.
Average customer rating:
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At the winter solstice
Jane Kenyon
Manufacturer: William B. Ewert, Publisher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
 General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Kenyon, Jane | ( K ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Christmas | Holidays | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006QSGJ0 |
Average customer rating:
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Daybreak-2250 A. D.
Manufacturer: Ace
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GQWFGK |
Customer Reviews:
A Lonely Journey.......2007-03-15
It has been almost 200 years since the global destruction wrought by nuclear war. The tools of man's vaunted technology lie rusting alongside crumbling roads between ruined cities. In the mountains, the descendants of people who were training to colonize other worlds when war broke out, struggle to survive. But in their zeal to maintain the purity of the human race in the face of radiation-caused genetic mutations, the Tribe of the Eyrie have isolated and even killed those with characteristics that drift from the norm of humanity.
Onto this stage steps a young man named Fors. The mixed-blood son of an honored explorer, a Star Man, he has been denied the honor of following in his father's footsteps, to become one of the courageous explorers who went into the lowlands searching the moldering cities for technology and devices to help their people survive. More importantly, to uncover the lost knowledge of what happened and why. Bitter and angry at the tribe's rejection, Fors leaves the mountain stronghold of his people and sets out alone on a trail that will change the history of not only his tribe, but all that remains of the human race.
Andre Norton's book, originally titled "Star Man's Son," foretells a cautionary tale of the future, one in which humans still have not learned the lessons of the past. The journey of Fors is a fascinating depiction of what the world would be like after the last great war of technology. In this world, the survivors of the human race have separated into tribes, each jealously guarding a swath of territory. Relationships between the tribes are bound in suspicion and conflict, but the real hatred is shared by all for the dwellers of the urban ruins, a human-rat hybrid known as the Beast Things.
Although all of the human tribes strive to turn their backs on those characteristics which drove their ancestors, known universally as The Old Ones, to war and destruction. But as the situation has developed, Norton makes it clear that conflict is an irrefutable part of the human make-up and despite the naive desire for "world peace," it would seem that humans will always reach first for the spear. Sadly, the historical pattern of humanity demonstrates that only external threats will compel us to lay aside our differences and work together.
The climax of the book, when the tribes gather for one last great battle against each other, becomes the moment when Fors steps forward and restores peace. He reminds all present that everyone faces a common enemy in the Beast Things and if humanity is to survive, that they must all band together in mutual support, or by choosing to exterminate each other, leave the planet to the Beast Things.
Norton has crafted a tale that is part Star Wars, Terminator 3, and Lord of the Rings, although its publishing date, 1952, predates all three. In the ruined cities, we see the heights from which our parochial passions caused us to fall. We are forced to come to grips with the truth that even in the face of a terrible lesson, we still run the risk of destroying each other. In the conflict between the tribes, we are challenged to rise above our primitive instincts and choose survival.
In the travels of Fors, we find our own restless desires to go beyond the horizon; to seek knowledge of distant lands and unknown peoples. And through Fors' eyes, we discover that we can choose friendship; we can choose life; we can choose peace.
There few problems with this story, the most pronounced being that it would be virtually impossible for a genetic mutation such as the Beast Things to rise to such an advanced level in less than 200 years. Perhaps 2000 years, but then there would be precious little evidence of the Old Ones left for exploration. The dialogue is pure Tolkien, and at times almost descends into Iambic Pentameter. Despite the stilted language, however, the story is clearly and descriptively told. The descriptions of the landscape and the cities, as well as the countryside between, tantalizes the reader to consult a road atlas to identify the land where Fors traveled. Sometimes, the reader is convinced that Fors is in Illinois, in fact the description of the big city on the lake that Fors discovers sounds suspiciously like Chicago. Other times, it seems he travels through The Smokey Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina.
At 191 pages, it is a short read, but an intense one. The book moves along rapidly from start to finish. Norton has taken the reader along for the breathless journey, a tale that is hard to set aside.
If you enjoyed Tolkien and Lucas, and you are intrigued by the vision of an apocalyptic future, then this book is for you.
Good novel from 50 years ago..........2006-02-22
Unfortunately, the author passed away last year. Fortunately, she had time to write a good number of novels. This one, written in the fifties, is a more than average post-apocalyptic novel.
It is the story of a mutant who doesn't feel at home in his tribe. One of the early X-Men :).
Even if you can read it in a matter of hours, you will find that Andre Norton had plenty to say about the actual world men lives in and not so much about the nuclear war that happened, which is fine by me. The trip of Fors in one of the ruined city and his encounter with the Beast things is very gripping.
Usually, I resell the books I read. I am keeping this one.
Enjoyable story about post-nuclear war world.......2005-07-27
Originally released in 1952 under the name "Star Man's Son" this story is set in a post-atomic war future. While that may seem cliche, at the time it was quite original. The story focuses on Fors, who lives in a remote mountain village. As the story opens, Fors is passed over for the postion of "Star Man" - a man who goes out into the wilderness in search of ancient technology for the village. Fors blames this on the fact that his mother came from a tribe outside the village.
