BOOK BRIEFS Jesus, God, Sex and the Universe Jesus the Man by Barbara Thiering seems to be high on SoFers’ reading lists. No fewer than four readers have sent unsolicited but welcome reviews or comments, all appreciative. It has to be said that specialist scholars on the Dead Sea scrolls (on which Barbara Thiering bases her new interpretation of Jesus’ life) have been far more critical than our lay enthusiasts, particularly with regard to the author’s tendency to wring somewhat speculative historical data from documents which had a devotional rather than an historical purpose. But it does make a fascinating read.
A more personal and experiential evaluation of Jesus is offered by Margaret Vernon in Jesus and the Aquarians. As the title suggests, the author writes “from the perspective of ‘New Age’ spirituality, also taking into account Liberation, Creation and Feminist theologies”. She adds: “I claim no religious or moral authority”. Books like this (available at £4.40 from 31 Sandstock Road, Pocklington, York YO4 2HN) will never have a wide readership, but every personal pilgrimage is worth recording in this modest, undogmatic manner.
John Hemming’s On the Contrary, published by the Quaker Universalist Group (83 Oak Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 6AF) at £2.30 is another written with wit and poetry. John sadly died a week after finishing this pamphlet.
More substantial than these and deserving a far wider readership than it has yet had is Alison Leonard’s Telling our Stories (Barton, Longman & Todd, £8.95). This too is a “personal pilgrimage” account, but one by a professional writer (and another Quaker) who knows that all exploration is linguistic. We understand and come to terms with the turning points of our life by finding a fitting language to express them. “What I have learnt about a language for my spiritual journey is that, though I may articulate my journey in different words from those that other people find for theirs, the differences can co-exist. There may be occasions for speaking the same words together, but the basis is a search for the words that each of us can use authentically. An essential component is the respect that we have both for our own words as they emerge and for the words of others. The search for words turns out to be a search for our identity as individual human beings, and for authentic relationships in community. It requires both that we speak our truth and that we’re heard, and that we listen to other truths and take them on board in a spirit of acceptance.