He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Unquestionably erudite, but the vast amount of information in this digressive work may limit the appeal.Įlie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. When the Romans led their military expeditions into Greece, they turned its books “into the spoils of war.” In the “story of books in Rome, slaves are the protagonists.” Vallejo frequently diverges from her primary path, covering education, religious persecution, the rise of reading, bookselling, and countless other topics. For example, how many books were in ancient Greece? How many people could read then? Before turning her gaze to Rome, she discusses libraries in Nazi concentration camps. Throughout, the author draws on other writers (Borges, Christopher Morley, Umberto Eco) and films ( Memento, It’s a Wonderful Life) to help make her points, and she is clearly filled with wonder about myriad topics, almost all literary.
PAPYRUS AUTHOR REVIEW HOW TO
Vallejo’s narrative jumps around: illuminating tales from ancient history, descriptions of her research in Oxford’s libraries, how to read a scroll, the education of a scribe, our fascination with The Iliad and The Odyssey. After Alexander died young, King Ptolemy worked to maintain the vast library, enlisting the help of a variety of scholars. “In Alexandria,” writes Vallejo, “books served as fuel for passion,” and that institution became the world’s first public library. When Mark Antony arrived, he tried to woo Cleopatra with a special gift: 200,000 books for the city’s library. The author opens with a fablelike story about a king sending out hunters to find books, papyrus scrolls in many languages, “light, beautiful, and portable,” for a great library in Alexandria. Spanish author Vallejo, here “consumed by the book I’m writing,” beckons readers to join her on a sprawling, learned, lively personal history tour of books-“a silent dialogue between you and me.” The narrative quickly morphs into a comprehensive, fact-laden, occasionally rambling intellectual history of ancient Greece and Rome. And Now The Motive For the Announcement of the ‘Jesus’ Wife’ Fragment May Be Coming to Light ( and historical research converge in this memoir-ish book about books and a whole lot more.This thing is a fake and it seems to me that only those wishing to 1) assert the ‘importance’ of ‘ancient gnostic texts’ for modern Christianity or 2) out and out fraudsters will continue to support its ‘authenticity’.
The ravages of time are in no way evident. Honestly, I don’t see how anyone simply looking at the fragment can imagine it to be ancient.
No doubt Francis Watson’s comprehensive work showing the fragment’s dependence on the Gospel of Thomas was a contributing factor for this judgment, as well as the rather odd look of the Coptic that already raised several questions as to its authenticity. He said that Helmut Koester (Harvard University), Bentley Layton (Yale University), Stephen Emmel (University of Münster), and Gesine Robinson (Claremont Graduate School)–all first-rate scholars in Coptic studies–have weighed in and have found the fragment wanting. Craig Evans, the Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Acadia University and Divinity College, sent to me earlier today. News flash: Harvard Theological Review has decided not to publish Karen King¹s paper on the Coptic papyrus fragment on the grounds that the fragment is probably a fake.” This from an email Dr.