Fors decides to abondon his village and sets out for the wilderness anyway, accompanied by Lura - his hunting cat companion. On his journies he encounters various other tribes, mutated wildlife and ruins of the past civilization.
Although one of the main messages of the book - an apocalyptic nuclear war is a bad idea - seems obvious now, it is still an enjoyable story. I think the strength of the book is that the focus is kept tightly on Fors. The book does attempt to provide a post-war history, delve into a scientific mistery or reveal a complex political stuggle. Instead it revolves around Fors' desire to vindicate his father's belief in a large undiscovered ruined city, his desire to prove himself to his village, and struggle to warn his village of the growing threat of the "beast-things" that live in the ruins. Because the book centers around the protagonist's individual struggles, it does not seem dated in the way that a more technologically focused book would have. The post-war world is revealed enough to keep it intersting, but not so much as to be tiresome.
This is a fairly simple sci-fi novel, that younger readers will enjoy. Despite that it does end with some ambiguity. While Fors may experience a personal triumph, what are we to make of the fact that the humans can only be united by a common enemy?
Product Description
Third Ace printing, same cover as first two. This is D-534, published in 1961.
200 years after the Destruction, young Fors set off to explore the empty lands to the north. He was a member of a clan which concerned itself with recapturing the knowledge and skills of their ancestors. By adding to that knowledge, Fors hoped to secure a place as one of the leaders of his clan, a "Star Man," like his late father.
Customer Reviews:
A NOTABLE PAPERBACK FOR VINTAGE COLLECTORS.......2007-05-27
The 1954 Ace sci-fi double numbered D-69 is a particularly notable paperback for vintage collectors. It includes one of the earliest appearances of Andre Norton's very first novel, "Daybreak--2250 A.D." (which first appeared in 1952 under the title "Star Man's Son"), as well as the first--and, I believe, to this date, the only--book edition of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore's "Beyond Earth's Gates." This paperback should also be of interest to collectors as it is only the sixth sci-fi double that Ace ever released, out of a catalog that eventually numbered in the hundreds. I would like to confine my comments here to the Kuttner-Moore work, as the Norton story is by now extremely well known and oft discussed. "Daybreak" is a wonderful introduction to an author who would deservedly attain enormous popularity, and features the heroic action and human-animal rapport that would become her hallmarks. Seldom discussed, if at all, is "Beyond Earth's Gates," a novel that first saw the light of day in the September 1949 issue of "Startling Stories," under the title "The Portal in the Picture." This is a preferable title, I feel, as it gives the reader a more precise inkling of what the book is about. In it, we meet Eddie Burton, an up-and-coming Broadway actor who gets into big trouble with the cops when his annoying ladyfriend, Lorna, disappears into a framed Rousseau painting on his living room wall! And shortly thereafter, Eddie also disappears into the portal in the picture, and appears in the land of Malesco, which he had heard about in supposedly make-believe stories told by his Uncle Jim many years before. Malesco, as it turns out, is all too real; a sort of alternate Earth that had split off from our own space/time shortly after the rule of Caligula. Vaguely Roman in setup, Malesco is completely dominated by its priesthood, the keepers of the religion of Alchemy, and lorded over by the very intimidating figure known as the Hierarch. As had Uncle Jim, Eddie and Lorna become involved in an incipient people's revolution against the priesthood; a seemingly hopeless cause....
Anyway, I have often referred to Kuttner and Moore as sci-fi's preeminent husband-and-wife writing team, but it can be fairly stated that they also excelled in the fields of fantasy and, as in their masterful "Valley of the Flame" (1946), a meld of the two genres. "Beyond Earth's Gates" is certainly a hybrid sci-fi/fantasy tale, and a darn good one at that. To make their bizarre plot a bit more credible, the authors continuously have Eddie tell us that he is no hero. He makes constant references to Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard, telling us that John Carter might do this or Allan Quatermain might do that, but that he was too chickenhearted to do anything. Eddie is certainly not your classic adventure hero; just a dude who's gotten in waaay over his head, and this somehow makes the story more believable. He is a very humorous narrator, too. For example, he compares his plight in Malesco to a space alien trying to navigate the N.Y.C. subways, and tells us that nobody in N.Y.C. "subway change booths has ever been known to speak in human tongues"! When he learns that the Malescans look on N.Y.C. as an otherworldly paradise, he says, "Believe me, I know better!" (As a native New Yorker, I thought these lines were quite amusing.) The authors, very cleverly, even manage to explain the mysteries of Joan of Arc's voices, Kaspar Hauser and Peter Rugg, by tying them in with the Malescans. This short novel (the whole thing runs to less than 140 pages) concludes with an extremely suspenseful denouement, with Eddie facing off against the Hierarch whilst thousands of Malescans watch the fate of their world hang in the balance. Wonderful stuff. Anyway, shortly after "The Portal in the Picture"'s 1949 release, Kuttner and Moore moved to the West Coast to earn their degrees at the University of Southern California. Only two more sci-fi novels would be forthcoming from the team, "The Well of the Worlds" in 1952 and the "fix-up" novel "Mutant" in 1953. A reading of "Beyond Earth's Gates" will likely convince most readers that even toward the end of this prolific team's legendary career, they were still capable of extraordinary, highly entertaining work.
