Joyful Noise : The New Testament Revisited

Rating:
Summary: Spiritual thinking taken to dramatic heights
Review: Being acquainted with the editors, I chose to read the introduction and afterword as book-ends. The effect was electrifying, since these writers clearly are wrestling with their personal beliefs, and struggling to communicate how important this quest can be. Any tolerant and thoughtfull religious thinker will find his/her accepted theology stretched and challenged, though many of the views seem "heretical" to mainstream conventional approaches. Take a chance and see if some of your long-held tenets don't take on a different resonance.

Rating:
Summary: A fresh and wildly spirited collection of essays.
Review: Edited by one of the literary giants of the 20th century, Rick Moody, Joyful Noise is the most profound treatment of the N.T. I have ever come across. Not since Chesterton's Orthodoxy has my system of beliefs been so tested. This book will appeal to, and the shake the ground of agnostics and believers alike.

Rating:
Summary: An embarrassment
Review: This book bills itself as "the New Testament Revisted." Revisited by whom, you may ask--writers interested in spirituality, religion and questions of scholarship--like Percy, Price, and Updike--or a bunch of glib, Gen-X New Yorkers whose interpretation of the New Testament is about as shallow as a parking-lot puddle? There are some great writers in here, but even they are dragged down by the overwhelming stupidity, presumptuousness and arrogance implicit in solipsistically re-exploring a work millions of people visit pretty regularly, thank you very much. For such a smart writer, it is hard to believe that Rick Moody so wholly swallows the highly debatable reconstruction of Jesus given to us by the Jesus Seminar. Another annoyance: he writes in his preface that all the writers were welcome to write what they pleased, but as editor of this venture he wanted to keep out any "repressive" interpretations of Christianity. It seems it has never occurred to Mr. Moody that the very fabric of the Judeo-Christian faith is repressive, and without that repression it loses much of the moral authority that made and make it so attractive to non-Christians. Moody, also in his introduction, writes that this book had as its genesis a "dinner party" conversation about the evangelical wing of the far-right. That seems about right, since this book is the literary equivalent of a dinner party: half-smart, filled with people who have no idea what they're talking about, and even though it's short, it feels really long. JOYFUL NOISE is little more than a calling-in of favors and a Cliffs Notes version of trendy New Testament scholarship. A book to despise.