I had promised a review of Franz Cumont's Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism. It is difficult for me to stop where I am with the book and make these few statements, as I desperately want to spend more time tracing out the various ideas and go about verifying his assertions ( Read more... )

Early Christianity and Greek Paideia by Werner Jaeger

( book review )

Ten years before it was released as a Major Motion PictureTM, I read Frank Herbert's Dune. I'm pretty sure I read it twice in a row. It was five years before I was mature enough to tackle any of the sequels, and I got past God Emperor and well into Heretics by the time Lynch's film came out. In 2003, the SciFi channel did a Dune mini-series that ( Read more... )

I picked up Needleman's book Lost Christianity about a week ago, and I'm just about finished with it now. I had a strong feeling of having gone full circle, without any remaining desire to either consider myself 'Christian' or to style myself thusly.

( Observations from this new book )

As promised, here's that quote from the book I've been reading. Further observations to come.

These are words of a Christian mystic identified as "Father Sylvan" by Jacob Needleman in his book Lost Christianity. It's clear through in the text that "Father Sylvan" is both a student of Gnosticism and Hermeticism, which have colored his perceptions ( Read more... )

Has anyone else read Jacob Needleman's Lost Christianity? I'm about half-way through it now and need to let some of the ideas resonate through conversation ( Read more... )