Book Description
Sheds light on the origin and nature of Hebrew texts and versions, helping scholars, students, and pastors more fully understand the Old Testament.
Customer Reviews:
It is what it says it is.......2007-04-04
Brotzman does a good job of introducing one to the field of textual criticism (TC) and covering the essential issues and topics. It isn't an all-exhaustive work, but it is not intended to be one.
It's a good introduction and preparation for Tov's book, which should be the next logical step for someone seriously interested in the field of TC. However, a beginner would probably be overwhelmed by the host of technical terms and jargon used in Tov's book, unless he/she has some foundation to understand the basics, etc. I wouldn't recommend anyone to dive into Tov's book without the understanding of what TC is all about. Brotzman does a good job of that. He not only covers the basics of TC, but he also shows how to apply the principles in practice by providing a TC of the book of Ruth with a helpful commentary.
After reading his book, one can decide whether TC is something they are really interested in after all. If so, Tov is the next logical step. For the people new to the field, Brotzman's book is an inexpensive way to find out what it's all about.
INFORMATIVE AND ASSURING.......2005-10-14
How did the Old Testament get to us in such good shape and what are the apologetics for such a claim? Can someone who is not a student of Hebrew get some basic information on this subject? The answer is `Yes', with some effort, since the book is geared to an intermediate student of Hebrew, as stated near the end of the book.
Author Ellis Brotzman says that it is a "miracle" that Old Testament even exists, and a "double miracle" that it is highly accurate after its transmission from ancient times! I am very impressed with the care of the Old Testament by the Jewish custodians of the scriptures for such a long period of time. We have them to thank (through God's Providence) for what we have today. To explain how, Brotzman stayed fairly high-level, taking us from the creation of the original manuscripts to the present day, through different text styles, different language translations, and through the different gyrations of textual criticisms. Textual criticism, I found out, is a very organized, scholarly methodology of condensing the various texts into one that is as accurate as possible for our use today. To this end, Brotzman patiently goes through enough of the Hebrew language characteristics to allow us to understand what textual criticism is about. For example, I found that for hundreds of years early on, the Hebrew text was originally entirely consonantal, with the vowels being transmitted only through oral tradition. Later, the oral tradition was changed to written, and the vowels were indicated by adding the appropriate number of dots below the appropriate consonants. He lets us know in a general way how that works and the affect it has on the transmission accuracy of the text. He also gives examples of standard BHS texts with the margin notes on the sides and bottoms and what they mean, and the references they point to (other manuscripts, frequency of different types of errors, etc.). He also talks about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the great roll they play in validating the accuracy of the textual transmission. He then gives us some actual case studies from the book of Ruth and how the scholars settled the variant readings through textual criticism, applying the methodologies he describes earlier in the book.
The book took some work for me to understand, but it was worth it.
brotzman's writing.......2003-01-18
is concise enough to be understood and does lend something to the neat field of OT Text Criticism. it isnt exactly written for the expert in the field of hebrew knowledge (this is only my 4th semester of it), but the title says it all, "a practical introduction".
Not Enough Information.......2001-02-19
This book is well organized and speaks in a language that the novice can understand. Unfortunately, I have often been left with the impression that more information could have been added to the book so as to spare me a few trips to the library. I bought Brotzman's book when I was living in Germany at the same time I also bought "Textkritik der Hebräischen Bibel", the German translation of a Hebrew work by Emmanual Tov, also, I believe, translated into English as "Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible". I have to say that I prefer Tov's work. Tov provides more information on the various non-Hebrew versions, with Saadia ben Yusuf's Arabic translation being completely absent from Brotzman's book. Also, Tov's book has much more material on the Dead Dea Scrolls. Actually, Tov's book, being considerably larger, has more material on just about everything. Also, Tov's bibliographic information is more extensive and accessible, being listed with every chapter.
Brotzman's book is easier to understand (at least for me, as I was working with Tov in German), and perhaps this is why it is more commonly found in seminary bookstores than Tov's book. I would have to recommend Tov's book on account of the content, however. If you think you are too stupid to handle Tov's book, then this one is for you, but if that is the case, you'd best not meddle in Old Testament textual criticism.
I gave this book three stars because it is a complete introduction and provides all the basic information that a beginner needs to know. Beyond this, however, the book is really disappointing. I already knew pretty much everything in Brotzman's book before I read it and have never found any reason to refer back to it. Tov's book, on the other hand, though also an introduction, was a valuable reference to me long after I bought it and read it for the first time. Unfortunately, I lost that book during my move from Germany and have occasionally picked up Brotzman's book in hopes that it might answer some question that I had, only to be disappointed every time. Three stars is a generous award for this work.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Journal of the American Oriental Society, published by American Oriental Society on January 1, 1996. The length of the article is 597 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction. (book reviews)
Author: Alexander A. Di Lella
Publication:
The Journal of the American Oriental Society (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1996
Publisher: American Oriental Society
Volume: v116
Issue: n1
Page: p136(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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